The Wood Wife by Terri Windling (the false prince TXT) 📕

shrugged. “Well I hope you’re wrong about Maggie. I think Cooper’s house suits her. And I think she’d like Diamondback Rattlers. And I think it’s cute that you’re shy.”

“Cute,” Fox said, kicking her boot with his own. “Puppies are cute. Small children are cute. I want to be sexy and brilliant and devastating.”

“You’re just lazy. Every other woman falls at your feet like a gift-wrapped present with a nice big bow. And of course you fall for the one who doesn’t.”

“That’s right. That’s the only reason she interests me. It’s not that she writes like an angel, or has a voice that makes me shiver to my toes, or that she lives her life with more sheer guts than any ten people put together. No, you’re right. It’s just her singular good taste in not falling for me.”

“Not every woman falls like fruit out of a tree. Some of us take a while. You’ve known her now, what, a whole two weeks? Maybe you ought to work on it.”

“Why? So I can be her townie boyfriend until she gets back to her real life in L.A.? No thanks. I’ve thought this all through already, Dora, and I’m staying clear of it.”

“If you say so,” she told him dubiously.

“I say so,” Fox said firmly.

The waiter appeared, flung down a tray, and drifted out of the room again. Dora picked up her bottle of Dos Equis and looked at the food on her plate. “What is this?” she said.

“It looks like a chimichanga and, let’s see—” Fox poked with a fork. “A bean burrito,” he announced. He ate some. “It’s not bad actually. It’s got spinach and walnuts or something else weird inside.”

“But Fox, it’s not what we ordered.”

“Darlin’,” he said, “I count myself lucky that we got anything from that young man at all. Try it, it’s good. Like life, you know? It doesn’t always give you what you ask for, but usually it turns out fine just the same.”

Dora gave him a disgusted look. “Thank you for that deep philosophy. Life doesn’t give you a bill for it afterward.”

“We’re not going to get one either. He’s forgotten about us already.”

It was true. Their waiter was heading out the door and sauntering along up Congress Street. Now there was no one but them in the cafe or in the hotel lobby. They ate their meal, poured themselves some coffee from a pot they found behind the counter, and when they rose to leave again the waiter still hadn’t returned.

Fox left a big tip on the table, and then he saw Dora’s puzzled look. He said, “I reckon anyone that bad at their job is going to need the money more than me.”

Dora smiled and put her arm through his as they walked together up Congress Street. “That’s the screwiest logic I’ve ever heard. But things are always screwy when you’re around, Johnny—why do you think that is?”

“It’s a natural talent,” he assured her.

She laughed. “Yeah, I reckon it is,” she said, mimicking his drawling voice.

• • •

The sun set quietly that night, slinking behind the Tucsons with subdued whispers in blues and pinks, and then a long violet sigh. Maggie watched from her sunset place on the hill above the upper cabin. She’d been here every night this week. The dark-haired man had not shown up again—except, inexplicably, in a canvas painted over forty years ago. Each time she came here and found the hill empty there was relief mixed with her disappointment; and yet she continued to dream of him. Just the thought of those dreams brought the blood to her cheeks. She sighed, and turned away from the vast purple sky to climb back down the slope.

There were lights on in the upper cabin now, and a red Ford truck in the narrow drive. She saw someone was sitting at the outdoor table and her heart beat faster. But no, it was not the man from the hill. This man was older, stern-looking, with a barrel chest, copper skin, and black hair tied in a single braid. He sat very still, just watching her. His face was fierce, etched deep with lines of age around the eyes and mouth. If this was Tomás, then her tenant was not the man she’d met up on the peak.

Maggie took a breath and went on over to him. “I’m Marguerita Black. Thank you for the apples.”

He smiled, and it transformed his face. She’d pegged him as an older man and now she hadn’t any idea; he could be her age, or John Aider’s, or anything in between. He was dressed in jeans and a denim jacket; he wore a string of beads at his neck, and a necklace of animals carved out of polished stone.

“Tomás Yazzie,” he said in an accented voice. “You’re the new landlady. Pleased to meet you.”

“Likewise. But I don’t feel like a landlady yet. I still feel more like a guest up here.”

“My Dineh relatives call this land God’s Backyard. So really we’re all guests here.”

She smiled at him. “I like that. But what’s ‘Dineh’?” she asked.

“Navajo, in our own language,” he explained. Then he offered, “I’ve just made some coffee. Stay for a cup?”

“I’ve never been able to resist the offer of coffee in my entire life,” she confided.

“A sensible woman. And here I thought all you California people were too healthy for that. Fox told me you’re a vegetarian.” He said it in tones that somebody else might say a serial killer.

“I am. But I still have a few vices left, and I cling to them tenaciously.”

“Well I’m not going to ask you what the others are,” he said as he led her to the house. They passed through a fenced garden area, where corn, beans, tomatoes and squash were growing in lush profusion. She stared, astonished by what the man had coaxed from the dry desert soil.

Maggie stepped into the mechanic’s cabin. He turned from the stove, eyeing her suspiciously. “Now this isn’t your fancy