The Things We Water

“Put me on Zoom when you go on your dates.”

I leaned away from my phone, my back bumping into the massive tree trunk behind me and burst out laughing. “The hell I will.”

Matti’s familiar face took up my entire screen, showing me that he’d regained all the weight he’d lost when he’d gotten sick. He’d announced a couple weeks ago that he was never going to look at a hot dog again. “I can help you screen them,” he insisted, leaning even more into his camera. He had been eating his lunch right up until I told him about all the men in the kitchen and the schedule that Franklin had mentioned. I hadn’t gotten around to sharing that I wasn’t sure how I felt about any of it though.

He’d claimed he didn’t remember that part—the speed dating aspect. I believed him, but it wouldn’t have made a difference to me being here or not if I’d known ahead of time. I was just happy to see his face for a little bit. It had been weeks since our last video call. I’d been busy, he’d been busy, and we’d been texting every few days and sending funny videos on our social media accounts that we only used for that reason.

“I don’t need you helping screen them from a distance. If you were here and you could smell their intentions, that’d be a different story, but you’re off living your big-city boy life.” I shook my head. “I’m not video calling you.”

“Record the dates and we can analyze them afterward,” he tried with a straight face.

I scoffed. “I want to think you’re joking, but I know you’re not.”

“I’m not,” Matti confirmed. “Sienna and I both agree we deserve to have a say in who you mate with because we’re going to have to put up with them too. Ask her.”

I tilted my head to the side.

He huffed. “At least tell me their names before, and I’ll give you my input, if I know them or not.”

“Fine, we’ll start there. I have a list going already, but I don’t know anyone’s names, just what they look like,” I explained.

He laughed before suddenly sobering in a way that reminded me of Henri going back and forth between being Teasing Henri and Serious Henri. Matti leaned forward, so close I could only see his lips. “Nina,” he tried to whisper, “don’t let Henri see it.”

“Why?” I whispered back for some reason, confused.

His lips kept taking up the screen. “Just trust me.”

I trusted him with my life, but…. I kept my voice the same volume. “I already talked to him about what you said. Two or three times. He’s not… he’s not interested.”

I wanted to tell him about that yearning little thought that hadn’t left me since the night Henri and I’d been alone outside together, but this wasn’t the time or the place, and that wasn’t a conversation I could see myself having with Matti. He could know all about me being bloated and having terrible gas from eating raw broccoli, but about my feelings toward his cousin?

I could just imagine it: Hey, Matti, I think I might be a little in love with your cousin, but just a little bit. What do you think?

Best-case scenario: he’d probably fall out of his chair laughing.

But before anything else could be said, he made a face. One I recognized. It was a young Matti face. The one he’d made when he knew he’d done something wrong and was trying not to get busted.

It put me on red alert.

“What?” I drew the question out.

The camera panned back. He reached for his throat and adjusted the pale gray tie tucked into a slate blue vest. He gave me a side-eye that confirmed I wasn’t in the wrong for getting wary. “My cousin is an idiot.” He squinted. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

“Why is he an idiot?”

Matti’s expression left me feeling more suspicious than I already was. He looked constipated for a second, grimaced, then finally opened his mouth. “I wasn’t going to say anything, and Sienna and I talked about it, and we agreed to let things happen naturally, but….”

“You sure are dragging this out,” I muttered.

“You didn’t sense his reaction to you that first day,” my best friend just about blurted out.

“Explain.”

He gave me another classic Matti smile that might have fooled somebody else. It was his “look how cute and innocent I am” face. “See….” He trailed off again.

“Dang it, Matti, quit dragging it out.” I was freaking bracing myself here.

“Listen, listen….”

I leaned back against the tree and threw my hands up in the air.

Matti laughed. “Nina, listen to me. Two seconds after I thought about you and Duncan moving to the ranch, I thought about how you were going to need to marry someone. Right after that, I thought‘hey, she should marry Henri,’ but I didn’t bring it up because he’s not a martyr. He’s not going to marry someone because they need him. He isn’t that generous.”

I felt my face going a little hot because I’d learned that the hard way.

“I’d hoped,but I figured chances were slim. I didn’t want you to be disappointed if he told us all to fuck off,” he explained while I brought my cell back down so I could peer at his face.

And he’d still told me to do it anyway, but I let him keep going.

My best friend’s face was sober as he kept rambling. “But you didn’t smell what Sienna and I did when he first saw you. Those first ten minutes.” He whistled low. “I don’t ever want to scent that off him again, but I know how he felt, and so did she, and that’s why I told you to marry him, Big Jaws. Because you can’t hide that, and I don’t know what the fuck he’s thinking.” He paused, then whistled again. “He’s always been real uptight. He’d be the last person I’d expect to have some biting kink, but you did it, and he didn’t hate it.”

My mouth opened a little, and I tried to process what in the world he’d just admitted. What it meant. Or how it made me feel.

But I’d known this MFer felt something!

And that thought had barely entered my brain before another reality smacked the initial thought aside. It took the wind out of my sail almost instantly, too. And that brief little flash of hope, of awe, disappeared, and I slumped.

On the screen, he tipped his chin up at me in question.

I gave him a half-hearted shrug. “Whatever he might feel, it isn’t enough to get him to… you know. I told you. I’ve brought it up more than once.” I paused. “Except, the other day, he did something I thought was sneaky. A few guys from the ranch showed up for breakfast, and right afterward, he started rubbing his face against my hair and my cheeks and everything.”

Matti’s face was almost incredulous. “I told you, he’s a⁠—”

My body became instantly aware of magic, the sensation getting stronger by the second, and I held up my finger, cutting him off.

He knew the drill and shut up.

Sure enough, heavy footsteps crunched over gravel before I heard a familiar voice. “I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t promise anything.”

I raised my eyebrows at Matti, aware he would know based off my expression who was coming. I wasn’t wrong when Henri walked right by where I was sitting, phone up to his cheek as he listened to whoever was on the other end. He got two steps past me reclining against a big tree off to the side of the clubhouse before he stopped and looked over his shoulder. He blinked, the phone still up to his ear.

I smiled at him, and he turned his whole body to face me. I flipped my phone toward him, letting him see who was on the screen. Matti must have made some kind of gesture because Henri’s eyebrows dropped before he sighed and grumbled into his phone, “Like I said, I can’t make any promises, Margaret.”

Margaret wasn’t someone I’d met yet, but Randall had mentioned her before, and I was fairly certain she was a senior member of the community.

I turned my phone back.

“Call me later,” Matti said in a voice lower than the one he’d been talking to me with.

“I will. Love you, bye.”

“You too, bye,” he replied, flashing another Little Matti smile before his face vanished and my background image—baby Duncan with a stick in his mouth—appeared.

Tucking my feet beneath me, I pushed off the trunk and stood up.

Henri held up a rough-looking index finger.

He wanted me to wait?

“Yes, I’ll get back to you… as soon as I can… yes… yes… sure.” He kept talking as I brushed off my butt and spent a moment taking him in. Dressed in a long-sleeved T-shirt, dark jeans, and boots, he seemed to me like he had the day off.

And how did he keep getting more handsome every day? I wondered before my brief conversation with Matti swept that aside. It was something and nothing at the same time.

This wasn’t going to go well for me.

Henri’s bone-deep sigh was the first sign he’d hung up, followed by the way his hand dropped to his side.

I raised my eyebrows. “People driving you nuts?”

He released another breath that seemed like it came straight from his soul. “It’s been a long day.”

I looked at my phone’s screen. “It’s ten in the morning.”

He rubbed his hand over his mouth before slanting me a look. “Exactly.”

“Poor, Fluffy,” I told him with a grin. “Anything I can do to help?”

“It’s all good. I’m off from work the next two days,” he tried brushing it off. “Margaret’s having a problem with her hot water and thinks it’s faster to call me than it is to call our maintenance man.” His gaze moved over my face, down my white shirt, black shorts, and fanny pack. A little notch appeared between his eyebrows. “What are you doing out here? Where’s Duncan?”

I scratched my cheek. “He and Agnes are with Phoebe and Shiloh. I just dropped them off, got sad on the walk back, and I called your cousin to cheer me up. I forgot he’s on a work trip in New York.”

Henri made a face I wasn’t sure how to interpret before looking me over again. Just as he seemed to be about to say something, that ringtone, the one I had memorized by that point, went off. He closed his eyes, made a hum in his throat, then very visibly—and only halfway failing—tried not to snarl, “One sec,” before bringing his phone to his ear. “Henri,” he answered, all traces of whatever frustration or irritation he’d been feeling gone, at least from his voice.

His face on the other hand? It was a good thing he wasn’t taking a video call.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he snapped into the phone. His features were like thunder, all dark and sharp. Henri’s body became tense.

He was angry.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He was already stepping back. “Someone smelled something that doesn’t belong, and there’s only a few things that come across the way it was described. I need to check.”

“You think the Jenny Greenteeth is back?” That little b better not be back with her BS.

“I don’t know, but I need to see for myself,” he explained, taking another step backward.

I didn’t even think about it. “I’ll come with you.”

He stopped. “You don’t need to⁠—”

“I want to.” I smiled. “I’ll be your bodyguard.”

Henri’s head jerked at almost the same time as amusement glimmered in his eyes.

But I wasn’t going to give him time to tell me why I couldn’t protect him. I reached for his wrist and started pulling him toward the golf cart building. “Two sets of eyes are better than one, and I would rather hang out with you than do nothing in my room. I’m trying to not helicopter mom Duncan while he’s with his friends. And if it’s the Jenny Greenteeth again, I want to tell her what I think about her trying to eat my friends.”

The cutest little expression twisted Henri’s mouth and even touched his eyes as he let me pull him for a minute, at least until he was walking right beside me. When he got there, he didn’t tug his arm out of my reach.

I didn’t let go either.

In less than a minute, we were on our way in one of the newer electric UTVs, and the coordinates for wherever we were going were on the screen of his cell phone, which he held in his right hand while he drove with his left. What we were going to find, I had no clue, but I could tell he was concerned by his tenser-than-normal body language, so I kept quiet and let him concentrate.

I looked up at the sky while we drove by the clearing in front of the clubhouse and parking lot.

It had been over a week since someone had tried talking to me in my dreams. Since Henri and I had sat in the forest, wrapped in shadows and silvery moonlight, talking about things that still felt like a secret and probably always would. Since that incredible yearning I’d felt in my soul had me hoping for things that weren’t destined for me.

I cut that thought off at the knees and focused on the rest of what had happened that night, because that was a safer topic than the latter.

I peeked at the latter out of the corner of my eye. Now wasn’t the time. No time was the time, no matter what Matti had said.

Anyway.

The gnomes.

I had purposely tried not to think about anything that had to do with my past or with anyone I could potentially be related to by blood over the last week. Because the more I thought about someone waiting thirty years to find me, the more it pissed me off. What excuse could anyone have to justify that?

There wasn’t one.

I had enough stuff to worry about. The last thing I wanted was to have some annoying voice speaking to me in my dreams, which was the reason why Agnes had woken up that night. She’d heard it too. When I’d asked Duncan about it the next morning, he had confirmed that he hadn’t, and I had wondered if his telepathy had anything to do with it.

And thinking about Duncan made my stress shoot up even more because it reminded me of the person from Alaska coming to visit, according to Franklin.

I felt sick thinking about all those balls I was trying to juggle hanging in the air… when I had no idea how to juggle in the first place.

It was a testament to how on edge Henri was, or maybe it was the breeze hitting us head-on, that he didn’t comment on my yo-yoing moods at the moment. I’d gotten used to him picking up on everything and forcing me to talk about it. Maybe it drove me a little nuts, but I sort of liked it.

I am my own worst enemy, dang it.

Much sooner than I would have expected, he pulled the UTV off to the side. Henri got out, then stopped. He turned to me, and the light slipping through the trees, golden and beautiful, struck him at the perfect angle, illuminating him like some angel who had just fallen to Earth.

But more like a warrior angel than a guardian one.

The gorgeous man held out his hand. “I don’t know what we’re going to find, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

I stared at his fingers, then at that incredible face, and walked over to set my palm in his. I gave it a squeeze.

Look how freaking cute he was trying to protect me. He didn’t squeeze back, but that was all right.

I had to walk faster than normal to keep up with him, but it was worth it. Despite holding my hand, Henri was totally focused on scanning the area, his nostrils flaring ever so slightly every time I happened to glance over at him. We hadn’t gone very far when he caught a scent of something that had him tensing. No wonder he was irritated and whoever had called was concerned.We were too close to the clubhouse and all the houses.

I whispered, “What is it?”

His eyes swept across the wooded area, his nose clearly working harder. “Smells like something rotting, but not in a natural way. Not how dead bodies usually smell.”

I wanted to ask how he knew the difference, but unfortunately, I knew exactly what he was talking about. I’d smelled something like it before. “Bogeyman?” I asked quietly.

He glanced at me. “You smell it?”

“No, but I’ve come across them before, and that’s how I’d describe them.” It had been once in Maine at a campground. I’d had an upset stomach and needed to go number two, which I never did in my camper, and had gone out to find the bathroom in the middle of the night. I’d seen the figure skulking around the campground, sticking to the shadows, trying his best to hide, which had been ballsy because what was a campground if it wasn’t clusters of people separated by feet? I hadn’t known for sure what exactly I’d seen, but I’d sensed his magic and smelled him, his odor had been so strong. He hadn’t been peeping through windows, and I’d watched him long enough to make sure he wasn’t doing axe-murderer stuff. At some point, the figure had caught me watching him and then just about basically melted into the shadows of one of the RVs.

The next morning, while I’d been coming out of the shower facility, I’d brushed by a well-dressed man in his seventies whose magic had felt identical to the being’s from the night before. He recognized my face and must have instantly identified my bracelet for what it was, because he apologized for being seen. One thing led to another, we had breakfast together a couple of days, and he’d explained what he was.

A bogeyman.

Henri hummed in response. “We’re getting closer.” He squeezed my hand. “Want to go back to the UTV?”

This man. I went up to my tippy toes and gave his cheek a peck. He’d shaved that morning, and his skin was smooth and warm. “You’re a good man, Henri, but I’m coming too. I’ll be fine.”

The expression on his face said he wanted to argue, but something else won because he nodded. If it was a bogeyman….

Bogeymen didn’t just smell like the streets of a city in times when people would toss their crap and pee out of their windows. They were what most people would call a monstrosity in their magical forms, and to most, just looking at them made them sweat, if not have a meltdown in panic. They terrified adults and children at night for a reason. I wasn’t sure if they sucked up their fear like a succubus was supposed to feed off sex, but from all I’d heard, they did thrive off it. The older man hadn’t spilled his beans to me, so I never got clarification on how exactly his magic worked.

Henri and I didn’t go far before I spotted something ahead—multiple somethings. Two wiry bodies were shuffling through the trees and foliage, the normally sweet air tinged with a hint of day-old vomit and decay.

If I hadn’t already become desensitized to pulling long strands of grass covered with poop out of Duncan’s butt from time to time and having to gag on the few occasions he’d thrown up a carcass he shouldn’t have eaten, I might have started retching.

Maybe I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner tonight after this, but I’d worry about it later. A breeze picked up from behind us, going straight for the two figures.

The bogeymen whipped around.

I didn’t like to call anything ugly, but… damn. With splotchy pale gray skin, thinning hair at the tops of their heads, and a build that was borderline emaciated, they weren’t attractive beings. Small, membrane-like wings, that didn’t look like they could carry five pounds, were dark and tucked against their bony, hunched bare backs. Apart from their body odor, I could confirm that they had terrible breath in both forms—the one I’d met as a human man had apologized for his halitosis from the beginning.

There was a reason why rumors said they didn’t mate often.

I lifted my hand and waved at them.

Thin mouths parted, and beside me, Henri went still.

“Hi,” I called out.

Henri’s head swiveled in my direction, but he didn’t tell me to stop.

“Forgive… us….” The first one slurred through large, too blunt teeth. He might have had an overbite.

Before our eyes, the air shimmered and two lean men, about average height, appeared. They were both dark-haired and dark-eyed. They were okay-looking, but there was nothing memorable or striking about them.

One of them started wringing his hands. “We tried the gate, but no one would let us in,” the bogeyman claimed, his eyes nervously sliding to Henri. “We parked at the road and used our magic to follow a trail.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it wasn’t Crown Prince Wolfiness standing there, silently, breathing loudly through his nose, the muscles at his arms flexing as his hands formed fists.

Their throats bobbed, and the men glanced at each other.

The second one seemed to steel himself before his voice came out strained. “We mean no harm. We’re looking for….” The man, who looked to be somewhere in his thirties or forties, glanced at the other guy, who, now that I could see them well, had some physical similarities that made me assume they could be related, even brothers. “We heard a rumor of a young one….”

Henri took a sidestep in my direction, his hand palming my lower back.

“One who smells like life,” the bogeyman finished, his lean features expectant but clearly nervous.

I didn’t need visual confirmation to know Henri was pissed, and if they had decent noses, they’d be able to tell that too.

“We want to have kids,” the other man almost blurted out, his voice emotional. “We were hoping for a blessing. We’ll pay for it! It would mean the world to us. We mean no disrespect. We tried the gate so many times, and we leave tomorrow….”

The fingers on my back went from flat to clutching the material of my T-shirt from Idaho.

“What is it?” I whispered, peeking up at him.

His left eyebrow went up that signature millimeter he wasn’t allowed to go over without special permission. He seemed to be thinking real intently about something. His attention was on the bogeymen, but I knew he was talking to me when he finally replied, “They’re not looking for me, young one.”

I wouldn’t say I smelled like life. I wouldn’t say that at all. No one had ever given me that idea. Not in any way. It had always been the opposite—except for the kids and Henri telling me I was the equivalent of a pastry, that is.

But right then, Henri was standing there like he was waiting for me to say something, to do something….

He peeked at me right back I guess, when I didn’t reply.

I did that “come here” gesture he was so fond of with my index finger and was pretty pleased when he leaned in close enough that I could ask straight into his ear, “You think they’re talking about me?”

He stayed right where he was with his earlobe a hair away from my mouth. “There’s nobody else it could be,” he answered, and I’d swear I felt his skin graze my lip for a millisecond.

“You’re sure?” I whispered, backing up an inch so I wouldn’t do it again.

His head twisted, and those amber eyes roamed my face when he was at the right angle, and… was that a tender little smile on his mouth? On that serious face? “What do you think fertility is?” he asked before lifting his hand and touching my chin with light fingers. “You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to.”

“I can’t do anything; that’s not the way I work,” I explained, forcing myself not to stare at his lips so close. The top one had the most perfect little bow to it. How had I never noticed that before?

“Tell them that, then, because I’ve been ready to drag their asses off my land for the last fifteen minutes, and they’re lucky I’m feeling more generous than I ever have before with a trespasser.” That time, he didn’t bother lowering his voice. Not at all. “They’re risking their lives coming onto my land, and they know that.”

He did have murder eyes a couple minutes ago. I grimaced.

The pad of one of his fingers slid to the corner of my mouth, and he did that scowl-frown thing again. “I’m running out of patience. Do what you’re going to do, or don’t, but decide. Their odor is starting to give me a headache, and I’ve been told I get grumpy when I get one.”

I smirked at the idea of him being grumpy. Serious, often and frequently. Broody, every once in a while. But grumpy? Aww.

But the weight of his words settled into my heart, at what he thought they knew they were risking by trespassing. At what they wanted. Just reproduction. No biggie. Sure.

I nodded at him and turned to the men. Might as well be up front about it. “That’s not the way my magic works,” I called out and scratched my cheek.

Two sets of eyeballs went wide, and I tried to ignore the fact that even they didn’t believe me. “You’re the one?”

That was definitely a touch of disappointment in their voices.

I smiled. “Neo is the one. I’m just Nina.” I shrugged. “But I think it’s me you’re talking about. Maybe. I can’t just… you know… it isn’t like that. I haven’t done a study if I work on men or women, or both.”

There was a sigh beside me. “It’s her,” Henri assured them, the slightest little growl in his tone.

If we were doing this, we needed to hurry up. He wasn’t exaggerating when he said he was losing his patience.

The men turned to each other. One of them bobbed his head. “A blessing… a touch… anything would be welcome.”

“Anything,” the other reiterated.

A blessing?

“Please, we would love a son or a daughter. Would do anything for one,” the bogeyman on the right pleaded, his wish so heartfelt even if I wasn’t convinced they believed us.

A slightly louder low growl started up in Henri’s chest, and I made a decision right then.

Telling myself to hold my breath, I started marching over there. At least I tried. I made it two steps before a hand landed on my shoulder. Before the momentum could stop me, Henri’s velvet grumble muttered, “Hold on a second, cowboy. You’re not going over there alone.”

I was such a sucker for Protective Henri. That was an undisputed fact.

And Matti’s admission came back right then and there, trying to lull me with a false sense of hope. Maybe my smile dimmed a little as I put a lid on it, but….

Henri was just trying to take care of me in his own way. And that was going to be all right with me. I smiled up at him so hard my cheeks hurt, and I didn’t miss the way his features softened. Only for a second, but they did.

Side by side, we walked toward them together. Henri was so close, his arm brushed my shoulder when we stopped a few feet away from the two. “I can’t do anything like what you’re asking for on purpose, but what about a hug?” I offered, telling myself I wasn’t wasting their time. I’d been up front about it. They’d insisted.

“A hug?” Right Bogeyman asked carefully.

All right, guess not that. I thought about it and held out my hand. “A handshake…?”

A thought made me straighten, and I took off my bracelet and bent to set it on the ground. “Or maybe I’m not who you’re looking for.” I raised my head and they… they… they both looked stunned all of a sudden.

Not a little stunned but s-t-u-n-n-e-d. I might even say flabbergasted.

And in the blink of an eye, whatever adjective that could’ve been used to describe the one bogeyman’s face turned to pure excitement, and before anything else came out of my mouth, they both threw their arms around me.

These two strange men with questionable body odor, whose names I didn’t know, who I had never seen or sensed before, hugged me.

Hugged the crap out of me the same way Sienna did after we hadn’t seen each other in a couple months.

The same way my parents did every time we were reunited since we’d moved away from each other.

Their frames trembled as I closed my arms around them too, trying to hold my breath in case I smelled something I couldn’t hide a reaction from.

I didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

“Oh,” Left Bogeyman said in a way that sounded so… relieved? The arms around me tightened, their shaking intensifying. One of their hands curled into my T-shirt.

“That’s enough,” a deep, snarly voice barked at the same time a palm landed on my lower back one more time.

The bogeymen reacted instantly, releasing me, and one of them bowed. Then the other one did the same, their unremarkable, lean faces bright and shining and so hopeful it made my heart squeeze.

Was one of them tearing up?

“Thank you, thank you,” the one on the left choked out with another bow that made me uncomfortable.

Right Bogeyman reached into his back pocket, earning a clear, loud growl from Henri that was anything but human, and the man lifted his hands, palms toward us, holding his wallet. “I mean no harm,” he gulped as he dug into it and started pulling out cash.

I watched as he held out a handful of bills. Hundreds and twenties it looked like. “Please, for your blessing,” Right Bogeyman explained.

The hand still on my back twitched, and I could see Henri’s face out of the corner of my eye. He was gritting his teeth, so I shook my head at the stranger. “No, you don’t have to. That wasn’t… I told you, that’s not how it works.”

The bogeyman eyed Henri, before rushing out, “In the old days⁠—”

“I’m only in my thirties!” I cleared my throat and lowered my voice. “The old days for me was having a flip phone,” I told them with a slight laugh.

“But—”

The human chainsaw beside me got louder.

For their sakes, I took a side-step closer to Henri, the hand on my lower back moving with me, and the next thing I knew, his arm was draped over my shoulders.

And the man, who I’d been thinking less than an hour ago that I might be developing serious feelings for, drew me in to his side, tight, so much tighter than I ever would have expected, my shoulder nestling perfectly under his armpit while he literally tucked me into him. Fingertips grazed the exposed skin of my arm before he wrapped his whole hand around it. Lifting my head, I found him glaring at the strangers with narrowed eyes and a…

That was an interesting face.

He reminded me of Matti when we’d been young and a human kid in school who didn’t know any better would try stealing food off his plate.

That poor idiot had no clue how close he’d been to getting bit.

“My patience has run out,” Henri spat through clenched teeth. “Pretend this never happened. That can be your payment.” He looked at them through slitted eyes. “If I catch you anywhere near here or hear that you’ve told someone about what happened today, I will find you. Both of you. Understood?”

The bogeymen bowed immediately, the one holding his wallet stuffing it back into his pocket. “Thank… thank you for your graciousness,” the left one stuttered before he focused on me with his simultaneously nervous and joyous plain face. “Thank you for your kindness, your gift⁠—”

“Get off my property before I change my mind and show you what I do to trespassers.” The hard body lined up along mine pointed at a specific direction and growled, “Be fast.”

The men took off.

We watched them, or at least I did for a minute before tilting my head up.

Henri hadn’t been paying them any attention anymore. That focus was down. On me.

His mouth was already flat, his gaze narrowed. He was thinking. He was thinking long and hard, all right. His cheek was doing that pop thing. Pop, pop, pop.noveldrama

Reaching for him, I squeezed the fingers that were holding my other upper arm. “You okay? You’re sure you’re fine letting them go?” I asked, not positive what I would do if he said he wasn’t. I didn’t want him to hurt them, not as long as they were really leaving and would keep their word.

“I’m fine,” he answered, staring me right in the eyes with that sober freaking face.

“That’s good,” I said before biting the inside of my cheek and coming to a decision. “About that….”

Henri was taking me in like he’d never seen me before.

It made me nervous.

“Don’t finish that sentence. The last time I met one of their kind, it didn’t end well,” he cut me off. It was what he said next that had me blinking. “You did a nice thing. Hope in itself is a gift.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, but it didn’t make me feel less self-conscious. A part of me wanted to pretend that hadn’t just happened, so I did what I usually did when I wanted to change the subject.

I poked Henri in the solid wall that were his abs. “See? Told you I was going to be your bodyguard.”

He blinked, and it made me grin.

But a thought occurred to me suddenly. My stomach dropped. “I’m not worried about myself, but if someone in the community is talking… are they going to spread rumors about Duncan?”

“No.” Henri sounded so certain. “You don’t need to worry about that. The children are the greatest treasure we have in our community. No one would say a word. Not even Dominic. To put a child in jeopardy is to sacrifice your life.”

I almost sighed with relief, trusting his every word.

“Come on, let’s—” His ringtone went off, irritation taking over his face as he pulled his phone out. “One second,” he warned before touching the screen. “Henri,” he answered, his tone deceptively polite. The person on the other line would never know his jaw was clenched the whole time.

Since his focus was still on me, I tipped my head in the direction of where we’d left the UTV, and he nodded. He didn’t say more than “yes” and “correct”the entire walk back to it. Even when he picked up my bracelet where I’d dropped it, he only handed it to me. Something else came out of his mouth when he got behind the wheel that sounded like he’d ended the call, but Henri had barely pulled the phone away from his cheek when it went off again. It was another call from the ranch based off his “Henri.”

No wonder Matti and his dad had left this place behind.

Did they ever leave him alone around here? Did he ever get a day off to relax? I deflated at the idea that he didn’t, because every time I racked my brain for a sign that he got time off, not including the few play sessions outside and the night he’d watched movies with us, I couldn’t get any solid evidence otherwise.

Which got me thinking….

He stayed on the phone the entire way back to the clubhouse, shooting me an occasional apologetic face, his hands flexing and gripping the steering wheel, his knuckles going white on and off the whole ride. When we got to the warehouse, he pulled in, still listening to someone ramble on the other end.

Those amber irises slid toward me after he parked, and he shook his head, his whole expression just… tired.

Almost pained.

I held up my index finger just like he’d taught me and got out, leaving him there to run into the clubhouse. It didn’t take me long to get up to my room and get what I needed. My trip to the kitchen didn’t take long either, and neither did jogging out to the parking lot to back my truck up to my RV and hitch it up.

It might have been about fifteen minutes max by the time I circled back to the warehouse, not sure I was going to find Henri still there, but he was.

In the same position I’d left him in. One hand was cupping his forehead, eyes closed as he said in a flat voice, “I know you’re upset that your water heater can’t be repaired today, but if Shane said you need a new one, then you need a new one, Margaret. You’re more than welcome to stay in the clubhouse until then.”

He lowered his hand and gave me a flat smile when I slid onto the bench seat beside him.

A few more things were grumbled, and about five minutes of reassurances and apologies later, he dropped his hand with his phone in it on the seat between us.

He blew three normal-people-sized breaths out of his mouth at once.

I gave him a second to decompress before setting my keys beside where his hand was resting on the seat. The movement caught his attention, and he gave me that neutral expression he was so good at. I flicked the keys a little closer to his fingers.

“Right now, there are a whole bunch of leftovers sitting in the fridge of my RV. There’s enough gas in the generator and water in the tanks for maybe two days, if you don’t flush the toilet every time you pee. My best guess is that there’s two days of drinking water in bottles, if you don’t stop and get more. My trailer is already hooked up to my truck, ready to go. We can trade phones, so you aren’t without one in case of emergencies, and I’ll deal with whatever calls come in while you’re gone,” I explained my plan to him in a rush.

Henri blinked.

“I’ll tell everybody you got called into work, and if your work reaches out, I can contact you on my phone and pass the message along,” I went on, hoping I’d covered all our bases. “And nobody will know I’m lying because it’ll be on the phone.”

That bottom lip slowly unpeeled from his top one in what I would call the closest thing to his mouth gaping as he might ever get.

I kept on going. “I know I’m not qualified to handle running this place, but I can listen to someone complain just as well as you can. Plus, I have no problem telling them to call whoever gets paid to do that specific job, Fluff. I work in customer service. I’m a professional at resolving issues,” I told him with a straight face. “If you want to look at it like this: I’ve kind of been training for this, not my whole life, but for a long time.”

Henri blinked again before his attention dropped to my keys sitting beside his hand again, and his throat bobbed.

I pushed them closer. “I’ve got about half a tank of gas in my truck,” I let him know.

Another very, very deep breath left that incredible body. And I almost didn’t hear him start to say in a strangled voice, “You’re….” He paused, his forehead wrinkling. “You’d do that?”

Did he have to sound so surprised?

I pinched my lips together. “Your Furry Highness, you’re tired, you’re overworked, and I think you might have needed a vacation five years ago. Go. If it’s life or death, I’ll call you. I’ll lie out of my teeth if I have to first though. I promise to exercise sound judgment. I won’t let you down. You can trust me,” I told him seriously, meaning every word and hoping he was aware of it. “You’re the one always taking care of everybody else. Let me help you out this time.”

He was quiet for so long, his expression so blank, so still, that I honestly had no idea what he was going to decide.

Then those amber irises caught mine, and he started shaking his head. “I don’t⁠—”

“You don’t have anything to feel bad for. From everything I’ve learned around here, it’s a well-oiled machine. Residents don’t bother you when you’re on shift, and I’ve heard some of your work conversations—they’re not that important. Right? If it’s an emergency, I can call you. The only people who might text or call are Matti and Sienna. I talked to my parents last night, so you won’t hear from them either. My phone won’t go off much if you have it,” I told him.

That chest I might have been becoming obsessed with rose and fell, and… he nodded.

Henri freaking nodded.

Those long fingers curled around my keys, and he palmed them. “I don’t know where I’m going,” he let me know. “I won’t go far.”

“I don’t need to know.” I shooed him. “Go. I’ve got this. My job is dealing with upset people. It’s a science, and I’m nice, but I’m not that much of a pushover. The customer isn’t always right when they’re shopping at the Nina Trading Company. A little tough love never killed anybody. Go.”

He didn’t go right then; he hesitated with my keys in his hand, thinking it over, and probably thinking it over again.

But Henri gave me a look—a warm, nice one—that made me beam at him.

At this hardworking, loyal man who made the bones that made up my chest feel too small for my heart.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, and in the next second, he was gone.

“Yes, ma’am, you have a great day too,” I said into the phone the very next day, only partially paying attention while holding out my thumb at Pascal who was waving his arms like the lunatic he was.

He was trying to get my attention again. The little boy had a radar for knowing when he wasn’t someone’s sole focus, especially when it counted, which it did at that moment because the kids were having a cartwheel competition, and I was the lucky judge. There was a small whiteboard on my lap, and someone had already tried to bribe me. That someone being Pascal. With a piece of onyx he’d found in his pocket.

Except I was scoring all the kids 9s and 10s. The 9s were given out if they couldn’t complete the cartwheel, but as long as they landed on their feet, they got a 10. They were adorable. And with the weather being amazing and a steady breeze keeping the area where we were at cool, I was having one of my favorite days yet with the kids. But with everyone else?

I waited until the other end of the line went totally dead before I did my best Henri impression by keeping my features neutral as I set his phone back into my fanny pack. Heaven forbid someone see me rolling my eyes, figure out who I’d been talking to, and it get back to them. The truth was, I had no clue how Henri did this crap every day, having to keep cool while dealing with people acting like their issue—no matter how big or how small—was life or death.

I’d made a list of the problems people had called with. Some of it had been important, but some of it hadn’t been. The list was saved in the notes app on Henri’s phone as: MFer. Someone’s satellite TV wasn’t working. Someone else couldn’t log on to their Wi-Fi. Margaret needed to vent about her hot water heater again. Someone wanted to know if they could add on to their house. Another resident burned themselves and the PA wasn’t answering her phone. Someone thought they sensed something they shouldn’t have. A teenager called to complain about their parents grounding them. Margaret called again to complain some more about her water heater.

And that had just been in the first four hours.

“Nina! Nina! Watch this! Watch this!” Pascal shouted until I gave him another thumbs-up and he threw himself into a cartwheel.

I drew the number 10 on my whiteboard and held it up.

The little boy started jumping up and down like he’d won a gold medal.

“He’s so dumb,” Agnes muttered from a few feet away. She had decided from the beginning she wasn’t participating in their competition—the prize was two strips of my beef jerky—and had sat off to the side, drawing with markers.

In between us, Shiloh let out a little laugh that had me peeking at him. He had done a couple of cartwheels before wandering over and plopping down so close to me that he’d kneed me in the thigh. He was stacking flat rocks on top of each other, or at least that’s what he was trying to do while wearing my bracelet.

That was a new thing with the kids, them taking turns each day wearing it when they got home from school. I wasn’t sure how they decided who was going to get it, but I went along with it. I loved it because I got the cutest reaction from them every time I took it off. “You smell soooo yummy, Nina,” Shiloh had cooed as he’d let me put it on him.

They liked the way I smelled with my bracelet on, but without it?

Their comments were good for my soul.

One of the ogre boys, Billy, did a beautiful cartwheel. I wrote 10 with a smiley face beside it.

“We’re gonna do one at the same time!” two very sweet werewolf twin girls yelled before they chatted for a moment, nodded seriously at one another, and twisted into their own cartwheels. They got a 10 with two hearts.

The ogre boy and Pascal huddled together, and I wondered what they were planning on doing. You never knew with these crazy asses.

Agnes’s head shot up, her upper body twisting around just as I felt a familiar presence from the same direction.

“Nina!” Pascal started shouting. “Nina! Nina! Check this out!” He and the other boy high-fived and did two back-to-back cartwheels as the strength—and proximity—of the magic behind me got stronger. I drew them a score of 10 with two stars on either side, and the way they did some dance I had never seen before made me grin.

A figure approached and crouched beside Agnes, speaking to her softly, and out of my peripheral vision, I saw Shiloh set his rocks down and get a hug from our visitor.

One of the twins yelled, “I can do a roundoff, Nina!”

To which Pascal shouted, “Me too!” before he froze. “What’s that?”

Snickering, I watched the girl do a cartwheel but land with both feet instead of one at a time. I wasn’t sure what the boys told them, but she did another, and that got them trying to replicate one—they looked like cartwheels to me though.

Two hands landed on my shoulders then, and I turned my head to see the face I’d been expecting. The eyes I had memorized at this point. The cheeks and jaw I might be able to draw from memory too.

I couldn’t go as far as to say that he looked different, but Henri did somehow. Maybe it was his energy, maybe it was the brightness in his eyes, or it might have even been the faint curve to his mouth. He looked better than ever.

“Hey.” I grinned at him. “You’re back soon.”

“I missed home,” he admitted.

Before I could ask him where he’d gone, how it had gone, or if he wanted his phone back, this wonderful man leaned toward me and pressed his lips against mine, softly, sweetly, a smooth touch that lasted a single second, but it might have been the longest second of my life.

“Thank you,” he murmured after he’d pulled back, his voice just about a whisper.

“For what?” I practically gasped, not sure what year it even was when my mouth could still feel the pressure from his lips, and he was looking at me like I’d brought a loved one of his back to life.

“For the nicest thing anyone’s done for me,” he replied.

I’d do nice things for him every day if that was what I got, I thought. I’d answer all his phone calls. At least most of them.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Shiloh’s head angled to watch us, his mouth wide open.

Henri must have seen it too because he let go of my shoulders like they were hot potatoes. His throat bobbed, and in the blink of an eye, his face had smoothed into his neutral one. “Did I miss anything?” he asked, all evidence of his affection gone.

Right.

All right then. I forced a smile like my mind wasn’t still centered on him kissing me a minute ago. There was a lot you could blame on being a werewolf, but that wasn’t one of them. And I wasn’t sure I could handle trying to guess why he’d done it, much less what it meant.

“Everything went fine,” I told him.

I would break my own legs before I complained about how needy the ranch’s residents were and how around midnight, when Margaret had called for the millionth time, I’d considered running his phone over.

He raised an eyebrow like he could tell there was something I wasn’t telling him. There was a lot I hadn’t told him, but I shrugged and gave him the only piece of honesty I was willing to share with him in front of the kids. “I made some friends, maybe some enemies, and I might’ve considered calling a priest to come and exorcise M-a-r-g-a-r-e-t, but you have nothing to worry about, Fluff. I handled it.” I clutched my whiteboard. “All that matters is that you had a good break.”

And I would do it again if I got another kiss for it.

Not that I would tell him that.