Hard Luck Hellhound

by Chant, Zoe

  She wanted to live here?

  And... she wanted to work at the bar?

  Giving her what she wanted meant he would run into the daily temptation of her day after day. Could he handle that?

  You can handle it by giving in, his hellhound growled. I would never hurt our mate.

  You hurt me, Russ said. You destroyed my life.

  Its ears twitched forward and, bewilderingly, its tail edged down between its legs, like he had hurt its feelings. Our life looks fine to me.

  He didn’t have time to get into an argument with his mythical shifter animal. He forced all his attention back to Anita.

  It was his responsibility to keep himself from blurting out his feelings, if that was really what he had to do. If Anita wanted to live in Heaven’s Limits, then she should.

  Even if the truth about hellhounds was too wild to spring on her with this little notice, she deserved as much honesty and fairness as he could give her otherwise.

  “It’s a great place to live,” he said truthfully. “My whole life blew up a couple years ago, and this town gave me space to put myself back together again. You couldn’t pick a better place if that’s what you want to do too.”

  “It is.” She looked serious and completely sincere. She knew what she wanted.

  “Then I’d be happy to have you as a waitress.”

  She blinked at him. “That’s it? No trial run? No interview? I don’t even have to fill out an application?”

  “I’ve never gotten around to making one up,” he admitted. “And I’ve been so swamped lately that I’d take anybody who could open a beer bottle.”

  “I can open a beer bottle,” Anita said gravely. “I never thought that would be one of my most marketable skills, but it’s true.”

  “Then we’re all set.” He held out his hand.

  Another handshake. It showed how lovestruck he was that he knew that and was so eager for this seemingly mundane experience to repeat itself.

  They sealed the deal only for him to remember that he hadn’t gotten around to telling her what kind of pay she could expect or what kind of hours she would work, let alone things like vacation days and insurance. Since the roadhouse was going to be a wasteland for the next few hours anyway, they both took seats at the bar while they talked it all over.

  He didn’t know everything she’d been through before she had decided to overhaul her life with nothing but a suitcase and a tiny, beaten-down car, but he didn’t know that he liked her old life or anybody in it. Her expectations were so low. She was blown away by the pay he could offer her—which wasn’t nearly as much as he would like to be able to offer—and when he got to how of course she could keep the apartment above-the-bar for free, her jaw literally dropped.

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “Sure.” He shrugged. “It’s not like I’m losing money. I wasn’t renting it out anyway.”

  “But you said your old waitress lived there. Didn’t she pay you rent?”

  That was hard to answer.

  “Yes,” Russ admitted. “But...”

  “But what?”

  But she wasn’t my one true mate. But she wasn’t this surprised by the idea that the world wouldn’t treat her badly.

  “But she wasn’t in your position.” That was at least partly true, even if he left out the “true mates” detail. He was pretty sure he would have made her this offer anyway. “She didn’t have any urgent need to stockpile her savings, not as far as I know. No kids, no medical bills, no car trouble. I want you to live above the bar if you’re going to be working here, especially if you’re going to be stuck without a car for a while. It’s convenient for me, so if I can make you an offer that’s cheaper than you’ll get anywhere else...”

  “Free is pretty cheap.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping. Besides, you liked it.” He smiled at her without meaning to, just from remembering how her face had lit up as she had looked around the apartment. “I like it too, and it means something to me to know that it has a tenant who gets a kick out of it.”

  She shook her head, and it took him a panicked second to understand that she wasn’t saying no as much as expressing astonishment. “Believe me, I’ll wake up every morning and look around and be so, so grateful that my car broke down here. I still feel like this place has to be a dream. Especially since—” She cut herself off so sharply that for a moment he thought she’d bitten her tongue.

  “What?”

  Anita just shook her head again. When she answered him, he had the funny feeling that she still wasn’t saying what she had been about to say earlier.

  “Especially since I’m now officially employed. And housed.” She looked around. “Is there anything I should be doing right now? Wiping down tables? Cutting up lemons? Learning how to make the perfect margarita?”

  “All of that can wait, trust me. Most of our patrons won’t ask for anything more complicated than a beer, anyway.” He thought of Lu and her Harvey Wallbangers and neon blue Aqua Velvas. “And I can handle the one who does. You should take the afternoon to get settled into the apartment. Oh, that reminds me. Just a sec.”

  He disappeared into the bar’s back office and leaned against the door for a second, his heart pounding.

  Had he just invited the woman of his dreams to be his waitress?

  Yeah, he had.

  Good, his hellhound said in its rumbling voice.

  Russ pushed back at it. You stay out of this.

  She needed the job, and she needed Heaven’s Limits—or at least she wanted the job and wanted Heaven’s Limits, and Russ wanted her to have everything she wanted. He just needed to keep his distance. Emotionally and literally, because God knew that if he had too many more hot and heavy handshakes, he’d lose his mind and blurt out everything.

  He gave himself until the count of five to just breathe in and out and calm down, and then he got down to business and grabbed the cardboard box he’d come in for.

  He hoisted it up and brought it out to Anita.

  It occurred to him at the last second that she might see this as an insulting kind of charity, and his face started to burn as he deposited the box on one of the barstools.

  “I wasn’t sure how long you’d be staying, originally, and I didn’t want you to have to keep spending every night in a sleeping bag...” He cleared his throat. “I mean, you don’t need to take any of it, obviously. I just thought there were probably a few things you could use.”

  “Russ, this is incredible.” She dug through the box, and, reassuringly, her face was glowing with pleasure and excitement like it was Christmas morning. She lifted up one of the squashed, folded squares of bedsheet and pressed a corner of it to one cheek, like she was luxuriating in the texture. She caressed it against her skin.

  Russ experienced the unusual sensation of being jealous of his sheets.

  He had wanted to get her a new set, but now, he wouldn’t be able to afford anything this good. The linen he’d given her was all left over from his old life, when he’d had more money than he’d known what to do with. The sheets were Egyptian cotton, with a thread count so high that the fabric felt as smooth as butter. He’d given them a wash this morning before he’d packed them up, and the lavender smell of his fabric softener sweetened the air as Anita shook the corner of the sheet out to straighten it again.

  “Mm,” she said. “They even smell good. And towels!”

  The towels were new. They were the thickest he’d been able to find in the town’s unevenly stocked general store.

  He’d thrown in everything he could think of—hand soap and bath soap, cleaning stuff, basically everything but food, since he didn’t know what she liked. He hoped it was okay, and he said so.

  “Okay?” Anita said incredulously. “It’s more than okay. You don’t understand: my family spent my whole life paranoid that the world would smash me flat, that everybody in it would hurt me and take advantage of me. But this... this is one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done fo
r me. You’ve done all of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me.” She looked at him for a second and then launched herself at him, going up on her tiptoes so she could put her arms around his shoulders.

  Russ froze.

  KISS HER, his hellhound roared.

  It took everything he had to turn his head away. She wasn’t trying to kiss him anyway, he realized after an unsteady, wrenching moment of doubt. She was just giving him a thank-you hug, the kind normal, nice people gave each other all the time.

  But if that was true, why was she holding onto him so tightly? Why was she leaning her head against him, pressing her cheek to his chest with such fervency?

  She rubbed her cheek against the sheets, too, he reminded himself. She just likes feeling things.

  Except his shirt wasn’t made out of Egyptian cotton, so it was probably a less satisfying experience.

  When she pulled away from him, she looked confused—and maybe even a little hurt. It took him a moment to understand why. He’d been fighting the urge to sweep her up in his arms and never let her go, and as a result, he hadn’t held her back at all. His arms had stayed stiff at his sides.

  “Sorry,” Anita said. Her face was flushed, her smooth, light brown skin now reddened along her cheekbones. “I guess I got a little carried away.”

  It was probably the right choice to put some distance between them, but he couldn’t stand her thinking it was her fault. “No, not at all. I’m sorry. I’m just... not a hugger.”

  She forced a weak smile. “I’ll remember that.”

  You don’t have to! Russ’s hellhound put in eagerly.

  Russ had to bite his tongue to keep the same thing from coming out of his mouth. He had to keep himself from saying a lot of things, and he needed to go ahead and just start getting used to it.

  6

  As Anita made her new bed with her new boss’s sheets, the smell of lavender wafted through the air, soothing her disordered mind.

  Her disordered mind objected to that. She didn’t feel that soothed.

  She’d finally met someone she could touch, and he didn’t like being touched.

  She’d finally met a man she already felt like she couldn’t live without, and he kept pulling away from her like his life depended on it.

  She was surprised by the hot tears that sprang to her eyes. She thought she’d gotten out of the habit of crying a long time ago. There wasn’t much satisfaction you could get out of crying when there was no way for anyone to comfort you. She rubbed at her eyes, trying to get herself to calm down.

  Calm down. Act like an adult. The same things she’d been telling herself since she’d turned thirteen and the family curse had come roaring to life.

  Since she’d first gotten locked in her own body, with no safe way to touch or be touched.

  She still dreamed sometimes of when it had happened, when everything in her life had turned upside down.

  They weren’t realistic nightmares, for the most part. In her dreams, it was like a voice just hissed at her out of the darkness: You! You’re the unlucky one! The first-born daughter!

  In the dreams, Anita could sometimes answer that voice with the kind of clarity and perspective she never could have had at the time. I’m just a kid. Someone hundreds of years ago offended a witch and now every oldest daughter in the family has to suffer for it? Have a heart.

  Sometimes she just wanted to take that teenaged version of herself in her arms and squeeze her tight. She could still touch herself without the curse kicking in. She wished she could reach back in time and give her younger self a hug, letting her soak up some of the comfort that was so hard to get anywhere else.

  She wanted to give that girl a hug—and she wanted to tell her, Chin up.

  Anita had lived her whole life in the shadow of her parents’ knowledge that the curse was going to strike her when she turned thirteen. They had treated her like she was made out of glass. She’d had to fight tooth-and-nail for every ordinary opportunity she had ever gotten, from “learning to drive” to “taking a job” to “doing online college courses.” It wasn’t just that they tried to protect her from accidentally being touched; they tried to protect her from everything.

  She understood it, really. They felt guilty for rolling the dice and having kids when they knew what could happen. Her mom had seen the curse hit her older sister, and she’d seen the toll it could take. Aunt Angela was a seamstress, and she always had to wear gloves to keep from accidentally brushing against her customers. She’d never been as lucky as Anita about being able to hide the pain.

  And though Angela had fallen in love a few years ago, with a sweet local widower, the curse made sure that she couldn’t do anything about it. She was still alone.

  Anita’s parents knew that loneliness might be lurking for her too. They wanted her to have as easy and painless a life as they could give her, since they felt like it was their fault pain was always lurking around the corner.

  It had taken a lot of years—too many years—for her to get fed up with that. For her to realize that a life made up only of avoiding things was no life at all. She had finally told her family: I’m leaving. I might not be able to touch people, but I can still meet them. I can still do things.

  Mija, her mom had pleaded, the world is full of people who will take advantage of someone as delicate as you are. You have to stay where people love you, where there are people that you can trust.

  I love you, Anita had said. And I love that you love me. But I need to find some new people to love me too, some new people to trust, or I’m going to go insane.

  And she had been right. The world wasn’t made up of nothing but razor-sharp edges and people waiting to screw her over. She could roll with the punches and the broken-down cars, and she could find new people worth trusting and worth loving. People who didn’t treat her like she was broken.

  It might have taken her years, but now she had a life. She had Heaven’s Limits. She had a job. She had the coolest apartment imaginable.

  And she had Russ... sort of. Speaking of people worth trusting and loving.

  She dried her eyes, rubbing away the tears. Where should she draw the line? She wanted to go after what she wanted, but at the same time, she shouldn’t waste her heart pining away for someone who didn’t want her, even if he was the only person she had ever found that she could touch.

  But he did want her. She was almost sure of it. He backpedaled frantically whenever they touched, like he was terrified of her... but he couldn’t be, could he? He kept inviting her into his life. And he looked at her in a way that made her feel like she was going to dissolve right there on the spot.

  And in a life full of people who had walked away from taking care of her, Russ had stepped right up, without her even asking or expecting it. From the first second she’d met him, he had gone out of his way to help her.

  She stroked along the hem of the sheets. They were his, and touching them felt like some substitute for touching him.

  They were so incredibly soft, almost like silk. She was sorry he’d given up something so decadent on her behalf, but not sorry enough to offer to give them back—not yet, anyway. She was a creature of sensation. She’d always liked...

  Everything seemed to stop, the world freezing up around her.

  She’d always liked touching things, because things were all she could touch. She craved sensory pleasure, and while getting it from things wasn’t as good as getting it from people, it was still better than nothing. Anything was better than nothing. And decadent textures like these satiny sheets were about as good, in the world of artificial physical contact.

  And they’d been given to her by a guy who couldn’t stop looking at her... but couldn’t stand to touch her.

  “Fuck,” Anita said under her breath.

  What if Russ was cursed too? What if, in the biggest irony of her life, she had found someone she could touch only because he couldn’t touch her? That would be the ultimate cruelty of the curse, to fake her out
by giving her an exception that wasn’t an exception at all.

  She couldn’t hurt Russ just to get the touch she craved. She would never do that to him or to anyone else.

  She forced herself to exhale, clenching her hands into fists to make them stop shaking. She was jumping to conclusions. Just because her life had sucked didn’t mean Russ’s had too. Her life was weird, and she couldn’t use it to guess what had happened with anyone else. Liking high thread-count sheets didn’t mean somebody automatically had to be cursed. She was projecting her story onto him when he probably had his own.

  She would keep the possibility in mind, but she wouldn’t just assume that they were doomed.

  She just had to take a step back. She’d probably made her insta-crush pretty obvious by now. It was time to see if he made a move on his own. In the meantime, she could be the most professional waitress ever.

  Above all else, Russ was a wonderful guy, and the last thing she wanted was to let him down. She didn’t want to give him any reason to regret hiring her.

  She was going to waitress the hell out of this bar.

  She slid her laptop out of its case and sat down on her bed, connecting to the roadhouse’s free wi-fi.

  It was time to become a mixology expert. If a drink existed, she was going to learn how to make it. Or, since she only had a few hours before she had to start work, she was more realistically going to cram every cocktail recipe she could into her head. And maybe figure out how to do a couple little tricks.

  And buy a cowgirl-y outfit, to catch a cowboy’s eye. It would take a significant bite out of her checking account, but what was life without risk?