8. Big, Bad Wolf #2
Tara looked at the woman through the windshield. Five-eight, maybe. Looked early thirties, but who knew with wolves. Dark hair pulled back. Jeans and a faded blue tee.
Her stomach did a thing it absolutely did not have permission to do.
Who the fuck is she?
Heat in her face. Pit in her stomach. Why the fuck do you care, Tara?
Then his head turned a degree. Not enough to look at her. His nostrils flared, once, slow.
He just smelled me.
The corner of his mouth moved. Not a smile. Or was it.
Oh, fuck you.
She stared at the dashboard like the dashboard had asked her a question.
Dex got out of the truck.
She watched him cross the lot. Watched him reach the woman.
They didn’t embrace. Didn’t shake. He said something.
The woman answered. They stood there talking the way people who had known each other a long time talked, all economy and shorthand.
The woman raised one hand in a quarter-wave that read as either hello or what-the-fuck-have-you-gotten-yourself-into and let it drop.
Her eyes moved past Dex to the dead truck.
To Tara.
The look went all the way down. Tara had watched her grandmother give that exact look to people for thirty years. The woman didn’t smile. Didn’t frown. She just looked.
Dex held out his hand. The woman handed him a key. A few more words were exchanged. The woman started walking toward the dead truck. Dex started back toward the new one.
Tara got out of the cab.
She moved her go-bag. She helped Grandmère across the gravel. As she passed the woman coming the other way, she gave her the polite-neutral nod a southern woman gave another southern woman whose business with her had not yet been spelled out.
The woman returned the nod.
The woman did not say a word.
The new F-150 smelled like pine air freshener and gun oil. Dex got in. Tara got in. Grandmère climbed into the back and laid her head against the headrest like a woman who had decided she was done for the day.
Behind them, the other woman got into the dead truck.
Dex put the new one in gear and pulled out. The other one peeled off at the first exit. Tara watched the side mirror until the dead truck was gone.
Dex didn’t say anything.
She let it sit for two miles.
Then: “Who was that.”
“Mel.”
“Mel.”
“Mm.”
“Mel from where, exactly.”
“From Magnolia Creek. She runs The Daily Grind in town. She was at Thornwood before any of us were old enough to know she was at Thornwood.”
“Ah.”
“Mm.”
“Right.”
“Mm.”
He glanced over at her. Just a flick. His mouth was doing the corner thing again, slower this time, and his eyes were a color of gold that had no business being in the cab of a truck on a quiet stretch of state highway.
She stared at him.
“You are the most annoying…”
“Mm.”
“…disrespectful, condescending…”
“Mm.”
“Dex.”
“Chère.”
“I swear to God if you call me that one more time on this drive I am going to throw you out of this truck.”
“You’re welcome to try.”
She turned her face to the window so he wouldn’t see what her mouth was doing.
From the back seat, a sound that might have been a cough.
It was a laugh.
Mère, do not.
Grandmère did not, and yet she absolutely did.
***
He drove ten miles in a quiet Tara had never been on the receiving end of in her life.
She caught him looking at her once. A flick of the eyes.
She kept her face on the window and held it there.
Five more miles.
He downshifted as they made a turn, his hand casually brushing her knee.
Casual. Wide warm palm. Long fingers. Heat through the denim. He didn’t move it. Didn’t look at her.
Heat bloomed low in her belly. Her thighs pressed together half an inch before she could stop them.
His nostrils flared again.
Goddamn it.
She would not look at him. She would not move her leg.
His mouth moved at the corner. The slow, knowing one. He still didn’t say anything. He still didn’t look at her.
He’s fucking with me.
I am going to kill him.
I am going to kill him and Grandmère is going to help me dump the body. Giggling wench owes me.
The hand stayed.
Three feet behind her, Grandmère had not made a sound in twenty minutes.
Mère, if you are enjoying this, I will burn the kitchen down.
From the back seat: a small, suspicious sound.
Tara turned her head a fraction.
“Fontaine.”
“Mm.”
“Move your hand.”
“Mm.”
“That was not a question.”
“I heard you.”
“And?”
“And I’m thinking about it.”
“Oh, you are thinking about it.”
“Mm.”
“Does the thinking come before or after I break your goddamn fingers.”
His mouth did the corner thing again.
“During,” he said.
She closed her eyes for a count of three. The hand was warm. The hand was unmoving.
Eventually, he had to shift again.
The hand had to move.
When it left, the warm place where it had been stayed warm for another long minute. She watched the road. He watched the road.
Thirty miles to Magnolia Creek.
***
The wrought-iron gates of Thornwood came up out of the dusk like old things came up out of dusk in this country. Low. Dark. Sure of themselves.
Sigils ran through the metal like bright lines, brighter than any ordinary metal had business holding.
Her shoulders dropped two inches as the truck rolled past the gateposts.
She hadn’t realized she’d been carrying them up around her ears.
The drive curved through magnolias and live oaks. The house came up at the end of it: two-story white clapboard with a wraparound porch, lit warm against the dark. The kitchen window glowed a warm yellow, which meant somebody had put a kettle on and was already thinking past the next hour.
A figure waited on the porch.
Tall, long-legged in jeans and a soft cotton shirt the color of wet moss. Dark hair shot through with silver, pulled back from a face Tara would never forget.
Dex killed the engine.
For a moment, nobody moved. The cab smelled of coffee, pine, and that maddening scent that seemed to belong only to him, familiar already despite the fact she couldn’t have described it if someone put a gun to her head. From the back, Grandmère said softly, “We here, baby. Now we go in.”
Tara opened her door.
The night air came in warm, wet and with a smell of honeysuckle.
Above the porch, the wrought iron caught the porch light strangely, the sigils picking up and holding the light a half-second past when the light should have crossed the metal.
She stood with one foot on the running board and one foot on the gravel.
He didn’t look at her.
He didn’t have to.
Grandmère reached the porch first. She didn’t hurry. She hadn’t hurried in seventy years.
Tara followed her up the steps.
Behind her, just at her shoulder, Dex Fontaine’s voice, low enough that Rowena would not catch it from the porch.
“Chère.”
“What.”
“Breathe.”
“Fontaine.”
“Mm.”
“Fuck you.”
That corner of his mouth moved again. She didn’t see it. She knew it was there. She could hear it in his voice.
“Mm, you should probably buy me dinner first.”