“Yours,” Ezra said. “It is. For as long as you want. I know Mom would be fine with it if you worked in your room over there, but there’s nowhere like this to spread out.”
“Thank you, Ez.”
“My pleasure.” Making her smile and bringing contentment to her scent would always be his pleasure.
Twenty-Seven
Asthedayspassed,life seemed to be ironing out its wrinkles, smoothing into a new normal. After two weeks with them, Robert and Ann began treating Willow as a third member of the household. But she woke every morning wondering when she would wear out their welcome. At last she asked to speak to them and voiced her fears. Ann fed her cinnamon bread and patted her arm, then suggested the three of them re-evaluate after six months. Robert nodded, said they had talked it over already, and six months to get on her feet seemed reasonable to them. Willow sat at the kitchen table and cried.
The next morning, her manager Devin met her five steps from the front door of the café.
“Let’s talk for a minute,” he said and motioned her toward the swinging doors behind the counter, which led to the employee break room.
Willow’s mouth dried. She glanced at the giant decorative clock that hung beside the chalkboard menu. Nope, not late. Early in fact. On wooden legs she followed Devin and refused to meet Molly’s eyes.
In the break room Devin motioned her to the worn leather couch, but Willow shook her head.
“Feels like I should be standing,” she said.
“Oh, you’re in no trouble, Willow. But I’ve got to ask you a personal question, one you might not want to answer in front of Molly.”
He didn’t smile. Willow’s heart pounded. A personal question… She tried to guess, but nothing came to mind.
“Go ahead, I guess,” she said.
“Right, so I don’t spread Harmony Ridge gossip, but sometimes I hear it. And there’s been a rumor—low-key at the moment, but it might get around. Could be inflammatory, depending on who you ask.”
Her stomach balled up. Inflammatory. “A rumor about me, you mean.”
“Yeah, word is you’re dating a lupine.” He smiled, and his mild tone was one provocation too many.
“You know what, Devin? I’m sick of this. Yes, I’m dating a wolf. I’m not ashamed of it. He’s a good man, and our entire culture’s fallen for the prejudice and badly documented so-calledsciencethe media shoves down our throats about how inherently unreliable and/or dangerous wolves are, and I’msick of it.”
Devin’s eyes grew wider as her diatribe gained volume. He waited until she took a breath before he lifted his hands in surrender. “Hey, I’m with you, okay? You’re right. It’s messed up.”
Her adrenaline was too high to come down easily. She tried to read him, see whether he was putting her on, but she couldn’t tell, and right now she couldn’t trust. “I’m sorry, what?”
“One of my best high school buddies was a lupine, and he was a cool guy. I don’t get why everyone’s so down on them as a group. Except, like you said, media bias.”
Willow shook her head. No way he meant that. Her dad’s words, the vitriol in his voice, echoed in her head and soured her stomach.“You dirty werewolf.”Trevor’s wounded diatribe followed.“The cops handcuffed my brother.”
Devin took a step toward her, then stood still. His eyes warmed, and for the first time he seemed not to be her manager, but instead just to be…a guy. A guy a little younger than her dad. A guy who lived and worked and had friends and family just as she did. A guy who tried to make sense of the world just as she did.
“Sorry,” Willow said. “None of that rant was about you.”
“I figured.” He smiled. “Look, I wanted you to have a heads-up in case it does get around. Anybody gives you a hard time here, just let me know, and I’ll deal with them.”
“Wow, um, thanks, Devin.”
“Sure thing.” Another smile, a shrug. “That’s all I had to say.”
“I thought you were going to fire me.”
Devin shoved a hand through his cropped brown hair. “Uh, that would be illegal, so…”
“I don’t have money for a lawyer, so you’d get away with it.”
His mouth crimped down. “Well, I’m sorry you even had to think about that. People suck.”
