I held out my hand, supposing this must be one of Betty’s friends. Ancient or no, I should be polite. “I’m Gerard Caron of King—”
“Kingsville!” Betty screeched, inserting herself between the old bat and me. “Ha ha. Kingsville. Yeah. Kingsville.”
As she spoke, she was ramming her back into my middle, physically pushing me back on my heels and causing me to stumble into a row of boxed foods. “Woman,” I snapped, gently shoving her off me and brushing at my shirt before going on a tirade about flighty women and boxes full of stuff that wasn’t food at all.
Betty’s spine stiffened, and her face spasmed into a strained grin. It was quite off-putting.
“This is my cousin,” she said in a breathless rush of words.
I blinked. Cousin?
“Yer cousin?” Ms. Carol wrinkled her nose, her look clearly disbelieving as she eyed me up and down. It was obvious there wasn’t the slightest bit of resemblance between us. Where I was a mountain of a male, Betty was delicate and feminine.
Again, Betty looked ready to puke. Eyes wide and chin wobbling as though she wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, she grabbed hold of my hand. I had no idea why the pigêon was acting as she was, but I was becoming highly amused by the sight of it, momentarily forgetting my stumble into the fake food stuffs.
She elbowed me, causing me to huff out my breath.
“Isn’t that right, Gerard? My cousin from Kingsville.”
She wanted me to go along with this farce of a story, and for reasons I could barely fathom, I found myself agreeing. Perhaps it would keep her from elbowing me in the gut again.
“Aye. Her cousin. From Kingsville,” I tacked on, forcing myself to smile, which I’m guessing didn’t look half as friendly as I hoped because suddenly, Ms. Carol was backing up and giving me terrified eyes.
“Good day, Ms. Hart. Mr.... erm... Gerard.” The way Ms. Carol said my name, like it tasted of filth, assured me we hadn’t fooled the old bird at all.
Placing her hands fast on the handlebar of the miniature steel bird, she shoved off, grumbling what sounded like “perfect heathen, that one”, though I couldn’t be sure.
Lifting both my brows, I looked down at Betty’s now-scarlet face. She groaned, closed her eyes, and took my former spot, leaning heavily against the fake food boxes and shaking her head.
“Well, that’s it, then. In about five minutes, I’m going to be knocked up. You’re the deadbeat dad with no prospects, and we’ll be moving into the Sunnyside trailer park just down the road.”
“What?” I barked, wondering if the woman had lost her damned mind. “We are not—”
She scowled. Several of the rainbow-colored boxes behind her plopped to the glossy floor at her feet as she shifted. “Of course we aren’t, you scarlet baboon. But you’ve just met the town gossip. Reputation matters. Not like I had much of one to begin with, what with looking like I do.”
She held up her arms, staring at her markings with a mournful pout.
While this female drove me absolutely insane, and I really wanted nothing more than to return to my home world and forget any of this had ever happened, seeing her so upset bothered me.
Deeply.
Refusing to analyze why that might be, I said the first thing that came to mind.
“Well, she may not like your drawings, but I’m growing rather fond of them.”
She blinked, looking up at me with those wide, milky-chocolate and galaxy eyes of hers, and for reasons unknown, my heart began a rapid staccato beating in my chest, making me feel light-headed and weightless.
“You do?” Her voice was a whispered tremble that slid against my flesh like the softest of caresses, causing me to break out in a heated wash of desire.
I licked my lips, confused, irritated, annoyed, and also inconceivably horny as hell. This made no sense. No sense. For years, my only obsession had been Belle and only Belle.
No other woman had ever caused this kind of heady sensation of want and need. I did not even know this crazy female, yet I could no more control my reactions than the sun’s rising in the morning.
She laughed as she flicked her wrist, and the sound was throaty and husky. “Whatever. Not that it matters if you do or don’t. I do, and that’s all that—”
“I do.” I said it softly, wondering why it felt so natural to compliment her this way, like I’d done it a million times before.
A smile blazed radiantly across her face, and again, my traitorous heart trembled.
“I do. I like it.”
“That’s... that’s good,” she said softly. “I’m glad.”
We might have stood there staring like the idiotic baboons she’d compared me to if a kid hadn’t suddenly barreled into her middle, squealing happily as he picked her up and twirled her around.
Betty blinked. “Briley!” Her stunned look morphed into one of delighted surprise. “What in the world are you doing here?”
The child—who wasn’t really a child at all, but a boy on the cusp of becoming a man—stared up at her with adoration in his big, sleepy eyes. His face was smooth, his hair brown. He was only as tall as Betty’s chest, with the promise of many more inches yet in his future. His smile was gentle and delighted. They looked nothing at all alike, and yet, as she stared down into his face, I lost my breath.
There was joy, wonder, and such fierce love for him in her eyes that it rocked me to my very core. Most people went to great lengths to hide the type of emotion she was so openly displaying.
Briley gazed at her with the same sort of look. His ears were a little oddly shaped, and he was stockily built. I’d seen his type before during my travels with the soldiers regiment in a neighboring village.
Many of the men in my troop had mocked and teased the girl child as she’d happily hopped and skipped along the riverbank, plucking up wildflowers as she went and singing a happy tune. I’d been enchanted by the sight of her, though. I’d felt oddly protective, and I’d warned all the other idiots that if they mocked her in my presence, they’d get a beating that would leave them seeing stars.
I hadn’t understood why I’d instantly felt so protective of a perfect stranger, but seeing this Briley now, I felt... unusual was the only word I could use.
I studied the boy’s profile, trying to figure out what it was about him that felt instantly familiar, like we’d once been the very best of friends.
He laughed, and my flesh tingled because I could swear I’d heard that sound so many times before that it was woven through the very fabric of my life. And yet, I’d never seen this boy before, nor had I ever visited the Earth realm.
Right?
My brows dipped.
“Daddy said you must be lollygagging at Wally World, and he sent me to find ya.” Briley spoke in a high-pitched sing-song style that instantly brought a ghost of a smile to my lips and heat to my eyes.
Confused and glad beyond reason or belief, I held my hand out to the boy. Betty looked up, blinked, and gave herself a small shake.
“How rude of me,” she said. “Briley, baby, this is my friend Gerard.”
Briley giggled. The sound was so guilelessly delighted and strangely infectious that I found myself joining in as I reached out to take his hand in mine.
“Hi, Gerard,” he squeaked.
“Hi, B—” The moment our hands touched a vision so unbelievably powerful rocked through me like a wave.
An image exploded in my mind: Briley and I sitting on a small boat in the middle of a pond. The child was holding a book, and he was reading to me in a stilted and stuttering manner, but all I knew was this overwhelming sense of pride. I saw myself staring down at him with something that almost looked like a father’s love.
Grunting, wanting to shove those strange images away, I swiftly released him, causing him and I both to stumble back. He fell into Betty’s arms, and I plopped unceremoniously to the floor right beside the rainbow boxes of food stuffs.
Betty’s jaw dropped. “What in the holy hel—
”
A man rounded the aisle then, tall, but nowhere near as muscled as me. He was Betty’s height and had the same dark coloration as she. Shoving his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his pointer finger, he looked almost frantic as he glanced between Betty and me before marching up to her and yanking her in for a near-violent hug.
“GD it, Betty,” he snapped. “Ms. Clare told me all about our ‘cousin’ from Kingsville. I haven’t heard from you or seen you all damn day. I called, and the darn thing went straight to voicemail, so that’s how I had to find out that you were having triplets with the town’s meth distributor?”
“Huh?” she asked, shoving a hand against his chest. “I had him pegged for a drunk, close though.”
Briley snorted.
“Hey.” I grunted and shook my head. It didn’t take intellect to figure out he was speaking about me. “And you are?” I grumped.
The male whirled on me, dropped a possessive arm across Betty’s shoulder, and dragged her into him. “I’m Kelly. Who the hell are you?”
Her brother. The wild animal that’d suddenly and violently roared to life inside me at the sight of another man touching her so familiarly settled down. Confused by the overwhelming sensations bombarding me, all I could do was scowl down at my feet.
What was happening to me?
Betty had had that massive meltdown in the cornfield. Was it was my turn, now? What had Rumpelstiltskin done to us? This was magic. It had to be. I bit the inside of my cheek, using the pain to help focus me back on reality and away from the thousands of questions barreling through me, demanding answers I didn’t have to give.
“Kels, this is my friend, Gerard,” Betty said as she slipped out from underneath her brother’s arm and came over to me.
She took my hand, and the moment our skin touched, there was a spark, a flare of heat so intense it caused us both to hiss. When she tried to release me, I wouldn’t let her. I clung tight and stood. We stared at each other for half a second longer as I wondered what the demon had done now, why he’d left me in this godforsaken place, and why in the bloody hell it suddenly feel so right to be right where I was.
Betty licked her luscious pink lips, took a shuddery breath, and finally forced me to drop her hand.
Wrapping her arms around her middle, she turned toward her brother and said, “Gerard saved my life today. I fell in the pond out by—”
“GD it, Betty!” Kelly cried again, marching straight up to his sister and wrapping her in another tight hug, clinging with an expression of sheer terror on his blanched face. “You can’t swim.”
I blinked and shook my head. But she’d always been an excellent swimmer before.
And then I paused, because how would I know something like that? I didn’t know her before. I’d never met this woman before today. A niggling deep inside of me didn’t agree.
Briley wrapped his arms around her from behind, leaning his head on her back and giving a wimpy shudder.
I felt another image trying to worm through my mind, one of the four of us, standing much like this and crying. I blinked, and the image vanished like a vapor.
No. No, this was dark magic. A curse, nothing more. I didn’t know these people. They didn’t know me.
Clearing my throat, I shut off the weird and overwhelming emotions. When Betty and Kelly glanced at me, I said, “Where is the real food at? I’ll cook tonight.”
Those hadn’t been the words I’d meant to speak.
At all.
I’d been about to tell them I was leaving, that I didn’t like this place. I didn’t want to be around them any longer and it was high time for me to go. But my brain and my heart were at war, and I was scared to death something was terribly, terribly wrong with me.
Chapter 10
Betty
Gerard moved easily through Kelly’s kitchen as if he’d done this very thing a thousand times before. He barely even needed to ask where anything was. When he pulled out a saucepan, my eyes widened in surprise, but when he loaded the stove down with a sauté and a noodle pot, my heart literally started racing.
My finger hovered over Kelly’s phone, ready to dial 9-1-1 at the first sign of smoke.
But instead of the disaster I feared, Gerard created a masterpiece that pretty much left us all speechless. He made angel hair pasta with some sort of lemon and olive oil drizzle, lightly-pan-fried chicken coated in breadcrumbs and flour, and a sauce that was rich, buttery, creamy, and chock full of all the good stuff like mushrooms and shallots. Freaking shallots. Like, who used shallots, ever? The only time I ever saw those things was when I visited a posh restaurant, which on my librarian’s salary, was a big fat never.
I’d been in orgasmic bliss, but Briley had gone nearly feral, curving his arm around his plate and demolishing it all in a few big gulps while eyeing each of us with a look that clearly said, “Keep far, far away if you wish to keep your fingertips.”
I wasn’t sexist or anything, but I hadn’t expected the kind of talent he’d shown tonight. ‘Course, he was French, and the French did absolutely everything with style. It was, like, coded into their handbook of life or something. Be sexy. Know all.
Or maybe that was just my crazy infatuation with his culture that made me think so, but I’d never met a French person who wasn’t just completely cool about everything. My God, they could even smoke sexily. It really wasn’t fair how much sexiness oozed from their pores without even trying.
Gerard had excused himself to go to the restroom a few moments ago. I glanced down the hall for like the hundredth time already. The guy was such a freaking anomaly to me. Just when I thought I had his number, he went and did something completely unexpected that sucked all my preconceived ideas of him right out my head.
Kelly used the last of his chicken breast to sop up all the sauce on his plate, saying, “Never knew we had such a talented cousin.”
I looked back at him to see his eyes twinkling with mischief. He was never gonna let this one die.
I kicked his shin beneath the table, causing him to grunt and Briley to giggle while still protecting his plate from my grabby fingers. We’d eaten all the food, and Gerard had made enough to feed an army. There were just scraps left. I was totally willing to go Mad Max on the leftovers if it meant I got to lick up the rest of that sauce.
“Leave me alone.” I glared at my brother, who only stuck his tongue out at me. “I had to say something to appease that busybody.”
“And cousin was the best thing you had going for you? I mean I know we’re country, but we’re not that redneck.” He smirked.
Eyeing him hard, I held up my pitifully empty fork in a threatening manner. “Keep it up, and I’ll steal that meat right off your plate.”
“Daddy, hurry. I think she means it!” Briley chortled before shoving forkfuls into his mouth.
Food was sacrosanct in this house, especially when we weren’t forced to eat the slop either Kelly or I created. When God had handed out the ability to cook, both my brother and I had been woefully absent that day. Poor Briley.
Kelly popped the fork in his mouth, and I growled at them both. “Traitor,” I hissed at Briley, who only giggled harder.
After swallowing the last bite, Kelly leaned back and patted his belly. “No, but seriously, who is that man, and why, for the love of God, did I actually let him cook us dinner?”
“A, because we were starving, and anything’s better than what you or I make. And B, he saved me.”
“So you’ve said,” he said slowly. “But why? Why did you even need saving? Why were you at the pier instead of at the library like you were supposed to be?”
He lifted a dark brow. My brother wasn’t the brawniest guy ever. In fact, we were about the same height, though he had a good forty pounds on me, give or take. But he had that same “mean” look Mom used to get when she’d busted one of us for being naughty. Briley, who was now chugging his glass of soda, was chuckling, a thin, reedy sound that made my lips twitch in amusement.
> I loved it when my nephew got giggly. His effervescence was incredibly hard to ignore. Even the surly Gerard’s lips had twitched a time or two during the meal, which almost made me think he might be human after all.
But then he’d go and get all quiet and gruff again. The guy had been determined not to engage with us much, no matter how hard we tried. Even I tried, and I wasn’t anywhere close to being a people person. But the more he shut me out, the more I wanted to know about him, which sucked because he was about as cuddly as a prickly pear. I’d ask him a question, and he’d give me a one-word answer. I’d smile, and his lips would go paper thin, like I was annoying him or something.
Which, of course, got my dander up and my feathers ruffled.
Briley thought the whole thing was hilarious. But then, my nephew rarely thought badly of anyone. The only person I’d ever heard him sound hateful toward had been James. Go figure.
“I like him,” Briley said after finally sopping up the last juicy, tender morsel. He leaned back in his seat with a sigh and patted his distended belly.
“I know you do, squirt.” I grinned.
“Well, I reserve the right to withhold judgment. He’s weird. And quiet. And I don’t like the way he keeps looking at you,” Kelly butted in with a brotherly shake of his head.
I swear, sometimes Kelly thought we still lived in feudal times when I would have been nothing but a pawn to be brokered away to the highest bidder, which probably wasn’t fair of me to think, since his intentions were actually good. And he’d been right about James. Darn him.
But I hadn’t listened then, and I definitely wasn’t going to listen now. If my brother knew me even a little—which he did—he knew that already. It was probably why he was grunting and squinting at me with that mean face of his again.
I’d been forced to take out my galaxy contact when we’d finally gotten home and put on my glasses, which I hated to wear because I never actually thought I looked good in them. Until I’d walked out the bathroom and I’d caught a blush steal across Gerard’s throat. Though it was hard for me to accept, I understood body language enough to know that the way he’d suddenly leaned in toward me might mean he didn’t hate my nerdy specs near as much as I did. Novel concept that.
The Jaded King (The Dark Kings Book 2) Page 9