Chapter Four

Apparently, whoever was in charge of the gate at the county-managed public lands had called it quits early. The gatehouse was empty, and they’d left the barrier up.

Didn’t make good sense to Ben. Back home, leaving property unguarded like that was a tacit invitation of vandalism.

Alex tossed some change into the donation bucket and edged her rickety truck into the parking lot.

“This truck yours?” Ben asked in an exasperated rush. He’d been wondering for the entirety of the drive, but had been too distracted by the other shit in his head to ever get the question out.

She backed the truck into a space near the picnic tables and bathrooms and killed the lights. “Yep.” She gave the steering wheel a loving pat and grinned at him. “Got it last month. Paid cash.”

“Hope you didn’t pay much,” he murmured.

“Rude.”

“Naw. I’m a mechanic, and I’ve got a supernatural sense of hearing. I reckon I’m obligated to tell you that something under that hood’s about to blow.”

“You’re saying that to scare me.”

“For what?”

“Guys do that.”

“No the hell they don’t, unless they’re either twelve or dipshits. Which are they?”

Her quickly averted gave him all the answer he needed.

“I wouldn’t waste my breath telling you something that wasn’t true. If you bought this bucket of bolts recently, you got ripped off.” He let his gaze track from the sticking gear shifter up to the speedometer that still read forty-five in spite of the vehicle being parked. Then he flicked at the air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. “Makes sense that you picked the lemon scent.”

“Hey, you’re speaking in longer sentences.”

“Tryin’.” Ben flicked the air freshener again. He’d had no idea people still used those things. He preferred the organic method of sweetening up the inside of his ride: kicking Scott out of it. “Talking with sense is easier when the damn animal part of me ain’t waging a nonstop hissy fit at being cooped up inside this body.”

The animal part of Ben was actually resting for the time being—perhaps too curious about the lady behind the wheel to act up. He didn’t want to think about what that might have meant.

“Do your sentences have to be mean ones?” She pouted. “And I’ll have you know I only paid five thousand dollars for this thing. That’s what the Blue Book website said was fair.”

“The Blue Book website ain’t got eyes and common sense. You paid about two thousand dollars too much.”

“I really do think you’re trying to ruffle my feathers. Is that fun for you?”

“Nope.” Ben folded his arms over his chest and fixed his stare on the ceiling’s stained and loose fabric. “My memory ain’t what you’d call encyclopedic—”

“That’s a big word.”

He cut her a look. Scott was right. The lady had some sass to her. “I know words. No reason I gotta use ’em all at once.”

“Fair.”

“Listen, some vehicles were more common than others. This here thing is a fifteen-year-old domestic, base model pickup with a faulty automatic transmission that was known to cause issues at the ten-year mark. Most folks let the trucks die in dignity or trade them in before it’s too late.”

“You saying I’m on the wrong side of ‘too late’?”

“I’m sayin’ you got had.”

And that made him mad.

More than anything, he hated a cheat. Vehicles were too freaking expensive of an investment for folks to be playing around with each other like that. That was why, when he and Scott had opened their shop, they’d made sure to establish from the get-go that they were going to do right by folks, and they’d try to help out with the cost when they could. A busted transmission shouldn’t keep a lady from being able to get to work and her kids to daycare.

He worried at the dirt on the underside of his thumbnail and glanced at her through the corners of his eyes.

Her skepticism was evident. Of course she thought he was bullshitting her. He didn’t blame her. Mechanics were notoriously untrustworthy. Being a Wolf probably made him doubly so, in her mind.

“I don’t get nothin’ out of lyin’ to you, sugar.”

The sigh she heaved could have launched an aircraft carrier. She stabbed the catch of her seatbelt and unlocked the doors. “I guess I believe you. My brother, Chet, insisted that he should go with me to look at it, but I wanted to make the purchase on my own. I thought I was getting a good deal. Other trucks the same size were much more expensive.”

“For good reason. A lot of metal goes into a vehicle this size.” Usually, anyway. That particular model seemed to be as much plastic as steel. “Why’d you need a truck, anyway? Living out here where everything’s far apart, you’d get better gas mileage in a little coupe.”

“I need the hauling capacity for my business.”

He furrowed his brow. “The diner?”

“No,” she said emphatically. “The one I’m trying to start with the seeds. I always need dirt and pots and stuff.”

“Ah.” He nodded and released the catch of his seatbelt, too. “The long story.”

“Yes.”

“Wanna tell me?”

“I . . . don’t know.”

“Most ladies like to talk.”

“And most men like to remind us of that.”

Damn.

Shitty of him to say, and he knew it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to be an asshole. I’m just used to being around Wolves. They’re pretty good at ignoring the stupid shit.” And the non-Wolf ladies he’d been with didn’t pay much attention to what was coming out of his mouth as long as he had his pants off.

She nodded and focused her attention out the windshield, but he didn’t believe for one second he was off the hook.

He didn’t want her to be mad at him. Not only was she someone he was likely to run into every time he accompanied Clarissa to Maria, but their shared network was knit too tight. Word would get around quick that he’d been a dick, and he’d be catching bullshit from all angles until Armageddon.

There were two other vehicles in the dirt lot. One was a maintenance truck that probably lived at the park full-time. The other was a late-model sedan with faded maroon paint, a missing rear bumper, and a vanity plate reading, “NMBOTNY.”

NM Botany, he realized after reading it a couple more times.

“I’m hoping the owner of that car will leave,” she murmured.

“You know ’em?”

“Mmm. Freakin’ busybody who wants to play nature police. I’ve already had it out with him three times. I’m not quite so paranoid to truly believe he’s got my schedule memorized, but it sure seems like he does.”

“Since we’re waiting, you might as well tell me why you’re even out here.”

Before she could start, his phone buzzed in the pocket of his cargo pants. He fished it out of the pocket and read Scott’s message of,

Ben tapped out with his thumbs,

Same code as always, but usually, he sent those words when he was en route to his car after zipping up his pants. The wolf in him seemed content for the moment to watch and wait. Ben sure as hell wasn’t going to needlessly escalate the situation. Being normal-ish was a nice break from the ordinary.

“My grandmother had all of these little baby food jars in her garage when I was a kid.” Alex settled down lower in her seat and tugged the rolled bottom of her knit cap over her ears. The temperature was dropping fast. “Every one was filled with a different kind of seed she’d harvested and saved. She’d always set aside some of the produce she grew to cull seeds from, or she’d let the fruits go to seed on the plants so she’d have some for the next year. I asked her if buying seeds wouldn’t be easier. You can get a pack of thirty or forty from the grocery store for a buck. Less if you go to the seed and feed store. A seed’s a seed, right?”

“I’m guessin’ no?”

“Nope.” Alex made a little popping sound with her mouth as she pronounced the puh sound.

Playful.

Made him smile.

“Back then,” she said, “I didn’t know the difference between organic and conventional, heirloom versus hybrid. Any of that. I didn’t see why it mattered until one day when I was around thirteen, she came inside with two tomatoes. One was ugly as sin. Lumpy and oddly colored. The other was smooth and red. She started puttering around in the kitchen to start dinner. Taking out all the ingredients for sandwiches. She put one kind of tomato on one half of each and the other kind on the second half. Chet was distracted by homework and wasn’t paying attention, so he bit down into his without looking, but I was watching my grandmother, seeing what she put on her sandwich. Of course, she picked the bumpy one, but I figured she did because she was the kind of lady who never wasted anything.”

“I know the kind. Related to a few of ’em.”

“Yep. She sat down with her sandwich and asked why I wasn’t eating. I went ahead and took a bite of what was familiar. Tasted the way I expected a typical tomato to taste. I’d finished up that half and eyed the second. Chet was completely done by then and had already washed everything down with a glass of milk. No commentary, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. I picked it up, took a bite, and had to hold it in my mouth for bit because something wasn’t quite right.”

“Why not?”

“The flavor was . . . ” She scrunched her nose. “Really tomato-y.”

“Shouldn’t that be a good thing?”

She laughed. “I was so used to the commercial kinds, I didn’t know better. That was what my mom always bought and what the school served on Taco Tuesday. I was floored that the ugly, bumpy tomato was so much better.” She shrugged. “After my grandma died, I needed something to do to keep busy and distract myself from the grief, so I decided to sit down and catalog all those seeds in the garage. Tedious.” Alex became more energetic the longer she talked, turning her knees toward him and leaning in conspiratorially.

That was nice, too.

Folks didn’t tend to chat at him much, except for Clarissa, but she seemed to have a natural knack for knowing what folks needed, whether it be a few kind words, or to just leave a Wolf to his own devices for a while.

He’d been so thankful when Calvin had tapped him and Scott to be the travel guards she claimed she didn’t need. Standing out in a large wolf pack was hard enough, but being trusted enough to be attached to the lady everyone loved was a huge honor. It wasn’t one he was so quick to give up, but tasting a bit of the same kind of attention outside of his guard gig made him question his priorities.

“My grandma kept information about everything in her head and all I had to go on were the scant notes she scribbled on the labels,” Alex said. “They were all faded and incomplete. I needed two years to identify everything. Planting and harvesting and photographing. She had tons of heirloom varieties that her grandmother or great-grandmother or something must have brought west a hundred years ago.”

“And by heirloom, you mean . . . ”

“Oh, you know.” She talked with her hands when she got excited, drawing vaguely tomato-shaped things in the air with her index finger and spreading her hands far apart to indicate size and distance. She wasn’t giving him rehearsed talking points. Everything coming out of her mouth was passion. Scott did the same thing when he was talking about Hondas. Made Ben grin.

“The varieties you don’t see in stores anymore because they’re not so hardy or especially disease-resistant. They’re great for home gardeners and small farmers, but not big growers who are shipping stuff all over the place.”

“Ah. Learn somethin’ new every day, but how’s that relate to your business?”

“Well, my goal is to eventually have enough stock to sell seeds to folks who want those rare heirloom varieties, especially the native New Mexican ones. That’s what I do when I’m not at the diner. I’m out in the planter beds at the rental house or poking around with stuff under grow lights, getting them ready to go into the ground in spring.”

“Makes sense. But what are you looking for way out here?” He crooked his thumb toward the dry, desert landscape. He couldn’t imagine there’d be much of anything out there that anyone would want.

“Various decorative perennials. Maybe they don’t look like much right now, but during the summer when they’re all clumped together in a small yard, they look amazing. I happen to think that folks should plant more of what already grows wild. The ecosystem is more tolerant of native plants than stuff brought in from outside. I need to cultivate more of the rarer local stuff. Which means I have to find more.”

“And you’re sure taking the seeds is allowed?”

Cringing, she made an eh gesture by rocking her hand.

“This is where some thievin’ comes into play,” he said. “I did three months in juvie when I was a teenager for stealing rims off cars. I don’t reckon this is gonna earn me any cool points. Of all damn things, vegetation.” He was never going to live it down.

“Hey!” she balked. “Plants are life. Don’t dis plants.” She fidgeted with the rolled edge of her cap. “And we’re not exactly committing thievery in this instance. I got special permission once.”

“Oh?” He narrowed his eyes with suspicion. Special permission was the same shit Scott had said about them being in that parking lot filled with high-end imports when they were sixteen. The problem was that they hadn’t had special permission to jack those bastards up onto blocks and take the wheels off them.

“I had a verbal agreement with the last guy who oversaw the place, but when he got transferred . . . ” She shrugged.

“I get you.”

“Do you really? Usually at this point, most folks pretend they’re listening.”

“I asked you, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, but only because your inner dog is aching for a fix and it behooves you to be nice.”

At that, Ben’s inner wolf did the psychic equivalent of picking up his head and looking around in a “Did someone say my name?” kind of way.

Ben scratched idly over his sternum, musing over how quiet that part of his consciousness was. He should have been more demanding. Wilder and hungrier. He didn’t make sense.

And Alex was looking for an answer.

Dragging a hand through his tangled hair, he let out a ragged exhalation.

Honesty’ll have to do.

“I ain’t denying I’m probably gonna ask you to sleep with me at some point in the next few hours, but one thing has nothing to do with the other.”

“But—” Her gaze must have caught onto something in her periphery, because quick as a scared rabbit, she dropped low in the seat, and yanked his shirtsleeve, whispering hoarsely, “Get down a little. That jackhole is coming to the trailhead.”

He slumped down and leaned toward her to whisper, “The botanist?”

Her eyes had little golden specks in them that seemed to flicker as her pupils adjusted to the shadows.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d paid attention to a woman’s eyes. Or to the long sable lashes rimming them, or how the eyebrows weren’t exactly the same. One had a little notch at the top.

His fingertip landed on the mark, smoothed down the silky hairs that should have laid in one direction. The notch was actually a scar about an eighth-inch long. She’d gotten hurt somehow.

“Where’d that come from?”

“Hmm?” As if her brain were operating on a translation delay, her hand moved to his a few seconds later, fingers tracing along his until joining the tips against the spot over her scar.

“Right there. What’s that?”

“Oh.” She let her hand fall onto her lap. “I don’t know, exactly. I’ve had that scar since I was a toddler. My mother said there was a coffee table involved, and the coffee table won.”

“Poor thing.”

Her shoulder hitched upward in a bashful shrug. “I forgot to fill it in this morning.”

“Don’t really need to.” Imperfections made people more interesting to look at.

“Anyhow, umm . . . ” As Ben dropped his hand from her face, she took a breath. “The botanist . . . he wants to leave everything pristine and undisturbed, but I say the grounds are fair use, and as long as I’m conscientious and leave plenty behind for others, I’m in the right.”

“Well, I tend to agree.”

“Do you?” She peeked over the dashboard. “I’ve got to tell you, I like the way those words sound together. You’re speaking my love language.”

Love?

He scoffed inwardly.

Love had always been a distraction for Ben. He didn’t try to endear himself to people. He was what he was. But for some reason, he was all the more curious about what else about him Alex might like. Flattering her in such a small way was somehow exhilarating. He felt a lingering satisfaction from it.

“Simple lady, huh?” He laughed. “Maybe you shouldn’t trust me, though. I reckon your moral code ain’t gonna line up so well with mine.”

“Why the heck not?”

He pointed to himself. “Werewolf.”

“So?”

“Werewolves don’t always act like people. Sometimes, we gotta be a little more practical and say fuck the greater good.”

She gave him a long stare. So long he started to wonder if maybe he should revert to grunts. Grunts were ambiguous. Grunts were safer. He shouldn’t have opened his big mouth, but he was getting caught up in the give-and-take nature of the conversation. He was woefully unfiltered and way out of practice, but she didn’t seem too scandalized. Just distracted.

She straightened up like a prairie dog scanning for danger. Her gaze rapidly flitted to every corner of the windshield. “Oh, hell. It’s snowing.”

His lip curled back in disgust. “Gonna stick, you think?”

“Hard to say. The meteorologists are always bad at predicting anything for this area. They were calling for several hours of snow, though. Maybe we’ll get an inch, which’ll be enough to keep folks off the road until it melts.” She peered over the dashboard again. “Ugh, he’s still there. What is he doing?”

“Think he’s waiting on the snow to stop?”

“He’s stupid if he is. Wait. He turned the car on. Wipers are running and the brake light is lit.”

The truck windows had fogged enough for Ben to feel comfortable enough to sit up. “He’s backing out.”

“Be still for a minute or two. He might circle around.”

She watched intently through a tiny porthole she made in the condensation on her window, occasionally dragging her fingertips across the glass to clear the fog.

So focused. So . . . defiant.

She was trouble. A woman like her could probably confuse a man into thinking he didn’t need to breathe if she argued long enough.

No, not just any man, stupid. Just Ben, because he had werewolf Swiss cheese brain and the canine part of him that was supposed to keep him out of trouble didn’t have a hell of a lot to say. He was in wait-and-see mode, but wait-and-see felt a hell of a lot like the calm before the storm.

Was he the storm or was she?

“Okay. I’m going to run out there before the plants get too damp and covered,” she said. “I’m looking for two specific varieties. As long as they still have some leaves on them, I can figure out what they are, even if they’re dried out.” She pulled a couple of brown paper sacks from the glove compartment and blew them open.

“How much of each do you need?”

“How long is a piece of string?”

He grimaced.

“I know, I know, but more is obviously better than less. The sooner I can grow them, log them, and propagate them, the sooner I can add them to my catalog. I won’t be comfortable listing them if I can only stock a few packs.”

“How many seeds are you putting in each pack?”

“I’d planned on twenty.”

“Really?” He snorted and gave his head a patronizing shake. She could be more assertive than that, and she knew it. “Twenty?”

Her face crumbled. “Too few?”

“Too many. Woman, you’re only now starting out. Sell them little suckers four to a pack and tell folks you expect about half to be good. Price accordingly.”

“Interesting strategy,” she murmured, wrapping her fingers around the door handle.

He shrugged. “I don’t know a whole hell of a lot about gardening except for what I seen my mama do, but I know about ordering car parts. Nuts and bolts are ten for a dollar, but if you put Ferrari packaging around those same hunks of metal, you can sell them for a dollar each.”

“Huh.” She nodded slowly, gaze focused on nothing in particular as she opened the door.

The wind swept through the cab and sent a chill right through Ben’s pants to his male bits.

He groaned and opened his door. “Sugar, show me one of each of those plants, and let’s get this raid over with. The only thing I hate more than chocolate is snow.”

Alex put a hand over her chest and gasped. “How dare you?”

“I’m a Wolf. Chocolate’s poison.”

She pouted as though the very idea was worthy of a funeral. He couldn’t help but to laugh as he got out and closed the door.

“Don’t fret about me,” he said as they walked to the trailhead. “I get plenty of sweets.”

“Like what?”

“Lately? Fruitcake. It’s real good dipped in frosting. Sweetie makes cake balls out of it.”

Alex stopped in her tracks, tugged him by the coat sleeve, and glowered at him. “You’ve had this season’s fruitcake?”

She looked so harmless standing in front of him with fat snowflakes clinging to her hair and her eyelashes, but any woman compelling enough to make a shifter’s inner beast shut up was anything but harmless.

“Yeah.” He got her moving again. The less time spent in the elements, the better. “Had to sample what my hooch was going into.”

“So, you’re a bootlegger?”

“Yep. Fourth generation. Got other job titles, too, but the one I’m concerned with at this moment is plant bandit, so where they at?”

She passed a haphazard, four-rock cairn and darted into the weeds. She waved him in. “Come on. Ground’s pretty dry.”

“Taking your word for it.” He hoped she exercised a little more caution during the summer. Reckless roaming like that was a good way to get one’s self gnawed on by snakes and other things with venom.

Kneeling, she shook a bit of snow off one dried-out plant. “Blackfoot daisy,” she said as she snapped off a step containing a seed head. “I have other samples, but not from here. I suspect these will be hardier than the pathetic specimens I have.” She moved farther off-trail and bent in front of a short, bushy plant. “Mock vervain. We’ll be lucky to find any seeds still on that. Butterflies love them. Any plant that draws pollinators to a yard is a good one. So few bees around anymore.”

“Not a problem I’ve got.” He knelt and raked his keen gaze over the desiccated stems in search of the swollen pods. “I keep bees. Sell the honey.”

She swiveled around again and put that shocked-and-awed stare on him. “You have bees?”

He shrugged and held out a palm full of seed pods. Easy to find with vision as good as his.

Gaping, she held open one of the brown bags.

“Got a bunch of side hustles. Beekeeper is one.”

“I want bees.”

“And seeds?” He held out some more and stood. Looked like there was another of those vervain things a couple of yards away.

“Well, you’re just a regular renaissance Wolf, aren’t you?”

“No, sugar, I’m a Wolf who’s not wearing drawers and who’s about to freeze his balls off.”

One more seedpod. Hopefully, she’d be able to get them to sprout. He knew what it was like starting from nothing. Guys in his family were always looking for new hustles. Bootlegging was a family business—he hadn’t had to waste too many brain cells devising his own system for that, but running the auto shop? Starting those hives? Selling off all that extra firewood every winter? He’d had to figure out those things on his own. Diversification kept him out of the poorhouse. He’d been dirt poor before. He didn’t like that shit, and it was a state he did all he could to keep his immediate family free of. Working for Clarissa bound his hands somewhat on being able to start new ventures, but he wouldn’t have changed a thing. He couldn’t imagine ever being prouder about his work—or prouder of himself. Every sacrifice he’d made had been worth it.

“There’s another daisy plant over there.” Alex pointed to the mound and moved away.

He got to work picking, squatting low and putting his back to the wind, looking up occasionally when one of her bags crinkled.

“I think that’s enough for today,” she said when he dropped about thirty more heads into the bags. “Ground’s getting wet and we’re going to leave footprints. I don’t want to leave tracks for that doofus to find.”

“Plus, it’s cold.”

“Mmm. That, too.” She was already heading back toward the truck, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to second-guess that decision.

“Wish we could stay longer and go in deeper,” she murmured. “If I could take my time and come out with a magnifying glass and my specimen book, I might find some I don’t already have. I know they’re out here.”

“Another day, then.”

“Maybe. I’m not used to having anyone to tag along and watch my back.”

“Really? You shouldn’t be out here in the desert alone at any time of day. You need to get you a partner in crime.”

“I used to have two. One got married, and the other decided to become a cowgirl.”

He grunted. He understood. “That’ll happen to you, too. Either gonna get married to a man or to your work, and your friends’ll whine and whine they never see you. Mine sure do, especially since Calvin sent me to Clarissa.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said quietly. “Hard to imagine when I’m the one on the outside.”

“Not always gonna be on the outside. And being at the end of the line don’t mean you won’t get what’s due to you. Be patient. You’ll get what you deserve, sugar.”

She seemed to be pondering that. The crease between her eyes deepened as she got the truck started and heat cranked up.

There was an odd smell emanating from something under the hood, but he wasn’t going to knock it. He was going to cross his fingers and pray to the wolf goddess that they made their way back to Maria in one piece. He could give Alex another lecture the moment she parked.

Ben’s inner wolf gave him a little psychic nudge.

What the hell is she thinking, driving around in a hunk of junk like this?

Not only was it a waste of money, but the truck wasn’t safe for her. She could get hurt. She could freeze to death or something if the thing gave out on a back road somewhere.

That wasn’t right.

She didn’t want to hear another man telling her “I told you so,” so he wasn’t going to say that.

Tugging his seatbelt across his body, he decided he didn’t have to say it.

He’d loan her his vintage Chevy if he had to. It didn’t have air conditioning, but it ran like a dream and didn’t smell like a lemon-scented promise of disaster.