Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

“Oh? Your home? Are you married? Children?”

“Neither—” Joey began.

“He’s got us,” Vanessa said, with a hint of wolf aggression.

Joey sent her a glance. He sensed Vanessa’s hackles rising at Sylvia’s flirtatious manner, but Joey sensed that was Sylvia’s usual social mode.

“I often have students staying with me for a semester or so,” Joey explained. “Usually international students like Xi Yong.”

“That young fellow’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Doris’s father Jacob put in. “Not everyone understands that part of designing a house is the land around it. They ought to outlaw those gigantic McMansions that leave three feet on all sides, so your bedroom looked directly into your neighbor’s bedroom.”

Sylvia put up a warding hand. “With you there, Dad.”

Jacob nodded. “I’d like to see Xi Yong’s gardens one day. He says the Chinese plan their gardens with an eye to how it will look in generations to come.”

“Are there any plants here in California that they also have in China?” Doris asked.

Joey was glad to see Xi Yong’s smile of pleasure as he answered, and even more glad to see how interested Doris was when the conversation strayed to cooking herbs familiar in both countries.

As the plates emptied, with even the teens full after seconds and thirds, rosy cheeks got even redder, and people moved away from the brightly leaping fire in the fireplace. Doris stood with a soft sigh of resignation that nobody but Joey noticed, and began picking up all the dirty dishes. Joey rose and collected the dishes around him.

He followed Doris into the kitchen, which was, of course, a disaster. She set her pile of dishes on the last bit of free counter space, and as Joey looked for a place to set his, she said with a return of her social smile, “Thanks. Go sit in the den—enjoy yourself.”

“Please let me help. I’m a fellow cook—I know this part of a big blowout. And you know that four hands cut the work in half.” He nodded at the jug still full of Queen Esther’s Cocktail. “We can make a party of it. I’ll wash. You dry—you know where everything goes. And scrubbing those pots will be the workout I need to begin digesting that excellent meal.”

“Thanks!” Doris relented with a grateful smile that sent Joey’s fox leaping around in dizzying circles, yipping Nest! Nest! Nest!

This is what a partnership is about, Joey thought happily as he filled the sink with sudsy water. When he lowered the first stack of dishes in, he said, “The worst cleanup I think I ever had was one night when we ended up with fifty-six guests.”

“Fifty-six?” Doris’s eyes widened as she fetched a dish towel. “How did you get that many into your house? Or did you have it catered? No, you said cleanup . . .”

“It was supposed to be an engagement party for a couple of my Korean exchange students who had become really popular. Equally popular, I learned that night, were my Korean ribs, which they’d requested as the main dish. Their friends brought friends, and my carefully planned party for no more than twenty-five used up every plate and glass I had. It cleaned out the fridge, the pantry, and even my secondary pantry, where I keep emergency stores. The last arrivals had to make do with bowls of Korean bibimbap—which were mostly rice, since my meat and veggies had been cleaned out too. By the time I was done there was no hot water left, and I had to boil cold to pour over the dishes to rinse them.”

“Wow,” Doris exclaimed. “What a night! You must have slept around the clock after that.”

“Pretty much. But it was a great party. How about you? What was your toughest night?”

“That’s easy. A barely-rescued disaster of a formal dinner we gave at my synagogue. It was a fundraiser for a family who’d lost their home to a fire. The dinner was for the people who donated a lot. Volunteers brought in their best dishes for the place settings. We had a florist donate flowers. We had an actual Cordon Bleu-trained chef plan the menu . . . and the gas went out midway through the prep.”

“What was the menu? And what did you do?” Joey asked.

Doris launched into her tale with the enthusiasm he loved to see. She kept him laughing at the jerry-rigged cooking tools that didn’t depend on electricity, and he enjoyed watching her animated expression as she described clever work-arounds in the menu. That kind of adaptation only comes of expertise in making excellent food.

Which was itself a form of love.

He reveled in this unconscious evidence of her generosity, and they kept trading experiences, good and bad, laughing at the bad ones, until they’d cleared the counter. Then he said, “I’ll start the coffee and tackle these pots if you want to raid the rest of the house to collect the rest of the dishes.”

“Great idea,” she said, and vanished through the back door.

The jug of cocktail had gone down appreciably when at last they finished, except for the coffee and tea cups now scattered throughout the house. Joey’s heart beat fast as they looked at one another with the weary pride of a job well done. Strands of her short hair, usually crisply brushed back, hung around her face, her cheeks rosy, her eyes smiling.

Recklessly, for he could feel the effect of the cocktail, he said, “It’s a little warm in here. I realize there’s no chance of an after-dinner stroll. But when you first brought us to the house, I thought I saw a little balcony on one side. Could you show me where it is? I wouldn’t mind a breath of fresh air, and I like to watch the snow fall.”

Doris hung up the third wet dish towel, neatened the edges, then said, “Grab your coffee. I can show you.”

On the stairs, the air was cooler, and felt good on his brow. The murmur of voices and laughter from the far wing rose up the stairwell. Doris opened a door on the landing to the balcony. “You wouldn’t know it, but it looks out over the treetops to the valley below.”

Cold air embraced Joey. It felt delicious. Ordinarily his fox would be begging for a shift and a run, but Joey felt the fox quivering inside him at the proximity of their mate.