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.
“Would you please stop doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Rubbing my car. It’s…”
“Turning you on?”
“…distracting me. I keep seeing peripheral movement, I think someone’s about to make a lane change, and it’s always you. It isn’t easy driving this car in this weather in this traffic, and I’d appreciate just a little…HEY! YOU WANNA STOP VISUALIZING WORLD PEACE AND START VISUALIZING YOUR TURN SIGNALS!…consideration.”
Byleth blinked, looked from Leslie/Deter to the SUV that had just drifted across three lanes of fast-moving traffic and back to Leslie/Deter again. “He didn’t hear you.”
“I know. But it makes me feel better. Helps me drive.”
“Oh.”
“It’s just a way of releasing…TRY LEASING A CAR YOU KNOW HOW TO DRIVE, MORON!”
The car in question braked hard, swerved left, then right, then hit a patch of ice, turned a complete three hundred and sixty degrees and settled safely on the shoulder. A half a kilometer of brakes squealed, dozens of steering wheels were cranked, sudden moisture caused two seat warmers to short out, and then it was over.
Byleth smiled. “He heard you that time.”
Fingers white around the steering wheel, Leslie/Deter stared wide-eyed out at the surrounding traffic still moving miraculously to the east and beginning to pick up speed. “God saved us all.”
“You think?”
“He reached down His hand to keep His children safe.”
“No.” Byleth frowned and shook her head. “I’d have noticed that.”
“You can’t deny that was a miracle.”
“Hey! I can deny anything I want,” she snarled, folding her arms and slumping down in the seat.
They drove in silence for a few minutes, then Leslie/ Deter sighed and squared his shoulders. “You know, you’re not as tough as you think you are.”
Byleth glared at him past the lock of
