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“Scheisse!”
“What?” she said urgently. “What’s wrong?”
What was wrong was that he’d nearly run them off the road watching her try to untangle her hair. What the hell was the matter with him? These were dangerous roads at the best of times, and it was dark and still snowing. “Can you please close that mirror? The light is distracting me.”
He felt her attention for a long moment, as if she were trying to decide if he was telling the truth or was just out to sabotage her beautification efforts. She slid the mirror closed, flipped the visor up, and they spent the rest of the journey in silence. He felt miles away from the easy intimacy they’d shared this evening, and he didn’t only mean that kiss. Dear god, he had told her about his sister. And last night, too, when he’d been prattling on about Star Wars and the solace it had brought him when he’d been younger. He’d allowed her to know that he’d been the kind of person whoneededsolace.
Ms. Delaney never put her hair back up. When he pulled up in front of the Owl and Spruce, it was still tumbling down her back. When she opened the car door, she triggered the overhead light. They stared at each other for several seconds.
She was right about the kiss. They needed to bury it. So instead of apologizing again, which had been his impulse, he said, “Are you going to lay people off?” He might as well ask. The question had been tormenting him, and now that she’d had her Riemsmeetings and had completed her first week of work, she probably had a preliminary sense of the scope of her planned destruction.
She looked startled, but only for a moment. “Undoubtedly.”
He was surprised that she’d answered so easily. They continued to stare at each other. It was almost as if he could feel whatever goodwill remained from their truce disappearing, like the heat from the car dissipating into the cold night. It was more dismaying than it should have been.
He thought back suddenly to her confusion, back at the fire, when he’d said they should “go back.” He’d meant to the castle, but had she been talking about this? This thing they did when they weren’t in a truce?
“If you’re on a sinking ship and you don’t have enough lifeboats for everyone, do you say, ‘Well, sorry, if we can’t all go, we’re all going to drown together’?” she asked, breaking with his gaze. Well, there it was. They were back to “normal.” At least he had won the staring contest.
“I didn’t say anything.” He should be enjoying that she was having a one-sided argument here, imagining him saying things to which she was responding. It should be giving him a satisfying sense of superiority, knowing he was getting to her.
Somehow, it was not.
“Is a long, slow death preferable?” she asked, no longer even trying to keep the annoyance out of her tone.
“A long, slow death would give people time to adjust,” he parried. “It would allow people to steer their children into different career paths, whiletheystill have jobs.”
They resumed staring at each other until she finally said, “Thank you for your company today,” in a way that made him wonder if she had enjoyed his company at any point over the course of the evening or if she was just being polite. “And for dinner.”
“You are most welcome,” he said tersely. Hehadenjoyed their dinner, so he meant it. And yet, he could hear with his own ears how it sounded like he didn’t.
Chapter Seven
Cara had had sex with a lot of different kinds of men. Doctors and lawyers. A plumber, a carpenter, a librarian. She wasn’t picky, was the point, at least not about occupation. That kind of stuff only mattered if you were in the prospect for something long-term. She’d even hooked up with a professional archer once, when she was on a job in the same city as the Olympic trials for archery.
But goat herder was a new one for her.
Yes, Imogen had set her up with a dude named Johannes who was a goat shepherd. Wait. Did shepherds only do sheep? Maybegoatherd, like in that song fromTheSound of Music, was the correct term.
According to Imogen, Johannes rarely came into the pub on account of how much time he spent with his goats. He was, no joke, a lonely goatherd. Funny that a couple hours ago, Cara had been by a fire with Mr. Benz, taking in a scene so stereotypically Alpine it had brought to mindThe Sound of Music. Now here she was, preparing to meet her very own goatherd.
She paused before pushing open the door, trying to shake off the uncomfortable vestiges of the staring contest she’d had with Mr. Benz. She was a little alarmed at how she’d answered his question about layoffs. She shouldn’t have answered it at all, let alone so easily. Maybe that kiss had actually been a spell. Maybe his plan all along had been to put the whammy on her in order to ferret out information. She didn’t relish layoffs. She never did. But in that moment, she’d felt defensive, so she’d acted like layoffs were a foregone conclusion, one that didn’t bother her. She’d felt the need to keep the upper hand, though she wasn’t sure why. Well, probably because he’d been dropping her off at the pub so she could bang a goat herder named Johannes whom Imogen had set her up with. It all sounded so tawdry when put that way. And even though Mr. Benz was apparently a poor rich person, she knew in her bones that he didn’t do tawdry.
No, he just did sweet, gentle fireside kisses.
Enough. She wasn’t going to let Mr. Benz slut-shame her. Though to be fair, he had done no such thing. Okay, she wasn’t going to let her interpretation of what Mr. Benz would think allow her to slut-shame herself. Resolved, she took a deep breath and pushed open the door.
She scanned the pub with a frisson of nerves. Imogen waved her over to the bar. “Hello, hello! He’s having a round of darts while he waits for you. I’ll take you over.”
“Hang on a sec. Let me catch my breath.” And by “catch her breath” she meant execute a super suave arm stretch–yawn thing to try to get a look at the lonely goatherd without him seeing her.
Wow. He looked exactly the way an Eldovian goat herder named Johannes should. He had long, slightly messy blond hair,and he was wearing a blue wool sweater with a red-and-white pattern knit into it. His back was to her as he threw darts, so she couldn’t see his face, but this boded well. She took a fortifying breath as she turned back to Imogen, who winked and set a shot in front of her. “In need of a little liquid courage?”
She was so not this kind of drinker, but, hey, when in Eldovia...
When in Eldovia and about to bang a goatherd...
She threw back the shot and immediately started coughing. In her very limited experience with shots at home, they were always sickly sweet. This one was aggressively herbal, almost medicinal. She waved her hand in front of her face as she got control of herself. If any vestiges of sleepiness had been clinging to her from the drive home, she was now fully awake.
