by Holley Trent
“For fuck’s sake,” he said a little louder than he’d intended, then fought to bring his voice down to a more reasonable level. “I haven’t forgotten it for more than five minutes since I stepped onto this ranch this afternoon. I sure as shit don’t want to be the one going in, either, but it seems it’s either me or Ellery, and I don’t think the alpha’s gonna jibe so well with his mate going into that hole.”
“Right, so you should walk into it instead,” Belle said tartly.
“Actually, you both need to go,” Claude said. “One blocking the gate, as it were, and the other in to find our confused new friend.”
Steven ground the heels of his palms against his eyes and chuckled. “Shit.”
“Steven, don’t do it,” Hannah said. “If you’re going to go in there and freeze up, I’m going to have to in there and get you, and Cougar or not, I’ll do it. I will find some way to blow that damn portal to smithereens even if doing so rips a hole in time and space, so help me God, I mean it.”
“Hannah ...” he warned.
“I said I mean it.”
“Is this person important?” Steven asked Claude. “The one inside the hellmouth.”
“Important?” Claude shrugged. “Probably to someone. Obviously, people cared about her. Is she missed? Likely not by many. She was just one low-ranking employee in the angelic bureaucracy.”
“That makes it even worse,” Steven said. “The little people always get ignored. You can’t leave folks behind like that. Not when you know they’re there.”
“I agree,” Ellery said softly.
“Ellery,” Sean warned, “Mason is going to flip.”
“So don’t tell him.” She wiped her hands on her napkin and tossed it onto her plate. “Don’t say anything until all is said and done. When do we do it? After some of those folks leave for the night?”
“Are we doing it?” Claude looked to Steven.
Steven didn’t want to do it. He didn’t want to be anywhere near that portal or close to the things coming out of it, but he’d never be able to put aside the guilt if he left that woman in there. Sometimes people had to temporarily sacrifice their well-being for the sake of other people’s long-term good. He was going to hate it. Going into that thing was going to scare the hell out of him, and he wasn’t usually the kind of man who courted fear.
But it had to be done, and there didn’t seem to be anyone else who could do it.
“Eleven o’clock?” came his choked voice.
Claude’s smile was tight and strained as he nodded. “Yeah. Eleven’s good.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Belle didn’t realize Steven had intended to leave her at home until he stood from the sofa where he’d been wedged between Alex and Lily, playing some video game with them that obviously perplexed him mightily, and handed off his control without a word to her.
A growly engine idled outside, and she’d heard it enough times in the past few years to know exactly which Foye it belonged to.
She stuffed her feet into her sneakers and ran after him, grabbing him by the back of the shirt on the walkway and giving him a hard yank. “You’re just going to leave like that?”
“I would have thought you’d be happy to be rid of me for a while. I don’t have to babysit you, right? You probably have things you want to do.”
“Nothing so pressing.”
Sean leaned on the horn.
Belle flipped him off and hoped he could see it. He was going to wake her derelict neighbors and send the squatters scattering into the night.
“I gotta tell you that the cat in me thinks you’re being an idiot,” she said. Actually, that was a mild description of what the cat thought. The cat wondered if maybe Steven was the one who needed to be followed around as if he were a habitual shoplifter in a high-end boutique. Maybe if she sat on him and dug her claws into his shoulder or some fleshy bit of him, he’d be still for a little while.
She wouldn’t even have to shift all the way, and if she were still in her human form, there’d be no risk of infecting him.
Not that infecting him was that bad of an idea. He’d live longer. Be around more years for her to torture him—for her to be just one more demand on him.
Dick.
She started at the press of his hand to the top of her chest and grabbed his wrist.
“That you, Belle?”
“Huh?”
“You zoned out on me. Did your hitchhiker come back? I’m guessing no, because as far as I could remember, she never made you growl.”
“I wasn’t growling.”
“Yes, you were.” He grinned. “You were growling like I tried to take a bowl of kibble away from you. You kitty cats are funny.”
More like jealous and irrational. She didn’t see how that was funny at all.
She let her hand fall from his wrist, and his hand slid down her chest, tickling the skin left exposed by her shirt’s V-neck before falling away.
“You shouldn’t tease me,” she whispered.
“Who’s teasin’?”
“You are. You’re teasing a cat in heat, and I think you believe it’s a game.”
Sean pressed the horn again.
Steven turned and waved.
Sean rolled down the window and leaned out of it.
“I’m coming. Just give me a minute.” Steven turned back to Belle. “I don’t think it’s a game, princess.”
“You act like it.”
“If anyone’s treating this like a game, it’s you, but I guess I can’t fault you. You’re young. You probably don’t know you’re doing it.”
Her jaw dropped.
He shrugged and tamped her mouth closed. “I’m just sayin’. When I leave here tomorrow or the next day, you’re not gonna care. Mark my words. You’ll come down from this thing—this state you’re in—and when you’re clearheaded, you’ll figure out it was a bad idea.”
“You think the fact that I’m hormonal right now renders me unable to make good decisions?”
“I think there’s a chance of that. I mean, no offense. Happens to the best of us.”
“Are you trying to piss me off with that lame-ass excuse?”
“Come on, Belle. Don’t even act like this is bothering you.” He furrowed his brow. “You don’t want me. You don’t give a shit about me, and hell, you could probably do better with someone who lives right here in town.”
She gave her forearms pinches and tried to wake herself up from the nightmare she was obviously having, but nothing changed. She was still outside on the walkway of her rental house being swarmed by moths. Sean was still parked at the curb and waving Steven on. Of all possible things, a deputy’s cruiser pulled up in front the truck, which was parked in the wrong direction, and flashed its lights once. Not a dream.
Belle closed her eyes and sighed as Deputy Carlson emerged from the vehicle.
She could hear Sean’s muttered “Damn it,” from twenty feet away.
Fortunately, the deputy just waved at him and bypassed him altogether. He walked up the path and stopped in front of Belle and Steven, tipping his hat. “I’m glad to see you up. I have a message for you.”
“Oh, is that all? I thought you were going to give my brother a ticket for being half parked on the sidewalk.”
“Nah, I’m off the clock. Not heading into work for a while, so he could park up in the tree for all I care.” The deputy rooted in his front pocket and handed her a folded slip of paper. “Jill handed that to me before she got on the bus. I think she was afraid to give it to you personally.”
“What is it?” Belle unfolded the three sheets of loose leaf, squinted at the tiny print, but, even with her superior supernatural vision, couldn’t make out anything. It was too dark outside.
“Dunno. I was curious, but I didn’t read it.”
“And she said to give it to me, not to Mason?”
“She said you’d know what to do with it.”
Oh. That probably meant that the contents didn’t only concer
n Mason. She and Jill weren’t exactly BFFs, but they got along okay in spite of their groups being enemies. “Well, thanks.” Belle refolded the papers and tucked them into the back pocket of her jeans.
“Sure.” Carlson turned to Steven. “How long will you be hanging around?”
Steven shrugged. “Can’t say. Maybe until the end of the week. I’m already being threatened with termination back at home. Perhaps, I’ll actually have a job to go back to.”
The deputy handed him a business card. “Sheriff told me to give you that. Said to call him if you for some reason got canned.”
“He wouldn’t happen to be doing anything to assist in me getting canned, would he?”
The deputy snorted. “Nah, he just knows how things go sometimes in those big departments. He used to work in one down in Houston.”
“Cool. I’ll keep that in mind.” Steven tucked the card into his pocket and turned his baseball cap around in time for Belle to see him bob his eyebrows. “Gotta get moving. See you around?”
“Hope so,” Carlson said.
Steven jogged to the truck, and Deputy Dipshit turned to Belle.
Damn it. When that guy started talking off the clock, he was impossible to be rid of, and according to her nagging inner cat, she needed to be in that truck.
“So ...” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Is Alex around?”
“Maybe. Why?”
“Just wonderin’. I figured I’d say hi.”
“She’s in the house.”
He crooked a thumb toward it. “Think she’d mind?”
Belle shrugged and followed him when he headed toward the door.
Both Lily and Alex jumped with fright in seeing him there, but they recovered quickly enough and went back to playing Mario Kart.
“Hey, ladies,” he said.
“Whatcha doing here?” Alex asked.
“Came by to give Belle something. Figured I’d say hi.”
Belle walked into the kitchen and put on better shoes. Like hell if she was going to sit at home and twiddle her thumbs while the folks from the kids’ table played with the hellmouth. After all, it was her ghostly hitchhiker who’d caused them to plan a mission into the thing in the first place. Certainly they didn’t think she was going to let them cut her out of all the action.
Also, she didn’t want Steven anywhere near that thing.
That was stupid of him.
“Freakin’ martyr,” she muttered.
“Where are you going?” Lily asked when Belle grabbed her keys.
“To the ranch. I just need to ...” Belle cut her gaze to the deputy, but he’d found himself a seat on the arm of the sofa and had his gaze locked on the television screen. She swallowed. “I need to ...” Follow my mate into a hole. “Check on something real quick.”
“A horse this time of night?”
Belle nodded. “A horse. Sure.”
Lily gave her game controller to the deputy. “I’ll ride with you.”
“No, you don’t have to do that. It’s okay.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s late. My office isn’t opening tomorrow because the building is getting fumigated, so I can afford to go to bed late tonight. You shouldn’t be driving around on your own out in the wilderness at this hour. Cougar or not, you’re still a chick.”
Belle laughed. “Last I checked, you were a chick, too, and you don’t have claws like me.”
“Well, I’m sure if your father had had a sister, Daddy would have barked up her tree. Alas”—Lily shrugged—“I’m just human. Forgive me for it, will you?”
Belle sighed and looked at Alex and the deputy again. He might have known in general what sorts of weirdos were around town, but he didn’t know all the specifics, and Belle wanted to keep him out of her business as much as possible. To do that, she couldn’t go getting into a debate with Lily about why she shouldn’t ride along for what was supposed to be a simple ranch chore.
Letting her shoulders droop, Belle passed her keys to her other hand. “All right, cousin. Let’s go look at a horse.”
“I’ll get my shoes.”
“We’ll be back in ... a while, I guess,” Belle said to Alex.
Alex nodded and muttered “Damn it,” at the screen.
Once the door was closed and Belle was out on the walkway and heading to the punch buggy, Lily said, “So, what are we really going to do?”
“Check on a horse.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s bullshit.”
Belle groaned and shoved the key into the driver’s door lock. “If you knew I wasn’t being completely honest, why’d you come along?” She unlocked the passenger door, and Lily pulled it open.
“Because if there’s something happening at the ranch, I want to know about it. Maybe I don’t have a say in what’s happening there, but I do care about it being in the family. And I’m curious about all the nonranch stuff, too.”
“What nonranch stuff?” Belle put on her seatbelt and got the engine started.
“You know, how folks are living. How Foye Woodworks is doing and how your brothers’ mates are settling in. The bunch has grown fast. I feel out of the loop.”
“Sorry. I think you’re the only relative who isn’t named Foye who cares.” Belle turned a U and got the car moving in the direction of the ranch.
“Daddy cares.”
“Does he?”
“Sure. He felt bad when Aunt Glenda had to take on all that debt to keep it going, but he couldn’t really contribute anything. He was going through some rough stuff at the time.”
“Yeah, I remember. Vaguely. I was super young at the tail end of it.”
“I’m glad someone’s making it thrive.”
“Mom wants to retire before my brothers give her a bunch of grandkids to keep her busy,” Belle said softly.
“I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s going to come of the ranch?”
Belle shrugged and picked up a little speed as the road opened up. “I think about it a lot. I think about staying and taking over for her.”
“You could. You should.”
“I wish I could, but who the hell is going to take me seriously?”
“Is that your biggest worry?”
“It’s a pretty big worry, but of course there are others. The guys live there. It’s going to be pretty much impossible to keep them from telling me how to live my life if we’re all living right there in the same little housing cluster.”
“Why do you have to be?”
“Huh?”
“Really, why do you have to be? The ranch is large enough that you don’t have live right there in that square where Aunt Glenda and your brothers are. Hell, you could park a trailer out on the old Foye homestead and still be able to access the livestock pretty easily. It’s got some flat parts, right?”
“That’s a bit of a haul.”
“But you get my point. If you want to do it, figure out a way. Not everything needs to be cut and dried. Some things need creative maneuvering.”
“Gods, you sound like Steven now.”
“He told you to move back to the ranch?”
“No, he told me that if I wanted something, that I should throw my weight around and get it.”
“You don’t agree with him?”
“To an extent. I just don’t think I can have everything.”
“I don’t want you to leave, Belle. I’m sure if Aunt Glenda had any idea you were considering it, she’d cry herself into some kind of shock from electrolyte imbalance. But I do understand what it feels like to be stifled. I mean, look at how clingy Dad is. I think he’s got the entire town bugged and knows of every step I make before I even finish making it.”
“What’s the solution to this?” Belle turned on her bright lights in time to steer around a particularly large mass of tumbleweed.
“I dunno. Maybe we could figure it out together. Hell, if I thought it’d help, I’d tell you I’d move with you to the ranch, an
d that way if you end up halfway off the grid, you wouldn’t be alone, exactly.”
“You’d do that?”
Lily nodded in Belle’s periphery. “Yeah. Now that I’ve said it aloud, I like the idea. I probably won’t be much help for a while as far as ranch stuff goes, but if you and Aunt Glenda are patient with me, I’m sure I can pick up whatever needs to be done.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“Huh.” Belle steered in silence for a while, pondering the situation as she cruised around curves and navigated past miles and miles of arid range. “There’s just one problem with your plan,” she said as they neared the ranch.
“What?”
“I’ve got to take a mate soon. I’m not going to be able to keep putting it off. The heat I’m in right now is not so bad compared to what it’s going to be the next time, and the next time, it’s going to take me completely off guard and I’m not going to be able to function for a few weeks.”
“So ... you’re saying any roommate situation would be a temporary one.”
“Yes.”
“Have anyone in mind?”
Tell her, Belle’s inner cat said.
“The cat picked him,” Belle said softly. “And I guess he’s ... suitable enough.”
“Who?”
“Steven.”
“Why do you sound so disappointed? I haven’t spent much time with him, but he seems likable.”
“I wouldn’t say I like him. That’s too simple a word for what this animal inside of me makes me feel. Everything is way too damn complicated. The thing is, my biological encoding is to drive him nuts as much as I can, and half the time, I’m being mean to him just because that’s what we do. We Cougar women put our men through their paces to make sure they can hack it, because they don’t always stick—especially the ones who aren’t cats. I worry he’s not going to stick. Nobody wants to be treated like that.”
“Can you see having a future with him?”
“I haven’t allowed myself to think too much about the future beyond getting out of here, truth be told.” Belle killed her lights as she turned onto the ranch road. Navigating by moonlight wasn’t the safest way to get around, but she didn’t want to alert her mother or Mason that she was on the property. For that matter, she didn’t want anyone else to know she’d followed Steven there yet, either.
