Six Months (17 page)

When I peered over my shoulder, Reno had his fist tucked against his cheek.

“Anyone ever tell you how pretty your hazel eyes are when you’re mad?”

I blushed, and that made me even madder. “Are you goading me?”

“No, just sweet-talking.”

“Don’t be nice to me, Reno. I’m not in the mood for nice.”

“Music to my ears,” he said with a chuckle as I yanked the curtain closed.

***

When Reno walked in the Weston house after dropping April off at work, a sigh of disgust blew past his lips. There were muddy paw prints across the floor, scuffed-up rugs, and scratches on the doors. Guests had left their plates everywhere, so the girls were frantically trying to clean it up before Lynn returned from her vacation. That woman wouldn’t just have a cow if she saw this mess—she’d have a herd.

“Shoes off!” Lexi barked as she hiked up the stairs. Reno kicked off his boots and followed behind her.

“Where’s Jericho?”

She didn’t bother to turn around. “After the shit he pulled last night? Austin is having a little chat with him. You know what he actually said? He said that our peace parties were lame and all he was doing was livening things up.”

“Your friend knows about us now,” Reno confessed.

Lexi gracefully spun around, a mixed expression of anger and relief on her face. “Well, maybe that’s a good thing. Although now she’ll think we’re all batshit crazy and will probably turn in her resignation at Sweet Treats.”

“Not likely,” he said with a soft chuckle. “She’s up there now.”

“I gave her the day off.” Lexi swatted at a fly buzzing around her leg, then turned around to climb the stairs.

“Long story,” Reno said. “Any damage?”

“Uh, besides our reputation?”

Yeah, that was going to be problematic. Not keeping a peace party under control in front of the Packmasters wasn’t a shining example of Austin’s leadership skills and dependability as an ally.

Denver emerged from the game room wearing knee-length cargo pants and a threadbare T-shirt. He held a white kitchen trash can filled with beer bottles and paper plates.

“You could stand there or help out,” Denver said, setting the bin by the wall.

“Let’s get something straight,” Reno began, approaching him with a menacing stride. While Austin was the alpha of the pack, they all had their rank, and Reno was second-in-command. “I don’t ever want to see you putting your hands on April again. I don’t care if she’s naked and leaning over your truck with a wet sponge and a bucket of suds. You keep your distance and we’ll be cool.”

A smile softened Denver’s face. He tried to mash it into a frown, but it wasn’t working. “Well, thanks for implanting that erotic visual of April in my head for the rest of my life. I’ll never look at a car wash the same again. Calling dibs? Looks like someone has a pet,” he said in a smartass tone, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his forearm. “Didn’t know you went for humans. That’s cool. You got nothing to worry about with me; I was just trying to get some game last night and I didn’t see anyone else stepping up to stake his claim.” Then he pinched his chin and frowned. “Now, why do you think that is? Maybe you need to back off and stop getting territorial over something that isn’t yours.”

Reno’s irritation level spiked. Denver walked off and began opening the bedroom doors, peering in.

“Looks like the rooms we kept closed off were left alone,” he called out to Lexi, who had disappeared in the bathroom at the end of the hall. “Christ almighty! What the train wreck is going on in here?”

Lexi burst into the hall, clutching her chest. “What’s wrong?”

Denver stood before the open door that went into Lynn’s bedroom. “It looks like a Smurf exploded.”

Her shoulders sagged and she rolled her eyes, closing the door. “Jesus, you scared me. My mom likes the color blue. Don’t say anything to her or she’ll be furious you were in her bedroom. Good thing she didn’t do this to the rest of the house, so just let her have her space.”

He threw his hands up defensively. “I’m
all
for Lynn having her own space if
that’s
the end result. Has she seen a professional about that problem?”

Lexi smacked him on the arm and he let out a snort as he picked up the trash and jogged down the stairs.

“Do you want to help?” Lexi asked, looking weary. “We’ve cleaned the trash off the lawn, but I’m getting tired, and there’s still a lot to do inside.”

Reno felt a surge of protectiveness begin to surface. Packs looked after their women, even the mated ones. “Go lie down and take a nap for a few hours. Have you eaten today?”

“Yeah. Austin cooked breakfast burritos about an hour ago. Leftovers are on the stove if you want any. If Austin asks why I’m not cleaning, tell him I’m overheated and underappreciated.”

Reno waited until she went into the bedroom and closed the door. Then he jogged downstairs and ate three of the burritos on the stove. They were already cold, but the eggs and sausage hit the spot.

Austin came through the back door in the kitchen and kicked off his shoes at the entrance. He tossed his baseball hat on the table and despite the agreeable weather, he was beet red beneath his tan.

“Damn Jericho. One of these days he’s going to get us in serious hot water with the other local packs.”

Reno licked the grease off his thumb and leaned back. They had a spacious kitchen with tall windows along the back wall. The table from the old house had ended up on the curb and they’d bought a new one that could seat twenty. Ivy had found a child’s table at a rummage sale and placed it in the right corner of the room against the wall by the doorway. Lexi’s little sister enjoyed sharing a meal with a doll or her invisible friend. It was nice having a six-year-old in the house; it reminded Reno what packs were all about.

Family.

“Where’s Jerko?” Reno asked, finishing the rest of his juice. “Shouldn’t he be the one cleaning up this mess?”

Austin took a seat across the table and laced his fingers together. “Jericho’s staying with a friend for a couple of nights. I told him he needs to get his act together.”

“So you kicked him out?” Reno shifted in his seat. He’d have a real problem if that were true because you didn’t turn your back on family for something like this.

“No,” Austin grumbled, sliding his jaw to the right. “If you fuck up in my pack, fine. You’ll answer to me, and I won’t go easy. But you’d have to do something serious for me to give you the boot. Jericho needs to clear his head and I don’t want you boys messing with him while the dust is still settling. We need time to cool off and see what the situation is with the neighboring packs. I’ve spoken privately with three of the Packmasters, and we’re still in good standing with them. Plus, I think Lexi’s wolf is itching to take a bite out of Jericho for ruining the party,” he said with a private chuckle. “That woman is something else. Someday she’ll give me strong sons, of that I have no doubt.”

“Are you two starting up a family soon?”

Austin scratched his jaw. “The pack is new and I want to put a few years behind us. Lexi loves kids and told me she’s ready when I am. I think she’ll say anything to get me to have sex with her while she’s in heat, so I’ll take that with a grain of salt.”

Lexi was an excellent bitch, even though she’d kick your ass three times over for calling her that. Heck, Austin would take care of that for her. That was a rule in the house—one word they couldn’t call Lexi. While the word didn’t carry a derogatory meaning among their own kind, they were aware it did among humans. Lexi had grown up with humans, and for her, it wasn’t a nice word to call a lady.

Reno privately thought to himself that he’d make a concerted effort to avoid using that word around April. Then the thought of another man calling her a bitch stirred a venomous fire in him.

Reno lowered his voice. “You ever heard of a man named Maddox?”

Austin’s eyes flashed up with suspicion. “What do you want with him?”

“His name came up for a job I’m on. It has me curious because I didn’t think he’d turn out to be a Shifter.”

“Not a wolf,” Austin corrected. “But yeah, he’s a Shifter. Maddox has a thick reputation as a favor-trader, but I heard he branched off into monetary loans. I’ve never met him, but when I was a bounty hunter, a few of the guys I brought in had dealings with him.”

“Is he dangerous?”

Austin wiped the sweat from his face and ran his fingers through a tuft of dark hair. “Who can say? I didn’t get much information from the men I busted—only that they were trying to scramble up cash to pay him off.”

Most Breeds didn’t get financially tangled up with humans, so it was an unusual situation. Reno’s connections had recognized the name and identified Maddox Cane as a Shifter. While Reno had bigger things on his mind, like who was after April, he owed Wheeler to help him sort out this mess with Sweet Treats. Wheeler didn’t work for Lexi, but she needed someone with experience in accounting. Wheeler had no choice in the matter. A good Packmaster knows that a man needs work to feel dignified, so Austin had voluntold him for the job.

Lexi shuffled into the kitchen in a pair of loose shorts and a brown T-shirt, her long hair bound in a ponytail. She lingered by the stove and sleepily glanced at the empty plate where the breakfast burritos used to be.

Reno felt a pang of guilt for not having left her one. “I thought you were upstairs taking a nap.”

She shrugged. “I can’t sleep. I’m too hungry.”

Austin crossed the room and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her and kissing the side of her neck. “Me too,” he murmured.

“You’re all sweaty,” she complained.

“Mmmhmm,” he agreed, kissing her some more. “I think I need someone to wash me off.”

Reno took that as his cue to head out. He had a few errands to run before picking up April at the store. One of them being a quick visit to the sonofabitch at the party who had put his hands on her.

I was irritated with Reno for driving me to work on my day off.
I organized the displays to keep busy, but I felt detached and anxious. The residual effects of the night before still plagued my thoughts. The worst part was I had no idea which part made me want to run into the streets screaming. Sanchez? Trevor? Shifters? Drugs? Waking up next to a naked man?

Well, maybe not so much the last part. Reno was undoubtedly the sexiest alarm clock I’d ever snoozed on.

After five failed attempts to get in touch with Trevor, I called Lexi and barricaded myself in the bathroom for three hours. When she heard how shaken up I was, she insisted on coming to the store to talk to me in person. But I told her I was on the verge of checking myself into an asylum and maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

In a calm voice, she explained how she’d gone through exactly the same thing, only her situation had been ten times worse since she hadn’t known she was a Shifter and had to get used to sharing her body with a wolf. While she’d known Austin most of her life, he’d never spoken of his family because it would have opened the door for more questions. In fact, Lexi’s mom thought he might have come from an abused home, which is why she’d always asked him over. In any case, he had been Weston’s friend, not hers. She admitted she’d done the bathroom meltdown too, so that made me feel less crazy.

Each Shifter was born to one type of animal. Some lived together in packs, prides, or herds. Other animals, such as wildcats or hawks, preferred to live on their own terms. Wolves had a natural instinct to form packs, and each was led by an alpha male referred to as the Packmaster. Shifters had Councils comprised of different animals so there was no favoritism, and they worked to keep the peace. There weren’t just Shifters out there either. I didn’t know what to think when she started talking about the Mage her father had worked for and how they weren’t magicians but creatures who could harness energy. Then she confirmed Vampires were real and started going on about things I’d never heard of, such as Chitahs and Sensors. My head was spinning. Some lived extended life spans, while some Breeds were immortal. Lexi told me about the division that existed among all the Breeds because of wars that had happened in the past.

She divulged some personal details about their sex life that made me laugh. Shifters are seemingly normal until they go through the change in their late teens or early twenties. That’s the first time they shift into their animal. After that, their bodies acquire built-in immunity and they no longer carry or transmit human diseases. Their children can get sick and die, and she suspected it was nature’s way of controlling the population. Most female Shifters went into their heat cycle once every year or so, and that was the time their bodies were ready for conceiving a child. In fact, she said an unmated Packmaster’s duty was to make sure single women in the pack were kept away from the men during their heat cycle. In some cases, the alpha might help them out in ways that didn’t involve sex in order to speed things up and get them out of heat, but that’s something Austin didn’t know much about firsthand since he hadn’t grown up in a pack. Decisions like that always depended on the Packmaster.

Lexi empathized with the emotional roller coaster I was on, reassuring me that I had nothing to fear. She mentioned Jericho had been placed on punishment and was temporarily out of the house. With that being said, she had extended an invitation for dinner that evening.

But I had other plans.

Reno
plans.

Her efforts were in vain, and after some prodding, it became evident that Reno hadn’t filled her in on his plans to take me out. Suddenly, for whatever reason, I became upset.
Was he ashamed of me?

Two minutes before five, the brass bell on the main door jingled.

“Welcome to Sweet Treats,” I heard Bethany say in a bored voice.

I’d changed into a pair of faded denims with a hole in the knee and an oversized black shirt with quarter-length sleeves. He asked for casual, so I was giving him
casual
.

“Is April here?”

“Uh…” I heard Bethany stutter. “April?”

I peered around the corner and my inner voice did a
meow
.

Reno wore a black sleeveless shirt with a pair of black cargo pants. I took a moment to appreciate his firm biceps and his masculine stance because Reno was a man in every conceivable way. The kind of guy that made heads turn when he walked down the street. He looked like he’d just stepped away from fighting street crime, minus the gun holster. A sexy five-o’clock shadow dusted his jaw and his eyes were obscured behind mirrored aviator sunglasses. It had been cloudy all afternoon, so the shades made him look more like a cop.

Except when he was naked in my bed.

“Hi…” I greeted him shyly.

His predatory grin was so subtle I barely saw his lips move. “You ready, princess?”

I studied Bethany, who lingered behind the register, catching flies with her open mouth, which was full of braces. I’m sure Reno was nothing like the kind of man she’d imagined me with.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He held the door open and we walked out onto the busy sidewalk. Reno stepped up to an oversized blue truck and opened the passenger door.

“Whose truck is this? Where’s your bike?”

“We’ll need the truck tonight,” he said, helping me inside the cab. “It smells like rain.”

After he buckled me up, Reno slammed the door. I held my breath and squeezed my seatbelt strap as he strolled around the front of the truck, deliberately tracing his finger along the hood. It reminded me of the courtship rituals of wild animals. I usually didn’t pay much attention to a man’s posture, but he stood up straight and walked with his shoulders back, like a man who owned his confidence. I liked that he wasn’t covered in tats, because I wasn’t really into body art. Reno hopped in, cranked on the engine, and a guitar riff blared through the speakers with AC/DC singing “Thunderstruck.”

“What happened to your face and hand?” I glanced at a small cut on his cheekbone and noticed the knuckles on his right hand were bruised.

He lifted his shades and his resolute eyes looked sharply at me. “I took care of someone who needed taking care of.”

Reno pulled onto the street and I shifted my gaze out the window, wondering where he planned to take me. Maybe it would be an outdoor patio at a Mexican restaurant. What did Shifters do for fun? Reno wasn’t human, but it felt wrong to turn my back on him for something he couldn’t help just because I didn’t understand it. Maybe that’s why I had agreed to go—I was curious to learn more about him. I’d known Lexi for over a year and she seemed normal, so maybe I needed to be more open-minded.

After a short ride, we parked in front of a Target and got out.
Well, this is classy
, my inner voice remarked.

Inside the store, I eyeballed him as he pulled out two red shopping carts. “What are we doing here?”

Reno took off his sunglasses and tucked them onto the collar of his shirt. “I need to buy a few things, and I want you to help me. I have an open credit line, so anything goes. I want you to take one of these baskets and fill it up with decorations. The necessities are full sheets, a comforter, uh… pillowcases and all that junk. Something with a feminine touch. I also need sofa pillows, decorations for a bedroom and living room, and small area rugs. The whole tamale. Don’t look at price tags. Like I said, it’s all taken care of.”

Wow. They must have really messed up his house. “So I’m basically redecorating your house?”

“You have taste.”

“And you got that from my trailer?” I leaned on the cart and glared at him skeptically.

He rubbed the corners of his mouth. “I saw the little touches in there that were all you.” Then he glanced at his watch. “If I don’t find you first, then meet me back here in an hour. I have to grab some things on the other side of the store. Like I said, go all out.”

I wondered if they had a new woman in their pack. I’m not sure why, but the thought sparked jealousy in me. How could they live with a single woman in the same house and keep it platonic? Maybe this was for Ivy and they all shared her. I hadn’t thought to ask Lexi every intricate detail about their lifestyle. Reno said they outlived humans and he had seen three wars. Three? I wondered how old that made him. Recent wars, or were we talking Civil War?

“Don’t let me down,” he said. “We’ve only got an hour to get it all together.”

This was the weirdest date I’d ever been on. Maybe it wasn’t a date—had he even used that word? He’d just said we were going out, hadn’t he?
Mental eye roll
. I was jumping to conclusions again. If that were a board game, I’d be the undefeated champion.

“Gotcha. Shall I buy her some lingerie as well?” I angrily rolled my basket down the aisle and heard him chuckling behind me.

At first, I was irritated by the idea of shopping for another woman. But soon it became liberating to fill the cart and not look at the price tag. Reno could sift through my stuff later and decide what he couldn’t afford; my assignment was simply to fill the basket. I picked out a trendy set of lavender sheets that matched a purple and black comforter. After I’d selected the bedroom set, I specially chose accessories so her bedroom wouldn’t look like a purple nightmare. I found two lightweight mirrors that were classy and modern along with candleholders, candles, and a white vase with capiz shell flowers.

Then I hit the sofa pillows. Without a clue of what color the couch was, I went for neutral browns and a maroon. I also snatched a fuzzy maroon throw that could be put on the back of a sofa to match the pillows.

This was fun! Okay, maybe I went overboard when I spotted an adorable little bookshelf table, but it was too beautiful to pass up. I could put Hermie’s bowl on top and fill the lower shelf with my books.

Except the only problem being it wasn’t my table, and I was buying it for another woman.

Another woman
.

Then my inner voice said,
Wait a minute. Hold the phone. Little decorations with a feminine touch? Missy, I bet he’s seeing how into this lifestyle you really are. Those Shifters probably have harems
.

Had I ever asked Reno if he was married or had a girlfriend? What if Shifters practiced polygamy? I sure as heck wasn’t going to be someone’s second wife if that’s what he had in mind. Or even a girlfriend on the side.

“April?”

I whirled around with my arms folded. “Do you have harems?”

His lips twitched. A slow chuckle rose, growing louder until Reno was rocking with laughter. I’d never seen him laugh and it unnerved me. So much so that I turned around and bumped into a man, causing him to drop an armload of towels.

“Oh, jeez. I’m so sorry,” I said, bending down to pick them up.

Reno’s laugh died down and he began clearing his throat.

The man knelt in front of me and winked. “It’s fine, sweetheart.”

Then Reno’s laugh cut off and his boots clomped on the floor until he was beside me. The man’s eyes flicked up and he scooped the unfolded towels from my hands and hurried away. I was left kneeling on the floor.

“You did good,” Reno said, peeking into my cart. “Real good.”

“You might want to look through it all and check out the prices. I was going to get that table up there, but the box was too heavy,” I said, pointing at the end table as I stood up.

Reno lifted the box with one arm and slammed it over his cart. “You done? Or do you want me to wait?”

“No, I got everything and then some.” I reached in the cart and held up a few things. “You weren’t specific, but these mirrors are fifty dollars, so—”

“Put them back in,” he said. “She needs mirrors. We’re not thrift shopping, so if there’s anything you were holding back on, then grab it. We need to head out.”

I glanced at his cart and there was a mix of odds and ends. Lots of food, but also a toolbox, sealant or whatever that gooey stuff was that guys liked to buy in giant tubes, a lamp, paint, mops, and even a few small appliances.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Before the rain starts up again.”

After we loaded up the bed of the truck, Reno agreed to head back to my trailer. I wanted to check if Trevor had decided to come back home.

A burden had been lifted from my shoulders after I’d deposited the money back into the business account early that morning. I stuffed Sanchez in my mental closet and locked the door so I wouldn’t let the fear drive me to doing something stupid, like using the money to skip town. It wasn’t worth the risk of hurting anyone else around me. My grandma had raised me to clean up after myself, and Sanchez was going to require a tremendously large mop.