“Macadamia nut and white chocolate chip,” Johnny said. “Made ’em myself just today.” He offered her his hand. “I’m Johnny.”
Nana shifted the basket and accepted his hand readily. His tattoos didn’t faze her at all. It made me wonder why they disturbed me so much.
“I’m Demeter. Demeter Alcmedi.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Demeter.” He properly put the emphasis on the first syllable, as she had in introducing herself. She always hated it when people made her name sound like a Frenchman asking for a yardstick, duh-ME-tur. He was definitely racking up brownie points with her. Didn’t she know he was a wærewolf? She could usually tell right away. “The cookies are for after dinner, though. I hope you like General Tso’s Chicken.”
“My favorite! Did you tell him, Seph?”
“No.” I didn’t eat meat, so I began to wonder what he’d gotten for me. “Kitchen’s all the way back.” I pointed down the hallway.
He carried the bag on to the kitchen, boots thumping and chains clinking. Nana was smoothing her hair again. “Did I get it?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I laughed quietly.
“What?” she asked.
“He brought Chinese. I guess you’re eating out of a box anyway.”
“This is different.” She patted her basket happily and carried it down the hall.
When I joined them, Johnny had put his leather jacket on the back of a chair and started taking out the white paper cartons at the dinette table with two chairs on one side, a bench on the other. I got down the mismatched kitchen plates and grabbed some flatware from the drawer. “Uh-uh,” Johnny said, wagging a finger at me. “You have to eat with chopsticks.”
I gave him a dubious look; he countered with a defiant one. “Okay,” I conceded, “just don’t be too harsh when I’m wearing my dinner.”
He glanced sidelong at Nana placing her basket out of the way on the countertop by the sink and whispered to me, “If you get messy, I promise, I’ll clean you up personally.”
In the instant it took for my cheeks to warm, the image of him licking sweet-and-sour sauce off my cheek filled the cinema in my head. I couldn’t move.
Johnny took a plate from my hands and began dumping one of the cartons onto it. “You’re vegetarian, aren’t you?” he asked in normal tones, as if to cover up that he’d whispered to me.
I swallowed and wished I could pull the heat from my face as easily. “Yeah.”
“I couldn’t stand not having a couple of thick and juicy filet mignons, rare, with lots of peppercorns. Mmmm. Love it.”
Having figured him as a porterhouse type, I made a mental note. I’d promised him treats.
“Here you are, Demeter.” He sat the plate before her and came back to serve up another little box. He noticed the big oak dining set in the room beyond. “Oh, you have a dining room. Should we eat in there?”
“No. I never use it,” I said.
He shrugged. “Okay.”
“How’d you know I was vegetarian?”
His eyebrows jumped up and down, and he acted like he was locking his lips shut with a key. Then he quipped, “Celia told me.”
Celia was the first wære I ever knew. After the attack, I thought she and Erik were going to die—everyone did—but they both made it. Then we found out about their lunar furriness. I helped them find a safe house to spend their full moons in. When I bought this place, we fixed the cellar for them. At first it was just the band, but as she met more wolves and brought them along, we kept adding kennels. It was practically a pack now.
Celia was filling the cages as fast as we could renovate the space for them. The wæres brought pizza and beer and pretty much partied in the storm cellar until the change happened. Listening to them talk about the ups and downs of wæredom shaped my column topics. They each paid me twenty bucks a night for kenneling services and a continental breakfast of Krispy Kremes. Since that seemed to be the doughnut of choice for all wære-creatures, I’d bet the company’s sales always spiked before full moons. “Celia,” I repeated.
Johnny stopped serving and faced me squarely. “I asked her a lot of things about you.” He was very close. Though he’d kenneled here for six months—meaning I’d seen him six times, and then only when opening the cages in the mornings and leaving the doughnuts—I’d never been this close. He smelled like cedar and sage.
For the first time, I really looked at him. Not with furtive embarrassment. Not even with fear. I looked and paid attention. All the things I feared faded for an instant, and I saw Johnny beneath the tattoos. He had steely, blue-gray eyes.
“You two come and sit down to eat,” Nana ordered us.
Taking my plate of steamed vegetables on rice, I went to the table and deliberated about where to sit. If I sat across from Nana, Johnny could choose which of us to sit next to, but if I sat beside her, he would have to sit across from us both. That seemed the best plan. So I sat and tried to figure out the chopsticks, but I couldn’t get anything to my mouth. By the time Johnny had filled his plate with some kind of chicken dish and sat with us, I’d tried, without success, to pick up a bite of food a dozen times. Nana laughed at me. I felt terribly foolish, but I laughed too.
“I’m going to starve if you won’t concede to letting me use a fork.”
“You’re using them like a shovel and holding them wrong,” he said. “They’re delicate, but they won’t break. Hold them like this. Firmly.” He indicated how he was holding his, and I noticed he had more rings on his fingers than I did. “Pinch the food.”
I moved one stick, then the other, and held the chopsticks up for inspection. “No.” He put his chopsticks down. Reaching across the table, he took my hand in his before I could protest. Gently, deftly, his warm hands repositioned the sticks and molded my fingers into position. “There. Now try it. Pinch.”
I did, and actually got a bite. The vegetables needed half a minute in the microwave, but to warm them up, I’d have to set the chopsticks down. Then he’d have another chance to “help” me position them properly. I decided to eat the food just as it was and avoid further hand-holding. “Oh,” I said, chewing. “So that’s how you do it.”
“I thought you already knew how to do it,” Johnny said brightly, as if there was no innuendo in the statement at all. “Next time, we’ll try French. Or Thai. Some Thai can be really hot. I like it hot.”
Next time?
“Oh?” Nana said conversationally. “What about Greek?”
Johnny grinned and, despite the Wedjat tattoos, it was mischievous in a very little-boy way. Nothing scary there at all—until his smile decreased and he focused hard on me while he answered her, “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything Greek. But I’d love to.”
I’m not accustomed to being mildly flirted with, let alone blatantly flirted with. A little is one thing; it lets you know somebody’s interested. It’s flattering. But Johnny never did anything on a small scale. The sexual-tension thing—which he clearly thrived on—rose to an overwhelming peak for me with Nana sitting there, her old ears hearing every word and not catching a single innuendo. I was scared that she’d catch on. Scared she’d start cussing and go all indignant on us. Scared she’d laugh like a banshee and proceed to bring him up in conversation every morning at the breakfast table.
He had to stop.
When we were all nearly finished, I asked Johnny, “What’s that you’re having?”
“Bo Lo Gai Pan. It’s chicken and water chestnuts, pea-pods, mushrooms, vegetables, and pineapple.” He lowered his tone and continued. “On your tongue the pineapple just—”
I cleared my throat loudly and interrupted him. “You picked up the package?” I didn’t want to know what the pineapple did on his tongue. I just knew it’d be another innuendo.