Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1)

by Ever Coming

  “Jenny?” Her BLT was long forgotten. Something stirred in me as I thought maybe I was wrong. Maybe she would fill Marie’s shoes just fine.

  “Jenny is a friend. She has seven kids. Widowed. Husband died in some weird circumstances. The town kind of pitches in where we can. She works hard, but feeding seven cubs isn’t easy.”

  If she noticed I’d accidentally said cubs, there was no trace of it on her face. Hopefully, she was preoccupied with filling Marie’s many job titles.

  “I can do that. I feel awful. Here I was thinking because I closed the shop at the normal time, I was free for the rest of the day. I have work to do!” She nearly jumped out of the booth. There were low-key chuckles from some of the males in the room.

  “Settle down. We’ve been taking care of Jenny since Marie passed. Finish your lunch. Fuel up. Then you can tackle the world.”

  Surprisingly, she listened. With some gusto, she finished her meal and downed two more Cokes, the sweet tea lasting less than one half sip before she was demanding anything else, all with a smile on her face that could make me happy for the rest of my life.

  No, not me. Someone, but not me.

  Ours. She’s ours.

  Of course, my gator decided that was the moment to rear his head. Fucking bastard. Just when I’d made up my mind she wasn’t for me. Even though I wanted her—bad. She smelled like the finest donut or cake or some kind of confectionary, even over the BLT and the smells of other shifters in the room.

  It called to me.

  Her smile called to me.

  Her voice beckoned my gator out of the depths.

  Damn it, I just wanted to lay her out on this table and…

  “Etienne?” She was waving her hand in front of my face. I was losing my damned mind over this female.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I just wanted to say thank you for lunch. And, um, can I maybe persuade you to have dinner with me tonight? Maybe you can tell me some more secrets about Marie that she’s obviously hiding?”

  She always talked about her grandmother like she was still alive. It was endearing.

  “I think I could make that happen. What time?”

  “Seven.”

  “I have one condition,” I said, and she stopped trying to get out of the booth, which was all I wanted in that moment.

  “What’s that?”

  “Wear the red heels.” My eyebrow confirmed my request. The woman looked fine as fuck in those heels.

  A red glow blossomed in her cheeks. “Um, I’ll see what I can do. Any requests?”

  God, she didn’t know what she was saying. To cook and feed a male shifter was the ultimate symbol of a female of honor. She just didn’t know what it meant to me.

  “Anything you make will be fine with me, Tansy. Anything.”

  I just hope she didn’t make gator. I was a lot of things, but I wasn’t a cannibal.

  Tansy

  What on this green earth had I been thinking, inviting him to dinner? I might make a mean meal, but living alone I had nothing ready to go, which meant a trip to the store, cutting into my yelling at Meemaw time, which was number one top priority. She had been hiding from me long enough, or at least I assumed it was hiding since I still felt her prescience. It was going to be a hard day when she left forever.

  The bakery was blissfully empty, being already closed for the day. The last thing I wanted to do was talk to anyone but Meemaw. I decided to wait until the dough was ready to rise before calling her.

  I yanked all of the ingredients needed for my famous butter rolls, and by famous, I meant like three people had them, but they always asked for me to make them again. Was that my subconsciousness plan? To make him want to see me again? I needed to not examine that one too closely.

  “Whatcha doin’ back, Tansy?” And there was Meemaw, thankfully just as visible as the last time I saw her. This fading thing had me on edge, but until I could figure out what to do about it, I figured it best not to upset Meemaw with it. I had no problem upsetting her, but not over afterlife yuck because some things were just too serious.

  “I came to bake some rolls for dinner tonight.” And shake her down for information, or at least give her a what for about leaving me in the dark about far too much.

  “Company comin’.” It wasn’t a question, given the smirk on her translucent face.

  “Yeah, something like that.” I added my flour to the bowl, looking forward to when I could beat, I meant knead my dough and let out the frustrations of the day—make that the week. “I’ve got some bones to pick with you, Meemaw. You’ve been layin’ low lately, which I’m guessing means you know I met that dead little girl. You wanna tell me about that?”

  “Not particularly.” She said it as if we were simply discussing the weather and not a little girl whose life not only ended much too soon, but also ended in a way that seemed to have kept her trapped here.

  “How about the dead guy at the station?” I focused all of my attention on Meemaw’s face, needing to see if she knew more than she was going to let on. “Says it was a bear.” She flinched—barely. Oh yeah, she knew something about him all right. “A freckin’ bear. I should’ve bought a gun. That is good to know info, you know.”

  “He’s not at the station.” Because that answered nothing. “He’s attached to Bruno, and you don’t need no gun.”

  “I’ll be the decider on that one.” Bears and gators and who knew what else equated with guns and done.

  “Speaking of rolls, who you bringin’ round?”

  My eyes rolled of their own accord. Good old Meemaw’s ignore-and-distract tactics weren’t going to work, not this time.

  “We were not speaking of rolls. We were discussing all the dead people in this town.” I went back to my dough, adding the final ingredients and taking out my aggression on the mixture. Yeast dough was great for that.

  “I’m still stuck on the rolls.”

  I kept at my dough, taking deep breaths as I did so.

  “What time is Etienne coming?”

  I stopped dead in my tracks, looking up to where she was, only to be startled as I found her far closer than she was only a second beforehand. That was one thing I never got used to with ghosts. “I never said it was him.”

  “You didn’t have to, especially with the way you’re blushing right now.”

  It was my least endearing trait, if you asked me.

  “It’s just hot in here,” I lied, hearing her laugh slightly as I did. “Fine.” My exacerbation seeped into my words. “Yes, I’m making dinner for Etienne.”

  I grabbed a tea towel to cover the rising dough. The bakery had a proof box, but I didn’t want to bother with it. I wanted this dinner to be cheat-free and homemade, not commercial, which was all kinds of dumb since it was my bakery and not purchased pre-made. Yet it seemed important to do that for him. Arggggg, the man had me in knots.

  “He’s a good one, that man.”

  “Is there any such thing?” I growled back like a stupid teenager. My brain told me you couldn’t judge all men by one, but my heart…was an entirely different story. It wasn’t as if I still loved him or ever truly did, but the betrayal was so horrific and life-altering it still stung.

  “Don’t let one horrible excuse for a human being ruin your chance at happiness.”

  “And Etienne is my happiness? Please. We just met.”

  “And he might or might not be the one for you, but if you shut him out from the get-go, how are you ever going to know?”

  “Arrrg, Meemaw.” I hip-checked the drawer the towel had been in closed before loosely covering the bowl. If I left now, I could do my grocery shopping in time to come back and form my rolls. “Why did you have to go and logic me like that?”

  Because, once again, she was right. Etienne wasn’t him. He was as far from it as you could get. He was rough and sexy and yet a gentleman, and could he kiss. There was magic stored in his lips. I was sure of it.

  “Dill.” Meemaw int
errupted my naughty wanderings.

  “What?”

  “Put a little dill in the rolls. Trust me.” And she disappeared.

  I uncovered the bowl and added some dill before setting it aside to rise and making a run to the store.

  Etienne

  All of them were laughing at me. Justice was doubled over. Scratch that. Loic was stoic as always.

  I knew I should’ve brought my shit to the station and gotten dressed there, but Bruno would have a thousand questions I wasn’t willing to give answers on—yet.

  In between the shower and buttoning up my shirt, I’d decided on my purpose for accepting an invitation to her house. I wanted to know what made this female tick. There was more than the dresses and the cakes—something inside her was restless. At first, I thought it might be an oppressed shifter, but I would smell that, especially on a female.

  Tansy had secrets, and I intended to have her whisper them to me.

  “Shut the fuck up, Just.”

  He was still bent over, waving his hands in the air like the sight of me was just too much to take standing up.

  “I said knock it the fuck off before I shove my boot so far up your ass, you’ll be cleaning your colon out of your gums with a toothpick.” My gator added a growl for good measure.

  That straightened him out quick.

  “Sorry, Eti, I’ve just never seen you clean up so well. Especially for a female.”

  He was right. All of my meaningless conquests had taken place in the back of my truck with my gun still holstered.

  I certainly wasn’t proud of it, but I wasn’t a monk, either.

  “She’s—this one is different.” I admitted it with a hushed tone. The jeering stopped from the others immediately. They knew what I was talking about. None of us had mates, mostly because we were a group of beastly ogres secluded in the swamps, and a good percent because we were dickheads with attitudes the size of the Atchafalaya Basin. But a mate—that was a topic even asshole shifters didn’t give each other shit about.

  “You think she’s your...I mean your gator…”

  Loic couldn’t even say the word. It was that sacred to us.

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.” I could lie to myself all I wanted to about my true intentions for going to Tansy’s house that night, but I couldn’t lie to them. They were my brothers in this place and in our place in life. Plus, they could taste the lies before they came out of my mouth. It was like a penny that had been in the river too long, bitter and metallic on our tongues.

  They didn’t say another word.

  “Hey, Eti, good luck,” Loic ground out before I stepped into my truck.

  I forced myself to take my time getting there, not wanting to come off too eager, though my gator was about to come barreling through my chest at any minute. I’d bought her some tulips from the local gas station, the only local place to buy cut flowers. Tansy didn’t seem like a roses kind of girl.

  The smell of rolls and meat caught my attention before I knocked softly on the door.

  “Good evening.” She answered the door in a white dress that swayed softly above her knees.

  And she wore the red heels.

  Good girl.

  Tansy

  “You look—nice.” Or smexy as the day was long, but lame nice was what I settled on. Boy, did he clean up nice.

  I wasn’t going to wear the heels. I tried to convince myself it was because I was at home, and who wears shoes in the house. But I was lying to myself. I wasn’t going to wear them to show I was independent or some dumb thing. But then I heard him pull up and watched him get out of the car all yummy-like, and on they went. The look he gave me when he noticed them had me wanting to never take them off again. What was it about Etienne that could have me so in knots and questioning all my thoughts on men with some slight glance?

  “You are beautiful. These are for you.” He held out a bunch of tulips, my favorite. It was obvious from the way he thrust them at me, that flower giving was not his normal wooing strategy, making it a bazillion times more special.

  “They are my favorite.” Ever since I went to Holland, Michigan as a kid, tulips had been my fave.

  “They’re from the gas station.” His head dropped slightly. Was he embarrassed he hadn’t gone to some shop that cost all the dollars for the same exact flowers? Men.

  “That doesn’t make them less special.” It was the truth of it. They actually were more special. Sure, my ex thought flowers were the best gift ever and always got them from a fancy place, but every last bouquet was a lie or a cover-up.

  Sorry I can’t make dinner. Unexpected department meeting. Which in English meant going home to be with my family. And I miss you. Which translated to: I need you to stop calling so I’m doing an over-the-top gesture to give you confidence in us so you don’t end up calling when my wife is around. And then there was the ever-popular, Last night was amazing, which translated to: I did all the things he wanted right before he left me to go home to the wife he never told me about.

  These flowers dwarfed those in all the best of ways.

  “Well, are you going to come in all the way?” He was just standing in the doorway like a true gentleman, which I had no illusions he was, or at least I hoped he wasn’t. It was adorable, but the bugs were going to come in if he didn’t get inside.

  “If dinner is half as delicious as it smells, try to stop me.”

  “I’m going to go put these in water and do the finishing touches on dinner. You can hang out with Curtis.”

  That darn lizard had grown on me something fierce. The little thing was cute and, at the same time, terrifying. Little ghost girl knew what she was talking about. I needed to go visit her soon, see if I could help her. No little girl should have her life over that soon, and definitely not under conditions trapping her here.

  I set to work slicing the roast, dishing up the sides, and whipping the butter. I had a feeling Etienne was a meat-and-potatoes guy, so that was what he was getting. None of the pretentious truffle oil junk they taught us at school, just honest-to-goodness dinner.

  “Dinner is ready,” I called over my shoulder, only to catch him deep in conversation with Curtis.

  “You don’t have to call me twice.” He came over and sat at the tiny café table that was my dining room set.

  “There’s plenty more of all of it on the counter. It’s just that the table is small.” I shouldn’t be embarrassed by my place. It was clean and well-kept, yet as I pointed to the cracked counter where the food sat, I wondered for a nanosecond if he thought less of me. He was a cop, had a real job. I was a college dropout running someone else’s dream. Not even really a dropout. I was a college kicked-out. Was that a thing?

  “This is perfect, Tansy.” He took his first bite, and all my insecurities fled. He loved it. Not even the best actors in this world could show the kind of ecstasy on their face Etienne did with that one bite. “I can’t remember the last time I had a meal this fancy and never one this good.”

  “It’s not fancy. Just meat and potatoes.” If Meemaw were here instead of hanging out at the bakery she would be yellin’ right ’bout now. Tellin’ me how if I didn’t show my worth no one was gonna see it.

  “With homemade bread and butter?” I nodded, happy he noticed the butter, my favorite of all things to serve because it was a thousand times better than anything you could buy at the store and so easy to whip up. “Fancy,” he concluded.

  “Fancy-ish,” I conceded. The dill was extra fancy, but since that wasn’t my decision to add in, ish was accurate.

  “Works for me.”

  We ate in silence until he got up, filling his plate of his own accord. That had to be a good sign. No one does that unless they both love the food and feel comfortable with the earlier offer. He came back, his plate mounded high. My heart soared. He loved my food, my gift.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “Like is an understatement. This is the best food I’ve ever eaten. You need to coo
k this for me every night.” Every night. He wanted to eat my food every night. Sure, it was a figure of speech, but the thought of it still filled me with the happy.

  “It would get boring after a while. Besides, this meal has no bacon. You can’t expect a girl to live like that.” Not that adding bacon to the potatoes wasn’t an easy enough task.

  “What is it with you and bacon?” He slathered another roll with the butter. Next time I needed to plan ahead and make some fancy butters. If there was a next time. Which there probably shouldn’t be, seeing he was all us and all and I didn’t want a relationship. Not that I should be depressing myself during one of the most enjoyable dates of my life. Not that it was a date, because it certainly wasn’t, except maybe it was? It was official. The man had me in knots.

  “You eat it more than me. You tell me.” His bacony scent had me wanting to lick him all over after I owned his mouth. I blamed all of those thoughts on the bacon. Bacon and its super powers because chemistry and longing had no part to play in my life at the moment, no matter how much the rest of me disagreed with that statement.

  “What makes you say that?” He shoved the remaining half of the roll in his mouth, a droplet of butter running down his chin, begging to be caught—with my tongue. Down girl.

  “You always smell like the world’s best BLT.” I shrugged.

  Etienne

  The roast beef lodged in my throat.

  Well, fuck me sideways and call me Timmy.

  There was something about Tansy she wasn’t telling me. Something secret—something a little more than normal. That was the only way I would smell like something so specific to her.

  I had to know.

  Maybe my gator was onto something, after all, the clever bastard.

  Fuck. Tansy could be my mate. And I meant fuck in the best way possible.

  “Strange. I actually don’t eat a lot of bacon. I’m a beef and chicken man.”

  She laughed and moved to get her plate, but I was faster. “Let me.” The surprise on her face was adorable and infuriating at the same time. Adorable that she was so surprised by a gesture that, to my kind, was meant to be the highest honor. Infuriating because whoever had been with this woman before, obviously hadn’t treated her like she should’ve been treated. I wasn’t a fool. She wasn’t a teenager. I was more than sure she had been with other males before me.