Crossroads

Chapter 7

Nick reread the same paragraph for the fifth time and tossed her paperback on the coffee table with a groan. “I can’t concentrate, and I’m terrible company. I should just go to work.”

“And leave me all alone?” Derek peered at her over the screen of his laptop. “I’m almost done answering email.”

“I’m losing my mind.” She needed to be doing something useful. She needed to be at the safe house with Michelle.

But Jackson and Alec had warned them that the last thing they should do was traipse back and forth constantly, potentially leading people from the city to the remote location where Michelle and Aaron were staying.

“It’s for the best, Nicky,” Jackson had told her. “Just for a few days.”

A few days. It had been less than one, and she was already going crazy.

Nick sat up on the sofa and took a deep breath, then released it in one long, slow exhalation. “How are you at poker? I’ve seen you play at the bar a few times, but I don’t know if you’re any good.”

“Not bad.” His gaze dropped to his computer again as he typed something. “I quit playing with Kat though. Between the statistical analysis and the fact that you can’t bluff her, it’s completely pointless.”

“You should have known better than that anyway.” She studied Derek’s bent head and relished the tingle of attraction that bloomed inside her. “Have you noticed it’s not so bad anymore? The attraction?” It came out wrong, so she tried again. “It’s not so primal, I mean. Mindless.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” But his grin was teasing. “The mindless part seems to come and go, but it hasn’t been uncontrollable at least.”

She wished she could give him a lighthearted reassurance, but she couldn’t hide her solemnity. “Because we stopped fighting it. We made our claims on each other.”

“Ah.” After a few more clacking keystrokes, he closed his laptop and set it aside. “As enjoyable as frantic sex on the kitchen floor was, I’m glad.”

“Me too.” She’d meant to tell him it was all right for those claims to be short term, that it wouldn’t hurt her feelings if they didn’t last. The words wouldn’t come. “I’m glad too.”

He reached out and smoothed a finger down her forehead and along the bridge of her nose. “You’re frowning and getting cute little wrinkles.”

It would have been easy to relax into his touch and encourage more. To forget words. “Do you know me, Derek? Who I really am, not what most people see?”

“Hell, Nicky. I’ve spent so much of the last two years trying not to look at you that I don’t even know what most people see.” His finger followed the same path again. “Alec says the mating urge is like a blind date with better sex. You have to do the getting-to-know-you part after you remember where you left your clothes.”

“Alec is a little bit of a pig, but he’s not wrong.”

“So?” He tapped her in the middle of the forehead. “Poker. Strip poker. Strip poker with revealing personal questions?”

Not quite what she’d had in mind, but appealing all the same. “You’re not wearing enough layers to make that fair, baby.”

“I’m not planning on losing.”

“That’s what they all say.”

Five minutes and a winning hand later, Nick slapped her hand on the coffee table. “Give me a shoe and tell me what you wanted to be when you grew up.”

He leaned down and tugged at the laces on his left boot. “I wanted to own a restaurant. Be one of those crotchety but brilliant chefs.”

“Brilliant, yes. Eccentric, maybe.” She grinned at him. “But you’re not crotchety.”

“Oh, I could have been.” He got the boot off and dropped it to the floor. “However, when I was sixteen I had teenage rebellion and decided it was unmanly to follow in my mother’s footsteps.”

“Hence the hard hat and construction boots. I see.”

His eyes twinkled. “It’s very manly.”

“Indeed.” She pushed the cards across the table so he could deal the next hand. “I wanted to be a princess, until I realized that I sort of already was. Then I wanted to be anything else in the world.”

“Like a bar owner in New Orleans?” He shuffled with quick, efficient movements, his gaze on her face instead of the cards. “How’d you end up with the bar, anyway? I mean, you bought it from Mahalia, obviously, but what made you do it?”

Nick shrugged. “May was looking to retire, and it seemed like a solid investment.” More than that, she’d been fascinated by the mix of patrons—witches and wizards, psychics and shifters. Everyone mingling, no one making judgments. “I liked how everyone could go there. It didn’t matter who they were. I hadn’t seen a lot of that before I came here.”

He dealt the cards with the same careless grace. “I’ve noticed. I send Andrew on business trips these days. He doesn’t have to worry about getting challenged by shapeshifters.”

Derek had had a hard time of it, and it made her feel ashamed, as though she could control their society. But she couldn’t, so she changed the subject. “Anything you want to know? I’m feeling more generous with the information than with the clothes at the moment.”

“Hmm. Favorite food?” He looked sneaky. Devious.

“Pepper steak,” Nick answered absently. “What are you plotting?”

“Dinner.”

“Reason number sixty-five to keep you around,” she teased. Her cards sucked, so she threw in two and hoped for better ones. “I’m still going to win though.”

It wasn’t even close. Before long, she’d only lost her shoes and shirt, but Derek was down to his boxers…and she was holding three kings and an ace. “You are so screwed, mister.”

Derek waggled his eyebrows at her. “How do you know I’m not cheating?”

“Because there are easier and more expedient ways to get naked if that’s what you want?”

“I thought easy and expedient was our problem.” He ran his fingers over the top of his cards and eyed her. “I want more answers. First kiss. Tell me.”

Nick swallowed. “Nate Kelly. He was the housekeeper’s son, and Michelle and I practically grew up with him. I was sixteen.”

“Shapeshifter?”

“Human. Psychic, actually.” She laid her cards on the table. “His abilities didn’t manifest until a year later. My father looked high and low for someone to help him but, that late, there wasn’t much to be done.”

She saw sympathy in Derek’s gaze. “It was rough with Kat. She was reading people’s emotions before she could walk, and thank God that’s all she could do. Her powers spiked during puberty, right before our parents died, and she was still unstable when I took over as her guardian. The tutor I found for her said that if she hadn’t built a strong foundation growing up, the shock could have killed her.”

The shock had killed Nate, slowly but surely. First, it had driven him crazy. Then, it had driven him to suicide. “How old were you when the accident happened?”

“Twenty-four.” His voice was a little rough. “Kat had just turned seventeen and started college. She looked all grown-up on paper, so it wasn’t hard to convince them to let her stay with me, but… Well, you know Kat.”

“She’s a handful?” She tried to imagine barely being more than a kid herself, losing both her parents to a car crash and finding herself suddenly responsible for a teenaged cousin. Her heart ached for him, and she reached for his hand. “You did a good job, Derek.”

“I did as well as I could.” He tugged at her hand, pulling until she slid into his lap, seated sideways with her legs stretched out along the couch. He curled both arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder, his breath tickling her neck. “I resented it for a long time. Obviously there’s some sort of magic or psychic power or whatever in our family, but my mom and I were human, and my father might as well have been. But Kat’s mother… She was involved in some crazy shit. Psychic cult shit.”

“People look for answers. Things to believe in.”

“I guess. Kat’s dad kept her out of it, mostly. He and my father understood each other. My aunt was crazy, and they were her brother and her husband. They thought they could make it better. Or make her better. In the end all it did was get the four of them killed.”

A shiver took her, and Nick pulled away enough to look into his eyes. “It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

She’d never seen him look so tired. “I was trying to get custody of Kat. I couldn’t exactly tell the police that I thought a telekinetic might have sent their car through the guard rail.”

And there it was, the sad reality of supernatural life. As choking and rigidly structured as wolf society was, at least there was a structure, a ruling body to which one could appeal for help. Derek would have had no one. “I’m sorry.”

He pressed his forehead to hers. “Jackson and Alec looked into it after Kat started working for them, but it had been two years by that point. I guess there’s a file in their office somewhere… Kat went through a phase where she was pretty obsessed with it, but all I wanted to do was keep her from following the trail back to whatever cult her mom was tangled up in.”

“I don’t blame you.” Kat was strong, and there were plenty of supernatural groups—essentially terrorists—who would gladly twist her abilities to suit their goals. “She’s had enough tragedy. You both have.”

“That’s life, I guess. Finding the good stuff in the tragedy. The supernatural world blows, except for the awesome people you can meet. Like hot shapeshifting bar owners.”

“Are we back to easy and expedient?” She nuzzled his cheek. “What about your first kiss? I want to know.”

“Jennifer…something.” He laughed. “We used to spend part of the summer in Boston, visiting Kat’s parents. I was fifteen and had just shot up to six feet, and Kat’s babysitter was a smoking sixteen-year-old. I convinced her I was twenty, and she thought I was hot shit. Then she found out how old I really was and never spoke to me again. You women and your older men. You break a guy’s heart.”

She couldn’t resist teasing him. “Uh-huh. So you’d rather I went and found someone younger, that’s what you’re saying?”

He nipped her lower lip. “Miraculously enough, I find myself more forgiving of the trend as I grow older.”

“I wonder why.”

“Like I said, it’s mysterious.”

“Not so much.” She studied him, curious. “First love.”

His body tensed, just for a second. Even after he relaxed, his laughter sounded forced, his voice strained. “I thought I was in love once. We’d been together a year when my parents died, and she was great through all of it…until I told her I had to come back to New Orleans. She was human. I couldn’t explain why Kat had to stay here.” He shrugged one shoulder, the muscles bunching under her hand. “It got ugly. She got mean. It went to hell so fast maybe it was never love at all.”

He hurt, and Nick wanted to make it stop. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s okay.” The corner of his mouth ticked up. “It means I understand that you have to help Michelle. That’s what good people do. They take care of the ones who need them.”

It was one thing they had in common—responsibility to others. “It still sucks sometimes.”

“Yeah, it sure the hell does.” He stroked his thumb along the side of her neck. “What about you? Any ex-boyfriends gonna come after me?”

There had been casual dates and a few steady ones, but nothing important. Nothing like Derek. “I haven’t had much time. I don’t have a general manager at the bar, so I’ve been handling most of the day-to-day stuff myself.”

“By choice? Or because the bar can’t support a manager?”

“Mahalia didn’t have one, and I guess I just haven’t gotten around to hiring one yet.”

“So if you found someone interesting enough to make time…” He flashed her a wicked grin. “We could have a date outside the house some time. One where we keep our clothes on.”

“Hey, that was my plan all along, before life intervened.”

“I’m derivative.” His fingers tickled up her back, brushing along the line of her bra. “I’m also considering stealing your bra.”

Nick reached back and slapped at his hand. “You didn’t earn this lingerie. You lost the game.”

“It wouldn’t be stealing if I’d earned it.”

“Thief.” She didn’t care. She just wanted to kiss him.

So she did, his jaw first and then his lips. His fingers crept back up to her bra strap, and he unhooked it as his tongue teased just inside her mouth.

Nick bit his lower lip and pulled away. “Ready to admit to your ulterior motives?” she asked softly against his ear.

“I wasn’t aware they were very ulterior.” The wet heat of his tongue dragged along her jaw, and he laughed, low and dirty. “The mating urge may not be scrambling my brain at the moment, but I’m still a man with a really hot chick in his lap.”

“I was talking about the strip poker.” At least, she thought so. It was hard to remember with his tongue on her skin.

He found the sensitive spot above her pulse. “Does anyone suggest strip poker for innocent reasons?”

The telephone interrupted Nick’s answer, and she groaned. “Hold that thought.” She handed him her lace bra. “And this too.”

He yanked her back and nipped her neck once, then released her. “If we weren’t at Shapeshifter Alert Level One, I’d rip the phone out of the wall.”

“If something happens, Jackson or Alec will call my cell. It’s got to be work.”

It turned out to be Phillip, the closest thing she had to a bar manager, with the minor crisis of a missed delivery. Nick mouthed an apology to Derek, who pouted ridiculously for two seconds before tossing her bra at her.

She caught it and headed into her small home office to handle the call. She knew she shouldn’t resent the intrusion—the bar was her business, her livelihood, and Phillip needed her guidance. But, for the first time in forever, she had the chance to spend time alone with Derek. It was the sort of thing she’d sacrifice for her sister or Aaron, but she was loath to do it for anything else.

Life had settled into the most surreal mimicry of normal Derek had ever experienced, and it was driving him more than a little crazy.

Alec and Jackson maintained their insistence that they avoid any unnecessary travel between New Orleans and the safe house. Jackson was the only one who could be completely sure he’d shaken any followers—magically, Derek assumed, though no one had come right out and said as much. Nick had been reduced to endless phone calls with her sister and long, hushed conversations with Mahalia, whose continued presence in New York was starting to make sense.

Derek couldn’t concentrate on work. He had no damn idea how Nick kept dealing with the bar. Every time the phone rang they both tensed, but after three days of waiting, he was starting to realize they hadn’t been kidding when they talked about how slowly the Conclave moved. Aaron and Michelle could have fled to New Orleans on a tricycle and still gotten there before anyone made a move.

Talking. Sitting and talking and waiting, and the only thing that made the days tolerable was the fact that Nick had hardly left his side. They’d skirted the issue, as if she was as unprepared to acknowledge the insanity of it as he was. But not discussing it didn’t change it.

Instinct had taken over, and they were along for the ride.

They ended up at his house on the second night, and Derek dragged Nick out of bed in the morning before the phone could ring and shatter the illusion that the world held just the two of them. “Coffee,” he said, pushing a steaming mug into her hand. “Drink it and don’t be grumpy. I need my sous-chef on top of her game.”

“I’m not a morning person.” She gulped the coffee. “Are you a morning person? This could pose a problem.”

“I never used to be.” He moved across the kitchen and retrieved his battered old cookbook from the cupboard above the stove. “Something about the heightened senses I have now. The damn birds wake me up. You can hear them a half mile away.”

Nick yawned and slid onto a barstool by the counter. “I’ve never known anything else, I guess. It doesn’t bother me.”

“Maybe someday I’ll get used to it.” He carried the book to the island and set it down in front of her. “This is something very special. Don’t tell Kat I’m letting you look at it, because she’s not allowed to touch it thanks to page fourteen.”

Nick arched an eyebrow and flipped to the page. “What the hell?”

The dark text was illegible, obscured by smeared ink and formulas scrawled in bright purple, but Derek knew the recipe underneath by heart. Hot chocolate, the rich, decadent kind his mother had made when someone needed cheering up.

He ran a finger along the edge of the crinkled page and smiled. “I was already away at college, and Kat was living with my parents for a few months while her mom had one of her episodes. She must have been about twelve and, with me gone, my mom was looking for someone else to cook with, I guess.”

“And Kat had a problem with the…” she laughed and peered down at the page, “…hot chocolate recipe?”

“Uh-huh. She decided to try the recipe for herself one day…after she made some adjustments to the proportions. Apparently was better at math than cooking. The way I hear it something blew up and from then on bonding was restricted to talking about books.”

“How exactly does one make chocolate explode?”

“Got me.” He flipped a few pages, looking for another familiar recipe. “She splattered milk and chocolate all over the kitchen, and my mom grounded her for writing in the sacred book.”

She trailed her fingers over the inside edge of the cover. “This was your mother’s?”

“My grandmother’s first. They added to it, altered it, glued in new pages and glued over things they didn’t like.” He found the waffle recipe and flipped the book around so she could read it. “Best waffles ever made, right there.”

“The ones you made the other morning?” Her smile was predatory. “Those were fabulous.”

“Damn right they were.” He had the recipe memorized, so he didn’t look before moving to the cupboards to start pulling down ingredients. “Now you’re going to make them.”

She snorted. “Did you forget the part where I can’t cook? I suck at it.”

“So you’ll try again.” He tossed the flour onto the counter. “You can do it, baby. I’ve got faith.”

“So did Mrs. Kelly. She spent fifteen years trying to teach me.”

“I’ll just have to try creative incentives.”

“Sounds dirty.”

“Probably because it is.” Though if he didn’t stop thinking about it, they’d skip breakfast again.

There had been something incredibly satisfying, something primal, about having her in his bed. If he hadn’t pulled her out of it, they might have ended up spending the morning naked and groping each other like horny college kids.

Derek gathered the sugar and baking powder and turned, and his heart kicked up into his throat when she smiled at him over the rim of her coffee cup. Sweet, a little goofy, and so very, very Nick. It wasn’t the wolf who wanted to sweep her off the stool and hold her close.

So maybe it wasn’t all instinct.

Maybe she heard the way his heart skipped, or maybe his expression revealed his thoughts. Either way, a soft look came into her eyes, and her smile gentled. “Thank you, Derek. For being here, and being you.”

He cleared his throat and dropped the ingredients onto the counter. “The supernatural world makes dating an adventure, huh? At least I’m not having to chase you all over the country like Jackson and Mac.”

“No, you’re just having to abandon your life in order to keep me sane.”

“Not really.” Though maybe he shouldn’t tell her how little of a life he’d had to abandon. “I was supposed to be on vacation already, remember?”

“Exactly.” She toyed with a dry measuring cup. “This can’t be very restful.”

“Restful’s overrated.” Derek grinned and shoved the flour toward her. “You can apologize until you’re blue in the face, but I’m still making you cook. Cowgirl up, Peyton.”

“All right.” Nick rose and studied the ingredients he’d already laid out. “Just remember, though, that you asked for it.”

The first batch tasted like baking soda, and the second was so runny they couldn’t even cook them. Derek thought she might have had it with the third batch, but the celebratory kiss turned into dirty, celebratory sex against the counter, and they forgot to unplug the waffle iron this time.

By the time they actually got breakfast on the table, it was nearly ten in the morning and the kitchen looked like Kat had performed one of her doomed high school science experiments in it. Derek ignored it and drenched the waffles in maple syrup, then handed the bottle to Nick. “Told you so.”

She’d already torn off a corner of her waffle for a taste test. “Mmm, nowhere near as good as yours, but not bad.”

“Just takes practice. So what’s your plan for today? Didn’t Jackson say he’d take you out to visit your sister?”

“This afternoon. He has to come back to the city anyway, and he said he’d drop by and we could follow him out there.”

We. Instinctive pleasure was more satisfying than the damn waffles. “Good. Anything we should take?”

She shook her head as she reached for her coffee. “I don’t think so. They should be pretty well stocked on everything.”

Except hope, but he couldn’t pick a bag of that up at the corner market. If Derek was climbing out of his skin half the time, he couldn’t imagine what life was like for Aaron, trapped in a tiny house with a pregnant lover and a death sentence over his head.

It put a damper on his enjoyment of the waffles. “Any news from New York? Or Alec?”

“Not yet. It looks like Enrica bought the story about me needing time to think about—about Luciano’s proposal.”

His fingers tightened, but he didn’t shatter the coffee mug in a blind, instinctive rage. Progress. “That’s good right?”

“It bought us some time, and we need it, if only to make them believe I’m getting desperate enough to walk away from all the power they crave.” Her hand slid over his. “What matters now is what happens next.”

He liked the feel of her skin on his, the soft, casual brush of her fingers. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles, inhaling the scent that was slowly becoming as familiar as his own. “Then eat up, Nicky. We’ve got places to be.”