by Zoe Chant
He took the keys from the valet numbly as Tawny scrambled into her side of the car. They had never talked about what they were. Girlfriend didn’t seem quite right, and he’d never put a name to what more they were.
She is our mate, his lion said, perfectly content.
Country mistress, she’d said, like she was some paid companion. Did she know what she meant to him? Did she believe what he’d told her about mates? She didn’t really think that he was buying her company, did she? She had certainly been reluctant to accept his gifts at first.
Tawny sighed as he settled into the driver’s seat beside her. “That was a lovely dinner,” she said cheerfully. “But absolutely exhausting. I feel like I’ve had to be switched on to eleven all night just trying to keep up, and these may not be heels, but my feet are still killing me. Do you think this outfit would look alright with sneakers next time?”
Damien let her chatter on as he pulled out into the familiar city traffic towards his apartment building. She was still winding down as they took the long elevator ride up, and she kicked off the detested shoes as Damien unlocked the door for her.
“I am taking the world’s shortest shower so that I don’t get makeup all over the sheets, and then nothing is going to keep me from straight to sleep and staying in bed until noon,” Tawny said.
“Tawny,” Damien said, catching her hand.
She smiled up at him, so warm and happy that it did something deep in his chest and temporarily washed away his doubts.
“Tawny, are you having fun here?”
She hesitated just a moment, and the doubts all came surging back.
“I am having fun,” she said firmly. “I... miss Green Valley, and my cats, and my neighbors. But I am having fun.” She said it as if she were having fun by sheer force of will, then her face softened. “And you are here,” she added gently.
Damien cupped her face, her dear, sweet face, in both of his hands, and kissed her slowly.
“Mm,” she said, when he released her. “Okay, I can think of one thing that could keep me from going straight to sleep,” she suggested slyly.
Chapter 32
Tawny had all but forgotten about lunch with Shelley when her phone rang a few days later.
“Yes?” she answered, once she’d swiped three time in vain and finally accepted the call. “This is Tawny.”
“This is Shelley Powell.” She sounded like she looked, all business and crisp efficiency.
“Oh, Shelley! How are you?”
“Fine,” Shelley said politely. “I wondered if you’d be free for lunch today. I was thinking The Capital.”
“That sounds lovely,” Tawny said promptly, with no idea what The Capital was.
It proved to be an impressive building that was even more grand on the inside, when Damien’s on-call driver took her to the front steps. Tawny spent several moments feeling small and under-dressed, then lifted her chin and marched to the hostess.
It couldn’t be worse than the city book club.
She was ushered to a table where Shelley was already seated, talking heatedly on her phone. The hostess offered her a menu that puzzled Tawny until she realized that the numbers beside the descriptions were prices without dollar signs. Exorbitant prices. Her credit card, already stretched by frivolous book purchases and the pantsuit she could barely afford for the company dinner, would be weeping this month.
Damien had insisted she take a debit card to his account “for emergencies.”
Tawny wondered if lunch with his daughter counted as an emergency.
A server asked for her drink order as Shelley signed an apology and continued her conversation.
“Just water,” Tawny insisted. She could put the lunch on her own card if she was careful.
“I’m very sorry about that,” Shelley said as she finally concluded her call. “I swear, these subcontractors don’t even read their contracts.”
Tawny chuckled despite her nervousness. “I think your father said that exact thing earlier today.”
Shelley looked at her without laughing. “So what is it you do, Tawny?” she asked conversationally.
“Happily retired,” Tawny said cheerfully. “But I was the mail carrier for Green Valley until last month.”
Shelley looked rather confused as the server returned with their drinks.
“Just water” turned out to be something bottled in glass, and Tawny wondered wryly what it was going to cost as the server poured a glass of wine for Shelley.
They chatted awkwardly about how Tawny was enjoying the city so far, and Tawny tried to stay friendly and cheerful, without betraying how nervous she felt, or how intimidated she felt by Shelley’s effortless elegance. She wanted to Shelley to like her, and was sincere about her desire to help Damien reconnect with her.
“You’re really not what I expected,” Shelley said, once their food order had been taken. She didn’t comment on Tawny’s selection of the cheapest option on the menu.
Tawny chuckled, not sure how to take that. “I didn’t ever expect to eat lunch in a place like this,” she confessed. “And if you had told me earlier this spring that I would be dating someone like your father, I would have laughed you out of town.”
“You aren’t his usual type,” Shelley agreed, chilly in tone, but thoughtful in expression.
Tawny couldn’t quite hide her wince. It shouldn’t surprise her that he had a type. A younger type, if she had to guess; Damien would not look out of place with supermodel arm candy. There were several tables nearby with men who looked older than he was making eyes at dates half her age. And after all, she hadn’t even known about Shelley and her mother until just more than a week ago. She should have know that he would have other women as well. Had he been married more than twice? What did she really know about him?
“Well,” she said, not sure how else to respond. “Maybe his usual type wasn’t cutting it anymore.”
Shelley nearly choked in her wine trying not to laugh, and Tawny caught just a glimpse of a real smile cross her face.
“I’m not a gold-digger, if that’s what you were worried about,” Tawny said frankly. “I’ve spent more time trying to get him not to buy me things than anything else. In case it was your inheritance you were concerned for.”
She wondered, after she said it, if it didn’t cross the line between funny and rude.
But Shelley genuinely laughed then. “I don’t need Dad’s money,” she said earnestly. “And I don’t want it any more than you do.”
Their food was served then, tiny portions on giant scarlet square plates drizzled with multi-colored sauces.
“I think that if something is listed in the menu description, they should serve you more than one eyedropper full of it,” Tawny observed skeptically. Then she took a curious bite. “Oh, wow.”
Conversation as they ate found an easy rhythm. They started by talking about their favorite foods, which led Tawny to talk lovingly about her garden and the joy of fresh vegetables, which led to comparing hobbies. Shelley apparently loved designing clothing and from there, they began discussing books, a topic that Tawny could wax passionate about for hours.
Shelley insisted on ordering dessert for both of them, and did so without requesting a menu, so Tawny was nervous about how much it might cost. She might have to use Damien’s debit card after all.
“Your dad...” she started to say, just as Shelley began, “My dad...”
They laughed. “You go first,” Shelley said firmly.
“Your dad has been mending fences with Shaun since he came to Green Valley and started getting to know Trevor, and I think he’d really like to do the same with you.”
“Well, if he’s expecting kids, he can get over that,” Shelley said, Damien’s scowl familiar on her face. “I can’t stand them.”
“No,” Tawny said hastily. “I don’t think he’s angling for more grandchildren... he just wants something more like a family than a collection of strangers and coworkers that share blood.”
>
Shelley shook her head thoughtfully. “You know, as much as dad hates Green Valley, it sure has stuck to him.”
Tawny felt like her chair had been pulled out from underneath her. “He hates Green Valley.”
“Everything about it,” Shelley told her. “He said it had no culture and smelled like cows.”
Tawny wished she had Damien’s gift for hiding her expressions, and was glad when Shelley’s phone rang.
“I’m sorry Tawny, I have to take this,” she said.
Tawny hadn’t wanted to admit how much she was hoping that their visit to the city was just that—a visit.
She missed her town. She missed the tiny stores and the nosy neighbors. She was hurt to think he thought it had no culture, even if she had to admit he was right, and she ached to think about leaving it forever.
Homesickness turned the rich dessert to ash in her mouth, and Tawny had to take a long sip of the undoubtedly-expensive water to wash it down.
Shelley hung up. “I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “This is a three billion dollar contract and I needed to talk to our lawyers about some of the wording before it went out for signatures.”
Tawny smiled at her brightly. “Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“What were we talking about?”
“Your father,” Tawny said. The thought of him steadied her. The way he frowned when he wanted to mask his emotions. The way he lowered his defenses with her and the way he looked when he said he loved her. His shoulders, and his big hands, and the beard she had once thought she hated.
“You’re not really happy here, are you,” Shelley guessed. “Even though you like my dad.”
“I don’t want to complain,” Tawny said faintly.
“It’s not complaining to be honest about what you want.”
Tawny couldn’t answer. To be honest, she wanted to go home.
Chapter 33
Damien had grown accustomed to returning to an apartment filled with light and music. Once Tawny had overcome her fear of the intimidating stereo system, she declared her undying love for it, and it was rarely silent. Damien was never sure what style of music he would come home to, but it had turned his return from work from a mandatory part of his day, to the time he loved the most.
That, and the way that Tawny greeted him, with smiles and kisses and a book in one hand.
But this time, the lights were turned down low, and the apartment was quiet.
He turned into the kitchen, and saw Tawny’s phone on the counter with a bus schedule. Just as he was furrowing his brow and trying to decide what to make of that, he heard quiet steps from the room behind him.
“Planning on making a trip?” he asked as he turned, and was surprised to find not Tawny, but Shelley, holding a half-full glass of red wine, gazing into one of the display cases.
“What’s this?” she asked curiously.
Damien didn’t have to ask what she was looking at. He turned on the lights. “That’s the paper crown that Tawny was wearing when I met her.”
Shelley finally saw him. “What did you do to your face?!”
“I shaved off my beard.”
“Why? How?”
“I went to my usual barber,” Damien said, as casually as he could. His face felt naked, like everything he was feeling must be written across it.
“Why?”
“For Tawny.”
Shelley was silent for a long moment. “I like her,” she finally said. “She’s... good for you.”
“I trust you had a good lunch,” Damien said.
“We did,” Shelley agreed, but Damien found himself frowning thoughtfully at her face. Something else was going on behind her serene expression. Was it... pity?
Tawny wore her emotions no deeper than her skin, every feeling emblazoned across her features. But he and Shelley were cased in emotional armor, thick and resilient. It did nothing, he realized, to protect them from hurt or anger. But it isolated them from the potential for better things.
Like a decent relationship with each other.
How much anger and resentment could have been avoided if they had just talked to each other? If he had made an effort to connect with her, if he’d ever thought to reach out?
“Shelley,” he said thoughtfully.
“Did you know that she hates it here?”
“I know,” Damien said. He’d have to be blind, not to see past Tawny’s brave smiles and cheerful determination. He’d bought her some houseplants, but he could tell that they didn’t fill the same place in her heart that her garden had. He had even mentioned getting a cat. Tawny had laughed and said she couldn’t imagine a cat getting hair on his couch, or scattering kitty litter in the bathroom.
She didn’t even like to cook in his kitchen.
A sudden thought sent him back to the kitchen counter. It was an interstate bus schedule, not the city bus. A bus to Green Valley was circled.
Damien’s stomach fell all the way to the ground floor.
She was gone.
“Did you know she was going?” Damien asked Shelley.
“I had no idea until I got here.”
“She didn’t feel like she belonged here,” Damien told Shelley frankly. “She must have gone home.”
Home.
It wasn’t until he said the word that he recognized exactly how much Green Valley had started to feel like a home. It wasn’t Tawny’s tiny house that evoked the feeling, it was the quaint little town, with its colorful cast of characters. Maybe Green Valley didn’t have museums and dinner parties and culture, but Damien was realizing that he didn’t want those things.
He wanted quiet mornings reading the paper with Tawny. He wanted lazy afternoons drinking lemonade with Tawny. He wanted languid evenings and leisurely conversations. He even wanted the piano lessons, and the book club—the Green Valley book club—and pulling weeds and bee stings.
With Tawny.
Shelley said tentatively, “Tawny... she’s different than mom was, isn’t she. How you feel about her.”
“She’s my mate,” Damien said gently. “My lion never cared who else was in my life as long as I was happy. But Tawny... Tawny matters to him, too. I don’t love her any more than I loved your mother, or Shaun’s either. But... it’s different. We’re aligned in a way that I never expected.”
He wondered if Shelley was talking to her own lioness, she was so quiet for a moment.
Finally, Shelley nodded firmly. “I guess there’s only one more question I have, then.”
Damien was scowling out the window across the room. He couldn’t see the streets below them, but he kept imagining Tawny, lost and heartbroken, wandering them. “What’s the question?” he asked.
“Why are you still here?”
Damien looked at her with furrowed brow.
“Tawny’s out there, so go get her!” Shelley walked to the island where Tawny’s unwanted phone was sitting. “She circled the bus she planned to take, it doesn’t leave for 15 minutes, and buses are always late. Go see if you can catch her.”
She didn’t have to suggest it twice.
Chapter 34
Two blocks in Green Valley would have been a matter of a few minutes of walking, waving at a few neighbors, and stopping to pet one of the neighborhood cats.
Two blocks in Minneapolis were much larger than they looked on the tiny, crowded map, and they were dense with people to navigate. Tawny ended up waiting through two lights at one of the intersections, not realizing that the blinking yellow crossing signal meant hurry forward rather than stop and wait, intimidated by impatient cars and honking drivers.
It was noisy and hot, and by the time Tawny arrived at the Greyhound station, her shoulders ached. Probably, she should have left the books to be shipped.
It wasn’t worse than deciding to walk her route with packages had sometimes been, but she was glad to arrive at the station and put her bag at her feet as she stood in line for a ticket.
Probably her phone would have allowed her
to buy a ticket, she realized belatedly, but by then she was only a few people from the start of the line and she preferred having a printed ticket to some mysterious screen on her phone that she would never find again.
Ticket in hand, Tawny realized she’d have nearly an hour to wait until the bus took her to the Green Valley stop. She had a moment of nervousness, looking out over the crowded room.
It was the scene in a movie, lacking only the ominous music.
The laminate floor was cracked and dingy. One of the banks of lights was off-color, and faintly flickering.
In one corner, it looked rather like a drug deal was going down between a few dozen rough looking characters. A collection of bikers lingered in one corner, defying the heat with their full body leather.
“Hey lady, got a dollar?”
The man, lurking at her elbow, had a wild look in piercing blue eyes below unruly eyebrows. His beard made Damien’s look downright puny, and Tawny as pretty sure it had never been combed. What little hair remained on his head had possibly never been combed either. He wore old, mismatched clothing, and his feet were bare. He reminded her of a stray dog that was expecting to be kicked—one that might just bite her preemptively.
Tawny started to clutch her purse closer, then swiveled when another gruff voice demanded, “What’s going on here?”
One of the terrifying bikers was looming over her, covered in tattoos and piercings.
Tawny had only a moment to think that it would have all been much easier if she had just had a car and been able to drive herself home to Green Valley.
That’s when she realized that she’d left her new phone on the table in Damien’s apartment.
Chapter 35
Damien pulled alongside the curb marked ‘No Parking’ and left his car there, damn the fine and the sidelong looks. He was not going to let Tawny escape.
And he certainly wasn’t going to let her take the night bus to Green Valley alone. He would drive her to Green Valley if he had to wrestle her into the car by force.