Hot and Badgered

by Shelly Laurenston

  Calm again, Charlie went over to her father’s side and grabbed her sister’s backpack. She dumped everything on the floor and quickly pulled out the notebooks. She handed a couple to Britta, Berg, and Dag. She took the rest. In silence, they all quickly flipped through the pages until Britta said, “All I see are notes for things that I’m not sure are physically possible to make in today’s world.”

  “These are all music and drawings,” Dag said.

  When Charlie looked at him, Berg just shook his head.

  “Someone else must have taken it.”

  “Who?”

  Charlie thought a moment, but when she suddenly closed her eyes and whispered, “Fuck,” he knew they were in trouble.

  * * *

  “Come on then, Aunties,” Mairi said as she pulled the Guerra twins up, tucking the notebook the two women wanted into the pack before strapping it to her shoulders. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “My face,” one of them sobbed. “Look what that bitch did to my face!”

  Mairi understood why her cousin had done it, though. She’d wanted to do something similar. Just so she could tell the two bitches apart.

  “It’s all right. No need to worry. You’ll be better in no time. Plastic surgeons can do wonders these days,” she lied. Those weren’t just scratches. Her cousin had dug down deep with her claws. To bone. Those were scars that would last, even for shifters.

  She led them to the door, stepping over the bodies of the men she’d been forced to kill. Her cousin had only taken out one. Mairi had killed the others because they’d seen too much. She’d walked in when they were talking about claws and fangs. Not a good scenario in her estimation. Best to quiet them all.

  So she had. She’d killed every man and hadn’t even worked up a sweat. Full-humans were almost too easy.

  “Let’s get you someplace safe, Aunties. And then,” she said as she helped them out, “we’ll have a nice, long talk about family. . . and how we’re different from the other boys and girls.”

  * * *

  They led the bears as far away from the wedding as they could, but when they turned to make sure they were all back there, Stevie realized that only Miller’s polar friends had been chasing them. Miller was gone.

  “Max!”

  Max stopped and turned, quickly realizing the issue.

  They were at a dead end, with the bears only a few feet away from them.

  One of them threw his arms wide and asked, “So what are you gonna do now?”

  Max reached under the slit in her dress and pulled out two blades. She started toward the men but Stevie yanked her back.

  “No!”

  “Why not?” Max snapped.

  “It’s wrong.”

  “And what? You think they were going to be nice to us?”

  “We don’t know if they were going to kill us, though, right?” she asked the men, but they just seemed sadly confused by the situation. “Look at them. You can’t just kill them.”

  “And I still say, ‘why not’?”

  “What about the bodies?”

  Now Max was getting frustrated. “What about them?”

  “We can’t just leave them here. The cops will come. It’ll ruin the wedding.”

  “The wedding?”

  “Look, we want to stay in New York, right? So Charlie can have a chance at what some consider normalcy. Then we can’t leave bodies just lying around everywhere.”

  “So what do you suggest?”

  Stevie studied the hallway they were in, her mind calculating every bit of space, noting anything within arm’s length, taking into account every defect in the design and architecture before evaluating those things within three dimensions inside her mind.

  When she was done, she took one of Max’s blades, walked over to the wall on the right, found the patch she wanted, and stabbed it with the knife.

  There was a moment of silence before the wall began to crack. The crack spread fast, crawling up the wall, to the ceiling.

  The bears were staring up as the crack moved by, a second before nearly five feet of ceiling gave way and fell on them.

  Stevie pulled Max’s knife out of the wall and handed it back to her. Then she smiled.

  “Show off,” Max muttered before she ran around the bears, who were groaning and trying to dig their way out of the rubble.

  * * *

  Barb Malone stood behind the tapestry that separated the prep area from the actual ceremony. Everything was going perfectly. She could see her staff on her tablet as they rushed to get those last-minute details finished in the Grand Ballroom for the reception. She’d been reluctant to move away from her paper and pen days, but high tech was her friend, an extra set of hands that she’d never really had before.

  Glorious. Just glorious.

  “We are winding down here,” she said very softly into her mic. “You have T minus five minutes before the ceremony is over. Be ready. Be smiling.”

  To her delight she heard that the cake had arrived and it was perfect. The cake always worried her. If that thing was damaged during transport, a bride would forever say her wedding was ruined by “the cake disaster.” So Barb only worked with certain bakers and bakeries; she wouldn’t tolerate mistakes. Not now, not ever.

  She was about to move back to the front of the room when she saw a polar bear come in through one of the doors and start moving toward the ceremony.

  Barb quickly and quietly moved across the floor until she stood in front of the man. Why was blood on him? She shook her head. No time for those kind of questions.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she whispered, “but you can’t be back here.”

  He tried to push her out of the way but Barb Malone was a Siberian tiger. You didn’t push her anywhere. She unleashed her fangs and he started to roar. A roar that would travel.

  But then two of the bride’s cousins were suddenly there, throwing themselves onto the back of the bear, trying to stop him and, thankfully, distracting the polar from roaring.

  Unfortunately for the two cousins . . . they were honey badgers. Honey badgers on a polar bear? Seriously?

  “This wouldn’t be so bad if I could use my knife!” one cousin complained. Too loudly.

  “I said, no!” the other barked back.

  “Keep quiet!” Barb ordered.

  A muffled scream startled Barb, but a wolverine landing on the bear’s back startled her more.

  What the unholy fuck was happening?

  “Dutch! Get him!” one cousin squealed.

  “I’m trying!”

  * * *

  Charlie couldn’t find any sign of the Guerra twins or Mairi, and she really didn’t have time to look. She had to check on the damn wedding.

  She eased the door open and slid into the back with the Dunn triplets behind her. She’d just let out a relieved breath—seeing the bride and groom about to take their vows—when she noticed the tapestry in the background was moving.

  Then she heard a squeak. She knew only one shifter who ever squeaked like that. Stevie.

  She motioned to Berg to keep a lookout for trouble before lifting her skirt and moving around the perimeter of the room until she reached the tapestry and disappeared behind it.

  Charlie was trying to be quiet but she gasped when she saw Stevie and Max hanging onto a polar bear wearing a blood-soaked white suit and desperate to shake them off. Coming around to the front was Dutch. He grabbed the bear around the waist and was using all of his brawny weasel strength to try to take the bear down to the ground. But Miller wasn’t having any of it.

  Charlie ran toward the bear just as he opened his mouth to roar. She slapped her hand over his face and started pushing him back with Dutch.

  “Get him out of here!” the She-tiger wedding planner whispered-yelled at them.

  The bear tried to go forward again, ready to ruin everything for a couple Charlie really could not give two shits about, but still . . . She’d been paid to prevent something like this from happening.
Sadly, she still felt a sense of commitment.

  But just when the bear managed to get within inches of the tapestry, his hand reaching down to pull it off and reveal all of this to the rich full-humans about to marry into this insanity, a big hand caught hold of the polar’s wrist and yanked him back.

  Max and Stevie were quickly removed from the polar’s back, and Dag wrapped his arms around the polar, slapping his hand over Miller’s mouth.

  Then there was Britta. Standing in front of the polar, smirking, she reached down and grabbed Miller’s balls. Then she twisted.

  His high-pitched squeal—despite Dag’s hand over his mouth—still made every shifter in the place wince, but the full-humans probably hadn’t heard a thing.

  “Let’s go,” Britta ordered, and as one, the Dunns lifted the polar up and carried him out.

  Just as the door closed behind them, Charlie heard applause and cheers and knew that the bride and groom were now wife and husband.

  Grinning, she looked at her sisters and, together, they all did their own little awkward celebratory dances.

  Charlie knew it wasn’t pretty . . . but she also didn’t care.

  chapter THIRTY-TWO

  Their table at the reception ended up being all the way in the back, by the kitchen doors, but Charlie still didn’t care. How could she when she was just relieved the worst of it was over?

  Carrie, for once, had taken someone’s advice other than her own and had nailed her husband almost immediately after the ceremony. A good thing because four hours later, after the toasts had been made, the dinner served, and the cake cut, Damian Miller had shown up again with his thumb reattached—shifter surgeons could do amazing work—and his rage unhampered by all the pain meds he was on. He slurred his way through accusations of whoring and thievery, but he was such a mess that Ronald Farmington and the Farmington family didn’t believe a word of it.

  Eventually, the intruder passed out and he was dragged from the room by the wedding planner’s security detail.

  Charlie doubted it was over—multimillions had been stolen from that bear—but her involvement in all of it sure was.

  She looked out over the dance floor and watched Max and Dutch tango from one corner to the other. Charlie winced at the bandages easily visible on her sister due to the cut of her dress. Shot in the back and Max refused to go home, to get some rest. Even worse, she’d let Dutch, of all people, yank out the bullets before the area was cleaned and bandages taped over the wounds.

  Charlie sighed and focused on the slice of honey cake a waiter had placed in front of her.

  Berg came back to the table and, lifting Charlie up, sat in her chair and then put her on his lap.

  “Is this a thing we do?” she asked.

  “It is now.” He gave her a short but warm hug. She liked it.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I’m fine. Did you see them?”

  “Nope. If the twins and your cousin were here, they’re gone. I did touch base with Ric Van Holtz. He said that Malone and Smith are on their way to Italy, trying to find them.”

  “According to Max, they know what they are now. This kind of changes everything.”

  “How? It’s not like it’s going to make them meaner.”

  She shrugged. “You have a point.”

  “Oh, and your father disappeared.”

  “Of course he did.” She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.” Although she still wondered how the old bastard had gotten everyone’s bank account information. Even worse, he hadn’t bragged about how he’d done it. He bragged about everything, which meant he was hiding something big . . . or disastrous. And that worried her more than anything.

  Dutch and Max tangoed over to them and Max dipped Dutch so that his head was almost in Charlie’s lap.

  “Still hate me?” Dutch asked.

  “Forever and ever.”

  “What’s wrong?” Max asked before bringing Dutch up and twirling him away. She dropped into a seat and motioned to one of the waitstaff. She pointed at each of them and asked, “Beer? Beer? Beer? Beer? Four beers,” she told the waiter.

  Once the waiter was gone, Max asked, “So what’s up?”

  “Dad’s gone.”

  “Of course he is. Although I have to admit, I was impressed you threw half a table at him.”

  “It was awesome,” Berg said, burying his nose against the back of Charlie’s neck.

  “He just made me so mad.”

  “I understand that,” Berg said, squeezing Charlie a little tighter. “There is something about your father that just makes you want to punch him.”

  Bernice stopped by on her way to more drunken schmoozing, repeatedly pointing her finger at Charlie before telling her, “Nice job, pretty girl.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I pay you tom—”

  “Tonight,” Charlie insisted. “You promised. The rest of the money tonight, including the bonus.”

  Bernice quickly held up her hands but stumbled a little in the process. “Not a problem. My husband has the cash. I’ll send him up to get it for you.”

  When she’d walked away, Berg asked, “You going to tell her about the account numbers situation?”

  “After we get paid, I’ll tell her and Will. Not before.”

  “Especially since we don’t know how much longer she’ll have access to ready cash,” Max muttered, smirking at Dutch.

  Stevie came back to the table and dropped into a chair. Dutch motioned to his lap and she kicked off her shoes and placed her feet there. Dutch was smart enough, though, not to actually rub her feet. That she hated.

  Stevie looked around the room and admitted, “I’m so bored here.” She leaned in a bit and whispered, “Our party last night was so much better.”

  “It really was,” Max agreed. “Of course, we had zebra legs.”

  Charlie laughed and Stevie held up her phone. “So I got a call from the CERN director. I think he cried a little.”

  “You’re making the world of science very sad,” Charlie told her sister.

  “I’m not giving up science. I am science.”

  “I really don’t think you should be hanging around that Kyle kid,” Max warned.

  “You need a job, though,” Charlie said, pointing at Stevie. “Somewhere, somehow. I don’t give a shit. But you cannot just sit around the house doing nothing. We all know that leads to obsessing and possible hoarding.”

  “I’m well aware of my mental health issues. I’ve got it all under control.”

  “You’re not going back to Switzerland?” Berg asked Stevie.

  “Nope. I already talked to Tiny and he says he’d be more than happy for us to stay.”

  “Considering what he’s charging us—”

  “He’s willing to work on a deal for the rent if we sign a lease and you continue to make him your honey-pineapple cake.”

  “You promised him—”

  “I said we’d talk about it. Didn’t I, Max?”

  Max looked at her sister and admitted, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening because you’re boring the fuck out of me.”

  Stevie’s eyes narrowed but before she could say anything, Max took off running and Stevie charged after her.

  “Fun is fun,” Charlie yelled after her sisters, “until someone gets hurt!”

  Charlie cringed when Max slipped in her heels and flipped herself over one of the open bars and into the liquor bottles, sending glass crashing to the floor and knocking the bartender out cold.

  Dutch pushed his chair back. “I’ll deal with it,” he said before Charlie could start yelling at everyone.

  Embarrassed, she couldn’t even look at Berg. He was probably checking for one of the seven exits she’d noticed and marked in her head in case of emergency. Not that she’d blame the man . . .

  * * *

  Berg tried to calm his mind. Because he knew, if Stevie wasn’t leaving New York . . . then Charlie wouldn’t leave, which meant she would stay. In New York. With him
.

  Don’t get too excited, he warned himself. He didn’t want to scare Charlie off. Don’t say anything that will spook her. Just keep calm and—

  “Are you going to say anything?” she suddenly barked at him, making Berg jump.

  “Say anything about what?”

  She gestured across the room, and that’s when he noticed Max was covered in cuts and, apparently, liquor. She was also laughing hysterically along with Dutch while a tsk-tsking Stevie was trying to help the bartender, and the wedding planner was ordering the waitstaff into action and yelling at the badgers who’d caused a scene.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked, confused.

  “You didn’t notice all that?”

  “Notice all what?”

  She turned to the side, her butt still on his lap, so she could look him in the face. “You’re not embarrassed?”

  “By what?”

  “By what I affectionately call my family? I mean, look at them over there.”

  Max had gotten poor Stevie into a headlock, which was doing nothing but pissing Stevie off.

  But all Berg could do was shrug. “My sister grabbed the nuts of a polar bear and twisted until he squealed like an otter caught in a hunting trap. You haven’t even met my parents yet.” Berg suddenly looked off and said, “Oh, God. You’ll have to meet my parents.”

  “So?”

  “They’re going to embarrass me. And Dag. And Britta. Oh, Britta . . . she’s not going to be happy.”

  “Berg? ”

  “Yes?”

  “Have your parents ever sold you into indentured servitude?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t think you have to worry about me judging them.”

  “And you’re staying?” the question was out of his mouth before he could stop it. He hadn’t meant to ask her so directly.

  “Stevie wants to stay. I don’t know what Max is doing but that’s nothing new.”

  “But you’re staying?”

  “I have to. I have to bake food for Tiny.”

  Realizing she wasn’t getting what he was asking her, Berg just closed his eyes and came out with it, “I love you and I want you to stay.”

  Charlie let out an annoyed sigh. “Well . . . that’s all on you.”