Page 22 of Collared Mate

Henry

Rick’s waiting at the table I booked at La Vache. It’s a very high-end steak house that only sells beef from two places, Japan and New Zealand. There are still arguments as to which is better. I chose a lunch seating, because I figured that was a more refined and public feeling part of the day. Restaurants are always public, but some feel more public than others, if you know what I mean.

I see Rick before he sees me. For a moment, I am thrown back in time. Seeing him feels good. I’ve made a lot of friends since him, but he was my first true friend.

There is no enemy greater than a man who has been your friend. We know one another’s weaknesses inside and out. I’m going to have to keep my wits about me and be prepared to take what looks like a loss if I want to win. Art of War sort of stuff.

Rick looks the same as he always has, handsome but brooding. That’s what a woman would say. I have another word for his perpetual mood: sullen.

He is doing his best not to look impatient at being made to wait three minutes, and he is failing. The waiter, already paid off, is doing an excellent job of keeping him in his chair by offering him bottles, which he is proudly rejecting. They’re all good.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” I say as I draw my seat out.

“You.”

He looks at me with daggers of hatred. I’ve never noticed it before, but he and Fiona really do share the same eyes. What they don’t share is the same soul. She has pain in hers, and fury from time to time. I’ve even had the pleasure of seeing her murderous rage. But she never looks like this, blank and hateful at the same time. Rick looks like someone hollowed out the part of him where my memory was supposed to be.

“Me,” I say. “I have several very important things to tell you.”

“I’m not going to have lunch with you,” he says, starting to stand up.

“Sit. Down,” I growl. “Or we will have this conversation elsewhere, and there will not be wine.”

The threat reaches a part of him that hasn’t been told what to do in a very long time. Both his brows rise, and he gives me a faintly incredulous look.

“Are you threatening me, boy?”

“I am.”

He laughs, and for a moment he looks like the friend I used to have. His dimples make an appearance, his dark eyes sparkle with amusement, and he is locked in on me.

“I’m here because I’d like to ask for your sister’s hand in marriage.”

“Oh,” he says. “Is that all?”

“That’s the main reason, yes.”

“Then this meeting doesn’t have to be very long at all. No. There you go.”

He picks his napkin up from the table and tosses it down on his plate in a foppish show of closure. “Anything else I can help you with before I have you hunted down and killed the way I should have years ago?”

“Yes. You’re being lied to. You’re being played. I had nothing to do with your father’s passing, which I think you know because otherwise you would have hunted me down. You don’t have to keep going down the path you’ve started on just because you think you’ll lose face.”

I tried to pick my words carefully, I really did. But all Rick hears is insult after insult.

“You think I’m too stupid to know if I’m being lied to by my own people?”

“I think you’ve wanted to be able to trust them, but they’ve left you in increasingly precarious situations. Fiona was married to Christian for too long. She suffered with him.”

“Fiona is a complete little psycho,” he says. “If you had any idea what she got up to in her spare time, you wouldn’t be here asking for her hand. You’d be running back to wherever you went to lick your wounds.”

I ignore his tone, and his insult. This conversation is too important to be distracted by those things, and the fact that he’s still here talking to me means I have some chance of getting through to him.

“I know your sister better than you think,” I tell him. “I can also tell you that she’s making scenes and waves in front of other packs.”

“Oh, yeah? Like whose?”

“Like mine, for instance.”