Martine chuckled at the notion. “Five hundred?”
Jerry grinned down at her. “Vampire. I guess after five hundred years, I might want to retire, too.”
“It’s in a great location.”
“Yep. Right near Derrick’s place.”
“That’s not the only reason I like it, Jerry.” Doth thou protest too much?
“It’s one of ’em. Probably the biggest one.”
No. No. No. She didn’t base business decisions on a man’s whereabouts. But she was curious. “Why do you say that?”
His wide shoulders shrugged. “You guys are good together in your efforts not to be good together.”
That stopped her in her tracks. “What?”
He rolled his eyes, pulling her back into the rhythm of their walk, his handsome face serene. “Time for some honesty. You’re not fooling me. Your plan is to go back to New York once this mating thing is done. You think you’re going to be able to do that without looking back. But I know differently. I don’t know what kind of arrangement you and Derrick have, but I can guess. Neither one of you talk like you’re mates, because that would go against everything you think you believe, but you act like mates anyway.”
Martine stayed silent, absorbing Jerry’s words, pacing her steps to meet his larger ones.
“Too much honesty?” he asked, his face now worried beneath the overcast sky.
“I don’t want a mate,” she said, her eyes falling to the ground for speaking with such brutal truth.
But was it still the truth? Or was she just being lulled into this whole idea of love and family because she didn’t have one, and the second she gave in to the idea, it would all crumble around her?
But Jerry grinned, easing her concern she’d spoken out of turn. “Yeah. That’s why this is getting harder for you each day. Because what you say you want and what you’ve always thought you wanted sometimes turns out to be exactly the opposite of what you really want. That hurts for people like you—so determined to go through life without any attachments. Because attachments can mean disappointment. Easier to avoid if you just float. It’s the chicken-shit way out for sure.”
She pinched his arm, making him growl. “Hey, now. I’m no chicken-shit.”
Now Jerry stopped and turned her toward him, his face as relaxed as it always was, but his words—his words were another story. “I always wonder about people like you. People who think the best way to avoid getting hurt is to hide from it altogether. But if you don’t get hurt, how can you know what really good feels like? Know what? You can’t.”
Now her temper was rising. She had experienced some of the worst hurt. Her father. She didn’t need to justify her fears to anyone. “I’ve experienced pretty bad. Maybe by comparison, it’s not the worst tale you’ll ever hear, but it certainly won’t leave you warm and fuzzy on the inside. Don’t judge me, Jerry, because you have no clue about where I come from.”
Nice crutch. Lean harder on it, Martine.
Jerry raised his lean hands like two gloved white flags. “Oh, you won’t hear me trying to compete for the gold with you in the Suffering Olympics, Martine. Whatever keeps you from wanting to join the rest of us in the world—join something—is yours alone. Life is messy, relationships are messy, but sometimes you have to keep jumping in the mud to find the sweet spot. Or you can give up. So you live a half-life. And I’m okay with that, if you’re okay with that. Just promise you’ll stop back in and visit when you can because I’ll miss our morning walks.”
With that, he patted her on the arm before strolling off, taking the path they usually took every day without another word, leaving her to stand there like the big, fat, classic example of abandonment cliché she was.
* * *
Max sipped at his coffee as Derrick eyed him over the rim of his own cup. “So how are things with JC?”
He asked only because this comfort he’d found with Martine, comfort laced with passion, made him antsy. Made him angry. Made him happy. He needed to find a flaw in Max’s happiness, one he could work a finger into and tear a big hole in, so when something went wrong, he could say, “See?”
But Max’s smile said it all. It was satisfied. Content. “We’re good. Really good. It’s taking some time to adjust, and we’re still figuring stuff out, but I love her. Damn well nuts about her. In the end, that’s kind of all that matters to us.”
His next admission was sincere. He was happy Max had found the person he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. “The mate looks good on you.”
Max gazed at him, raising his coffee mug. “It looks good on you, too, brother. Whether you like admitting it or not. I think instead of preparing to ship Martine off the minute she saves your life, you might want to consider how happy she seems to make you and beg her to stay. You yell a lot less with her in the picture.”
“She’s easy to get along with.”
Max winked. “I get it.”
Suddenly, he was defensive. “But that’s all it is.”
“Right. Got it.”
“Do you get it, Max?”
“Yeah, brother. I get it. Look, don’t get defensive because you’re falling for her.”
“I’m not falling over anything.” So fuck you.
Max shrugged. “Okay.”
His temper flared and he fought to keep his flaw for yelling in check. “Stop agreeing with me, jackass.”
“Okay.”
Derrick’s jaw clenched. “Let me spell this out for you. Martine’s easy to get along with. We have a lot in common. She likes to cook and so do I. She can carry on a good conversation on just about anything, and she’s pretty good at crossword puzzles. She also doesn’t bitch at me when I want to watch Ice Road Truckers and have a beer. She makes me laugh. But that’s it.”
Max bobbed his head, his eyes amused. “You have things in common, talk, hang out companionably, an assload of chemistry. Check. Got it.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
Max rolled his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “What am I thinking, Derrick?”
“You’re thinking those are all the qualities a guy needs in a life mate. Except you’re forgetting, I don’t want a life mate. Besides, we hardly know each other. How can you sign on for life when you’ve known each other for three damn weeks?”
“Noted, and don’t forget, you’re asking the guy who did just that—signed on. But here’s something you’re forgetting. You don’t have to know everything about each other right away. Sure, you have to hop in the sack with her in order to keep on living, but afterward, when all the bullshit’s passed, you can get to know each other at your own pace. There’s no rush. The point is, she’s the first woman I’ve ever seen you interact with and actually enjoy the interaction. I’m just sayin’.”
“Well, stop sayin’. I repeat, I don’t want forever. I like playing the field.” Yeahhh. That big field full of women all over Cedar Glen. Just sayin’.
“Check again,” Max agreed with a smug smile.
He sat silently, stuffing some eggs into his mouth to keep from sharing with Max how much he looked forward to seeing Martine at the end of a day. How he thought about her all the time when he wasn’t with her—a first for him and any woman he’d ever even loosely been involved with.
“So ever figure out who the guy that came in here the other day was?” Max asked.
“Nope. Haven’t seen him since either.” And after Martine’s confession, that worried him.
“I made sure everyone’s aware of what happened. The guys in the pack are keeping an eye out, and I’ve tightened up the perimeter around town with extra security just to be safe. We won’t let anything happen to her.”
Derrick nodded, taking a last swallow of his coffee, ignoring the fear that swept over him at the idea of anything happening to Martine. “Appreciate that.”
“So we still haven’t talked about the impossible.”
“The impossible?”
Max’s head dipped in a nod. “Yea
h, you know, that part of the curse that says your mating will have an impossible stumbling block?”
Oh. Right. That. “Can’t deal with something we can’t see.”
“Have you given thought to what it might be?”
Was his brother kidding? He’d thought about it day and night. “I’m gonna go with this son of a bitch Escobar.”
“Yeah, the warlock. JC and mom have been doing some research on familiars and warlocks since they heard about what went down with Martine. This magic shit, it’s pretty crazy, Derrick. I don’t know any witches or warlocks to consult, but I’m gonna be honest, it scares the shit out of me.”
“What really worries me is, neither does Martine. If she at least had some basic knowledge of the craft, I’d feel a little more prepared, but she shunned that entire portion of her life.”
“Bet there’s some instructional videos on YouTube,” Max joked.
But Derrick wasn’t laughing. He was beginning to panic. With only a week and a half until the full moon, he felt as if he was going to crawl out of his skin with paranoia. “If only it were that easy.”
“Ever thought about contacting her mother?”
Yeah. He had. Martine would kill him, but if it meant keeping her safe, he’d do it. “She’d probably kill me.”
“Listen. I don’t want to get pushy with you, but I’m not going to lose you. Got that? If I have to, I’ll snoop the hell around and figure out who her mother is and drag the woman back here to help us. She knows the ways of a familiar, right?”
Derrick clenched a fist, dropping his fork. “Martine wasn’t really clear on what she knows. Only that her father was abusive and her mother spent a lot of time keeping her under her father’s radar. He was a real prick.”
Max wiped his mouth, throwing his napkin on the table and leaning back in his chair. “If you think it’ll cause you trouble with Martine, I’ll find her and bring her back myself, but I’m not waiting too much longer for you to shit or get off the pot. If we need to fight fire with fire against this Escobar, if he’s the impossible part of this curse, we need someone who knows something about magic. We need to prepare, Derrick.”
“What about JC’s friend? What was her name? Viv?” JC’s best friend had surprised everyone with her admission the night of Max’s mate, when she’d revealed that she, too, was paranormal. She’d hidden her shifter form from JC almost all their lives. But Viv had been the catalyst to convincing JC shifters truly existed, and the last push needed to ensure JC knew how dire the mate really was.
“She really is just a cat shifter. Nothing more. So no help there.”
Fuck. It just might come down to him locating Martine’s mother. He didn’t want to go behind her back, but he wasn’t going to lose her either.
Lose her? You don’t have her to lose, pal.
I meant let her die.
No. You meant let her go, Mr. Freudian Slip.
“So, one last question,” Max said, interrupting his thoughts.
“Go.”
“You’re sure she’s telling you the truth about this Escobar? You’re sure he really makes her steal magic from others and it’s not the other way around?”
He knew it was Max’s job to ask, knew he was doing it for his own good and the good of the pack, but it pissed him off anyway. He leaned forward over the table, his eyes full of a deadly stare aimed right at his brother. “I’m sure. Don’t ask again.”
Max just smiled—smugly. “Aw, all that bark over a woman you claim you don’t want to set up housekeeping with.”
Derrick clenched his fist. “Enough.”
Max, still smiling, rose, his gaze catching JC as she and Martine and Nat turned the corner outside and headed toward the bar. “You’ve got ’til the end of today to talk to Martine about finding her mother. Then I go fishing, brother. Don’t make me play the alpha card with you and demand you take action.”
As the women entered the bar and Martine’s eyes met his, her smile bright and welcoming, warmth invaded his chest.
The kind of warmth that comes with compatibility, anticipation, comfort.
As she approached him, he grabbed her hand and squeezed it in order to hang on to that feeling for just a little longer before she blew her stack. “Come with me, Pussycat. We need to have a talk.”
She grinned, winking up at him and leaning in, putting her hand on his chest. “Is it the kind of talk we had in the storeroom just the other day? Like the one where I ended up with sticky notes stuck to my butt?”
Derrick couldn’t help but chuckle. That had been a pretty damn good talk.
But he shook his head, slapping on a serious face. “Nope. Not this time, you lusty wench.”
She pouted prettily, her glossy bottom lip thrusting outward. “Boo-hiss.”
As he led her to his office in the back, he prepared himself for a lot of booing and hissing.
* * *
“Absolutely not!” Martine yelled at him, hopping off the chair opposite his. “My mother is off limits!”
His eyes narrowed as he rose, determination written in them. “Look, Martine, your life could very well be in danger simply because of the mate. If what I suspect is true, Escobar could play a role in that. I want to be prepared. You do remember the part of the curse where it states it’s supposed to be impossible for me to mate, right? It’s bad enough I could end up dead. What if it’s impossible to avoid because you end up dead? I damn well won’t let that happen to you!”
Martine swallowed hard, wrapping her sweater around her waist tighter. “And you think my mother can stop that? How, Derrick? The only magic I ever saw her perform was silly stuff like snapping her fingers to turn off the lights and stirring a pot of soup for that pathetic excuse of a father I had while she wasn’t even near the stove!” No. Not ever.
She paced the floor, processing the plan Derrick had laid out, her legs trembling.
“You yourself admitted you don’t know a lot about her background as a familiar because she sheltered you from the life—because she didn’t want your father to abuse your possible powers. How do you know what she’s capable of and whether or not she can help you?”
“Don’t forget you! This won’t just help me—it’ll help you!”
Gripping her shoulders and stopping her in her tracks, his jaw clenched. “Fine. Yes. It’ll help me, too. But there’s no way I’m leaving this earth without knowing you’re safe.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Not now. She couldn’t acknowledge words that heavy and so full of possession right now. “My father is a vicious, spiteful man, Derrick. If he knew she was helping me, I’m afraid of what would happen to her at his hands. I can’t let you risk her life!”
Derrick’s chest lifted and released as he took a deep breath. “I would never endanger your mother, Martine. I promise you. But I’m not going to let an opportunity to see if she can offer help slip by. That’d be damn foolish.”
Sorrow seeped into her soul. God, she missed her mother. “She won’t see me, Derrick.” She’d made it clear the day Martine left that she wouldn’t ever see her again.
No explanation.
His lips flat-lined. “Then she’ll see me. So either you tell me where she lives or I start looking. But I warn you, like it or not, this meeting is happening.”
Fear washed over her. Deep, bone-deep. She hadn’t seen her father in fifteen years, and she didn’t want to now. The very thought made her heart crash so hard against her ribs she was sure Derrick could hear it.
But one thing was certain—her mother was sacred ground.
Keeping her voice low, Martine narrowed her eyes in Derrick’s direction. “Then I’ll just warn you, if my father gets wind of this and my mother ends up hurt—one little hair on her head out of place—I’ll leave Cedar Glen and you won’t have to worry about anything but digging your own damn grave on the night of the full moon.”
She pushed her way out of his office, slipping through the bar beginning to fill with lunchtime customers,
zipping past JC and Nat as they waved her over to their table, and opened the exit door by shoving it with the flat of her palms.
The sun was blinding against the white of the snow on the ground, making her inhale sharply.
Fuck Escobar and fuck the paranormal. Fuck all of it.
The hell she’d risk her mother’s life to save her own—or even Derrick’s.
Chapter Thirteen
Okay, so she’d been really harsh with Derrick.
Upon reflection, and with a wince or two as she remembered her words about digging graves and her mother’s safety, she had some regrets.
It was two days later, and neither of them had spoken a word to each other, and at this point, she was feeling like someone had dug an enormous hole in her heart.
She missed talking to him. She missed laughing with him. She missed the heat of his chest against her back as she fell asleep. She missed making love.
And what will that feel like when you go away forever, Martine? If you miss him after only two days of silence, what will a lifetime of silence be like?
Oh, shut up! I’ll adjust. I’ll do what I did when I left home. I’ll get over it. That’s what it’ll feel like.
Sure it will. In the meantime, you owe him an apology. He was looking out for you, protecting you. Is that such a crime?
No. It wasn’t a crime. It was chivalrous and sweet and swoon-worthy.
But this was her mother they were talking about—attached to a man who was known for his brutality. No, he’d never hit Dianna, or even Martine, but now was as good a time as any to start.
He was a filthy drunk whose pattern of abuse could have changed. As he grew older, his dream of immortality still elusive, maybe his bitter anger had morphed into something neither she nor Derrick would be able to contain.
Derrick was a werewolf who could run super fast and beat people up with his super strength. But he knew zip about spells and the horror Gavin could create if he really set his mind to it.
Yet, she owed him an apology. He was, after all, looking out for her, too. She really believed his motivations weren’t selfish. She sensed he cared as much about her life as she did his.
What's New, Pussycat? (Wolf Mates Book 2) Page 14