by Holley Trent
“Hey, Al. Didn’t realize you had a guest.” Kyle performed a goofy salute that perfectly matched the goofy look on his face. “Hey there.”
After several seconds of hostile staring, Ben nodded slowly, once, keeping his lips firmly shut.
“Hey, I think I know you?” Kyle said, tilting his head one way and drumming percussively on the side of the door.
Go away.
“You come into town with Clarissa sometimes.”
“Call her Ms. Morton.” Ben’s voice was shot through with unexpected hostility. He hadn’t even used that tone with Scott when they’d been nearly baring fangs at each other in Noelle and Tamatsu’s foyer.
“Right. Right.” Kyle put his hands up and chuckled in that jocks-gonna-jock way that had probably been charming for some people back when he was in high school.
She hated to admit to herself that she’d liked that sound once, too. She’d thought it meant that he didn’t take himself too seriously. In truth, it meant he didn’t take her seriously. “Ms. Morton, then.” Kyle rocked back on his heels and jammed his hands into his pockets.
“You should show some respect for folks,” Ben said.
“Well, try as I might to be perfect, sometimes I miss the mark.”
“No kidding,” Alex said in an undertone. She ground her teeth and stared unseeing at the vinyl siding of her rental house.
There’d been a time back in spring, or even summer, when she would have been thrilled to have Kyle randomly show up for a visit, even after dumping her in such a crass way. He’d been the “adult” relationship she’d always craved, and with him, she thought she’d be getting consistency and stability. Even after informing her, in his typical matter-of-fact style that, “We’re not actually breaking up because, see, we weren’t technically a couple.” After all, they couldn’t possibly be that. “I’m thirty-three, Al. You thought this was serious? You’re way too young.”
She’d been a bauble. Throwaway, although he’d spent four nights per week in her bed.
Belle had been right about him all along.
Dipshit.
He wasn’t for Alex. He wasn’t a keeper.
Taking a deep breath, she passed her bags to one hand and smoothed the end of her ponytail with the other. “Do you need anything? If not, I hope you’ll understand. I’ve got a lot to do.”
“Ah, you work too much. Have some fun, Al.”
Ben closed his door softly and, before starting on the walkway to the door, gave Alex an annoyed look.
He wasn’t going to say anything to Kyle. Kyle was her problem. Her guest at her home. Ben’s dislike of the guy was clear, and he was making a choice to walk away rather than witness the exchange. He probably thought he was doing her a favor.
She didn’t need him to.
She locked up the truck and waved at Kyle as though they’d already done their good-byes. She caught up to Ben at the welcome mat and stomped her feet on the coir. “Don’t walk away from me like that,” she spat in a whisper as she shoved the key into the lock.
“Figured you wanted privacy.”
“A few months ago, I might have. I moved on. He wavers.”
“That’s your ex?”
She pushed the door open and nudged Ben over the threshold. Or rather, he let her nudge him in. He had her by more than half a foot in height and probably seventy pounds. He didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do.
She shut the door and locked it resoundingly, in spite of the fact Kyle was walking toward it.
“Not my ex,” she said through clenched teeth as she closed the blinds beside the door. “According to him, we were never a couple.”
“Acts like you were.” He leaned against the foyer wall, looking completely at home in the tight quarters like some ornament she’d bought at the flea market and installed for aesthetics. “I figured it must have been a bad breakup. Sniffed some stress coming off you.”
“You can smell my stress?” she shrieked.
The thought was paralyzing. She’d never believed herself to be an expert on shapeshifters, but she’d never heard of them being able to do that. He was probably reading her like a book.
A stupid book.
He grunted.
“No, no, no.” She hurried into the living room and laid the contents of her arms atop the coffee table. “You were doing so well with using words. Don’t stop now.”
“Ugh, look. Depends on how close I am and whether or not I’m paying any attention. Mostly, I try to mind my own business. Folks who subscribe to that philosophy live longer.”
“So, you smelled my stress spike . . . ” She took a breath. Her pitch was careening too high too fast, and she didn’t want Ben to see her so affected—not over someone she never meant anything to. She took one more breath and tried again. “You smelled my stress spike, and you thought the correct course of action was to abandon me?”
“No, no, no.” He shook his head vehemently and gave her shoulders a squeeze that somehow managed to be both consoling and patronizing. “I wasn’t abandoning you. I was giving you privacy. Women haven’t ever made a heap of sense to me. I figure, why would you start now?”
There was a rap on the door.
Her mouth went dry. Stomach lurched. Alex would have bet good money Ben caught a whiff of her stress ramping up again.
Why won’t he go away?
“You gonna get that?” Ben asked her.
She forced a swallow down her tight throat.
She didn’t want to get it.
“Want me to get it?”
Yes.
But that was cowardice. She’d never been the kind of woman who’d avoid necessary confrontation, but what was between her and Kyle was personal, and embarrassing, and she didn’t really want an audience. Especially not the renaissance Wolf.
She wiped her sweaty palms on her pants and started toward the door. “Hey, can you, maybe, plug in the Christmas tree lights? The place looks a little less pitiful with twinkle lights.”
He gave her another one of those long, assessing stares before pushing off the wall he was holding up and heading toward the tree. “Okay.”
She should have been opening the door and telling Kyle to go sit on his nightstick and spin, but her feet were moving her closer to Ben. Her hands wrung as he squeezed behind the tree and bent to insert the plug into the outlet. “Why do you look at me like that?”
“Who, me?” His brow was furrowed when he backed out of the tight space.
“Yes. What do you think when you stare so long?”
“Not thinkin’.” He shrugged. “Listenin’ to the animal in me.”
“Oh.”
Kyle rapped on the door again, and then mashed the doorbell for good emphasis.
But she didn’t care about Kyle right then.
She cared about the Wolf who was carefully bending the limbs of her artificial Christmas tree back into their proper shapes. About the Wolf who was gently nudging her crocheted tree skirt back into proper form with the tip of his steel-toe boot.
She hadn’t even had to ask him to.
Kyle knocked once more.
“Big-ass tree,” Ben said and whistled appreciatively.
“Yeah. Shamefully so, maybe,” she said with a giggle. She’d needed that break in the tension. “I have no regrets. Bought it on December twenty-sixth a couple of years ago after I learned the hard way how difficult it is to get a fresh Christmas tree in this part of the state. Not like I was gonna go get a national park permit and cut down my own, right?”
He snickered. “You wrestling with a saw would be a funny sight.”
“Ha ha.” She plucked a bit of mangled tinsel from the end of a branch. “I figured if everything holiday-themed at the department store was less than twenty bucks, I’d get the biggest tree I could fit into the closet.”
“I like the way you think, Alex.”
“I like that sentence.”
She was rarely in sync with people, but if the mess with Kyle had taught her anything, it was to
never let anyone make her feel inferior about the personality she’d been born with. They could take it or leave it.
“Good.” He grinned playfully. “I’ll save up that compliment and tell it to you again later, then.”
“Hey, why not? Why not reuse what works? Recycling is just as good in conversations as it is for the planet.”
He snorted. “How do you come up with this stuff?”
“I wish I knew. Just the way my brain works.”
She left him relocating ornaments from low branches where they were densely arranged to barer higher ones.
When she opened the door, Kyle had his fist poised to knock again.
“Brr,” he said, and she didn’t know if he’d meant the sound as a response to her quickly spreading scowl or the outdoor temperature.
“I bet the inside of your car is warm,” she said through clenched teeth. “You can go get in it.”
“I thought we could catch up,” he said, ever oblivious.
“And when’d you think that? Before you saw my truck at the stoplight or after?”
He leaned into the doorway, charming boy-next-door smile reaching all the way to his eyes.
That’d been attractive once. She’d thought she’d wanted boy next door all grown up. But the boy next door had said and done all the right things until he’d gotten what he wanted.
“Alex, your tree is leaning,” Ben called out. “I think the stand is wobbly. You got a little block I can use to prop it up?”
Kyle’s grin waned a bit at the corners.
Alex bobbed her eyebrows at him. If she were going to have a dog in her house, he was going to be the one of her choosing. The one on the doormat could stay where he was.
She called to Ben, “There’s a bunch of magazines on the dresser in my bedroom. Use them. I’m done with them.”
There was also a two-foot stack of periodicals next to the sofa he could have used as easily, but the sofa wasn’t in her inner sanctum. Not just anyone could go into her bedroom, and Kyle knew that.
“You got it,” Ben responded after a few seconds.
No argument. No mansplaining about how she should really use such-and-such because—
Stop.
She’d already thought through every decision she’d made in her and Kyle’s “relationship.” She’d already blamed herself enough. Had already decided that he didn’t matter anymore.
She didn’t need to compare him to anyone else except to know that it was okay to push the bar up high and to not settle.
“You know, I don’t want to catch up right now,” she said. “I’m busy. Please respect that if I close the door, that means I’ve decided the conversation is over.”
“Have it your way, but I’m only trying to help you,” he said with a shrug. “You don’t always make the best decisions about who you hang out with.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” She suspected he was goading her. Trying to get her angry and hysterical in that skillful and devious way of his so that he could swoop in and be the reasonable, mature one. So he could tell her, yet again, that she had some growing up to do.
“The fact I have to tell you says a lot.” He shrugged. “I shouldn’t have to tell you.”
“If you have some critical information you need to pass on to me that would help me be proactive in ensuring my personal safety, spit it out. Otherwise, get the hell out of my yard.”
The phony bastard smile went away completely then.
“Go,” she said before he could say one back-handed cruel word. “The next time you see me on the road, do both of us a favor and immediately make a U-ie. In spite of what you insist on believing about me, most of the time I make pretty good decisions. In the end, you weren’t one of them.”
She shut the door and turned the deadbolt.
Then she forced herself to shake off the nerves.
Done.
Over it.
She didn’t peek out the window to see if he was leaving. She turned off the outside light and walked to the living room.
The tree was straighter—she hadn’t actually noticed until then that the angel at the top had been listing a few degrees—and Ben was pushing her Swiffer across the hardwood floor.
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly. “Shoulda took my boots off sooner. Brought some of the desert inside, I guess.”
“Wow,” she said softly, watching the graceful ease he employed in maneuvering the implement. “You found that fast.”
He snorted. “Blame my mama. Couldn’t go to anyone’s house without having to clean up before we left. Always ended up leaving places better looking than when we got there. Had to get a knack for guessing where folks stored stuff before they realized little kids were cleaning their house. I’ll be done in a sec.”
Alex could certainly understand why people would freak out about peoples’ babies cleaning their homes. She was feeling some of that nervousness herself, but right as she opened her mouth to insist that he stop, he walked past her with the Swiffer, whistling bars from “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.”
“You goin’ anywhere for Christmas?” he asked her from the kitchen.
She heard the pantry door slam.
“Uh.” Regaining her wits, she spun on her heel, realized she was still wearing her shoes, took them off, and then followed. “No,” she said breathily. “Chet and I used to go to our mother’s, but we don’t bother anymore. She’s probably skiing or something.”
He peered into the aquarium she used to start early spring seeds and turned on the plant light. Most folks weren’t curious enough to bother. “You don’t like skiing?”
“I could take it or leave it. I just already know what’ll happen. My mother would pay for everything, and then we’ll inevitably devolve into a conversation about money and how if Chet and I tried really, really hard, we could do better for ourselves. I thought the whole point of life was to find something to do that makes you happy. Obviously, you’ve got to make sacrifices, but isn’t happiness what most folks strive for?”
“Folks who give a damn, anyway.” He tapped the glass on the side of the aquarium. “What are those?”
“Mostly grape hyacinths. I don’t plan on selling those. My grandmother loved them. One day, when I buy a house, I want to have a huge section of garden filled with them.” She shrugged. “Building up quantity now is all.”
He grunted and turned off the light. “My mama’s got a yard full of flowers. She didn’t do nothin’ to put them there, though. Wildflowers. Come back every year. Bees like ’em, and she don’t complain about me putting hives out there.”
“I wouldn’t complain, either, if I were getting free honey.”
“And she sure is. And then takes her haul down to the swap meet and trades for old records and stuff. All I can do is shake my head. She don’t even have a record player.” He turned off the light and moved on from the aquarium to the whiteboard she’d hung next to the back door. It was covered with frost dates, planting dates for various plants, reminders about estate sales open to the public where she’d go on the hunt for neglected and weird native foliage, and various other reminders. “Damn, you’re organized.”
“Hardly. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. I need reminders for my reminders.”
“Or a second brain.”
“That’d work, too, if I can find one that hasn’t been beat up as bad as my truck.” She leaned against the kitchen table, covered over with vintage seed catalogs she’d been poring over to find out which plants were no longer offered. Part of her business strategy was to be the go-to gal who was offering them. “So, I’m curious. Which of your jobs is your sacrifice job?”
He turned away from the board, hands in pockets, one dark brow raised. “Do what, now?”
“You know, like my waitress gig,” she said with a giggle. “Which do you do because you have to?”
“Oh, I get you. Me and Scott call them quit-first jobs.”
She grunted. The name made sense.
&
nbsp; He shrugged. “I don’t have one of those anymore. Used to be on a road construction crew. If that isn’t one of the most miserable jobs out there, I don’t know what is. Backbreaking, hot-as-hell work. Paid good when I needed the money, though.”
“When’d you decide to quit?”
“You shoulda told me there’d be a pop quiz. I woulda came prepared.” Padding across the kitchen, he dragged his hand down his jaw again, massaging the shadow of his beard.
She wondered if the hair were coarse or soft. It looked soft. She wanted to swirl her fingers over the shadows of hair and trace the haphazard growth directions on his chin and cheeks.
Sometimes, she just had to feel things. Touching was how she could tell some plants apart that were too visually similar at some stages to conclusively identify. Of course, now she didn’t need any extra help telling him apart from anyone. She’d know him by his relaxed posture, his full lips, the hoods of his eyes.
She simply wanted to know if he felt as good as he looked.
That probably made her needy, but she didn’t care. Her ideal relationship came with lots of affection—even in public. Also, sprawling conversations, and a shared drive for busyness, and just . . . comfort around someone.
Ben was helping her home in on what, specifically, her standard was. She didn’t know if he met it, but that didn’t stop her from wondering What if?
“Four or five years ago, I think,” he said, his voice drawing her focus back to his intelligent eyes. “Me and Scott were picking up mechanic work on the side.”
“Long days, I guess?”
“The longest.”
“I know the feeling,” she murmured and looked to the ceiling. Her gaze always tracked immediately to the water staining near the light. She kept itching to paint it over, but the house wasn’t hers, and the landlord’s usual line on aesthetic issues was, “Maybe I’ll fix up the place when you move out.”
She wished she could move without so much financial risk. She’d go somewhere with space for a greenhouse and a cellar she could keep her stock in.
Wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, but she could dream.
“Sometimes I wonder if my mother’s right and if I’m being too fanciful,” she said, looking at Ben again.