Page 9 of Beware of Hodags

“That’s a nice name,” Shepard says, then locks his eyes with mine before adding, “for now.”

My smile is slow even as my heart begins to race. “Oh yeah? ”

He bites into his potato wedge, unaliving it in two mustache-swishing motions.

It can’t be chewing, because chewing with a beard probably isn’t seductive.

I’m in the middle of wondering what seductive chewing with a beard could even be called —beardly sensual mastication?

Sultry bearded chomping?— when his eyes lock on mine.

His unwavering gaze holds immense challenge. “Hope you like Cavoc.”

“You’re intense,” I point out.

He raises and drops a shoulder. “When you know, you know.”

My heart thumps.

Our waitress returns with his order of cookies. “Here you go!”

“Thank you,” he says, and she tops off our drinks and scoots to her next table.

“I can’t believe you didn’t get the shake too,” I tell him.

He jerks his chin at mine, eyes mistrustful. “Yours looks thicker than oatmeal, and that’s a problem because I would have had to drink it through a straw,” he shares. “Milkshakes and mustaches do not play well together.”

“Ah.”

“Do you like country music?” Shepard asks, seemingly out of left field.

Music. Singing. A triton. My imagination starts stitching a bare-chested Shepard with the lower half of a merman. I bet he has a sexy merman tail. “Sure.”

“I need to take you to Hodag Fest. It’s a country music festival Rhinelander holds every summer. All my family goes. I can’t wait to introduce you to everyone. Where are you from?” he asks.

It’s the beginning of a back-and-forth volley of questions.

Things about ourselves, things about growing up.

Random things about our family. (He loves to swim—he admits he practically lives in the many lakes around here in the summer.

I file this away with the other clues I’ve gathered, feeling confirmation that I’ve probably solved the mystery of what he shifts into. )

“My uncle’s knee is famous,” I share. “It had a cameo in the movie Somewhere in Time.”

Shepard squints. “With Christopher Reeve?”

“Yep.” I taste my cookies and—WUFF. These are divine!

Crunchy on the outside, chewy and warm in the middle.

Salty and sweet and perfect with this sweet-sour ice cream.

I raise my hand to shield my mouth in as best a show of courtesy as I can manage while I talk around a mouthful.

“So the movie was shot on Mackinac Island where my uncles and aunt were working for the summer. They got to know Christopher Reeve. He hung out with them for weeks.” I finish chewing only to take another bite, moaning.

“They were extras in the movie theater scene—that’s where my uncle’s knee shows up—and my other uncle was painting on a ladder in another scene, but that one got cut. ”

Shepard is smiling. “That’s real nice.” His eyes slide to his cookies, and he stuffs one in his mouth and groans.

“Right?” I say, waving my hand excitedly. “Aren’t they amazing?”

“Fugging yes,” he declares, then stuffs another one into his mouth—and I watch his beard curl under his lip, just like he complained it would do.

“What’s your family’s claim to fame?” I ask him, glancing down at my food to give him a little privacy.

He doesn’t hide his struggle to pick his hairs out of his mouth though.

He’s unhurried, retrieving them in pinches until he’s satisfied he’s got them all.

Then he wipes his fingers on a napkin and he leans back, his arm stretching along the back of the booth.

“That’s an easy one. The man credited with the creation of the hodag legend was my great-great-great-grandfather. ”

My eyebrows rise. “No kidding?”

Personally, I’m not sure I’d want to own this. But Shepard bobs his head with pride. “Eugene Shepard was his name. He spun such outrageous stories that most people started crying hoax. Others said that Eugene oversold and sensationalized the hodag on purpose in order to protect them.”

I sink a cookie in the last of my milkshake. “Protect them?”

“Yeah.” He watches me prepare my mustard ice cream-covered cookie for its death by biting. “Since nobody believes they’re real, now a hodag can park itself in front of the chamber’s welcome center and people won’t believe their eyes.”

“Ha,” I scoff, since I encountered the welcome center hodag he’s teasing about. Something occurs to me. “Eugene Shepard? Is that where you got your name?” My head tilts as I consider him. “Is your first name Eugene?”

“That’s my dad. He goes by Gene. But I got Shep from my great-great-great-grandad, yeah.”

“That’s neat.”

And then… I don’t know what to say.

Shepard is hardly any help. He’s just watching me.

Stifling my urge to fill the lull, I finish my cookie, dust myself off, then lace my fingers together on the table in front of me and squeeze them.

When Shepard continues to sit across from me, watching me silently, I purse my lips at him.

“I can’t tell if you want me to generate conversation or if you’re tired of talking. ”

He reaches his hand out across the table and lays it, palm up beside mine.

An invitation? Haltingly, I set my left hand in his. Gentle sparks, pleasant and tingly, race up my arm and rapidly heat my whole body.

Proving this is exactly what he wanted, he closes his hand around mine. “Don’t stop talking.”

I have to restart all the thought factories in my brain before I can remember what we were even talking about.

“Umm, you might regret saying that. But alright. Let’s see.

I’ve been here for less than a day and it seems like there’s a couple of people around here who name their kids after someone important in their family. ”

Playing with my knuckles by running the side of his thumb over them, he lifts a shoulder. “Was the way it was done till the last hundred years or so.” Seeming contemplative, he brushes his thumb over my empty ring finger, blowing any coherent thoughts I’ve ever had into smithereens.

Our waitress appears at our booth. She lays our receipt face down on the table with a smile and two breath mints. “Pay whenever you're ready,” she says as she scoops up our finished plates. She doesn’t wait for us to decide how to split the check. She aims herself for her next table and zooms away.

I reach for my purse—

And it’s weird because I can feel something from Shepard as I do it.

When I set it in front of myself and grasp the zipper, I stop. It’s like I’ve been immobilized by a freeze ray.

Shepard looks at me. And his look is so arresting that I know why I can only clutch my zipper and watch him as he raises his brows and softly growls, “I pay.”

Replaying all the advice I’ve heard, namely the bit where I shouldn’t argue with a man who wants to pay for my meal if I want him to be my man, I lower my hands to the table beside my purse. “Thank you, Shepard.”

He drops his gaze to give my purse a pointed look. When his eyes return to mine, I take his silent cue and drag my purse off the table, returning it to the bench.

“You’re welcome,” he rumbles. His leg brushes mine as he plants his boots and presses his back against the booth, lifting his hips so he can slide his wallet out.

He straightens and sets it on the table, pulling out bills that he tucks under his plate.

When he raises his gaze to me, he pushes one of the mints toward me.

I take it .

He unwraps his mint and flips it into his mouth. He doesn’t let it dissolve—he bites into it with a loud crack. He grinds it in three crunches before he swallows and speaks. “Ready?”

I slide my purse strap over my shoulder. “I am.”

Shoving to his feet, he rises from the booth.

I slide to the edge and cast a glance up at him because he’s standing over me.

His brows are drawn. “There’s a problem.”

“What’s that?”

He looks very serious. “When we get back to the cabin, I don’t want to say goodbye to you.” His gaze stays fixed to mine. “Now that I’ve found you, I’m not sure I can leave you. At all.”

Gosh, he’s either a love bombing psycho or he’s a dream come true. Thanks to our biology, I can rest assured he’s the latter. Rising from the bench, I give him a gentle smile. “I can’t be with you all the time. You’ve got to work.”

“Work with me,” he invites.

“I have a job,” I tell him.

“Where do you work?”

“Lycosid Cranberry Farm. I start Monday.”

His jaw drops. His eyes go round—he's horrorstruck. “Oh, honey, no.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“They’re… enemies.”

“Enemies?”

He takes my hand and distractedly calls a goodbye to the Tula’s employees as he hits the push bar of the door and gestures for me to precede him.

I wave to the Tula’s staff, then look at Shepard. “What do you mean by enemies?” I ask. “Is there a Rhinelander version of the Hatfields and the McCoys? ”

“Yes.” At my look of astonishment, he sighs and indicates I get moving with a subtle jerk of his chin. “Let’s get in the truck.”

Except once we’re in the truck, he doesn’t speak. He maneuvers through traffic with such a coolheaded efficiency that I don't even try to hide how deeply attractive I find it.

Glancing over at me, he does a double take. Eyes widening, he looks from himself to the road. Then he frowns down at his truck’s dash and interior like something about one of these features will explain why I’m giving him bedroom eyes.

“Tell me about the feud with the Lycosids,” I prompt him instead of answering his unspoken question. I run my thumb up and down my seatbelt. It’s one of those old metal push-button deals with no automatic retraction. It’s just a three-point nylon strap, adjusted and clipped.

Shepard huffs out a breath. And then, without taking his eyes off the traffic ahead, he reaches over and hits the button on my belt, releasing it.

“Hey!” I protest.

But he’s already tossed it across me and hooked his fingers in the belt loop of my jeans. One yank and I’m sliding across the bench seat until I’m flush against him, my knee brushing his gear stick.

“Ohmygosh!” I yelp. Not in protest, mind you. He’s simply surprised me.

His arm bands across my belly, searing my skin through my shirt as he quickly takes up the middle seat’s belt and snaps it across my hips. Then he closes his hand over my knee, making my whole leg tingle.

The tingles travel riiight up.

I stare at the side of his face until he turns his head and meets my gaze. His eyes have gone dark. “You had better tell me about the feud,” I warn.

“Or what?” he says, his gaze causing my whole body to glow. He moves his attention back to the road .

“Or I’m going to jump you right here in the middle of traffic,” I inform him.

This gets his gaze whipping off of traffic and back on me, his eyes wide. “Are you trying to deter me from telling you, or…?”

“Shepard. Tell me.”

He shakes himself like he has to refocus.

“Uh,” he starts, sounding delightfully thrown, “There’s a lot of bad history.

To say my family and his don’t get along is putting it mildly.

” He tips his head and his mouth slants.

“Feud might still be too mild a word.” He rolls us to a stop when a light ahead of us turns yellow.

“You could have made it—” I’m starting to say.

But he’s turned to me and his seatbelt snaps taut as he leans across me, grabbing me by my face with his left hand and tugging me close—

He kisses me.

There’s an audible snap of dazzling static as our lips make contact. I gasp against his mouth.

Shock aside, his lips are amazing. Wonderfully firm, but also soft. He tilts his head so our noses aren’t so mashed together, and he tastes like the breath mint he had at the restaurant and—

A car lays on the horn behind us.

Shepard pulls away from me, eyes hot. He turns his attention back to the road and pacifies everyone behind us by accelerating.

I blink at the side of his face. This must be what it feels like to be kissed stupid. Not that we got to kiss for long, but the rush I felt when his lips met mine was carbonation to my bloodstream. My body is in an uproar.

“I want to ask you to get a new job,” Shepard announces, and the only sign that he’s affected is the gravelly quality to his voice.

I’m still blinking. I have to cross my arms over my chest. Not because I’m feeling combative but because my chest is having a reaction and I’m hoping to calm things down before my diamond-hard nipples drill holes through my shirt. “It is a new job. ”

Shepard exhales, rolling to another stop at another light.

I’m instantly hopeful he’ll kiss me again.

He does turn to me, but instead of grabbing me with urgency, he reaches for my face and pulls me close…

and sweetly, gently rests his forehead against mine.

My insides melt. So do parts further south.

“Just promise me something,” he says.

His eyes are so pretty. My voice is uncharacteristically breathy. “What?”

He pulls back a little, searching my face. “If anything happens and you feel scared or so much as uncomfortable, quit. We’ll find you a new job. A safer one.”

“Safer? Is Mirk dangerous to me?”

He moves his attention forward again. His timing is perfect, the light turns green and we start rolling, not forcing anyone to wait behind us this time.

“If he becomes attracted to you, he’s gonna be in danger,” Shepard promises.

Which doesn’t quite answer my question and also raises additional concerns.

Since Shepard is my mate, I silently agree that Mirk developing an attraction would be a problem.

But I don’t think so much of myself that I’m worried my new boss is going to be madly infatuated with me.

Mirk seems like a super guy, and I have no doubt that if he develops any interest in me, I’ll only need to let him know I’m taken. Problem solved.

“Let me reassure you,” I tell Shepard. “I think this is a nonissue. He was very polite. I can’t imagine he’ll do anything but keep our relationship professional.”

Shepard peels his attention off the road to look me up and down in a flattering amount of disbelief.

With a hard shake of his head, he moves his eyes back to the view beyond the windshield.

His beard punches forward—he’s jutting out his chin, I realize.

Staring at his profile, I watch his ears notch back a fraction, watch the skin of his cheekbones and temples tighten, and his eyes turn wintry.

His voice, when he speaks, is grim. “He’d better,” is all he says.