by Zoe Chant
Malachi pointed at the kitchen table, his face stern. Still laughing, Elizabeth obediently went over and sat down in one of the chairs.
And she had to admit—privately—that it was nice to sit. She wasn’t nearly as crazy-exhausted as she’d been yesterday, but she still did get tired easily.
Hayley and Malachi had their heads together already, talking recipes. Elizabeth watched them curiously. She’d always been terrible in the kitchen. She wondered if she could learn any better. Maybe Malachi would be willing to teach her.
The two of them separated and started pulling different things out of the cupboards and the fridge. Hayley chopped some kind of herb; Malachi washed lettuce; Hayley measured flour; Malachi cracked eggs.
Soon enough, something was in the oven and something else was on the stove, and the kitchen started to smell delicious. Elizabeth was pretty convinced that it would take a while for her to learn out to do all of that. Particularly that quickly.
“How long have you been cooking?” she asked Hayley.
Hayley glanced at her dad with a smile. “Pretty much since Mom left. Dad had me helping in the kitchen. I had to stand on a stool at first.”
Malachi smiled fondly. “I couldn’t cook worth anything while I was married. Amanda wished I’d do more of it, and I always meant to and never did—my fault,” he said ruefully. “I was a little more traditional about housework back then. When I had to do it all myself, I realized how much work it really was. I should’ve given her a little more credit.”
“Now you know better,” Hayley said firmly, and Malachi nodded.
“Anyway, once it was just me and Hayley, I realized that I was either going to have to learn to cook, or she was going to be eating Kraft Dinner every night until she graduated high school. Which she probably wouldn’t have complained about back then, but I for sure didn’t want that.”
“Kraft Dinner is freaking delicious,” Hayley said. “There’s nothing like neon orange cheese powder to really wake the taste buds up. But I’m glad I don’t have to eat it literally every night.”
“Anyway, I figured—I wanted to spend as much time with Hayley as possible, make sure I was doing a good job parenting even if it was just me. And I wanted her to eat healthy food. So we learned to cook together.” Malachi shrugged, looking a little self-conscious.
“And now we’re snobby gourmets together,” Hayley finished with a smile. “Except we still like cheese powder, so I guess we can’t be that big of snobs.”
“Wow,” said Elizabeth. “That’s—” adorable, but she didn’t know how much a very masculine man and a very teenaged teenager would appreciate being called adorable. “Really great,” she finished. “That you were able to do that together. And you’re amazing cooks, speaking as an appreciative eater of your food.”
Hayley grinned. “We totally are. Tonight isn’t going to be as fancy as last night, because we don’t have a lot of stuff left to cook with—grocery shopping tomorrow,” she said to her father.
Malachi nodded. “I’ll do it.”
“Anyway, we just had eggs and stuff for a salad, but we’re making it awesome,” Hayley finished confidently.
“I’m sure it will be,” Elizabeth said, with equal confidence.
The oven beeped. “Speaking of which,” Hayley said, and she and Malachi both sprang back into action.
Elizabeth watched with a strange feeling in her throat. Will you and I learn to cook together someday, baby? she thought at her stomach. Will you stand on a stool with me while I figure it all out?
It seemed impossible, somehow, that she might have the same relationship with her kid as Malachi had with Hayley. They were so comfortable together, got along so well. And Elizabeth was so—
Awkward. Cold. Difficult to get along with. Bad at relationships.
Would she be able to get past all of that to show her kid how much she loved them? How much she already loved them, even though she’d only seen them on a single sonogram, so far?
God, she hoped so. She was going to take all of this in, all of this warm, homey kitchen scene that was in front of her eyes, and hope that she could impress it on her brain, into her bones, so that she’d remember it for the future. So that when she was all alone in her own place, with her own child to take care of, she could bring some of this with her.
“Here we go,” Hayley said, coming over to the table and interrupting Elizabeth’s wistful thoughts. “Scrambled eggs with rosemary flatbread and a green salad.”
“Maybe you should start up a restaurant someday,” Elizabeth said, looking down at the plate. The flatbread looked amazing, golden and flecked with herbs, and the eggs were perfect.
“Nah, I’d be competing with Lachlan,” Hayley said comfortably, plonking herself down in the chair across from Elizabeth.
“Well, then, maybe he could take you on as an apprentice or something,” Elizabeth said. “If you wanted.”
“Huh.” Hayley looked like she was thinking about that.
“College first,” Malachi said firmly.
“Yeah, yeah. Maybe I’ll major in business, so no matter what I end up wanting to do, I’ll know how to turn it into a good job,” Hayley mused.
“Not a bad idea,” Elizabeth said, and took a bite of her dinner. She’d copied Hayley and Malachi and scooped a bite of eggs onto the flatbread, using the bread to get it into her mouth. “Oh, wow.” She closed her eyes, appreciating. The bread was warm and flakey, the eggs soft and rich, and the rosemary just made it all that much better.
“Seriously,” she said when she’d opened her eyes. “You should think about getting into cooking. Or at least make it a lifelong hobby, because you’re amazing at it.”
Hayley raised her eyebrows. “I’m glad you’re not saying it’s going to be good for my husband someday.”
“It should be good for whoever you want it to be good for,” Elizabeth said, startled, wondering who had said that to her. Not Malachi, certainly, not after all he’d said about wanting Hayley to be happy and successful however would work best for her. “Husband, wife, friends, family, yourself, your customers, a soup kitchen. Whatever you want.”
Hayley ducked her head, blushing, and focused on eating her salad. Elizabeth glanced at Malachi to see him looking at her with a warm smile.
Now it was her turn to blush. She went back to her dinner before it started to get cold.
But that look lingered in her mind. The light in his eyes when they focused on her.
Maybe there was something here, after all.
Maybe.
Chapter 12: Malachi
It was time to acknowledge it to himself: Malachi had it bad.
Watching Elizabeth be a better parent to Hayley than Amanda had been recently was the last straw. He realized only after a few minutes that he was sitting there at the table, letting his eggs get cold, while he watched Elizabeth eat with a dumb smile on his face.
When he looked over at Hayley, he saw her looking right back, eyebrows up. Caught. He frowned at her and applied himself to his food.
He hadn’t noticed it coming on. He’d been too focused on feelings that seemed pretty natural directed toward a pregnant woman in trouble: protectiveness, a need to see that she was safe and cared for.
And also the natural feeling of admiration and respect for a woman who had helped take down Oak Ridge’s dangerous enemy, and put herself at risk in the process. Who wouldn’t have wanted to help her?
But Elizabeth had turned out to be more than just what he’d known about her to start. She wasn’t simply a woman with the same goal as Malachi and the means to help carry it out. She also wasn’t just a damsel in distress.
Malachi had been caught hardest, he thought, by the way she was so determined to be a good person, a good parent to her baby, and so terrified that she wasn’t going to be able to.
It made him want to catch her hands, look her in those bright blue eyes, and make her understand that she didn’t have to work any harder than she already had. Sh
e was there. She was a good person who helped other people, who risked her life to take down a monster, who told his daughter that she should do whatever made her happy.
Who desperately needed to understand that she could rest. That the only hard work she needed to do right now was grow the tiny person inside her, because she’d already done everything she needed to do for other people.
“Well, law school is hard,” Elizabeth was saying to Hayley. “But even just having known you for a little while, I’m sure that you could do it.”
“Really?” Hayley was wrinkling her nose in suspicion.
“Really,” Elizabeth said confidently. “You’re plenty smart enough. And that’s not the big obstacle—it’s all about persistence. To get through it you have to be willing to work really, really hard for three straight years, and not give up even when it’s extremely frustrating. So if you think you can do that, then you’ll be fine.”
“Oh.” This was obviously not quite the picture of law school that Hayley had had in mind. “How is it frustrating?”
Elizabeth waved her hand. “A million weird things to learn, hundreds and hundreds of pages of reading to do every week—sometimes every night—unreasonable professors demanding things that seem impossible...it’s just grueling. If you’re willing to knuckle down and do the work, even when you just want to cry instead, then you’ll get through it. That’s the most important thing. Way more important than being smart.”
That made Hayley giggle. “Oh yeah?”
Elizabeth nodded. “You’re smarter than plenty of lawyers I’ve met, believe me.”
Malachi was struck by the picture of Elizabeth as a young law student, buried in heavy books, reading frantically through her hundreds of pages, typing on a laptop late at night in a law library. It was—charming.
And impressive. Obviously, he’d already known that Elizabeth was a smart, hard worker, but hearing her describe it was impressing him even more. He’d never been much of a student, himself. He was better with people, out in the world, than in a library with books and a laptop.
Hayley, meanwhile, was clearly enjoying the picture of herself as smarter than plenty of lawyers. “Well, maybe I’ll do it, but maybe I’ll just go into business instead.”
“You could get an MBA,” Elizabeth said. “If you really do want to go to graduate school after college. All of this is setting you up for lots of student loans, though,” she added, “so make sure you’ve got a solid plan for earning enough to pay them back.”
“Oh, yeah.” Hayley bit her lip.
“Lots of people think lawyers are all rich, but it costs a lot to go to law school, and if you don’t go work for a big high-paying corporate firm for several years, you’re going be paying it off for a long time.” Elizabeth sighed in a way that suggested that she was familiar with this process.
Was she having money troubles? Malachi hadn’t thought of that—he’d assumed, just like she’d said, that she had a comfortable amount of money simply because she was a lawyer. But she was relatively young, and he wouldn’t have been surprised if Victor hadn’t paid her what she deserved. Maybe she still had a pile of debt from law school.
God, he wanted to help her. He wanted to make sure that she never had to worry about anything ever again. He had plenty of money saved up—
Yes, his dragon hissed, and Malachi had to shake his head internally.
That’s not actually possible, he chided both his human side and his dragon side. Everyone has worries. There’s no way to ensure that someone won’t have a care in the world.
Protect her, his dragon insisted, and Malachi decided to leave well enough alone. There were some things that dragons didn’t quite understand, and the idea of cares beyond food, family, safety, and territory was one.
“Come on, Dad, let’s do the dishes.” Hayley was prodding at him. “Elizabeth looks like she needs a nap.”
Hayley was right, Elizabeth was drooping a little, those blue eyes heavy with drowsiness. “Oh, I don’t—” she started, and then was interrupted by a yawn.
Malachi looked at her, and she smiled ruefully. “Okay, maybe I do.” She stood up, and Malachi watched her carefully as she walked towards the stairs, but didn’t see any evidence of unsteadiness. Still, he kept an eye out until he could hear her walking down the upstairs hall to her room.
Hayley, meanwhile, had carried her dishes over to the sink and turned the water on. With it splashing down into the egg pan—making enough noise to mask any conversation, Malachi realized, and had to admire his daughter’s tactics—she said, “Wow, Dad, you’ve got it bad.”
And, well, what could he say. He spread his hands. “I guess I do.”
Hayley was giving him her suspicious look. “Are you gonna do anything about it or are you just going to pine hopelessly?”
“What have you been reading?” Malachi asked, distracted from the issue at hand. “Pine hopelessly?”
Hayley waved a hand. “Forget that, come on. What are you going to do?”
Malachi could recognize a hint of uneasiness under the bravado, and he went over and put his hands on Hayley’s shoulders. “I’m not doing anything you aren’t comfortable with. If you don’t like the idea of a woman in my life—”
Hayley squirmed away. “No, stop it. You’re a grown-up adult, you can date if you want. I guess I just don’t know—like, it’s been eight years, and nothing? And now you’ve known her for like, a day?”
Malachi shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Maybe there were just eight years without the right woman coming along, and now...”
Hayley thought about that. “Okay. Okay, I guess. She is pretty great.”
“She is,” Malachi said, heartfelt.
“You have the stupidest look on your face, I feel like you should know that.”
Malachi punched her in the arm, pulling it so that his knuckles just barely touched her bicep. “Hey, show some respect for your elders.”
“Yeah, yeah. Come on, let’s do the dishes.”
They cleaned up quickly, since the meal had been simple enough that there wasn’t much mess. Then Hayley dried her hands off and announced, “So I’m going to go play a super-loud videogame with my headphones on, and it’s probably going to take a lot of hours, so I won’t hear anything that happens in the house tonight.”
“Hayley.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to hear anything, not even sappy romantic conversations. So feel free to—confess your feelings or whatever.”
“Is your homework done?” Malachi said, grasping for something that would return normalcy to the conversation. “No videogames until your homework’s done.”
“It’s done, I did it earlier. I wanted to have plenty of time to defend the Earth from alien invaders tonight.”
Malachi rolled his eyes. “All right, fine. Join your comrades and keep us safe from the giant bugs.”
She grinned. “Will do.”
He kissed her forehead and she thumped off upstairs, leaving him to...decide what he was going to do.
Confess his feelings or whatever, he supposed.
The problem was—he thought that what he was feeling was mutual, but he couldn’t be certain. He’d met Elizabeth’s eyes several times now, and felt something between them, something with an almost solid weight, a real presence.
But it was easy to delude yourself when you were falling for someone.
And the absolute last thing he wanted to do was to make Elizabeth feel uncomfortable in the place she was staying for safety and protection.
That thought made him go cold. What if she wasn’t feeling the same way, and he went up and confessed his feelings or whatever, and she felt—somehow pressured to do something she didn’t want to do?
Maybe even if she was feeling the same way, she might not be in a place where she felt comfortable starting anything romantic. Which seemed likely, even, since she was alone and pregnant and exhausted and in danger.
No. He couldn’t say anything. He’d wait unt
il the danger had passed, until she was feeling better—until she’d known him for more than a couple of days, maybe. He felt absolutely certain that he wanted a relationship with her, but surely a woman was more likely to want a little while to get to know a man, make sure he was someone she could truly trust.
Especially a woman with a romantic history like Elizabeth’s.
That decided it. After hearing that man on the phone yesterday—no. He wouldn’t do anything to even suggest that Elizabeth might have to fend off advances from him. She didn’t need that right now.
No. His dragon interrupted his thoughts, startling him. She belongs to us. Why not say so?
People don’t belong to each other! he snapped back harshly. She’s free to make her own choices about where she belongs.
Can’t choose us if we don’t tell her, the dragon pointed out.
It’s not happening, Malachi thought with absolute finality.
The dragon subsided, sulking. Malachi sighed. Even if we wanted to say anything right now, she’s probably asleep. She went up to take a nap.
And last night, she’d closed her eyes after dinner and slept the whole night through. She’d needed it, and he could only hope that she was getting just as much rest tonight.
He went upstairs himself, intending to head straight for his own room and the Tom Clancy book waiting for him there...but found himself lingering outside the guest room, hoping to hear her slow breathing, to know that she was sleeping peacefully.
Instead, he heard a page turn, and then her voice. “Malachi?”
Oh, yes. Elizabeth had shifter hearing, too.
Before he could come up with some excuse for why he was standing outside her door like a criminal lurking in the shadows, she said, “Come in!”
She’d thought he was about to knock. “I didn’t mean to bother you,” he started to excuse himself.
But she interrupted, “No, no bother! Come on in.”
And then, well, what could he do but go in?
She was sitting up in bed, wearing her borrowed pajamas—a T-shirt and a thin hoodie, which looked soft and comfortable and hinted at the curves underneath.