The Cowboy Genie's Wife: A Paranormal Romance (The Dirty Djinn Series) (2 page)

“There’s a dead body in my rearview mirror, and you’re worried about what your little genie friends think? Is this a serious conversation we’re having right now?” 

He folded his arms and drank straight from the bottle this time and counted to ten while she sliced the cheese and flatbread. “Go ahead. Finish”

“A couple of weeks ago, one of my clients left his safe open. I found buckets of cash. Literally. I’ve never seen so much.” She waved away his arched eyebrow. “I don’t dive in lakes of gold coins like some people, and no, that wasn’t a wish. It was just there, and I figured he wouldn’t miss a little of it.”

“You little thief.”

“Not helping,” she said between bites. “And it wasn’t a lot. Maybe a grand. But the guilt ate me up, even though the money was going to a good cause.”

“Yeah, right.”

She shot him a look and didn’t continue until he apologized. “So, I brought the money back, or tried to, but the safe was closed. The only way to return it was to tell him. So I did.”

“And it didn’t go well.”

Rosa shoved some bread in that cute little mouth of hers. A bit of oil from the dip drizzled out the corner of her mouth. He fought the urge to wipe it off. Memories are jacked-up things. They come at the worst and best of times. Like now. His mind wandered back to the first time he’d made her
bessara
. Her puggish nose wrinkled up at the sight of it, but her eyes soon glazed over in delight. It’d been her favorite ever since.

She pointed to him with a flatbread square. “This almost makes it worth it, but no. It didn’t go well. He had me on camera, Fazil. He knew I’d taken it. He waited for the right time to strike.”

Her eyes misted, and for a moment, nothing else mattered. Unable to control himself, soon he was beside her, holding her to his chest as she cried. Each of her tears melted away the lost days between them. His anger, his hurt didn’t stand a chance against them.

But she froze and drew back. He had to remind himself not to mistake her moment of weakness for a moment of love. That’s what made all of this so much worse. He’d always love her. He’d always be here, but as a human, she could walk away at any time. She wasn’t a slave to him as he was to her. His magic could only grant a
hamdullah
long life. It couldn’t make them see, or feel, the soul-consuming adoration that came with it.

So, he let her go and walked back to his side of the counter, suddenly a lot colder than a few moments ago.

Rosa wiped her chin on her shoulder and soldiered on. “He told me he’d press charges, unless I slept with him.”

“How long ago was this? To the hour?”

“Does it matter?”

Yep. If the soul was close, he’d find a way to torture the bastard for the rest of eternity. Instead, his Rosa suffered. “He tried something?”

His chest tightened at her nod.

“He pushed me onto the sofa. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t get up, so I grabbed the stylus from his tablet and shoved it into his eye.”

“Shit.” He reached for her hand, but she jerked away.

“I tried to run away, but he grabbed me by the neck and started punching. When he got me on the floor, he wrapped his hands around my throat. My vision started to blur. I didn’t have a choice. I swear. We’d knocked over a table. I grabbed the vase and I—”

He tried again for her hand, and this time, she was either too scared, exhausted, or just over it to push away. He’d take it. “You survived. That’s all. You should have wished for me.”

“I was scared. I wasn’t even sure if you’d hear from so far away.”

Did you try?

The words almost escaped, but he didn’t push the point. She’d been through enough without him piling on. If there’s one thing he’d learned living out here, it was patience. The woman was skittish. Too much emotion from him and she’d wall up. Best to stick to the facts for now. “Rosa, if he had cameras on to see you stealing, they may have captured the whole thing when you went to take it back.”

“Thought of that. Thought of going to the cops too. But the one thing you drilled into me all these years was to keep our secret safe. What if they started checking into my background?”

Her shaking stopped, and the quiver in her voice faded away. He offered her more wine, and she guzzled it down.

“I check the news on my phone every eight seconds. So far, nothing.”

“What about his wife?”

“On vacation.”

“What about the cleaning crew?”

“I am the cleaning crew.”

Under different circumstances, the look on her face might have been funny. He moved on. “I’ve got contacts in the area. There are enough Others on the force, vampires or weres, depending on the precinct. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll get started on making some calls tonight.”

“I guess not even my wishes can change the past, huh?”

“You know it doesn’t work that way.” But not for the first time, he wished it did. He had a lot of fixing to do. Might as well start with this. “Write down this address.”

As her pen scratched across the paper, his gaze locked on the woman he’d married a lifetime ago. She’d been small then, in so many ways. The twenty-year-old he’d met then was far different than the one before him eighty years later.

Well, he supposed she was twenty-five now. She’d matured to a confident, self-assured thing ... aside from this. Though, killing a man with a plastic stick might do that to a person. “A stylus?”

She looked up, a crooked, sheepish grin on her face, before breaking into a yawn. “I’m kinda a boss.”

“No kidding. I’m proud of you.”

The eyebrow went up. “I come here with blood on my hands, and you’re proud of me? I’m not the girl you married, Fazil.”

“You’re better. Even though you may not believe it, I’m not the man you married either.”

“Right.” Her fingers dragged up and down the stem of the glass, before reaching into her purse at the counter’s edge. She put down the pen and handed over the paper “Here’s the address. So what happens now?”

He waited until her frenzied writing slowed and then snatched the pen from her hands. He used it to point upstairs. “Now, you get some rest. I’ll handle this.”

“Fazil—”

“You’ve already done the hard part. I’m just cleaning up.”

Despite her protestations, she followed him upstairs and into the largest guest room. She’d wanted to stay and speak to his contact, but Others were rarely accepting of her. Vamps and weres changed their mates, while she remained very much human.

She turned against the doorframe, leaning against it before going in. “Tomorrow we’ll talk about...”

He hoped for an “us,” but instead, she twirled her fingers above her head.

“... this salt of the earth alpha-man ranch of yours.”

“Yeah, sure.”

No hug. No kiss. Just a shrug and a door slammed in his face. Fine. He’d deal with it.

It hadn’t gone unnoticed she’d never divulged the reason she needed the extra money in the first place. You didn’t push a woman like Rosa. The last time he’d tried, she’d left him.

She couldn’t know what that’d done to him. An eternity of waiting for someone to love completely, only to have the ferocity of your love scare them away.

What she called controlling, he called protection.

That was his job, damn it, to protect her, and because he’d slipped, she’d shown up on his doorstep with cuts on her face and pain set deep in her eyes. The dull gnaw in his gut that he’d lived with since she’d slipped away amplified to an intensity which left him sick to his stomach.

Never again.

By all that he knew and held dear, she’d never leave him behind again.

H
e spent the night making phone calls and calling in favors.

Rather, offering them.

Not a single damned creature minded having a djinn owe him something, but all that didn’t matter if it saved Rosa.

She was home.

Finally.

Step one was keeping her safe. Step two was keeping her here.

He’d given her the perfect life before. Sure, he’d kept her under close watch, but her only valid complaint was that she missed
normal
life. All the cars and vacations, all the jewels, hadn’t satisfied her in the end.

Then, she left, and everything changed. From then on, he threw all his energy against the wall of normalcy. The ranch? His finest hour. Couldn’t get more unglamorous than that. To be totally honest, he was better being average than Rosa was.

Rosa never knew this normal. She relied on the memories of the West her parents dragged with them to the big city. But, whatever. He’d built the place of her father’s stories—one she couldn’t possibly turn down. And, because she could be a bitch about the whole thing, he’d done it the hard way: hands, shovels, backhoes, and plows.

Mostly.

He used
a little
magic to get the property in his hands.

And occasionally feed the animals when he was tired.

And he’d had a line of crude oil swerve through the edge of his farthest field, but that was it. Otherwise, he was as self-made as any other red-blooded Algerian-American. If this didn’t prove to her he was a changed man, then the woman was too pigheaded to see how much he’d tried.

He fell asleep at his desk, waking up a few hours later as Butch the Rooster crowed good morning to all his little hens. After throwing some water on his face and yawning all the way downstairs, Fazil got the coffee and toast going.

Mrs. Hate-All-Mornings came down fully dressed for the day, with a fanned-out bun across her head, and sleep still in her eyes. Her? Up before noon? “This is new.”

She chuckled and dropped her forehead against folded arms on the counter. “Two sugar cubes.”

“I remember. We’ve done this once or twice.”

She mumbled out a “yeah” before plopping her chin on her hands. “So, this ranch is real?”

“As real as the horse crap you’re going to help me shovel.”

“I refuse to believe you don’t wish it away.”

“That’s something else you’d be wrong about,” he said, pouring her coffee and handing over the sugar service tray. “It calms me. It’s not like I have anything else to do. I can’t sit around watching TV all day.”

“You did before.”

“I was a different djinn then. You never bothered to get to know your husband, Rosa. It wasn’t always like this. Our parents taught us hard work.”

“Yeah, right.” She frowned and blew across the top of her coffee until the steam rolled across the table. “I bet they hate me.”

“I never told them about our little fight.”

“I left you.”

“For like five years.” He tossed a sugar cube in the air and caught it in his mouth, slamming the table with his saccharine success. “No big deal.”

Completely wrong thing to say. Rosa shoved away from the table, grabbing her cup so fast the coffee spilled out of the top. She howled in pain but didn’t wish it away. He only grazed her hand before she snatched it back. “You cocky son of a bitch.”

“Let me fix your arm.”

“No big deal? This was all a joke for you, wasn’t it? You don’t think I can make it on my own.”

“You’ve proven that you can, all right. I’m sorry. Now, give me your arm.”

She stepped back, head shaking and bun bobbing like an angry buoy. “This whole thing is a game to you. Let’s see how long the puny human can hack it. Well, I did just fine.”

“Tell that to the dead guy.”

Everything about her froze but her quivering and misting eyes. Shit. “I didn’t mean that, Rosa. I’m being a realist though. I mean, c’mon, baby. You grew up in a different time, and you don’t have the tools—”

“Shut up. I survived without you once. I’ll do it again. I can’t believe I came here.”

“You needed my help, and it was the smart thing to do.”

“The smart thing would have been to walk away the first day I met you.”

She turned for the door again, but he ducked around to block her escape to the hallway. “You’re still my
hamdullah
.”

“You’re still an arrogant prick who doesn’t have the
tools
to deal with a modern woman. Here’s what’s up. I can do anything I want. Live my life how I want. Being here with you reminded me of that. So, thanks for your help, but—”

“You realize that you’ll die without me?”

“That’s your plan? Blackmail me into staying? News flash, everyone dies. I should have aged and died years ago with the people who love me and—”

“I love you!”

“We haven’t talked in almost five years. All your wall punching and shouting won’t change that.”

“Whose fault is that, Rosa? Not mine.” Hands in the air, he pulled back swearing. “When you live as long as we do, fights last a few years. Nishan hasn’t spoken to his
hamdullah
since the Boer War, doesn’t mean he loves her any less.”

“That’s insane. You’re insane.” She tried to slide out a third time, but again, he refused to budge.

“We have an eternity to make this right.”

“You only love me because you have to.”

He couldn’t see her face, but the timbre of her voice shifted. It still carried a steeliness to it but without any bite. “That’s the only reason anyone loves another person. The only difference is I know I’m meant to be with you. You’re hurting as much as I am, Rosa. And I’ve changed.”

“You said something about horse shit earlier.”

He huffed at her play on words but let it go. As long as she was willing to get inside his lamp, they had another eternity to work out their pretty freaking miniscule issues. Once she got it through her head he’d done nothing wrong, they could move on. “Come on. I’ll give you the formal tour of the place.”

* * * *

S
he didn’t have an eternity for him to work his issues out.

The past quarter century had all been based on his timeline, his needs, and his wants. A home full of children had been her dream growing up. But His Majesty had claimed they needed time together. He consumed her days with trips to Thailand and Cyprus and threw diamond bracelets at her, but these things hadn’t filled her heart.

But that was always his answer. More stuff. More rings, more clothes, more everything but whatever she actually wanted. Despite his protestations, he didn’t know best.