Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

A shley was beginning to think Penny got her own way a lot. Otherwise she, Ashley, would not be walking Penny to the diner. Instead she would be standing around the parking lot worrying and fussing and, she reluctantly concluded, possibly, just possibly , being in the way. They were at a table and warming up in the cozy diner before she said, "How did you do that?" in a tone that sounded mystified even to her own ears.

Penny set the menu aside and grinned across the table at her. "I think you have a lot in common with your cousin Bill. Very responsible, maybe a little uptight about making sure things get done because you don't quite trust anybody else to do it, probably with good reason. But not everything needs your immediate and constant supervision. I speak from the experience of having learned this the hard way myself. So I appealed?—"

Despite herself, Ashley laughed. "To my better nature?"

"Oh, God, no. 'Never appeal to a man's better nature. He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.' Although I'm constantly amazed at how many people actually vote against their own self-interests, but never mind that. That's a long way of saying I figured you were hungry and that suggesting food would outweigh your sense of responsibility for keeping an eye on a bunch of grown men who have been given the equivalent of a giant Lego set to put together."

"You're just very confident, aren't you?" Ashley sat back in the booth, staring at Penny in admiration. The Sixty Pix drummer was small and compact, but then, Ashley thought, so were firecrackers, and they made a hell of a sound. "Was that a quote, the thing about better natures? It sounded like one."

"Yeah, an old science fiction writer said it. Robert Heinlein. And look, yeah, I hit things really hard for a living—well, not a living, but for a hobby—well, not a hobby, I do get paid for it—anyway, the point is, I'm really short and the best way to get people to take me seriously is to not only be brazenly confident about everything, but also right about everything, like, all the time."

Ashley gave a startled laugh. "And are you?"

Penny offered a positively rakish grin. "Often enough, yeah. Besides, we're both going to be increasingly busy as today goes on, I think, so if we're doing the flirting thing I thought I should get you alone to do that for a little while. So tell me about Ashley Torben."

The rakish grin made Ashley's heart flutter, but the much softer smile that followed Penny's last few words made her insides positively melt. "You've got a very direct way of flirting."

"It's Gwen's fault. I learned from her. Is it working?"

Part of Ashley wanted to explain it wouldn't matter if Penny didn't flirt at all. That Ashley would happily follow her around adoringly just to get the time of day, never mind a series of devastating smiles and direct, laughing comments. That she knew in her soul that the confident redheaded drummer was everything that would make her happy in life.

Of course, all that also required her explaining that she could turn into a bear and that her certainty that they belonged together was born out of a magic that had served shifters well over the millennia. That didn't seem like the right conversation to have in a diner, so Ashley only ducked her head and murmured, "Yeah, I think it is."

"Amazing. What's good here?" Penny waved a hand, indicating the diner, and Ashley took a moment to look around like it was a place new to her.

It was not an elegant space, or even a charmingly retro one. Larry's Diner had been in Renaissance as long as anybody could remember, and the decor hadn't really been updated since the seventies. Inexpensive brown beadboard panelling covered the lower half of the walls, with scarring where olive green vinyl booths had come loose and gotten scraped against them. More than one of those booth seats had been repaired with duct tape. The tables were metal-based, with faintly yellowed laminate tops that sported paper placemats that doubled as the menus. The lighting was dim, especially in winter when the nights closed in early, although for the moment it was as bright as it got, with sunlight bouncing off the snow outside and reflecting through the windows. The whole place looked like a hole in the wall. It was a hole in the wall.

Ashley looked back at Penny and smiled. "Everything. Literally everything is good here. Not just good. Homemade levels of good. I have a real weakness for the chicken-fried steak and eggs, personally, but you can't go wrong with anything on the menu."

"You know what, Bill said the same thing when he brought us here for dinner before our first gig at the pub, and the hot wings I got were fantastic, but I thought maybe I'd lucked out. Two locals telling me the same thing, though. Now I'm starting to trust it, and also starting to understand why a place that looks like the last half of last century forgot about it is still open and doing good business."

"It does look like that, doesn't it? I'm used to it, but yeah. Whatever you order will be good." A waiter came by as Ashley finished speaking, and although the guy, in his fifties, looked as worn out and used up as the diner itself did, he smiled.

"That's what we like to hear. We doing breakfast or lunch, ladies?"

Penny said, "Yes," and ordered the Big Blue, which involved buttermilk pancakes with blueberries, blueberry yogurt, hash browns, eggs, bacon, and a blueberry 'smoothie' that Ashley knew was basically a milkshake. When the meal arrived a few minutes later, Penny stared at the hash browns in dismay. "They're blue."

Ashley, who had been waiting for that, grinned. "You did order a breakfast called 'Big Blue.'"

"But the potatoes are blue!"

"They're some kind of Peruvian potato," Ashley said, still grinning. "Aren't they cool?"

"They're blue !" Penny took an incredibly cautious bite and managed to look even more dismayed. "And they taste exactly like potatoes. They're delicious. Okay, somebody call the chef, this is amazing. What the heck!" She pointed her fork at Ashley. "Are you using mysterious foods to distract me from asking you to tell me about yourself? It's not working, if you are."

"I don't know that there's all that much to tell," Ashley protested. "I grew up in Renaissance, or up in the mountains just above it, have nine thousand cousins and a business degree, and I run a pub."

And you turn into a bear, her bear concluded.

Yes, but I can't say that over brunch!

Why not? The bear sounded affronted. She's your mate. She'll believe you.

She really won't, Ashley promised. It's too weird. "So that's boring me," she said, to drown out the bear. "What about you?"

"I grew up in Denver, decided I wanted to be Animal when I was like five years old, pestered my parents into buying me a drum kit, and am now living the dream as the drummer for the Sixty Pix. Animal," she repeated when Ashley blinked at her in confusion. "From the Muppets."

Ashley laughed out loud, taken completely by surprise. "Oh. That's wonderful. Really?"

"Really. All that energy and noise. It was great. I also have a day job as a housecleaner," Penny added. "Because it turns out you can't really bank on being a rock star. No, really," she said to Ashley's new round of surprise. "I'm an independent contractor, so I can make my own hours, which means not scheduling myself when we've got a gig. And I'm really good at it. I took a course in crime scene cleanup."

Ashley stopped with a forkful of food halfway to her mouth. "Are you kidding?"

"I am not kidding. I decided I didn't want to do actual crime scene cleanup because trauma, but it was really interesting and there's basically nothing I can't clean now."

"You are a much more interesting person than I am," Ashley said aloud, and, to her bear, I know fate is never wrong but there's no way she'll want to stay with someone like me. I'm completely ordinary.

"Eh." Penny shrugged. "Different. I can clean a crime scene and bang a drum. I could not, however, run a pub or get a business degree."

"That seems unlikely!"

Penny smiled. "I'm not great at sitting down and studying unless I can either make a lot of noise while I'm doing it, or it's something new and fascinating with basically every turn of the page."

Ashley tilted her head, cautiously curious. "ADHD? You don't have to answer, obviously, I'm just being nosy."

Penny lifted two fingers close together. "Lil' bit, yeah. I'm pretty focused as long as I remember my meds, but I tell you what, expecting people who struggle with routine to take two pills a day to keep their heads on straight is a big ask. But I think it's part of why I'm great in an emergency. It's a whole new situation with constant challenges that is resolved in a relatively short period of time! I'm great at that! But I get bored and lose interest if it turns into an ongoing series of basically repetitive challenges."

"Like running a pub."

The redhead touched a fingertip to her nose. "Exactly. So, see? Different, that's all, not more or less interesting. Besides, I think you are interesting. Wrangling all those cousins, running that pub, throwing beers on women to get their attention…"

Ashley laughed and hid her face in her hands. "Not my usual approach."

"Worked though, didn't it? Although I thought you weren't interested," Penny said. "You wouldn't even look at me."

"Only because you were so knee-meltingly hot I thought I would actually drool on you if I did," Ashley said into her hands. "I mean, come on, you were half naked in the bathroom and you've got the most incredible …biceps…." That was true, if not exactly the body part Ashley had been trying not to look at.

Penny didn't respond, and after a moment Ashley looked up to find the other woman beaming shyly at her. "People don't usually call me hot," she said. "Cute, yes, but not hot. Cute is the curse of the short woman."

"I'm sorry, but you are cute," Ashley said. "Button nose and everything. But also hot. I mean. Look at you." She made a small helpless gesture. "You're stacked . Whereas I'm tall and sort of twiggy."

Penny's eyebrows rose so high they were in danger of getting lost in her hairline. "First, Twiggy is a literal fashion icon. Second, I don't think you're seeing the same person I am when I look at you. Not to come on too strong, but I would walk across a bed of molten lava for an ounce of your elegance."

"I poured a beer on you."

A startled laugh burst from Penny's chest and she pushed the rest of her food away, having made quite a dent as they'd chatted. "Even the elegant are clumsy sometimes. But seriously, look, my life is nuts and I know that, and I don't know if brunch as a distraction to keep you from micromanaging counts as a date, but if you'd be interested I'd really like to take you out on a real date sometime this week? Next week? We're in town through the end of the year."

"I do not micromanage!" Ashley hesitated. "I don't think I micromanage."

"You probably don't, actually. Sorry, I didn't mean to hit a sore spot there." Penny bit her lower lip, which had the perhaps-unfortunate effect of making her look even cuter. She had large, dark brown eyes beneath her shaggy red haircut, and her uncertainty gave her a pretty terrific puppy-dog look just then. "Is that a nice way of letting me down? By avoiding the question?"

"No! No, I'd love to go out with you on a real date. If this isn't one. Is this one?"

Penny smiled. "No. Because I can definitely do better than this for a first date. I mean, I hear there's this big gala charity event happening at the Thunder Bear Brewpub tonight, and I'd totally take you to that, but it's so last-minute I'm afraid you're already working."

"Well, I hear the lead singer and drummer from the Sixty Pix might show up to that event, so you probably wouldn't want to be stuck with me tonight anyway, but maybe…" Ashley tried to think ahead and ended up groaning. "God, maybe tonight is actually best. I'm working the next two nights and then my insane family has decided to have a last-minute reunion and there's no way I'm introducing you to seven million Torbens on a first date. It'd be like running you through the gauntlet."

"Well." Penny leaned forward, moved Ashley's plate out of the way, and put her hand down, palm up, as an invitation. "Let's say we called this a first date, and the thing tonight a second date. Then you could spare me the gauntlet until the third date, and I'm sure that would be totally fine, right?"

"I'm not sure you really appreciate how many of us there are."

"I've met about a dozen of you already," Penny said gamely. "Give me a chance."

Ashley, knowing she sounded way too soppy, murmured, "There's nothing I'd rather do," and put her hand into Penny's.