Page 32 of Unwilling Wolf

“What is this for?” she asked.

“Your birthday,” the woman said with a bright-white smile.

Eliza just stared at her in shock. “How did you know?”

Garret said, “I told her it was your birthday. She wanted to make you something.”

In that moment, he could have knocked her over with a feather. “How did you know it was my birthday?” she asked him.

“I remembered. From before.” As he ducked into the kitchen to reheat the plate of her half-burnt cooking in his hand, she could’ve sworn a blush darkened his tanned cheeks.

She took the gift from Lenny and sat on the chair, as excited as she’d been as a child on Christmas. She’d rarely ever received a gift.

From the wrappings, she pulled out a pair of shoes much like Lenny’s. She clutched them to her chest. They were made of soft leather with a very low heel. “Oh, they’re just brilliant!” she exclaimed to Lenny, who was grinning. Garret flashed her a smile, and her breath caught in her chest.

Then and there, she peeled off her heels and put on the work shoes. Lenny showed her how to lace them properly. How long it had taken the girl to make them, she couldn’t guess, but admiring the detailing, Lenny’s absence as of late made sense.

Laughing, she stood, then crept around the furniture, miming a rabbit hunt with her hands up pretending to hold a rifle. Lenny stood and scuffled and bumbled noisily around the room impersonating their first excursion, and Eliza belted out a laugh at the accuracy. Any time she looked over at Garret, he was grinning.

Lenny talked to him in a different language, and made gestures good-humoredly. He laughed, but Eliza wasn’t offended. How could she be at such a time? She couldn’t take her eyes off the new—and undeniably comfortable—footwear. The deep timbre of Garret’s unfamiliar laugh warmed her heart in tender ways she happily kept to herself. It was a second, and unexpected, gift.

After they had settled, Lenny and Garret ate her cooking and didn’t even make awful faces at it. It had shaped up to be a right happy birthday after all.

Lenny left after dinner. Garret would no doubt escape to the solitude of his bedroom soon after. She expected that, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat at the table with his hands clasped in front of his mouth. She fingered the stitching on a napkin, sensing he had something to say.

“That’s nice of you,” he said. “The way you treat Lenny. Not many women—not many people,” he corrected, “would be this kind to her.”

“That’s silly. Why wouldn’t I be kind to her? She is my friend. Lenny is probably the nicest and most sincere friend I’ve ever had.”

Garret searched her face for a long moment. “I can tell you’re telling the truth. You really mean that. You didn’t ever think you were better than her, or Cookie, or anyone here.” He cleared his throat. “I got something for you. For your birthday.”

He pulled out a bright, fragrant orange and placed it on the table in front of her. Shocked into silence—a feat which didn’t happen often—she reached out and touched the peel gently with her fingertips. She had only eaten a few oranges in her lifetime.

“Where did you get this?” she whispered.

“I got it in town a couple of days ago. I pulled a couple of favors,” he said.

Shyness crept over her, and she offered him a soft smile across the table. “Thank you for remembering.”

He nodded, and she peeled the orange slowly, savoring the smell. After she’d divided it into slices with care, she pushed half of them in front of him.

“It’s your present, Eliza. You don’t have to share.”

Arguing with Garret had never gotten her anywhere. So, she tucked her legs under herself and ate the fruit piece by piece, relishing the flesh’s tanginess and the juice’s refreshing tartness. He watched her with an unreadable expression while she ate. Only after she was finished did he pop his first slice into his mouth. His eyes glowed that inhuman blue with amusement as the angles of his jaws worked around the tart fruit.

She should’ve been afraid of a man who looked like him, but fear didn’t exist in her in this moment. “What?” She felt her chin to make sure she didn’t have juice running down it or some other such embarrassment.

“Nothing.”

Silence stretched between them like the walls of a wide valley, but pushing Garret into an unwelcome conversation wouldn’t work.

“It’s just when you eat something you really like,” he said, “you rub your hands together before you dig in. You used to do that when you were a kid, too. It’s funny that you still do it.”

She laughed, and he stuck another slice into his mouth, then pushed one from his pile toward her. The urge to rub her hands together again nearly overwhelmed her. As if he’d read her mind, Garret laughed. That he’d remembered a personal habit she’d never before noticed opened her heart just a little more.

“I was thinking,” he said around a bite of fruit.

“Uh-oh. That sounds dooming.”

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