Page 84 of Why Cheese?
“What about you?” My question kills his laughter dead. “What would you want?”
He lifts his head to stare past the horizon. “The sun.”
“That’s, um, not going to fit in my tote bag.” I wince as my dumbstruck words fall out.
Roq extends his arms. “I can’t remember what it’s like. For its heat to bake my skin and warm my cheeks as I lay by the stream. For the light to sparkle on the tumbling waters like brilliant gems. To count the clouds passing overhead on a blue sky wider than the world itself. To stand in gold instead of black.”
“You’re like vampires,” I say the second it hits me. Roq raises his eyebrow at me. “Cheese vampires. Which isn’t vampires who eat cheese, just that you can’t go in the sun. Would cheese vampires eat pizza? I guess the garlic might be a problem.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “You can’t control it, can you?”
“I…I talk when I’m nervous. But I’m not saying I’m nervous. Okay, maybe a bit. I’ll stop. Right now. No more. Eek.”
“Your uncle was like that. The first time we shifted in front of his eyes, he spoke nonstop for a half hour.”
There’s still anger in his voice while talking about my great uncle, but also sadness. All of my memories of Mateo are tinged with pink sprinkles and glitter glue. I’m sure he was a complicated man, but at five all I got to see was a jolly old elf who made me happier than I had any right to be.
“You didn’t need to bring me out here.” I stare at my feet pointed to face each other. “I know you hate me.”
“I—”
“It’s okay. It won’t hurt the deal we made. Three months, I’ll get you all you need, sell the cheese, and try to stay out of your way. All their ways.”
Did I really think I’d be spending three months in a sex and cheese-filled paradise? I’m an idiot. Things like that don’t happen to me. Three hot, very different men, all laser-focused on giving me sneezing orgasms?Yeah right, Violette. Wake up.
“Miss Reely.”
I wince at him using my last name.
Roq’s voice cracks like a burning log, “I don’t hate you.”
What?
He’s being polite. Polite people don’t say they hate you while they go on hating everything about you.
He tosses his head back and sighs so deeply his Adam’s apple bobs under his coat collar.Hey, where’d he get that coat from?“I’ve been less than kind to you, I see.”
“No, it’s…it’s okay.”
“It’s no wonder you took to those three and gave me a wide berth.”
“I thought that you wanted your space. You had your work to do. And I didn’t want to interfere.”
Roq drops his hand to the bench right beside mine. He funnels air in like he’s about to breathe fire, then closes his eyes. “And I kept waiting for you to betray us.”
Why?
“Just as your uncle had.”
My brain does a brake screech and slams into a wall. “Uncle Mateo? What did he…? How could he betray you?”
Roq’s demeanor shifts. He looks about to leap to his feet and storm back into the cellar. Then the dark streetlamp flickers and a yellow beam descends on us. “We’ve had many patrons over the years.”
“Patrons? Oh, you mean Cam’s mistresses.”
Roq stares dead ahead with an exhausted look. “Yes. People with whom we made the same deal as we did with Mateo. In exchange for supplies, room and board, protection, we would create cheese for them. Each one in time learned of our weakness and would exploit it. Mateo was the first one I told of my own volition.”
“Your weakness? It’s not garlic, is it? Oh no, I put some in the lasagna!”
