the rounds of my other tables. I had my cel phone in my pocket, and I checked it from time to time. I was very anxious to hear about Tara, but I wasn’t going to bug JB. I figured he was nervous enough as it was, and there was a good chance he’d have turned off his cel phone since he was in the hospital.
I was more worried about JB than I was Tara. For the past two weeks, he’d been coming in to parade his worries to me. He hadn’t been sure he could handle being in the delivery room, especial y if Tara had to have a C- section. He hadn’t been sure he could remember his coaching lessons. I figured it was good he was presenting a strong face to his wife and saving the worries for a friend, but maybe he should have been sharing his qualms with Tara or her doctor.
Maybe he was passed out on the hospital floor. Tara … she was made of stronger stuff.
Alcide and Roy ate with the hearty appetites of men who’ve been working outside al morning—men who also happen to be werewolves—and they drank the whole pitcher of tea. They both looked happier when they were ful , and Alcide made a big effort to catch my eye. I dodged it as long as I could, but he nailed me fair and square, so I went over, smiling. “Can I get you-al anything else? Some dessert today?” I said.
“I’m tight as a tick,” Roy said. “Those were great hamburgers.”
“I’l tel Antoine you said so,” I assured him.
“Sam not here today?” Alcide said.
I almost asked him if he saw Sam anywhere in the room, but I realized that would just be rude. It was not a real question. He was trying to segue into another topic.
“No, Kennedy is on the bar today.”
“I bet Sam’s with Jannalynn,” Roy said, grinning significantly at me.
I shrugged, tried to look politely indifferent.
Alcide was looking off into the distance as if he were thinking about something else, but I knew he was thinking about me. Alcide was feeling kind of lucky that he’d never managed to clinch our relationship, because he figured there was something fishy going on between Jannalynn and me.
Alcide didn’t consider that he himself could be the bone of contention, since Jannalynn had told him she was going to propose to Sam, and I was Eric’s girlfriend. But we two women clearly had issues, and he had to wonder how that would affect the pack, which had become the most important thing in the world to Alcide.
He was thinking this al so clearly that I wondered if he was trying to let me know his concerns, projecting them on purpose.
“Apparently we do have issues,” I told him. “At least, she does.” Alcide looked startled, and half turned. Before Roy could begin asking questions I said, “How’s the bar doing?” Hair of the Dog, the only Were bar in Shreveport, wasn’t a tourist bar like Fangtasia. It was not exclusively for Weres, but for al the twoeys in the Shreveport area. “We seem to be pul ing out of our slump, here.”
“It’s doing good. Jannalynn is doing a great job of managing it,” Alcide said. He hesitated for a moment. “I heard that those new bars were fal ing off some, the ones the new guy opened.”
“Yeah, I heard that, too,” I said, trying not to sound too smug.
“Whatever happened to that new guy?” Alcide said, keeping his words guarded. “That Victor?” Though the world knew about the existence of vampires and the two-natured, their infrastructure was not common knowledge. It would remain a secret if the supes had their way. Alcide took an elaborately casual sip of the remaining tea. “I haven’t seen him around.”
“Me, either, for weeks,” I said. I gave Alcide a very direct look. “Maybe he went back to Nevada.” Roy’s mind was empty of Victor-thoughts, and I was glad that Palomino had kept her mouth shut. Palomino … who hung out in a Were bar. Now I made the connection. That was why the distributor was leaving TrueBlood at Hair of the Dog … it was for Palomino. Just Palomino? Was another vamp visiting the Were bar, too?
“Your boyfriend doing wel ?” Alcide asked.
I came back to the here and now. “Eric’s always wel .”
“Find out how that girl got into the house? The gal that got kil ed?”
“You-al don’t want any dessert? Let me get your check.” Of course I had it ready, but I needed to create a little bustle in the air, get them moving.
Sure enough, Alcide had pul ed his wal et out of his pocket by the time I got back. Roy had gone to the bar to talk to one of the men who worked at the lumber mil . Apparently they’d gone to high school together.
When I bent over to put the check by Alcide, I inhaled his scent. It was a little sad to remember how attractive I’d found him when I first met him, how I’d al owed myself to daydream that this handsome and hardworking man might be my soul mate.
But it hadn’t worked out then, and now it never would. Too much water had passed under that particular bridge. Alcide was getting deeper and deeper into his Were culture, and further and further away from the fairly normal human life he’d managed to live until his father’s disastrous attempt to become packmaster.
He was scenting me, too. Our eyes met. We both looked a little sad.
I wanted to say something to him, something sincere and meaningful, but under the circumstances I real y couldn’t imagine what to say.
And the moment slid by. He handed me some bil s and told me he didn’t need any change, and Roy slapped his buddy on the back and returned to the table, and they prepared to go back out into the heat of the day to drive to another job in Minden on their way back to the home office in Shreveport.
After they left, I began to bus their table because I didn’t have anything else to do. There were hardly any customers, and I figured D’Eriq was taking the opportunity to slip out back to have a smoke or listen to his iPod.
My cel phone vibrated in my apron pocket, and I whipped it out, hoping that it was news about Tara. But it was Sam, cal ing from his cel .
