Page 58 of Blade

HENLEY

“I’m goingto admit I’m not completely sure what to do in this situation.” I hated having to admit that but I didn’t want Blaine to think this was normal behavior. “I’ve never run into this before.”

Especially in the South.

Blaine looked around at the mostly empty but new-looking restaurant and shrugged. “Well, I’m enjoying the company and I like being able to see the main street. Right over on that corner was where I almost got arrested when I was nine.”

“Huh?” Whatever he saw on my face made him laugh. “I might’ve heard that wrong.”

Grinning from ear to ear, he leaned back in his chair and shrugged. “I had the amazing ability as a child to test anyone and everyone’s patience.”

“I just can’t believe that.” I also couldn’t believe how long we’d been waiting for food. “What did you do?”

As he told me about driving the local police chief crazy, in the back of my mind I was wondering what was going on in the restaurant. We’d been seated quickly and had been given drinks right off the bat, but after that, things had started going downhill.

It’d taken the very polite server ten minutes to take our orders and refill our drinks, but then she’d started avoiding us completely. We were now almost forty minutes from our refills and aside from a few other couples being seated in different parts of the dining room, she hadn’t come back.

We’d gotten a quick smile from her from across the room, but that was about it, and the stressed voices coming from the back of the kitchen said something was wrong.

“You’re lucky you didn’t end up having to be bailed out of jail.” Shaking my head had his grin coming back. “You have to be making this up. You’re polite and well-mannered.”

He’d been a hell-raiser as a kid, though.

“I bet you have some interesting stories.” Stretching out one leg, he rubbed it against mine as he reached for his glass, just playing with the last of the ice that was melting. “What’s one of your favorite memories from when you were a kid?”

Hmm.

“All my memories involve either me or my family doing something dangerous or ridiculous.” I had a few that didn’t make me look terrible or stupid, though. “Okay, when I was about five or six, we were traveling out West for the summer.”

That’d actually been a pretty fun trip right up until they’d left me in Yellowstone.

“My mother wanted a family vacation instead of just traveling for…um…work.” Blaine should’ve at least looked horrified at that, but he simply reached over and squeezed my hand before releasing it.

He really was too nice for his own good.

“We ended up at a campground near Yellowstone for a couple of weeks because my dad found a temporary job doing some land clearing.” He’d been hoping the family he was working for was…interesting…but they’d turned out to be just weird humans.

There was a startling number of them and it made monster hunting difficult sometimes.

“One weekend we were out doing some hiking and pretending to be a completely typical family.” I remembered being hot and slightly frustrated about that, but it’d also been beautiful. “We stopped by this little stream and my mother let me take my shoes off. I was playing in the water and somehow didn’t notice they’d started walking again.”

I still wasn’t sure how that’d happened.

Blaine’s eyes got wider. “Oh.”

I wasn’t sure how to explain that part, so I just shrugged and got to the good stuff. “I was a pretty smart kid and got out of the water because I wasn’t supposed to be in it by myself. Then I sat down to wait. Because you’re supposed to stay put if you’re lost.”

I’d seen that on TV, but it only seemed to work if your family noticed you were missing.

“After a few hours, I started to get worried.” Okay, based on Blaine’s wide eyes, maybe I wasn’t that smart and should’ve started worrying sooner. “Just as panic was setting in, this Bigfoot family came out of the woods. The mom was really nice and said they were going to help me back to the ranger station. I just had to promise not to tell who helped me.”

It’d been an easy decision to make.

“Their kid was really nice but the dad kept rolling his eyes and talking about how badly humans parent their young.” He’d actually reminded me a lot of my father which had been weird at the time. “We walked through the woods for probably about forty-five minutes and then they watched from the trees while I finished going the rest of the way by myself.”

“Good grief.” Blaine cocked his head and studied me for a moment. “I’m very glad you found such interesting help, but please tell me that as an adult you know this was wrong.”

“Yeah.” Not that anyone else in the family would admit it. “They played dumb when the rangers finally contacted them. My mother said I wasn’t with them on the hike and that I’d wandered off from the campground where family friends were watching me.”