Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(82)

Out in the late-summer sun, wearing a button-up shirt I’d bought him, Adam looked more relaxed than I’d seen him in a while. He also looked gaunt. He’d lost maybe ten or fifteen pounds over the last week. Werewolves need fuel for shapeshifting. I suspected that the monster needed even more fuel. Adam was eating, but he was burning it all.

“Hey, Mercy,” said someone I didn’t know as they passed by our table on the way out. “I read about your car accident. I’m so sorry—I’ve broken my nose a couple of times. It really sucks.”

One of the problems with being a local celebrity was that the newspaper and TV stations tended to cover any excitement. It provided an opportunity to frighten the daylights out of people, but also to do some PR. From the sounds of it, my Jetta’s fate had been used for the latter.

“I liked that car,” I told him with a friendly smile. “I’ll be fine, but we’re having a private funeral for the car on Wednesday.”

I’d said that last to be funny. We’d had a funeral for my old Rabbit, but the Jetta would actually just end up in my parts car graveyard without ceremony—though I might say a few words over her.

“Good to hear,” he said, and then his partner pushed him on with a nod to us and a “Let them eat, dear” to him.

When they left, I said, “I didn’t know the local news caught my high jinks with the car.”

Adam grunted. “Someone interviewed the police officers and got an official version. They called us, and my office sent a press release to all the news organizations. All of which downplayed the injuries so that your car’s death was the biggest news. Kept it off the front page of the newspaper and in the last five minutes of on-air news.”

“Huh,” I said.

“Do you want me to keep you up on when you make the news?” he asked. “One of my guys in the office tracks it for me—all the reporters have his name and contact information.”

“Like a movie star’s promotional manager,” I said, fluttering my eyelashes at him. “Assistant to Mr. Hauptman.”

He laughed. “I’ll tell him you said so. His main job is being big and scary to reassure clients we can protect them. He seems to be enjoying schmoozing the press—it’s a different look for him. He tells me that he’s just waiting until one of them actually sees him.”

“Butch?” I asked incredulously. “Butch is your PR guy?”

Butch was six-eight and over three hundred pounds of ex–football player and Marine. Aided by some facial scarring, he could compete with Darryl for scary.

“Yes.”

“You need to get him on the air,” I said. “No one will pay attention to a few werewolves if they can follow Butch around.”

“Do you want me to tell him to keep you updated?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know I should track that on my own, but . . .” I shrugged. “If I can get a heads-up, I won’t react to people like a goldfish.” I opened my eyes wide and made bubble-blowing motions with my mouth to illustrate my point. “It isn’t a good look for me.”

“I have to agree,” he told me with an appreciative grin. “Especially with the tape on your nose.”

I had forgotten all about the tape somehow between the mirror in my bathroom and the front door of the restaurant. Now I remembered. And the way the bruising on my left eye was darker and bigger than the one on my right. It gave me a lopsided appearance.

Self-consciously, I glanced around at the tables where people were studiously not looking at us: the very handsome—if too thin—man and the lopsided woman, who had just been making goldfish faces. Maybe, if they didn’t know Adam, they would just think that slender was his normal build.

“I think you are beautiful no matter how much tape is on your nose,” he said consolingly.

He wasn’t lying. There was a reason why—even though he had shut down our bond; now turned into a terrifying monster instead of a beautiful, terrifying werewolf; and could be completely unreasonable at times—I loved him to bits.

“I know a good optometrist who can help you with that,” I told him, and he smiled at me.

“So everyone knows about the car wreck,” I said, because I couldn’t say, Let me take you to Bran and have him fix you. I wasn’t sure Bran could fix him—and I knew that he wouldn’t go as long as the smoke weaver and Fiona’s wolves were still running around.

“Better that than everyone wondering if I beat you up,” he replied.

“Hah,” I agreed.

The waitress came and took our orders. She didn’t even widen her eyes at the size of Adam’s—we’d eaten here before.

After she left, I said, “I don’t know why it’s so different eating here than it is eating on the river shore by our house.”

“We could clear the river area and put up picnic tables down on the shore,” Adam said. “But I like it better the way it is.”

“With weeds and rocks and mud for all the river wildlife to use,” I agreed.

“And,” said Adam, raising his water glass to me, “here we have a chance to eat an intimate meal without the pack interrupting four times an hour.”

“With the added benefit that neither of us has to cook,” I said lightly. How could it be an intimate lunch when Adam still had our mating bond locked down tighter than a miser’s penny jar?