Second Nature (22 page)

He was staring right back, pretending to be unimpressed even though Griffin could tell that it bothered him that he had to look up to meet her eyes.

A satisfied smirk strutted across Griffin's face.

"Don't be a fool, Tarquin," Rhonda siad before her companion could answer.

Is he just Rhonda's patrol partner, or is he her husband?
Griffin wondered.
Did he finally find the perfect Kasari wife he wanted?

"I'm not a fool," Tarquin said, scowling. "She just tried to make me look like one." His finger stabbed in Griffin's direction.

"Tried?" Griffin drawled. "I would say I succeeded. To get beaten up by an antapi girl in front of all your friends... I'm sure it was the highlight of your teenage years." The sweet scent of triumph, the heady fragrance of his fear as she had taught him a lesson were still fresh in her memory — as were the less pleasant consequences that had followed later.

Tarquin's muscles quivered.

Griffin could almost hear the blood pump through them and felt the answering rush in her own body.

A growl erupted from Tarquin's chest, but with his human body and vocal cords, it didn't sound very impressive at all.

"You got hair ball problems?" Griffin asked, smirking.

With another growl, Tarquin lunged at her.

It was a full-out attack that might have felled even someone as big as Griffin — if it had hit her.

Griffin neatly sidestepped him.

The force of his attack smashed him into the side of the car without any extra effort from Griffin, leaving a nicely sized dent.

"That's enough!" Rhonda shouted. "Tarquin, you're making us Kasari look bad. And Griffin, stop taunting him. If you're just here to cause trouble, I'll leave you here and you can tell your commander to send a saru who can behave like a professional."

"Me?" Griffin flashed her teeth in an innocent smile. "He was the one who attacked me!" She had learned her lesson fifteen years ago. Since then, she had never been the one to throw the first punch. With people like Tarquin, there were more elegant ways to take them down a peg or two.

Rhonda's unflinching gaze still rested on her, and Griffin had a hard time meeting it without looking away. She had always admired Rhonda's courage and her integrity. It was hard to believe that someone like Rhonda could be a traitor. "Fine," she finally said. "I promise to be on my best behavior. Catch, Tarquin!"

Her car keys arched through the air.

Cursing, Tarquin fumbled and dropped the keys, as Griffin had known he would. His fingers and arms were probably still itching and tingling after their confrontation.

He threw Griffin one last angry stare, then picked up the keys and got into the rental car.

*  *  *

Griffin sank into the cushy passenger seat and wriggled until her big body had gotten halfway comfortable in Tarquin's car.

Next to her, Rhonda had the opposite problem. Half-forgotten protective feelings flared as she watched Rhonda wrestle with the seat to adjust it for her shorter legs. For a Kasari, she was downright petite, but she had never been self-conscious about it. Rhonda had never thought of herself as a small woman.

And she isn't. There's something about her that makes her larger than life.
Griffin brushed her hands over the soft fabric of her pants, removing imaginary lint, as if she could brush away her thoughts that way too.
You're here to do your job, not to relive an old crush. Rhonda is a suspect.

"I hear you're a librarian. Do you like your job?" she asked.

Rhonda started the car. "I love it," she said. Enthusiasm drifted up from her every pore. "So no bad librarian jokes, please. And you? Do you like your job?"

It was a question that Griffin had avoided for quite some time. "Some of it," she answered. "I guess it's the same with every job. There are always things that you like about it, and others that you just have to accept as necessary."

Hazel eyes flashed her a look of concern.

"So what's your favorite thing about being a librarian?" Griffin asked before Rhonda could ask a question of her own. "Do you get to meet some authors?"

"Not as often as I'd like, but we had a few come in and read from their books. It's always so much fun, especially for the kids."

Authors of children's books were not what Griffin was after. "Any famous local authors?" she asked, keeping her voice calm and her body relaxed, not allowing her muscles to tense for the final lunge at her prey.

"We had one great reading where —" Rhonda stopped herself midsentence. Her instincts had always been good, so she had sensed Griffin's trap. "Wait a minute. You're not just making small talk, are you? You're really investigating J.W. Price? What did she do to deserve this?" Outrage at having been tricked replaced the scent of Rhonda's enthusiasm.

Great. The ever-effective Kasari rumor mill is still in full working order.
"So you have met her?" Griffin asked without answering Rhonda's questions.

"My boss somehow convinced her to read a chapter of her latest novel," Rhonda said.

"And?" Griffin drawled.

"And it was great. People loved it." Hazel eyes crinkled at the edges as Rhonda remembered and smiled. "He tried to convince her to come back and do it again sometime, but she never accepted."

It wasn't because Jorie was shy. Not exactly. She just preferred solitude to being in a room full of fans.
So how would a woman like that get in contact with a Wrasa?
Her writing was the most likely option. "So you never spoke to her directly?" Griffin reprimanded herself when she realized she was hoping for a negative answer. She didn't want to be forced to investigate Rhonda any further.

Rhonda chuckled. "She signed my copies of her books for me."

"What's so funny about that?" Griffin asked.

"She wrote a librarian joke into one of them," Rhonda said, still grinning.

There wasn't even a hint of resentment toward Jorie for making fun of her beloved job. "I thought you don't like librarian jokes?" Only minutes before, Rhonda had warned her about it.

"I don't like bad librarian jokes — hers was a good one," Rhonda said.

Rhonda's words, her smile, and the scent of her emotions all led to one conclusion. "You like her," Griffin said.
And she's not the only one. Martha likes her too.
Not that Griffin could blame them. Jorie Price was an interesting woman.

"Is that a crime?" Rhonda's light eyebrows pinched together, forming a wrinkle on her otherwise smooth brow. "Have your superiors gone completely overboard now and declared even liking a human against the First Law?" Bitter sarcasm filled the confines of the car.

It was a pretty intense reaction for the normally levelheaded and friendly Rhonda.
She's sensitive about it because she's been criticized for liking humans before — probably by Leigh.
"And that's all you ever talked about with Ms. Price? Books and librarian jokes?" she asked, ignoring Rhonda's bitter accusations. She had no good answers for them.

"Yes!" In the semidarkness of the car, Rhonda glared at her before she looked back at the street.

Griffin inhaled the metallic taste of aggravation. The acid fragrance of deception was absent. Either Rhonda was telling the truth, or she was such a good liar that she had convinced even herself.

"Why are you investigating Ms. Price?" Rhonda asked.

"We're here," Griffin said instead of an answer. Dismissing Rhonda as a likely suspect, she focused on meeting her fathers for the first time in fifteen years.

*  *  *

Rhonda stopped the car in front of the Eldridges' home.

Since Griffin hadn't been here for fifteen years, seeing the house was a bit of a culture shock. The large house in the center of town was just so different from her mother's small, secluded home where Griffin had grown up. There were no walls, no gate, and no fence around the Eldridge estate — signaling that the home of their nataks was always wide-open for every member of the pride. Instead of guards, only the scent of herbs and flowers from the large garden around the house greeted Griffin.

Griffin didn't have much time to look around, because Rhonda strode up to the house as if she lived there.
And maybe she does,
Griffin thought as she watched Rhonda take a key from her pocket and unlock the door. Did half the pride have a key to her fathers' house, or was Rhonda accepted into the household as some kind of adopted daughter?

Not a lot had changed in the house since the summer she had spent here. The loud ticking of the large grandfather clock in the hall was still getting on her nerves. Brian's black bag was sitting right next to the door, reeking of various ointments and medicinal herbs. Half a dozen jackets hanging on the coatrack indicated that they had visitors. During the summer Griffin had spent with her fathers, hordes of daily visitors and all the cousins that practically lived at the house had driven her crazy. Voices drifted over from the kitchen and from one of the rooms upstairs, but she didn't bother to eavesdrop on their conversation. She was here to talk to the nataks, not to refamiliarize herself with Kasari small talk.

"Back from patrol duty so soon?" Leigh called from the living room. "Couldn't resist my cooking, huh, Ronnie?"

Oh, Leigh is allowed to call her Ronnie, but not me. Nice.
She forced back the old feelings of rejection.
What did you expect? You haven't seen her in fifteen years.

Then Leigh must have smelled her presence. She stopped joking and appeared in the doorway. Not saying anything, she took her time to study Griffin from head to toe.

Griffin did the same. It was hard to believe that this stranger really was the half-grown cub she had known fifteen years ago. Sun-streaked blond hair no longer fell onto her back in long braids. Now it curled around shoulders that were sinewy, but not as sturdy as Griffin's. The fern-green eyes had lost their carefree twinkle. Only Leigh's scent was still the same. A hint of lavender that didn't seem to fit her personality always clung to her. It came from the small lavender bags that Martha used to hang in her closet to ward off moths. Apparently, Martha still did that for Leigh.

"Look what the cat dragged in," Leigh said. Her full lips formed a smile, but it was not one of warm welcome.

"Hey, I didn't drag her in," Rhonda said. She leaned up to playfully ruffle Leigh's blond hair. "She came quite willingly. She wants to talk to your dads."

"Rhonda, Leigh, is that Griffin? Bring her in here!" Brian Eldridge's commanding voice boomed through the house.

Griffin took a deep breath and headed for the living room in a straight line, fully facing the two men at the head of the large table to show them she was not intimidated. The scents of Rhonda's mother and half a dozen of Leigh's cousins around the table trickled into her consciousness, and she felt their curious gazes, but she ignored them for now.

Both men stood when she entered.

It was the old power game. They didn't want to give her the advantage of looking down at them.

They were both still tall and physically fit men, but Griffin suppressed a smirk when she realized she had outgrown her fathers by at least three inches. With surprise, she noticed that Brian's ginger brown hair was beginning to turn gray, and even Gus's lighter hair had more than a few gray streaks. The laugh lines around her fathers' green eyes had deepened, and Griffin suspected that Brian's beard hid more lines around his mouth too.

So much time has passed.
A hint of regret crept up, and Griffin forced it back.

Some things hadn't changed, though. The scent of healing herbs still drifted around both of them, and Gus still let Brian do the talking.

"Griffin," Brian greeted. His nostrils flared as he took in Griffin's scent.

"Father." Griffin gave first him, then his younger brother Gus a nod.

"Sit," Brian said, gesturing at one of the chairs on the other side of the table, directly across from him instead of next to him, where Leigh had been sitting. It was the chair a natak would offer one of his people when he wanted to keep an eye on them while they were giving a report, not the place at the family table that he would offer a daughter.

Oh, yeah, make sure everyone knows you don't really consider me your daughter. I don't care.
Griffin sat down, pretending she hadn't eyed the seat next to her father even for a moment.

"How are you?" Brian asked. He sat too and raked his intense gaze over her.

It sounded stiff and formal. Maybe he wasn't used to expressing fatherly interest. Griffin wondered whether he was close to Ky or Leigh. "I'm well," she answered just as stiffly.

Brian nodded. "You look good... all grown up." For a second, his smile seemed insecure, as if he had just realized his daughter was grown up and a stranger to him.

Yeah,
Griffin thought.
Fifteen years will do that to a teenager.
She stopped herself from saying it out loud. Never going back for another visit had been her choice — even though it hadn't felt like much of a choice. As much as her fathers might like to ignore it, the pride would never fully accept her, and she would never feel comfortable living with the close-knit clan that left her no space to breathe and be herself.

"How are your sister and mother?" Brian asked.

Leigh's cousins exchanged glances, and a few of the older pride members started to grumble. Obviously, they didn't like Brian's continued interest in Nella.

If it is true interest.
Griffin couldn't tell whether Brian was really interested in Nella's well-being or just making polite conversation.

Brian had avoided contact with her mother because he knew that even the appearance of an ongoing relationship with a Puwar could hurt his career.
So is this his way of keeping up with how she's doing? Does he curse her name and hope she'll drop off the edge of the earth, or does he still care and hope she's doing okay?
"Both are doing fine," she said, keeping her answer short. She wasn't here to exchange news about the family.