Her hand smacks over her mouth as she tries to hide a laugh, her gaze raking over me as though she can see the orange underwear beneath my clothes.
Damn, she’s gorgeous.
Her cheeks redden slightly before she looks away, gazing at the path in front of us as she asks, “You always wear boxer briefs?”
Immediately, I realize she’s recalling last night, when I stumbled downstairs half-asleep. Nearly naked. “Not always, but I could be persuaded to,” I quip and then immediately panic that I’ve let my mouth run away unsupervised again.
Fuck. Was that too much?
I glance down only to see a slightly embarrassed, but definitely heated, cockeyed grin on her face. She changes the subject but her tone stays light and her eyes keep a glimmer of that banked heat I just witnessed as she asks, “So, if you’re a restaurant owner and not a chef, what do you do with your days?”
“Paperwork. Endless damned paperwork,” I reply with a sigh, imagining how full my inbox is going to be when I finally do go back to the office. I took a week off the morning after we bit her, and it’s going to be insane when I return.
“You mean it’s not all glamorous taste-testings? You’re ruining my fantasy.” She has the world’s cutest pouty face, that lower lip jutting out temptingly.
I laugh. “Well, at the end of the day, even dream jobs are jobs, right?”
“So true. I thought when I started at a clinic, it would be me saving all the animals and having them follow me around with big doe eyes and loving me forever.”
“It’s not?”
Her lips press together into a wavering sort of frown. “There’s some of that, but there’s a heck of a lot more peopling than I ever realized. Animals, I’m good with; people…well, they’re trickier.”
“I get that. I imagine, in any kind of service industry, you go up against challenging personalities, whether that’s cooking a meal for someone or taking care of their pet.”
“Right you are, sir,” Noah agrees with a soft smile that fades too quickly. “The fussy pet parents aren’t the hardest part though,” she confesses as she plucks a few needles from a nearby pine and runs them through her fingers, her gaze pensive. “It’s the loss that surprised me. I never gave much thought to all the sorrow and anguish I’d be a part of with my job. Yeah, there’s the fun stuff, the puppies and kittens and other unusual animals. But more often than not, I have to deliver bad news. I have to help people say goodbye to the one precious soul in this world that they love above all others. And that’s…hard.”
“Brutal,” I agree.
I desperately want to eviscerate the heartache in her face when she glances up at me. I want to pull her into a hug. My shifter side wants to nuzzle her close and let her smell my scent to calm herself, but I don’t want to overstep here. I take a deep breath and try to pull together words to comfort her instead of touches.
“It’s a profound thing you do. You offer a sense of peace and respect when someone’s world is crashing down around them. Ending pain and suffering isn’t easy.”
She nods solemnly and I sigh.
“Sometimes, I worry that what I do isn’t enough. The rest of my family are enforcers, you know—”
“What’s that?” she asks.
“Pack protectors.” Noah’s clueless expression has me biting back a chuckle. “Ummm…like pack soldiers?”
“Got it,” Noah responds, processing. “Why’d you choose a different route?”
I shrug. “When the twins were born, everything was so chaotic. I’d been messing around in the kitchen and helping out a little, but then it just became a necessity. Mom had a brood of wild kids and pack stuff she was in charge of, two of our dads were always on patrol at any given time. Things were falling through the cracks, so I stepped up to help. Then they appreciated it. Noticed me, you know? I liked when any of my fathers would clap me on the back and tell me ‘Well done’ and stuff like that.”
“Mmmm,” Noah’s response is muted and makes me sneak yet another glance at her. I wish she was projecting her thoughts right now so that I’d better know where we stand. Where I stand.
The light glints off her hair and—it might be my imagination—but her shoulders seem more relaxed than before. Her expression is thoughtful as she replies, “I may bring peace when someone’s world is breaking, but you bring the joy. People go to your restaurant to celebrate. You create a space for them to do that. That’s a different kind of magic all on its own.”
We come to my favorite spot on the property just then.
It’s a small clearing surrounded by trees but set on a slight rise above the lake. At the crest of the hill, there’s a series of square wooden posts with a small awning overhead connecting them. A worn red porch swing hangs from the awning, gently rocking in the breeze. Sitting on the swing gives the perfect view of sunset on the lake, and the house is tucked back at an angle so that it can’t be seen from here, giving the illusion of utter privacy. I’ve spent many evenings alone in this very spot, and somehow, it seems like the perfect retreat for this moment, the perfect thing to share with Noah.
“After you.” I gesture to the swing.
“Thank you.”
She sits down at one end, and I take the other. We rock in comfortable silence for a few minutes, watching the sun roll down over the treetops on the far side of the lake, drizzling them with drops of yellow.
“Tell me something good about shifting,” she requests, interrupting the buzz of the insects around us.
I press my lips together and use my heels to gently propel the swing back and forth while I try to decide on just one thing. “Running,” I finally say.
“Running? That’s it?” Her tone is skeptical.
Searching for an explanation, I glance over at her as I try to piece together words to explain something so much better than any description could be. “When you shift and run, your thoughts are just…free in a way that you never experience as a person. All those worries you carry at the back of your mind, the ones that never really go away, fade. Self-consciousness? Gone. Day-to-day stress rolls right off your fur. It’s just existence in its purest form. It’s you pushing yourself to your limits, finding out what you’re capable of, opening yourself completely to your instincts and power. It’s life changing.”
I can tell a bit of cheesy excitement has crept into my tone, and I bite my lip and shake my head at myself.
“Sorry. That sounded like a fucking sales pitch. It’s hard to explain. Perth is better at helping make sense of it all because he teaches it…” I trail off, feeling a little awkward and vulnerable.
Her eyes stare steadily up at me as she tries to conceive of something that’s clearly foreign to her and hard to understand. Finally, she gives a slow nod. “Running. Okay. Thanks. That actually sounds nice. I have something to look forward to then.” A soft smile curves her cheeks.
I turn back to the lake, trying to contain the tiny flicker of excitement dancing in my belly—because this is the first time I’ve heard her talk about shifting without an edge of fear or contempt.