by Thalia Eames
“Let’s go over to the Grace spread and have a talk with Larkin,” Garrett said. “Maybe we can work something out.”
Daz smoothed his beard. “It’s not a bad idea, but you know that idiot over there,” he pointed to Cash, “is going to punch somebody in the head. Possibly twice.”
Garrett nodded. “Yeah, but it worked out the last time. It’ll be fine.”
Famous last words. Daz knew it when Garrett said them. He thought about that again three hours later when they all landed in jail.
Garrett covered his head when they heard the stampede and lamentations of their women. And by lamentations, Daz meant their ladies bemoaning how they’d chosen such stupid men for their own. The women also weren’t happy about getting called down to the police station on a Saturday. They’d been having a girl’s day.
Daz had warned Garrett his brother would punch someone. They hadn’t imagined he’d flatten three Grace men including Larkin, along with an actual wild boar the Graces kept as a pet. Every time Garrett said, “You punched a pig,” Cash responded with, “I didn’t know. Punching is my affliction. I couldn’t stop.”
Doubling their trouble, a group of Grace women showed up right behind Lennox, Gran, Jules and Nox (who they’d tease about being one of the ladies later). Willie Mae, Effie and Caitlyn Grace stood with stocky arms crossed or hands on hips, glaring at their own men.
Sheriff Stan didn’t stand a chance once the women converged on him, despite the fact they all, with the exception of Gran, clearly saw him as a father figure.
“Anderson Garrett Westlake,” Lennox said, while Nox laughed at his father. “What did you do?”
“Yup,” Willie Mae said. “I wanna hear this too.”
Garrett looked genuinely bewildered by Willie Mae. “I don’t report to you. I don’t report to anybody.”
Lennox cleared her throat and Garrett started explaining. “It started when Daz called me and Cash in for a meeting.”
Jules’s jaw tightened. Daz held his hands up for protection, not trusting the bars to keep Juliana away from him. “Now, Blue, it actually started when Larkin came by the clock tower.”
All six angry women turned their glares on Larkin Grace. Garrett slipped Daz a fist bump.
Willie Mae, a surprisingly short woman when compared to the size of her animal, thumped one of the bars, making it ring. She had peroxide-blonde hair, drawn-on eyebrows and tanned skin stretched over a body shaped like a V.
Daz understood why she’d become head of the Grace family and not Larkin. She wasn’t someone you messed with more than once. “Larkin,” she said, in a tobacco-roughened voice. “I know it weren’t you starting trouble.”
For the first time, Larkin looked twitchy. “T’weren’t me. That Cash Warren punched a bunch of us in the head. Including Mae Ella.” Larkin got animated jumping up from the bench in the Grace holding cell to glower into the Warren/Westlake one. “Now you tell me, Willie Mae. Who punches a defenseless sow?”
“That’s what I want to know,” Garrett said.
Cash looked affronted. “We were having a good old-fashioned normal brawl until Garrett shifted. A prehistoric wolf the size of a grizzly will bring any situation to a head.”
No one could argue with that. Lennox looked ready to faint and Garrett looked pitiful. Nothing like seeing a six-and-a-half-foot man brought to his knees by his woman’s fears to bring Garrett’s compulsive need to shift into clarity.
Jules’s voice broke through the murmurs of agreement about the wolf. “Cassius Warren.” Uh oh. “If no one shifted until Garrett did, why did you punch that poor pig?”
“Boar!” several Graces shouted.
And it all started up again, each faction fighting to have their side of the story heard. Until an air horn pierced the clamor.
Sheriff Stan blew the horn again to make sure they were listening. “Shut up. I’m going to hear from Dashiell Warren and then I’ll decide whether to listen to the rest of you.”
Daz laid out all the facts of Larkin’s two visits to see him, including the suspicion Daz was blood related to the Tahvili crime family.
When he finished Cash said, “That’s why we went to their chop shop. To try to talk things out.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Willie Mae waved her arms at Cash. Sheriff Stan’s brow furrowed, his expression a bit like a bug had flown up his nose. “Now, Stanley Hewitt,” Willie Mae said. “You know chop shop is slang for garage, right?” She turned to her family. “Right, everyone?”
Daz saw it the minute the light bulb went off in Jules’s head. “Stan,” she said, “why don’t the ladies and I take an interrogation room and work this out? You can keep all our men for the night.”
The increasingly more impressive Willie Mae said, “I’m all right with that.”
Sheriff Stan liked the sound of it too, which bothered Daz a lot. With the bargain struck, Jules and the rest of the ladies left to go find a room.
Jules, and the Westlake/Averdeens took one side of the interrogation table and the Graces sat on the other.
“Let’s get this thing worked out before the sheriff gets wise and I have to close down more criminal endeavors beyond my chop shop,” Willie Mae said.
As the alpha female, Lennox spoke first. “We’ll start with the catalyst to this whole thing. Let Mariel and the kids go. We’ll pay for the hole Jules put in Kirby’s ceiling.”
“That ain’t no trade,” Willie Mae said.
“I’m not offering a trade.” Lennox sat back in her chair.
Jules jumped in. “We’re speaking to you woman to woman.”
Lennox finished for her. “You had to know what your brother was doing.”
Willie Mae worked her jaw as she thought it through. “The thing is, the way my brother treated Mariel ain’t no different from how I was raised.” Effie and Caitlyn agreed. “That’s how we was all raised. My daddy said a man ain’t loving a woman right unless he smacks her around.”
The Graces saw the shock on Jules, Lennox and Gran’s faces. These women were victims of generational abuse to the point it reprogrammed them, changed their idea of what love looked like.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Nox said in the quiet.
“Well, boy…” Willie Mae leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “…you might be right. What else is on your mind, Lennox?”
“You’ll leave Juliana alone.”
Willie Mae sucked her teeth. “I never meant Juliana Perlas no harm.” She shook her head, lifting turquoise-painted fingernails to examine.
“You tried to ram my truck,” Jules said. Lennox cleared her throat. Jules amended with a thumb point. “Her truck.”
“Here’s the thing, Juliana,” Willie Mae said. “I’m sorry for losing it on you. But you come home for a visit to find your little brother crying because some bitch with a shotgun threatened him and took his family. Then tell me what you’d a’done.”
“I’d have lost my shit,” Jules replied.
Willie Mae inclined her head with a quick nod of agreement. “I really didn’t think what Kirby put Mariel through was that bad.” Willie Mae looked up at her cousins, who’d crowded in behind her. Her voice hollowed out when she said, “I thought most women got hit at home. Shit, I’ve been known to slap my man in the mouth when he fries my nerves.”
Nothing else needed to be said. You didn’t call into question someone’s worldview and then pick at her while she tried to figure things out. Jules wouldn’t let this go though. She planned to continue working on the Grace women until they realized domestic violence wasn’t a way of life
After a silence that seemed to make Nox jumpy, Willie Mae said, “What do we know about this Tahvili family?”
Effie pulled out her tablet. Jules made a show of doing a search on her phone, but she’d already done the research. Effie spoke first. “They’re an
international crime family with roots back to Iran. They out-muscle and out-money us by a long haul.”
Jules didn’t like hearing what she’d learned any better than she liked saying it. “They’re known to be responsible for the eradication of several rival lines of shifters, including other wolverines. They’ve been Americans for several generations and it’s thought their ancestor became a shifter when he arrived in Louisiana a few hundred years ago through the ritual of Tooth and Claw.” A bite and a scratch from the same shifter turned most humans into the same animal as their progenitor. Jules learned about Tooth and Claw when Lennox had faced off against three she-wolves. She scrolled down the Tahvili wiki page. “They’re also known for being violent and cruel, and death seems to follow them.”
Effie took over again. “Over the past four years, Amin Tahvili, the family patriarch, has lost his son and two of his grandsons to their criminal activities. Some folks speculate he’s looking for a new heir.”
Lennox caught Willie Mae’s eye. They communicated without words. “We won’t chase Mariel. And I can order Larkin to quit. Under most circumstances he’d listen but if he thinks he’s doing something to help the family he might go against me.”
“Can we reason with him?” Lennox asked. All three Grace women laughed.
Caitlyn said, “My brother ain’t but so smart. But I’ll try to show him the pros and the cons.”
The women ended their meeting. On any other day Jules would’ve been proud about what they’d accomplished without her having to fire her shotgun. But not today. If Daz thought his presence could bring a criminal syndicate to LuPines, he’d leave town, and she’d lose him.
Chapter Nineteen
Jules got a text from Daz after he got out of lockup the next morning.
Daz: Take me to church.
Jules: Really?
Daz: Yeah, meet me there?
As she walked up to the cathedral she found Daz standing on the church steps, wearing a dark suit, the same color as his eyes, and a light blue shirt he’d left unbuttoned at the collar. He looked amazing, but beyond that he’d become the man she wanted to meet every Sunday morning—for the rest of their lives—on the cathedral steps.
He kissed the corner of her mouth when she reached him. He took in her marigold yellow sundress and said, “You’re beautiful, baby Blue,” with a certain gleam in his eye.
She couldn’t help the warmth his comment brought. Playing coy, she turned on her fuchsia heels pretending to be unaffected until she heard his deep-chested chuckle behind her. She turned back toward him and he grabbed her into his arms, kissing her breathless.
“You keep kissing me like that and we may not make it inside,” she joked.
“I do love the way your mind works.” Daz took her hand and they walked inside.
Later, while they ate a classic banana split at the ice cream shop, he told her how much he enjoyed church with her that morning—admitting how glad he was that she took him seriously enough to share her spiritual side with him. His sensitivity made her tremble. Despite his bad-boy ways, Daz was a caring man.
A tiny quake shook Jules’s heart at the revelation. She would take him to church next Sunday and she’d hold his hand during the mass as she’d done earlier that day. Like Lennox said, finding a man like Daz was a blessing.
In that moment Jules knew she loved Dashiell Warren. She loved the danger boy he showed everyone else, and the sweet man he gave only to her. She craved the sexual adventures he took her on, as much as she needed those moments cuddled on his lap while he read to her.
There were so many ways she could lose him. His birth family could pull him away because he’d protect the town before he’d allow his past to harm them. Their ability to touch could evaporate and create a wall between them. He wouldn’t stay if that happened because he’d want her to have a life with a man who could give her all the caresses and hand holding they currently shared. His growing popularity could freak her out and send her scurrying back behind the scenes. So many ways to lose him. Only one way to keep him. She’d hold on with both hands for as long as she could.
That evening a growing crowd of DazDaze fans from in and out of town, Louise Dumbarton, Pa Bailey, Chaplin, Cash and Jules, waited in front of the clock tower. Most importantly Jeff Jacobs stood behind Chaplin’s chair, talking to him about things only former loves knew. Jules felt badly for them. The two men had found a sweet friendship, but their platonic bond seemed to make the ache of what they could’ve had sharpen into a cutting edge.
Daz had disappeared inside. While they watched, the hour and minute hands wound round and round to land on 8:00 p.m., and for the first time in ten years the bell rang out eight times. The audience went crazy. Jeff Jacobs kissed Chaplin’s cheek and the younger Bailey oscillated so hard in his chair Jules worried he’d fall out.
Louise held a cocktail party on library grounds afterward. Jules rewarded Daz with a ton of kisses all over his face. Then she played the role of surrogate and hugged him or patted his back for folks who couldn’t do if for themselves.
Jules was feeding muscadine grapes to Daz one at a time when the flashes of several camera phones went off in their faces.
“I knew it was you,” said one tall, gorgeous woman, with pale blue hair and paler skin. “You all recognize her, right?” she asked her friends. “First Adam Cross and now our Daz Warren.” The woman’s tone turned incredulous. “This bitch needs to be stopped.”
Chapter Twenty
Jules woke up the next morning and nothing happened. The crazed fans who’d terrorized her six years ago hadn’t followed her home. Or thrown any bricks through her windows. A quick check in the mirror showed how perfectly her melon colored dress highlighted her skin. She kissed Daz’s sleeping face. He’d been amazing the night before, letting his obsessed fan know she could respect Jules or leave. Jules gave him lots of rewards for that when they got back to Averdeen Manor.
Jules went downstairs to have breakfast with Lennox and Gran on the back porch, and nothing happened. She drove her car to work. When she got there she spoke to the staff and got them ready just in case her infamy brought problems to the diner. But they had a good day at the Peach Pit. The diner stayed as busy and full as usual.
Their only rowdy patron turned out to be Dillon, who decided to fire up the juke box and break into a bad falsetto version of Queen’s “Somebody to Love”. The main problem there was most women had trouble reaching the stratospheric notes of Freddie Mercury. Dillon needed a forty-foot ladder and the starship Enterprise to get halfway to those octaves. But Dillon made them all laugh in the attempt, and for Jules his singing counted as blessedly uneventful.
After work she said hello and goodbye to the second shift, filled a bag with freshly baked biscuits for Daz’s breakfast, and stepped out into the sunshine. Still nothing. Still a nice day. But when Jules got to her car she found a message on her windshield. Not in the form of a note tucked under the wiper but in huge neon green letters painted across her windshield:
#STARSLUT will fuck for fame
Jules hadn’t quite gotten over the shock when a cold stream of water hit her back. She turned around and another blast covered her front with a liquid she realized wasn’t water. It reeked of bleach. The tall, pale, blue-haired woman, who Daz had told her went by the name Mazzie Kitts (obviously fake) stood with a smaller, darker girl with a mohawk and lip piercings. Both held super soakers filled with bleach, the scent of which burned Jules’s nostrils. Her lovely little dress was ruined.
It took Jules a minute to realize these chicks truly had sprayed her with chemicals and written #STARSLUT on her windshield, but the message reached her brain soon enough. In the meantime, Mazzie and Mohawk had stopped shooting and were pointing and laughing. Reaching into the bag she brought with her, Jules pulled out a buttery soft biscuit and opened fire.
Pow. Hot biscuit hit Mazzie in the eye and stuck.
Pow. Mohawk took a biscuit to the forehead and squeaked. Pow pow. Biscuits caught Mazzie in the chest as she screamed. Bip. Another flaky missile caught Mohawk on the side of the head as she turned to run.
Then Jules remembered something very important. She had a shotgun filled with rock salt in her trunk. She dropped the biscuits. Popped her trunk and went for her weapon.
“Oh. Okay, bitches. It’s on now.” Jules cocked her shotgun with one hand.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say she’d never seen anyone run that fast. Run like a girl? Hell yeah, most shifters wished they could match the speeds at which Mohawk and Mazzie got out of there.
Jules laughed with maniacal glee. “Run. Keep going. I’m the sheriff in this mutha fuckin’ town!” Jules yelled at their backs.
“Nope, I don’t believe you are,” a voice said behind her. She whirled around ready to go to battle. “But the sheriff of this here motherfucking town sure is proud of you.” Without a care about the bleach, Sheriff Stan, The Exterminator, smashed Jules to his potbelly. She hugged him back, happy he’d shown up for her.
“Let me be clear, if my Cora or anybody else asks, I’m proud of you for not shooting those girls,” Stan said, holding on to Jules. “But we both know the truth.”
Stan drove her to Averdeen Manor. While they sat out front he promised he’d have her car towed and cleaned, then hugged her once more before she got out. Jules gladly accepted the reprieve from the damage those heinous chicks had done to her sense of safety.
Halfway up the front steps she paused. With so many super sniffers in the house she’d cause an uproar the minute she walked in with the reek of bleach clinging to her. Fishing her phone out of her handbag she texted Nox.
Jules: Bring me a change of clothes to the backyard.
Nox: Why?
Completely engrossed in texting she headed around the side of the house.
