Blaze: Queen’s Birds of Prey: Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance (Queen's Birds of Prey Book 2)

by Kathi S. Barton

  They searched in the yard for two sticks that they wanted to use. He had found a small piece of a cherry tree, and she decided that the oak would be nice. As they were headed back into the house, she picked up a large piece of maple. They were both so excited that they had to slow down before Blaze could concentrate on making it happen.

  The table and twelve chairs were the most gorgeous things he’d ever seen. The table was made from strips of the woods in varying shapes and lengths. The shine on the table made the different woods pop, so that you could see where each piece blended into the next. Even the chairs, all of them slightly different in the way the wood fit together, made him think that they were much too pretty to sit in.

  After that, it was an all-out trial to figure out what they could blend together to make their home something so unique that they would be the envy of everyone they knew. Once they had filled not only the dining room but the office too, they headed up to play around in the bedrooms. It was nearly sunrise before they fell into their sleeping bags, all they had to sleep in without a mattress, and fell asleep.

  “Tomorrow we’ll find the things that would be too rough to make out of wood.” Bryson laughed, and asked her if that would mean sheets. “Yes, and towels. I don’t know about you, but the thought of rubbing up against a tree to get dry isn’t my idea of fun.”

  They talked for a little while. Not about anything important—just that they both wanted children, that they liked to travel. Bryson admitted that he’d not done a great deal of travelling, and that he didn’t even own a passport.

  “We’ll take care of that tomorrow as well. Not that you need one to travel as a bird. You can pretty much go where you want when you want, and never have to worry about that too much.” She yawned for the second time in a minute. “Now hush. I’m exhausted. And I want a mattress brought to us tomorrow. If we don’t shop early, then we’ll never get one this week.”

  Bryson told her that he loved her, and realized when she didn’t answer him that she’d fallen asleep. He lay there for several minutes as he thought of his life with this woman. With all the birds, as they referred to themselves.

  All he had to do now was take care that his father didn’t do anything to mess up his new life. And that of his sister, Clara. But he also knew that if anyone could and would protect them, it would be his birds. Smiling, he rolled over and cuddled up to Blaze. Tomorrow was going to be a big day for them.

  Chapter 4

  Curt Williams was about as pissed off as he’d ever been. His kids were driving him insane and pissing him off. What is their problem, was what he kept asking himself. All he wanted was a place to live and some cash. Why did they have such a problem with him having either of those?

  He’d tried twice now to get to the house that they’d taken from him, and both times he’d been met there by a pack of wild dogs. Curt knew that they were wolves, and more than likely that pack that had made sure that he wasn’t able to get onto their land again.

  The last time he’d been able to get on pack land and into their storage units, he’d made a killing off taking some of their stash. As soon as he’d broken into their smoke house, he’d been glad that he’d brought himself a wagon. Otherwise he would have only been able to take a few things. As it was, Curt had been able to take not just some meat for himself, but enough to make himself about five grand off the deal. Who knew that people in the area would be excited to have a taste of the old country way of preserving foodstuffs?

  He’d taken dried hams and sausages, and fat back bacon that was still in slab form. That had been the most requested item that he’d taken. People wanted more of that than they had anything else. Yet, the ham? Well, he’d enjoyed the entire thing. Then he’d used the bone, just like his grannie had, to make soup beans and a side of corn bread. That had been some good eating—right up until it was all gone, that is. Since then, he’d not had a decent meal.

  Now he was cut off from his source. Curt wondered if these people knew what a gold mine they were sitting on. And if they did, why the hell weren’t they sharing it with the world? Not that he wanted them doing that. Once he was able to get there and pull more out, he didn’t want them flooding the market and taking all his business.

  Curt had always thought of himself as a thinker. He could not just think his way out of trouble, but he had a way of making money off his thoughts. An entrepreneur, he supposed, was what he might call himself. A person with the ideas and the way to make cash.

  “For me, anyway.” Curt thought of all the cash that he’d lost over the years. It had been a blast. Both losing and winning had been a great deal of fun for him. “No one understands the thrill of it. Even though I do lose a lot more than I gain, it’s like I’m king of the world either way.”

  Sure, he figured that he had gone a little overboard with a couple of things. Like, using the house and the money that was supposed to fix it up was a bad idea. Curt knew that now. But a man could not turn down a sure thing when it hit him, now could he?

  Laughing to himself, he went down to breakfast at the hotel he was staying in. It had been a stroke of genius to have the bills go to his daughter. Of all the people in the world, Clara would not see him on the streets. Just as he was flipping over his waffle when the bell dinged, the manager came to stand with him.

  “I need to speak to you, Curt. Your daughter said that she wasn’t paying your bill to stay here. I told her how you’d been here a week already, depending on her to pay up, and she told me that she wasn’t paying anything for you.” Curt took his waffle out of the maker and sat down to fix it all up. “How do you propose to pay your bill here, Curt? You told me that I could depend on her.”

  “Then call my son.” He said that his phone was no longer in service, and someone at the house had said that he wasn’t expected to return there. “What the hell does that mean, not expected to return? He’s kicked me to the curb so that I couldn’t bother his shit, and now he’s gone? I’ll go there today after I eat and get you some cash. The damned kids have no respect for their elders anymore, do they, Hamilton?”

  “It’s Ben, for the ninth time. My name is Ben Donaldson. Don’t you listen to people when they tell you who they are?” Curt took a bite of his waffle to keep from answering him. “I’m not going to bother telling you that you’ve racked up a pretty sizeable bill, Curt. You will pay it by the end of the day or I’ll have you arrested. You’ve taken advantage of my good will enough.”

  When he walked away, Curt just chuckled to himself. People just didn’t have much patience anymore. It was like they were set to go, go, go all the time, and not even stop to smell the roses.

  Curt was a man that not only stopped to look at the beautiful, but sometimes would sit for hours just thinking and looking at a pretty view. Of course, he was trying to think of ways to make a buck off the prettiness of whatever it was that caught his attention. He thought that was why he’d never had heart troubles. Curt was a slow moving kind of person. The best ideas came to him when he was just sitting down.

  After having three more waffles, he went back to his room. It wasn’t even the best room he’d ever had, and the man Harley, or whatever his name was, was acting like Curt was taking food from his mouth. Not to mention the place wasn’t even filled up. There were at least three empty rooms in the place, even on a weekend.

  It wasn’t until he picked up his newspaper that he realized that it was only Tuesday, not Saturday as he’d thought. Today he’d have to go to where Bryson worked to figure out how come he wasn’t paying up for his own dad. He was going to have to get physical on him if things didn’t go the way he wanted.

  Curt tried to remember the last time he’d seen his kids. It had been a few months at least. He knew that they both had a job, but he couldn’t have told anyone what it was they did at the places they worked.

  Bryson worked at a coloring book place, he thought. He wasn’t sure that was what
it was, really, but he knew that his boy had to have certain pencils and some other crap to do it. Curt was really ashamed to tell people that Bryson worked at a coloring job, so he told them that he was the big manager. It was certainly better than telling them that his boy used crayons all the time.

  Clara worked in an office someplace. It must have been in a bad part of town or something, because he knew she’d had to take defense classes, as well as learn how to shoot a gun. He’d thought about the gun she’d gotten a couple of years ago. It might have been longer; he just didn’t remember shit like that. He wanted that gun, just to sell it off for some cash. But she was pretty smart about hiding it. He’d yet to be able to find out where the sucker was.

  Finding the building where his son worked was proving to be difficult. Since he didn’t know the name of the place, he was sure that he could pick out the building. There were a couple that he thought for sure was it, but one of them had been closed down for a few years, he thought it looked like. The other one said it was being remodeled.

  The cell phone numbers for his kids didn’t do him any good now either. They both said that they were no longer in service. Even his own had hit the crapper today. Curt was sure that they’d cut him out of that program too.

  It had taken him a few weeks to get a phone matched up to their bill. The two of them had the same company, that he had been aware of. But snitching himself one of their bills had been harder than he thought it should have been. They didn’t leave their stuff out for him to look at when he was around.

  It wasn’t like he wanted to pay on them or anything. He just wanted a few numbers off the bill so he could get him service too. Curt was actually surprised that it had worked. He figured that once they got their bill he’d be cut off like he was now. The number of years that it worked had been astounding to him.

  They were stupid, was all he could think about his kids. They’d given him shit about his gambling when they had shitty jobs that couldn’t even keep them in cell phone service. It was enough to make him ashamed of claiming them as his kids sometimes.

  Stopping a man to ask him where the coloring place was got him nowhere fast. The man just looked at him like he was stupid or something. Threatening the man for being so rude when he was far enough away from him, Curt looked up in time to see his son with a beautiful woman. He might not have known it was his boy, but he looked so much like someone he knew long ago that it had taken him a minute to put it together. When he turned and smiled at the woman, Curt made his way to the other side of the street to find the building that he’d been looking for. It, too, was closed up for remodeling.

  “I need some money.” Bryson looked at him with so much anger that Curt took a step back. “Christ almighty, son, you looked just like your momma there for a minute. Just give me some cash and I won’t be bothering you today anymore. Oh, you forgot to pay the hotel bill where I’m staying too.”

  “No.” The women looked at him like he was a bug or something when Bryson spoke. Curt didn’t have time for this, and asked his son what he meant by telling his own daddy no. “Just what it sounds like. Two letters—even you should know what it means. You certainly told Mom that enough when she asked you to stop gambling away the food money.”

  “This here isn’t the time to be bringing stuff up like that. You got yourself a pretty woman here, and she don’t want to hear about that kinda stuff.” He eyed the girl. “Son, you’re not paying for her, are you? Christ, if so, then you can share her a bit. I wouldn’t mind even sloppy—”

  The punch to his face felt like he was having his head ripped off. When he fell to the ground, he just laid there. The woman had her fists doubled up like she was going to hit him again. That just wasn’t right, her knocking him to the ground like he was a nobody. Especially if his son was paying for her for the day.

  “You’re nothing to me, if you want to know the truth.” He didn’t bother telling her that she was wrong, but he did look at his son, who was laughing at the situation. “I’m not a prostitute, you moronic fuck. I’m his wife.”

  “Wife? When the hell did that come about? You didn’t even invite your old man to the wedding? Did you get anything nice for wedding presents? I can take a few of those things off your hands if you want.” Shaking his head, he put out his hand for Bryson to help him up. “Well? You being married don’t make it so you can be a shit to me. Help me up.”

  “If you so much as pretend to get up off the sidewalk, I’m going to put you in traction.” Curt believed her. He wasn’t normally so afraid of women, but this one scared him to the depths of his soul. “Now, you’re going to tell me that you’re sorry for calling me a prostitute, then you’re going to go away.”

  “Go away? You can’t be telling me to go away. I’m not a dog. Help me up from here and I’ll show you just what I mean.”

  He held out his hand, but neither of them moved to take it. When they turned to leave him there, he wanted to scream at them to get their asses back here. He called for his son. This shit was getting old, and he was frankly sick of people treating him like he was nothing at all.

  “What is it you want, Dad? Money? No, I don’t have any that I want to lend you. A place to stay? So you can rob Clara and me of all the things we worked hard to get back? Then that answer is no as well.” Bryson put his arm around the woman and smiled back at him. “She’ll do just what she said she would, Dad. And you’ll be lucky if she only puts you in traction. Just leave us alone, or so help me, I’m going to help her put you in a world of hurt.”

  This was not the welcome that he had hoped for. He knew that his kids would be pissed off at him, but not to the point of threatening him. Another pretty woman walked by him, and he knew better than to open his mouth. For some reason Curt had a feeling that she was baiting him into saying something. When she went into the same building his son had, he thought about following them, but decided that he’d look for Clara. She’d no doubt be around close. Her and Bryson were always like two peas on a corn cob.

  ~*~

  Bryson couldn’t stop laughing. Every time he thought of his dad sitting on the sidewalk with a bloodied lip, he would laugh all the harder. Then Curt had put out his hand, as if anyone was going to trust him doing that. Trust of his father had long since faded away.

  “Are you quite through braying like a jackass?” He laughed more, but only a little. Mercy didn’t seem to be in the best of humor today. “I’m sorry. I have a splitting headache, and I was hoping that your dad would try something with me so I could take it out on him.”

  “He’s stupid, not suicidal.” She smiled at him. “What’s really wrong? I didn’t think you guys could get ill or anything. You having a bad day is normal from what I’ve been told, so this has to be something more.”

  “Blaze got to buy out the building before I could.” Bryson asked if she was serious. The turned out lip and the way she looked pissed and sad at the same time got him. “Yes. It irks me when I can’t be the savior of a good company. And she slipped right in there and bought it right up. I don’t have a lot to do lately, and that would have made my day.”

  “I see. Well, I don’t, but that’s fine too. If it’ll make you feel any better, there is a business that you could help out.” That perked her up, and he nearly laughed again, but decided that he’d be in less pain if he didn’t. “The one right across the street from here used to get donated coats for children and adults that couldn’t afford one. The man that was running it would start collecting the day after it started to warm up, and would have a great many to give away by the time the first cold snap was here.”

  “What happened to him?” Bryson said that he had died, and he thought that his son had been stealing from him and selling the coats instead of giving them away. “Damned kids. They’re the ruination of the world, I think.”

  “Aren’t you going to have a baby soon?” She said that her child would be perfect. “Ah. I don�
�t know what to say about that, except to tell you good luck. Anyway, that kind of thing is needed just about everywhere nowadays. Not just kids, but adults too could use a sturdy warm coat and some gloves.”

  “Where did he get the coats from, do you know?” He told her what he knew. “So at the end of the season, while they were putting out spring stuff, he’d go around using his own money to buy up coats that were on clearance What else? I’m sure he wasn’t a rich man.”

  “No, he and his wife weren’t. But they did work extra when possible to buy what they could. She, his wife, knitted mittens and hats to give away as well. The two of them would pick up things cheap, sell them for a little more, and use that money too. They were very enterprising.” Mercy asked why they stopped doing it. “This is going to sound hokey, but it’s the truth. His heart was broken when he wasn’t able to get a good deal on the coats anymore because of his son, and he died from it. His wife, I don’t remember either of their names, tried to do it for a while, but she ended up in a nursing home when her son wanted the family home for himself. Now him, I remember. His name was Nathan Raglan.”

  “So, this Raglan person messes things up for not just his parents, but for a lot of people in need. He sounds like he could be related to your father.” Bryson just nodded. There was no point in him denying it. His father was a bastard. “If I can swing this, can you help me out with it? I’m sort of scary to a lot of people.”

  “Just a lot of people? I would have thought the numbers would have been much bigger.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’ll do whatever I can do to help you. I even have a truck to haul things with. It’s old, but works well.”

  “A storage unit.” He nodded, unsure what she was talking about. “No. I mean, we’ve been meaning to get rid of the things that are still in storage in town. Oh my gosh, Bryson, my mind just went into overload in thinking of ways that you and I can make this work. We’ll get rid of the stuff in the warehouse by auction or something, and fill the place up with walls and shelves. Then we’ll somehow get businesses to donate or sell us cheap things like coats and hats. After we have those, we can branch out to food and other things that could be used in the winter. Hell, all year round.”