She was scared, however, that she could see fighting his battles beside him long into the future. She was scared that she wanted that—to be beside him.
He was a runner. He never stayed in one place. Always moving. Always roving. Swim or die, he seemed to say every time he moved on.
It was an act of survival. It was as ingrained in him as the mystery of all of it. Even as she embraced it as part and parcel of who he was, she admitted that it might be the one thing about Gavin that terrified her most.
Prometheus cut through the undergrowth, tongue lolling playfully, panting. Mavis silently thanked him for cutting through the fabric of her thoughts and tossed him a Milk-Bone. He yanked it out of the air with his teeth, making quick work of the snack. Mavis ran her finger through the clean water she’d poured into his water bowl next to the towel, pleased when he moved to it to freshen his palate.
His fur was warm from the sun when she ruffled it above his collar. Fingers sinking in, she lowered her cheek to the flat top of his head when he came up for air, answering the touch by pushing lovingly against it. “You’re with me,” she murmured. She hated the ache inside her. She hated how it made her question—everything. “Right?”
Sitting back on her heels, she braced herself as Gavin stood. The river sluiced off him, a glossy coat. It tuned her in further to his potency. Muscle and bone didn’t so much cohabitate, as each fought for ground, bringing his struggles to the surface. The survivor—warrior Gavin—was there in rippling arms, pectorals, abdominals. His thick quads were outlined by his buff-colored trunks pasted wet against his skin. She couldn’t even look near his waist where his distinct V-cut was on parade.
Embattled Gavin—haunted Gavin—was there, too, and it was loud in the strain of his rib cage and the knots of his collarbone and high shoulders.
As he splashed to shore, he ran his hand over his face, then back and forth over the crown of his shorn head. Mavis’s attention snagged on the fangs of the wolf. The wildness of it, the primal nature…it suited.
He wasn’t tame. He snarled. He spooked. He made the hairs on the back of her neck stand sharply on end. He was a wild thing that appealed to everything offbeat inside her. He made her answer in places she didn’t normally have to think about on a regular basis. She chastised herself and nearly thought better of the gesture she’d brought him here to make. Frowning, she lifted the hot foil-lined packet between her hands as his wet feet dredged into the sand. “Here.”
“What’s this?” he asked, taking the gift with a measure of caution.
“An animal sacrifice.” She shook her head as he unwrapped the foil with a rustle and settled slowly on the towel next to her.
“Ah,” he uttered, and she heard the moment the grin hit his face. “You,” he added with affection.
“I did promise,” she said, and sniffed. The smell of braised beef hit her squarely in the stomach and she turned her nose. “Eat it quick before Prometheus catches a whiff or I decide it needs a proper burial.”
“Mmm,” he answered, mouth full. “Oh, gawd!”
Mavis held up a hand. “The sex bomb noises aren’t helping.” Seriously not helping. Her gorge wasn’t the issue anymore. More, the cinder and burn sweeping outward from the star-bright point of her navel.
“But it’s so good!” He polished off the burger quickly, licking his fingers and crumpling the empty foil. He gripped her arm, the one closest to him, tugging her around to him. Big hands framed her cheeks as he said, “You are a dark, strange goddess but I’m willing to worship you any way you’ll let me.”
“Hmm,” she said, trying to sound noncommittal. He released her and she turned halfway away, filling their tea glasses with lemon water from the well-capped pitcher she’d brought in the basket. Composing herself appropriately.
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Are you ever going to tell me?” he asked.
Her brows lowered. “Tell you what?”
“How you got into the business with Zelda. You said you’d tell me, eventually, if I stopped thinking of it as a racket.”
“Have you?” she probed, raising the lip of the glass to her mouth.
He nodded, decisive. “Sure. I mean, I don’t know if I believe that there’s something there. I do know that you believe in what you’re doing. So does Zelda. You’re pros.”
Mavis nearly smiled at the admission. “Thank you,” she said. At the tilt of his head, she added, “For saying it.”
“Do I get to hear the story now?” he asked.
She took another sip. “You’ve probably heard it before. It’s no secret.” Sitting up straighter, she cleared her throat. “My interest in the paranormal found me. Kyle was fifteen. He knew how to drive but only had a learner’s permit at that point. He wanted to drive Dad’s Mustang into town. Dad was in the passenger seat. I was in the back. We came up to an intersection. The light turned green, but before Kyle could hit the accelerator, Dad yelled at him not to. It wasn’t a second later that a tractor trailer blew through the red light and hit the car in front of us.
“Traffic stopped, as you’d expect. Everybody got out to help. Dad told Kyle and me to stay back as he ran to see if anyone was hurt. I remember Kyle dialing 911 on his cell phone, speaking to the operator. He had his hand on my shoulder, like he wanted me to turn away, but you know how it is when you see something like that. You can’t help but look.”
Gavin nodded sagely. When he stayed silent, listening, she went on. “The driver’s door of the tractor trailer was open. It’s as vivid to me now as it was then. I saw the driver climb down from the cab. He was wearing a blue shirt. He didn’t look injured at all. I think he even looked up at me. Then he turned and walked away into the crowd of people standing around. It didn’t occur to me that nobody stopped him, nobody…”
She paused in the telling to wet her throat. Gavin frowned at the lull. “You’re going to tell me he didn’t really get out of the truck. Aren’t you?”
Mavis brushed her knuckles across her chin to wipe away a bead of excess water. “We were at dinner the next night. Nobody had spoken about what happened, at least not around me. Dad said something about a diabetic coma. I wanted to know what that was. He told me. Then Kyle asked, ‘That’s what the driver had?’ It took me a moment, but the way Kyle said it bothered me. Past tense. I asked, ‘What do you mean he “had” it? He’s all right, isn’t he?’ I knew by the look on Mom’s face that that wasn’t the case. It was Kyle who finally told me that he never made it out of the truck.”
Gavin’s stare was trained on her profile. She could feel it washing over her features. “How old were you?”
“Five,” she said. “Close enough to my birthday to feel six. But five.” At Gavin’s next beat of quiet, she spread her fingers wide. “I’ve gone over it in my head a thousand times or more. There’s a good chance I didn’t see what I think I saw. It was the closest to death I’d ever been at that point so there’s a possibility I imagined it, to cover the shock.”
Gavin shook his head. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
She turned her gaze to him, finally. “It doesn’t?”
“No. I remember all those times Kyle and I would camp out in the woods. We’d hear you in the bushes when we told ghost stories. No matter how scary we made them, you’d never run. We could never make you scream. You’ve always absorbed things. That’s one thing I noticed. You and your owl eyes—always absorbing everything and everyone around you.”
“Is that why you thought I was spooky?” she wondered.
“You could say that,” he replied.
She studied him, pursing her lips. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
“I never thought you were crazy,” he told her. “A little weird, but in a good way. An interesting way.”
She smiled with more ease than she would have thought possible after telling her story. “Good answer.”
&nb
sp; His eyes skimmed across her lips. She caught the gleam in them, the beginnings of an answering grin before he glanced around at her picnic basket. “Didn’t you pack anything to eat?” She nodded and he picked it up by the handle.
“Thank you,” she said, and opened it to find her brunch. “Anything else you want to know while we’re here?” Alone.
“Plenty,” he admitted. “Like what’s the deal between Zelda and Errol?”
“What do you mean?” Mavis opened another foil-wrapped packet. The veggie wrap didn’t smell nearly as offensive as his cheeseburger. She dived in, realizing how hungry she was.
“Well,” he said thoughtfully, stretching his legs and hooking one ankle over the other, “when we got back to the river house after our field trip to Mobile three days ago, Zelda was out of sorts. Errol quietly volunteered to make us grub. Zucchini lasagna.”
“How was it?” Mavis asked curiously.
“I’ve had worse.”
“You should try his vegetarian meat loaf,” Mavis suggested, taking a large bite from her wrap. “It’s his specialty.”
He held up a hand. “Help me out here. How the hell do you make meat loaf vegetarian? The meat part’s baked into the title.”
Mavis crumpled the foil into a ball. She chewed, swallowed and answered, “Chalk it up to a man trying to impress a female…even if it means giving up that vital crutch all red-blooded American men seem so desperately attached to.” At his frown, she expounded. “Cow.”
“Huh.”
“Someday you’ll have to explain to me the correlation between virility and beef,” she told him.
Gavin’s jaw worked for a moment. He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. “You worry me, Frexy. Did your parents not tell you the deal about the birds and bees?”
She elbowed him in the side, enough to make him straighten up. Being close to him wasn’t helping her train of thought.
“Anyway, after the meal,” he said quickly, “Zelda thanked Errol profusely, and asked if I was in good form. When I answered yes, she made it pretty clear that she was dragging Errol off to her wing of the house.”
“And?” Mavis asked.
“And he was at breakfast the next morning,” Gavin finished.
Mavis shrugged. “So?”
He scratched the tip of his nose. “So, they’re clearly doing some bed-hoppin’…”
“And you—a red-blooded American man who is no stranger to sexual escapades—is scandalized by the idea of a single man and a single woman having relations because why?” When he made a face, she rolled her eyes. “Tell me it isn’t their age.”
“I don’t have a problem with old people doing it,” he claimed, “just so long as I don’t try to picture it in my head.”
“Why would you picture it?” she asked. “Are you a pervert?”
“Not that kind of pervert,” he said.
“Then what’s the deal?”
“They’ve been doing this for how long?”
“I don’t know,” Mavis replied. “The whole thing started six months or so after I moved to the river.”
“And how long have they been having sleepovers?” he wondered.
“As long as they’ve been together,” Mavis said.
“And they live in separate houses?” he asked. “Zelda’s not the conventional sort so I wouldn’t be surprised if she opposed the marriage route, especially since she’s…however old she is. She still won’t tell me.”
“She has a flair for mystery,” Mavis said.
“Like you,” he acknowledged.
Look who’s talking, frogman. “You know how old I am.”
“In the physical sense. But you’re an old soul. That’s been clear a hell of a lot longer than I can reckon.”
His eyes grazed her features again, as if he were memorizing them. Mavis cleared her throat. The starry point at her center was swelling at an alarming rate. “You’re right about one thing—Zelda doesn’t believe in marriage. She tried it once, when she was younger.”
“I take it it didn’t last long.”
“About thirteen months. He wanted to bring home the bacon and leave her at home to do the washin’, dryin’ and child-rearin’. Also, he wanted to give her an allowance.”
“Sounds quaint and domestic.” Gavin gave a false shudder. “No wonder she ran.”
“As for her and Errol’s arrangement,” Mavis continued, “it suits them. They both can operate independently. If ever one needed to take care of the other, things would change. But for now, Zelda’s home is the river house. It’s her business. It’s her life, one I think she had to reinvent in a lot of ways. It took guts for her to go back there after her father passed on. Her mother ran off with the mailman when she was little.”
“The mailman?”
Mavis nodded. “The mailman. Her father remarried quickly. Her stepmother was a woman of the church with two little girls of her own. While they never toed the line, Zelda was—as you’d expect—different. Rebellious. Outspoken. The stepmother put all her energy into convincing her father that she was evil.”
“Seriously?”
“She went so far as to try to get the reverend to affirm that Zelda was possessed by the devil,” Mavis revealed.
“And Zelda’s father believed this?”
“It’s unclear what he believed,” Mavis said, “but he didn’t do much about it. Zelda ran away before she was sixteen.”
“Where to?”
“Where else?” Mavis said, smiling. “To join the circus. She was a trapeze artist.”
“You don’t say.”
“She toured for several years, wound up in Vegas where she joined an acrobatic troupe. Before Cirque du Soleil, there were Zelda and her fellow artists. Then her father died. He left the family money to the stepmother and her daughters, but he bequeathed the river house to Zelda. She didn’t have to come back. She had a good job, good money and good standing—none of which she’d ever had at home. But she was like me; even when her stepmother was taunting the shakes out of her, she could never stop loving the river. She swept back home, making an entrance in a pink stretch limo and a gold lamé cape.”
“Like Elvis?”
Mavis held up a silencing hand. “Don’t bring up Elvis. She’ll spend hours regaling you about how he stole her look after their torrid affair.”
Gavin chuckled deeply. “Okay. Don’t bring up Elvis.”
“The stepmother had decided to stay on at the house, figuring Zelda wouldn’t dare show up again.”
“But she did.” Gavin tipped his chin. “Thatta girl.”
“Zelda said the stepmother packed her bags quicker than Jesus could part the waters and she never heard from her again. Anybody on the river will tell you what happened next. She dissolved the family antiques business, took every last scrap of furniture she could find and piled it on the front lawn and burned it all to cinders. Some say she danced on the ashes.”
“Naked?”
She eyed him balefully. “That’s when she planted the willow and started her own business. She’s been here ever since.”
“And Errol?” he asked.
“He and his wife moved here after the war.”
“What war?” he asked.
“’Nam.”
“What branch was he?” Gavin asked contemplatively.
“Army,” she said. “He volunteered to fight, lied about his age to do so…”
Gavin grew quiet.
It was her turn to watch him. “I won’t tell you how it went. I think you already know. He and his wife lived in the city. Once he was discharged, apparently it became clear to her fairly quick-like that he needed a change—of scenery and pace. So they came here. They bought a house with an apple tree. She died sometime in the nineties, leaving him alone.”
“Until Zelda,” he guessed.<
br />
“When she and I started investigating, a lot of people laughed,” Mavis explained. “Most people laughed. A lot of callers wanted to hire us for the spectacle. Errol was one of our first clients. The first one to take it as seriously as we did. And the reason he won’t move to the river house with Zelda is because his house was the first place we discovered legitimate EMF anomalies.”
His shoulders moved as he released a breath. “The wife. He thinks she still lives there.”
Mavis licked her lips in reply. She realized the foil was still balled in her hand and tossed it into the basket with the pitcher.
“How does Zelda feel about sharing?”
“Oh, she doesn’t mind. Aurelie, his wife, had dibs on him first, after all. Though when they do the sleepover bit, it’s not often at his place.”
“I should think not.”
Mavis noted his discomfort on the subject. Maybe Gavin did believe, after all. She wrapped her hand around one of the glasses she’d filled. “Cheers,” she offered.
“To what?” he asked.
“To a large step in an uncharted direction.” When he frowned, she elaborated. “You did something three days ago—something you weren’t comfortable doing. But you did it regardless, and whether you choose to join Errol, Zelda and me again in the field, I’d just like to say congratulations.”
“Why?” he said, frown deepening.
“Well, when I do something that scares me…” Mavis waited a beat for Gavin to deny that he’d felt any sort of fear on their jaunt to Mobile. He didn’t. Pleased with him, she continued. “… I tend to confront pieces of myself I wouldn’t have otherwise known. Which I think is exactly what you need right now, especially since you don’t know exactly what you want to do with the rest of your life. And at this point there’s nothing wrong with that.” He groaned in disagreement and she shook her head. “Your life’s been turned upside down. There’s nothing wrong with recalculating, recalibrating and taking the time to know yourself again—discovering what else there is in life. I know that’s what you want.”
“Do you?”
It was a direct question, posed in a direct manner. “It’s okay if whatever path you choose doesn’t bring the same sense of satisfaction as being a SEAL did,” Mavis said. “And I don’t care where it leads you when you find it. Just… I want you to find it.”
Harlequin Superromance May 2018 Box Set Page 14