“I was thinking more along the lines of the cleaners or the witness who discovered whatever it is we’re about to see, but good to know.”
A grimace twisted his features. “Beg pardon.”
He got out, and I sighed into the empty cab. “Men.”
“I heard that,” he said through the window.
Contrition was difficult to fake, but I like to think I managed as he opened the door for me.
“Gwyllgi tend to get protective fast, both the male and the female of the species,” he explained. “Midas paired us up, and that’s that as far as my inner wild man is concerned. I don’t mean to snap and snarl, but those same instincts make it hard when another male is encroaching on my territory, so to speak.”
“You haven’t snapped or snarled.” I gave credit where it was due. “You’ve been downright kind to me, but you will have to work on your Midas fixation. I’m starting to think you’ve got a crush on him.”
“All that golden hair, those flowing locks…” Ford batted his eyelashes. “He’s so dreamy.”
Despite the reason for our early-morning trip, I burst out laughing. “You’re horrible.”
“Yeah, well. Every pretty girl wants an equally pretty boy, and he’s as pretty as they come. I don’t have to want to date him to be honest with myself. Doesn’t hurt I’ve heard dozens of lovelorn women ticking off his attributes over the years. I could recite them for you, and you could write them down. Just think of all the time you’d save not making your own list.”
“Jealousy is poison.” I gentled my tone to avoid coming off as reprimanding. “It warps your outlook on life and the object of your envy.”
“Voice of experience?”
“Oh, yeah. I had a friend like yours. The best, the brightest. I wanted everything she had. Her magic, her status, her family, her whole life. I made a bad bargain to get a poor imitation.”
Tension shot through his shoulders. “Not with Linus?”
“No, not with Linus.” Ford must have superpowers that caused you to blab your darkest secrets. That, or I had starved myself for companionship until I was ravenous enough to vent a year’s worth—a lifetime’s worth—in one go. “He saved me, in more ways than you can imagine.”
As his posture relaxed, he pointed toward the creek. “That’s our destination.”
A petite woman stood where he indicated, arms crossed over her frail chest, delicate hands cupping her opposite elbows, bony fingertips digging into delicate skin.
“That’s Bonnie Diaz.”
I jerked my head toward him. “The same Bonnie from the Faraday?”
“Yeah. She’s Midas’s new PA. He’s not thrilled about it, but she has office experience. She suggested it, and he didn’t have the heart to turn down the offer.”
Mud had soaked through the hem of the ankle-length dress she wore, cream with tiny pink flowers, and her shoes were ruined. Her cardigan was a complementary petal-pink shade, and her hair was bunned up so tight it gave me a headache looking at her. Her face was scarred, a cruel swipe of claws across one cheek, but she was lovely, and she trembled when she spotted Ford.
“I got a t-t-tip.” Head down, she kept her eyes averted. “I followed up before bothering anyone.”
Ford gawked at her. “Alone?”
Bonnie curved her shoulders inward, making herself even smaller, and whispered, “Yes.”
I couldn’t say why I did it, except I had often wished for help that never came, that I never dared ask for, but I stepped between them and wrapped a supportive arm around her narrow shoulders.
“Ford isn’t mad at you,” I soothed in tones that would have calmed me back then. “He’s just worried. No one wants to see you get hurt.”
Happy to plaster herself against my side, she turned her face into my shirt.
“I didn’t want to lose my job,” she mumbled against me. “I just got hired, and I need it to stay in the pack. Everyone has to contribute. Everyone. Alpha Tisdale told me so. If it had been a crank call and Midas came out for nothing, he might…”
The sentence hung there unfinished, and I hoped I read her implication wrong.
“Midas doesn’t hurt women.” I repeated what he’d said to me because I believed it. I wasn’t sure how she could doubt him after spending any amount of time with him, but past trauma had a way of coloring the present in shades of the familiar. “You come tell me if that ever changes.”
“I c-c-can’t do that.” She shivered at the sound of his name, or maybe at the thought of standing up for herself, and she burrowed close enough it felt like I gained a second heartbeat. “You’re not p-p-pack.”
“You’re right. I’m not. I’m the POA’s apprentice. I operate outside pack law. That means if the pack ever gives you trouble, right on up to the alpha, you come to me, and I’ll keep you safe. I will set you up with a new job and arrange a place for you to live.”
The Office of the Potentate did more than enforce Society law. We protected all those who were subject to them, regardless of species, when those same laws failed them.
“Okay,” she breathed, barely a whisper.
Remembering the empty lot, I asked, “Did you take a Swyft?”
“I shifted and ran.” She plucked at her ruined dress. “I’m stronger that way.”
She was braver than she knew, reckless too, but I wasn’t about to kick her for it when it was obvious life had knocked her around enough.
“There’s a bench over there.” I pointed down the path winding back toward the parking lot. “How about you wait for us, and when we finish up, we’ll give you a lift wherever you need to go?”
Peeking up at me, she wet her lips. “You’re sure you don’t m-m-mind?”
“Not at all.” I winked at her. “It’s not my truck. It’s his.” I laughed at Ford’s pinched expression. “What’s a little mud between friends?”
“Friends?” she repeated with so much hope I didn’t have the heart to tell her she had misunderstood.
“Yeah. Friends.” I patted her bony shoulder awkwardly. “Sure. Why not?”
Bonnie was strong, ridiculously strong, as I learned when she hugged me until my head threatened to pop off like a cork stopping a bottle of shaken champagne. “Thank you.”
“Go on.” I pried her off me and shooed her in the right direction. “We won’t be long.”
With a quiver in her limbs, she padded to the bench where she sat facing us. The bright intensity of her stare made my spine prickle when I turned, giving the absurd impression she was watching my back when a strong breeze would knock her off her feet.
“You handled that well.” Ford toed off his boots, rolled his jeans up over his ankles, then stepped down into the shallows. I took the high road, keeping to the edge of the shore, and left him the wet one. “Her fear makes it tough to spend much time with her. Her timidity makes our submissives withdrawn, which draws out the protective streaks in our dominants, and you wouldn’t believe how fast those brawls turn ugly.”
Given her reaction to males of the species, I could imagine. “Who hurt her?”