"We'll have a great evening." His voice had the husky shading that heated her blood. He squeezed her hand as he put it back in her lap. When he released her, he let his fingertips slide over her palm.
Caro bit her lip to stop a gasp. Her nipples contracted, tingling, and she swallowed hard.
It would be so easy to let things go too far with him. She had to get hold of herself, find her equilibrium. Her caution.
The car turned right. Gravel crunched under the wheels. Rick made a couple of other turns and cut the engine.
"Here we are," he said. "I recommend the chicken stew. It's amazing."
"Sounds good." At least she managed a relaxed tone, no small feat when desire still sizzled in her blood. She fumbled for the door handle.
"Sit tight. I'll get it." Rick opened his door, letting in a whiff of cool night air.
Muffled music also rode the breeze, fainter once he shut his door. Caro couldn't hear the melody, or even the bass line, clearly. Maybe it wouldn't be loud enough to bother her inside.
He opened her door. "You probably already figured out from the sounds that we have a gravel parking lot."
In the magic, she caught his outline standing to the side so she could leave the car on her own. Caro unfolded her cane and stood. Finding Rick's elbow had become easy. Maybe too easy.
"Unpainted, wood shingle walls and a tin roof, red," he added, leading her onto a concrete walkway. "And we're at the door. I'll get it."
A hinge squeaked. Hot air and a driving beat rolled over Caro's senses. At least the air wasn't smoky. It smelled of fried chicken and hot bread, homey scents. Fiddles wove around and through the drums and guitar in a country rock beat.
"We're going to our right," Rick told her, raising his voice a little, "along the line of booths on this wall and the next, to the last one. One left turn on the way."
"Got it." She nodded.
They made it to the booth without a problem. As they sat, footsteps and a cheerful swirl of Mundane life energy approached.
"Evenin', y'all," said a woman's cigarette-roughened voice. "Rick, it's been too long since we seen you."
"It sure has. DeAnne, this is Caroline."
Caro extended her right hand. "Hi."
"Good to meet you." A slim, work-roughened hand grasped hers for a quick, firm shake.
Caro caught the woman's friendly curiosity as DeAnne asked, "Can I start you folks off with somethin' from the bar?"
"Caro?" Rick courteously deferred to her.
"What do you have on tap?"
DeAnne replied, "The usual big names and a nice local ale name of Screamer."
Caro grinned. "You gotta love something with a name like that. I'll have a Screamer."
"Two," Rick said.
DeAnne told them she'd be right back and hurried away.
"What does she look like?" Caro asked.
"Thin, five three and fifty-something with puffy blond hair, a light, perpetual tan, and brown eyes." He paused. "Is that enough, or do I need more detail?"
"No, that gives me an image. Thanks."
Rick took Caro's hand on the tabletop. Her heart kicked, and she took a slow, deep breath to steady it.
"So we're good," he said. "Since you ordered something."
"So far." She should slide her hand free, but it felt so good in his. The desire humming between them in the contact added another enticement.
So did the music. It had become jaunty. Fun.
"Here we are, folks," DeAnne announced. Two glasses clunked lightly on the table. "Y'all ready to order?"
"I hear the chicken stew is amazing," Caro said.
"My mama's recipe." Pride echoed in DeAnne's words.
"I'll have that, please," Caro requested.
Rick added, "For two. With a side of the jalapeño cornbread."
"You got it."
Rick thanked DeAnne. As she walked away, her footsteps, along with her energetic presence, faded.
Something slid across the tabletop as Rick said, "Your beer's at two o'clock, Sunshine."
"Thanks, Dudley."
Rick sighed heavily. "I looked up that cartoon. The guy's kind of a joke."
"But sweet. And honorable."
"I guess." Although he grumbled the words, they carried a faint undertone of satisfaction. "I meant to tell you I tried giving Max Grant an ally, like you suggested. That seems to be working. She's his sister, but he doesn't know it."
"His sister helped him?" Was that a reference to herself and Griff, or was she just way too wary anymore?
"She did. The relationship is still evolving. But now let's drink to your success. The editor at Georgia Arts Monthly loved the piece. The teaser on their website already has several hundred hits."
"Really? That's...amazing." Her grin stretched so widely that her face hurt.
"It's deserved. So let's drink to it."
Caro lifted her glass. "And to the man who made it happen."
"It was my pleasure." Rick clinked his glass to hers.
Caro sipped her ale. "It's good. Light and crisp with a bit of apple in there."
"Here I had you pegged for a white wine drinker," he teased.
"I am. Also red wine, blush wines, and all sorts of other things."
Bringing up a touchy subject might spoil this light, fun mood, but she'd been wondering about him in odd moments. Maybe their current, easy rapport would encourage him to open up.
"What is it?" he asked. "You're frowning like your ale went bad all of a sudden."
"It's not that." Caro ran her hand down the cool glass. "Rick, will you tell me about life in Birmingham?"
"There's not much to tell," he said uneasily.
Maybe she shouldn't have started this. Having opened the subject, however, she would see it through. "You know so much more about me than I do about you. I'd like to know how it was for you, growing up, and what gave you this burning need to fight injustice."
Rick said nothing, and he'd shut down his emotions. She caught no sense of his feelings, no hint of his mood. Her magic couldn't give her the precise outline of his body, but she would bet it was tense.
At last, he leaned forward. "My dad drank himself to death when I was twelve. We moved from Chicago to Birmingham, Alabama, to live with my uncle. My mom's brother. Who never let us forget what a big favor he'd done us."
"I'm so sorry." Caro extended her hand, palm up. He took it and lifted it briefly to his lips. This time the zing made her heart skip a beat.
He lowered their joined hands to the table. "Thanks, but a lot of people have it worse. Mom and Jenny, my sister, and I had a roof over our heads, food, all the necessities."
"It's just the two of you and your mom?"
"Yeah. Jenny and I are a team, y'know?"
Was that a lure or just an offhand remark? Caro said nothing.
After a moment, he continued, "Anyway, we both got jobs as soon as we were old enough. With work study, scholarships, and loans, we managed to swing college."
"Where?"
"Me at Alabama-Birmingham, Jenny at Auburn." His voice rang with pride as he added, "Even though she got a full ride, she worked. Graduated with honors. She's a promotions manager for an office supply chain now."
"That's great. I admire people who can juggle so much and still do well."
No wonder he continued to freelance despite his last book hitting the USA Today extended list. He'd had too much experience with hard times to trust the good ones.
Was he like that about relationships, too? Not that she had any room to talk. Besides, this wasn't really a relationship, no matter how tantalizing the light caress of his thumb over her fingers felt. This was a flirtation. Light. Short term.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.
His silence had a brooding quality. She could wait, though. Her father said waiting was an effective tactic because most people felt a need to fill a conversational void.
"Mom wasn't the same after Dad died," Rick admitted. "She still isn't. We moved
in with my uncle because she thought I might do better with a man around. Quote, unquote. Not her fault it didn't work out that way."
"You didn't get along with your uncle?" Caro asked.
"No."
She let the answer hang, but he didn't seem inclined to add anything. What he'd said was enough, anyway, for her to know his childhood had been much tougher than hers, blindness or no blindness.
After several moments, she asked, "So what spurred this dislike of injustice?"
"Besides Mom working two jobs and putting Dad's survivor benefits into the family pot, then Jenny and me chipping in, and that never satisfying my uncle?"
The words carried a bitter tinge. Caro's heart twisted. Sometimes old wounds were the worst.
"I'd really like to know what happened," she said gently.
"You might as well," Rick muttered. "My dad found out someone he worked with, a mage who had a lot of Great Lakes Area Collegium connections, was dabbling in dark magic. He went to the shire reeve about it. Too bad Dad didn't know the reeve and this asshole were golfing buddies. They turned it around on Dad, blamed him for exaggerating. Hinted that maybe he'd done the dabbling."
"Oh, Rick. I'm so sorry."
He twined his fingers through hers. "Dad couldn't deal. He started drinking, then drank more. And more. And then...Well."
"I guess the charges never went as far as putting this dark mage to the test? The auras around the examination chair would've supported your father."
"They said he didn't have enough proof. Not that they bothered to look for any. The investigation was a sham."
"You were twelve, and you remember all that?"
"Yeah." He blew out a harsh breath. "So now you know the basics."
"Thank you." Caro rubbed her fingertips along the back of his hand, over lean muscles, long fingers, and a light sprinkling of pale brown hair. He still gave off tension, but he'd opened up to her.
Maybe she owed him the same.
#
Rick studied Caro. Should he tell her more? If you wanted people to open up to you, you generally had to share first.
She didn't seem shocked, but the daughter of a successful lawyer had to know injustice was thriving in the world. In her touch, he sensed only sympathy, and maybe a hint of sorrow, for the boy he'd been.
Too bad he didn't want sympathy from her. He wanted something a lot hotter.
Yeah, knowing she cared warmed his heart, but his body was warming to the brush of her fingers on his hand. It was making him hard. So he was a dog. But what was it with her, that she could do that to him with the merest touch?
He needed a distraction, and the light, airy fiddle melody was perfect. "Do you two-step, Sunshine?"
Caro shook her head. "Never learned."
"I can teach you."
"Maybe after we eat."
"There are only a few couples dancing," he assured her. "And I lead, you know. No matter how much smarter or prettier you are than I am, I'm still the guy. I lead. All you have to do is follow."
"Well..."
"We won't do anything complicated. If you don't like it, we'll sit down."
"Here's y'all's stew," DeAnne announced, arriving at the table.
"A reprieve." Caro smiled. "It smells great."
DeAnne set out their food. "Rick, I meant to ask you. Have you heard any more about that fella who disappeared down the road, by Bond Swamp? The one whose car they found?"
Across the table, Caro tensed. She'd probably heard the same MageWire report he had, that deputy reeves had noticed the stink of ammonia, a sign of ghoul presence, on the car. But no Mundane could know that.
"Not a thing," he lied, wishing he didn't have to. "Sorry."
DeAnne sighed. "It's just a rotten shame. He was such a nice fella."
After making sure they didn't need anything else, the waitress hurried away. But not before she gave him a wink and a jerk of her head toward Caro. A seal of approval, not that he'd doubted it.
How could he get Caro to give him the same, to trust him? He wanted that more than he'd realized, and for himself, not the story.
Idiot. He was losing perspective, when maintaining it was key. Like noticing she hadn't responded at all to his comment about being a team with Jenny. Had avoided responding, which implied that she was hiding something. Loss of perspective could blur things like that, keep him from noticing. He couldn't let that happen.
Even if Dare had been right the day of that catastrophic raid, he'd been a menace ever since.
Except Jason had said some of the reeves thought Dare was going after ghoul nests on his own.
But that couldn't matter, even if that unlikely theory were true. Rick gave himself a mental shake. He had to put these doubts away. Right or wrong, Dare had cost too many innocents their lives.
Caro spooned up stew and tasted it. "Mmmm." Her eyes closed. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, catching a stray drop of stew. The deep breath she drew as she inhaled the food's scent made her breasts rise.
Rick set his jaw against the sudden, sharp need to fill his hands with them. To have her moan for him.
So now he had a woody. Shit. At least the table hid it from everyone else, but had she picked up on his lust before he shielded it?
If she did, she showed no sign of it. Smiling at him, she said, "This is great, just like you said."
"DeAnne knows her way around a kitchen."
"Is she the cook, too?" Caro broke a palm-sized square of cornbread.
"No, that's Walt. But she's the boss, and everybody here knows it."
"She seems to like you. You either work here a lot or eat here a lot. Or both."
Rick grinned. "Hey, I'm a likeable guy."
"You are," she agreed, smiling.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. Abruptly, Caro set her spoon down. "I want to tell you something."
"Okay." Judging by the tension in her face and body, it was something difficult. About her brother, maybe? Rick leaned forward. This could be the break he needed.
She blew out a hard breath. "Before we step onto the dance floor, I need you to know why I hate crowds so much. The Christmas I was eleven, my class went to the mall to see the decorations. This was right before school got out, a week before Christmas, so the place was insanely crowded. The short version is that I got separated from my class. The girls I was with were distracted and didn't realize at first that they'd lost me."
"Sunshine, I'm sorry." He covered her hand with his again. She looked grim. Maybe he should stop her. But she'd said she wanted to tell him.
Caro shrugged. "Obviously, it all turned out okay. But I was lost in the crowd, couldn't use my cane. Didn't even know which way I was facing. People kept jostling me, not on purpose but trying to move past me. I finally made my way to a wall and just stood there."
"That had to be terrifying." He reached across the table for her other hand. Touching her was way too appealing, but he couldn't resist in the face of her remembered pain.
Although her fingers tightened on his, her expression didn't lighten. Again, she blew out a hard breath. "This man asked me if I needed help. I told him to go away. I didn't know who he was."
"At that age, your magic wouldn't have manifested yet."
"No. Except for sensing colors with touch, which came early, I had nothing then. Anyway, I groped my way into a store and refused to move until Mom arrived. Security came, to get this semi-hysterical kid away from the holiday shoppers, I think, and I had a fit. By that time, the teachers had done a headcount at the buses and missed me."
Caro sighed. "It was a huge kerfuffle, one I didn't deal with especially well. I didn't want to leave the house again for a long time."
"Sunshine, you were eleven. Of course you were scared. Of course you pulled back. You were smart not to go with anyone you didn't know, security or not."
"You're sweet to say that." She didn't sound convinced, though.
"Not sweet. Honest," he said firmly. "Now, what do you say to a d
ance lesson? The floor isn't crowded, but if you'd rather not try–"
"No, I want to. I can tell that there's plenty of open space in here. I can sense people or other living things, as most mages do."
"If you're sure, I'd love to dance with you." She was offering him a lot more trust than he'd first realized.
"I tend to pull back," she confessed. "I've done it often since then. I'm trying to change that."
"Change takes courage. I'm honored you'd trust me with being part of it."
A smile quirked the corners of her ripe mouth and made him want to taste it again. "You're a nice guy, Dudley. I bet you'd look fabulous in one of those red tunics the Mounties wear."
"Thanks. But if you want a dance lesson, you need to dig in so we can get to it."
They finished quickly and slid out of the booth.
Rick said, "You can leave your cane and purse in the booth, but if you'd rather, we can put them behind the bar."
"If you say they're okay here, that's fine." She squared her shoulders.
This might go better if she didn't carry herself so rigidly, as though she were going to face another public demonstration. But maybe that was how this felt to her.
He steered her to the corner of the dance floor with no occupied tables nearby. They had some space here.
"I need you to be very specific," Caro said. "I feel kind of naked without my cane."
"Got it. Okay, Sunshine, give me your right hand." He placed his right hand at her left shoulder blade. "Rest your left hand on my arm and shoulder so you can feel how I move."
Waiting while she set herself, he couldn't help noticing how earnest she looked, and anxious. In this, at least, she trusted him. Maybe they could progress from here. It really was too damned bad that he had to betray her trust to get the truth.
"Good," he said when she was set. "You step first with your right foot, and I start with my left. That's important when we travel the floor."
"So we don't kick each other."
"Right. We do two quick steps, then two slow, two quick, two slow, and repeat that pattern."
"Hence the two-step?" she asked.
"Exactly. Now let's try it, just small steps for now. You're going backward, okay?"
After a couple of false starts, she had the hang of it. "It's not that hard." Caro grinned. "At least, not while you're saying 'quick, quick, slow, slow."'
Sentinel: A Light Mage Wars Novella (The Light Mage Wars) Page 8