The Coyote's Chance (Masters of Maria Book 4)

by Holley Trent

  And she was so warm. Not warm like a shapeshifter, but like a lamp with a bulb too powerful for its base.

  “Do you feel any magic?” she asked demurely, gaze averted from his face. “Call me a liar if you can.”

  Grimacing, he trailed his fingers down the column of her elegant neck and stopped at the dip at the base of her throat, just above the top button of her polo shirt.

  She was always so buttoned up, so conservatively dressed, even on days when spring in New Mexico meant temperatures approaching ninety. She’d be the one person in a group wearing jeans or khakis, or who’d zip her sweatshirt up to the throat and put up the hood when everyone else was in short sleeves.

  He hadn’t given it much thought before, but for as long as he’d known her, the only flesh of hers he’d seen was the stretch between the bottom of her sleeves and fingertips, and what was above her collars. Always collared shirts, except for once, and that one time, she’d had a big bandage at the side of her neck.

  The second after he hooked his finger into her collar to have a look, she smacked his hand away as if he were a bee about to sting.

  “Don’t touch me,” she snapped.

  “You didn’t have a problem with me touching you before then. I daresay you liked me touching you.” He grinned. “Common affliction with ladies.”

  “Perhaps you should get some counseling with your fiancée regarding that. Get out of my house.”

  Fiancée.

  His smile waned. Forgetting his obligations was so easy when there was no script for him to follow. No puppet master tugging at his strings. Sitting back, he leaned his chair onto the hind legs and crossed his arms over his chest. “Nah.”

  Felt good to say no.

  “Then I’ll sic King on you and make you leave.”

  King didn’t give a shit about him. The dog was snout-deep in moo shu pork, and Willa was paying him no mind.

  “Normally, I don’t stick around where I’m not wanted,” Blue said, “but I think you owe me some answers.”

  “I don’t owe you anything.” She tugged her collar up in what must have been a reflexive movement before crossing her own arms. “You don’t deserve answers simply because you’ve mustered up enough energy to push words into the air. You’re entitled to nothing.”

  “Then who is, for God’s sake? Who knows the answers? Who do you tell things to?”

  “That’s none of your business, either.”

  “And why not? Hmm?” He raised his brows at her. “Why do you insist on keeping everything about you so tightly under wraps? What are you afraid of people finding out? Give me something, Willa. Anything.”

  “Anything?” She pushed her seat back from the table, and he was certain she was going to try to march him to the door and push him out of it, but she didn’t.

  She pressed her hands to the back of her neck and paced in front of the stove.

  Back and forth. Back and forth. Jaws twitching. Fingers nervously, rapidly tapping against her nape. Breaths coming out in short, frantic bursts.

  Blue set his chair down on all four legs and pressed his hands to the table edge. “Willa. Look at me.”

  She didn’t. “You know, I think I’ve been out of sync since I was born. It’s hard to really . . . grow into yourself when everything you do feels like an act of fraud.”

  Slowly, he stood.

  They were getting somewhere, he thought, but he didn’t want her back in that disquieted state she’d been in the day before. He didn’t want to become associated in her mind with anxiety. He’d have to figure out some way to soothe her.

  She kept pacing. “One lie after another. All my life, even my name has been a lie.”

  “You told me that. You said Willa wasn’t your name.”

  She gave her head a hard shake. “But the one before that was wrong, too. I had one name the day I was born and then another the day after because my mother didn’t want anyone else to know the first one. She said she’d made a mistake—said she hadn’t been thinking clearly, but who could blame her?”

  Blue couldn’t tell if the question was meant to be rhetorical. She still wasn’t looking at him. She was pacing methodically, five steps forward before turning, and then back.

  He took a step closer. She was right that he could usually sense magic. Shapeshifters tended to be more sensitive to paranormal energy than average people, and alpha-level beasts in particular. He didn’t feel any magic coming off her, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have any. It may have just meant that whatever she had was something he wasn’t equipped to understand.

  “I think she thought that if she didn’t give me another name, the nuns would pitch us out and we wouldn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “The nuns?”

  “They were so poor.” She paused pacing long enough to smooth down the corner of a lifting linoleum tile, and she got moving again.

  He took another step toward her, not giving a single damn that King had obliterated their dinner. Food could be replaced. Watching Willa spiral down some kind of obsessive rabbit hole was making his hair raise in that ominous way that made a Coyote want to shift and howl.

  “Who was poor, Willa?”

  One more step.

  He hoped if he kept saying her name, she’d remember that she wasn’t talking to herself—that she was talking to him and that she wasn’t alone.

  “My grandparents, and their parents, too. Just couldn’t get ahead. Slept on dirt every night. Rarely had their bellies filled, no matter how hard they scrabbled. They sent my mother to the nuns so she’d at least be starving with some dignity.” She let out a dry laugh and slowed again to tamp down that tile corner. The adhesive was probably bad. The entire floor was likely overdue for replacement, but he doubted she could afford it.

  “It was either that or she get married to someone who had a little money, but everyone thought she was crazy. Her head wasn’t right. Even worse than mine.” She grimaced and moved again. More harried pacing, but at least she’d let her arms fall relaxed at her sides.

  “Your mother was a nun, Willa?” Another step forward for him.

  A jerky nod from her. “It was . . . odd. The family had only been Christian for the past two generations. Moriscos. The cloistering should have been good for her. In theory, it should have been good, but no matter how hard women try to seclude themselves, men find ways of getting access.”

  “Your father?”

  No response to that. She picked up a large canister from the counter and set it atop the peeling tile. Then she paced some more.

  “I suppose it wasn’t completely unheard of for a nun to turn up pregnant. They were all so naive about the body. That naivety was bound to get people in trouble sometimes. They didn’t throw her out then because she certainly wasn’t the only one there with child, but naming me what she did would have been . . . Terrible. I couldn’t have a name like that. Not if we were really what she claimed we were, so she told them my name was Beatriz.”

  “But your name’s not Beatriz.” While her back was turned, he replaced the canister and stood atop the flapping tile.

  When she paced back and found him in her way, she furrowed her brow. Suddenly, he’d become an obstacle. He’d gotten in the way of her orderly pacing and she needed to switch gears.

  She didn’t seem to know how, except to turn the other way—a shorter march.

  Smaller steps.

  Not gonna work.

  When she returned, and spun on her heel a foot from him, he took her hand and squeezed it.

  “My name’s Barrett,” he said. “That’s the name that’s on all the junk mail I get from folks who trawl property tax databases. Barrett Shapely, because my mother didn’t want to name me Randall Junior.”

  Her fingers inside his grip wriggled tentatively, kind of like a baby bird testing its wings for the first time.

  He tightened his grip incrementally, pulling her closer without her immediate notice.

  “She didn’t want to name me aft
er him,” he said. He’d pulled her back so far that she had no choice but to turn toward him. Didn’t meet his gaze, though. Stared at his neck. His chin. Something down there.

  “Why not?” came her muted query.

  “Because she wanted me to have a chance. She knew what that name meant to other Coyotes and she didn’t want me to have it.” He put his hands on Willa’s biceps and chafed. Maybe she didn’t need the warmth, but right then, he did. “She hated him. Had to marry him anyway, just like I have to marry that—”

  Doesn’t matter.

  He took a breath. Recentered. “She . . . hung in there until the prenup expired, and then got the hell out with barely the shirt on her back. Most of my father’s money started as hers.”

  He was always chasing a damn dollar. That was how Blue had ended up being more of a commodity than a son.

  “And you and Diana?” She did look up then. There was concern mixed with curiosity in her gaze. She probably already knew what he’d say.

  “Family court said that she had custody, but Coyotes don’t always pay courts any heed. She got expelled from the territory and was cut off from us completely until I was eighteen and left for college. He couldn’t really stop me from seeing her then. Reacquainting was harder for Diana. She was angry and resentful that Mom couldn’t stick it out. She was young and needed her mother.” He pulled in a breath and rolled his gaze to the ceiling. “Still needs her mother. Their relationship isn’t what it used to be.”

  “I know what that’s like,” Willa whispered. “My father tried to take me away, too, because my mother wouldn’t have him. He punished her for that until the day she died, and now he’s taking out his anger out on me. I hope I never have to see him again.”

  “Who is he, Willa?”

  “No names.”

  She started to pace once more, and the tense, tight set of her mouth told him that story time was over.

  But then the pacing turned into what seemed to be an inward fixation. She stared at nothing, forehead wrinkled and eyes filled with worry she wouldn’t share with him, but whatever it was, it scared her. He could smell her terror in the way her adrenaline and sweat surged. He could see her rapid pulse throbbing at her temples.

  She stayed like that for a minute. Maybe two.

  Too long for a living thing to be so still and yet so scared.

  He didn’t care how much she hated him. He didn’t want her to think she was alone, and he wouldn’t leave her alone. Not when she was like that.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Willa didn’t realize what she’d said and what she was doing until she found herself breathing in a sweet, desert scent with sharp notes of male testosterone and the distinctive Coyote musk.

  She’d lost her head for a moment, and had said too much—had given away too many pieces of her past to a man she couldn’t and shouldn’t trust. And she was standing there in her kitchen that he’d sauntered into as though he owned Maria and everything in it. His arms were around her so tightly that she couldn’t move backward or to either side. The only place she could go was closer to him, and that was the last thing she wanted.

  So move.

  She couldn’t. At the very thought, her toes curled traitorously into her sneakers as though they sought to grip the floor itself and keep her there for her own good.

  It wasn’t good, though.

  Blue set his chin atop her head and rubbed her back slowly, each circle conducting the tempo of her breathing. Deep breath in at the top of the loop, long breath out at the bottom.

  Her heart had stopped beating so fast. It always pounded when the thoughts overwhelmed, adding another layer to her anxiety. As it slowed, the knot of anticipation in her gut unfurled, too. Her body was telling her that the danger had passed, but that was a lie. Danger was standing in her kitchen and had pulled her against its body.

  “Why won’t you go away?” she whispered.

  “What good would that do either of us?”

  She didn’t have a good answer for him. As much as she worried about the upheaval his presence was causing the pack, now she had to also fret over the fact that if he left, Kenny, Lance, and Diana would leave with him. She hadn’t wanted to care about them. They were outsiders. But she did care, and the Sparks pack sounded like a dog-eat-dog disaster. At least in Maria, people mostly knew who they could trust.

  Blue trailed his thumb across her nape, tickling the fine, short hair there, making her spine twitch involuntarily, but he stilled her motions with a tighter hug, planting his other hand against the small of her back, nearly crushing her against him.

  She should have felt suffocated, but didn’t. Some people were good at hugging and knew instinctively how long to hold on and how tight to hold. Her grandmother had been one. Willa had only seen her a few times, but at each, she’d scooped Willa up and held her tight against her bosom until Willa’s spirit had quieted.

  She’d whisper, and Willa had no idea then what those foreign words had meant, but the feeling behind the words had been curative.

  “Everything is fine with you,” she’d been saying in Arabic.

  “You’re all right,” Blue said. He let Willa go then, but not far. He took her hands and slouched to link her gaze to his dark, curious one.

  She gave her head a small shake. Reflex. Small lies told to one’s self had a way of becoming delusions, and she couldn’t afford that.

  “Sometimes you just have to pretend,” he said. “Trust me. You trust me?”

  “Not as far as I can throw you.”

  He let out a quiet guffaw. “That’s more than none. Come on.” He grabbed her keys off the hook along with King’s leash and pulled her along behind him.

  King stopped licking the table and skittered ahead to the door.

  She grimaced, already dreading what three pounds of spicy Chinese takeout was going to do to his canine digestive system.

  Sleeping outside tonight, dog.

  “Where are we going?” she asked Blue as he locked the door.

  He latched the leash on to King’s collar and scratched the excited dog behind his ears. “Just getting some air. I always think better when I don’t have four walls around me.”

  “What do you need to think about?”

  He shrugged and started up the walkway. “Dunno. Maybe I’ll need to do some thinking in the next few minutes.”

  “Sometimes, I’d prefer not to.”

  “Problems seem smaller when you do.”

  “Are you an expert on problem solving?”

  His sly grin had probably been melting hearts since he was six weeks old, and she was just one more sucker with no resistance to his charms. She shouldn’t have looked him in the eyes. It was easier just not to see people, especially people who had more power than her.

  “I’m an expert on Coyotes, capitalism, and folklore,” he said. “I don’t claim expertise on much else.”

  As he hooked his arm around hers, she parsed that statement, tripping over the tiniest crack in the sidewalk as she did.

  “Oof.”

  He got her balanced and upright without missing a beat.

  “Folklore?” she asked.

  “Yep. As my father would put it, I’ve got a master’s degree in bullshit.”

  “Why folklore, of all things?”

  “Well, I’ve also got an MBA, but that was for practical purposes. Gotta be employable, right?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Truth be told, that was an afterthought,” he said. “Folklore was where my interests always were. You can blame my mother for that. She’s kind of a fable geek. Used to collect first editions of fairy-tale books when she could find them. Haunted all the auctions and estate sales she could get to looking for rare books and would take me and Diana with her. Hard not to get caught up in the excitement. Hers was so genuine, you know?”

  “Does she still collect them?”

  He grimaced and passed King’s leash to his other hand.

  The dog had taken his first of
what would probably end up being several pit stops right in front of Dirk Wiggims’s daylilies.

  She hoped he wasn’t at home. He was sensitive about those invasive weeds.

  “She stopped collecting a few years ago,” he said. “Money got tight for her, but I send her a volume whenever I find something interesting. Diana’s way better at locating stuff than I am, though.” His sly grin returned. “Also better at getting folks to hand their books over for cheap. She has a certain knack for bargaining.”

  “In other words, people are afraid to tell her no?”

  He raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe that has a little something to do with it, but I also think she knows which battles are worth fighting and she doesn’t give up until she gets what she wants.” He gave the leash a slight tug and got King moving again. “Save some flowers for another dog to water, bud.”

  “He’s the only one who’ll try,” Willa muttered. “The rest are afraid of Dirk’s sprinklers. They come on at random times.”

  They rounded the corner heading out of the subdivision. They were only about a half mile from Maria proper, but that may as well have been ten. There was a noticeable divide between the haves and the have-nots in Maria, well established during the nineteenth century when the population was all cattle barons, cow hands, stagecoach bandits, gamblers, madams, and prostitutes. Within a block, the compact, older housing originally meant for blue-collar retirees gave way to grand adobe domiciles and modern architecture projects made of expensive, corrugated whatever and with perfectly manicured desert landscaping in their front yards.

  Sighing as they passed Paul and his lawyer wife’s stately monument to manhood, she pondered her lot in life.

  Do I really have to be broke?

  She didn’t have time to dwell on the subject, because Blue started pulling her along at a brisk clip, eyes straight ahead.

  “There’s a line,” he said, breaking out into a full-bore run. “When there’s a line, that means there’s good shit.”

  “Huh?” She was struggling just to keep up. Blue was a well-honed running machine with a shapeshifter’s lung capacity, and she was a musician who only ran when she was being chased.