"I'm doing fine," he said, smiling. "But I do see something I'd like to look at."
In a narrow patch of shade between the store and the Crossroads diner, there was a woman with a bright-colored blanket spread over a table, selling silver and turquoise jewelry. Gio gravitated toward it. Max drifted after him, muttering, "We don't have time for this!"
But Gio insisted on poring over every necklace on the table, until finally he picked out one with large pieces of turquoise in silver squash-blossom settings. The money he passed the woman was hidden in his hand, but she gasped and began to reach for her change box, only to have Gio shake his head and smile at her. "Your work is beautiful," he told her. "It is worth this and more."
"Got yourself a nice souvenir?" Max asked as they walked toward the cafe. "It'll bring out the something or other in your eyes." Maybe he was pinging her shifter mate sense wrong because he already had a wife somewhere, she hadn't even thought to ask—
"It's for you," he said gently. "May I put it on you?"
Max was too startled to protest. Instead, she turned and lowered her head, lifting her ponytail out of the way.
She had seen this scene in many movies, but no one had ever done it for her. There was something intensely fascinating about having him behind her, where she couldn't see exactly what he was doing, that made her visualize his every move in a way that seemed to make it even more intense than if he had been standing in front of her.
His fingers brushed her neck, and she had to stop herself from gasping in reaction. He laid the chain against her neck, and the turquoise and silver settled on her chest. She felt the soft glide of his fingers as he worked the clasp, taking a moment to figure out how it worked. Then, as Max was in danger of losing herself in the sensations, the soft baritone purr of his voice asked, "What do you think?"
Max blinked herself back to reality and looked down at the glint of turquoise resting against her T-shirt. She couldn't get a good look at it; it was hard to stare at your own bosom with any sort of objectivity. "What doyouthink?" she parried.
"It looks amazing," Gio said, which made her consider that he didn't have a whole lot of objectivity about her bosom, either.
They went into the air-conditioned shade of the Crossroads. The place was almost empty, but after they settled in the cracked plastic seats of a booth behind a sun shade, they found that the drinks were cold and fresh, and the menu was surprisingly comprehensive. Max ordered a sausage omelet and pancake combo, Gio got the Reuben sandwich, and Max asked for a burger and fries to go for Javic.
After they ate, carrying the greasy takeout bag in hand, they went next door to pick up some cold drinks from the store. The sun was fiercer now, and the turquoise jewelry vender had packed up. They wandered around the gas station store, giggling over light-up cactus key chains and racks of jackalope merchandise.
"What about this one?" Gio asked playfully. "Is it like the roadrunner, I might see one walking back?"
"I've never met one," Max said. "Or a jackalope shifter, for that matter. But if I do, I'll introduce you."
Gio added a small box of cactus candy to their purchases. Max realized that Javic probably had nothing to wear other than his burnt clothes, so she threw a jackalope T-shirt onto the pile, roughly estimating his size. Then she added a pair of sunglasses rimmed in cactus green and a jackalope hat to the pile. Gio gave her a raised-eyebrow look.
"One of you is bound to need them," she said, and primly added a second pair of sunglasses.
GIO
They walked backup the highway with their bags. There was very little traffic, so they walked on the road's surface rather than dealing with the soft, sandy shoulder with its treacherous hidden rocks and tangles of thorns that snatched at their pants legs.
The desert landscape was beautiful in the pale gold sunlight. Gio found himself liking this place far more than he had expected to. Italy was a much softer place, but he saw aspects of his homeland in the desert palette of gold and beige and dusty green.
And it suited Max. Gio kept glancing at her, glazed with golden sun. It softened her features while also bringing out the strength of her bone structure, the graceful flex of her toned muscles. He could see her curves beneath her sweat-damp T-shirt. The silver and turquoise necklace resting between her breasts drew the eye like a target.
Max looked his way. Gio hastily wrenched his gaze upward, but he could tell that she had caught him checking her out—and that she didn't mind at all. A warm smile curved the corners of her mouth, bringing out a hint of dimples.
"Penny for your thoughts," she said.
"I was thinking that you suit this place, and it suits you," Gio told her.
Her smile faltered a little. "Dry, hard, scary?" She said it in a bantering tone, but there was hurt underneath.
"No!" Gio said, shocked. "Beautiful. Warm. Filled with hidden life."
Her smile warmed again. She touched his arm with the back of her hand. "Speaking of hidden life," she said quietly, "there's a jackrabbit over there."
"Not a jackalope?" he whispered teasingly.
"Not as far as I can tell, anyway. Perhaps you'll see the antlers if I can't."
She pointed it out to him. The gray-brown rabbit with its enormous ears was so close to the color of the rocks that Gio would never have noticed if Max hadn't brought his attention to it, and it seemed remarkably unafraid of them. They both watched as the animal browsed on low grasses until a semi truck came rocketing down the road. The rabbit tensed and then shot off with long leaps of its powerful back legs until it vanished in a tangle of dry brush.
"They're not rabbits, but actually hares," Max told him as they resumed walking.
