“Doing twenty-five to life in West Tennessee State Penitentiary.”
Annie Jo blinked. “Oh. Well. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” She finally released him and stepped back. “Now y’all come right on in this second. Come on.”
They walked into a small but tidy house with comfortable, well-worn furniture and lots of pictures on the mantels and bookshelves. A small piano filled one corner of the living room and Jess remembered how Annie Jo used to give lessons. Once she left town, the number of boys taking piano lessons dropped dramatically.
“Annie Jo, this is—”
“Jessica Ann Ward. How could I forget such a pretty face?” Annie Jo hugged her and Jess grudgingly let her. “I see you’ve grown up even prettier.”
“Thank you.”
“Y’all want some coffee or hot chocolate?”
“Love some.”
Annie Jo led them to her kitchen and sat them down at the breakfast table. She put out fresh cinnamon rolls while she brewed up some coffee and made Jess hot chocolate from scratch.
When Jess took that first sip all she could think was, Marry me.
“So what can I do you for, my darlin’ Bobby Ray?”
Smitty put down his coffee. He’d already devoured three sweet rolls in the time it took her to brew the pot. Now he was reaching for a fourth.
God, the man is a bottomless pit.
“I need your help,” he said.
“Help with what?”
“I’m trying to track someone down.”
Amber eyes that were so light they looked more yellow and doglike than Jess remembered watched Smitty closely. “You mean Walt Wilson?”
Smitty stopped in the middle of licking icing off his fingers, which did nothing but drive Jess crazy. How was she supposed to focus when he insisted on doing that? “You’ve heard from him?”
With a sigh, Annie Jo got up and went to her refrigerator, pulling out cream and sugar from her cupboard. She offered some to Smitty, who passed, and put a small amount in hers before she spoke again. “About four weeks ago he and that mate of his showed up here looking like they’ve seen better days. I know he was hoping I’d let him stay, but I got one rule. You can spend one night and one night only. Otherwise, I’d never get rid of any of ’em. I’d have Smiths acting like this was a bed and breakfast while they were visiting New York.” She returned the cream to the refrigerator before dropping back into her chair and focusing on Jess. “I know his daddy, you see? Took a turn with him when I was eighteen or nineteen.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t the best ride I had, but it wasn’t the worst. At least Walt Junior is smarter than his daddy. But not by much. Anyway, the next morning, about three She-wolves and a male showed up and off they went.”
“Do you know where?”
She sipped her coffee, those shrewd eyes watching Smitty. “Why you askin’?”
“Because of me,” Jess cut in. “Because I need to find him.”
“You know, he left something behind.” She stood and disappeared from the room, but she yelled back through the doorway, “He called about it a day later and I said I’d already thrown it out because I didn’t want him back here.”Annie Jo came back in. “I thought it was strange he’d call about something like this, so I went through it. And found this.”
She placed the issue of Wired Magazine on the table. “Isn’t that you, Jessie Ann? In the background? With the sword?”
Jess cringed. That damn article! They’d been pretty successful keeping their names and info out of the paper until about six months ago when Wired did an article on the company. Far in the background of one of the candid shots, if you looked really close, you could see Phil and Jess sword fighting with the Roman short swords they’d just ordered. Watching and laughing were Danny, May, and Sabina. When they saw the photo they all figured no one would notice them in the back like that.
Then the woman in Human Resources said they were getting in a ton of résumés because of that one article. Why? Because everyone saw the “owners” sword fighting in the background. In other words, “What a cool place to work!”
Great for their employee pool, but bad now that they had losers like Walt Wilson coming into their lives.
“Yes, ma’am. That’s me.”
“But he circled her.” She pointed at the black marker circle around May. “Why?”
If they needed her help, they’d have to be honest with her. Annie Jo needed to know why she should rat out family.
“That’s Maylin. She’s part of my Pack. She got pregnant sixteen years ago by Wilson. But he doesn’t care. He wants money and he’s using her daughter as leverage.”
Annie Jo sat down again. “Yeah, I was afraid you were gonna say that. The Wilson males are notorious. They’ll knock a girl up and walk away in a heartbeat. Then they won’t have anything to do with her. See I was real careful because I had a scare once, when I was fifteen, and I swore never again. All I needed was for that bitchy sister of mine to find out I was pregnant and all hell would break loose. Besides, I never wanted children. So I always made sure I was on birth control and that any man I ever had sex with wore condoms. One thing you’ve gotta remember about wolf males, Smith or otherwise, is they can impregnate sand. As a female, you’ve gotta protect yourself. Isn’t that right, Bobby Ray?”
“She’s right. Which reminds me.” He patted Jess’s arm. “I need to have a condom conversation with Johnny.”
Jess’s back snapped straight. “I’m sorry. What?”
“Who’s Johnny?”
“Her foster son. A wolf. She’s gonna adopt him. But he just turned seventeen.”
“Oh, Lord!” Annie Jo exclaimed with a laugh. “Yeah, darlin’. He has to have that conversation with him. And soon. The Smith mantra—condoms, condoms, condoms.”
“Thank you, but I can have that conversation with my son.”
Annie Jo rolled her eyes. “Darlin’, you cannot talk to that boy about fucking. You just can’t. It will freak him out. Let Bobby Ray do it. Y’all are together, aren’t ya?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
Now Annie Jo’s expressive eyes crossed in exasperation. “Whatever.”
“I don’t see why we need to discuss this now.”
“We don’t. But I need to talk to him soon.” Smitty smirked at Annie Jo. “Maylin’s daughter is sixteen and a cutie.”
“Oh, Lord!” Annie Jo exclaimed again. “Darlin’, you better let him talk to that boy or y’all are gonna have yourself a nine-pound, eight-ounce problem.”
“Phil and Danny can do it.”
“They’re wild dogs, too, right? They can’t tell that boy what he needs to know. You need Bobby Ray to do it.”
“Why?”
“Wolves are different. From, oh, let’s say, fifteen to seventeen, their aggression kicks in.”
“Johnny’s not aggressive.”
“He growled at me in the elevator,” Smitty told her out of nowhere.
“He did what?”
“If little Kristan hadn’t been there, he’d have gone for my throat.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What was there to tell?”
Jess opened her mouth to start yelling when Annie Jo put a calming hand on her forearm.
“Before you tear his head off, you need to understand that the wolves and the wild dogs are different. They grow up different. You, of course, don’t count because you were the only dog in a town of wolves. But it goes like this, from fifteen to seventeen, male pups are aggressive to adult male wolves. They’ll take ’em on in a heartbeat and get their ass kicked every time. They actually need that sort of discipline and they don’t really mind. Of course, Bubba was... oh, never mind. But when they hit eighteen, their aggression turns to a level of horniness the likes of which you’ve never seen. They’ll fuck damn near anything.”
Jess snorted. “That’s not entirely true.”
Smitty growled. “I walked away for a reason.”
“Don’t bark at me.”
“He probably walked away for two reasons.” Annie Jo cut in. “One, because he didn’t have condoms. Bubba Smith beat into every one of his sons the condom, condom, condom rule. He made sure they had condoms in their trucks, in their school bags, stuck in books. Any place he could think of, and Lord love ya, but you better use ’em. Bubba didn’t want a bunch of grandkids running around since he knew his sons would breed a ton once they were mated. Unfortunately, the Wilsons just didn’t have that same philosophy. “
“And what, pray tell, is the second reason?”
Annie Jo smiled. “The second reason is, you were special, Jessie Ann. Everybody in town knew that. Why you think the She-pups kept coming after you? But none of that is here or there. Y’all can work that out yourselves because one of my students will be here in about five more minutes.”
Smitty nodded. “Where is he, Annie Jo?”
“The Bronx.” She stood and opened one of the kitchen drawers, extracting a pad. She tore off the top sheet. “Here. Take it. I don’t want that boy back here. But let me tell you something, Jessie Ann. The best thing Walt Junior probably ever did was throw that little Maylin away. Wilson’s mate, she can’t be more than late twenties, early thirties. But damn if she don’t look closer to mid-forties. They ride their females hard and put ’em up wet, with very little payoff.”“She’s married now,” Jess said with true pride. “And her husband loves her and their daughter.”