Chapter 11
Bree said yes to the date, of course, though she made him wait for it.
She’d looked up from a delivery manifest on Tuesday afternoon and said, “Let’s go out on Thursday.
Dad’s got his card game at Robertson’s, and Tomás can close the shop.
” Then she went back to the manifest like she hadn’t just handed him the best news he’d had in weeks.
Without looking up again, she’d added, “Wear something you can sit on the ground in.”
“Where are we going?” She always kept him guessing, which appealed to his naturally curious nature. His inner cat was beguiled by her already.
“You’re the one who asked me out, Paxton. You figure it out,” she huffed as if he was dense, never looking up from her work as a grin stole over his face.
So he figured it out.
He spent Wednesday evening in his parents’ garage with his dad’s pickup and a plan.
The truck was old but Herman kept it in tip-top shape.
Pax swept out the bed, laid down moving blankets from the shelf over the workbench as padding, then went into the house and raided the linen closet for the good quilts.
He chose the heavy ones his mother saved for cold weather.
His mother watched him carry them out with an expression he refused to look at directly.
“There’s a cooler in the shed,” was all she said.
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Use the blue one. The white one leaks.” She turned back to the stove, and if she was smiling, he didn’t see it.
Ari was worse. He sat on the workbench eating an apple and offering commentary while Pax checked the truck’s tires and topped off the washer fluid like he was prepping for a convoy through hostile territory instead of a picnic under the stars.
“You know she’s known you forever,” Ari said. “The truck doesn’t have to pass inspection.”
“Don’t you worry about the truck,” Pax groused, even as he continued working on it.
“You already checked the spare.”
“There’s nothing wrong with checking it again.”
“You already checked it twice.” Ari took another bite of his apple and grinned. “This is the most nervous I’ve ever seen you, bro, and I was there when you jumped out of a perfectly good airplane the first time.”
Pax closed the tailgate with more force than strictly necessary. He wasn’t nervous. He was thorough. There was a difference, and he was not going to explain it to his nosy twin.
His jaguar, for the record, wasn’t nervous either. His jaguar had been insufferably smug since Tuesday afternoon.
He rolled into town in his father’s borrowed pickup and parked behind the hardware store. He was there on the dot of six, and she was waiting for him.
She was wearing a soft blue shirt he’d never seen before, hip-hugging jeans and boots, with her hair loose around her shoulders instead of braided.
He forgot for a second what he’d been planning to say as she stopped just outside the back door of the shop and looked at the truck.
She smiled at the sight of the cooler strapped in the bed and the quilts folded against the cab, then she turned her smile on him and he felt like he’d won the lottery.
“You kitted out your dad’s truck,” she said.
“I did.”
“For a date.” She looked bemused.
“For this date. It’s important to me. You’re important to me, Bree.
” He went around to the passenger side and opened her door.
The courtesy gave him a valid excuse to be close to her when she climbed in.
She smelled like the soap she used and underneath it, faintly, like the store, sawdust and metal, with the added enticement of warm woman.
His jaguar stretched out inside him like the cat had just found a deliciously warm patch of sunshine.
He’d chosen their picnic spot with more care than he’d ever admit. There was a rise about twenty minutes out of town, on the edge of Clan land. From the top of the little hill, you could see the whole town laid out below, small and complete, with the desert running out behind it to the mountains.
He and Ari had come up here as kids to watch storms roll in.
He’d checked the road that morning, and found nothing but rabbit tracks and the usual signs of light usage.
The place smelled clean of anything that might be remotely dangerous or evil.
It was a perfect spot to spend a few hours romancing his girl without everybody in town—or his Clan—watching.
He backed the truck up to the edge of the rise, some distance off the road, so the tailgate faced the view.
They got out of the cab and went around to the back.
When he dropped the tailgate and she took in the little nest he’d built back there, the quilts and the cooler and the town going gold below them.
“Okay,” she said finally. “This is way better than the diner.”
“That is high praise, indeed.”
“The highest.” Her eyes were shining when she said it, and she let him lift her up into the truck bed like it was a carriage and she, a grand lady.
The food was nothing fancy, because he knew better than to try to out-cook Bree.
She was the one with chef skills in their relationship.
Definitely not him. He’d packed good bread and imported cheese, cold chicken, the fat green olives she liked, strawberries, and a bottle of white wine he’d buried in ice in the blue cooler that didn’t leak.
He poured the wine into actual glasses he’d wrapped in a dish towel, and she laughed when she saw them.
“You brought real glasses.”
“Paper cups just seemed wrong.”
“You are full of surprises, Mr. Rojas.” She smiled as she took the glass from him and he felt his heart fill with the joy she brought to him. He always seemed to feel good when he was around her, and had since they were just kids.
They ate while the sun went down. It took its time, throwing the whole western sky into copper and rose and then a deep burning orange that made the mountains look like cut-outs from black paper. The air cooled and he pulled one of the quilts up around her shoulders as she leaned into his side.
They talked of simple things at first, then about the years they’d been apart.
She told him about the way the town had changed in his absence, the people who’d died and the few new arrivals, and he told her just a little bit about the places he’d been and the things he’d seen.
He didn’t tell her about the fighting or the evil things he’d fought.
He would keep that as far from her as he possibly could, but he didn’t mind telling her about the foreign lands he’d seen.
She seemed to drink it all in, wanting to know about the landmarks he’d seen around the world and the foreign cuisines he’d sampled.
“I discovered the cheese we just ate when I was in Germany, a few months ago,” he noted.
“It was really good. I’ve never tried that kind before,” she admitted.
“I had to drive a bit to find a store that had a decent selection yesterday, but it was worth it to get authentic Gouda. It’s imported from the Netherlands,” he told her. “I’m glad you liked it.”
“Love it, but you didn’t have to go to so much trouble. I would’ve been happy with PB&Js sitting on a blanket. That’s kind of what I expected when I told you we’d be sitting on the ground. I wanted you to take me on a picnic, but I never expected you’d go all out like this,” she admitted.
He reached up and brushed back a lock of her hair from her face that was blowing in the gentle breeze. “I like doing nice things for you, Bree. That’ll never change.”
She held his gaze for a bit longer, then looked out over the town. “You’ve been so many places, while I’ve barely left the state. Do you miss traveling?”
“Not really,” he replied. “I thought I might, but being back home has been good for my soul. I’ve seen a lot of the world, but in my profession, the parts of the world I’ve seen haven’t been the greatest places.
Germany was one of the better locations, but although I liked it, I didn’t really fit in there.
Ari picked up more of the language than I did, but most people could get along in English, at least where we were.
Seth speaks a dozen languages and his new mate is British and moved from London when she inherited the castle, so there was no issue there.
But getting around the countryside posed a few challenges.
Still, it was a nice place. I’d go back to visit, but I think Ari and I have both decided we don’t want to work there. ”
“So, if Germany’s out, then where will you two go?” she asked gently.
Pax sighed heavily. “I still don’t know. We have an offer from a group based in Wyoming. And there’s a mission for the Clan that would take us to a tropical island in the Atlantic, but I’m not sure how that will work out. Right now, I just want to stay here.”
“That’s good, I suppose,” she replied softly.
“What would you say if I told you I was going to put down roots and just stay here?” he asked.
“What about Ari?”
He shook his head. “That’s the only sticking point. I don’t want to lose him, but I think we both want very different things right now. We might have to go our own separate ways.”
“Pax, that’s serious. You two have been inseparable since before you were born.”
“I know,” he replied, running one hand through his hair in frustration. “I’ve always felt a little…incomplete, when he’s not with me, but I think the time has come where we both have to seek our own paths to happiness. I don’t think his lies in this town.”
She was silent a moment, taking in his words. Then she touched his arm in a comforting way. “It’s a big step.”
“It sure is,” he agreed, settling back to watch the view. He was just as happy to let that troubling topic go and move on to less consequential matters.
They talked and talked, until the stars began shining down on them from above. Then, they didn’t need words anymore. That had always been the way it was between him and Bree. The silence had never once been empty when they were together.