“I met her at that job we had Friday night.” He couldn’t mention last night’s meeting. Not even to Mace. He still couldn’t believe it. She’d called him Bubba. She might as well have spit in his face.
Mace shook his head, smiling as his son hissed and swiped at him when his father took toast off Dez’s plate. “Forget it, Smitty. You are so out of her league. She barely remembered you.”
Sissy and Ronnie exchanged glances.
“Out of whose league?” Sissy asked. “Jessie Ann’s?”
“She may have been Jessie Ann when you knew her. But she’s Jessica Ann Ward now. And you, my hillbilly friend, don’t stand a chance.”
Dez sat up a little straighter. “Are you guys talking about Jess Ward? Christ, I haven’t seen her in ages.”
“You know Jessica Ward?” How Dez put up with that superior lion tone, Smitty had no idea. Without fangs or claws, she couldn’t exact her revenge during hunts, the way Smitty often did.
“Yes, Captain Ego, I know Jessica Ward.”
“I love when she calls him that,” Sissy laughed.
“We worked together a few years ago.” Dez grinned down at her son. “A bunch of us were sorry when she left. She was so damn good at her job.”Eyebrows raised, Sissy said, “Don’t tell me that frightened little rabbit was a cop.”
“Not a cop. Technician. Computer tech specifically. She was good, but she left to start her own business. And now she’s richer than God.” Dez looked at Smitty. “Mace is right. She’s so out of your league.”
Smitty gave his best pout. “Why are y’all trying to hurt me?”
“Because it’s fun?”
“It’s easy.”
“I love it when you cry.”
Smitty sighed. “Forget I asked.”
“So how did your date go?”
Jess rolled her eyes at May’s question. “I don’t want to discuss it.”
May grimaced. “That bad?”
“That boring.”
“I’m sorry, sweetie.”
Jess stood and took her breakfast plate to the sink. “It’s not your fault. We’re just not a good match.”
As she rinsed her dish, Jess said casually, “And I saw Bobby Ray Smith last night at the restaurant.”
“Oh?” May asked, just as casually. “What happened?”
“Well”—Jess dried her hands and turned—“I guess you could say—”
The sight of forty wild dogs standing in the Pack kitchen, appearing suddenly simply so they could hear her response, stopped the words dead in her throat.
Phil motioned to her. “Every detail. Leave nothing out. Go.”
And she did “go.” Right to the front door and freedom.
Smitty motioned to Dez and she happily placed her son in his arms. “All I know is... Jessie Ann is still damn cute.”
“And so not interested.”
Smitty glowered at his friend. “Did you actually have to sing that?”
“Bobby Ray always had a thing for the damsels in distress.”
“Oh, save me, Bobby Ray,” his sister mocked. “I’m so weak and frail.”
“Save me, Bobby Ray,” Ronnie joined in, “I’m trapped under the bleachers—”
“—in a tree—”
“—in the school venting system... ”
The two lifelong friends looked at each other and said in unison, “Again!”
Ignoring the She-heifers idiocy, he asked over their laughter, “When did she leave town?”
Still chuckling, Ronnie thought a moment. “It was right after Big-Bone fell off that mountain.”
“Man, she must have been so drunk,” Sissy said. “She broke both her legs and some ribs. Took her days to heal,” she added with true pity.
Smitty said, “Her Packmate said she’d been their Alpha for sixteen years.”
“It’s possible. I know she left before the end of our junior year.”
“Wow. Alpha of a dog Pack,” Sissy sneered. “Wonder what ya gotta do to get that job?”
“Be the best ass sniffer?”
Dez shook her head. “You two are mean.”
“What can I say? She brings out the worst in us.”
“Actually,” Ronnie reminded Sissy, “everybody brings out the worst in us.”
“Good point.”
Smitty sighed, a little sad. “Y’all don’t think she left because of me, do you?”
He’d asked it honestly, knowing how he’d protected her and all. But the hysterical laughter he got back did nothing but insult him.
“There’s nothing to tell. I saw Bobby Ray for like five minutes.”
“She lies,” Sabina accused. “But we will break her.”
They pushed Jess into a chair and Sabina snapped her fingers. They placed it in her hand and she held it in front of Jess’s face.
Jess snorted. “You really don’t think that’ll work on—”
“Dark, dark chocolate,” Sabina told her softly. “Walnuts. Fresh from the oven.”
Sabina held Jess’s favorite brownies under her nose. They’d been baked, along with cookies, for an early afternoon trip to the zoo.
She reached for the pan, but Sabina yanked it back. “Oh no. Not unless you tell us everything about your five-minute meeting with the wolf.”
“Fine,” Jess agreed, her mouth watering. “But I get the whole pan.”
“If you think your hips can handle that, my friend.”
“When are you going to pick up the final check?” Smitty asked Mace.
Mace, finally sated, leaned back in his chair and put his arm behind his wife’s chair, stroking her shoulder. “Forget it.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“For-get-it. I’m there to do business. Not have you sniffing around her like a dog in heat.”
The cub in his arms, Butthead, aka Marcus Patrick Llewellyn, smiled up at him and reached for his finger. You could actually feel small claws right underneath his skin. Yet, they wouldn’t make a real appearance until Marcus hit puberty. Still, you didn’t need to see those claws to recognize the animal within. He may have his mother’s gray–green eyes, but this wonderful little boy—and Smitty’s godson—still had the cold, hard expression of a predator. Just like his daddy.
Smitty smiled at Dez. “How are you holding up, darlin’? I know it’s not easy raising one of us.”
“Good. The cheetah nanny helps, though. But the first time he snarled, I had a bit of a panic attack.”
“She screamed and threw him at me.”
Dez scowled at Mace. “I did not throw my son at you. I just handed him over and walked quickly from the room so I could scream into a pillow in our bedroom.”
“I found her under the bed with the dogs.”
“I was getting their toys, you big-haired bastard.” She looked back at Smitty. “It’s just taking some getting used to. The snarling, the hissing, the purring. Then I have to deal with it from the baby... .”
“Ha, ha,” Mace stated dryly.
“When do you go back to work?” Smitty asked because he loved seeing the way Mace’s entire body tensed with panic.
She gave a deep sigh. “Tomorrow. They asked me back early. Said they were desperate. I thought about telling them no, but Mace said I shouldn’t risk my job.” She rubbed her husband’s thigh and gave him that sincere, loving look that always made Mace want to run for his life. “You’re so wonderful about all this, honey.”“Uh... yeah. Thanks.”
Mace turned toward Shaw and asked him about the hotel, and Smitty watched Dez, Ronnie Lee, and Sissy Mae all exchange suspiciously smug glances.
“Hey,” Smitty said, “did you three plan—ow!”
The entire room looked at him and he gritted his teeth against the sudden and brutal pain in his foot where Dez had stomped on him under the table.
“What’s the matter with you?” Mace demanded, almost sounding like he really cared.
Smitty shook his head while Dez gently brushed his hair out of his eyes. “I think the poor baby got a leg cramp, huh?”
He nodded this time, unable to speak as she ground her heel into the upper part of his foot.
“You don’t hunt enough,” Mace accused, already turning back to Shaw. “That would work those cramps out, ya know.”
Dez kissed his cheek and hissed in his ear, “You say a word—they won’t find your body for months.”
Wolves were a smart breed and always knew when a predator meaner than them was near.
Still holding the baby, who seemed quite happy with the vicious side of his momma, Smitty promised, “Not a word.”
Jess dropped onto the couch beside the sixteen-year-old boy reading a book and trying to pretend she wasn’t sitting next to him.
She opened her laptop and booted it up. “You weren’t up to zoo time today?” she asked him.
Jonathan DeSerio, Johnny, shook his head, his eyes focused on the book in front of him. Until his head suddenly snapped up and he hurriedly said, “Unless you want me to go. I can next time.”
For three years after his mother died, child services bounced Johnny between foster homes. For reasons no one but other shifters understood, the full-human families the city stuck him with simply didn’t like having him around. They found him odd. And with reason. He wasn’t really human, not completely.
Finally, a division of Child Protective Services that handled mostly shifter cases discovered Johnny. They tried to place him with one of the local wolf Packs, but none of them would take him. So CPS finally came to Jess and asked if they could place him with her Pack. They were all canines after all.