Following Fabian Read online

  CHAPTER NINE

  Astrid scooted to the inside of the booth and put up one hand, bidding Fabian to wait. She cringed and pinched a stack of paper napkins out of the dispenser. Knocking a few errant crumbs that were probably invisible to everyone else to the floor, she said, “Really? Javier?”

  Fabian waited for her finish the table sweep, and then sat at her right elbow. He touched her wrist. “Well, you were going with a J-theme. Figured a Spanish name seemed appropriate. Besides, it’s one of my favorites.”

  “Where I come from, folks would pronounce that Jav-ee-yur. Not nearly as pretty.”

  “You’ll just have to teach them to say it properly.”

  “Why? What difference does it make how people pronounce my imaginary kid’s name?”

  The smile he’d been wearing since they left the police station faltered a bit, but he quickly corrected it. Just that quickly, he’d gotten used to the idea that they did have three children at her aunt’s house. He liked that she’d called him her boyfriend. “It makes a difference, dragon. Names make a difference.”

  “Do you default to Spanish?”

  “That’s a random question.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe a little. I’m just curious.”

  His forehead furrowed. “Yes, I guess I do. I remember my mother spoke Spanish to my father, but she’d speak French to Felipe and me. My French is as good as my Spanish, but I guess I do as she did and switch as needed.”

  “Do you remember anything about her?”

  “Who, my mother?”

  Astrid nodded and balled up the napkins she’d cleaned with.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Felipe said he couldn’t recall much about her. He thought she was pretty and smiley, but he didn’t know if that was because you guys had pictures or if it was an actual memory.”

  “We had some, but they were probably lost during the mess back in Asheville.”

  “Felipe has them. He set fire to Jacques’s trailer, but he has all your documents and the few pictures he could grab from your camper.”

  Fabian blew out a breath, and rubbed the heels of his palms against his closed eyes. “Gracias a dios. You wouldn’t think things a few scraps of paper would have such great value, but when you think you’ve lost them, their worth becomes profoundly clear.”

  She snaked her hand around his waist and tucked her fingers beneath the back of his shirt.

  Her touch made him never want to improve his English. He didn’t think she’d touch him if it weren’t for the need of translation.

  “Yeah, I know what that’s like. My brother Eric and I lived with our paternal grandparents from the time we were little kids. I think I was two when we went to live with them. I don’t remember either of my parents.”

  He found her hand at his waist and gave it a gentle squeeze as he fixed a tender stare on her. “Did they… You know.”

  “Die? Yes. Idiots, the both of them. Took a ski vacation in Colorado and got too close to an avalanche. The folks at the lodge didn’t go looking for them for two days because my parents were professionals, and by then, of course, it was too late. I’ve never learned to ski. Have no desire to, for obvious reasons.”

  “Probably the same reasons Felipe and I never learned to walk the tightrope.”

  She drew her hand away and put it in her own lap as Agent Rodriguez, who’d immediately parted from them upon entering the restaurant, returned from the restroom.

  He suddenly didn’t like the woman. It was so easy to forget why they were there when he was sitting hip-to-hip with the dragon and having a nice chat. Rodriguez reminded him of why they were there.

  About Jacques.

  And reminded him that when the time came to act, Fabian might not be able to do what was necessary. He’d never been able to before. At best, he was only pretending to be heroic. He hoped he believed his own lie when he got close to Jacques.

  * * *

  “I hope this place is all right,” Agent Rodriguez said in a light voice that made Astrid grumble internally. Rodriguez’s smile was megawatt, and she had the kind of jocular personality that probably put most people at ease. She had a peaceful vibe about her, which Astrid imagined must have felt in stark contrast to her own crackling aura.

  Maria had said to Astrid not too long after they’d joined the Shrews, “Hey, lightning bug, turn the electricity down a notch, will you?”

  Astrid hadn’t known what she meant, and Maria hadn’t really, either. It had taken Maria six months to figure out that she was the sort of empath who was seriously affected by negative energy. If she wasn’t careful, it did a little more than depressing her. It drained her.

  It seemed strange now that the two were partners, given Astrid’s cynical nature, and Astrid regularly broached her concerns about the pairing, but Maria put her at ease. “It’s okay. I’m used to you now. You’re the elephant in the room that I’ve rearranged the furniture around. It’s all good, lightning bug.”

  Astrid didn’t like being thought of as an elephant, but she got the gist.

  “I’ve been here six times in the past few weeks,” Agent Rodriguez continued. “It’s a bit of a dive, but the food’s good, and they’re not stingy with the coffee. The coffee at my motel is shit.”

  A man slipped into the booth next to Agent Rodriguez, and it took Astrid a moment for her eyes to convince her brain of what she was seeing. Her body sprang to high alert preemptively, and she balled her hands into fists under the table.

  No fuckin’ way. Instinctively, her fisted left hand went to the knife tucked into the back of her waistband.

  “What’s wrong? You just went tense,” Fabian projected.

  She swallowed and stared at the smiling newcomer, who was apparently Rodriguez’s associate.

  Agent Marsh. David Marsh. She didn’t need an introduction.

  Slowly, she pulled her left hand away from her back and planted that hand onto her lap, where it shook uncontrollably.

  Gritting her teeth, she wondered, how dare he smile at her? He had no right, after what he’d put her through.

  Once, they’d been in love, or at least she’d thought. He’d said he couldn’t handle her the way she was—that she must have been pushing him away on purpose because she didn’t know how to give.

  He was the reason she’d almost died in that hospital three years ago. He was the man who’d lied to her and enrolled her in the drug trial.

  The drug trial she’d thought was supposed to help her with stress was actually an experiment intended to make women like her, Dana, Sarah, Tamara, and Maria softer. It hadn’t worked, because the drug was a fucking joke. Poison.

  It’d turned her into what she was now: a freak of nature.

  Fabian wrapped his large hand around her shaking one under the table.

  “Dragon?”

  David beamed at her, but didn’t acknowledge her directly. He just groaned sarcastically at his partner as he shrugged off his coat. “God, you’re complaining about coffee again?” he ribbed with Rodriguez. “You think yours is shit? What’s worse than shit? That’s what my motel has. I don’t even have in-room coffee service like you do. I’ve got to go downstairs and get that gritty, burnt crap out of the lobby, and the woman at the front desk watches me like a hawk every time I step foot out of the elevator. I always feel like a schmuck for taking that fistful of sugar packets, but without it, it’s like drinking dirt. Why offer the coffee if it’s gonna taste like dirt?”

  He kept prattling on and on about the coffee while Agent Rodriguez debated whose beverage choices were really worse.

  Is this really happening? I should kill him where he sits. Stab him in the nuts.

  Fabian squeezed her hands again, and she closed her eyes, sighing, hoping she was adequately blocking him out of her thoughts. Maria would probably rock and chant at a moment like this, but Astrid had never found that calming. She needed to find some other way to expend the destructive energy bubbling up inside her.

  She was
n’t that woman anymore. She’d paid and paid and paid for what she’d done to David’s car all those years ago, and really? He’d brought her wrath onto himself. She was wired to be loyal and true.

  He was wired to be a cheating slutbag, apparently. At least he had been four years ago. What the fuck was he doing in the FBI? The agency must have had pretty damn low standards.

  Fabian gave Astrid yet another little nudge beneath the table, this time with his knee.

  “What’s wrong, dragon? Please talk to me. Do you need to leave? Obviously he upsets you.”

  She opened her eyes and stared at the sticky tabletop.

  How many dirty tables had the busboy cleaned with that same rag? The place was probably just teeming with germs. She needed to find some hand sanitizer or something—anything to at placate that screaming part of her brain that was mostly quiet now that she was a Shrew. Shrews weren’t bothered by dirt. Astrid Falk, though, had been a wee bit OCD before the study. It came back when she was stressed. Stress made compartmentalizing nasty shit harder.

  She took a deep breath and met his concerned gaze. “I just…don’t like being surprised. I didn’t know there was a second agent.” She pulled her coffee mug closer with her free hand and stared into the empty vessel.

  “That’s all? Really?”

  She cursed him for being so intuitive.

  “Mm-hmm,” she murmured aloud, knee now bobbing beneath a shaking hand.

  “What are they rambling on and on about?”

  “They’re complaining about motel room coffee.”

  “Jesus. See if you can redirect them to something more salient. I’m starving and plan on eating well, but I’d like to know how we’re going to deal with Jacques.”

  “Okay. Leave it to me, cupcake.” She nudged her empty coffee cup toward the edge of the table with her free left hand when the waitress came by.

  “Cupcake? I think I like sugar better.”

  “You like sugar and yet you call me dragon?” The conversation was utterly ridiculous, as were many of her exchanges with the man, but she smiled all the same. She welcomed the distraction. There was only one other man who could disarm her the same way, and right now, he was back in North Carolina being very cavalier about the upcoming full moon and his impending cellular transformation. She’d never get over the idea of her big brother being…well, weird. Like her.

  “I say it lovingly. You make a beautiful, lust-provoking dragon.”

  “D’aww,” she whispered, and her knee stopped bobbing. The man did wonders for her dark mood. If David wanted to do that LaLa Land, all-is-well bullshit, she’d do the same. In a few days, or less, she’d be going home, and he could go fuck himself soundly.

  She turned back in to the distraction that was the handsome acrobat.

  “Sleep with your eyes open tonight. I would if I were you, sugar-cupcake.”

  “Where are you sleeping?”

  “In my room. The same place I’ve slept the past ten nights. We’ll have to get you squared away somewhere.”

  “I’ll just share yours.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  She sipped her refilled coffee, which truly wasn’t all that bad, and narrowed her eyes at him. “If I don’t submit separate two room receipts to Sarah, she’s going to think we had sex.”

  “So?” His gray eyes twinkled with mischief.

  Astrid blinked and hoped her expression displayed adequate incredulity.

  “So we’ll get a separate room for the receipt, but I’ll sleep in yours. That way you can keep an eye on me.” He grinned.

  She scoffed.

  “You don’t know what kind of trouble you’re courting. Messing with a Shrew means you’re invoking all sorts of hazing from the others. I don’t think you have the constitution to endure it, to be honest.”

  “I’d like to think my constitution is rather similar to Felipe’s.”

  She sipped some more, and stared at Rodriguez over the top of her mug. She was still yakking with David. Astrid had forgotten how much that man could yak. “Felipe got a free pass because he has magical sperm. As I mentioned before, we have uncertain fertility, we Shrews. It was theorized our bodies would treat fertilized eggs as germs and try to eliminate them. Not sure why they thought to test that, but the scientists that worked with us for a while noted that would be a side effect of the changes.”

  Fabian pushed an eyebrow up and reached for his own coffee cup. “I’m happy to assist you with any experimentation you’d like to do in that regard.”

  “Ha ha. I bet.” Heat suffused her cheeks, and she turned her face toward the window so no one would see. She wouldn’t mind a little experimentation with Fabian, truth be told. Potentially magical sperm would just be a fringe benefit. She did want a kid someday. She probably wouldn’t be naming him Javier, though.

  She stole at glance at Fabian, who was wearing that damnable Castillo smirk.

  “I’m so sorry,” Agent Rodriguez said. “Here we are going on and on, and Mr. Castillo can’t understand a thing we’re saying.”

  “What’s she saying now?” Fabian asked.

  Astrid sipped. “I suspect you’ll find out soon enough. I think she speaks your language, sugar.” She locked her stare on the pretty Latina and ground her teeth. The agent had lit up the moment she laid eyes on Fabian.

  Astrid didn’t know what the woman had expected, but if she knew what was best for her, she’d keep her hands off.

  Fabian didn’t need any new distractions. He needed to handle his business, fly to North Carolina, and maybe repay the Shrews by helping them with their sticky Bear situation.

  That was the only reason Astrid cared.

  Yep.

  Agent Rodriguez began spewing off some rapid-fire Spanish, along with immediate English translation, that had David beside her nodding and occasionally grunting.

  She wanted to reach for her fork and stab him in the bicep with it—to make him feel pain just like she had all those months in the hospital when her organs were systematically shutting down, one at a time.

  No. She had to be the bigger person.

  She wasn’t that woman of four years ago anymore.

  Nope.

  She meditated on the specks of the laminate tabletop, only half-listening to the chatter going on around her.

  Fabian occasionally got a word in edgewise, but mostly the talking came from one side of the table.

  Astrid picked up a menu and held it inches from her face, unseeing.

  When Fabian nudged her thigh beneath the table and sought out a bit of skin, she nudged his hand away after projecting “Sorry” to him.

  He may have been the balm she needed to her bruised soul, but for the moment, she needed her thoughts to be her own. She didn’t want pity.

  * * *

  Fabian couldn’t remember ever meeting such an inscrutable woman before. He’d had his fair share of hookups throughout the years as the troupe traveled the world and performed shows. Women following him back to his trailer was a typical occurrence, and occasionally, he partook of their company. Not once had a woman ever made him second-guess his own intelligence. Dealing with Astrid required him to stay one step ahead—to predict what she’d say and what she’d do in order not to offend her.

  He didn’t even know why he cared so much. He’d never been the kind of man who’d chase after women who played hard to get. Maybe that had been his problem. If he didn’t recognize that there was something between him and the cranky dragon, he wouldn’t be standing outside her motel room at five in the morning bearing the donuts he’d struggled to order, and nearly burning the skin off his palms carrying a hot coffee cup in each hand.

  He pounded the kick plate again, and moments later, Astrid pulled the door open and set her heavy-lidded gaze on him.

  The room was dark, and she was undressed down to her underclothes. He tried not to stare, and how he managed the feat came down to his healthy fear of the woman, and not so much his self-control. Sh
e’d probably rip him a new asshole if she caught him staring like a letch.

  “I told you I’d come get you from your room at seven,” she said, still blocking the doorway.

  He shook his head. “Don’t understand.”

  She blew out a breath and moved from the doorway. “I’m going back to sleep.”

  He used the sliver of light from the hallway to watch her fit form stalk back to her rumpled bed.

  To think that’s what she was hiding under those baggy clothes…

  Perfect, round ass just begging for a squeeze.

  He whistled low, hit the corridor light switch with his elbow, and let the door close behind him. Setting down the coffee cups first, he let the paper bag fall from under his right arm.

  When he turned toward the bed, Astrid was under the covers with the blankets pulled up to her ears and wriggling down lower as he watched.

  He slid between the bed and the wall and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “What?” came her muffled voice.

  “Talk to me.” God, he would love to be able to have a conversation with her in his native tongue and speak sentences that contained more than ten syllables.

  “Sleeping.”

  He nudged the covers down a bit and pressed his hand against her warm left shoulder. She always felt so good, and he didn’t know if the draw was due to him being so fucking skin starved or if she was really that spectacular.

  “Shit, what, Fabian? Why aren’t you sleeping? I want to be sleeping. That fucking agent talked herself blue in the face until one in the morning, so why are you so goddamned spry?”

  Oh, she was punchy. He massaged the tense cords of her neck. “I should be sleeping, I guess, but I’ve become so accustomed to having someone in the room with me when I sleep that being alone is unsettling. Maybe I feel like someone is going to sneak up on me.”

  “Understandable.” She yawned and rolled onto her back.

  He nudged the covers beneath her chin and smiled at the sight of her puffy eyelids. It was nice to know that even dragons woke up a bit soft. He found her sleep-roughened appearance to be absolutely charming, though he wouldn’t tell her that.

  “If you want to catch a few Z’s before the agents pick us up, I won’t quibble if you curl up in a little ball at my feet,” she said.