The Cougar's Trade (25 page)

“When I got ready to wash my clothes yesterday, I couldn’t find a basket,” she said before he could ask about them.

He cringed and set the baskets on top of the counter. “Sorry. I usually just wad everything up and carry it straight to the washer.”

But he also left his dirty clothes festering in the washer basin until he had a full load. There was probably a better way of going about domestic chores, and she certainly wouldn’t want to mingle her delicate things with his filthy laundry.

“And that’s okay,” she said. “I just need to be able to sort.”

“I’m not so great with the household stuff. You’d think I would have paid a little more attention to how Mom did things.” He shrugged. “I guess I had my head in my ass.”

“I’m sure you were busy with your activities.”

“We all were. That’s no excuse, though.”

“Isn’t it?” She canted her head to the side coyly. “According to your mother, it takes at least two hours of practice per night for a young man to become proficient enough in classical guitar to be asked to be a guest in the state philharmonic. Also according to your mother, she didn’t
mind
the chores because she wanted so badly for you to get off this ranch. And you wanted that, too, didn’t you?”

Shit
. He put his head back and swore at the ceiling. “I don’t know how that even came up in a conversation for you, but that doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I happened onto your music things when I was looking for snacks.”

“And you decided to go snooping from there? I guess that’s turning into a habit for you.”

She set the bag on the counter and pushed down the sides to reveal a couple of Styrofoam takeout containers. A few tendrils of red sauce spilled over the side of the square one. He drew in a long inhalation and let the aromatic notes register. Rich and
spicy
. Garlic. Onion. Peppers.
So many fucking peppers.

“Call it snooping, if you want. I was curious, so I asked some questions.”

“You could have asked me.”

“You wouldn’t have told me everything. You have a habit of omitting the parts of a story that would make you sound interesting, and you are, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I was interesting once. I don’t see the point of rehashing it now.”

She bobbed her eyebrows in that
if you say so
way the women in his life were so adept at, and looked away. Not from shyness this time, but…
annoyance
?

He pressed his palms against his eyes and rubbed, the aggregative sleep deprivation from the past year rendering him practically numb. He was processing almost everything in his life on a slight delay and hadn’t even been paying attention.

“I won’t keep you from your nap.”

“Nah, talk to me now.”
Get the lecture out of the way.
“With the way I’m feeling, it might end up being a little more than that. Mason’s on watch tonight, and Sean tomorrow. I may take tomorrow off and just sleep. We’re caught up enough with orders.”

“What ever came of the plan to start cycling other Cougars in the glaring in on watch duty? I’m certain you can find a handful of volunteers. Even that would be a help.”

“The plan is still on the table. There’s just the issue of setting up the roster and implementing it.”

“I could set it up for you. You could enforce it.”

“I don’t want you getting mixed up in that.” The thought of her coordinating a bunch of ill-mannered, rough-and-tumble Were-cougars made his brain twitch. He could just see it—tiny, soft-spoken Miles weaving through the group with a clipboard telling this Cougar and that Cougar what he was supposed to be doing and when he should be doing it. He could imagine the smirks and leers from the assholes who weren’t on board with Team Foye yet. There would always be Cougars who were a part of the glaring, but who operated on the fringes of it. The Foyes didn’t try especially hard to loop them in, but if opportunists thought there was even the slightest possibility they could get close enough to leadership to give them a hard time, they would.

He set the food into the refrigerator, grabbed the laundry baskets, and headed toward the bedroom.

Miles followed on his heels. “That’s it?”

“What’s it?” He set the baskets in the corner beneath the window. “What do you mean?”

“You have a habit of killing conversations.”

“How so?” He flicked on the closet light and bent to pull off his boots.

“You…well, you tend to state the improbability of things or your displeasure of them. Or sometimes, like you just did, you’ll say what you don’t want as if you not wanting it automatically makes it illogical or unwise.”

He tossed his socks into a new laundry pile along with his sawdust-covered shirt. “Miles—”

“No. See, you’re doing it again. You’re throttling the conversation.”

“How?” She had to be kidding him. He poked his head outside the closet door and found her sitting on the edge of the bed with her arms folded across her chest. She looked as serious as she ever did.

“That voice. There’s a scold in your voice when you say my name.”

“I assure you, it’s not intentional. Maybe you’re just mistaking—”

“No,” she snapped. “Don’t tell me what I’m hearing or not hearing when you’re not even conscious of what you’re continuously doing.”

“What
am
I doing?”

“You tell me. I don’t want to psychoanalyze you. I’m not qualified, and even if I were, it wouldn’t be my place. All I know is how I feel, and that very often, you’re the one who makes me feel that way.”

Somehow, he managed to close his mouth before the quick retort fell off his tongue. Whether or not she had misinterpreted anything he’d said or done—whether or not she’d misconstrued his intentions—she was entitled to her feelings. And he needed to examine just what was triggering them.

“I know you’re not used to dealing with women like me.”

“That may possibly be the understatement of the year.”

She drew in a breath. “I understand that. I think I have a good grasp on how different I am from the other women in the glaring. I don’t bite back. I
can’t
. I’m not built to, and so I’ve compensated in other ways. But just because I don’t immediately call you out on your shit like Ellery might to Mason doesn’t mean you’re not occasionally full of it.”

Whoa
. He took a step back, reeling as if the blow had been physical and not just verbal. And the awful part was he knew he deserved it, and
worse
.

“You look at me and you see everything I’m not. You see the things you would have me be, and you mourn the lack of them. Trust me, Hank, I know my deficiencies better than anyone. I’m pretty self-aware in that way. People generally like me in spite of them.”

“I
do
.”

“Are you sure?” she asked softly. “Or are you simply rationalizing that although I wouldn’t make much of a mate, I might make an okay wife?”

Again, he held his tongue. He hadn’t thought that—at least, not consciously. But now that the idea was at the front of his brain, he could discern the truth in it. He could accept her as a lover and a domestic partner. As a friend to his brothers and a confidante of his sister. But Cougar’s Ear or not, he couldn’t see her as the mate
La Bella Dama
had guided him to.

Why was that?

Oh. Because he
was
full of shit.

“Miles, I don’t know what to tell you.”

“That’s an honest statement, and I appreciate it.” She bobbed her shoulders, and her bright eyes were wet. “I don’t want you to tell me anything, though. I don’t want you to feel around for the right words if they don’t come to you naturally. You don’t know what to say, and that’s because you don’t know how to behave. That’s okay. I can forgive you for that. I can tell you how what you do makes me feel, and I know that eventually, you’ll be more sensitive or else I’ll
stop
being so sensitive.”

“I don’t want you to stop being sensitive. That’s who you are.”

“But it’s not what you wanted.” She gestured to herself, indicating her body from head to toe. “All of this is who I am. I’m short, slight, and can’t fight worth a damn, which I think you learned that day you plucked me out of my tent.”

He had. She’d tried to get a few good blows in—a few dirty ones, at that—but she had neither the height nor the leverage to do him any real harm. From that moment, he’d set his mind on not having her. He’d talked himself out of desiring a woman he didn’t think he could or should have. It was the same way he’d talked himself out of applying to Juilliard even when the department chair had, in person, urged him to.

He was constantly looking for reasons to justify his strict practicality, and none of them seemed to hold water anymore.

“I keep trying to show you that I can do other things,” she said. “Not everyone gets to be a superhero and I came to grips with that right around age eighteen when I realized that this was all I was ever going to be. I’m sorry if it’s not enough for you.”

Sighing, he hung his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. She was right. It
should
have been enough. She was an amazing woman, and he wanted to get out of the way to let her care for him. He wasn’t sure he knew how, just like he wasn’t convinced music would come naturally to him again if he blew the dust off his guitar and tightened the strings. That scared him. What scared him more was Miles thinking he was some sort of coward for not reaching for the things he wanted. Including her.

She cleared her throat. “I tried talking to Hannah, and she’s being terse, but that’s better than before, I guess. Ellery is going to try again when she gets home.”

“Maybe she can mediate a discussion between the two of them. I’ll help if she’ll let me get close, but Mom or Belle might have better luck.”

“Probably. I’d stick around to try again, but I’ve got to go to Amarillo to pick up Marta Fitz’s little boy,” she said. “Your mother is driving me to the airport in Albuquerque. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

“Let me take a quick shower. I’ll go with you.” He had his jeans unbuttoned and his fly down without even thinking.

“No.” She got in front of him and blocked his passage to the bathroom, and he had no choice but to look down at her. The tenacity and calm certainty in her voice would have made him think her face would have been set with determination—chin jutted and eyes narrowed—but that wasn’t there. The hurt was still there in her moist eyes and flushed cheeks. The hurt that
he’d
inflicted.

“You’re tired, so stay,” she said.

“What’s another day? Let me come with you.”

“So you can make sure I don’t get myself into any trouble, seeing as how your network won’t be watching me through every window on Main Street?”

He gave his hair a frustrated yank. “I don’t
want
you to get hurt. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“No one’s going to hurt me. The Sheehans aren’t going to pop out of the woodwork and grab me. They can’t steal me and try to prevent our mate bond from completing because it already nearly has. I have your scent in my skin—your imprint. You know it’s there.”

He hooked his thumbs into his belt loops and stared at the scarred wood of the floor. He could have fixed that—made it smooth and perfect so it looked brand-new, but he’d liked that it had character. It was just like the old guitar he wouldn’t get rid of. It was cheap when Mom had bought it and it had barely made it through his puberty intact. But it had done everything he’d needed it to, even if it wasn’t what other people considered to be top of the line.

Just because things weren’t as others expected them didn’t mean they weren’t right for the person they belonged to.

Miles was a lot like that guitar. Something that had done well by him that he’d tried to hide away because looking at it made him feel guilty.

He
was the one in desperate need of upgrading, not them.

“Call me when you land?” he asked.

“I’ll leave a message if you don’t answer. You might be asleep.”

“Don’t let that stop you from trying.”

He looked up then and caught her wary gaze. “There isn’t much that’ll stop me from making good on my promises.”

“Are you promising?”

“Everything I say is a promise. Think about that.”

She grabbed her sweatshirt off the dresser and left without another word. Just as well, because he had plenty to ponder already.

• • •

Hank rose around two the next afternoon and immediately reached for his phone. No messages, no texts. He threw back the covers and heaved himself out of the bed with his cell pressed to his ear. Mason answered on the third ring.

“’Sup?”

“Serious question.” Hank wedged the phone between his cheek and shoulder and pulled on a pair of clean-enough jeans. “What’s the quickest way to get a woman not to be pissed at you?”

“You’re asking me? If I knew that, I’d tell it to Sean.”

Duh.
“But you got Ellery to stop being mad at you for kidnapping her.”

“At least half of that was due to Nick being cute and irresistible. I’m not sure I would have managed to turn the tide on my own. I think I was just the means to the end. I was the box of bran flakes, and Nick was the prize inside.”

“Whatever.” In spite of Mason and Ellery’s good-natured ribbing, she loved him. There had to be some key to that. “And I don’t have a kid, so what else do you got?”

“Uh…I didn’t kick her cat out after she pissed on my baseboards. That seemed to ingratiate Ellery somewhat.”

“Miles doesn’t have a cat. Give me something else.”

“What is this about? Did you not get enough sleep? Sounds to me like you could use a few more hours.”

“I slept okay.” Once he got to sleep, anyway. It’d been nearly dawn by the time he’d dozed off watching his flight tracker app. He hadn’t been awake to see her flight land. “She didn’t call me.”

“Huh?”

“Miles. She didn’t call me. She said she’d call when she got there. She promised.”

“Maybe she’s been busy.”

“Or maybe she ran.”

“I doubt it. She wouldn’t abandon her friends, even if she was trying to get away from you.”