The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) (29 page)

He knew her, intimately, but she was unfamiliar somehow. Out of her element. She didn’t belong in North Carolina any more than mermaids belonged on shore. Not that he didn’t want to see her. He’d gotten so used to
always
seeing her because that had been his job for a few weeks, and he missed her company. It had taken him going home to realize he’d been lonely before he left, and that had been no one’s fault but his. He’d chosen not to connect with anyone because he hadn’t wanted to put himself out there for relationships that weren’t going to last. That didn’t make the side effects any easier to swallow, though.

“What are you doing here?” he asked quietly.

She shifted her weight and tucked her loose hair over her shoulder. “Waiting a lot, mostly. You need better chairs on your stoop. The ones on your deck don’t have cushions, either.”

He shrugged. “I put the cushions in the garage before the last hurricane and never put them back. You’ve been waiting here all day?” He punched the code into the keypad and watched the door retract, its wheels squealing all the way. The thing needed oil or maintenance or something.
Just one more thing for me to do.

She followed him through the garage, paused behind him when he hit the button to close the door, and then continued with him into the kitchen.

“Not all day,” she said. “I flew from Albuquerque last night, via Miami.” She laughed and stopped in front of his fridge, apparently to stare at the few pictures on it. “I, um ... got into Raleigh around ten. I came here, but you were gone, so I explored a bit. I put some miles on the rental car and learned about North Carolina drivers.”

“Shit, don’t judge us based on what you might have experienced. Most of the folks here aren’t
from
here. They picked up those shitty road skills elsewhere.” He gave her chin a chuck. “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here, pumpkin spice.”

She cringed.

“Come on, it wasn’t that bad.”

Her smile was soft. “Steven, it was bad. And I would have thought why I’m here would have been obvious. I’m stalking you.”

“You’re not doing a very good job of it. I can see you. You need to work on your stealth, kitten.”

She fiddled with the zipper of her sweatshirt and just eyed him for a while. Maybe a minute. Finally, she said, “You look tired. You ...
feel
tired.”

He
was
tired. Worrying made sleep hard to come by. He’d worried about Hannah, worried about invisible things attacking him while he was out doing his job. Worried about Belle, mostly.

“You came all this way to tell me that?” he asked.

“No, I came all this way because I’m a cat and I follow who I belong to.”

“As if you could belong to anyone.” The idea was comical, but he couldn’t muster up enough energy to laugh about it.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge—one of the few things inside the damned appliance—popped the top, and headed toward his bedroom. He had to get the day’s grime off of him. Being back in the office and inside that recirculated air all day long made him feel like he’d been skewered and deep-fried in germs. He had no idea when he’d become so squeamish about that. When he’d been stationed overseas, he’d gone unshowered for days and that hadn’t bothered him nearly as much.

“My luggage is on the deck. I need to ...”

“I’ll get it.” Steven loosened the knot of his tie as he backtracked through the hall and into the kitchen. The deck door was behind the table. He slid it open and pulled her suitcase and backpack in. Just in time, too. Thunder clapped nearby and the air had gone thick with humidity. It was the kind of swamplike moisture that felt like rain on the skin when he walked through it, even if nothing was falling from the sky at the moment.

“Big suitcase,” he said, gesturing to the thing as he passed by her once more.

“I bought it for my great getaway. I have a whole set, but I didn’t ... know how much to pack.”

“Think you’ll be staying awhile, huh?”

He tossed his shoes into the closet, dropped his dress shirt into the hamper, and then waited for the expected noncommittal response.

“I’ll stay as long as I need to.”

And there we have it.

“What is it that you think you need to be doing?” he asked.

He unfastened his belt and his slacks, and Belle watched, saying nothing as he stepped out of the pants.

He draped them over a hanger and then pulled his undershirt over his head. “No answer?”

She let out a strained laugh and pulled a hand from her pocket to pat down the hair at his temples. “Why’d you cut your hair? And when?”

“During lunch today. I probably still have hair down my back from it.” He turned.

She confirmed it with an
mm-hmm
and dusted some off his shoulders. Her gentle caress down his spine was like the tap of a magic wand. It made him breathe. Made the tightness in his chest abate. Made him unclench the fists he’d made.

His palms were cramped. He must have been making fists all day and hadn’t realized it.

She looped her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek to his back.

He closed his eyes and let himself touch her—to put his hands over her wrists. He didn’t feel like he was taking so much from her that way. Even friends touched like that sometimes. “I’m used to it being short,” he said. “I only grew it out to annoy my father, but I don’t really care enough what he thinks right now to endure the frustration anymore.”

“You should grow it back.”

“I’ll think about it.” Reluctantly, he let go of her wrists and took a step away. “Why’d you come here?”

“I told you why. I would have come sooner, but I had to do some things on the ranch.” She wouldn’t let him have that little bit of distance. She closed it and encircled his neck with her arms.

Her warm lips pressed next to his spine and up to his shoulders, his neck.

Felt good. Felt
damn
good, and he had no business enjoying it.

He nudged her arms away yet again and turned, freeing himself from the much-wanted embrace at the same time.

“You followed a coward across the country?”

“I followed my
mate
across the country. My mate isn’t a coward.”

“Then your mate must be someone else.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence. I know who my mate is.” Her tone was level and soft—quiet. It lacked the venom he knew she was capable of and that he had been on the receiving end of more times than he could count, but it was no less effective. She meant what she said, and he’d be stupid to question her. Belle Foye wasn’t a woman to be trifled with, and somehow, he was supposed to be enough for her.

That didn’t seem right to him. He’d never been that lucky.

She lifted her chin indignantly and grated her teeth a few beats, locking that foreboding amber stare on him.

If she yelled at him, he’d probably deserve it, and unlike what he endured at work, he probably wouldn’t be able to tune her out. Every word would be a wounding barb, and he wouldn’t be able to protect himself from them. There was no shield from the truth.

He let out a breath when she looked away and at the shirts hanging to her right. Mostly work shirts and a few old uniform components. She fingered the rank insignia on the sleeve of one of his uniform coats and then tucked her hand into her pocket. “Coward, huh?”

“It’s not the same thing, and you know it.” He brushed past her toward the bathroom where he cranked the shower water on and stepped out of his shorts. He leaned against the sink, rubbing his eyes as he waited for the water to heat, and didn’t care if Belle was watching. He would have been more surprised if she wasn’t.

“Did you have dinner?” she asked. “My metabolism is aggressive, and I’m starving.”

He dropped his hand and glanced over to find her leaning in the doorway with her hands in her pockets.

“No,” he said. “I usually grab something from the freezer and nuke it.”

“Do you have takeout menus? I could order something. What are you in the mood for?”

He ground his back teeth, stepped into the shower, and pulled the curtain closed.
Lying on my back and staring at the ceiling
. That was his speed at the moment.

“Nothing in particular, Belle.”

“I’ll figure something out.”

The door closed, and he imagined she was on the other side of it, but he had to see for sure. He peeked outside the curtain, and she was gone.

He scoffed and reached for the soap.

“She shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

Hannah should have dissuaded her, or Sean.
Someone
could have talked some sense into her. Most people understood that if a person left, it was because he or she they didn’t want to be somewhere. Hell,
Belle
had wanted to leave her home, and Steven understood why she wanted to, even if he didn’t necessarily condone it.

Maybe he needed to remind her of that—that sometimes, folks just needed to
go
.

He had that on the tip of his tongue to say when he stepped into his living room twenty minutes later dressed in a T-shirt and pajama pants and with his wet hair dripping onto his shoulders.

But he forgot to say it, seeing her curled up the way she was in the near dark.

She’d turned the porch light on, and it shone a bit through the door’s small windows, but the only other glow in the room was from the television, which she had turned to the local public television station. They were showing some sort of documentary. She was curled beneath a pile of blankets she’d claimed from ... hell, he didn’t even know where he kept that shit, but she’d found it. Only her hair and eyes peeked out. The rest of her was a shapeless blob under the covers, and it made her look small and helpless. Of all the things Belle Foye was, helpless wasn’t one of them.

She nudged the blanket away from her face and said, “You have good cable, and your local channels actually come in clearly.”

He shrugged. “Single guy’s gotta have some vices.”

“My roommates and I refuse to pay for anything but basic, and basic only gets us network channels and a bunch of stations none of us watch. It’s a racket.”

“It is, but what are ya gonna do, huh?”

She patted the cushion beside her. “Food’ll be here soon.”

“What’d you order?”

“Subs. You can’t really mess up a sub.”

“Unless you squeeze too much mayo onto it.”

“I told them no mayo. I know you dislike it.”

He furrowed his brow. He didn’t recall ever saying anything about it. He’d always been picky about it, along with onions, tomatoes, and various other ingredients most normal folks weren’t squeamish about. Back at the ranch, he’d eaten whatever Glenda had put in front of him because that was good manners, and he
did
have a few.

She laughed and tucked some hair that had escaped from her ponytail behind her ear. “You always lift your buns. Took a while for me to make the connection, but you flinch when mayo’s there.”

“You’re scary as hell. You know that?” He took the seat she’d indicated and set her socked feet atop his lap. He stared at them until she wiggled her toes, and then he met her sleepy gaze. “What are you doing here?” he asked quietly.

“I came to drag you back to New Mexico.”

“Thank you for the candor.”

“No reason to beat around the bush.” She worked herself a little more upright so her spine was against the back of the sofa and she could see him better. “Five centuries ago, this might have been normal for a Cougar.”

“What might have been?”

“Annoying the hell out of her mate until he did what she wanted him to. But people who were aware of the Cougars back then knew what to expect from them—male and female. We don’t really
do
this anymore. What happened to my brothers, and I guess to me in way, are throwback courtship rituals that Lola amped up a little because it suits her.”

“Why, to put her pawns in place on the celestial chessboard?”

“It makes sense that once people learned who she was, she’d be more aggressive about shaping the community around her, not only to protect herself but the people she cares about.”

“And y’all think I have a place in that?”

“I think you know you do. I know
I
do.”

“So why aren’t you there?”

“You’re being dense on purpose.”

He shook his head. “I’m not. I just don’t think I’m as important as you’re making out.”

“You
are
important, and I think you’re afraid of that.”

“I—” He clamped his lips on the rebuttal because it was pointless to argue with her. Belle was going to have an answer to everything and probably had been fed half of them by her goddess.

They didn’t talk through two commercial breaks. They stared at the television screen—at some show about tribal tattoos—and he rubbed the soles of her feet. He smiled when she purred and laughed when she growled at him because he’d stopped.

Smiled because he was getting used to her idiosyncrasies and because they were comforting for him.

But he couldn’t smile for so long. Each time he thought about how much he liked her being there, he remembered why she was.

“I’ve had a long day. Keep rubbing, Welch.” She wriggled her toes and cast a warning glare at him over the top of her covers.

That warning wasn’t so scary. A few weeks ago, it might have been, but he’d learned that Belle’s bark, at least as far as he was concerned, was far worse than her bite. Or maybe he just liked being bitten.

“You know, I’ve had a long day, too.” He started rubbing again and guessed he hit the right spots when she settled even lower into her little nook and let out a whimper.

She sighed. “What happened?”

“I don’t remember half of what happened. I just ... didn’t sleep great last night and pretty much had to drag my ass across the threshold at work. Got there only to have three different assholes in my face asking a bunch of questions about the leave I rightfully took and trying to make me feel guilty about it, I guess.”

“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.”