by Unknown
Eli grabbed her hand and tugged her against him, wrapping her up in his arms like a frightened child. “I didn’t see one. He had something, but I’m thinking knife. The bastard was stupid, but he wasn’t dumb, and guns attract a lot of attention.”
Josie ran her hands over his arms and back and pressed herself closer. “He didn’t cut you, did he?”
“I’m fine,” he assured her. “Not even bruised.” He pulled back until he could look into her eyes and press a kiss against her forehead. “You did exactly the right thing by running. Thank you for doing what I asked.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “You ordered again, but despite what you may think, I’m not an idiot. I know that in matters of self-defense and hand-to-hand combat, I’m not the expert in our relationship. If we’re in a truly dangerous situation where you have things under control and I’d only get in your way, of course I’m going to leave when you tell me to. I just want you to be aware that when it’s not a directly life-threatening situation, I reserve the right to tell you to go screw yourself if you try to order me around.”
“So noted.”
“Good. Now, what happens next? I know you are the police, but after a person’s house has been broken into and they’ve been assaulted with a deadly weapon, isn’t it customary to call the cops? Maybe the other cops?”
He nodded. “I’ll radio the deputy on duty and ask him to bring a crime scene kit. He can go over it with me, and we’ll see what we find.”
“Any chance you’ll find my clothes, or are those part of the crime scene evidence now?” When he looked sideways at her, mouth twitching, she shrugged. “I like a good forensic science documentary. So sue me.”
“I’ll get you something to wear. Come on, let’s go inside. We’ll get dressed, I’ll call Cooper, and we can wait for him in the kitchen.”
“Let’s make coffee. That may I might be able to stay awake until he gets here. Seeing as how it’s about two fifteen in the morning.”
Eli steered her back into the cabin and away from the intruder’s nasty words, but Josie clearly hadn’t forgotten them. Ten minutes later when she sat at the kitchen table wearing one of his buttondown shirts over a pair of his cotton boxers, she rested her chin on her fist and watched him put together the coffee. Her free hand ruffled absently through the shaggy fur on Bruce’s head.
“Do you think I was his target?” she asked.
Eli paused for a moment, then continued measuring grounds into the filter. “I’m not sure. You may have been, but we were so close together it’s impossible to tell. He could have been going for either one of us.”
“Clearly, he dislikes me, though. Or at the very least, he dislikes the idea of me having a sexual relationship with a shapeshifter. Actually, I’m assuming he dislikes the idea of any human ever having any kind of relationship with any Other. His wording sounded a bit . . . sweeping.”
Eli slammed the filter drawer shut and pushed the button on the coffeemaker. Then he turned to glare at Josie. “We are not having a sexual relationship.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“We’re having a relationship. Period.”
Josie watched him, her expression very neutral. “What’s the difference?”
“What do you mean what’s the difference?” He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest and his feet at the ankles. The better to glare at her. “One implies that our only interest in each other is how many times the other one can make us come. The other means states that we’re more to each other than a warm body on a cold night.”
“Are we?”
Fury washed over him. He darted forward and slammed his hands flat on the table across from her. Then he leaned in until their noses almost touched. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
Josie shrugged, and her gaze skittered away from his. “I just mean that we’ve only been seeing each other a few days. Heck, we’ve only known each other that long. I wouldn’t want to assume anything about the way you feel about me based on the fact that we’ve spent every night together since the third one of our acquaintance.”
He grabbed her chin in his hand and forced her gaze back to his. “Now is not the time to ask how I feel about you, Josephine, because right at this very moment, you happen to be pissing me the hell off.”
“I’m so sorry,” she snapped, sarcasm dripping from her tongue. “Please forgive me for not knowing how exactly I’m supposed to be reacting to a situation I’ve never found myself in before. Clearly, I should have read the damn manual on human–Other social interactions before I agreed to let you and the Stone Creek Alpha eat pizza at my apartment!”
Finally—and belatedly—the note of mingled anxiety and confusion wormed its way through Eli’s instinctive anger at being dismissed as less than Josie’s predestined lifemate. He grabbed a sharp hold on his temper and sank down into the chair opposite her.
“Okay, sweetie, I think it’s time we talked about what’s really going on here. What’s making you so upset right now? You tell me yours, and then I’ll tell you mine.”
Josie made a frustrated sound in her throat and bowed her head. “That sounds about as appealing right now as a root canal.” She fisted her hands in her hair and tugged sharply. “How about we just forget the whole thing and drink our coffee until Jim gets here?”
“No. Now spill.”
She closed her eyes and let her arms flop to the table. Bruce made a disgruntled sound and took refuge underneath. “I just . . . I feel like I’m playing without a rule book here. I don’t understand how this thing is supposed to work, and whenever I feel like I’m starting to get a handle on things, it’s like the rules have changed and I’ve said exactly the wrong thing.”
“Wait, what do you mean by ‘how this thing is supposed to work’? Do you mean our relationship?”
“See, I don’t even know if that’s what I’m supposed to call it! I’ve never done this before. Every other relationship I’ve ever had has been an ordinary experience with an ordinary guy. And now suddenly there’s you, and the last thing you are is ordinary, and I don’t get how it’s supposed to work now.”
Eli wondered briefly if she was actually speaking English, because he felt as if he were listening to a foreign language he’d studied in high school and not heard since—he understood about one in every ten words, and even then he couldn’t seem to make any guesses about the context in which she used them.
“Are you all twisted up because you’ve never dated an Other before? Is that what this is about?”
“Don’t say it like that,” she snapped, glaring at him. “Don’t dismiss it as if I’m being ridiculous. Don’t act like it doesn’t mean anything that I’m human and you’re not. We’re different species. I mean, even more than most men and women feel like different species from each other, we actually are. We think differently, see differently, sense differently. Even our bodies don’t work exactly the same way. Our cultures are different. This is not a ridiculous thing to be concerned about.”
He growled. “Yes. It is. It’s ridiculous, because you’re making it sound as if the things that differentiate us from each other are somehow larger and more important than the things that make us alike. We both live in the same world, we both know the same people and frequent the same places. We even laugh at the same jokes and like the same movies. How are any of those things less important than that we don’t have exactly the same chromosomal makeup? Where did you get these ridiculous ideas about humans and Others not being able to mix? I would have thought that growing up in Stone Creek would have made you understand that we’re a hell of a lot more alike than we are different.”
She leaned away from him and looked hurt. He hated that. He was trying to make things better, not make her feel worse. “You make me sound as if I’m a worse bigot than the idiot who wrote those things on the front door, but that’s not what I mean. I don’t think that you’re any less of a person than I am; I don’t even think you’
re any less ‘human’ than I am. Whatever that means. I just think that whenever we start to talk about us, we seem to be using different languages where the words sound the same, but the meanings are just a tiny bit different. Like I’m speaking Italian and you’re speaking Spanish, and we sort of understand what the other one is talking about, but we’re actually missing half of every conversation we try to have.”
“So then let’s trade definitions,” he offered. “We don’t need to make this harder on ourselves. If what we need is an Eli-to-Josie dictionary, let’s write one. This is too important to let it fall apart over a little thing like varying definitions.”
Josie pointed at him and made a sound of triumph. “See, that’s exactly what I mean! You say this is ‘too important,’ but what do you mean by important? Because I’m a cautious girl by nature, and I don’t want to assume that when you say it’s important you mean that it’s something you expect to be part of your life for the foreseeable future, when what you really mean is that it’s a lot of fun at the moment and you don’t want to screw it up while the sex is still so good.”
Eli blinked against the glare of the light suddenly dawning directly in front of him. “That’s what this is about,” he breathed, and felt as if Atlas’s globe had just been lifted from his shoulders. “You don’t understand how I feel about you, do you?”
She blinked. “Am I supposed to? Because if you told me, I completely missed it. Was I drunk? Did I hit my head? What happened?”
He shook his head. “You didn’t miss anything, sweetie. I think we’ve just had so much going on that neither of us realized it might be important to make a few things clear to each other. Let me go first.”
He took her hand and clasped it between two of his. Instantly he felt better. Calmer. More whole. Everything always improved when he was touching her. If she couldn’t see that, she must be blind.
“I’ve been trying to be all considerate and understanding about the fact that you seem to go into this state of panic every time the subject of our relationship comes up. I kept thinking it was because you thought things were moving too fast. I thought you needed more time, and I should just play it cool and let things progress naturally until you realized what was happening between us. I thought that by going slow I was going the right thing, but if I was wrong, I am more than happy to correct that mistake right here and right now.”
He caught her gaze and held it, needing to be connected to her in every way possible while he made this clear.
“I am utterly and completely enthralled by you. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, or how I wasted three years living in the same town with you without ever so much as really seeing you. The only way I can explain it is to say that I was a complete idiot. For some reason, I didn’t realize you existed as more than a name and a profession. And it kills me to think about how much time I wasted because of it. I could kick myself. Except that I’ve come to understand that it doesn’t matter. All that matters is that now that I’ve met you and spoken to you and felt you and tasted you, I’m done. That’s it. You’re the end for me. I am not going anywhere, so I’m going to suggest that you don’t even try to get rid of me.”
Josie’s eye widened and her mouth opened, but he leaned forward to kiss her into silence.
“No, let me finish. I don’t really care what you decide to call what’s between us. The fact of the matter is that it exists, and that’s enough for me. The only thing I care about is that it makes you happy. What I don’t want is for it to make you confused. So I’m going to lay this out: I don’t want you to tell me how you feel about me tonight or tomorrow or the next day. I want you to wait. I want you to really figure it out and get comfortable with it. It needs to stop confusing you and making you crazy, and frankly, I don’t think sanity is in the cards for us until we figure out what’s going on with Rosemary and Bill.”
Her eyes closed, and she sighed at the reminder of the mess waiting for them back in town. He squeezed her hands and waited until her lashes drifted back up.
“So here’s the new rule. No declarations, at least not until the issue with the Lupines is resolved. Then, we can talk again about how you feel and how I feel and how we’re going to deal with all of it. Now is a crappy time to be making decisions about anything, especially the rest of our lives.”
He kissed her once, briefly, and smiled at her gently.
“Just remember—the way I feel about you is not going to change. I’ve waited my whole life for you, for this, and I intend to spend the rest of my life savoring every last minute to come.”
She frowned and tried to speak, but he shushed her and squeezed her hands.
“Nope. Not until this is done. Besides, I just heard Cooper’s car pull up, so we have other things to do right now. We’ll talk again when this is behind us.”
With that, Eli rose and went to meet Jim, leaving Josie behind at the kitchen table. She would need a minute or two, he decided, before she had to deal with making a statement. She could thank him for being so insightful and understanding another time.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Dear God! Clearly the man had been dropped on his head as a child. More than once. And from a considerable height. It was the only explanation for how he could possibly had gotten to be so mind-bogglingly, jaw-droppingly, awe-inspiringly stupid.
So she needed time to think, did she? No way could she possibly know her own mind about the man she was having a relationship with! A feeble-minded and opinionless woman like herself couldn’t ever be trusted to make anything as complicated as her own decision, and even if she had, she would obviously need time to mull it over and over in her vacuous little head until the two brain cells she barely had to rub together had worked out all the complexities of such a thing as her own bloody emotions.
Of all the arrogant assumptions! The man was lucky she didn’t march out onto the porch, carafe in hand, and dump the entire pot of scalding-hot coffee onto his head! In front of his damn deputy!
If she had brought her own car out here this afternoon, she would have changed into her own clothes, grabbed her keys, and been halfway back to Stone Creek before the moron managed to pry even half of his size twelve boot out of his condescending throat. To hell with the responsibilities of citizenship and looking out for a neighbor. He could fill out his own police report. It would serve him right if she developed a sudden and debilitating case of amnesia every time the subject of the break-in was even mentioned.
Of course, after that little lecture inside, if she did pretend to have forgotten the evening’s incidents, he would just chalk it up to her overwrought female nerves and add it to his list of asinine reasons why she couldn’t possibly know yet how she felt about the miserable jerk.
As if she wasn’t perfectly capable of acknowledging that she loved the miserable son of a bitch!
Men!
Her temper was frayed, to say the least, as she yanked open cabinet doors until she found a shelf of coffee mugs. She grabbed one for herself, filled it, dumped in the requisite flood of cream—Trust a Feline bachelor to keep half a gallon of real heavy cream in his refrigerator. Josie hadn’t even known the stuff came in half gallons!—and returned to her seat at the table. When they wanted to hear what she had to say about earlier events, they could damn well come and get her. She wouldn’t be going out of her way for them anytime soon.
She sat alone for almost fifteen minutes, nursing both her coffee and her rage. Unfortunately, the coffee was the only thing that cooled in the time before the two men filed into the kitchen and helped themselves to the still-brimming pot.
“Well, that was a nasty bit of work he did outside there. I’ll give him that.” Jim Cooper sighed as he eased himself into a straight-backed chair. “I’m happy to say we don’t see much of that kind of sentiment around here, Dr. Barrett, and I’m real sorry that you had to see it tonight.”
What the hell? The man spoke as if she hadn’t spent twenty-two of her thirty-two years living in the frick
in’ town and becoming aware of what people saw around it and what they didn’t. Was Eli’s stupidity contagious? Was it an epidemic among the male population of Stone Creek? Would she go into work on Monday morning and discover that Ben had forgotten how to take a patient statement or use the CBC machine?
“I believe I’ll survive the trauma, Deputy, but it’s . . . kind of you to be concerned.”
Jim nodded, perfectly content to believe in her sincerity.
Dear Lord, what was the world coming to?
“I agree with the sheriff about it, though,” the man continued in his slow, steady tone. “I don’t think it was done by anyone local. Based on the wording of the graffiti and the description Eli gave of the attacker, I’d say it’s likely we’ve got another skinhead incident on our hands.”
Oh my goodness. They had managed to figure that out for themselves, had they?
“You may be right,” she acknowledged steadily. “But last time, the incident was a bit different, wasn’t it? Less personal and more disseminated. Protests and riots instead of a personal attack. Why do you suppose they changed their tactics? Assuming it’s the same group, I mean. And why wait a year after the protests that summer?”
Eli shook his head. “I’m not sure we can assume it’s the same group, but we probably shouldn’t rule out the possibility at this point, either. Oregon, Washington, and Idaho unfortunately have more than their share of white and human supremacist groups. But since they usually leave Stone Creek alone, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a link to last year’s events. We’ll need to look into it, definitely. As for the time lapse . . . we made it fairly clear last year that their kind weren’t welcome in town. Maybe it took this long to reorganize, or to come up with a new strategy.”