CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lily managed to fashion a sling for Martha out of a long stretch of hand-woven fabric she found in the van and decided they needed fresh air. She couldn’t stay cooped up in the trailer forever, wondering if reckless Lance was going to get spotted by clueless humans in his four-legged form or if the Jaguars would return as mysteriously as they left. She had a life to live, even if it was confined to within the perimeter of a state park for the time being.

“I’ve bet you’ve been on the road for almost as long as you’ve been alive,” Lily said to Martha. “That’s crazy to me. I can’t imagine not having a place to roost. I mean, where I live isn’t exactly a palace, but I’ve made it cozy, you know? Gets kind of lonely out there on that ranch trail, but at least I’m not scared of all the spooky noises anymore. Helps knowing there are always Cougars around doing patrols and stuff. Plus, I can walk to my cousins’ houses in ten minutes if I really hustle.”

Martha bounced a bit in her makeshift harness and waved her arms.

“Yeah, I know. Sounds dull, but I kinda like it. You’ve got a bunch of ladies around looking out for you. I didn’t have that. It was just me and my dad from the time I was a toddler, and if it were up to him, he would have ensconced me in bubble wrap and locked me into a high tower so no one could get to me.” She snorted. “Not sure how he thought that would turn out.”

She’d always suspected that if she’d gone home after being turned into a Cougar, her father would have dropped dead on the spot. Contrary to what she’d inadvertently led Lance to believe, up until that day, she’d never given any serious consideration to being turned. Her cousins had never brought the matter up, and neither had she. There’d always been a clear delineation in her mind that her cousins were shifters and she wasn’t. It’d been no different from all of them having red hair and her having blond.

But she wondered if it should matter more that she wasn’t like them. She never felt excluded, exactly, though occasionally, she could tell they were coddling her. She didn’t have their strength or speed, and certainly none of their psychic sensitivities.

She was just Lily—the odd girl out, just like Marilyn in The Munsters.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to fit in a little more?

She paused at the overlook to the dam and propped her phone on top of Martha’s head to stabilize the camera’s focus. “I can’t believe I’ve never been here,” she told the baby and took the shot. “My cousins used to go camping all the time with their dad. Pretty sure this was one of their spots.”

“You’re a grown woman,” Lance said, startling her. “You can go where you want.”

As soon as her heart had settled back into its proper place in her chest, Lily closed her eyes and let out a breath. “Do you enjoy sneaking up on people and eavesdropping on their personal conversations?”

“I’ve been following you for a whole minute.”

And he wasn’t alone. She heard his feet padding behind her and also a suspicious panting sound.

French Fry.

Suddenly, the dog was sitting at her feet, tongue lolling, looking up at her with expectation.

“Probably wants to be fed,” Lance said.

“As do I.”

“If you’re hungry, we can go get something.”

“From where?”

“There’s a fusion place in Truth or Consequences we could try. One of the Coyotes from the pack was talking about it on Twitter a couple of weeks ago.”

Lily raised an eyebrow and squatted to scratch French Fry behind the ears. “You use Twitter?”

Lance grunted. “Not exactly. Do I have a handle? Yeah. Mostly, other people use Twitter and I scroll and watch the online train wrecks. I only signed up because it’s a way to keep track of other Coyote groups. We try to be discreet about our online lurking, so I don’t have a huge social media footprint. Diana does, though.”

“Really?”

Lily turned in time to see him nod. He was dressed, fortunately. The very last thing she needed was to think of him in the alternate state. They’d ended up on the floor of a walk-in closet the first time she’d pondered what was under his clothes.

“What does Diana do online?” she asked.

“Mostly, she posts organization tips. That was what she did for a living before we moved to Maria.”

“Posting things on the internet?”

“No, no.” He laughed, wild and carefree for a change, so what Lily had said must have been patently asinine. She wasn’t sure if she should be annoyed. Laughter was good medicine, though she would have preferred for the humor to not be at her expense. “Organizing. She had dozens of clients. She was like the Coyote Martha Stewart, minus the cooking.”

“Man, I feel like I really missed out on the Martha wave.” She gave the baby a playful bounce. “I had no idea. What does Diana do now?”

“Right now, she’s trying to build the business back up. Hard, I guess, when she’s running around being Blue’s emissary. She doesn’t quibble about the responsibilities, though. Willa can’t do the pack stuff, and Diana is equipped to. Fortunately, they get along.”

“Well, of course, they do. Willa’s a sweetheart.”

“Yeah, but Diana’s a Coyote.”

He said that as though Lily was supposed to grasp some deeper meaning. She didn’t want to delve further—not if it meant disparaging Diana in any way. She happened to like Diana. Actually, she got along fine with most of the Coyotes since they’d gotten on the straight-and-narrow bandwagon, truth be told. Her problem was a certain lieutenant who gave her heartburn. None of the others looked at her like they wanted to swallow her whole…and she hated that she didn’t mind so much that he wanted to. In some ways, Lance was the first man she’d really picked for herself. All the others had just been acts of rebellion against her father. There’d been no spark with them. With Lance, all they had were sparks.

Swallowing, she turned back to the lake and the watercolor sky, focusing her phone’s camera once again.

“So, you want to give it a go? That restaurant?”

“And leave here?”

“Yeah. I mean, if they come back and we’re gone, they can’t really say shit seeing as how they left, too. I doubt Martha will mind.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Lily was going to refuse. To sit in a restaurant with Lance and have to make small talk with him? To have to look at him for an hour and hold her tongue on the heavy stuff? That sounded like misery.

But then her stomach growled, and with his excellent sense of hearing, there was no shot in hell of her playing it off.

He hooked his arm around hers and got her moving toward the campsite. “We can feed French Fry before we go, otherwise he’ll probably try to follow us all the way down to T or C.”

A reflexive laugh fell out of Lily’s mouth in spite of her best efforts to squelch it. “Wouldn’t that be a sight?”

*

“I’m pretty sure she’ll be fine if you want to plop her into that high chair.” Lance hooked his thumb toward the wooden seat the waitress had dragged over.

Lily eyed the contraption warily and tightened her arm around Martha’s waist. “Um. I’ll be fine until the food comes out.” She was going to need two hands to cut her steak then. Normally, she wouldn’t have splurged, but since Lance was paying, she didn’t see the harm of making him suffer a little. In her head, she was calling it “marital reparations.”

Cupping his water glass in his right hand, he put his back against the wall and took in the space around them. Kitschy didn’t even come close to describing it. Every wall was painted a different color—hot pink, turquoise, electric yellow, midnight black—and the floor was a mosaic of linoleum the likes of which Lily had never seen. The tin can chandeliers were funky, but cool, as was some of the art on the walls. It was all local and all for sale. If she had a wad of cash laying around, she would have taken some of it home. Her little bungalow could use a little pizzazz.

“What did your Coyote friend get when he was here?” Lily asked.

“It’d probably be easier to answer what he didn’t get.” Lance nodded a thanks to the waitress who set down their appetizers. Lance’s appetizer was a rack of shrimp tacos that probably could have sustained Lily as an entire meal. Lily had chosen dumplings. She was a fan of all dumplings, no matter their country of origin.

“Hmm.” She chewed thoughtfully on one and tried to itemize the flavors. Pork and onion and some kind of sweet sauce. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the menu when she should have been reading it because the waitress had been talking Lance’s ear off, explaining the whole freaking history of not only the food offerings, but the owners, the town, and had probably been about to launch into a spiel about The Gadsen Purchase and New Mexican statehood, but Lily had cut her off with a tart, “So, what should I have?”

And then Lily had just nodded as the young woman rattled off this thing and that thing, saying, “Fine,” at the end when she’d suggested the steak. Everything that came before that was a blur. She didn’t understand why Lance hadn’t told that Chatty Cathy to go away. He was a professional misanthrope. There was no reason for him to suddenly flip the script unless he was trying to annoy her.

She rolled her eyes.

Of course he is.

“What do you think?” he asked through a mouth full of taco.

“It’s good,” she said in a flat tone. “I think my mother would like them. She’s got an adventurous palate, but doesn’t get out much.”

“Doesn’t travel?”

Lily shook her head and sliced through the second dumpling with her fork. There were only three. Unlike what was on Lance’s plate, her appetizer was really more of a tease than actual sustenance.

“I think she’s afraid to leave the country,” Lily said.

“Why?”

“Because the last time she was out of the country, she got deported.”

He stopped chewing.

“Yeah.” She sighed. “It was bound to happen. You can’t really travel across the southern part of the state without hitting border control every so often. I think she and my father got too comfortable. She was supposed to have returned to Mexico after she finished her master’s degree, and…you know.”

“She got pregnant.”

“Bingo.” It dawned on Lily that the proclivity toward reckless rendezvous must have been genetic. “She got pregnant with me and her choices were to overstay her welcome or go home to Mexico City where there was a chance my father would miss my birth.”

“So, you were born, and…”

“So, I was born, and for a couple of years, they carried on as though everything was normal. Nobody in Maria talks about what happened. They’re too polite, usually. Sometimes, some geezer will slip up and wag his tongue, and to them what happened was strictly my mother’s fault. It’s her fault for not marrying him, even if they were never in love enough to get married.” She paused there to scoff. Marriage had only complicated her situation with Lance. “It’s her fault for not getting her paperwork handled, as though that were such an easy thing. It’s her fault for getting caught.” She made an and so on gesture. “I think most people just didn’t like her.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s opinionated and quick to tell people when their logic is flawed. She’ll cut a guy off in a hurry if the only weapon he has in a debate is emotion. Meanwhile, my father tends to be more methodical about his interpersonal relationships. He’s very careful not to offend the people he considers peers.”

“I guess you didn’t learn that lesson from him.”

“I learned it well enough to wait until no one’s looking to give you the finger,” she murmured.

He saluted her with a taco and took a big bite. “I rest my case, shortcake. Shit, you’re meaner than a—”

“Whatever. Anyhow, Aunt Glenda liked her. In my opinion, that’s the greatest seal of approval a lady could get.”

“Did your mom know what your aunt had married into?”

Lily nibbled contemplatively on a dumpling. She’d never asked her mother what she knew of Maria’s paranormal underbelly. Maybe she’d always been a little scared to—afraid her mother would freak out about it the same way her father did. She was afraid her mother would tell her not to consort with “those people,” even though they were related to her, and they had never been anything but supportive.

“That a yes or a no?” Lance asked.

“I don’t think she knows,” Lily said.

“You ever going to tell her?”

“I came pretty close to having to. That scares me enough.”

He stopped chewing again.

She realized how what she said must have sounded the moment the words left her mouth, but she’d never been the sort of person who’d backpedal on the truth. It was out there. Now he knew.

“You would have kept me a secret,” he said pointedly.

“Not you, but perhaps what you are. At least until I didn’t have a choice.”

“Well, guess what?” he said, tossing his napkin onto the table. “I don’t get a choice. I wake up every day like this, and I don’t get to change my DNA for the people who don’t like it.”

“I would never suggest that you should change yourself. I—”

The waitress had returned with their meals, so Lily zipped her lips as the woman set them on the table and cleared away the appetizer dishes.

Lily sat back, clenching her teeth and drumming her fingertips on her thigh.

No matter what she said, he was probably going to find some way to twist her words. He was going to make her out to be some kind of shapeshifter bigot, and yet she’d been having to walk a balance beam between the groups her entire life.

Disown or be disowned?

Did she really want to be associated with people who had such hatred for people who were different? Did it matter if they didn’t love her anymore?

She didn’t know. She just knew that families were supposed to try. That was what she’d always been told. Maybe they’d all lied to her.

“So, you said this is your first visit to T or C?” The waitress squatted at the tableside and looked to Lance. “We’ve got some beautiful weather coming in this weekend. Oh! And you absolutely have to go to the hot springs. You can’t visit and not try those.” She giggled.

Lily pinched the bridge of her nose and prayed for patience.

To the waitress, they probably didn’t look like they were together. Lily was holding someone else’s brown baby and Lance had that blond lumberjack thing going on. The old saying went “mama’s baby, daddy’s maybe,” and it was possible Martha could be Lily’s and that Lance was just a friend, but that assumption still wouldn’t excuse the waitress for the brazen flirting.

Or Lance for condoning it.

Their marriage was on the skids, but that didn’t mean she was going to let him disrespect her.

“I can get you some discount vouchers if you want to visit the best spa in town.” The waitress winked. “I’m there every weekend. They don’t even care if you wear a bathing suit, so if you didn’t bring one—”

“Hi. Sorry. Hey,” Lily said, putting on her best stage smile. She hadn’t broken that thing out in years, but that lady had crossed the line and deserved to bear witness to the cheesiness of it. “We’re sort of in a rush to get this baby to bed. Could you bring us the dessert menus so we can put in to-go orders?” She hoped the “and then leave us the hell alone” was heavily enough implied.

“Of course!”

“Thanks ever so much.”

The lady bounded away.

Lily turned her glare toward Lance and was met with an icy stare of his own.

“I believe when we left off, you were putting words into my mouth,” she said.

“The ones coming out of it were elucidating enough.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t make any hasty judgments about what you think you heard.”

“I’m pretty sure I know what I heard.” He tapped his ear. “Remember? Freaky sense of hearing, just like your cousins.”

“Don’t even go there.”

The waitress dropped the menus onto the table and had squatted, probably to launch into another spiel, but Lily wasn’t going to let her. She tugged a menu over and preempted her with, “How about…” She scanned the menu rapidly and tapped on a couple of random things. “Those. Those are great.”

“Okay! Want anything else to drink?”

“No,” Lance said.

“Okie doke. I’ll put those in.” She backed away, molasses-slow and ignoring the patron on the other side of the dining room who’d been waving for her attention for the last minute.

Lily pointed toward him. “Guy over there looks hungry.”

The waitress looked. “Oh.” She gave her head a shake as if to clear it and hustled over.

“There’s no point getting pissy at her,” Lance said in an undertone. “She can’t help it.”

“Can’t help what?”

“You may be resistant to my energy because you grew up around shifters. She’s not.”

“Which means what?”

He shrugged and picked up his steak knife. “She thinks she likes me. Not a big deal.”

“Oh. I see.” She nodded slowly and set Martha into the high chair. “No, I’m sure it isn’t for you.” She gave the baby a prepared bottle and picked up her knife, too. “I’m also sure that explains the mountain of latex you keep in the travel trailer. Piles and piles of it. Did you learn your lesson before or after our little incident?”

Because if after, she was going to tie him up and roll him into an open septic tank at the ranch. Her cousins would help and she was pretty sure Blue wouldn’t be all that mad once Lily explained things to him.

Married guys weren’t supposed to sleep around, even if no one but Fake Elvis and a couple of witnessing strangers from the Vegas Strip knew about the wedding.

Lance cut into his steak, saying nothing.

“Before or after, Lance?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Because it just does. You didn’t have a condom that night.”

“That’s your assumption, Lily.” He shoved steak into his mouth and gave her a blasé look.

“So you’re saying you did?”

“We were both drunk off our asses. One thing led to another.”

The waitress came by again and looked at Lily’s plate. “Not cooked the way you like? If you want, I can—”

“It’s fine,” Lily snapped.

The lady blinked a few times and then walked to the kitchen.

Lily sighed. She was always nice, or could at least pretend to be, but that’d been harder to do since her release from the hospital. It was hard for her to pretend she had her shit together when on the inside, she was coming apart.

She rubbed her eyes and somehow managed to suppress the scoff hanging in her chest.

I’ll just leave her a bigger tip.

“What is with you?” Lance asked in an undertone.

Her appetite was trashed. She didn’t see the point in trying to eat. Lily tossed her napkin onto the table and waved down the waitress for a to-go box. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Or everything was. Lately, she had a hard time telling the difference.