by Christa Wick
Drawing a slow, deep breath, I examined my nails, a smile curling along my face.
“You’ll come around, catnip. It’s just a matter of time.”
Clover laughed, the cold, humorless sound unsettling.
“You’re right. Just a matter of time—then YOU’LL come around.”
She chopped at the air again. “When THIS is done, you’ll go right back to the same level of indifference as before.”
Yanking on the cart, she tried to pull away. I held firm.
She was wrong about the indifference, as wrong as she could be. But why would I choose to look directly at a woman who frowned or snarled when I did. Better to observe her sideways, to see the smiles she showered on those she cared about, to see, if only at an angle, the glitter of her gaze when she was happy.
I shook off the years of her scowling at me with a huff and shifted my grip along the cart as I circled it.
“Where you go, I go. And if you don’t like that,” I warned, “Braeden is sending every last Woodsman to bring you home.”
Clover shook her head, her lips pressed so hard together that they turned white.
“Sorry, catnip,” I said, my hands replacing hers on the cart. “Those are the rules.”
Chapter 9
Clover
Refusing to return to Night Falls with my tail tucked between my legs, I made another attempt at jerking the cart out of Joshua’s grasp.
This time, he let go.
I continued shopping. The big cat prowled behind me, his cell phone in his hands as he tapped out a message. A few minutes later, my phone buzzed. It had to be Braeden.
Big brother could wait. I planned to say something very particular to him, but first I had to figure out what it was. Then I had to pound the words into something that would annihilate any objection he could possibly throw at me.
I was my own wolf. That was point number one. He may be pack leader and my big brother, but I could make my own decisions—even the bad ones.
Not that I was admitting my trip to Buckley was a bad decision. After the scary bullshit with the prides in Illinois, Braeden had made me jump through all the hoops to get a concealed carry license when his attempts to confine me to the city limits of Night Falls had failed so spectacularly.
Joshua’s phone vibrated, then mine buzzed against my ass cheek again.
Stopping in the aisle, I swiveled my head to glare at the cat. It was his fault Braeden was texting me.
“He wants to know how much time he should pencil in for your temper tantrum.”
There was a faint smirk playing along his feline lips. I snatched the phone out of my pocket and looked at Braeden’s message.
“He did NOT say tantrum.”
“Maybe not in his message to you,” Joshua agreed, the smirk devoid of any semblance of subtlety.
I looked at his phone, my fingers tingling with the urge to take it away from him. But that would mean getting his slimy cat germs all over me.
The infuriating smile on his face disappeared.
Had I spoken out loud again?
I whipped my head forward and continued marching down the aisle, the mental shopping list I had been keeping track of erased. I increased the pace of my steps, my body beginning to react to Joshua’s presence with more than anger.
He’s a freaking cat. You don’t like him at all!
But, damn, he sure knew what to do to a girl downtown. Even if I had never experienced that before, I knew his execution was perfect. Just the thought of his mouth on me doubled the buzzing nerves clamoring for attention between my thighs. And he had found me pretty quickly after I told Paisley I was coming to Buckley. That was impressive.
Of course, he wasn’t THAT impressive. After all, he had started at my house, not up at Holly’s or anywhere else.
My face crinkled with the question I had asked Joshua on the call then refused to let him answer. One second he’d been pleasuring me, asking if I wanted more and then—WHAM—as soon as I said I did, he rejected me, leaving as if he suddenly had somewhere else to be that was more important or entertaining.
I lifted my hands from the cart, the force of my angry pace and hard push propelling it a few feet down a main aisle as I abruptly turned toward the store’s exit, my legs pumping at a speed just below jogging.
Don’t attract attention. Bad for the pack. Bad for you.
Every muscle in my body wanted to break into a run. I could feel Joshua drawing closer, his longer legs giving him an advantage in catching up.
“Clover,” he growled from less than a foot behind me.
I was within arm’s reach, but he didn’t grab or clutch. That would be causing a scene. I blinked, anger threatening to make me cry. He wouldn’t grab anyway. He was here on pack business, not personal. I could just imagine why he was at the house. When I had offered up my consent—my damn desire—for him to take me, his ambition had reared up. That or something like it. So he’d marched his obsequious cat ass to Braeden for damage control.
Reaching the automatic doors, I jerked to a stop as they refused to open. Joshua bumped lightly against my back then curled his arm around my waist. His free hand reached up and passed in front of the motion sensor, forcing the doors to open.
Nudging me forward, Joshua drew my body closer to his. I wanted to claw his eyes out for how much it hurt to have his flesh touching mine.
“Look, catnip—”
“Don’t ever call me that again,” I sniped.
“Fine, love—”
I froze for half a second then turned in his partial embrace. I fisted the edges of his jacket, stood on tiptoe and eye fucked his frosty blue gaze.
“Say that one more time and I will go nuclear,” I warned with a low snarl, my wolf making each letter vibrate. “I don’t care how many normals are around. I will go full meltdown on your ass, cat!”
Joshua paled. His hold on me disappeared. He raised both hands in a gesture of truce.
“Your brother wants you back tonight.”
I shook my head. “Not happening. Not tonight, maybe not ever.”
He snorted and I whipped around to look at him.
“A bit overdramatic, even for you…Miss Hughes.”
Tilting my head, I offered up my best saccharine smile. “True. I’d be happy to return once you move away from Night Falls.”
I watched in satisfaction as my challenge hit home. His mouth flattened, that thick lower lip with its perpetual bad boy pout all but disappearing. His nostrils flared and his pupils expanded so that only a thin halo of blue ice remained.
Head tilting with another challenge, I turned in the direction of my Jeep. Joshua kept pace. I noticed his bike parked on the opposite side of the aisle, two spots over from where my vehicle was parked along the building’s side.
The closer I got to the Jeep, the closer Joshua followed. We were within touching distance, only a thin strip of hostility keeping us from actually rubbing against one another. Elbowing him, I reached behind to unclip my key ring.
Panic settled into my bones as I patted the spot a few more times then ran my hand to the two surrounding belt loops, then around front, then in my hip pockets.
Joshua’s light chuckle stopped my search.
He lifted his hand and jingled my keys like I was some kind of baby he had to entertain.
Scratch that. He was a bully playing keep away.
I snatched for the keys. He danced away, fire crackling in his gaze, the lips back at full appeal as he flashed a playful smile.
Sadistic cat toying with its dinner…
Joshua froze, his expression sobering.
My hands jumped to clamp my mouth shut. I hadn’t said it out loud. I knew I hadn’t. But he sure looked like he had heard every word running through my head.
“I’m driving,” he said, body stiff as he rounded the front of the Jeep and unlocked the driver side door.
A few seconds later, the lock on my side popped up as he hit the control button. I opened the do
or, but didn’t climb in. No way in hell was I getting in the Jeep with him. As soon as I did, he’d play the complete asshole card and hit the master lock button.
“You can’t just leave your bike here.”
Shrugging, he put the key in the ignition and started the Jeep. “Someone from the Buckley chapter will pick it up.”
Crap. I had forgotten about the group of wanna-be Woodsmen. They weren’t shifters, but, one by one, they were males who had drifted into Night Falls looking for a motorcycle club to ride with after hearing about us. Braeden and Taron had been concerned a turf war would start.
Joshua’s dumb idea had been to start a Buckley chapter that was humans only. It was still in its early days, very provisional, but there were seven guys at last report—not that anyone reported club business to me. I had to eavesdrop, which is a damn hard feat around shifters. But I knew the last count and that the Woodsmen MC had given the Buckley chapter seed money for a clubhouse and laid down rules on what was allowed and what was prohibited. They couldn’t run drugs, women or guns. Basically, they could look tough and provide event security. And if they could make money off of gaps in local law enforcement, more power to them, but no extortion.
I slammed the passenger door and walked around to the driver side, jerked open the door and held my hand out, palm up.
“Get out and give me back my keys.”
“You can have your keys when your bratty ass is back home.” Pausing, he laughed. “That is, if your brother decides you can.”
I marched over to the side of the building where there was shade and pulled out my phone, fingers flying as I texted Braeden.
Call your attack cat off now!
I didn’t even bother reading the messages he had left or the ones that Paisley had also sent. Paisley might be my best friend, but she was now Braeden’s wife. The two of them would align against me, especially if Braeden was filling his bride’s head with false tales of danger.
Text sent, I waited a few seconds, then a few seconds more, my gaze jumping from the display on my phone to where Reeves sat behind the wheel, his thumb rhythmically tapping out his impatience.
When a full minute passed without Braeden’s reply, I pushed off the wall and started out of the parking lot. Joshua quickly caught up on foot. I saw him stuff my keys in the right pocket of his riding jacket then zip it shut.
“Where are we heading, Miss Hughes?”
“That ‘Miss Hughes’ crap is getting old fast,” I sniped, my legs once again coaxing me to break into a run.
“Remember,” he said. “If I call you what I want to—”
“I’ll shred you,” I agreed, not believing for a second that he really wanted to call me anything sweet like “catnip” or…or that other word, the one that was impossible for me when it came to cats.
Love.
Chapter 10
Clover
Stomach growling as much as my mouth, I walked a mile and a half towards the highway entrance where I knew there was a mom and pop kind of diner tucked up against the back of the woods bordering the road. Breezing past the hostess stand that was never manned, I grabbed a menu then plopped down in a corner booth.
Joshua slid onto the bench opposite me. He uncurled his long legs, planting a foot on each side of mine.
Ignoring the familiar touch of his blue gaze, I studied the laminated pages with their added coating of grime over the small print. The waitress came up and I barked out an order for what felt like half the menu.
“Bring me a slice of chocolate silk pie while I’m waiting,” I added as the waitress turned her attention toward Joshua.
Tall, lanky, with voluminous breasts that didn’t belong with her hip-to-waist ratio, the woman leaned over like she was suddenly hard of hearing.
“Who’s paying?” she asked all husky as he ordered a strip of sirloin and a cup of coffee.
Her gaze bounced between me and the cat. I could pretty much read her one-track mind. She saw me—thick, my curves camouflaged by a bulky hoodie and cargo pants. And then she saw him—lean with sculpted biceps that tried to fight their way through the leather jacket encasing them. Even if the cat and I were married, she figured her chances for a love connection were fair to excellent.
“Separate checks,” he said, his gaze on me, not her. “We aren’t a couple.”
I faked a smile, my teeth threatening to bore a hole into my bottom lip as the waitress stood a little taller, her hip hopefully canted in Joshua’s direction before she left. She returned in about half a minute with the coffee, all smiles until I began a slow, expectant tap of my fingernails against the table.
“Oh, right, the pie.” The waitress’s mouth corkscrewed for a second as her gaze skipped down my body. Turning to Joshua, she smiled. “I’ll be right back.”
I stared out the window, fingers still strumming. I would wear Reeves down. He’d give my keys back. After that, I didn’t have a plan. I wasn’t going home, not tonight at least. I would need a hotel, whichever one was the nicest in Buckley—a room with an amazing tub and a giant television.
Heck, I would get an actual suite. I had more money than I could spend in Night Falls from all the freelance work I did online with video editing and some amusing little side apps I had learned how to code and sell.
The plate with its slice of pie slid into place. The waitressed lingered, saying nothing but smiling like half her brains had fallen to the floor.
Not the floor, really, just to her hips.
Snorting, I chipped off a piece of pie with my fork.
“We’re good,” Joshua said, his voice filled with boredom.
I looked up from my plate and smiled at the woman. “Unless you want to crawl into the booth next to him.”
She glanced at me, her head swiveling away then jerking back to stare. Her cheeks paled, the only color left on them an uneven circle of powdered blush. Keeping her gaze on me, the waitress backed away.
“Bit of fang showing there, Miss Hughes,” Joshua smirked.
I ran a tongue along my top teeth then snapped my mouth shut. I hadn’t felt my gums swell, but they were hard and full, the pressure lengthening my canines.
“She’ll think they’re fake,” I mumbled past sealed lips.
“Maybe.” He stretched one leg out and softly brushed against my ankle with the toe of his boot. “Your real problem, Miss Hughes, is that I know they’re real.”
I popped another piece of pie into my stupid pie hole and closed my eyes, refusing to look at the smirking cat. He was dead wrong. I absolutely had not behaved in a proprietary fashion over the waitress flirting with him. In fact, it was an entirely feminist impulse that had caused the flash of teeth. The woman was acting like a fawning tool and needed to get a grip!
A different waitress arrived with the rest of the order. This woman was old and gray and she somehow managed to set our plates in front of us while acting like the booth was empty. No words, no questioning gaze as to whether we needed anything else, no ogling of the male eye candy. She just put the plates down and walked away.
I pointed the tines of my fork at the woman’s retreating figure. “Now that’s service.”
Smiling, Joshua cut into his steak. Right before he popped a piece of half bloody meat into his mouth, he did his best to ruin my meal.
“You’re returning to Night Falls tonight. You want to pick up whatever supplies you intended to buy, that’s fine. But you’re not staying in Buckley.”
I shook my head at him, then bit into my cheeseburger.
There was more than one way to skin a cat—at least that was what people said. I would figure out the best way to skin the one in front of me so that he headed home alone. I was sick of Night Falls. It was full of shifters that looked at me like I was some kind of troublemaker for speaking my mind. Like the cat in front of me, males I didn’t want to date and who didn’t want to date me populated the pack’s ranks. There was very little keeping me there—namely three shifters and one human female, and all of
them were entering a new phase in their life that left little time for me.
Marriage…parenthood…stuff that was full of feels and required a partner.
Half an hour later, nothing but crumbs remaining on my plate, I slowly chewed my last bite. Joshua had finished a good ten minutes earlier, his expression exasperated once he realized I was eating slower than a sloth snacking on leaves.
I would have finished sooner, but I hadn’t formulated a plan yet. Not a good one at least. An ever so slightly reckless one had popped into my head early on during my ruminations, but I had tucked it into my back pocket as a last resort.
“Fine,” I said, realizing I had reached the point of desperate acts. I pushed my plate away then sucked the last of the melt water from my soft drink. Setting the glass down, I gave Joshua’s shin a light kick.
“Pay both checks while I go pee. Then back to the store and…”
I huffed—like I couldn’t believe what I was saying. In reality, I couldn’t believe what I was about to do.
“Then on to Night Falls,” I finished. “So Braeden won’t have to tear you a new one.”
“Always looking out for me,” Joshua deadpanned.
Leaving the booth, I wrinkled my nose at him. As I walked toward the far end of the building, Joshua went to the register. The second I was out of his field of sight, I crossed my fingers and broke into a quiet run. I had stopped at the diner a couple of times in the last year. I would bet a crisp hundred dollar bill that Joshua had stopped in a time or two. But he was a guy, so his knowledge of the floor plan was less complete than mine.
The restroom for men was at the beginning of an L-shaped hall. The ladies’ room was located where the body of the L met its foot. Anyone who had visited the ladies’ room knew that halfway down the L’s foot, there was a door to the kitchen and, at the end of the foot, an exit. There was an alarm warning, but when the daytime temperature climbed high enough, as it was now that May had arrived, the employees who smoked left the door open.
Digging forty dollars out of my wallet, I slipped past the kitchen’s entrance then to the exit door and outside. I glanced around, looking for someone who would challenge me. I was alone, not a soul in sight. Shoving the money back in my pocket, I ran for the trees.