The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards)

by Holley Trent

  “You told them that you were caring for a sick family member, right?”

  He grunted. “Yeah, which set my dad off, because he found out that sick family member was Hannah, and of course, Hannah hasn’t said shit to my folks about being in the hospital or getting changed. I guess my dad ran his mouth and had folks there wondering what was really going on because I wasn’t feeding them enough info.”

  “Probably doesn’t help that Hannah doesn’t take your parents’ calls.”

  “That drives them up the wall, for sure. I don’t take them half the time anymore, either, and that has them in a special kind of tizzy. They’ve recruited my brothers to harass me. I’ve had to block them from text messaging me.”

  “They don’t like not knowing what’s going on.”

  “They should be used to that feeling. They haven’t known what was going on for years, anyway. They stick their heads in the sand about every damn thing that could possibly be considered a flaw in their characters and about how they’re treating people. Trying to teach them the error of their ways is just fuckin’ exhausting.”

  “Do they—”

  The double tap on the door halted her words and made her sit up.

  “I’ll get it,” he said.

  “I’ve got to pay him.”

  “I’ve got it.” He ran and got his wallet off the kitchen counter and then gave the delivery guy some money in exchange for the heavy bag he held out.

  Steven whistled low and called over his shoulder, “What the hell did you order?”

  “It’s not that much.”

  The bag had to weigh five pounds.

  Steven waved at the delivery guy, who’d cringed at Belle’s obvious understatement, then shut and locked the door.

  He left the bag on the coffee table and retreated to the kitchen yet again to drop his wallet and grab drinks.

  The light on his answering machine blinked, and curious, he hit the play button. Nobody called him at home.

  “Steven, it’s Claude—”

  “Nope.” Steven hit the stop button and hightailed it back to the living room.

  He tried to do right by his gut by listening to it as often as he could, and at that moment, his gut was telling him that Claude wanted something Steven couldn’t give him.

  He needed to see about getting his number unlisted. The only reason he had a landline in the first place was because he lived in a wooded neighborhood and kept dropping cell calls inside the house.

  Nobody needs to talk to me that badly, anyway.

  Belle was upright and unpacking the bag when Steven returned.

  He counted five sandwiches, all with different labels.

  He raised a skeptical eyebrow at her. “You might have a Cougar’s metabolism, but I know for damn sure you can’t put all that away.”

  She shrugged. “I figured we’d sample. You said you didn’t know what you were in the mood for.”

  “What I meant was that I wasn’t really hungry.”

  Hadn’t been hungry all day. Anxiety made a hell of an appetite suppressant.

  “You’ve got to eat,” she said. “Once you have a bit of it in your mouth, you’ll want the rest.”

  His lips quirked up reflexively. “Sounds like something I would say to a lady.”

  Belle’s eyes closed to slits, but before they did, he saw her pupils narrowing to thin lines.

  He’d made the cat mad.

  Jeez.

  He laughed anyway and retook his seat. He grabbed half of a turkey sandwich to start and pinned his gaze to the television screen. If he looked at her, he’d laugh, and she’d be mad again.

  She grabbed a sandwich half, too, and settled back into her burrow of covers.

  “You really are a cat, aren’t ya? Am I going to come home tomorrow and find you sleeping under my bed? Or perching atop my bookcase?”

  “Don’t be an asshole.”

  “I’m just wondering.” He put her feet back atop his lap and bit into his sandwich. He didn’t do much tasting, just chewed. Chewed, swallowed, and hoped that his body would be grateful for all the effort.

  “Do you own this house?” she asked when the show ended and another commercial break started.

  “Yeah. Or rather, me and the bank together.”

  “It’s cute.”

  “It was cheap. It’s a high-crime neighborhood.”

  “Didn’t seem like it. I was sitting outside a good part of the day and didn’t see anything untoward.”

  “Because I’ve got old people on either side, a couple of single moms across the street, and some blue-collar types on either side of them. It’s pretty quiet. Folks are protective about the block, and they try to keep things on the up-and-up, but once a neighborhood earns a reputation, it takes a while to shake it.”

  “But you didn’t know that when you moved here. You assumed it wasn’t safe.”

  “Nah, making assumptions is how folks get themselves into trouble. I looked at the place against my realtor’s recommendation. She wasn’t being helpful, so I went door to door myself and talked to folks. They liked the idea of there being a cool cop in the neighborhood.”

  He pressed his hand over her mouth before she could rebut.

  “I am cool. I mind my own business unless they ask me not to, and when they invite me to cookouts, I take good beer.”

  She wrapped her fingers around his wrist and set his hand atop her lap ... or at least in the general vicinity of her lap. There was a lap somewhere beneath that pile of covers. “You could have lived anywhere, though, right? You had choices.”

  “Yeah, I had choices. I could have spent a little more and been closer to work or in some gentrified neighborhood where folks like my realtor had already chased out all the original residents. I liked this block, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Because once I met the folks who lived on it, I felt like I’d have a role here. I’m used to being part of a team, and I think that’s important to have not just at work, but in the place you live, too.”

  “You wanted to be here because you’d have a purpose?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you felt good about that.”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s kind of how I feel about moving back to the ranch.”

  He tucked some escaping lettuce back into his sandwich and flattened the bread a little. There was always too much bread. “I know where you’re trying to go with this.”

  “So I won’t waste my breath, then. Chew and swallow. Watch television. You don’t have to say anything.”

  “What do you expect all that silence will accomplish?”

  “Silence drives action sometimes. You ever see a cat make a lot of noise when it’s on the hunt?”

  “I’m not on the hunt.”

  “Aren’t you?” She set her sandwich down on the coffee table, fought her way out of the blanket pile, and padded toward the kitchen. “Any chance you have chips in here that aren’t stale?”

  “Pretzels, probably.”

  “Good enough. I’d tell you that you need to go shopping, but I wouldn’t want you getting too comfortable here.”

  “Belle—”

  “Chew and swallow, Welch.”

  He scoffed and took a bite.

  Chew and swallow.

  He could do that. Beyond that, he wasn’t making any promises.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  With her inner cat so close to the surface, Belle’s sleep tended to be restless, so she spent half the night in some state that was neither asleep nor awake, but some place in between. She’d open her eyes and roll over to look at Steven who, more often than not, was awake himself.

  They didn’t talk, but by then, she’d probably trained him not to.

  The rest of dinner had been quiet, as had his preparations for bed. He’d slipped in between the sheets wordlessly, and she hadn’t needed an invitation. She’d decided that she would take what she needed unless he told her she couldn’t have it.

  He
didn’t.

  The hardest part of being so close to him was not pushing to have her needs meet. He probably wouldn’t have told her no, but she didn’t want to give him a reason to have to do any soul-searching about it. He had enough soul-searching to do already.

  She watched him listlessly dress, made him shove some breakfast into his mouth, and then followed him through the garage. Lingering beside his truck door, he said, “You can’t go to work with me, kitten.”

  “I could meet you for lunch.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “What time do you have lunch?”

  Het let out a breath and ran a hand through his damp hair. “Around one.”

  “Where do you want me to meet you?”

  “I’ll let you know. Hard to know what I’ll be in the mood for.”

  “If you don’t call me, I’ll find you.”

  He laughed, but it was obviously halfhearted. His mood was so flat, barely recovering.

  She didn’t know how to fix that, but she was persistent. He’d said himself that she needed to demand what she wanted in life. Although he probably hadn’t included himself as part of that advice, she’d committed to it all the same.

  “I bet you have absolutely no qualms about showing up at the department and plopping your ass into my desk chair until I get back to it,” he said.

  “I could certainly talk my way in if I had to.”

  “You make it sound like you’ve done that before.”

  She shrugged. “I usually don’t have to do much talking, remember? I have a way of compelling people to do things.”

  “Yeah. I’m getting that.”

  • • •

  At around a quarter to one when he still hadn’t called her, she was about to drive downtown, but his text message put her off from it.

  Walk east three blocks. There’s a hole-in-the-wall barbecue joint between the Laundromat and pawnshop. I’ll be there.

  She laced up her sneakers, locked the doors, and went.

  When she arrived at the joint, he was leaning across the counter. At some point during the day, his shirt had gotten wrinkled and he’d rolled his sleeves up to his elbows and loosened his tie. He looked like he’d really been put through the ringer.

  Poor baby.

  Apologizing to the few people in line, she cut in front of them and grabbed the lidded Styrofoam cup he held out to her.

  “Sweetest tea in the South,” he said. “It goes phenomenally with all the salt in the barbecue.”

  The cook, behind the counter, shoved her hands onto her wide hips and glowered at him. “You ain’t gotta eat it.”

  “Still gonna make me pay for it, aren’t you?”

  The lady scoffed. “I ain’t stupid. You know I am.”

  “Give me the pork, Cilla. You and I both know you’ve got a heavy hand with the salt, but don’t I keep coming back?”

  “What’s that say about you?”

  “Says I can’t get enough.”

  Cilla sucked her teeth at him.

  “Come on. I gotta get back to work and push some paper around my desk. Solve cases and whatnot.”

  The man in line behind Steven tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Yep?”

  “Whatever happened with that pawn shop robbery?”

  “Don’t you read the paper?”

  “Hell no, I don’t read no paper. Paper cost money. I rather buy lunch.” He leaned around Belle and pointed to the cook. “Priscilla, don’t you fix your mouth to tell me you ain’t got no ribs today.”

  The lady shrugged. “Ain’t got no ribs today.”

  “How you ain’t got no ribs?”

  Steven pulled Belle to the left of the line a bit as the folks behind them crowded the counter and demanded their rib satisfaction from Cilla.

  “What the hell?” Belle muttered.

  Steven snorted. “Cilla and her husband smoke all their own pork. If they can’t get whole pigs for whatever reason, they’ll get parts and not always the parts folks want.”

  “So this is a common protest?”

  They were getting louder, and Cilla—leaning onto the counter and rolling her head on her neck—screamed right along with them.

  “Yep.” Steven wriggled his eyebrows. “Give them a minute. They’ll drift away to stare at the menu for a while and then will happily consume whatever she gives them.”

  Belle slipped the paper cover of her straw off the tube and tossed it into the nearby trashcan. “I bet you know every place in town to get something good to eat.”

  “Nah. Raleigh’s big. I know pockets of it pretty well, but I do try to know everything that’s in the neighborhood I live in. You know, to show my face here and there. I think they’re more or less used to me. Of course, they didn’t trust me at first.”

  “How’d you earn their trust?” That seemed like information she might need to know for her personal use. She took a long draw of the tea and wheezed as her taste buds processed all that sugar on a delay. “Gods, almighty.”

  He slung his arm over her shoulder and chuckled. “See, kitten, that’s what we call sweet tea.”

  “There’s so much sugar in it that it’s chewable. Why?”

  “Because it’s hot in the South, and the sugar makes us not care as much. Also, it keeps us moving during the drag-ass part of the day. I’m certainly at that point.”

  “Tough morning?”

  He shrugged.

  “Wanna tell me about it?” She smoothed down his collar and straightened his crooked tie. She didn’t like him in a tie and slacks. Jeans and a faded baseball cap were more his speed.

  He took her hand in his free one and kissed the back of it. His breath came out in a long sigh as he pressed it to his cheek. “Quit it with the Cougar magic,” he whispered.

  “No. You’re stressed, and that makes the cat in me upset. If I can help you relax, I’m going to do it.”

  “Belle—”

  “I’ll tell you about my morning.” She didn’t want to hear whatever he was going to say in rebuttal. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was her taking him home. “I spent it vetting a horse trade and getting yelled at on the phone by some old cowboy who thinks I’m stupid.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Mom deals with that shit all the time and probably a little more calmly than I do. The cat in me can’t help but to take offense to some things.”

  “I’m offended on your behalf.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Of course, ’cause no one in his right mind would think you were stupid.” He pulled her close and tucked his chin atop her head. “Just stand there for a minute,” he whispered.

  “Don’t feel bad about needing a little help dispersing the energy.”

  “I shouldn’t be anxious, but I am. Nothing bad has happened in the past couple of days. I’m just wound too tight.”

  “It’s because you’re either thinking too much or not enough. Or you’re thinking about the wrong things.”

  “Is that it?”

  “It’s my best guess.”

  “What should I be thinking about?”

  She opened her mouth to tell him his job back in New Mexico, but couldn’t get the words out because suddenly there was a masked man in the doorway holding a shotgun up to his shoulder and pointing it toward the counter.

  The screaming from before that had been directed at Cilla didn’t stop—its tone simply changed. It was no longer halfhearted indignation from the hungry masses. Customers were screaming in terror. As humans were programmed to do, they scattered from the counter toward the corners and beneath the tables, leaving Cilla exposed.

  Cilla, wide-eyed and agape, put up her hands.

  “Your old man knows damn well what happens when you open your mouth, lady,” the guy with the gun said.

  Straightening the bandana covering the lower half of his face, the gunman moved closer to the counter.

  Steven pulled Belle closer to him. She must have tensed or made a move toward th
e gunman, and Steven didn’t want that, apparently.

  Belle didn’t know what she could do to help, only knew that she could and had to.

  If Steven were affected one way or another by the gunman’s presence, Belle couldn’t discern it. His energy was about what it was before, and his heart rate had hardly changed.

  She understood then. He’s used to this.

  He knew what to do.

  She looked up at his face and found his expression neutral and his gaze locked on Cilla, not the guy with the shotgun.

  What’s he up to?

  “You gonna pay me, old lady,” the guy said. “I don’t care how you gonna get it, but you gonna get my money, and you gonna pay me for all the trouble your old man caused.”

  “If you know me so well,” Cilla said, “you know I ain’t got no money. You think I got sacks of hunnert-dollar bills back here on these shelves or just taters and flour?”

  He cocked the gun, and another round of screams pealed through the small space. “Don’t care what you got back there, but I tell you this. I’ll be back here next week, and when I come, you gonna have my money. Start with ten thousand, and we’re going to go from there.”

  Belle cringed. From what she knew about mom-and-pop restaurants, the place was probably running on barely enough profits to keep the space up to code.

  “Go on and do what you gotta do,” Cilla said. “If I had ten cents, I wouldn’t give it to you. Your momma would roll in her grave if she knew what kind of fuss you in here making. What you think that bandana is doing? Not a dang thing. Stupid.”

  “Damn it, Cilla,” Steven whispered.

  “Oh, you mouthy just like your old man, huh?” the gunman barked.

  Cilla didn’t respond.

  Slowly, Steven passed a hand down Belle’s arm and took her cup. He flicked off the lid with his thumb, and handed it and the straw to her discretely.

  “Ten thousand dollars.” The gunman stepped closer to the counter, and Steven nudged Belle behind him. “You got me in the hole with my dude, and you gonna pay up.”