Hot and Badgered

by Shelly Laurenston

  At the same time, Hannah wasn’t above taking on a challenge. Especially when she and Britta went to a bar and received less than respectful come-ons from drunk full-humans who thought it would be funny to “get a ride on the big girl!”

  At six-three, Hannah never took that particular insult very well. Neither did Britta. They’d bonded early on from their barroom brawls and the Group had always been nice enough to use its connections in the NYPD to get both out of jail in a timely manner and without any black marks on their records.

  Still, he had no idea why Hannah was here now.

  “Hi, uh . . . Daaaaa”—he frowned and she quickly changed it to—“aaaaBerg?”

  “Da-Berg? Really?”

  “I knew it was one of you.”

  He liked Hannah so he wouldn’t hold it against her that after all these years she still couldn’t tell him and Dag apart. Britta said she couldn’t tell the Gallo twin foxes apart either. She just called each of them “Twin” and pointed.

  “So what’s up?” he asked.

  “Is there a Charlie here?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I found out some information about her recent problems. I usually just hand my research off to the agent in charge of the case, but I was told that would not happen because apparently she kicked that agent’s ass.” She smirked. “Brava, by the way.”

  Laughing, Berg stepped back. “Come on in.”

  * * *

  Charlie stared at the remains of the bacon. The hotel had provided a platter full of two kinds of bacon. Crispy and chewy, each in its own separate pile. Berg liked crispy and Charlie had dug into the chewy. Perfect.

  The problem was that when it came to bacon, Charlie didn’t have an “off” switch like she did when she ate almost anything else. If there was a pound of bacon in front of her, she would eat that entire pound without even blinking an eye. So she only allowed herself to get bacon on holidays like Christmas or Thanksgiving morning. She was afraid if she ate it every day, her heart would explode from all the grease.

  At the moment, there was a lot of bacon left and Charlie didn’t want to finish it. Well . . . she did want to finish it, but she knew she shouldn’t. Cholesterol could still be an issue with shifters. They weren’t immune!

  But her resistance was fading. Sitting on the terrace of a luxury hotel, with the hottest—and nicest!—guy she’d ever been with, wearing a fancy hotel robe, and feeling immensely relaxed from all that great sex . . . it seemed a perfect day for more bacon.

  Her hand was over the platter when she heard Berg say, “Charlie, this is Hannah.”

  Charlie snatched her hand back and looked toward the open glass doors. Berg stood beside a tall, powerfully built, dark-haired woman with dark brown eyes and a pretty face. But there were scars on her neck and her bare arms. A lot of scars. Scars on top of scars.

  “And Hannah, this is Charlie.”

  Hannah stepped closer and held her hand out. Charlie shook it and gestured to the table. “Hungry? We have a ton of food left.”

  “I haven’t finished eating yet,” Berg said, sitting down. “And you have to finish your bacon.”

  “I’m fine,” Hannah said, pulling out one of the other chairs and sitting down. “Ric Van Holtz sent me over. I did research on the people who’ve been trying to take your sister Stevie? Plus, the, uh, stolen one hundred million from your Uncle Will?”

  “Yes. Did you find out anything?” Charlie sighed. “It’s a Peruvian drug lord again, isn’t it? My father and his Peruvian drug lords.”

  “Um, actually . . . no.” She opened her backpack. There was a laptop in there but that wasn’t what Hannah pulled out. Instead, she dug around until she grabbed a magazine. She placed it next to Charlie’s plate.

  “Vanity Fair?” Charlie asked. “You found the ones trying to kill me in Vanity Fair magazine?”

  “I did. The pages are marked.”

  There was a pink Post-it in the middle of the magazine and Charlie quickly flipped to that page. Berg got up and crouched next to her.

  Spread across the first two pages was a pictorial feature on what Charlie had to call the hottest women she’d ever seen. Dark-haired Italian beauties wearing gold bikinis that looked stunning against their golden brown skin, thin gold belly chains around their tight abs. On their feet they had Louboutins and on their wrists and necks, they had diamonds. Lots of diamonds.

  Still, despite their obvious wealth, the whole thing looked a little lowbrow for Vanity Fair until Charlie read out loud, “The Twin Italian Invasion of Silicon Valley.” She shrugged and looked at Hannah. “Who are they?”

  “Caterina and Celestina Guerra. CEOs of a major software company out of the Lombardo region of Italy. Their mother was an aristocrat of Italian and Greek birth. Very wealthy. Very independent. And she needed that independence because she was disowned by her family when she had the twins.”

  “That’s harsh.”

  “Well, she met a much older man. She was in her late twenties and he was in his late sixties—”

  “Ew.”

  “—but she ignored her parents’ concerns over the relationship. What she didn’t know, unfortunately, was that her much-older lover was still married and that she was not the only mistress. When she found out, she didn’t take it well. I think there were some rage issues. Anyway, her parents cut her off. Her lover wouldn’t help and cut off all contact. She was on her own with twin girls, but she was smart, vicious, and not afraid to get her hands bloody. She built a successful business and trained her daughters to take over, which they did when she got sick and died about a decade ago. From what I understand, the twins blame their biological father’s absence for their mother’s death. And they blame the father’s family for his absence.”

  “That’s surprisingly fascinating,” Charlie said, “but I still don’t know what this has to do with me and my sisters.”

  “Well”—she cleared her throat—“their father is . . . Colin MacKilligan. I believe your grandfather, which would make Caterina and Celestina . . . your . . . uh . . . aunts.”

  Charlie gazed at the woman called Hannah, then back at the magazine, where the women’s matching smiles almost seemed to mock her. Unable to look anymore, she tossed the magazine onto the table and pushed her chair back, standing. She walked around the table and over to the railing. She stood there, her hands on the black metal, staring out over the city.

  After a full minute of silence, Charlie suddenly screamed, “I hate my familyyyyyyyyyyy!”

  * * *

  Sitting outside on the front porch enjoying her breakfast of a couple of bananas, Max abruptly looked away from her morning paper and over the Queens street outside their rental home.

  She glanced at Stevie sitting in the swing with the Dunns’ dog, his giant head resting in her lap. The sisters locked eyes and Max began to ask, “Did we just hear . . .”

  Her question died away and they gazed at each other for a long moment before they said simultaneously, “Nahhhhhhh.”

  * * *

  Berg cringed as Charlie’s scream echoed out over the city, and he watched her begin to pace.

  “What is wrong with these people?” Charlie demanded . . . of the air. “If I looked back into the MacKilligan lineage, would I only find assholes and scumbags? Are there any other kinds of MacKilligans? Am I a scumbag or asshole?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Berg.”

  “I’m not lying. You can’t be responsible for your asshole father, uncles, and grandfather.”

  “And aunts. I have asshole aunts, too.”

  “There is something else,” Hannah said.

  Charlie threw up her hands. “Oh, come on!”

  “What is it, Hannah?” Berg pushed, hoping to get Charlie to focus and prevent Hannah from making a desperate run for it.

  “From what I can tell . . . I don’t think the twins know that shifters exist. I don’t think they know they’re not completely human.”

&nb
sp; Charlie stopped pacing, stared at the hybrid. “Is that even possible?”

  “It’s rare,” Berg replied, “but it’s been known to happen.”

  “How did they get through puberty and not know?” Charlie pushed. “Even though I can’t shift, puberty was still hell on wheels.”

  Surprised, Berg asked, “You can’t shift?”

  “Nope. My father’s fucked-up genes win again. I can just unleash claws and fangs, and it’s really hard to kill me . . . which definitely is a plus.”

  “But think about it,” Hannah said, pulling out her laptop and moving plates and platters so she could lay it on the table. “Instead of reveling in the success of their lives, they’re busy trying to fuck over the people who they feel destroyed their mother. It’s all that . . .”

  “Honey badger rage?” Charlie asked.

  “Without shifting, without even knowing what they are, they have no place for all that rage to go.” Hannah began tapping away at the laptop keys.

  “So what if they find out what they are? What if they learn to shift?”

  Berg shook his head. “Being a shifter is kind of like being a hardcore drinker. It doesn’t make you an asshole, it just enhances the asshole already within. These two females are not going to become lovely young ladies because they can let their honey badger out. I mean, do you think Max would be, deep in her soul, any different if she weren’t a—”

  “Okay. Okay,” Charlie cut in. “I get your point.”

  Hannah turned the laptop around.

  Charlie smirked. “You hacked into their private pictures?”

  “Yeah. I’d strongly suggest you not look at the videos.” Hannah scrunched up her face, gave a short shake of her head. “Trust me.”

  “Oh, look . . . they hunt big game in Africa with rifles and crossbows. Nothing like standing over a dead elephant to make you feel one with nature.” She flicked through a few more pics but then she ended up seeing her aunts naked.

  Berg heard her squeak and watched her click away from those images as fast as her fingers would let her.

  The real problem was when Charlie started to go through the twins’ email.

  Charlie seemed to be a speed-reader, zipping through the information quickly until she abruptly stopped and shoved her chair back again. She stood and stalked off, back into the hotel suite.

  Shocked, Berg leaned in to read the email that had upset Charlie. He saw the problem immediately.

  His head dropped and he said to Hannah, “Charlie’s father has been talking to the twins?”

  “From what I can tell,” Hannah admitted, “he stole his brother’s money at their urging . . . and then the twins stole it from him. Not because they needed to, but more a ‘why the fuck not’ kind of thing. I’m guessing they think it’s funny.”

  “And I’m guessing Charlie’s father walked right into that shit.”

  chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  Berg had barely stopped the truck before Charlie was out of it and crossing the street to her rental house. She opened her front gate and stepped through, and Berg’s dog ran around the side of the house to greet her. She petted him, but kept moving.

  She walked into the house with the dog right behind her. She closed the door but had only taken a few steps when she heard a knock on it. She went back and found Berg standing there, appearing a bit disgruntled.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, in no mood. “Get in here.”

  “You closed the door in my face.”

  She headed toward the kitchen. “Not on purpose.”

  “That does not make me feel better. Especially when you made sure the dog got in.”

  Her sisters sat at the kitchen table. Max had her feet up, a magazine in her lap. Stevie was bent over a notebook, writing, her hand moving fast over the paper. She had a laptop open next to her work, but when she got really excited, she loved writing by hand.

  Dutch was also there, his arms on the table, crossed. His head resting on his arms. He appeared to be sleeping. He could sleep anywhere, during anything, according to Max.

  Not knowing how to start the conversation, Charlie tossed the Vanity Fair magazine in the middle of the table.

  Max was the only one who reacted. She grabbed the magazine and quickly found the Post-it marked page. She held up the picture of the twin billionaires. “You want me to start dressing like this?”

  “Yes. Including the gold belly chain.”

  She chuckled and studied the picture. “Who are they?” she finally asked.

  Berg rested against the doorframe, arms crossed. He watched her but didn’t say anything, which she appreciated. This was family business and one night of sex did not automatically make him family.

  “Those billionaire twins are, apparently, our aunts.”

  Max frowned, confused. Stevie’s head snapped up, eyes wide. And even Dutch stirred from his slumber, yawning and staring at the picture. He nodded. “Your aunts are hot.”

  “And have been trying to kill us.”

  Charlie went through the story quickly. Everything she’d learned from Hannah. As she spoke, she could feel her anger growing. Her father. Her idiot father.

  True, he wasn’t responsible for the angry twins, but he’d colluded with them. He’d gone against his own family for them. And he probably had no idea who they were. No idea whatsoever that the Guerra twins were actually his half-sisters. That they were only using him to get even with a family they hated for their own reasons.

  Once again, his stupidity had put her in a situation where she had to do something she really didn’t want to do.

  When she was finished, she waited for her sisters to react. To tell her what they thought, what they might want to do.

  Stevie dropped back in her chair and said simply, “Those bitches.”

  But Max jumped up and came around the table to stand next to Charlie. She placed the magazine on the table and then proceeded to . . . pose? Yes, pose like the twins. It was . . . ridiculous.

  “Dude”—Dutch shook his head—“no. Just . . . no.”

  “What? We can be as sexy as these two.”

  “No,” Dutch said sadly. “No, you really can’t.” He reached across the table and grabbed the magazine. “How do you pronounce their last name?” he asked Charlie.

  “Do I look Italian to you?”

  “Wear-a,” Stevie said, going back to her notebook. Charlie noticed it wasn’t one of the college-ruled or graph paper notebooks she usually worked in, but a music notebook. Charlie couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her sister do anything related to writing music. It had been absolute years.

  “Wear a what?” Dutch asked.

  Stevie lifted just her eyes to Dutch. “Wear-aaaaa. That’s how you pronounce it.”

  He pointed at the magazine. “But there’s a G.”

  Fed up, Stevie snatched the magazine from him and threw it across the room. “Don’t annoy me.”

  Charlie realized that Max was still standing beside her . . . still posing.

  Her sisters weren’t going to let their father fuck up their day yet again. Only Charlie ever did that. But not today. Not after her great night.

  “We should get to work,” she announced.

  “On my modeling career?” Max asked. Still posing.

  “Stalking our cousin the bride.” She shoved Max, who flew toward Berg. He stepped aside and Max continued through the doorway.

  “Not cool!”

  Actually . . . Charlie thought it was very cool. Her new boyfriend could handle being around her family. For a MacKilligan girl . . . that was a win.

  * * *

  Britta disconnected the call just as Berg walked into the house.

  “There’s a job in California for a couple of days,” she said, as he searched the side tables. “If you’re interested—”

  “I’m not. Where are your car keys?”

  “Which car?”

  “The SUV. And why do you have keys in multiple places?”

 
“It’s in my bag and I’m not having this argument with you yet again.” He picked up her small, black backpack, quickly located the SUV keys, and was gone.

  She was about to yell at Dag, still asleep upstairs, to see if he wanted to go to California for a few days when Berg came back in the house and dropped into a chair across from the couch she was sitting on. He was smiling and seemed . . . satisfied.

  “I thought you were going out,” she said.

  “I never said I was going out.”

  “Then why did you need my car?”

  “Charlie and her sisters needed a car to go into the city.”

  Britta sat up, pointing a finger at her brother. “You gave those lunatics my car?”

  “I need my car.” He thought a moment, then added. “And they’re not lunatics. They’re . . .”

  “They’re . . . what?”

  “Honey badgers. Mostly.”

  Britta was moments from yelling at her brother, but she heard someone come creeping down the stairs. The cat shifter her brother had picked up the night before was wearing the clothes she’d been wearing when Britta saw her coming into their house with Dag.

  She silently watched the puma walk by, heading toward the door. The twat smiled at Berg but didn’t even acknowledge Britta, and it was her house too.

  So Britta did what any sister would do, “I really wish you’d stop bringing your whores here, Dag!” she yelled at the cat’s back

  The cat stopped at the living room doorway, back muscles flexing. But after a few seconds, she headed out; the front door slammed shut.

  Grinning, she looked at Berg. “What?” she asked when he shook his head at her.

  “Do not do that when Charlie spends the night.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to Charlie,” she admitted, “because Charlie would rip my face off. Because she’s a lunatic. Which is why I can’t believe you gave her my car!”

  “Lent. I lent her your car. She’ll bring it back.”

  “Covered in bullet holes?”

  Her brother shrugged. “There’s every possibility.”

  * * *