Snow Leopard's Lady Read online

  “That’s right. I got to know Sam, the owner, and we talked about why he didn't want to change the sign. Turned out he didn't think he was good at design, and he's color-blind, so he was afraid he'd pick something totally garish and ruin the whole thing, and also it had been so long that he was afraid he’d ruin the joke. So I worked with him and a local artist to come up with something nice."

  Wilson came to a stop in front of the store, where Sam’s Hardware was set up in a lovely, old-fashioned-looking font against a weathered-wood background. “It is nice.”

  “Look closer,” Mavis advised.

  He leaned out the window, peering at the door, and suddenly laughed. Mavis knew he’d seen the tiny lettering at the bottom of the sign: for chiropractic questions, inquire within. “So he gets a tasteful, accurate sign, but the joke keeps going.”

  Mavis nodded. “Everyone was pretty pleased with how it came out. And now anyone can find the store, and Sam’s doing better business.”

  Wilson grinned. “Imagine that.” He looked up and down the street. “What else?”

  “Well—we can head out of town if you want, and see some of the good vistas.” Mavis cleared her throat. “I’m afraid that most of my knowledge of the town is actually just stories about the clients I’ve gotten. You know, I’ve only been here several months myself, so I’m probably not the best tour guide. I don’t know much about the history, or anything.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Wilson looked surprised. “This is the best kind of introduction to a place I’ve ever had. You know about all these people, all the local businesses—that’s the very heart of the community. I can’t imagine anything else I’d rather learn, if I wanted to get to know a place.”

  Mavis hadn’t quite thought about it like that. She felt herself starting to smile. “Well—all right. Keep going, and I’ll show you a craft shop that was about to go under last year...”

  Wilson started the car.

  ***

  They spent a pleasant afternoon driving around town. Mavis was afraid she’d be monologuing the whole time, but Wilson was always very interested, asking questions, coming up with stories of Marines he’d known who’d left the service with the intention of opening their own businesses doing this or that.

  After a couple hours, Wilson asked her where the locals went to eat, and Mavis directed him to Oliver’s diner. Nina, she knew, wasn’t working tonight, which was probably for the best. Mavis didn’t want her to get the wrong idea, seeing her mother having dinner with a handsome man like Wilson.

  After all, he was going back to DC once the wedding was over, and he’d never have any reason to come here again. He’d probably remember this fondly as a nice vacation, where he learned some things he’d never known about small-town life, acquired some funny stories, and experienced some natural beauty.

  An interlude in his busy, important DC life. Full of his military job, and his—did he have a girlfriend?

  Surely he must. As good-looking as he was, with a job like his. Nice, kind, willing to listen—he must have a girlfriend. Women must be lining up at the door, for a man like that.

  But if he did, he hadn’t mentioned her at all.

  Mavis refused to let herself start hoping that Wilson was in fact single. Because it didn’t matter, did it? She wasn’t going to date him. He was going back to DC.

  He held the door for her as they went into the restaurant. Mavis bit her lip and redoubled her mental efforts to forget how good-looking he was.

  They were seated by one of the other servers, Patsy, who gave Mavis a significant look behind Wilson’s back. Mavis sighed to herself. It looked like Nina was going to hear about her mother’s not-actually-a-date no matter what.

  Wilson scanned the menu. “What’s good here?”

  “Everything’s good here,” Mavis told him, which was true. For a small-town diner, it put together a mean spread. “It’s not a gourmet place, but the food is always top-notch. Even my daughter’s happy to eat here, and she works as a waitress most nights.”

  Wilson’s eyebrows went up. “Now that is a sign of a good restaurant. Hmm. I hardly ever eat out anymore, I should get something indulgent. Maybe the steak.”

  “Why don’t you eat out?” Mavis asked, curious. It couldn’t be money, could it, with a job like his?

  Crap, maybe it was money. Maybe he had some kind of massive expense—debts, or medical bills, or child support. Maybe she’d just completely overstepped her bounds—

  But he was shaking his head and smiling. “Not as much of a party animal as I used to be. I’m a real homebody these days. And I do love to cook, so it seems a shame to pay somebody else to do it, particularly if I’m going to be eating by myself either way.”

  Mavis frowned. “You don’t have a lot of friends in DC?”

  “My good friends were in the Corps with me,” Wilson said frankly, “and most of them have either retired, or they’re still on active duty somewhere far away. And a few of them didn’t make it home.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Mavis said, struck by the bleakness of that picture.

  He shrugged, but the nonchalant gesture was contradicted by the air of sadness around him. “That’s military life.”

  Mavis thought about that as the waitress, Ruth, appeared to take their orders. When she'd left, Mavis said, "It sounds like joining the military is signing up for a lonely life, down the road."

  "Well," Wilson said, "that's not true for everybody. Most of the time, a military man—or woman—will have a family to come home to. So once you're done being deployed, you might miss your buddies from overseas, but you'll be home with your family at last."

  "But you aren't married?" Mavis ventured.

  Wilson shook his head. "No, I never met the right woman. Married to my job." There was a pause—was he hesitating? "And you?"

  "I'm...not married anymore," Mavis said.

  "I'm sorry," Wilson replied immediately. "If this is a painful subject..."

  "No, no—well, yes." Mavis had to contradict herself, because, well, it was. "But it's good to talk about it, I think. My divorce is in the final stages right now. My husband was...he was not a good man."

  Wilson's mouth firmed into an expression that looked almost angry. "Sometimes I think women in bad marriages have it worse than any combat Marine. Were you—in danger from him?"

  Mavis shook her head immediately. "No, he was never physical like that. It was just—he just—" She stopped.

  "Please don't think you have to talk about it, if you'd rather not," Wilson said.

  Mavis was frustrated with herself. "I want to. Do you ever—have you ever had something that was so terrible, and you wished you could just bring it to light, expose it to the air so that it would lose some of its potency? Be able to talk about it with people, like it was long ago and not important anymore?"

  The conversation had gotten heavy fast. Mavis felt like she should apologize, back off from sensitive topics, but Wilson was leaning forward, his eyes meeting hers. And something about the look in those silver-gray eyes suggested to her that he wanted to hear her. That he wanted to take this step forward into close, intimate things.

  As their eyes locked, he nodded slowly. "I feel that way about combat. It’s been years, but there are still things I saw, things I had to do... things I had to order other people to do. I understand.”

  Mavis held his gaze. She could almost feel the same pain in him, the way the past could reach forward and take hold of you. “Can you talk about it now?”

  Maybe if she could hear someone else’s story, it would be easier to tell her own.

  Wilson was quiet for a long moment. “It’s difficult. Because I believed, and I still believe, that it's important to defend our country. But in the moment, it’s hard to know if your orders are the best thing, if you're really serving the greater good, or if you're just contributing to human suffering. And there's so much suffering in the world, and I know that I was responsible for some of it.”

  There
was an endless sadness in his eyes. Mavis had to blink back tears at his words. "I'm glad you made it back," she said softly. "But I'm so sorry you had to see things like that."

  "I'm sorry anyone has to," Wilson said. "When I got back, I was driven by the memories of what terrible things could happen during war. I thought that by going into administration, I could work toward making the whole system better, take a step toward peace. But you've got to be truly ambitious, truly connected, to get that high up, and I'm not enough of a politician. As it turns out."

  "That's no bad thing," Mavis pointed out. "If you were that much of a politician, you probably wouldn't want the same things."

  Wilson nodded. "Which is a problem, but not one I can fix, that's for sure."

  There was a pause as their food arrived. Mavis realized she'd completely forgotten what she'd ordered, too caught up in the conversation. The fish, as it turned out. "Fresh-caught this morning," said Ruth as she set the plate in front of her. "And medium-rare steak for the gentleman."

  "Thank you, Ruth," Mavis told her, and Ruth smiled.

  "Enjoy your meal, Mavis. Enjoy, sir," to Wilson, and she left them to it.

  "Very friendly staff here," Wilson commented approvingly.

  "They are," Mavis said, "although I know them fairly well, because of my daughter."

  "Since she's a waitress too," Wilson remembered. "She seemed like a lovely young woman, when I met her last night."

  "She is." Mavis took a bite of her fish—it melted in her mouth, delicious and perfectly seasoned. She took a second to appreciate it, before adding, "I'm very proud of her for growing up as well as she did."

  "You should be." Wilson took a bite, and closed his eyes in enjoyment. Mavis found herself caught by the expression of pure pleasure on his face.

  Stop it, she scolded herself. She had to remember that there was nothing between them, that he lived thousands of miles away.

  But would a little vacation fling really hurt?

  The idea shocked her a bit. Mavis had never had a temporary fling. She and Daryl had met in college, and she'd only had one boyfriend before him. She'd never been much of a party girl, always looking for a serious relationship.

  But that hadn't worked out too well for her, had it?

  Still, that was no reason for her to go throwing herself at the nearest single man of an appropriate age. Mavis told herself firmly to put the idea out of her mind.

  "You said you moved here to be with your daughter," Wilson was saying. "And that was recently? What brought her here?"

  Mavis bit her lip. "That's—well. It's quite a story."

  "I've got nowhere to be," Wilson said. His eyes were warm.

  Mavis breathed in and out slowly. "I mentioned things that are difficult to talk about, but that deserve to be brought out into the air."

  Wilson nodded, quietly supportive.

  "I mentioned that Nina's adopted," Mavis said. "We didn't know she was a shapeshifter until she was first able to change, as a teenager."

  Wilson made an understanding noise. "I'd wondered why you were so curious about shifter culture, if your daughter was a shifter."

  Mavis nodded. "Since we weren't part of the community, we'd never heard of shifters. Nina kept it a secret, until one day we saw her. My husband—" Her voice caught.

  Wilson had set down his fork. He reached across the table and took her hand.

  The warm pressure of his palm against hers somehow gave her the courage to keep speaking. "My husband kicked her out of the house," she whispered. "He called her an unnatural creature, and—and all sorts of names." She swallowed. This was the hardest part. "And I didn't say anything against him. I was too much of a coward, too shocked—I didn't know what to do, and so I did nothing."

  She blinked several times, remembering that awful night, Daryl's furious shouting echoing through the house, Nina crying and yelling back, and then that final, horrible slam of the door.

  For so many years, that sound had haunted her dreams. The last thing she'd ever heard of her daughter.

  Mavis fumbled for her phone. "I'm sorry, I just need—" She had to make sure Nina was all right.

  "Whatever you need," Wilson said softly.

  But when she found her phone, she saw that she already had a text from Nina. It said, I hear you're having a date with a handsome military man! :)

  Mavis smiled helplessly at it, reaching for a napkin to dab at her eyes.

  "What is it?" Wilson asked.

  "I was going to text Nina, just to be in touch with her, but she's already texted me, teasing me about being out—" Mavis suddenly realized what she was saying, and felt her cheeks flush with heat again. She glanced up across the table.

  Wilson was smiling now. "Out with an old paper-pusher like me?"

  His voice was gentle, but he was following her lead, taking them out of the fraught subject of Mavis’ past.

  "That's...not how she characterized you," Mavis said, relaxing gratefully into the more lighthearted mood. She put the phone down. "I want to tell you the rest of the story," she said, more seriously. "But I don't think I can do it in public."

  "Of course. You should do whatever you're most comfortable with," said Wilson. His silver eyes were endlessly kind. "Shall we get the food to go?"

  "Let's finish," Mavis decided. "We should really appreciate this as it was meant to be eaten, hot and fresh." And she could use a break from this particular topic of conversation.

  "I'm going to have to come back here just to have this steak again," Wilson commented. "It's better than I've had in DC."

  "Local beef," Mavis pointed out. "Not much room for cows in the city."

  "Too true," Wilson said, with a hint of wistfulness in his voice.

  "Do you get out to shift much?" Mavis asked as she took another bite of her fish.

  He sighed. "I wish I could, but no. It's too far a drive to get somewhere private enough that no one would noticed a stray snow leopard running around. I spent most of my time in the city—concrete, sidewalks, shopping malls."

  “That’s hard,” Mavis sympathized. “I mean—I think it must be. Nina’s told me that it’s difficult to stay in one form all the time.”

  “I manage. I suppose it is difficult, but I’ve had many years to get used to it. In the military, even in the shifter units, there aren’t always many opportunities to go out and shift.”

  “I suppose not,” Mavis said.

  They focused on their food for a few minutes, while Mavis went over what Wilson had said about himself in her mind. It didn’t quite seem to fit the idea of a flashy, high-powered Washington military man that she’d had in her mind.

  In fact, it seemed as though Wilson thought his life was...dull? Confined? At least some parts of it.

  “What would you do if you weren’t working at your job?” she said impulsively. “Do you have any plans for after you retire?”

  “Come here and eat this steak for dinner every night,” Wilson said immediately, and when she chuckled, “I suppose that’s not the most realistic ambition. I’ve thought about it, but I admit I’m not quite sure. That’s probably what’s kept me in the job so long.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A military pension is very, very good,” he told her. “Particularly once you’re fairly high-ranking, and you’ve been in the Service for twenty years or more. Which I certainly have.”

  “How much more?” she asked, eyebrows raised.

  “Now, now, never ask a gentleman his age,” he said, and she laughed again.

  She liked his sense of humor. It wasn’t crude or insulting like a lot of men’s; it was more refined, and almost delicate, how he dropped casual little jokes into the conversation.

  Daryl hadn’t had much of a sense of humor. She’d given up trying to joke with him early on in their marriage, because he never got it, and then she’d either feel awkward when he didn’t notice, or have to explain the joke to him and deal with him telling her it wasn’t funny.

  “I
n any case, I could’ve retired years ago if I’d wanted to, and with the pension and my savings from all of the combat pay I’ve gotten, I wouldn’t have had to worry about money at all,” he said. “But—as I said before, I married my job. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself without it.”

  Mavis privately thought that it sounded like he and his job might be on the rocks, and perhaps a divorce was in order. But she wasn’t about to dictate his life choices for him, so she kept her mouth shut.

  The rest of dinner was in the same, more lighthearted vein. Wilson picked up the check, not even considering Mavis’ offer to pay.

  “It’s the least I can do in exchange for the wonderful tour this afternoon,” he said, “and the company and conversation this evening.”

  He held the door for her again on the way out. And then opened the sports car’s door for her, too.

  She had to keep her mind out of impossible fantasies, somehow.

  And then, once they were in the car, he said softly, “Did you want to continue our earlier conversation? If you’re comfortable. If not, I entirely understand.”

  And Mavis heard herself saying, “Would you like to come to my place for a cup of coffee?”

  Wilson said, “That sounds lovely,” and Mavis had to accept that she’d just asked a man up to her apartment only a day after meeting him.

  And she didn’t regret it.

  She was certain that Wilson would be a perfect gentleman, for one thing. And...if something did end up happening, Mavis was somehow sure she wouldn’t regret it.

  She wanted to spend as much time with this man as she could, before he flew off, away from Montana forever. She wanted to experience every moment with him as fully as she could.

  And from what she could tell, even fully clothed, he seemed to have the sort of body that a man twenty years younger would be envious of. Trim waist, broad shoulders, biceps that showed some definition even under his shirt...his jeans hugged his behind in a way that Mavis appreciated very much, and showed off powerful thighs.

  She remembered him saying he ran six miles every morning. Looking at him as he got out of the car and came around to open her door, she could believe it.