The Cougar's Trade

by Holley Trent

  “Jeez.” Hank dropped the phone into the cradle and leaned back in the desk chair. He had no idea how they were going to squeeze a trip to D.C. into their schedule with everything that was going on. As it was, they were stretched thin having to take night shifts monitoring the hellmouth. They couldn’t risk letting any sort of malevolent entity get off the ranch, so the spirits and demons needed to be suppressed immediately after they emerged. In fact, because of the hellmouth, none of the Foyes had gone more than a few hours from home since the portal had mysteriously opened up a year ago. They didn’t have the manpower to spare the trip to Cory’s, but he was a good ally to have and Hank didn’t want to ruin that.

  Miles stepped back from the door, and Hank rolled his eyes before he even locked his sight on whom she’d moved for. He could always smell Darnell coming from a mile away. He was one of Mom’s ranch hands, and he occasionally popped in at Woodworks when he’d gotten himself into the sort of deep shit he needed second-party assistance in digging out of. Apparently, he’d rather get chewed out by his alpha than his boss. Why Mom was scary to so many grown-ass men in the glaring, Hank could never figure out.

  Darnell took off his cowboy hat, swiped his shirtsleeve across his sweaty brow, and rocked back on his heels. He tipped his chin at Miles. “Well, hello.”

  She gave him a little wave.

  He stuck out his hand. “We haven’t formally met, what with you being locked up in—”

  Hank pointed to the chairs near the door.

  Darnell dropped his hand as if a heavy lead weight had fallen into it, then plopped into one of the hard plastic chairs.

  Miles took the one next to him, cheeks flushed and looking chastised.

  Shit. He hadn’t meant for her to follow the instruction, too. He groaned inwardly and scratched out a note for Mason about Cory. He looked up to find Miles staring at her hands. Then she wrung them. He knew they were capable hands. She wasn’t afraid of work, and she’d proven that time and time again. If given a chance to help someone, she would, whether it was with Mom’s dirty work or tending the occasional minor wound for Cougars who couldn’t get to urgent care, or even keeping an eye on Mason’s son, Nick. She did everything with enthusiasm. A pushover. If he somehow did manage to win her, he’d probably spend more time babysitting her than meeting the needs of the glaring. That couldn’t have been what La Bella Dama had in mind.

  “All right, Darnell. What’d you fuck up this time?”

  The other man cringed. “Mason ain’t around, is he?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thank the gods. Listen, I know Mason said not to antagonize the Coyotes, but I overheard them at the bar—”

  “The same bar Mason told you to keep your ass out of?”

  Darnell’s dark gaze flitted shiftily.

  Hank just stared. Darnell usually did a pretty good job of digging his own hole.

  “Look, it was two-for-one draft night. A guy in my tax bracket takes his savings wherever he can get them.”

  Miles chuckled.

  Darnell nudged her arm. “Right?”

  “Are you trying to get me in trouble, too?”

  “With that guy? Pssssh.” He flicked a hand in Hank’s general direction. “At least he gives me warning before he roughs me up. Mason prefers taking me by surprise. Calls it negative reinforcement.”

  “I’m acquainted with the theory.”

  “Man, you’ve got a pretty voice. You Southern girls are something else. You sound so sweet, even when you aren’t.”

  Hank rested his chin atop his fist and waited for Darnell to dig that hole a little deeper. The cat part of his brain was righteously indignant at the way Darnell was sniffing around his mate, and nine times out of ten, the man part of his brain just went along for the ride. At the moment, Hank wanted to see what his inner cougar had to say about the little nurse and he hoped he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of a surprise.

  “I’ll leave it up to other people to decide if I’m sweet,” she said.

  “I think you are. You haven’t tried to burn me alive yet, so that’s a mark in your favor.”

  Hank rolled his eyes again, not that anyone was paying him any attention. Ellery hadn’t tried to burn the idiot alive. He’d had an infected bite on his arm he wouldn’t stop licking, and Ellery had done her witchy nurse thing and burned off the ooze. Twice. If Hank hadn’t been sure Darnell hadn’t been a starter on Team Wimp before that, his behavior during the treatment confirmed it.

  “You’re out of Foye Jail. Does that mean what I think?”

  “Feel free to tell me what you think it means,” Hank said.

  Darnell chuckled lamely.

  “Forget I was here?”

  “You’d think that’d be impossible, right? Your damn energy takes up so much space in the room I feel like I’m being squeezed against the wall.”

  “What do you mean?” Miles asked.

  “Oh, shapeshifter psychic shit,” Darnell said with another one of those hand flicks.

  That’s right. Remind her of what we are. He sometimes thought she forgot. Most normal women would have been a little afraid of them. Cougars weren’t known for their domestication. In a month, she would have had witnessed plenty of episodes to confirm such. Men in her world probably didn’t walk around naked half the time because they expected to have to shapeshift in order to deal with a demon or an opportunistic Were-coyote bent on making Mason’s life a fucking disaster.

  He envied them.

  “Still waiting on your response.” Hank tented his fingers and looked from the squirming Darnell to Miles, who, sitting with her legs angled toward Darnell, looked at Hank through the sides of her eyes. Ellery had a powerful side-eye—the kind that would make a guy’s nuts draw up in fear. Miles didn’t have that. Her gaze didn’t have the same warning in it, just timid curiosity. Maybe Ellery could give her lessons, because she was going to have to do a lot better than that if she didn’t want a bunch of ill-mannered Cougars bowling her over.

  Damn. What was the goddess thinking? He didn’t like to question her decisions, but he just wasn’t seeing the logic of matching him with such an acquiescent little flower. He pinched the bridge of his nose again and let out a breath. “What were you saying about the Coyotes, Darnell?”

  “Oh. Right.” Darnell snapped his fingers. “Said something about how their alpha wanted to make it easier for their pack to roam around here, without all the…” He cringed. “Uh, interference.”

  Hank rocked back in the rolling chair. “The Cougars policing them, you mean.”

  “Uh. Yep.”

  Hank wasn’t sure when the law and order thing had fallen onto the alpha Cougar’s list of responsibilities, but his dad had done it when he was alive, and Hank imagined his grandfather had, as well. The sheriff might have known in general terms that shapeshifters existed, but the shifter groups in the area tried to keep most of their trouble off the law enforcement radar screen. Laws varied by glaring, pod, or pack, and transgressors often needed swift and brutal justice. No one had called the cops on Edgar Sheehan, but when the Cougars caught up to him, there’d be no gentle justice. In fact, chasing down leads on that particular asshole was on Hank’s to-do list for the day.

  Miles gave Darnell’s sleeve a little tug. “Did you overhear them saying anything about Nick?”

  Darnell pursued his lips and shook his head. “Nah. I think Jill is doing what she can to keep his name off folks’ lips. She’s tryin’ to be a better momma, I think. That’s more than I can say for most Coyotes.”

  “Oh. Good. After what she’d said about her alpha considering Nick to be a member of their group in spite of Mason’s objection, we were worried her alpha would try to stage a kidnapping.”

  Hank leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desktop. “Who is we?”

  She laced her fingers and locked her gaze on the portrait. “Us girls. The Coyotes might be a little afraid of Ellery, but she can’t be here all the time. Might just be paranoia, but we ho
ped they wouldn’t try to cause any trouble once they figured out her work schedule.”

  He let out a ragged breath. “That actually sounds exactly like something they’d do. I don’t imagine you girls came up with a plan for it.”

  Now she did meet his gaze. Her eyes were a beautiful silvery blue never seen among people of Cougar ancestry, but the hue was comforting and familiar all the same. Her eyes reminded him of a guitar strap he’d once owned, or perhaps still owned. He’d packed so much of his personality away when it was time for him to “grow up,” and then even more when Dad had died. The strap was probably around somewhere, as was the guitar it’d been attached to.

  “Not sure what we can do if they showed up besides turning the hose on them.” Miles’s soft voice drew him out of his futile reminiscing.

  Just as well. No use dwelling on lost things.

  “My granny had a surefire cure when it came to ridding herself of pesky trespassers,” Darnell said.

  “What?” Hank rubbed his tired eyes, certain he didn’t really want to know.

  “Buckshot.”

  “Ouch,” Miles whispered.

  “Hey—you can even get it in silver now. I don’t know a single shifter who’s not allergic to it.”

  “Huh.” Hank dropped his hand from his face, stunned. Darnell with a good idea? Hank wondered what kind of alternate reality world he’d woken up in. “It’s actually not that bad of an idea. I’d need to run it past Mason first, but I don’t see any reason he’d say no to Mom firing off a few warning shots if she had to.” Maybe they wouldn’t have to use any force beyond that. As long as the Coyotes knew the Foyes didn’t make idle threats, they might come to their senses and back off. They weren’t going to get Nick back. Mason and Jill had worked it out fair and square, because the ranch was the most stable place for the kid to be. He’d have human eyes watching him, and a lot of hands tending to him. He wouldn’t be left unsupervised while Jill went furry and forgot her son didn’t share the shapeshifter affliction. Unfortunately, Jill’s alpha was operating on the mistaken premise that the decision to leave Nick with his father wasn’t hers to make at all, but his. The dude had a bit of an ego problem.

  “Anything else?” Hank asked Darnell.

  “That was the only thing worth mentioning. The rest was boring Coyote shit about where they’ll be riding in the next few weeks and stuff like that.”

  Miles pulled his sleeve again. “Did they know you were listening?”

  He grunted. “Nah, folks rarely pay me any mind unless I get between them and their liquor. I am a cat, after all. I can be invisible when I want to be. I paid my tab and got the hell out of there.”

  “You’d make a good private eye.”

  Darnell’s eyes went wide. “You think so?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, and smiled. A genuine smile, at that. Darnell made people pull some pretty interesting faces, but grinning was rarely one of them.

  “Would have been really interesting to find out where they were going, how long they’d be gone, and who was going on the trip, though. Would make it easier to account for who’s left,” Miles said.

  “I didn’t think of that.”

  “Hard to know what’s important in the moment, sometimes,” she said softly.

  “I can find out, though. The bar’s kinda like their hangout. They’re there almost every night, and they talk loud when they’re drunk.”

  “I think knowing would help.”

  “Yeah, I think so, too.” Darnell stood and pushed his hat back onto his head. Striding to the door, he added, “Darnell Peterson, Private Eye. Might get myself a trench coat and a fedora.”

  “I’m sure they would be flattering on you. You wear a hat very well, sir.”

  “Hey! Thanks!” Darnell stepped outside and strode down the path toward the ranch four-wheeler he’d ridden up on. There was an extra spring in his step, but of course there’d be. The guy was probably feeling light as a feather with the way Miles had inflated his dodo bird head.

  She looked at Hank and she must not have liked his expression, because her smile ebbed and her gaze dropped.

  Great. Just that fast, he’d gone and made the flower wilt. “You know, there’s a pecking order around here,” he said, standing. He set the out-of-office message on the phone and hit the switch to kill the lights in the wood shop. “We’ve got an alpha, a second, and a couple of lieutenants. Guys like Darnell aren’t so good at making decisions.” He grabbed his keys and locked the front door. Pointing for her to head toward the side entrance, he said, “We Cougars have been more lax on structure for a long time, but we’re trying to fix things. Trying to strengthen the group overall.”

  She passed by him, saying nothing.

  “Mason decides what’s best for the group, and it’s up to those below him in the chain of command to carry out that vision.”

  She pushed the door open and held it for him.

  They’d done that the wrong way around. He’d been so busy trying to find a point to make he’d forgotten his manners. He did have a few.

  “I feel like you’re scolding me for something, and I can’t quite put my finger on what.” She waited on a large stepping-stone, looking a bit like a wingless fairy on her launch pad.

  She was a creature he should have been compelled to protect and coddle, and instead, there was only some guilt-riddled blend of attraction and resentment. He’d wanted a mate who’d make his job easier, not harder. A woman more like Ellery or Hannah. What am I supposed to do with this woman besides look at her?

  “Forget about it.” He tugged his hair free of his collar and tossed his keys from one hand to the other. Didn’t matter, anyway. He didn’t imagine she’d be spending much time around Cougars beyond the Foyes going forward, so there was no point wasting his breath on a lecture. He knew he was up against a clock and had a limited number of days to get her to accept him, but the practicality he’d developed during the past fourteen years of adulthood wouldn’t let him see her as anything beyond a beautiful woman—a trophy he hadn’t wanted. He’d wanted a helpmate, if he had to have a mate at all. She wasn’t going to be much use to him as far as Cougar concerns went. So, what was he supposed to do?

  Getting his affairs in order and waiting on La Bella Dama’s wrath like Hannah had suggested seemed the surest bet.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Miles had endured many uncomfortable rides in her life, but none had stoked her anxiety anything like being in a truck cab with Hank. The last time she’d been so ill at ease in a vehicle had been the night of her senior prom. Her first date had backed out on her three weeks before the event, and she’d hastily agreed to go on the arm of a boy from the golf team. He’d spent the entire limo ride plying her with ignorant micro-aggressions about poor people and making her feel as though he was doing her a favor by taking her. She knew her reputation and what people said about her. She was conscious of how students stared when her foster mother rolled up to the school in that little white car and how her motley crew squeezed in like a bunch of contortionists into a phone booth. They thought she was trash, and try as she might to ignore the snubs, eventually she’d started wondering if she actually was.

  Hank, however, made her feel even worse than that prom date because he didn’t talk at all. She could respond to insults, should he have hurled any at her. Silence was harder to negotiate.

  He drummed some complicated cadence on the steering wheel staring straight ahead at the road, the only other sounds in the truck being the engine in need of a tune-up and his occasional ragged breaths. It was an uncomfortable kind of quiet.

  She wasn’t afraid of conversation—of talking to people—but she was out of her element with this man. She lost count of how many people she met every day at the hospital where she worked. So many names to remember, histories to be sensitive to. She could always find some small way to relate to people and she truly believed empathy was one of the best treatments for pain. Even the most belligerent of her patients eventually gr
anted her a few polite words, but she suspected that Hank had none for her, or that perhaps he’d already used them up. So she sat quietly, staring at the road ahead and berating herself for feeling so damn guilty and responsible about things that weren’t her fault. She hadn’t asked to be kidnapped, and she didn’t owe Sean any favors. She didn’t have to be nice.

  I’ve got to keep telling myself that.

  Half an hour’s drive put them in a charming little town that reminded her of her childhood in all the best and worst ways. She could probably walk every block downtown in less than an hour and leave her vehicle doors unlocked because no sane person would go rooting around in their neighbor’s car. It’d be too easy to recognize. The bad part about small towns was that there was nowhere to hide, and there had been plenty of times she had wanted to.

  Hank slung the truck into one of the diagonal parking spaces in front of the mom-and-pop drugstore and stabbed his seat belt release. “We could have lunch now or after. Up to you.”

  She cleared her throat and turned to meet his inscrutable gaze. Green as a cat’s, and just as critical. She’d never had a harder time making eye contact. It was just so intense. A smile might have softened it, but Hank rarely smiled. Then again, few of the Cougar men did.

  “Now or after?” he repeated with a note of obvious impatience in his tone.

  She closed her eyes on the visual onslaught and shook her head. “I’m sorry. After what?”

  “I need to follow up on some Cougar business. I don’t know how long it’ll take me. So…before or after?”

  She couldn’t help but feel like the question was a trick and that there was a right answer she didn’t know. Hell, she didn’t even know her own truth at the moment. Was she hungry? And if so, could she wait some undetermined amount of time for a meal?

  “Well?”

  She must have looked stupid sitting there flapping her jaw when it was such a simple question. It wasn’t like she had a master’s degree and a full well of common sense or anything. Opening her eyes, she put her hand on the door handle and gave it a tug. “It’s up to you, really. I don’t think I’m hungry just yet. Breakfast was pretty filling.”