by Renee George
Nadine rolled her eyes. “You should walk away, Jock.”
I stood up and bared my teeth. “Bye, Jock,” I said with a hint of menace.
He raised his hands in the air, and Reggie leaned away from him, her body tense and ready to react if he tried to put his arm around her again.
“I’m just trying to be neighborly,” Jock said. He glared at me then walked away.
Nadine leaned over. “He makes me wish I’d brought my gun.”
Reggie and I both laughed. Donnie came back with our drinks. He gave me another smile. “Your nachos will be out shortly.”
“Thanks.” I took a sip of beer.
To Reggie, he said, “Is there anything else I can get for you?”
She blushed and shook her head. “I’m good.”
“I’d sure like to find out.” And with that, he walked away.
Reggie smiled as she drank her Gin Ricky. I was all for her enjoying a flirtatious comment from a good-looking guy. So, I tried not to stare as the woman with shoulder-length, straight brown hair strolled up behind the waiter. She seemed familiar, but I hadn’t met her before. I had a memory for faces. Most likely, I’d seen her at the store or something.
Donnie’s face registered surprise as she slid her arms around him and tried to shove her fingers down the front of his jeans.
He dropped the empty tray he held and rounded on her. “Rachel,” he said, his tone gentle and placating. “I’m working right now.” He was quiet enough that I shouldn’t have been able to hear the conversation, especially over the rest of the noise in the bar, but when you grow up with supernatural hearing, you learn quickly how to tune out and tune in different sounds. Right now, I was curiously distracted by the waiter and his unwanted guest.
Rachel—wearing jeans, cowgirl boots, and a western shirt—giggled and tried to grab him again. “Come on, Donnie. I miss you. Don’t you miss me?”
He looked around as he picked up the tray and worked hard to keep a few feet between him and this Rachel. “What are you doing here?”
Rachel’s smile faded. “You said you’d call me.” Her hand went up as if to reach out to him, but Donnie stepped back. “You can’t do this to me,” she hissed. “I won’t be ignored.”
Lacy Evans interrupted the hushed conversation by stumbling, drunk, between them. “Donnie Doyle!” she squealed. “Where have you been all night, handsome?” She squished his face between her palms. “Damn, your face makes me want to kiss your momma.”
He gently disengaged himself from Lacy, and I noted that Rachel had disappeared. Well, that was the end of that eavesdrop. I could care less about what Lacy had to say. She was Freda Downing’s daughter. Freda was my uncle Buzz’s waitress, and she worked nearly every shift at The Cat’s Meow. She treated me with a kind of wariness, not that I could blame her. As a result of a witch in my family tree, it was hard for people to keep secrets from me, and Freda had a lot of secrets, especially when it came to her daughter. I try not to judge people. However, Lacy was a single mom who took her partying more seriously than she took her responsibility as a parent. It made it hard not to judge.
“Ugh, I can’t stand her,” Nadine said, echoing my thoughts.
I shook my head. “She makes it hard to like her.”
“Try impossible.” Nadine cast a distrustful gaze at Lacy. “There is something truly wrong with that girl.”
Donnie was engaged in conversation with another woman now, a short, curvy brunette. It was almost as intense as the one he’d had with Rachel, but they were farther away, and there were too many conversations going on between them and me.
“Who is that?”
“Do you think I know everyone in town?” Nadine asked.
I sort of did. I hid my grin. “You could have just said you don’t know.”
“I don’t know.” She laughed. “We have almost twenty thousand people living here. Did you know everyone back in your hometown?”
“No,” I said. I’d made the mistake that a lot of people make when they assume everyone in a small town knows everyone. It just felt like more often than not it was true.
Reggie slapped her palms down on the table. “We have other, more important matters to discuss tonight, ladies. Like how I’m going to face my ex-jerk.”
Reggie was right. Thinking about Lacy Evans was a huge waste of a girls’ night out. “When is the dirtbag driving down?” I asked.
“The day before graduation. He rented a room at the Moonrise Inn. He wants CeCe to have dinner with him that night.” She wrung her hands together. “I haven’t seen that man in over a year. Not since we signed the divorce papers.”
I put my hand over hers. “You never needed him, Reg. And he sure as hell didn’t deserve you. You are strong, beautiful, independent, and successful. You’ve made a life for yourself and your daughter, and you did it without him.”
“Damn straight,” Nadine added. “You are one tough chick. And if that man even bats an eyelash wrong, I’ve got shovels, and Lils can bring the black trash bags.” She winked. “And since I’m a cop, I’ll make sure his disappearance goes unsolved.”
Reggie laughed. “All right,” she said. “How can I worry with friends like you?”
“You can’t,” Nadine said brightly. “It’s impossible.”
A woman slurred out the words, “Get the hell away from me.” I looked up to see Lacy and Jock near the pool tables. Lacy had her hand up as if to slap him, and Jock’s fingers were wrapped around her wrist.
“What’s wrong?” Jock asked, his voice dripping with condescension. “Am I not married enough for you?” He laughed when Lacy’s eyes widened. His tone was hushed as he leaned in close to her and added, “Who do I have to kill to get you in bed?”
Lacy was Jock’s secretary. He was in a position of power over her, and I couldn’t watch as he tried to bully her into doing something she didn’t want to do.
I jumped up from my chair and made a beeline for the duo, surprising myself and them with my righteous anger. Lacy had been having an affair with Tom Jones, the man who’d tried to kill me. He was also the father of the son she often ignored. And while the young woman had made some questionable life choices, Jock had no right to throw it in her face or use her past as a way to coerce her into having sex with him. I focused my fury on him as I approached. “You get your hands off her right now, or I swear I’ll break every one of your fingers.”
Jock looked sideways and down at me as if to gauge my threat level. Something in my eyes must have registered as high threat because he let go of her wrist. He threw his hands up in mock surrender. “We’re just having a friendly conversation here.”
Lacy looked more rattled than I’d ever seen her. I put intention in my words, calling upon my grandmother’s curse, a type of honesty magic, weak but effective if the person I was talking to wanted the truth revealed. “Are you two having a friendly conversation?”
She shook her head. “No, we’re not. I want Jock to leave me alone.” She blinked as if she couldn’t believe the words that came out of her mouth. I think she was more shocked than her boss.
“I’m just trying to buy a lady a drink,” Jock said, irritation plain in his tone. Without any argument, though, he turned on his heel and walked away.
“Everything okay over here?” Donnie asked.
Lacy’s dark expression brightened. “Nothing a little of you couldn’t fix.”
I hoped my eyes didn’t roll, but sometimes it’s automatic, especially when the situation warrants it. “I’ll see you around,” I said.
I glanced over at my table, Reggie and Nadine both stared at me with what-the-heck expressions. I felt Lacy’s hand, cool and slightly clammy, touch my arm. I looked back at her. A tight smile greeted me. “Thanks, Lily,” she said. “I mean it.”
I walked back to the table, a little numb at Lacy’s genuine gratitude for my intervention.
“Is Lacy up to no good?” Nadine asked when I sat down.
I took a sip of my beer.
“She’s a lot.” I wiped at the sweat on the bottle. “But no one should have to put up with Jock.”
Nadine and Regina nodded. Nadine said, “If being a dick was illegal, they would lock Jock up and throw away the key.”
Reggie raised a brow. “I’m not sure Lacy is much better.”
I stared across the room as she slid into a booth with a couple of young frat boys. “Regardless, she still doesn’t deserve to be harassed.”
Nadine and Reggie held up their glasses. “True story,” Nadine said.
I clinked my beer with their drinks. “Yep.”
Chapter 2
The next week, we’d skipped girls’ night because Nadine got called into work and Reggie had some senior thing at CeCe’s school. Besides, it gave me extra study time for my GED exam on Saturday. When the end of the week rolled around, my stomach and brains were in knots. But, I liked Fridays at the shelter because they were always busy. It felt good to throw myself into work, especially these days. Performing multiple tasks kept my mind occupied with things other than Parker and my stupid test. Today, I was inputting donations and purchases, and keeping my fingers crossed that the donations would keep us in the green and out of the red. Even with the bank reward I’d shared with Parker to build on the new site, money was still tight for the shelter.
Math had never been a strength, but with a calculator, I managed to make the numbers add up. Most of the time. I narrowed my gaze on the total column of the table I’d been filling in. The amount of money in the petty cash didn’t match. It was off by negative ten dollars.
The loud chorus of barking alerted me that Keith Porter had returned with Star, a beautiful gray pittie we’d taken in a couple months earlier. She’d been overbred and half-starved when she’d arrived. Now, she was a healthy forty-four pounds, a much smaller dog than my Smooshie. I leaned back in my chair and looked out the office door. “Hey, Keith. Can I see you a moment?”
Keith, a lanky fellow with a poorly developed beard, shaggy brown hair, but unusual green-blue eyes that made him almost handsome, ducked his head inside the office.
“What’s up, Lils?”
I gestured past him with a nod. “How’s the girl?”
“She’s still skittish, but she’s getting healthier all the time.”
I smiled. “I’m glad.” Star’s shy personality and her inability to get along with other dogs made her hard to place. We’d even had to put her kennel in a room by itself. I felt a kinship with her in a way. It’s a hard way to live being scared all the time.
“Did you need something?” Keith asked. I’d worked the day shift with Keith and with Jerry Atwell, a volunteer whose full-time job was firefighting. His wife had been in the hospital with pneumonia the week before, but she was home now, and Jerry had resumed his shifts at the shelter.
I’d noticed Keith had started volunteering to work at times when Theresa Simmons didn’t work. Theresa had confided in me that she and Keith had been having an affair for some time. This new distancing told me it might be over. Keith was younger than Theresa by a decade. I wasn’t throwing stones. I was older than Parker by as many years and more. But I’d always worried that Keith would end up on the losing end of the relationship. Theresa, no matter how poorly Jock treated her, had no intentions of leaving him.
“Did you get some money out of petty cash for something and not log it?”
“Shoot. Yes. I took a ten out this morning to get coffee and disposable cups.” He indicated the new canister and stack of cups on a small table in the corner of the office. “Sorry about that.”
“No worries. It’s ten bucks. I just like to have everything add up. Do you have the receipt?”
Keith shoved his hands into his pockets, pulling out keys, change, a phone. Everything but a receipt. “I’m sorry, Lily. It might be out in my car.”
I shook my head. “I’ll write it in, Keith. Don’t worry about it. Just keep the receipt next time and log the expense.”
He smiled. “You got it.”
Smooshie, who’d been asleep at my feet, must have sensed my mood. She shoved her large head under my hand, her wet nose brushing my palm, and whined. I looked from the computer, where I’d been inputting costs of supplies, to my enthusiastic baby. Her coloring was what was called red and white, though the red was more a rusty brown. Her face was white, with red framing her expressive brown eyes.
“Hey, big girl.” Her butt wiggled with excitement while her tail whacked the side of the desk with a loud thwack, thwack, thwack. She was definitely feeling neglected. “I’m sorry.” I scratched her behind the ear, leaned over and wrapped my arms around her waist while she shoved her head between my knees and under the chair. Her tail brushed my hair, and I smiled.
When I sat up, Keith was grinning, but he wasn’t looking at me. I followed the direction of his gaze to find Parker Knowles standing in the office doorway staring at me with a strange expression I couldn’t decipher.
I swallowed the hard knot in my throat. “Hi.”
He nodded to me. “Hi.” His dog Elvis stood behind him, ready to be there for Parker if he became stressed. Elvis was a trained service animal, a pit bull-Great Dane mix, which made him almost four feet tall, and the beautiful blue-furred beast probably outweighed me by a good ten pounds.
Smooshie’s ears perked up as she quickly propelled her stocky body past Parker and promptly shoved her nose right up under Elvis’ tail. The taller dog stood perfectly still, waiting for someone to make her stop.
“Smoosh,” I said sharply. She looked around Parker’s hip at me. “Manners,” I told her. “We don’t stick our noses uninvited into butts that don’t belong to us.”
Keith laughed. Parker said, “I didn’t realize you both like to stick your noses in butts…”
“Don’t be cute,” I said. But, gosh, too late. Parker was a little under six feet, built like a heavyweight boxer, and he had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. The kind of eyes a woman could get lost in.
“I’m off, boss,” Keith said to Parker as he eased past him. “Jerry’s my ride, and he has a shift at the firehouse tonight.” Keith threw me a boyish grin. “See you later, Lils.”
I waved. “See ya.”
Parker had moved all the way into the room now, but Elvis stayed out in the hall. I imagined he’d had his fill of Smooshie’s brand of hello. Parker leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “How’s everything?”
I assumed he was talking about the center’s finances. “We are staying afloat.” I rotated my chair to face him. “How’s the build going?” He’d been hands-on with the construction at the new property.
“Good.” He shook his head. “Good. Wish it was progressing a little faster, but it’s getting there. You should go with me sometime and check it out.”
I nodded. “Sure.” My pulse sped up. This might have been the longest conversation we’d shared since my revelation. He’d confessed his feelings for me, but in the same breath, he told me he needed time to “process” everything. In other words, seeing me transform into a cougar and rip a man’s throat out had freaked him out.
I guess I couldn’t blame him, but in a way I did. I’d spent my entire life as an outsider in my own community. With Moonrise, I’d finally found a place where I belonged. Or at least, it felt that way most of the time. Maybe it was time for us to talk. Really talk.
“Hey, we should get some—”
“What’s that?” Parker took two quick steps toward me. Fast enough that I had to brace myself to keep from moving into a defensive posture. He picked up a pamphlet near the computer. “Are you planning on going to college?”
The pamphlet was for the veterinarian assistant program at Two Hills Community College. “Ryan dropped that off for me,” was the wrong thing to say. The lobes of Parker’s ears turned red, and his nostrils flared with anger.
“Ryan, huh?” He kept his voice low and calm. I saw his struggle to keep his breathing slow and even. He wasn’t fooling Elvis, who moved in
quick, nudging his big head between Parker’s hand and hip. He wasn’t fooling me, either.
I sighed. “I’m thinking about taking some classes in the fall.” First, I had to get my GED, but Parker didn’t know I hadn’t finished high school. I hadn’t told anyone in Moonrise, except Nadine—not out of shame, but because I didn’t want to explain why. I only told Nadine because the test was seven hours long, and she agreed to dogsit for me when I took it. I’d quit school to become my brother’s guardian my senior year. My parents getting murdered had put an end to my dreams of graduating and going off to college to become a medical doctor. Still, I’d been reluctant to share my lack of education with Parker.
“That’s great.” He forced a smile. Our gazes locked, and my stomach dipped. The tension around his eyes eased. “Really. I think it’s great.”
“Nothing’s set in stone.” I shrugged. Why didn’t I just tell him that I’d signed up for the GED course?
“You’re too smart not to go,” Parker said.
I took the compliment. “Thanks.” I know I’m smart. I’ve devoured every medical book and journal I could get my hands on over the past seventeen years. It was my only consolation in a life I’d never meant to lead.
Parker’s scent, that of mint and honey, blossomed in the room. For a moment, I closed my eyes, let go of my control, and inhaled deeply.
When I opened my eyes, objects were crisper and colors more vivid.
Parker, his brows raised, took a step back.
I turned away from him, blinking as I pulled my inner cat back from the brink. “I’m sorry.”
“Lily—”
The phone rang before he could say more. Parker, his expression relieved, grabbed the phone. “Moonrise Pit Bull Rescue,” he said. “How can I help you?”
Saved by the bell, or ringer, in this case. When I wasn’t in cougar form, I wasn’t nearly as attuned to the world around me, but I could still hear better than humans. I listened for the voice on the other end of the line.
“Hello,” a woman said. Her voice was shaky and raspy. She was elderly. “Is this the dog place? The one for those pit bulls?”
