Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
“‘Look, it’s easy to outsmart a werewolf or a vampire,’ Jace said. ‘They’re no smarter than anyone else. But faeries live for hundreds of years and they’re as cunning as snakes. They can’t lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They’ll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you—with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place.’
He sighed. ‘They’re not really about helping people. More about harm disguised as help.’”
— CASSANDRA CLARE, CITY OF ASHES
M oonlight Valley was wonderfully, suspiciously, preternaturally cheerful. Where Hollywood dazzled with toothy smiles, this place felt genuine.
I suspected spells. Charms. Possibly, Macbeth’s three crones stirring up trouble in their cauldrons.
On the surface of things, this small town surrounded by some of the world’s oldest forest should be my jam. My plant magic might be weak, but I loved snails and frogs, mushrooms and the sweet decaying scent of forest loam. I wore black almost constantly (it was important to stay in character), although I did accessorize with colorful socks.
Cute socks were mission critical.
“You have a real nice day now!” My new friend caroled this parting shot as she handed over my cup.
I didn’t do mind magic. I swear that I had not charmed her.
She was simply nice.
It was unfathomable and not what I’d expected. As no spell in the world could make me do an early call time without caffeinated sugar, I’d snuck out of Wyatt’s poorly stocked cabin and walked a mile downhill at near-dawn to Moonlight Valley’s single main street.
The diner was euphemistically named the Peaches and Cream Parlor. Someone had painted the clapboard exterior pale green and then gone all in with white gingerbread trim, tin cans of red geraniums, and Adirondack chairs with pink-and-green ticking cushions. When I looked back through the diner’s door, the coffee lady beamed at me.
Something twisted in my chest.
Heartburn. Or cuteness overload. Exhaustion from being up at the crack of dawn.
You don’t belong here , I reminded myself. You’re passing through. This place is just selling coffee, not putting out the welcome mat, coffee lady notwithstanding.
I clutched my cup like the lifeline it was. Moonlight Valley did not have its own Starbucks. It did not even have a dedicated, small business coffee shop, the kind that sold curated knickknacks and nine-dollar chocolate bars to go with seasonal coffee drinks. The Pink Parts had a coffee bar, but as the bookshop was closed until civilized hours, my only option had been the diner. Which served black coffee, black tea, and—I peeked into my brand-new Someone in Moonlight Valley ?? you! reusable plastic to-go cup—frozen pink Frappuccinos with sprinkles and whipped cream.
SO MUCH SUGAR. I WOULD NEVER MANAGE.
...just joking. It had been half gone by the time I’d reached the diner’s door and the obnoxiously cheerful bell jingled to announce my dramatic departure.
Now I plopped myself down on a conveniently placed bench and considered my next steps as I drew an octopus man on the cup with a Sharpie from my ginormous, flower-covered crochet tote bag. Highly pink, fluffy beverages might be delicious, but doodling focused my mind. Plus, everything was better with tentacles. Ergo, I added appendages. My mollusk was giant and abundant! Then I gave him a beard and a mollusk friend because even bearded mermen-octopi monsters deserve love too.
Speaking of which, a large, red-headed, red-bearded man had returned my rental car and keys yesterday.
I’d spied on him from inside Wyatt’s house, where I’d been recovering from my near-death moment with Mother Nature. I should send him a thank-you fruit bouquet. Or maybe I could try one of my sister’s patented blessings and prosperity spells? He’d earned a good turn.
Moonlight Valley was full of people who overachieved in the categories of both personal niceness and holidays. Maybe I’d spent too long on the road, working. I had a great job and a fabulous team, but I couldn’t exactly relax and let my guard down. Maybe that was why I could imagine myself staying put in this town.
Just for a little while.
Maybe for Halloween?
It was only a few weeks away and would be a hoot. Fun, even. Moonlight Valley was a welcoming kind of place, the sort of spot that always had room for one more.
A flotilla of perfectly perpendicular brooms flew across the window of the hardware store, a flock of black construction paper birds hovering above them. Stacks of orange pumpkins alternated with white-and-black-striped pumpkins in front of a very sparkly, pink shop called Vanity Fur Salon.
Drawn by the sparkle, I was trying to decide if the stripy ones were painted or some kind of monstruous hybrid when my phone buzzed. Supreme Commander and Gal Friday flashed across the screen. Elena was calling.
I’d texted my sister earlier explaining that Moonlight Valley was the Bermuda Triangle of cell phone reception and not to expect hourly updates from me, although I’d failed to mention the (not so) near-death experience on the mountain that could have left me permanently out of touch. There was no point in worrying her.
“Hi?”
“Sonnet? Dear Danu! We have been freaking out. Why did you ditch your security detail at the airport? Why aren’t you traveling with the rest of the crew? Someone could have bespelled you. Kidnapped you.”
Elena’s business acumen came with a side of paranoia like eggs with hashbrowns. My sister was convinced that I was one spell away from paranormal doom and an unhappy ending. My brother, Victor, a trapeze artist and software engineer in New York City, was the only member of my family more convinced that evil lurked in every shadow.
Elena was my part-time manager and a full-time worrywart. Usually I was deeply grateful for her help. But over the last few years, things had become tense.
I had told her repeatedly that I needed to take a break. I was tired. Run-down. Sick of always acting and having to keep my glamour up. Her answer had been to wait until after we’d filmed just one more season of the TV show. She’d said this every season so far, her voice drowning mine out as she spelled out the many, many benefits of my career.
“ Dios mío , I’m twenty-five. I am capable of operating a motor vehicle.” Although I do have bad taste in footwear and can’t estimate a slope to save my life. “And who is this we you speak of?”
“I texted Mami and Papi.”
This was epically bad.
My mami was a wonderful person who I loved to the moon and back, but she believed I’d be spirited away if she so much as blinked.
More to the point, I’d grown up in a Chaneque witch family. Latin American folklore believed Chaneques were super short, mischievous sprites who delighted in leading people astray. Everyone in my family—myself included—was short.
We were also witches.
And most importantly: we were masters of misdirection.
You never, under any circumstances, asked for directions in our hometown in Baja California because you would end up in Siberia or Antarctica. Any place, really, that was not the spot you’d been aiming for. I was fortunate that Professor Hottie had not been Chaneque.
The misdirection was all in good humor, of course. We accessorized our petite stature with an impish sense of fun. My cousins were happily employed as airport information desk guides, software support engineers, and municipal employees. They got paid to send people down rabbit holes.
I was only half Chaneque, however, and had an uncharacteristically bad sense of direction to go with some seriously underdeveloped witchcraft. I’d also been dropped on Mami’s doorstep as a baby.
The baby-abandonment reasons were unclear, although possibly one of my fellow Chaneques had misled the dropper about the location of the fire station with its baby safe box, but the note pinned to my onesie had claimed I was half Fae, half Chaneque.
I certainly did not look like the tall, pale, impossibly svelte fairy folk who had tricolored irises and powerful magic.
I was short, fat, and dark, and my only magical talent was my glamour.
I thought sometimes about whoever had left me because my life could have gone in another direction.
It was weird and impossible to shake, those thoughts about what might have been. Did they feel the same connection to the natural world? Love ferns and mismatched socks and things that sparkled? Why had they chosen to walk away from me?
Sometimes, I felt the loss keenly, but not everything that sparkled was either a diamond or valuable. That had been a different ending, and I loved my found family. They were the true gems.
Mami claimed it was the best of fortunes that had delivered me to her; she worried constantly that some Fae would come back and spirit me off to the Otherland.
We don’t want them realizing what a mistake it was to give you away , my mami would say. You do not go near the Fae, hija, because they will kidnap you and drag you off to one of their fairy mounds.
Professor Hottie did not seem Fae, however. He was too big, too burly, and too flannel covered. The Fae I’d met tended toward Gucci and Prada.
“Please tell me our mami did not call the local police.”
“She did not.”
Thank you, sweet baby Jesús.
“She called your editor.”
I wondered if it was too late to relocate to another continent and sell crafts on Etsy for a living, someplace where Allegra, the editor in question, could never, ever track me down.
“Allegra told Mami that she was still expecting the first ten chapters of your new book even if you were dead and in hell. They then had a loud philosophical discussion about Allegra’s Western religious worldview, and Mami hung up on her.”
My editor was an amazing woman who was outstanding at her job. But like any great editor, her DNA was fused with shark genes. If I were dead, she would not waste any time mourning me. She’d just hire a medium and raise me from wherever it was I’d gone to because death was no excuse for missing a deadline. Then she’d probably use my reincarnation to promote the bejeezus out of the book.
“Ergo, Allegra called me,” Elena continued. She typed something with the precision and speed of a laser-guided missile. “I am supposed to send her a health update and your chapters today. I emailed and texted you this information at 8:00 a.m. yesterday and hourly thereafter.”
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass of the store window. “I was busy falling down a mountain. I’m also living in the middle of nowhere. Did you not get my text?”
She ignored my question. “You did not answer your phone.”
“Did you know that it’s possible to have negative bars of cell phone service?”
“Do not exaggerate. You know a dozen communication spells. Scry. Find a puddle, a bucket of water, or a penny-filled fountain. Do you need rain? I’ll send it.”
Had I mentioned that Elena was also a very talented weather witch?
She’d taught me what she could, but I was not the best of students.
“There is a distinct lack of herbs on the mountainside,” I grumbled. “And I didn’t have any thread.”
“We have discussed being prepared,” she said severely. “There are supermarkets. Amazon. A kitchen garden. Pockets. You are in Tennessee—not on the moon. I have comments on your last book proposal and two potential projects for you to pitch. You have not read your email in hours. I need to know whether or not you are attending the overseas premiere for Smoky Spirits . If you are, I need the name of your escort so the organizers can schedule your red-carpet arrival. I need your travel dates if you would like to travel by plane rather than swim or try to hang onto a broomstick for eight hours over the Atlantic Ocean. It’s cold this time of year, so I strongly recommend business class or a private plane charter. You need to approve the social media posts for October. Cosmo sent over the final text of your ‘What’s in My Bag?’ interview. There is product placement for?—”
My stomach cramped. The sprinkles I’d consumed churned. My belly was the Atlantic Ocean in hurricane season and Elena’s to-do list was a massive wall of water sweeping toward me.
I ground out a few feeble words. “Time out. Stop.”
It was a start. Next, name three things, I reminded myself. Three things, three sounds, three touches. That was the nonmagical incantation for reducing my anxiety.
Gourds.
A bale of past-its-prime straw.
Orange pumpkins.
Moonlight Valley’s Main Street clamored for my attention so three sounds was easy. The sound of a diesel engine in a pickup truck. The annoying bell over the diner’s door. Elena’s voice listing all of the many, many things I had to do.
Abracadabra. Sí, claro que sí.
Sadly, there was no magic incantation to drive away anxiety or make my to-do list shrink. No matter how far away from Elena I got, she could find me and remind me of what I hadn’t done yet.
“These things can wait,” I said (semi) firmly. “I told you that I wanted to step away to write. I told you that I need a break.”
I’d told her, but she hadn’t listened. Was there a spell to make her pay attention?
“You could not possibly have meant that.”
“I could have. I did.”
“You always say that you’re going to go away and write in one of those overwater bungalows in the Indian Ocean or in a snowbound cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. This is Pinterest fodder. It is not reality. You do not do this.”
I slurped up the last of my pink unicorn caffeine fix. “I have always meant it. It’s go time.”
“Sonnet, conejita .” Elena paused. Knowing her, she was probably compiling a slide deck of her arguments. “ Hermanita , listen. You know I want you to succeed. I love you.”
“I love you too.” And I did. Elena was my older sister by ten years. She’d earned an MFA from one of the best creative writing programs in the US and had worked in a coffee shop while she wrote her first novel. Just before I’d sold to my publisher, she’d placed a short story with a literary fiction magazine. She’d walked away from the literary circuit to manage my writing career.
“You are hot. You have tremendous reader engagement. They are BUYING YOUR BOOKS. The third season of Smoky Spirits is a huge hit in the US and now we’re debuting it overseas. You’re shooting a new season and there will be at least one more. Now is absolutely not the time to step back. You will lose your momentum. And then all the amazing things you’ve done, the money you’ve made, the ceilings you’ve smashed for Latinas and women writers and actresses will go poof like a bad spell. You will be the bad kind of invisible. You will have to START OVER.”
She yelled those last two words into the phone, making me jump.
She was not wrong, but I was so very tired of being told to check my numbers every ninety seconds.
So, so many numbers.
There were the number of words I’d written, the book sale numbers, social media post numbers, advance numbers, print copy numbers, viewer numbers...I was tired of them.
In fact, I was just plain tired. In addition to writing the script for and starring in every season of Smoky Spirits , I’d written six paranormal romantic comedies in three years and was working on getting one of them optioned for a movie. At some point, surely it had to be enough? I had to be enough.
Once upon a time, I’d loved writing, sharing my stories, making people feel happy and romantic. Loved. Most days, I still loved my job, but it was a job now, and I desperately needed a vacation.
“I need some time off.” I sounded whiny, as if I didn’t appreciate my success and the people who loved my stories. I did. Of course I did. “I just want to read someone else’s books and wear a onesie on a walk without someone snapping a picture and claiming I’m gestating Big Foot or recovering from a food addiction.”
In one recent but memorable moment in my life, the jumbo-sized package of toilet paper I’d been photographed carrying had inspired a wealth of punchy headlines: “From Red Carpets to White Rolls!” “VIP Wipe Out!” and “Potty-Couture!”
Reporters had speculated that I had resorted to diuretics to slim my curvy shape down with unfortunate consequences; an anonymous source whispered that I’d thrown a fit when my last set hadn’t stocked my favorite brand of TP.
It was way too much attention.
“ Conejita .” Elena’s voice warmed. “You’ll get those things. I promise. I’ll schedule a vacation for you next year.”
It was always next year and never now.
I glared ungratefully at the gourd display. “I want beaches. And fish. And a snorkel tube. Possibly a super unflattering life jacket and the chance to waddle like a neoprene duck in fins without someone photographing me. Please tell me this vacation won’t actually be a book or promotional tour.”
“Noooo. Well. Maybe, not mostly. We can discuss it. But right now, you need to accept that you’re not on vacation. You need to get out there and post something on social media that’s not about mushrooms. You have the new season of Smoky Spirits to film. We need people to interact with you. And if you’re interacting, your security team needs to be there.”
There had been incidents in the past. Uninvited people showing up at my house, my property vandalized because a fan spray-painted her love for me in ten-foot letters, folks who squeezed harder than a boa constrictor because who didn’t want to be hugged by total strangers?
“Understood. I’ll get my address to the team. They can stay here with me at Phantom Falls—the place I’m renting is enormous.”
“I’ll let them know,” Elena said. I imagined her checking a box on that pesky to-do list: Get Sonnet to toe the line. “You take care now.”
I still didn’t have my beach vacation, but I said my goodbyes and we ended our call.
I did not feel excited or energized by the thought of moving my security team into my new home away from home. I would need to work up some enthusiasm because the guys would already be salty about my abandoning them for solo time in Moonlight Valley. To be fair, I understood that they had one job: sticking to me and safeguarding my person. Also, to be fair: I was desperately in need of alone time.
And to be the fairest of the fair: I got to star in a TV series and stay in a palatial rental. I had nothing to complain about.
An obnoxious honk startled me out of my inner pep talk. I turned around as a gigantic stretch Humvee glided to a halt next to me.
The Humvee was a monster, big, crow-colored, and far too pristine. Maverick’s pickup truck had been crying out for a trip to the local car wash. Mud, leaves, and other natural souvenirs had decorated its wheel wells. This new vehicle was its manscaped, Brazilian-waxed, high-maintenance counterpart.
A familiar voice bellowed out the rolled-down window. “Sonnet?”
I grinned at my landlord/college bestie. Wyatt was always so loud. The man did not do whispers or subtle, although he buried a heart of gold beneath his obnoxious bravado. “I was waiting for my handsome prince to come along, cari?o . Please move along so that there’s room for him.”
“You don’t wait around.” His rough hoot of laughter was welcome, although his decision to stop in the middle of the road seemed questionable.
He leaned out the driver-side window, grinning at me. Despite the October weather—a less than balmy fifty degrees Fahrenheit—he wore a fitted Army-green T-shirt that clung lovingly to his pecs. Hunter casual? Lumberjack/mountain man casual? His dark hair was freshly cropped, and a pair of mirror sunglasses shielded his eyes from the glare of the rising sun. The smile that lit up his typically reserved face made him seem wickedly handsome.
“Ten minutes,” I said solemnly. “I gave him ten minutes, and he’s stood me up. I’ll have to move on.”
“Ten?” he repeated. It was a small number, and Wyatt preferred to think big.
“Yeah. How long would you wait for your fairy tale?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Eric, arms folded over his broad chest as he leaned against a building. My security team had found me.
Wyatt had to think about his answer for an alarming amount of time, long enough for two pickups and an ancient sedan to pile up behind him in the road.
Eventually, he stated the obvious. “I’m not good at waiting. I don’t have to wait. Lovers flock to me.”
“Uh-huh. I could offer you feedback. Ten tricks to up your wooing game. Some love magic.”
“Magic doesn’t exist.” Wyatt fired finger guns at me for reasons known only to him.
While I’d stumbled onto the truth about Wyatt’s werewolfism during our college days, he did not know about my own supernatural abilities. He believed I was the daughter of Mexicans who had immigrated to the United States when I was a baby, gotten their citizenship, and successfully chased after the American dream. He had no idea that I was half Chaneque, or that I was a practicing witch. If he’d ever seen me without my glamour fully on, he’d have run screaming.
Someone tooted their horn. Wyatt waved a big, friendly paw in the air and inched his monster vehicle closer to me.
“Do you need a ride up to the set?”
“I have a rental car.” I gestured vaguely in the direction I’d come from. “Up at the cabin. A noble and trustworthy steed. I have dubbed her Eleanor. Like Eleanors around the world, she is stubborn, gritty, and quite set in her ways.”
She was also a stick shift, which was something I had never mastered.
Wyatt grinned. “I’ll take you.”
As he promptly shoved open the passenger-side door (thus blocking the entire street), I skipped around his Humvee and climbed in.
“It’s good to see you.” He pulled me into his side, turning to wrap me up in a bear hug.
“You too.” I hugged him back, leaning happily into him. Wyatt was the best hugger: dependable, rock-hard, and unshakeable. He’d hold me for as long as I wanted, and fuck traffic, the world, and our adult obligations. He did not demand anything or, Danu forbid, talk. He was just there for me.
Eventually, I went back to being an independent adult and let go of him. He waited until I’d waved to Eric (who would undoubtedly follow me), clicked my seat belt, and then got us on the road.
I blinked, and we were out of Moonlight Valley.
Yes, it really was that small.
“Why didn’t you tell me when your flight got in? I could have picked you up at the airport.”
“I rebooked onto an earlier flight. My mami wanted me to meet someone, so I needed to get out of Los Angeles.”
A line appeared between his thick eyebrows. “She’s still doing that thing?”
“The one where she tries to match me up with all her friends’ single sons? Yup. She thinks I need a guy to keep me happy, so she orders them like spring bulbs from the garden supply center.”
He smirked. “She wants you to have sex and make grandbabies.”
“I have siblings,” I pointed out. “Plus, she’s convinced the world’s full of predators. She’s certain that one of these days I’ll be one of those sensational Yahoo stories, where everyone dies in a spectacularly gruesome fashion.”
“The cuckoo guy is going to get you?”
“El Coco,” I corrected, “and maybe. He’ll pop up in my bedroom some night with the sack he uses to steal misbehaving children, and it’ll be all over for me. He’s not the only bogeyman running around Central America, either.”
Wyatt grimaced. “Your momma is one superstitious lady.”
I curled up in the seat. My left sock today was white with purple thistles; my right had a girl hugging her pony in a field of white flowers. “Are you saying that you, oh hairy one, do not believe in the supernatural?”
He slid me a skeptical glance. “Have any paranormal creatures shown up in your bedroom recently?”
“There has been no one at all in my bedroom lately, paranormal or human,” I groused. “I live in a sexual Sahara.”
I waited for Wyatt to make his usual jokes about my unfortunate celibacy, but he just stared at the road in front of us with studied calm.
The lack of paved surfaces, street signs, and other markers of civilization was concerning—there was nothing but pines, pines, and more green leafy things surrounding our vehicle—but it was not like Wyatt to miss an opportunity to give me shit.
Awkward silence spooled out between us.
“About that.” He cleared his throat.
“My sad sojourn in the dating desert?”
“Yeah.” More throat clearing. The truck sped forward at a speed that seemed unsafe given the branches scraping at the top of the cab. “I ran into Mav, the guy who helped you get up to my place. He said he gave you a ride after you had hiking issues.”
“Ah-ha! The sexy professor!” I grinned out the windshield, recalling how much fun the end of my hike had been.
I’d flirted up a storm with the professor. Too bad he was so stinking cute.
In hindsight, I might’ve been interested if he had been just a little bit less hot. It would have been interesting to give him a kissing pop quiz, see what he knew and if he was any good at it. And if he’d passed that test, then I might’ve shared my number with him for...an epilogue.
One of those bonus scenes with a little happily-ever-after, if you took my meaning. Wink, wink.
Wyatt frowned.
“I did not touch your friend. His honor is intact.”
The frown deepened.
“Although there is nothing wrong with consensual touching.”
Sometimes I was in the mood for sex. Sometimes I wasn’t. Either mood was perfectly fine. And although I had not planned on sexy moods while I was in Tennessee, I could have deviated from the plan and given my number to the hot professor.
“Did he flirt with you?”
“ Sí, claro . Yes, he did.” I replayed the end of the hike in my head just to be sure. Our banter had for sure been amorous. “He was a charming guy. That kind of skill does not come naturally to most people.”
“Maverick flirts with absolutely everyone,” Wyatt muttered, driving faster than was strictly necessary.
I wrapped my hand around the oh-shit handle above the window. “Slow down. If he flirts with everyone, why did you need to ask if he flirted with me?”
Wyatt slowed down. Amber sheeted over his eyes as he muttered something I did not catch.
“Do not go wolf on me,” I reminded him. “Not inside a MOVING VEHICLE.”
Wyatt’s response was a rough growl. He was not enjoying our conversation. “Fine. Maverick doesn’t flirt with absolutely everyone. Or at least, he doesn’t mean to do so. But he’s a charmer, Sonnet. He makes people like him just by...” Wyatt muttered some words that did not flatter Maverick’s ancestry.
“Charm,” I stated flatly. “Natural, Goddess-given charm?”
Wyatt nodded vigorously, his fingers squeezing the wheel. “His daddy was the ultimate con man. A sweet-talking criminal. Maverick takes after him.”
“He’s a felon? No way.” This made me laugh outright. Professor Boone was no lawbreaker. He did not seem like the kind of person who cut corners and cheated to his own advantage. On the contrary, he’d proved he was a white knight when he’d rescued me. Though, the heated glances he’d directed my way indicated that he was more the Lancelot type of knight, interested in debauching my Guinevere. My muscled, burly professor was more than a bit of an animal beneath his flannel shirt and cowboy hat.
“Once upon a time he was. He did turn over a new leaf, got a doctorate in biology. But before that, he was the town’s blackest sheep. If a car went missing, you knew he’d taken it.”
“My professor was a professional car thief? He’s spent time in state prison?” I waved my hand around, accidentally smacking it against the window. He drove so much more responsibly than I’d have expected from a stealer of cars.
And also...PLOT TWIST. Maverick seemed like a nice guy, a Southern gentleman, a giant, bearded teddy bear of man. This man of whom Wyatt spoke was a bad boy and the whiff of danger was... chef’s kiss . He wasn’t perfect, anymore than I was, and I liked that about him. He’d lived, he’d made choices, and he had unsuspected depths.
Did I have questions? Sure.
Was I even more intrigued? You betcha. There was a whole person underneath that good-looking, bearded veneer.
Wyatt shrugged. “I mean, no one ever caught him. There were a couple of arrests, but the charges were always dropped. He never had a trial, but everyone knew .”
“And no one ran him out of town or...”
My knowledge of small-town vigilante justice was limited to Yahoo articles, but those had confirmed that people were creative. More to the point, they hated feeling stupid or ripped off. If Maverick had been convicted in the court of public opinion, someone would have done something.
“He never stole a car from someone who needed it.” Wyatt did not look comfortable explaining that his friend and my lumberjack rescuer was some kind of unethical Robin Hood. “Mostly he ripped off tourists rather than locals. He did take my father’s new BMW. Twice. The second time, I bribed him to hide a largemouth bass under the driver’s seat.”
A hit, a palpable hit. I had not been pleased to make the acquaintance of Wyatt’s dad. He was rude, arrogant, and an unmitigated asshole with a narrow-minded, bigoted worldview—and that was on his good days. He’d assumed my parents were here in the United States illegally (not true) and that I was a hot-tempered Latina who was out to sink her hooks in his baby boy for a green card (goes without saying: not true). I would have put more than a stinky fish in his car.
“So, he was working for the greater good? Doing the wrong thing for the right reason?” I allowed myself a moment to imagine a teenaged, leaner, softer Maverick imitating Robin Hood.
“Not at all.” Wyatt turned us off the main road and onto what looked suspiciously like a deer trail. It was a wooded dirt track that led away from civilization and toward a tremendous number of trees. “He was working for the local biker gang, the Iron Wolves. They had a chop shop that moved stolen cars, and Maverick topped up their inventory whenever they ran low.”
I considered the implications of this as we drove steadily farther and farther into the woods. “So, you’re saying that Maverick was an incredibly successful thief who did not get busted ever? Why would he stop?”
In my experience, people did not stop doing things that they were good at—and could get away with—if it made them money.
“He had a come-to-Jesus moment.” Wyatt slowed down, aiming for a thinner patch of trees ahead of us. If I squinted, I could just see a blue and gray streak that was likely water. “If Jesus was named Rue Ansel. Rue headed up the Department of Wildlife Management at the state university, and he was not pleased when Maverick made off with his truck. Of course, he shouldn’t have left it running by the side of the road while he hopped out to chase after some snake or other, but”—he shrugged—“he did, and Maverick took advantage, and then they had themselves a conversation about life choices.”
“A conversation, huh?” I could see trailers now, along with tents, cameras, and many people milling about. A tiny, charmingly run-down, one-street town filled up the rest of the available, non-wooded space.
“More gestures than words. Possibly someone got the stuffing knocked out of him.” Wyatt looked suspiciously pleased at this mental image. I, on the other hand, was questioning this information dump. Its timing was suspect. “But whatever happened between those two did not end up with Rue pressing charges. Instead, Maverick left the Iron Wolves and enrolled in college. Then he tore through graduate school at record pace. The two of them have a grant to spy on hognose snakes and report back on their mating habits.”
Reptilian voyeurism? Professor Hottie just got more interesting.
I needed this drive to take at least another half hour so I could learn more about Professor Boone’s scandalous and intriguing personal history.
Or I needed to change the topic and stop this 411 because it was not my business if Maverick had been the town bad boy back in his high school days.
He was a grown man, and I would judge him on how he behaved now.
Wyatt, however, was not done with his overshare. “But I think it was Evan Webster who tipped that scale.”
I promptly consigned my moral scruples about gossiping to a fiery end. “Who is Evan Webster?”
“Evan and Maverick were best friends. They more or less grew up together, but Evan had ethics from the moment he popped out of his momma’s womb. He had words for Maverick about the car stealing and the plethora of girlfriends, but none of them stuck. He went off and died fighting for our country, and only then did Maverick start thinking that maybe there was a better way to live the life he still had.” Wyatt parked by the edge of the set, at the end of a row of SUVs and trucks. “Mav takes care of Evan’s widow.”
I painted the picture in my head, something Thomas Kinkade–like, sweetly pastoral, all soft colors and blurred lighting. A darling house, a woman who was his last connection to his closest friend. A second chance to protect what was left, to make a difference, to remember. Was he holding on to what was left of Evan?
“Is that a euphemism?” This sounded like one of the soap operas my aunties loved, particularly if Maverick was standing in for his dead friend in the bedroom. I was, I admitted to myself, jealous. It made no sense whatsoever. Maverick wasn’t mine and he could date or not date as he chose, but part of me was deeply unhappy about it nonetheless.
Wyatt shrugged. “You know, he does the home improvement projects, re-gravels her driveway, wields a chainsaw when she needs it. He’s the man of the house when she needs one.”
“Man of the house?” I raised a mocking eyebrow, downplaying the awe I felt at how Maverick had turned his life around. I might act as if I was outraged by having just time-traveled back to the 1950s, but Maverick?—
He—
I—
God, he was amazing.
I was interested in playing house with him in any century, I realized, so I rearranged my features into a red herring of a scowl.
Wyatt gave me a look that I interpreted just fine. It said that he saw through my frowny face and had noted my feminist amusement at his patriarchal role-playing. “Man of the house. Maverick is a traditional guy. He likes to take care of the people he cares about, and he cares about Sanye. Plus, we wolves look after?—”
Wyatt stopped, finally looking chagrined, but the world flipped. Stood on its head. Yelled CLUE at the top of its lungs. I could finish that sentence. We all look after...each other. Our fellow Moonlight Valleyers. Other wolves.
My paranormal radar went off, an entire symphony of WHOOP-WHOOP in my head.
There was more to my Maverick than met the eye.
“Wyatt Reynolds, are you telling me you’re not the only werewolf in town?”
Wyatt looked guilty.
This was not an unusual state for him—Wyatt was what my mami called a ciza?ero , a shit-stirrer—but he looked more perturbed than usual.
Apparently it was okay to out his friend as a former felon, but not so fine to reveal that he went lupine in his spare time.
“Well—”
I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “Do NOT lie to me. Am I in a town full of werewolves or am I not?”
“You are.” Wyatt looked ever so slightly chagrined. Mostly, however, he looked calculating. I wondered if his slip was really such an accident—and if it wasn’t, why had he wanted me to warn me about Maverick’s paranormal side?
“And you didn’t think to alert me? You can take all this time to hint that my rental car could be at risk if Maverick backslides, but not tell me that he goes furry ?”
“Shapeshifting is a secret,” he countered. “It’s not as if we’ve put up a sign on the edge of town that says, Welcome to Moonlight Valley! Werewolf population: 127. ”
Honestly, they should have picked a more discreet name for their ridiculous small town. Did Specter Springs come with specters?
And what about Phantom Falls? Were there wolves and a ghost population?
I really needed to be here for Halloween.
“So Maverick Boone is a car-boosting werewolf who runs around growling and protecting the people he considers pack.” Called it! Totally knew he wasn’t human! “He’s big and protective and he looks out for others. I should have realized from that beard of his that he turns furry. He’s all muscles and hair.”
Wyatt was super easy to tease when it came to his werewolf. If I wanted to get him going, I’d call him a beast. Mind you, I didn’t personally think of Wyatt as a beast. He was one of the most disciplined, focused, workaholic, literary-minded beings that I’d ever met. Plus (although I’d obviously never told him this), I’d actually met a few creatures that slavered and had vicious teeth. There was no competition.
But he was fun to poke, like a big brother or an annoying cousin.
He gave the cutest little growl, and I bit back a smile. “Fine, so there’s more to werewolves than amazing hair and big teeth. I won’t pick on your full-moon rampages, your anger management techniques, or your carnivorous diet.”
“Noted.” He killed the engine and slid a glance at me. “Then I won’t call you out for hiding all my socks or doing that spell thing you do.”
Well, pumpkins and pixies. He knew. No mola. It was not cool.
He patted my shoulder. “You don’t do the spell thing on me, do you?”
“If—” I stopped myself before I outright confessed. Then I cleared my throat and started again, “If there was any magic involved, it started and stopped on the day of our roommate interview.”
As the glamour I wore to make me look fully human wasn’t specifically aimed at him, I decided it didn’t count. It wasn’t my like me glamour, the magic that charmed people into being friends.
He kept his fur hidden, and it was really the same thing. You didn’t walk around in public in your supernatural underpants.
“And don’t do it to Maverick either,” he added.
“Even if he’s a former felon.”
“Yeah.” Wyatt frowned at his steering wheel. I’ll bet it was scared. “No. I shouldn’t have said all that.”
You think?
It was Maverick’s personal information, not something I could Google.
It was part of his past. The wolf stuff could affect me now if he went furry, but I was in no danger of losing my car to him. Only my panties and certain body parts were at risk here.
“So give me a reason why?”
Wyatt met my gaze. “Let me get back to you on that. I don’t think I can explain, not really. You ever say stuff you know you shouldn’t but you choose not to hold back? And there are probably complicated reasons for that you should be working out in therapy or at least acknowledging?”
I spoke far too many things out loud. So I nodded.
“I apologize,” Wyatt said, and I thought he meant it. “But I think we’d both be more comfortable if we left it at that.”
Truthfully? There were a lot of awkward, uncomfortable emotions underlying his apology and I very much did not want to dig deeper.
I’d wondered once or twice if Wyatt’s feelings for me were more than friendly, but he was such an important friend and such a constant in my life that I did not want to probe further.
Did that make me a bad friend? It might.
Fortunately, Wyatt switched gears, redirecting our conversation away from awkward emotional reveals and back to Maverick.
“Maverick’s had a rough year. His momma just up and disappeared. Sheriff Jacob dredged the lake thinking she must have run off the road in her car because no way, no how, she’d have left those boys of hers. They never did find her body.”
Wyatt’s info dump about Maverick’s bad-boy past took a tragic turn. My heart broke, just a little. It shattered for the man who’d held me, rescued me, and then intrigued me.
My eyeballs wanted to join the sympathy train. I rubbed them hard, putting them in their place.
There would be no unsolicited moisture. I would not cry.
It was just that I loved my mami and could not imagine losing her. She was the locus of my life, an anchoring presence. No matter how far away I traveled, I knew I could always come home to her. “ Ay, pobrecito. That’s...”
I had no words.
Just feelings. Far, far too many feelings.
“And his daddy was an asshole, plus he has five brothers.”
“He has five uncles?” They would need an enormous table at Thanksgiving.
“No. Maverick has five brothers: Knox and Ranger, then the twins, Atticus and Ford, then Rebel. There’s also a sister, Mackenzie. Maverick is the oldest of the bunch.”
I shook my head. “My books aren’t this complex. His life is a telenovela. I could serialize it and make a fortune. Why is his daddy such bad news?”
I should not be asking nosy questions, but now I really wanted Professor Maverick to get his happy ending. Life had not dealt him a good hand.
“It’s a long story.” Wyatt looked doubtful about his ability to abridge what appeared to an epic Boone family history. It was true that I was due on set shortly. Still, Wyatt was an overachiever, and he gave it a shot. “Darrell Boone, Maverick’s daddy, got Kate Pemberwell with child when she was in high school. She had Maverick before she got her diploma. She came from some money, though, and her daddy?—”
This was War and Peace , Southern style.
“Condense,” I suggested. “Give me the PowerPoint bullets.”
“Darrell cheated on his wife, treated her like dirt up to and including beating on her, and chose to make a career for himself in the Iron Wolves.”
“That’s the local biker gang?”
“Sure is. And after Darrell worked his way up, he pulled Maverick in. Made it the family business. Maverick spent the first twenty-five years of his life shifting with the Iron Wolves and doing their dirty work because it made his old man proud.”
“How old is Maverick?” I wished I’d snapped a picture of him, but all I had were my memories, and they definitely painted my white knight in a glowing light. He was big and fit, his skin bronzed from his time outdoors. He had fine lines around his eyes that I’d chalked up to spending all that time outside in the sun. Happy, warm lines maybe from laughing too—or being charming. You did not see lines like that in Hollywood—actors Botoxed those suckers away like dry-erase markers on a whiteboard.
“He’s thirty-one. You can add that to your list of reasons to avoid him: he’s too old for you.”
This made me feel weirdly defensive. “Luke is thirty-eight.”
Luke Hensley, my current co-star, was the last man I’d dated. He’d also been under the (mistaken) impression that we were still sharing a luxury car on the road to matrimony and never mind that I’d stopped that car real quick, got out, and headed in a different direction.
It had not taken me long to learn that he needed constant reassurance about his looks, his life, and his lovemaking. I was no good at performance reviews or pep talks.
“Luke was too old for you, too,” Wyatt announced.
It was none of Wyatt’s business, but we were friends, and I appreciated his caring.
Despite the thirteen years he had on me, Luke had not been a mature adult. Or even a fully functioning one.
Partly, this was due to his being an honest-to-God Fae prince who had never quite adjusted to life outside the fairy courts. Mostly, though, it was due to his self-centeredness.
He was a tall, lean, underwear-ad-gorgeous, well-groomed, and entirely helpless man-child. The only area he’d been remotely competent in had been the bedroom, and even there I’d been forced to be the director and give him his lines.
Professor Maverick, on the other hand, was a mere six years older than me, but light-years more mature. I enjoyed being silly and unserious. I wiggled my feet, admiring my socks.
I’d bet Maverick had a drawerful of neatly paired black hiking socks.
“So, now Maverick looks after lonely widows. Is he sweet on his best friend’s lady?”
My palms were unbecomingly moist. Crawling back into my borrowed bed at Wyatt’s house suddenly seemed like the best idea ever. Disappointment sucked.
“Not really, no.” Wyatt looked at me. “If Maverick wanted to date Sanye, he’d have asked her out by now. I think he just likes being there for her. In fact, I think he’d like to be there for lots of people. It’s his thing.”
“Then why can’t I flirt with your reformed buddy? Is it impossible that I put down roots right here in Monstrous Valley? I could be his wolfy friend. We could make beautiful pups. I hope they have his gorgeous beard and my eyes.”
Wyatt bit back a smile at my facetiousness. “First of all, it’s Moonlight Valley, not Monstrous Valley. And second, I’m not warning you off Mav for your sake. I want you to stay away from him for his sake.”
This was . . .
Hurtful.
Qué chingados?
I’d thought Wyatt was secretly jealous of Maverick, but it turned out that the problem was me. Somehow, I wasn’t enough—and Wyatt knew me better than most people did. He’d judged me not good enough for his best friend.
Wyatt gave me a look. “You are not a settling down kind of person, or has that changed?”
“I do not settle. That implies settling. Compromise. I never plan on compromising.”
“And as a result, you move from one guy to the next, leaving a trail of broken hearts behind you.” Wyatt had known me for years and he was not wrong. “This is because you’re so awesome with your dimples and your sexy curves and your amazing sense of humor. Only an idiot would not fall in love with you.”
“You’re sure it’s not the werewolf thing? Like needing to stick to like?” I did not think so, but I was going to make Wyatt say it.
“It is not the werewolf thing.” Wyatt shook his head. “It’s that Mav has left enough pieces of his heart scattered over Moonlight Valley, what with his momma disappearing, Evan’s untimely death, and his family issues. He may have been an excessive dater, but he’s reformed now. Don’t tempt him to relapse.”
“You make me sound like a fate worse than death,” I groused.
I’d been called fat and loud, too career-focused and not focused enough. I’d been dismissed as a hack actress, a bad writer, and no good at a positively encyclopedic list of things. I’d grown a genuinely thick skin and it wasn’t made from magic, either.
It was easier and less painful to joke about Wyatt’s criticism and add another layer to my shell.
Wyatt ignored me, opening his door. “No matter how much of a bad boy Mav was before, he’s one of the good guys now. You chew cinnamon roll men up and spit them out.”
“Do not tempt me with delicious pastry,” I grumbled.
I wasn’t here to date men anyhow. There wasn’t room in my life for real romance—only the fictional, on-screen kind. So what if Maverick Boone was a best-selling nonfiction book? I only had time to shop in the fiction aisle of the bookstore. Man store. Whatever.
I stepped out of the truck, shaking off my feelings of hurt and disappointment. I was a duck and emotions were water. Boom. They rolled right off me.
It was surprisingly chilly, but that was October in the Tennessee mountains for you. The remnants of early morning fog still wrapped around the trees and the familiar smell of wet, composting leaves filled the air. My inner witch stretched, grounding herself in all that lovely earth as I ratcheted up my glamour, preparing to go on set.
“Maverick is off-limits,” Wyatt called as I headed toward the set.
I waved a hand in the air. Sure, he was. No dating for me, and certainly not for Moonlight Valley’s handsome, reformed professor.
It was all over before it began—and never mind that the more I was denied something, the more I wanted it.