At Lydia’s side, Wrench began to wheeze.
For a moment, she was worried he was going to seize again, then she realized he was chuckling. His mirth gained strength until he was laughing helplessly and everyone was staring at them.
“Mongoose,” Wrench finally gasped. “She’s a mongoose shifter. They’re immune to snake venom.”
“That’s what I said,” Ally said in exasperation. “A MANGOOSE.”
Lydia giggled almost hysterically. Bastian and Saina burst into laughter, leaning into each other. Travis chortled, holding his sides. Even Scarlet was snickering, a hand over her mouth.
“What?” Ally demanded.
That only made everyone laugh harder, until their eyes were streaming with tears and Travis fell onto the grass because he couldn’t stand up anymore.
Chapter 35
Wrench hated being babied much less than he suspected he would. Ally clearly took a lot of enjoyment in playing nurse, and he couldn’t complain about getting more time to spend with her as he recuperated in Lydia’s room.
But it was only a day before he felt well enough to resent his inactivity and started thinking again.
He didn’t want to talk about it too much with Ally around, but Laura and Tex took the girl down to the beach on his second day of enforced rest.
“There’s still an assassin here,” he growled at Lydia. “One that knows about you and Ally now.”
“We’ll find him,” Lydia assured him. “Everyone—especially Scarlet—is on full alert, and we’ll make a game plan to flush him out when you’re back to full strength.”
“You don’t deserve this risk. It’s my fault this danger is here.”
“You don’t deserve it, either,” Lydia reminded him.
“What if I do?” Wrench demanded. “What if it’s all this I don’t deserve?” His gesture included Lydia, and Lydia’s cozy room, a room that felt more like a home than anywhere he’d ever lived, and the view out the open window. It encompassed the whole island, with all the strange people who had accepted him as one of their own.
He didn’t have to look at her to know that Lydia was gazing at him with that look she got—that look that said she wanted to touch him and was careful not to. She’d been thoughtful about how much she casually touched him, and Wrench had caught her reaching for him and pulling back at the last moment several times.
“Do you really think that?” she asked gently. “That you don’t deserve happiness? That there’s not good in you?”
“If there was good in me, I wouldn’t be so good at hurting people,” Wrench growled.
“We reflect the kind of people we’re around,” she reminded him softly. “And if you’ve never been anything but hurt, that’s all you’re going to be good at.”
Wrench started to interrupt her—but to his surprise, she walked past him then, and gestured to him to follow her out into the courtyard. “Come.”
A blanket was spread out on the grass, and at first Wrench thought that she had very specific plans in mind. He had no objection to this idea—Ally’s arrival and his snakebite had put the kind of crimp on those activities that anyone would expected and he craved having her in his arms again.
But Lydia patted the blanket and not only made no move to remove her own clothing, but put on a pair of flexible leather gloves from her apron pocket. There was a little pile of odd tools to one side and Wrench suddenly wondered if sh
e had a kinky side he hadn’t known about.
“Take off your clothes and shift,” she commanded him.
He froze in confusion, his ardor dampened.
“Don’t look so frightened,” she scolded him. “I know you don’t like to be touched, but I want to show you how it can be.”
No one had ever accused Wrench of looking frightened in his life. When Lydia patted the blanket again, imperiously, he slowly obeyed.
In panther form, he crouched slowly down before her on the blanket, tense and anxious, tail lashing.
Then she slowly began to brush him, a coarse, short-bristled brush in her strong capable fingers.