Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
“P ut 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.