The Cougar's Trade

by Holley Trent

  “It’s not the shorts.” He liked the shorts. She had great legs.

  She raised her gaze slowly to him, and her cheeks took on the rich tones of a New Mexican sunset. “Maybe I was wearing too many layers before and you just didn’t notice.”

  “That you don’t make a habit of wearing support garments?”

  “What precisely needs support?” She looked down again, apparently not seeing the cause of his dismay.

  “Are you cold?”

  “No, why?”

  He drummed his fingertips on the top of the truck and let out a breath. “You look like you need a jacket.”

  She rolled her eyes and let down the parking brake. “It’s natural, and trust me when I say that most of the bras I own wouldn’t do much in the way of disguising that.”

  “Maybe you should buy better bras.” Or maybe he’d buy them for her, just to be sure.

  “I don’t like wearing padding. It draws too much attention to my torso.”

  As if her current state doesn’t? He ground his teeth on the retort. She was a grown woman. She could do whatever she wanted unless her actions would somehow negatively impact the glaring. “Where are you going, anyway?”

  “To get a haircut. I have an appointment.”

  “Going to Chop Shop?”

  “No, Val’s. Everyone said to stay away from Chop Shop because the barber is a bit scissor-happy. I’d really like for someone with a little more finesse to do the job.”

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Val’s would be chock-full of Cougars, probably, seeing as how Val herself was one. Miles would end up with even more Cougar taint, when he was having a hard enough time as it was getting his scent to adhere.

  Not gonna happen.

  He climbed up in the truck and shut the door. As he worked the seat belt across his body, she stared. “Well, you don’t mind if I tag along, do you?”

  “I…” She cringed. “Uh, no. You might get bored. I usually end up waiting a little while no matter where I go, in spite of having an appointment. I don’t mind so much because it gives me a chance to catch up on magazines.”

  “And, what, you think I don’t read?”

  She blinked. He took that as a no.

  “I’m self-entertaining, like most cats. I won’t even try to curl onto your lap or bite your ankles so you’ll pay attention to me.”

  “As if you were so hard to ignore.” She said it so quietly, it took him a moment to process her words. And when he did, he couldn’t make heads or tails of what she meant. She seemed to have no problem staying away from him.

  • • •

  They stopped into Val’s to find almost every seat had an ass in it. Hank groaned inwardly as he stood on the welcome mat. He’d never been inside before, and he had never wanted to be. The gaudy, purple-spewed display window didn’t do much to instill confidence in Val. It practically screamed out Men, steer clear with its crushed velvet curtains tied back with silk tassels and the scads of framed posters featuring hairdos that even Hank knew were five years out of style.

  He could feel every eye in the salon fix on him as Miles made her way over to the reception desk.

  “Well, well, well. Lookie here,” Val drawled. She smirked at him and resumed whisking her scissors across a section of hair pinned between her fingers. “You finally gonna let me cut that mess off, Fabio?”

  “I’m not letting you anywhere near my head holding something sharp.”

  “Let me just trim a little. Six inches. I won’t even make you wait. You don’t mind, do you, Starla?”

  “Nope,” the woman in the stylist’s chair said.

  “You call six inches a trim?” Hank asked.

  “Maybe five. Eight at the most. That’d put you and Mason about even, though I’m not taking credit for that hack job he does. He probably cuts his hair with a Bowie knife.”

  Sounded about right, actually. Mason tended to put his hair in a braid once a quarter and lop off anything that dangled. “I’ll pass, Val.” Hank might have grown out his hair due to necessity, but he liked being easily distinguishable from his brothers from a distance. He also liked that it drove people nuts.

  “Well, then, whaddaya want? Spreading your harassment campaign to us ladies now?”

  “Who’ve I been harassing? If you’re referring to select Cougars who’ve been participating in certain illegal activities out of their storefronts, then, yeah, I may have made them see the error of their ways. You’re not doing anything illegal, are you?” He folded his arms over his chest.

  “Some folks say my prices are illegal, but other than that, no.”

  “All right, then. I’m just waiting on Miles.”

  Val scoffed. “She might be waiting for a while.”

  “She warned me.”

  At the moment, Miles was clearing magazines off of a dark purple plastic chair between Margo Delacroix and Mrs. Perez. He didn’t miss the little laugh shaking Miles’s shoulders. Yeah, she probably thought him being there was a hoot, and those women were going to do their due diligence to henpeck him until he thrashed for mercy. So be it. They’d henpeck, and he’d torture them with that Cougar testosterone they complained of so much.

  “Suit yourself,” Val said airily. “So, Miles, I hope Jimmy didn’t terrify you too badly yesterday. I heard you had the great misfortune of running into him outside the clinic yesterday.”

  “I wouldn’t call it a misfortune, exactly.”

  “What were you doing outside the clinic?” Hank asked. He scanned the room for a spare chair, but there was none to be found except for the one at Station Two. Nope. Someone was going to have to share, and Miles seemed the obvious choice.

  He pulled her to her feet, with her furrowing her brow at him, then took the seat she’d vacated. “I think I’m probably a little more comfortable to sit on than this chair is.”

  “You’re such a saint, Hank,” Val said. “So giving. So thoughtful.”

  “That’s a new one. I’ve never been accused of that before.”

  Miles pushed up both eyebrows.

  He patted his lap. Two birds, one stone. Maybe he could offset some of the Cougar scents she’d pick up from the purple shop of horrors. If Val’s was the kind of place she’d been haunting the past few days, it was no wonder his scent wasn’t sticking. It was basically being neutralized on impact. Cougars tended to like keeping their money within the Cougar community, although Miles wouldn’t have known that yet.

  “Um…okay.” She turned and sat gingerly on his knees.

  Really? “I promise, you’re not going to break me.”

  She scooted back a bit more.

  Not enough, his inner cougar said. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against his chest, and there went that spike of adrenaline that seemed to be her perfume as of late. He couldn’t have been scaring her that badly. No one else took him all that seriously unless he bared a little fang, and sometimes not even then.

  He hooked his chin over her shoulder and fondled the hem of her shirt. “Comfy?”

  She nodded tentatively.

  “You sure?”

  “Your legs are going to go numb.”

  “No time soon. Think of another excuse.”

  “I’ll try to.”

  You let her, and I’ll never let you sleep through the night again, his inner cougar warned.

  “Jimmy was positively moon-eyed over you, Miles,” Val said. She had Starla bend over and worked some sort of scissors-swiping voodoo over her dangling ends. “I think he’d been trying to get a good look at you for a month. Now he’s probably not gonna stop harassing you until he finds his own mate.”

  “He was just being friendly,” Miles said.

  “Yeah? Friendly is saying hi and tipping your hat. I’d bet good money Jimmy got down on one knee to count off the tokens of affection he’d give to you if only the world wasn’t bringing him and his bank account balance down.” She guffawed.

  H
ank rolled his eyes. He wasn’t so worried about Jimmy. Val’s little brother had a legendary flare for the dramatic and fell a little bit in love with every pretty girl he saw. He’d probably caught a glimpse of Miles during the all-Cougars-on-deck search for Ellery, and had probably been composing love sonnets in his head ever since.

  And why not? his inner cougar asked.

  Hank brushed his thumbs across the backs of the hands Miles held pressed to her lap and watched her fingers dance reflexively. Perfect little doll of a woman who probably invoked thoughts of heraldic chivalry wherever she went. People wanted to do things for her just because she was nice. He’d always thought niceness was a congenital defect correctable via a few hard knocks, but Miles behaved as if being nice was a cure for things instead of a malady. Maybe for her, it was. La Bella Dama probably found her to be a breath of fresh air.

  He gave Miles’s hands a little squeeze. “What were you doing outside of the clinic?” he repeated. He’d never gotten his answer from the first time he’d asked.

  “Oh.” She turned slightly to look back at him. “I needed to donate blood.”

  “Needed to?” He gave her a little bounce on his lap, feeling her inconsiderable weight. “No offense, but I don’t think you meet the guidelines.” He’d once had a dog heavier than her. He’d loved that dog, evil jerk that he was, and had even given some thought recently to getting another, but Hank was thinking he already had enough problems at the moment, and besides—the problem on his lap was a lot prettier than a mastiff and she slobbered a lot less.

  “I won’t say whether I do or not, but clinics have been known to make exceptions when the donor would have had to let the blood anyway. I was overdue.”

  “Explain.”

  “I have a disorder called hemochromatosis. Juvenile onset. It’s hereditary and a pain in the rear, but we all play the cards we’re dealt, huh? It’s an excess of iron. I can maintain the treatment of it by giving up the occasional pint of blood.”

  He found himself gripping her a little tighter and didn’t let go until she winced and wriggled her fingers inside his.

  “Sorry. Blame my inner cat. He’s paranoid. You all right?”

  She shook out her hands and giggled. “It’s all right. Just a squeeze. I’ve had a lot of hairline fractures and dislocated finger joints from working with birthing mothers. When you tell them it’s okay if they squeeze your hands through the pain, they don’t tend to question it when those contractions ramp up.”

  “I don’t intend to cause you any new injuries.”

  “They always heal.”

  “Even so. I’m surprised you don’t get hurt more than you do, given your choice of leisure activities. Camping, of all things?”

  She bumped his chest with her elbow and groaned. “Hey, I’m short, not helpless.”

  Sure.

  “I’m in pretty good shape, all things considered. And I thought you knew—none of us actually like camping. Not me. Not Ellery. Hannah could take it or leave it.”

  “Then what the hell were you doing out at Arches? It’s an odd place for a person to be if they don’t have a particular fondness for the great outdoors.” The rugged great outdoors, at that.

  Red seeped up her cheeks. “It’s a stupid story,” she whispered.

  “I’d like to hear it,” he whispered back. He wanted to know precisely what sort of cockamamie thought processes the woman had so he’d know precisely what sort of trouble to expect from her. Half his job would probably be rescuing her from herself.

  “Maybe…maybe later?”

  “I’ll hold you to it.”

  She gave the barest of nods, and looked up at Val, who stood in front of her with her hands on her hips and her head canted to the side.

  “Uh-oh,” Miles said. “I’m not sure I like that look.”

  “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just trying to figure out your color. Someone asked me if I could put it in her hair, and I said I’d match it because I’m an opportunist that way. I’ll do almost anything for a buck.” She jammed a scolding finger in Hank’s direction before he could open his mouth, and good thing, too, because he certainly had a few words to add to the discussion. From what he’d heard of her exploits, Val was only slightly exaggerating.

  “Someone asked you about my hair color?” Miles asked. A person would have had to have been as deaf as a post to have missed the note of incredulity in it. “It’s just brown.”

  “There’s no such thing as just brown. There’s brown that veers toward blue, brown that veers toward red, and brown that veers toward blond. On the rare occasion, you’ll get the dishwater color stuff people pay me good money to correct, but you don’t have that.”

  “What do I have?”

  Val rubbed her palms together and grinned. “Highlights. Lowlights.”

  “Ka-ching,” Hank muttered.

  “Hey, Second, you make money your way, and I’ll make money my way. Don’t be mad that I actually like my job and you don’t.”

  That was low, and Val would have certainly known it. They’d graduated the same year, and had been in many of the same music classes. She knew exactly what Hank had hoped to be doing after graduation, and it wasn’t sawing wood. He ignored Miles’s questioning look.

  Val blew a raspberry and pointed Mrs. Perez toward her empty styling chair.

  Mrs. Perez stopped in front of Miles on the way past. “You come talk to me?”

  “Right now?”

  She waved a dismissive hand, then switched her cane to it. “No, no.” After pushing Miles’s short hair back from her forehead, and staring at Miles as if she were sizing up a state fair sow, Mrs. Perez grunted. Then she padded after Val.

  Hank was dying to know what she thought. Everything the women in the glaring had to say to the Foye men usually got filtered through Belle, or Mom as a last resort. Mrs. Perez usually gave him a wide berth and cast the evil eye at him from across the street whenever she saw him. Dad had always said not to take it personally. She did it to all the men. “She’s old school,” he’d said.

  “Not right now,” she called back to Miles. “When you get away from El Segundo for a while.” She muttered something under her breath in Spanish, and given her son Tito’s penchant for casting halfhearted aspersions toward the Foyes, Hank suspected that whatever she said was completely lacking in flattery.

  Val confirmed as much with her admonition, “Be nice, you old bat, or the next time you come in I’ll forget to use permanent dye.”

  “Thanks,” Hank said.

  Val snapped a cape around Mrs. Perez’s neck. “Don’t thank me. I’m just ready for there to be some stability around here. No one can remember the last time we’ve had a fully fleshed leadership structure in the glaring, and I’m curious to see what’ll happen once things click into place. I think the last time all the positions were filled was back when my dad was a kid.”

  “Before that,” Mrs. Perez said. She took off her glasses, hid them beneath her cape, and closed her eyes. “Long before that. Not since the last time the hellmouth was open. Nobody wanted the jobs, and I could think of a lot of reasons why. It was a good thing Floyd had all those knuckleheaded boys, or we still wouldn’t get any volunteers.”

  Hank rolled his eyes.

  “Except the Sheehans?” Miles asked.

  All conversation in the shop ceased, and every gaze turned toward her.

  She’d sure as shit picked that up fast.

  Mrs. Perez grunted. “Nobody want to say nothing. Roots go too deep. Sick of all the secrets. Damn cats and their secrets.”

  Hank didn’t know what sorts of secrets she meant. Whether it was about the Sheehans or something else related to the glaring, he couldn’t discern, and given the relaxed droop her facial features had taken with her imminent slumber, he didn’t think she would be forthcoming.

  Gazes shifted slightly from Miles to the man whose lap she perched on. He took the hint. He wasn’t welcome because they couldn’t speak freely, and probably not just abo
ut feminine things like color trends.

  He gave Miles a squeeze around the waist and stood her up. He’d have to get his scent on her in some other way, despite his inner cat’s insistence he stay and endure the abuse. “I’ve got some things to do. Gonna see how Sean is. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Two hours,” Val said. “That oughtta be long enough.”

  “That okay?” Miles asked.

  “You don’t have to ask.” He was the one who’d intruded. She didn’t need his permission, in spite of everything. Nothing was going to happen to her with the women around. She’d earned these women’s respect in such a short period of time, and Hank hadn’t managed the same in decades. He should have been asking her what was okay.

  It was last-ditch, and he didn’t care. He nudged her collar aside and grazed his lips along the slope of her neck, drawing a sigh from her.

  “You’re killing me,” she whispered.

  “How?” He pulled back.

  “Go away, Fabio,” Val said.

  “Going.” He backed toward the door and watched Miles sit back down in the chair he’d occupied. Her pale gaze flitted to his face, then to her shoes as he pulled the door handle.

  Was she ashamed of him? He hoped not. He understood why she might be, given who he was and the reputation he’d earned fair and square. She probably deserved better. No, she did deserve better. But, like him, she had to play the hand she was dealt. She wasn’t cut out to be an intimidating mate of a glaring’s second-in-command, and he shouldn’t have been anyone’s mate at all.

  They were both screwed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Miles still didn’t understand all the nuances of the various glaring roles and titles, and it seemed none of the ladies at the salon—besides Mrs. Perez—really knew much about them, either. The old woman seemed especially concerned with order and ritual, and she spoke to Miles with a reverence Miles didn’t think she deserved. She’d said as much while Val massaged her scalp in the shampoo sink. But Mrs. Perez had insisted that Miles get the respect she was due…whatever that meant. Between the weird ringing in her ears, likely caused by her dry-drowning at Val’s hands and her probably still-out-of-whack iron levels, she wasn’t understanding many things immediately after they were said. She did pick up on a few things, though.