Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
“She moaned and rubbed herself up against him, enjoying his big werewolf-sized body.”
— GAIL CARRIGER, SOULLESS
“ W hy do I feel like I’m meeting the parents?”
Maverick slid his eyes to mine, then promptly refocused on the road. He was a very safe driver. “Sanye is not my mother. Also, she doesn’t bite.”
There was a pause.
And then, “Well, not in the general, socially accepted sense.”
Peaches and pansies. Sanye was a werewolf too.
I glared at the cute pottery bowl of pimento cheese on my lap. The bowl was a clever disguise to hoodwink Sanye into thinking my cheese offering was homemade. Homemade was worth more points in the Who Does It Better game.
Yes. Yes, I was feeling competitive.
I was also confused.
“You have had dinner with her every Sunday for five years.” Maverick had told me this, and I had reconfirmed. Several times. “She is not a relative. She’s your friend. A really good friend. Why wouldn’t you date her?”
In Hollywood, good friend was code for fuck buddy and secretly having sex already .
Maverick had been offended when I’d pointed this out. I was not succeeding at being as supportive of his sexual abstention choices as I wished.
Maverick lifted an eyebrow at me. “You’re making too much of this. It’s dinner.”
Uh-huh. It was an audition, and I was an expert on those. He was taking me to this Sanye’s gorgeous, perfect house (and seeing as how Maverick had apparently been puttering around it, fixing crap for five years, it would be perfect), where Sanye would grill me and try to decide if I was Maverick worthy.
Last Tuesday, Alice, Ford’s girlfriend (although Ranger was predicting an engagement ring and a relationship promotion for those two), had shown me a picture of Sanye. Alice worked at the local pet grooming place that Sanye owned. First, I’d almost peed myself laughing at the name: Vanity Fur Salon. Then, I’d wondered if it was an undercover wolf beauty salon. Nevertheless, near-urinary incontinence aside, the woman in the picture was gorgeous.
In fact, gorgeous was an understatement.
Like saying the Himalayas were tall and challenging.
Perfect territory for a short Sunday afternoon walk.
Easy-peasy, like a wolf’s howl is breezy.
How on earth could Maverick spend so much time with her every Sunday, week after week, and not have feelings for her? The tall redhead was stunning. Ranger had told me she was tough and smart. Ford had praised her as super nice and thoughtful. Atticus saw an excellent businesswoman who had “real pretty eyes.” Rebel believed she was an animal whisperer and could do some pretty unimaginable things with fur. He’d accompanied his high praise with an eyebrow wag.
Sidenote: Rebel was too freaking charming for his own good. End sidenote.
Knox, however, had remained stonily silent, abstaining from participating in the Sanye lovefest. I was growing accustomed to silence from him, mostly of the stormy and irritated kind.
So why hadn’t Maverick made a move?
I already had a girl crush on her, and I hadn’t even met her yet.
“So why not date her? Your entire family loves her. Alice loves her. She’s a goddess of magical talents, endless goodness, and demonstrable beauty. Plus, she’s a werewolf like you.”
Maverick rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, I know Sanye. Other than being a wolf shifter, she’s just human. She has scars and flaws like everyone else. Plus, we’ve known each other since we were kids, and she’s like another sister to me.”
“Okay, fine. But I want it duly noted that I am also a goddess of magical talents and sexual attractiveness.”
“I am fully aware.” Maverick grinned, pulling onto a long dirt driveway that led to a small white farmhouse with a red door and window boxes. The window boxes were studded with spiky grasses and trailing lush green ivy and white climbing petunias. Matching white gourds and pumpkins lined the steps to the front porch.
Maverick parked and retrieved a pie from behind his seat, while I tried to convince the butterflies in my stomach that now would be an excellent time for a siesta. I was thinking this would be the world’s quickest dinner—perhaps we could snack instead of dine—and then Maverick was helping me down out of the truck. Obviously, I was perfectly capable of getting out of his beast of a motor vehicle. I just liked having an excuse to get my hands on him.
I would nail this audition.
I would be the best woman EVAH for Maverick.
I gave myself a pep talk: You go in there like you own this. This being Maverick, of course. I was going to lick him like a cupcake. He would be mine, all mine. You waltz in there and turn on the charm. You charm the freckles off her pretty face! Go! Go! Go!
I clomped up the porch steps and made a pretense of checking out the window boxes up close while I waited for Maverick to catch up. He was cradling the pie like it was a newborn wolf pup.
God. Even her flowers were gorgeous. She also had rosemary bushes that had been trimmed into cute little animal shapes in adorable stone urns. Her porch floor was sanded and painted an immaculate black. A swing hung at the far end, tastefully stocked with throw pillows. The house looked like something out of a magazine.
“This is an amazing house.” Proving I was a grown-up, I said it aloud. I mean, how could I not be impressed?
Maverick grinned proudly. “Right? I added the porch two years ago. Sanye suggested the window boxes. I painted them to match the trim.”
They were Chip and Joanna Gaines. There would be a horde of TV cameras and adorable children on the other side of that door.
“You built it?”
Maverick nodded, oblivious to how his tool skills sounded to me. “I did. And the greenhouse and the she-shed out back. I do a little work on the house from time to time.”
You built her an entire freaking HOUSE.
The butterflies in my stomach rioted. They launched themselves like little bomber planes up my throat. BOOM. There went my heart. BOOM, BOOM. No more brain cells.
On the one hand, Maverick was just the nicest, sweetest guy around. He built entire houses for free. On the other hand, I was dealing with some pretty intense feelings of jealousy and confusion. Why had he done this for HER? Was he just given to doing random acts of construction kindness?
And also: was it too late to develop a severe case of the plague and retreat to the truck?
Maverick rapped on the door, sliding me a glance. He looked amused. Of course, he was the prize in this scenario.
Sanye flung the door open mid-rap, almost as if she’d been staring out the peephole at us. Maybe she had one of those doorbell cameras?
“GREETINGS!” she bellowed at me, her very pretty eyes wide and excited.
“Uhhhhh.” Shit. I should have rehearsed. Was there a polite way to say, Excuse me, I’m feeling very insecure and would appreciate your validation of my feelings? A quick glance at Maverick told me that he was not going to be helpful in this particular situation—his face was a polite blank slate, and he was staring fixedly at a point somewhere above Sanye’s head.
“HI!” I bellowed back.
When in Rome, right?
She wrapped her arms around me in a full-frontal hug, squeezing me tight. “I AM SO, SO, SO EXCITED TO MEET YOU!!!!!”
Having set the pie baby down on an antique console table, Maverick rescued the pimento dip from my hands. It was in danger of being squeezed to death by Sanye’s python hug. Our eyes met over her shoulder. His own were shaking with laughter.
The enthusiastic squeezing continued.
Werewolves, even werewolf girls, were industrial-strength squeezers.
It was fine.
The longer she squeezed, the less time I had to talk, right?
She finally pulled away, her hands still gripping my shoulders. “I’m so sorry. I’m being super weird, aren’t I? It’s just that you’re YOU, and I love you so much.”
She slapped a hand over her mouth. Maverick shook his head.
“Oh my God. I’m the worst. I’m just so nervous. And I’m a terrible hostess. Come in.” She stumbled backward into the house. Since we were still connected, I fell in after her. Sanye’s cheeks were bright red. “I promised myself that I would be totally cool and not a creeper. I am not handling this well.” She added this last bit under her voice.
I did some praising of the deities myself. The butterflies flew away, back to wherever it was butterflies lived. Cocoons? Bushes? Predator-deterring nests of leaves?
She was a superfan.
Sanye Jansen-Webster is a fan of Sonnet Ruiz.
It had never occurred to me that she would be a fan. I was so focused on all the ways in which she intimidated me with her amazingness that I had failed to consider that she might be equally in awe of my accomplishments.
“I promised myself I would be cool too.” I grinned at her, and she blinked back. I hadn’t even charmed her. She liked me for me! Well, mostly for my career accomplishments, possibly for my sexy books, and maybe for being Maverick adjacent.
“You’re so cool,” she said, her voice full of adoration, her eyes dazed and dreamy.
Maverick leaned down, his mouth brushing my ear. “No charms. Behave yourself.”
“I am!” I said indignantly. “You heard her! I’m cool!”
I beamed back at her. Okay, whew.
“Fine, fine.” Maverick grabbed my hand and towed me through a cute white living room and into the dining room. It was like a Pinterest board in here. Would it be creepy to take pictures with my phone?
“Don’t be a birdbrain,” he continued. “Pull yourself together, Sanye. And shut the door. We brought cheese. What’s for dinner?”
Sanye wasn’t exactly a goddess of magical talents, but she had aspirations in that general direction. And she could cook. Everything was Southern comfort food but with these fun twists. Homemade, pillowy buttermilk biscuits, with roasted corn and jalape?os. Oh, and she’d ground the flour herself. From organic quinoa. Just one of the crops she grew on her one-acre hobby farm.
She also made raspberry truffle butter. She picked her own raspberries and probably arm-wrestled pigs for the truffles.
For the main course, she’d made mimosa-fried chicken (which wasn’t chicken at all, in deference to Maverick’s vegetarian sensibilities) and a delicious white bean salad that had me rethinking my lifelong hatred for all things vegetable.
Bickering with Maverick, explaining her cooking inspirations (fortunately, I had not tried to pass the pimento cheese off as my own make after all), and my constant photographing and praise of her food seemed to snap her out of the starstruck daze. Still, more than once she stared at me and repeated (over and over) how much she loved my TV show, and how she stayed up all night reading my books, and that I had the best hair ever. But by the end of dinner, thanks to Maverick’s efforts, she’d relaxed.
I had too.
“Yes, yes! Bek is the best ice planet barbarian ever.” I waved my hands enthusiastically at Sanye. We were discussing paranormal space romances and, as it turned out, we shared one book-loving brain.
“Don’t get me wrong. I love me a marshmallow alien like Salukh, I love a sweet man, but the grumpy ones are the best! Ruby Dixon is a genius. I mean Bek was on the redemption train! So surly! And protective! And then it was spur central!”
We both giggled, remembering the same bonus piece of alien anatomy. Sanye wiggled her thumb, miming the extra addition, launching us into renewed laughter.
Maverick reclaimed my attention, threading his fingers through mine and bringing my knuckles to his mouth for a soft kiss. His eyes twinkled at me as he mouthed, Spur. I felt warm and cherished.
With a quick squeeze of my hand, he got up, collected our plates, and padded into the kitchen.
“I love a man who’s an animal.” Sanye raised her voice, winking at me.
Maverick must’ve heard her all right because he yelled back, “Don’t give me any grief, woman, or there will be no pie for you.”
“Is it delicious pie?” she hollered.
There was no response from our werewolf waiter. Sanye looked at me.
“Is there pie? I saw no pie when y’all walked in.”
There had been pie. There has also been cheese. Regardless, I decided not to point out that she’d stared at me for the first thirty minutes of our visit. Maverick could have marched a herd of elephants through her living room, and she wouldn’t have noticed.
“Yes. Thanks for inviting me over.”
She beamed at me, her cheeks pink with pleasure. “I think I’ve got the gaga thing out of my system now, so whew. I’m sorry to have acted like that. I can see you’re just like the rest of us.” She nodded, then added with the comedic timing of a celestial goddess, “Except you don’t turn furry. Plus, you’re funnier, smarter, and have better shoes.”
“Sanye—”
“And with the curliest hair.”
“Cease—”
“It’s a sickness. Sorry.”
I had to laugh. “Don’t apologize.”
Maverick reemerged from the kitchen. We both frowned at his pie-less hands. “You two go on out back for a walk while I heat up the pie.”
He started stacking up the remaining dishes.
“I can help with that.” I stood up to collect our glasses, but Maverick made a shooing motion. “Go. Scat. Get out of here. You could check out the greenhouse. I thought I might put something like that out behind our house, and I’d like your opinion.”
Our house? Was that the Boone residence? Or some future love nest just for the two of us? I was so confused.
The one thing that was clear was now that Sanye had semi-conquered her case of the starstrucks, he seemed determined to throw the two of us together. He wanted us to be friends for real. It was a nice thought, but it also made my stomach tie itself into little knots. Being the approachable, likeable TV star Sonnet Ruiz was a familiar role. Even without using my glamour, I could slip that mask on whenever I needed to.
Being Sonnet Ruiz, regular human being, was much harder. Maverick made it easy to relax around him, which was one of the many reasons why I enjoyed his company. I looked from him to Sanye. She batted big, hopeful eyes at me.
“Come on,” she said, grinning. “I won’t bite, and I promise not to make more hair comments.”
And again, just like that, my nerves vanished. “I’m only going if you do admire my hair.”
“Deal.” She turned and headed out a pair of French doors (so jealous!) that led into her amazing backyard. “But seriously, your curls are amazing. They are a frizz-free zone. What product do you use and can I buy it online?”
Maverick shot us a small, pleased smile as he turned back into the kitchen.
“I don’t know where it’s from. My sister sends it. She mails me boxes of products—face serums, lip masks, moisturizers—and I just use whatever’s in the box. It’s like makeup Christmas.”
“Would you be willing to check for me? I can’t find anything I like hereabouts.”
“Sure. You bet.” I made a mental note to have a case of the stuff sent to her because the raspberry truffle butter alone deserved a pallet of fancy hair product.
We wandered across the yard to the greenhouse. It was absolutely darling, with walls of windows, a sloping white tin roof, and a baby barn door with black hinges. He’d hung a chandelier inside, and there was a squashy velvet armchair. And plants. So, so, so many plants. African violets and late-blooming dahlias, lemon trees, and pears.
“This is amazing.” I skimmed my fingertips over a geranium. How long had Maverick spent working on this greenhouse? Sanye’s house was perfect, while the Boone home wasn’t even half restored.
Sanye sucked in a deep breath and sank down on a cute little wicker settee. Her eyes held mine. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Her flustered and bubbly enthusiasm had vanished, replaced now by a more subdued tone; her voice quiet but infused with a subtle confidence.
“We should do it again.” I dropped down beside her. “I can cook next Sunday. I’m in Moonlight Valley for at least another month. I don’t want to encroach on your time with Maverick but?—”
“I won’t be here.”
“Excuse me?” Had I misunderstood? I waited for her to yell, “Surprise!”
“I won’t be here,” she repeated. “I bought a camper van and I’ll be using it to travel around the country.”
“Wow. I mean, congratulations!” That was a huge change. How would that work with her business? This is not the time to ask for career tips or to be nosy though. “Does Maverick know?”
I was almost certain he did not.
Sure enough, she shook her head. “Not yet. I’m so happy for Mav. He’s found you, and that’s going to make all the difference. He was all fenced in by his rules, and now you’re here to teach him to color outside the lines. He’s so lucky.”
I wrapped my arms around my middle, feeling off-balance. Fenced in? Coloring outside the lines? I wasn’t used to sincerity, I decided. I blamed Hollywood for that. We liked our emotions scripted and rehearsed in Tinseltown, so I had no idea what to say to Sanye.
She patted my shoulder. “No pressure, of course.”
“No! It’s not! In all Maverick-related matters, I welcome pressure.”
She smiled softly. “Good. He deserves happiness, as do you.”
And so did Sanye. I just didn’t understand why she was choosing to uproot her life.
“Sanye, when did you decide to leave?”
Another smile, this one rueful. “I guess I decided on Tuesday.”
“When are you telling him?”
A shrug. “I haven’t figured that out. I may wait until the movers have come to put my stuff in storage and I’ve put a few hundred miles between us. I hate goodbyes. He knows that. And it’s not as if I’ll be gone forever. I’ll visit and of course I’m coming back to Vanity Fur Salon. It’s a temporary leave of absence.”
“You’re not...” I hesitated. But she’d been open with me, so that was my invitation to be candid, too, wasn’t it? “I’m not the reason you’re going, am I?”
“No,” she said too quickly. Oh God. “Not in the way you mean. It’s just that I don’t actually have a reason to stay here . My reason left five years ago.” Her gaze unfocused for a moment. “My husband died. Did Mav tell you about Evan?”
“Mav loved Evan.”
“For good reason. Evan was wonderful.” Her smile was sad, and she fidgeted with a geranium. Little white petals fell onto the potting table. “When we first learned that Evan wasn’t coming home, I told myself that staying in Moonlight Valley was to help Evan’s parents and to help Mav. I’d also be surrounded by shifters. Those felt like the right reasons to stay. But that was five years ago. I’ve spent five years hiding here in this pretty house, with its pretty gardens, not living.” She thought for a moment, adding more cheerfully, “Which isn’t to say that I’m some kind of country princess locked away in a tower. It’s just that Evan’s parents keep suggesting that it’s time for me to move on. And now I think they’re right. Although maybe I’m taking their advice a little literally.”
We shared a smile. I thought that we understood each other, even if the poor geranium would never be the same again. Of course, the same could be said about Sanye. About Evan. Maverick.
Myself.
“I ran into someone on Tuesday,” Sanye said, contemplatively. “Someone I knew long ago. We said some ugly things to each other, and afterward, after I’d walked away from him, I felt lost and upset. And then Maverick called, happy as a wolf pup, to ask if he could bring you to dinner. It seemed like a sign from the universe. I always knew I would move on when the Websters were in a good place and Mav was ready to let me go.”
“Do you think Maverick will be okay?”
“He will be now that he has you.” Sanye swept up the petals. “But the two of you should move in here if I may overstep. Because if you go live in that big ole Boone place, you won’t have a second’s privacy. You’ll have all his brothers banging on your door, asking what you’re doing and why, plus they only have one bathroom.”
I mumbled something. My mind was paralyzed by the thought of one bathroom, six Boones, and me. Plus, it seemed awfully presumptuous of me to be thinking of moving into Maverick’s house, wherever that house might be.
“Sometimes you have to go off script,” Sanye said softly. “Right? Ad-lib. Change the lines to fit the scene.”