Beneath the Skin (21 page)

“I lost my bond mates in a car crash two years ago,” I said.

She gave me a startled look, drew in her breath with a gasping choke and burst into tears.

When Murphy and Bobby Jenkins came out onto the terrace, Molly and I were hugging

each other. She sobbed into my shoulder as I rubbed her back. She was all bones and sinew in my arms. There wasn’t much to her and I suspected most of her had drowned in that hot tub two nights ago.

“Hot damn,” whispered Bobby Jenkins. “She wouldn’t let us near her, but you walk in the door and ten minutes later she’s crying like a baby in your arms.” He looked suspiciously at Murphy. “Who the hell are you two? I ain’t dumb. You’re from the Great Council, aren’t you?

Trained in how to interrogate people. We didn’t drown Kevin. How the hell many times do I have to say it?”

“We left him alone!” Molly lifted her tear-stained face to scream at him over my

shoulder. “You, Jolene and me, we left him alone!”

Guilt oozed from her pores. I understood. They’d been having a threesome. Kevin was the odd man out and had gone into the hot tub to wait? Console himself? Usually Pack were not jealous of the occasional liaisons with other members. Mostly they did it because they wanted to shift. Sometimes a bond mate didn’t want to shift, or there was a triad with an odd person out.

Sex between pack members was common, although there were some who never strayed outside their bonds.

“He was a grown man, Molly, and he wasn’t drunk when we went off together. He must

have done that when we were shifted. I don’t know what to tell you, honey. It was just a bad, bad accident. It’s nobody fault.” Bobby’s voice got gentle and soft, and I moved aside so Molly could go to him. She did.

They embraced each other tightly--like pack. Tears gleamed in Bobby’s eyes.

Jolene came to the doorway, a glass of milk in her hand. The little girl, Mindy, clung to her legs, peering out from behind her.

Murphy and I left when other members of the pack showed up. It wasn’t a large pack--

fourteen members, not counting the children. Bobby and Jolene’s living room could only hold so many bodies and we weren’t exactly welcome. We were tolerated.

Close to midnight, Murphy and I got into the gold Chevy Lumina he’d rented at the

airport and drove back to our hotel.

“I can’t see where this wasn’t an accident, can you?” Murphy fiddled with the knobs of the air-conditioning. I wanted the windows down so I could feel the wind in my face. My wolf was fading, but still there and she loved the wind in her face.

“Was there an autopsy? Tox screens on his blood?” I put my window up with a sigh.

“Nothing,” he said. “There was nothing. Interestingly enough, though, his blood alcohol content wasn’t that high. Over the legal limit, but not by much.”

“I fell asleep in the tub once,” I mused. “My head actually went under the water. I woke up in a big damn hurry.”

“Had you been drinking?” Murphy’s face was pensive, washed pale by the oncoming

headlights of the other cars on the freeway.

I shrugged. “Not much, but yeah.”

“You’re good with people, you know that?” Murphy gave me a sideways glance and I

flushed. “That little girl opened right up to you like a flower and you helped her mother. You got her to a place where her pack could reach her. That was a good thing you did. Stanzie.”

My nickname on his lips sent a small shiver down my spine. It made me want something more than I knew he could give me.

“Maybe I make up in this form what I lack in wolf form.” He heard the bitterness in my voice and winced.

“No, what you are in wolf form is very much like what you are in this one,” he argued softly. “You open people and wolves up. We drop our defenses around you, Constance.”

I shrugged, not entirely convinced this was true.

“They aren’t telling that little girl what she really is until she’s sixteen. I don’t like that idea, Murphy. A lot of packs are doing it this way now and I don’t understand.”

“Protection,” Murphy said, but he was playing devil’s advocate. I didn’t think he much liked the idea, either. “They want their children to go to public schools, to make friends with Others. To not be so isolated and apart. It helps, they say, to build networks and resources so the children grow up and get good jobs and bring money and good things into the pack. Little kids talk. They would tell their friends about what we are.”

“And how can it be proved even if they did?” I scoffed. “Nobody in the pack would

obligingly corroborate the story. They’d pass it off as vivid imagination.”

“Is that what your pack did with you?” he wondered and I flushed again.

“I was home schooled,” I muttered, shifting around in my seat. “I don’t have Others for friends.”

“Do you have any friends, Constance?” He looked at me across the dashboard lights and I shrugged again. I was hurt but not surprised he didn’t include himself as a friend. Only he was.

He ought to have known that from when we shifted. Of course maybe he didn’t want to be a friend.

“Your bite is bleeding again,” I said to fill the strange silence. It was. I could smell the blood beneath the bandages. He’d worn a long-sleeved shirt to cover the bandage and it was dark so I couldn’t see if the blood had seeped into the fabric.

He rotated his shoulder with a grimace.

“The grandmother in Paris wanted to give me stitches, but I wouldn’t let her.”

I blinked at him.

“You’ll scar.” I was horrified. “You’ll scar and everyone will know that I bit you. I said I was sorry.” I could not believe he would humiliate me like this. How could my wolf be so wrong about him?

“I wanted the reminder,” he remarked. “It has nothing to do with humiliating you,

Constance. Jesus, why do you take everything so damn personally?”

“Suffer then. Bleed all over the place. Whatever.” I pressed my flushed face to the window and wished like hell I wasn’t trapped in a car with him.

We remained huffily silent as we hurtled down the freeway.

“Reminder of what?” I asked when I couldn’t take it any longer.

At first I wasn’t sure if he were going to answer, but then he said, “Remind me that my way isn’t the only way, and that I need to always try to see it from the other side, so I won’t forget that there is one.”

I bit my lip and took a deep breath. I could smell the air-conditioning, the ghost of a McDonald’s meal past, fake new car smell and Murphy’s blood. Among other things.

“Murphy? Are we friends?” I watched the big truck next to us flash by, going at least eighty miles an hour. Tiny red running lights winked and flashed, the noise of the engine deafening until it was past.

“Yeah, Constance,” he answered in a voice so soft I had to strain to hear him. “I meant other people. I thought I was a given.”

“Oh,” I said, swallowing. It was hard because something blocked my throat. “Then, no.

No, I don’t have any friends.”

That admission was difficult to make, because it made me sound pathetic, but at least I knew my wolf wasn’t wrong, after all.

His gaze was fixed on the road ahead of us, but his fingers got very tight around the wheel. “I’m going to find us a pack. When this is all over, I’m going to find us a pack, Constance, and you’re going to have lots of friends. Believe me?”

I nodded because I did.

“Will I have to shift with them at first? I mean, can I wait until you teach me what I need to know?” My heart hammered uncomfortably in my chest. “I’m afraid to shift with anybody but you, Murphy.”

He sighed. I kept my head bowed, gaze fixed on my hands locked together in my lap.

“You see, this is exactly why I need a reminder. Because now you’re scared you’re not good enough, and I never wanted that. Didn’t you say shifting brought you the most joy you ever felt anywhere, anytime?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’ve taken that away. I’m sorry, Stanzie. Please forgive me. I had no right.”

“You’re just trying to help me, Murphy. Ever since we met that’s what you’ve been

doing. I’m sorry if I’ve been a bitch about it.”

“You’re as good as any damn member of Mac Tíre, or any pack anywhere. You tell me

you understand that. Please tell me you do.”

I half-smiled and wished I could. Something was wrong with me, or I wouldn’t be the outcast I’d become. Murphy would help me and I wouldn’t stay an outcast. I just needed to work hard and I could fix my shortcomings. I wouldn’t be leaving a part of me behind as much as I would be evolving into the next stage. My wolf would still be my wolf, even when she could think in full sentences and knew how to follow and behave. There would still be joy left. My wolf was strong and not as easily bruised as I was. I had faith in her and Murphy.

I wanted tactile contact with him, but he always shied away from my touches. He needed to reach out first. I understood that even as I wished it were different.

In bed at the hotel, he curled up behind me, his arm around my waist. I felt his breath on my shoulder and I smiled as I closed my eyes.

Even though we hadn’t gone to bed until nearly two in the morning, I was wide awake at four AM. Murphy was sound asleep beside me, breathing deeply, his arm still around me.

I didn’t want to disturb him, so I forced my eyes shut and managed to fall back to sleep.

But at seven AM it was no use. I could not sleep anymore.

Murphy was like a log and didn’t even flutter his eyelids when I carefully dislodged his arm and got up to take a shower.

He opened one groggy eye as I put on my shoes--a pair of incredible brown suede ankle boots with zips up the back. One of my Paris purchases.

“You want to order room service for breakfast or go out?” I wondered, hoping for the latter. I felt cooped up and confined. My wolf was fading out fast, but there was still the whisper of her inside me, and I thought if I could get out into fresh air, she might blow away and go silent.

“Neither. I want to sleep. I’m wiped out, Constance. Goddamn jet lag.” Murphy groaned.

Sleep intensified his Irish brogue so I had to concentrate to understand him. The fact he talked into his pillow didn’t help, either. “Take the car and go shopping, why don’t you? I’ll be up when you get back. Try to stay out for at least four hours.”

I wanted to throw a pillow at his head, but when I turned around he was already asleep.

“I don’t drive cars,” I announced, but of course he didn’t hear.

The desk clerk told me if I wanted to shop I needed to go to the Galleria, and he found me a cab and told the driver where I wanted to go.

The cab was a mini-van with the middle seats taken out. It was something of an ordeal to climb inside. The cab smelled of cheap pine air freshener with deeper undertones of underarm odor, as the driver obviously did not believe in deodorant. He spent most of the ride talking on his cellphone in a different language. Nigerian maybe? I couldn’t tell. He drove like a maniac, weaving in and out of traffic, and barely kept one let alone both hands on the wheel.

I bounced and lurched around on the backseat, grabbing for handholds more than once, but I steadfastly refused to fasten my seatbelt. Murphy would have strangled me, but since I wanted to strangle him for not coming out with me, I figured we were even.

The cab screeched to a halt next to what looked like the entrance to an underground parking garage, and the driver took an inordinate amount of time hunting for his credit card machine. He asked me at least five times if I didn’t want to pay in cash, and at least five times I told him I would love to do just that only there was one little problem--I didn’t have any.

Murphy had exchanged money at the airport, but I hadn’t thought to take cash out of an ATM

thanks to Mr. Jet Lag. I did have plastic and the signs plastered in the cab windows declared the driver took Visa, Mastercard and Discover, so I really could not see what the problem was.

After ten minutes of this bullshit, he swiped my card then I had to struggle with the damn van door, which slid closed but was extremely uncooperative.

I made a mental note to try to find a bus route back to the hotel and looked around to find a street entrance to the mall so I didn’t have to descend into an underground parking lot and dodge traffic while trying to find my way inside.

This accomplished, I discovered that while I did not like Houston’s cabs, I did like the Galleria. For one thing there were lots of shoe stores. Although I tried on about twenty different pairs, I didn’t buy any. I did get Murphy a shirt in the Armani store. He’d bled on the one he’d worn yesterday and it was mostly my fault, so I figured I owed him.

One damn blue-and-white pin-striped shirt with a pocket cost me more than two hundred and fifty dollars. Decadent. Wicked. But then I thought of my eight hundred-euro Louboutins and forked over my credit card.

There was a huge ice rink on the bottom floor of the mall. Little kids and their parents skated and I stood on the floor above, and leaned over the railing to watch them. One chubby little boy fell a grand total of six times in forty seconds, but would not let his father hold his hand. Little kids made me laugh. They wanted to do it themselves. I could get behind that.

I wolfed down a chicken Caesar salad at La Madeleine and sucked down a bottle of

Perrier. I people-watched while I ate and was disappointed, because I didn’t see even one man wearing a Stetson. I thought everyone wore them in Texas. I did see lots of ball caps and t-shirts with sports team logos, but that’s everywhere in America.

Somewhat let down, I browsed through the Tiffany store where I nearly bought a silver charm bracelet but told myself not to go overboard and walked out with nothing.

Half the time I was shopping I had to stop myself from turning to Murphy to share a joke or an observation. I wanted to see his sardonic smile and even his damn Red Wing boots.

If I’d known his shoe size I would have bought him a pair of
not
Red Wing boots, but I didn’t so I had to content myself with the shirt. I guessed on that, but the salesman in the Armani store had the same height and basic build as Murphy and he’d told me his size, so I hoped it would fit. Besides, if it didn’t, it provided an excuse to get Murphy back here to exchange it.