Shifter Fever Complete Series Bks 1-5 Page 27

  “Ouch.” She pulled a face at the shiny red burn that he showed her. “How’d that happen?”

  “I was working and I just slipped.” He nodded behind him and her eyes immediately grew wide.

  “Do you have a lab back there?”

  So somehow she’d learned that he was a scientist. Maybe because she’d asked somebody about him? That thought pleased him quite a bit. “Yeah. I’m in between research facilities right now so I’m doing the best that I can with what I have.”

  She nodded, looking like she was about to ask him another question when the elevator at the end of the hall dinged and the delivery man stepped out. “Do you wanna eat your Chinese food at Milla’s apartment? With me? I have my own dinner, but we could watch another movie?”

  Matt staunchly ignored the shit-eating grin from his regular delivery boy and the hours of work calling his name from the lab. “Yes.”

  And that was how, for the second night in a row, Matt found himself on a white suede couch, watching a Star Wars movie.

  “Are you gonna finish that?” Inka asked him, for the third time. She scooted down the couch to peer into the carton of shrimp fried rice he was clutching. He’d never minded sharing food. Even though she’d already polished off his egg rolls and the sweet and sour chicken. But every time she asked for something else, there was suddenly less and less couch between them. So, yeah. Matt definitely didn’t mind. At all.

  He handed his food over to her immediately and shifted against the couch when she used the same fork that he had.

  He didn’t particularly understand the woman sitting next to him. She was unpredictable and a little strange. And she definitely didn’t have that refined, regal air that her sister had. But he liked her. She was funny and sweet and really, really easy on the eyes.

  Enough that when she tucked her feet to one side and those multicolored toes came within two inches of Matt’s leg, his heart banged a drum inside his chest.

  “What do you do in your lab?” she asked him on a commercial break.

  “Right now I’m building a certain kind of tool,” he answered carefully. Discussing his work was something he’d grown to be very cautious about. People either rolled their eyes at him or they acted like he was clinically insane. Both of which he’d learned to live with and neither of which he particularly cared for.

  “What kind of tool?”

  “One that can separate molecules using a certain sound frequency.”

  “Oh. Is it very loud?”

  He was thrown by her question. “No. Humans can’t hear it.”

  She nodded, but her brow was still furrowed in what looked a little bit like worry. “Why are you trying to separate molecules?”

  He cast around for a way to explain it without going into the crazy part, the part that had gotten him kicked out of more institutions than he cared to admit. “I guess because I want to see what’s in between them.”

  She furrowed her brow. “But aren’t there just atoms in between molecules?”

  He blinked at her, wondered if he’d underestimated her just a touch. “Yes and no. But really, I’m not sure yet. I’m still trying to get the tool to work.”

  She nodded and turned back to the movie.

  “Are you going to invite me over again tomorrow?” The question surprised even himself.

  She turned to him. “I hadn’t thought about it. Why?”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Because I want to know whether or not I should order about four times as much food as I usually do.”

  She burst out laughing. “It’s a problem. My family has pretty much given up fighting me when I go for the leftovers on their plates.”

  “Hey,” he held his hands up. “It doesn’t bother me. As long as you’re happy.”

  ***

  The next night, when she invited him over again, Matt didn’t sit quite so far to one side of the couch. And when Inka laid her head on a pillow in between them, some of her long, blonde hair spilled onto his lap. Matt survived the rest of that particular viewing on far less than the recommended intake of oxygen.

  He didn’t see her again that week and he was pretty sure she was gone the entire weekend. When he saw her on Monday morning, stepping out into the hallway, he took a beat to make sure it was her and not her sister. She looked relaxed and happy, the way she always did, but her hair fell in a controlled tumble over her shoulders and she wore classic black trousers with a sort of fancy white shirt. He hadn’t seen her in quite so tame an outfit, and honestly, he didn’t like it as much as the cat sweatshirt.

  “Hi!” she called, the second she saw him.

  He wished that he’d cleaned up a little before heading downstairs for his mail. He’d been up the entire night working, and now, at 8 am, was dressed in sweatpants, an undershirt, and four days’ worth of beard growth. He held his mail in one hand and a tremblingly full cup of coffee in the other. “Hey, there, where are you headed looking so fancy?”

  “Oh,” Inka grimaced down at her ordinary-looking clothes. “I have to wear stuff like this for work. Hey! You should come by. That lingerie store at Lex and 71st? You could get something for Lil Miss Wine Glass.”

  He stared at her blankly.

  “You know?” she prompted. “The cutie from last week? Valentine’s Day is coming up. I just thought…”

  “Oh! Right. Katie.” He shook his head to jumpstart it. “Sorry, it’s been a long night. No, it would be very strange of me to buy Katie lingerie since our date kind of tanked. Not sure I’m gonna be seeing her again.”

  “That’s too bad.” Inka’s brow pulled down and her lush mouth twisted to one side. “I hope you won’t be too lonely without her.”

  Matt cleared his throat. He had a strange… stalling feeling in his chest and he wasn’t completely sure why. “I don’t get lonely usually. As long as I have my work,” he nodded back toward his apartment but the movement had his coffee dripping over. He lunged forward and sucked down a scalding half inch to keep it from spilling. “Then I’m fine.”

  She fished a tissue out of the pocket of her trousers and strode over to him. She quickly wiped the coffee off his stubbly chin and then his fingers and lastly off the cup. “That’s lucky,” she told him. “I get lonely all the time.”

  Another opening? His eyes searched hers but for as open as she was, she was also a very hard woman to read. He cleared his throat. “Well, you know where to find me. I can always take a break if you’re lonely.”

  “Thanks!” Her smile was so dang bright, Matt found himself taking a step back from her. “See you later.”

  And then she was gone and he was stuck staring at the spot where she’d just been.

  ***

  Inka loved the energy of the lingerie store. She’d worked retail in all kinds of shops, and she’d enjoyed most of them. But she thought this was her favorite atmosphere of all. So much hope and thrill. Excitement and delicious anticipation.

  She liked the women who came in groups to point and giggle and wistfully test the softness of each product. She liked the women who came in on their own, knew exactly what they were looking for and bought it in two colors. She even liked the various men who came in, almost always on their own, and most of them a little pink around the ears. It was cute.

  But her favorite, by far, were the shy ladies. The ones who came into the store and knew why they wanted to wear the lingerie, but had no idea where to start.

  Inka’s boss, Rhea, had been skeptical when she’d first hired Inka, but even she was deeply impressed with Inka’s ability to make the shyer customers comfortable.

  When faced with a shy bird, Inka swapped outrageous colors for more muted ones, found sexy cover-ups for customers who just weren’t quite ready for the big show, and always, always chatted with everyone.

  She’d helped a young woman, Sarah, pick out a sheer little onesie set for ‘the big night’ with her girlfriend and Inka had gotten a little high off of the vibe. It was with a thrumming energy in her chest and a little
skip in her step that Inka walked home that evening.

  She made a private little sound of delight when she was half a block away from home and spotted Matt Woods at the front entrance. He wore track pants, a stocking cap, and a long-sleeve T. His breath came puffing out in clouds into the cold January air as he stretched one leg and then the next.

  She realized that he was talking on his cell phone, and though he was talking low, Inka could hear his words.

  “Si, Mama. Si. Creo que no—” He let out a long sigh. “Por supuesto.”

  The exasperated yet loving note in Matt’s voice had Inka smiling as she headed toward him.

  “I didn’t try to mess things up with Katie!” He was obviously frustrated and had switched back to English. “There was nothing wrong with her. She’s a very nice person.”

  Inka smiled harder when he pinched the bridge of his nose. She watched while he stretched out his back. She’d known he was tall, of course; he had to be almost 6’5”, but she’d never noticed that he kind of had a bod as well. She could see the muscles of his back against his sweaty shirt and his biceps strained the fabric a bit.

  He switched back into Spanish and Inka decided she’d eavesdropped for long enough. She passed by Matt, twiddling her fingers at him as she ducked into the warmth of the lobby.

  “Ma, I gotta go. Inka!” he called after her, jamming his phone into his pocket and managing to stub his toe on the threshold of the door at the same time. He cursed and hopped over to her. “You have a quick sec? There’s something I wanted to show you.”

  “Sure. Are you alright?” She frowned down at the toe he still had propped up in the air.

  “Por supuesto.” He cleared his throat. “I mean, yes, of course. I just have to walk it off a little.”

  “Oh. Well, I can take a walk with you.”

  It was in the opposite direction of what he’d wanted to show her, but he was in no way going to pass up the opportunity to take a walk with Inka.

  “Alright.”

  They would have been shoulder to shoulder except that his shoulder was about 3/4 of a foot taller than hers was.

  “Were you on a run?” she asked him, noting his clothes. The thrilled, buzzy feeling from the sale at the lingerie shop still ran through her and Inka just felt… good.

  “Yup. I have to, at least once a day or else I lose my mind.” The pain in his toe had subsided and he was walking comfortably alongside her.

  Inka knew all about that feeling. She occasionally jogged, more since she’d come to the city, but it wasn’t what her body was truly calling for. What she needed was to shift. To run and romp with her siblings. She couldn’t help but feel cooped up in the city. She wished, for the hundredth time, that she could move back home. But it was too risky. Her good mood trembled on the edge.

  They were halfway down the block when it started snowing. “We should turn back, you’ll get too chilly.”

  “No, no,” he cut in. “I’m still warm from my run and we won’t go too far.”

  “At least take these,” she insisted, shoving her hand-knit mittens into his hands.

  He didn’t argue. But he did clear his throat as he put his hands where hers had just been.

  Inka tipped her head back and caught some falling snow in her mouth. “What makes snow so beautiful?” She looked up and watched the white against the darkening gray of the sky.

  “It’s in the, ah, ratios,” Matt replied, his long-legged strides as casual as a cowboy’s. She liked the way he moved, she decided.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, there’s real beauty in ratios. Take, ah, this snowflake for instance.” He held out his mittened hand and caught one easily. He held it up between their two faces. She focused so hard, concentrated so fully on what he was saying that his heart did that stalling thing again. “Do you see the pattern there?”

  She nodded, her face so close to his. “It’s like a perfect doily.”

  He laughed. “Yes. Exactly. Mi Abuela would have liked you, I think. She had a thing for doilies.”

  They grinned at one another for just a second until he cleared his throat and realized the snowflake had melted. He held out his hand and caught another. “Okay, so this one has a pattern, too. They all do. And because of the way a water molecule freezes, it structures itself into a pattern. And it’s different every time, each one is unique, I’m sure you’ve heard that before. But every snowflake is also the same in one way.” He caught another. “Each of its spindles is in ratio to the next in what is known as the Golden Ratio.”

  “Oh! I’ve heard of that!” She came up to her toes in her excitement and bobbed back down. Her good mood was coming back. “Nautiluses have it. And chrysanthemums.”

  “Yes,” he smiled down at her. Most things that are deemed beautiful in nature have something to do with the Golden Ratio.”

  The two of them started walking again. They turned and Matt realized they were already heading back toward the front door.

  “Actually,” he continued. “Human faces have it as well.”

  “Really?” she blinked up at him.

  “Yes. A lot of what we say makes someone pretty is in the ratios of their face. Eyes to nose to lips. If one is too big or too far or asymmetrical,” he pointed with a little smile to a nose that Inka hadn’t noticed was crooked, “it’s not as beautiful as a face that falls perfectly into the Golden Ratio. Like yours.”

  “Mine?” Inka asked, involuntarily raising a hand to her cheek.

  “Por supuesto.” He narrowed his eyes at her as they approached the lobby doors. “You must have been told before that you’re beautiful.” She was so gorgeous, and so classically, that if she said she hadn’t been told that, he would have thought she was lying.

  “Well. Sure,” she admitted. And then looked up at him with those wide green eyes. “But no one has ever said I was mathematically perfect before.”

  He let out a surprised bark of laughter as he reached over her head to hold open the door to their building. “Let’s not get carried away here. I didn’t say perfect. I said beautiful.”

  The night watchman raised his eyebrows as he watched Matt walk Inka to the elevator.

  Inka was laughing and there was such a lovely flush on her cheeks that Matt wondered for a second if he’d embarrassed her. “You wanted to show me something?” she asked as they stepped into the elevator.

  “Right!” he snapped his fingers. “Just something I thought you’d like.”

  He led her through the hall and into his apartment. Inka was really, really hoping that he was going to show her his lab but he walked through to his bedroom instead.

  Inka followed right behind him, not even hesitating in the doorway of his room. That halfway thrilled Matt and halfway worried him. He didn’t want her to be so trusting that she’d follow the wrong person into the wrong room.

  “There,” he said, leaning on his window and pointing outside.

  Inka followed him over, unzipping her coat. The second she spotted what he was pointing at she gasped. “Is that a Peregrine Falcon?”

  He wasn’t sure why he was surprised at this point; Inka was obviously very smart. And learned. “From the best I can tell. Though I was never great at bird identification.”

  “I go birding at home as often as I can,” she admitted, looking up from where he was leaning over her. He craned to see the nest he’d spotted on the ledge of their building just the other day.

  “Any ideas why this guy didn’t migrate for the winter?”

  “Well,” she bit her lip. “Not all of them do. Sometimes they get confused when the winter starts out so warm. Like this past one did.”

  “You think he’ll be alright?”

  Inka nodded. “They’re resilient. And,” Inka leaned forward, squinting to identify the bird, “she’s doing alright, it looks like. She looks fairly healthy. Although she’s probably not appreciating the snow a whole lot.”

  “Movie tonight?” The question came out of the blue for b
oth of them but it delighted Inka.

  “Okay!”

  Matt was suddenly very conscious of the fact that he was leaning over her and she was looking up at him with something wonderful in her eyes. She didn't move forward or back, she just kept looking up at him with eyes so green he thought of an old emerald ring of his Abuela’s.

  Matt cleared his throat. “I'm gonna get cleaned up first.”

  “Oh. Right.” Inka’s eyes scanned down his body. She'd forgotten he'd gone on a run just now. He didn't smell like he'd just gone on a run. Actually, he smelled like fresh paper and copper pennies. Dang good if she did say so herself. “Okay, I'll change out of my work clothes and order some dinner for us?”

  Matt nodded. His hands dipped into his pockets for her mittens. For once in his life he was playing it cool. He handed the mittens back over to her. “Whatever you want sounds good to me.”

  Inka answered her phone as she jogged over to Milla’s apartment. “Mills!”

  “Inks!”

  They laughed as they greeted each other. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Milla answered. Then, realizing that Inka was going to be able to tell no matter what, backtracked and told the truth. “Well, I guess I’m just worried about you out there all alone. I was wishing you’d come home for more than weekends.”

  “Why?” Inka asked, sensing something immediately. She let herself into the apartment and tossed her bag down. “Did something happen?”

  Milla hesitated. “Griff is just having trouble again. He’s frustrated and snippy with everyone. And you’re always so good at making him feel better.”

  Griff was Milla and Inka’s brother’s girlfriend’s brother. A complicated relationship that Inka had long ago stopped qualifying. Griff was family. He’d had a rough few years, and now he was back and trying to figure out how to have a life in Green Mills with the rest of the Ketos. And Milla was right that Inka was the only one who could cheer him up sometimes. Griff had been one of the main reasons she’d hesitated to leave Green Mills. But in the end, there hadn’t seemed to have been any other choice.