Bull in a Tea Shop Read online

  It looked like the sort of place that would be owned by someone's aunt. In a small town like this, the aunt probably owned an antique store and had doilies on everything. And she definitely wasn't going to appreciate a guest who was covered in dirt and blood, and had a bunch of thugs after him.

  "You can't take me in there," he whispered, pulling back.

  The girl planted her feet and tried to tug him onward. "It's my aunt Verity's place. She's blind. She won't even know you're there. I'll just sneak you up the back stairs—"

  "Are you kidding? Your aunt has ears like a bat," Luke whispered.

  Worse and worse. The last thing he wanted was to get some poor elderly blind woman involved. "Look, is there a garden shed or something? I can hide there until they stop looking."

  "We can't just put you in the shed!"

  "Your aunt's going to hear us out here," Luke whispered.

  That seemed to help her make a decision, and the two of them led Maddox through a bunch of strong-smelling plants to a pretty little garden shed that looked more like a dollhouse, what little of it he could see in the moonlight. The girl opened the door. The interior was very dark and smelled like potting soil and compost. Maddox stumbled into a row of rakes and other tools, and caught himself on the edge of the door, panting through a rush of blinding pain.

  "Are ... are you sure you're gonna be okay?" Luke whispered.

  "Yeah, sure," Maddox said. He wasn't at all sure, but he thought he'd feel better if he could sit down.

  "I'll go get some things from the house," the girl whispered. "Bandages and things."

  "You don't have to—" Maddox began, but they'd already hurried off into the garden, leaving him alone in the shed.

  He found a pile of bags of compost to sit on, and leaned painfully back against the wall, closing his eyes.

  This wasn't the best night he'd ever had, for sure.

  Chapter Two: Verity

  Verity Breslin was humming quietly to herself and going through the nightly ritual of closing up the tea shop when there was a commotion in the back yard.

  She was alone in the shop. Her niece Bailey worked part time at the store after school as well as living with Verity in their shared apartment above the shop, but Bailey had called earlier to ask if she could take the afternoon off for some kind of after-school activity with her boyfriend and his friends. Verity hadn't been too clear on the details, but Bailey was a good girl despite the punk attitude she liked to cultivate, and she'd been working hard lately. She deserved some time off. Although Bailey had lived with her for several years now, Verity still struggled with the tightrope act that parenting a teenager required. She didn't want to be too strict and deprive Bailey of some well-deserved freedom.

  Anyway, it wasn't as if she'd expected the store to be busy this afternoon, and she hadn't been wrong. Ducker's harassment campaign had been terrible for business. She'd had just one customer all day, old Mrs. Yazzie who had come into town on her monthly trip from the sheep ranch she ran with her husband and son-in-law, picking up the usual bundles of herbs for the home remedies she made for her arthritis and her husband's gout. The herbs were already neatly packaged under the counter, and Verity found them by touch, running her fingers over the little paper Braille tag tied to the package and then checking with a quick sniff.

  "Heard a rumor you were selling out and leaving," Mrs. Yazzie had said casually as Verity wrapped up her purchases.

  "No," Verity replied firmly. "I'm not even considering it."

  "See you got the front window replaced."

  "Yes, ma'am, we did." The last time Mrs. Yazzie had been in the store, their front window had just recently had a brick thrown through it. Verity had dutifully gone through the motions of reporting it to Sheriff Hawkins, all the while knowing the sheriff had probably dispatched someone to throw the brick in the first place, or maybe even thrown it himself.

  "Shame about those vandals," Mrs. Yazzie said, her voice all too sharp and knowing. "The Millers' antique store is closed now, looks like."

  "They were thinking about retiring to a milder climate anyway," Verity said.

  "Mmmm," was all Mrs. Yazzie said, and she claimed her packages and shuffled out.

  Verity turned on her audiobook again and went back to mixing dried leaves for sachets of tea, sniffing occasionally to be sure she had the right flavors. She loved inventing new teas. Some were designed for specific purposes, to ease menstrual trouble or soothe digestive problems or calm the mind for sleeping. Others just tasted good.

  She'd been running the tea shop for her entire adult life. Back in those early days, there were people in town who didn't believe a blind woman could run her own business. She'd showed them, and after all her struggles starting up the shop, she wasn't about to sell out just because that fool Ducker and his pet sheriff thought they could strong-arm her out of business. Where would she go? What would she do? She couldn't imagine herself starting over somewhere new, where she didn't know anyone.

  No, she was staying right here. They could throw rocks through her windows, harass her on the street, and make insulting offers to buy the building, but this was hers. Thank heaven she'd paid off the mortgage, because she could easily see Ducker strong-arming the bank into foreclosing. But there was nothing he could legally do to make her sell.

  No ... all he could do was chase off her customers and threaten her.

  And all of these thoughts were uppermost in her mind when there was a clattering in the backyard as she was going through her nightly ritual for closing up the shop. Her heart accelerated, but she calmly locked the cash drawer and then reached under the counter for the wrought-iron fireplace poker she'd started keeping there after the incident with the brick.

  With the poker in one hand, and her other hand holding the cane she used to feel out her path when she went for walks outside, she listened at the back door. She heard whispered voices, and ... yes, footsteps on the back stairs that went up to the apartment above the shop.

  Verity unlocked the door and stuck her head out. "Bailey!" she said sharply.

  There was a guilty hush and the footsteps stopped. "Aunt Verity!" the girl's voice said. "I, uh. I can explain!"

  "Is that boyfriend of yours with you?"

  "Hi, Ms. Breslin," Luke's voice said guiltily.

  "Bailey, are you really trying to sneak a boy up to your room? What is wrong with you?"

  "We just didn't want to bother you," Bailey said. "I ... uh ... Luke left something in my room, and we had to get it, and now we're going out again. So everything is fine."

  "Everything is certainly not fine." Verity stepped out onto the back porch and tilted her face up. In addition to the usual nighttime fragrances of her herb garden, she smelled something else. Something sharp. "Bailey, what do you have there?"

  "Nothing?" Bailey said.

  "I told you she has ears like a bat," Luke whispered. "And a nose like a bloodhound."

  "The only difference between me and most people is that I pay attention to what's around me, that's all," Verity said sharply. "Come down here, you two."

  Their footsteps shuffled nervously down the stairs. Something sloshed, and she finally figured out what the smell was.

  "Bailey, what do you have the iodine for?"

  "Um ... Luke cut himself!" Bailey blurted out. "On a ... on a fence. An old barbed wire fence. We were just doctoring it. Upstairs."

  "I hope he's had his tetanus shots," Verity said. "That can be dangerous. Are you up to date on your shots, Luke?"

  "Yes, ma'am," Luke said.

  There was still something wrong. They seemed very guilty and subdued. And there was no reason why they'd be carrying the entire bottle of iodine if all they wanted to do was go upstairs to do first aid on some scrapes.

  "What else do you have there, Bailey?"

  "Nothing?" Bailey said, and just then there was a loud clatter and thump from somewhere in the garden.

  Verity whirled around, raising the poker.

  "R
accoons!" Bailey said. "I just—I just saw one!"

  There was another clatter. "That's not raccoons," Verity said quietly. "It sounds like someone's at the shed. Both of you, get into the house."

  "Aunt Ver," Bailey said, her voice anxious. "There's something I need to tell you ..."

  Verity had already begun to stalk down the path. She abandoned the cane against a garden bench so she had both hands for the poker. She had built every part of this garden, and she knew it so well that she could walk it as swiftly as any sighted person.

  And she hated to think what one of Ducker's men might be doing in her backyard. Stealing something? Her blood ran cold at the idea of those bullies poking around in her things.

  "Aunt Verity!" Bailey's voice said right behind her.

  "I told you kids to go into the house!" Raising her voice, she called, "Whoever you are, you're trespassing on private property. Get off my land or I'll make you sorry."

  A final small clatter from the shed seemed almost like an afterthought, as if whatever was making the noise was now holding very still, but one final trowel or flowerpot had been on the verge of teetering until it fell over.

  "That's your final warning, then," Verity snapped, marching forward with the poker cocked up over her shoulder like a baseball bat—telling herself, at the same time, that she wasn't about to make a terrible mistake. They did get animals in town sometimes, even big ones, black bears and cougars coming down from the mountains. No one had been attacked by a wild animal in town for a long time, but there were incidents out on the rural roads and hiking trails; just last year a hiker's dog had been injured by coyotes, and livestock losses to wild animals weren't uncommon.

  But she didn't think this was an animal. There was something about that flurry of activity, followed by a very purposeful hush, that made Verity think there had to be a human mind involved. Possibly a marginal example of the species, considering they'd broken into her garden and were now hiding in or behind her garden shed. She might even be insulted that Ducker wasn't wasting money on competent vandals to harass her.

  "Come out of there!"

  There were little rustles, a clink or two, and some anxious scuffling from the kids behind her. Then a voice—a deep, rumbling voice, a male voice—said very softly, "I didn't mean to scare you, ma'am."

  Verity nearly dropped her poker.

  "Aunt Verity," Bailey began in a small voice.

  "Hush," Verity said sharply. "I'm sure whoever this is can speak for himself. Can't he?"

  "Yes, ma'am," the deep, quiet voice said after a moment.

  There was something about that voice's deep timbre that shivered in her bones. It was a voice that she wanted to lean into, a voice she yearned to hear again as soon as he stopped talking.

  Verity had been blind from birth, so she had never learned to visualize things the way she understood other people did. She saw things in her own way, as a mix of impressions and feelings, touch and smell and a sort of general all-over sense of the shape of a thing.

  And she desperately wanted to know what a man with a voice like that "looked" like. She could feel it already—the way his muscles would flex under her hands, the rasp of his stubble against her skin. She wanted to know what he smelled like, what he tasted like ...

  But more than that, she wanted to know what he was doing in her garden shed.

  Chapter Three: Maddox

  Maddox had been thinking he'd just slip away while the kids were in the house. He appreciated them helping him, but he didn't want to get this nice family in trouble.

  He just hadn't figured on how hard it was going to be to get up once he sat down.

  After stumbling into racks of garden tools and getting the whole household roused, he ended up sitting heavily on a pile of bags of what was probably manure from the smell, and that was where the angel with the fireplace poker found him.

  He couldn't see much of her, between the darkness in the garden and the way his vision kept blurring in and out of focus. With the lights of the house gleaming behind her, all he could see was that she wore a long skirt swishing around her legs and wore her hair in two braids falling over the shoulders of her loose blouse. It was a girlish hairstyle, but he didn't think she was young. There was a solidity to her and a firm confidence in her low, rich voice that spoke of maturity.

  He wished he could see her face, even enough to read her expression. Most of all, he didn't want to scare her. Maddox knew he was intimidating even normally, with the tattoos and piercings and his massive size, and right now he was covered in dirt and blood and bruises.

  So he stayed sitting down and hoped she hadn't already called the police.

  But she didn't seem afraid. She came another step closer, a cautious step, but the kind of caution that he thought was more related to feeling her footing on the dark path than because she was afraid of him specifically.

  "Why are you in my shed?" she demanded.

  It was a fair question. He was still trying to figure out how to answer it in a way that wouldn't immediately cause her to run screaming for the house and call the cops when the punk girl made a throat-clearing noise and said, "Luke and I told him he could, Aunt Verity."

  "What?" The poker-wielding angel—Verity, he thought; her name is Verity—rounded on the young couple, who both took a few hasty steps back. "Bailey Breslin, my garden shed is not a rest stop for vagrants! Is this a friend of yours?"

  "No, he helped us and he's in trouble, Aunt Ver, just listen! The sheriff is after him."

  "And you're hiding him here?"

  "He helped us," Bailey declared, crossing her arms, while her boyfriend stared nervously at the poker. "He saved our lives. It's a long story, but we couldn't just leave him. He got hurt because of us."

  "He's hurt?" Verity turned her head, not exactly looking at Maddox but cocking her head to the side as if she was listening instead. "How badly?"

  "Not bad," Maddox said quickly, as Bailey said, "Pretty bad."

  "You should take him to the clinic, then."

  "No, Aunt Ver, you don't understand. Mr. Ducker and the sheriff are after him. I mean, they're literally hunting him. They tried to kill him. If we took him there, they'd find him right away. And he helped us, when he didn't have to. We can't just hand him over to them."

  "I'm going to want to hear this story," Verity muttered. She lowered the poker to her side, and turned back toward Maddox, with that same odd listening posture, not quite looking at him. Is she really that afraid of me? he thought. "So those first-aid things are for him, I assume."

  "Um ..." The girl started to hold up her hands, which were full of gauze packets and other items Maddox couldn't see clearly, and then lowered them. "How did you know I—"

  "Because I'm not stupid," Verity said tartly. "You, there. In the shed. How badly are you hurt?"

  Maddox hesitated. "Not so bad I need to put you to any trouble," he said, finally.

  Verity huffed out a sigh. "I haven't raised a teenager without knowing what that means," she said. "Come on. Why don't you come into the house and we'll see what we can do for you."

  Maddox made a ferocious effort, leaning on the cane. The world tilted and red sparks wheeled in his vision; he could feel his ribs grinding together. He sank back onto the pile of manure sacks. "I ... don't think I can."

  "You can't get up?!"

  "No, ma'am," Maddox said quietly. He just hoped he could get through this conversation without passing out.

  "This man should be in a hospital," Verity murmured. "Hold this." She thrust the poker in the general direction of the punk girl, who looked flustered and then shoved her first-aid supplies at her boyfriend and took it.

  Then Verity stepped carefully in Maddox's direction, reached out with a light dancing touch of her fingers and swept her hand past the support for the shed roof, then rested her fingertips on it and held out her other hand, sort of in his general direction but not quite.

  Maddox looked at it, and at her.

  "Are you still
awake? Still there?" Verity said. "I'm holding out my hand."

  "I ... know," he said cautiously. "Do you want me to—"

  "I'm blind. I can't see you. Take my hand so I know where you are."

  "Oh," he said, startled. He had thought she was just trying very hard not to make eye contact with him. Suddenly a lot of things made more sense. This was the blind aunt, of course. He'd been expecting someone old.

  He reached out and stopped with his hand just on the verge of taking hers. He didn't touch people very often. When he closed his fingers around her much smaller ones, the sensation was unexpectedly powerful. He was aware of the strength in her small fingers, the slight calluses from garden work or other physical labor, the softness of her palm.

  He thought she was going to try to pull him up, but instead she moved forward, with a swiftness and assurance he wasn't expecting. She kept hold of his hand but before he knew it, her other arm had slipped around his back and slid beneath his arm to support him, and suddenly he had an armful of curvy woman.

  Maddox tensed, which hurt a lot, but he was afraid to breathe, afraid to move. Her hair smelled like flowers.

  "Are you just going to sit there?" Her words were impatient, but her voice was gentle. "Let's get you up."

  He gasped aloud in pain as Verity heaved her weight against him to try to get him on his feet. She'd compressed his injured ribs, and for a minute his vision went white.

  "Sorry," she said quickly, adjusting her grip. "Do you think you can handle stairs? My apartment is above the shop, and there's no elevator."

  "I don't know," he admitted, still short of breath.

  "We'll put you in the shop, then," she decided. "Luke, go open the door. Bailey, go upstairs and get some blankets."

  With Verity helping and his cane to lean on, he managed to get painfully to his feet. The journey to the house was a slow hobble, and he couldn't help being acutely aware of her body against him: her warmth and softness, the strength of the arm around him, every whisper of her skirt and the soft brush of her braids when she moved her head.