“It is.”
“Good.”
“Right after this.”
“But…”
“Keepers police metaphysical crimes, right?” He caught up her hand and stared earnestly at her over her fingertips.
“Essentially, but…”
“How can I help you do your job, if I blow off this guy doing his?”
Her eyes widened.
“That’s not what I meant.” His glasses steamed up in the heat rising off his face. “It’s not. It wasn’t. Look, just let me deal with this. And then you can do what you want to make up the time.” The sound of heavy footsteps drew closer. “Claire?”
“Okay,” she muttered reluctantly. “But make it…”
“A quickie,” Austin snickered from the depths of the cat carrier.
As he turned toward the looming figure of the OPP constable, Dean shot a glance behind the seat that promised a discussion with the cat in the near future. Claire didn’t know why he bothered since Austin usually went to sleep right around the time Dean started talking about mutual respect, but she admired his persistence—futile though it might be. A cat’s idea of mutual respect had nothing about it any other species would recognize as mutual.
“License and registration, sir.”
The constable’s accent was pure Ontario and Claire felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. Maybe it would be possible to get back on the road with a minimum of delay.
Dean struggled to get his wallet out of his back pocket, realized he was strapped in, and jammed his seat belt trying to open it. Pounding the release catch with one hand and yanking at the lap belt with the other, he flopped about, making it worse. With the theme song to “C*O*P*S” running through his head, he fought to keep from hyperventilating as he alternately pounded and yanked. He’d watched enough television to know that when the police thought they were being dicked around life got unpleasant for the perp.
“If you’d just relax…”
“Not now, Claire.” Just relax and it’ll happen. Just relax and don’t think so much. Just relax and let nature take its course. After two nights of Claire telling him to relax, that word in her voice got him so anxious he wanted to scream at her to shut up.
“I think your lady’s trying to say that the tension against the belt is causing the problem.”
“Oh.” He sagged back against the seat, pressed the release with his thumb, and pulled the belt free. Fully aware of Claire’s pointed stare, he got out his license and registration and handed them over.
“Newfoundland, eh?”
“I meant to get my plates switched—and my license,” he explained hurriedly, hoping it didn’t sound like he was making feeble excuses for breaking the law, “but I wasn’t certain I was staying.”
The constable bent down and peered at Claire. “I see. You know a Hugh McIssac?” he asked as he straightened.
“Oh, no…”
He bent again. “Ma’am?”
Claire reached into the possibilities.
Five minutes later, they were driving east at a careful eighty kilometers an hour having received a stern although truncated warning that had included no references to hockey.
“Is it warm in here, or is it me?” Austin asked, dropping down onto the seat.
Claire gathered him up onto her lap and shot a worried glance at Dean. He looked as though he’d been carved from flesh-colored marble, the only indication of his mood a certain flare to the one nostril she could actually see. If he doesn’t say something before we reach that pine tree, I’ll speak first.
The pine tree passed.
Okay, if he doesn’t say something between now and when we reach those blackthorn bushes by the side of the road, I’ll explain.
A lunantishee looked out of the bushes as they went by and stuck a long, mocking tongue out at Claire.
Fine, if he won’t talk to me by that next crossroad, he can just sit there. There’s no reason I should have to say anything. I was right. Because, after all, we’re just on our way to catch a demon and that’s so less important than a forty-five-minute discussion of a peewee game played back in 1979.
They crossed the crossroad.
Austin sighed. “So,” he said, squirming around to face Dean, “who was Hugh McIssac?”
“A guy.” Dean’s teeth were locked so tightly together the words barely emerged, but innate politeness forced him to answer a direct question.
“A guy you knew back in St. John’s?”
“Yes.”
“Play hockey with him?”
“No.”
Claire felt the burn rush up her cheeks at the clipped negative. Oops. There’d be no way to make this up to him. A sound caught somewhere between an apology and a whimper forced its way past her teeth.
Dean glanced at her and sighed.
“Against,” he added grudgingly.
“Aha!”
“Oh, nice way to smooth things over,” Austin muttered.
“So, if I hadn’t stepped in, we would have been there another half an hour!”
Dean shook his head. “You don’t know that.”
“Because this would have been the time you cut the conversation short?”
“Yes!”
Claire folded her arms.
“Well, maybe.”
She snorted.
“Okay, probably not. But that’s not the point,” he told her indignantly, slowing slightly to let a minivan pass. “You said you’d let me deal with it.”
“I didn’t change any of the police stuff. He had no intention of giving you a ticket.”
“I’ll never know that for sure, will I?”
“And there’s nothing worse than girding your loins for a battle you don’t need to fight,” Austin interjected, climbing off Claire’s lap and stretching out on the seat.
“You girded your loins?” Claire stared across the cat at Dean.
“No.”
“No?”
“I don’t even know what that means!” He sighed hard enough to momentarily frost the inside of the windshield. “I just wanted to handle it myself.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Yes, I trust you. But you’re some high-handed at times!”
“I’m a Keeper! And I’ll have you know I’m no more high-handed than it takes to do my job. If you’d rather talk hockey than make love…”
“What?”
“We find the demon, I banish the demon, we find a private corner; isn’t that the plan? Unless you don’t want…Why are you pulling over? Dean?”
He put the truck into neutral, stepped down the parking brake, and pulled on the hazards. Then he turned to face her, one hand braced on her headrest, the other on the dash. “I want to make love to you. I want to make love to you so badly it’s all I can think about. When I’m eating, when I’m driving, when I’m looking at you, when I’m not looking at you, when I’m talking about demons, when I’m talking about hockey—I’m still thinking about making love to you.”
“And this is what you’re thinking about when you’re talking to me?” Austin demanded, rising up into the space between them. When Dean answered in the affirmative, he sighed and dropped back down again. “Well, that’s really going to put a damper on future conversations.”
Reaching out, Dean stroked the back of his fingers over Claire’s cheek. “But I’m only thinking about making love to you because I can’t actually make love to you. If I could, I certainly wouldn’t be talking about hockey, I’d be…”
“Okay, that’s enough. The cat does not need to know the details.”
Without taking her eyes off Dean, Claire picked Austin up and dropped him behind the seat. Then she snapped off her belt and slid forward. After a moment she sucked Dean’s lower lip away from his teeth and, when the suction finally broke, murmured into the swollen flesh, “Shall we find that demon, then?”
Dean’s answer was essentially inarticulate.
Austin opted to stay out of the discussion entirely.