The Cougar's Bargain (20 page)

Someone would be propping Hannah up on the way back to the motel, and Sean didn't think it was going to be him, which suited him fine. They needed a cooling off. He didn't regret anything he'd done—touching her, kissing her—but he needed to be sure she viewed it under the right lens. He'd exercised considerable restraint by slowing things down, but judging by her icy mood, it seemed she found some fault in that. Mate or not, maybe he'd never figure her out.

Same holds true for you, dipshit. Not like you're especially revealing.

He rolled his eyes at the bar's drop ceiling, and forced himself to refocus on the discussion at hand.

“So, let's rewind.” Steven put down his hamburger and wiped his greasy hands on his shirt. “You're giving me a lot of patchy information and you're expecting me to hit a home run with it.”

Hannah snorted. “I'm not expecting you to do anything. It wasn't me who challenged you to come on down.”

Sean gave his head a small shake and picked at the remnants of his club sandwich. She
still
hadn't done what he'd suggested. The longer she beat around the bush, the longer it would take for them to do what needed to be done and get back to New Mexico. Mason may have told him not to concern himself with Belle, but Sean didn't see how he couldn't. The last time he'd tried to disengage from family shit had been just before his father died. Sean had been feeling restless.
Stuck
. He'd lashed out and had to isolate for a while.

It'd been a bad time to do it. Woodworks had been upside down in debt, and there'd been the tiniest chance they could have gotten caught up, but at his expense. His dad had wanted to contract him out to some developer putting up high-end tract housing in the middle of Nofuckinwhere, Texas. Sean had said no. He'd been tired of working so much and having nothing to show for it. “Fuck the future,” he'd told his dad. “How about right now? Don't you care about that?”

Perhaps it had been his exhaustion talking, but at the time, Sean wouldn't have taken anything back. He'd meant every word—that he didn't want to be there, and that he didn't
care
about working wood. He didn't even care about the ranch.

He'd left, and no one had tried to woo him back. During that time, he'd believed he was dispensable—the third son. Not even the spare, but one extra beyond that. He wouldn't have gone home at all, probably, if his father hadn't died. That was what made him feel worse about it. He'd been fine with just letting them go, and he knew they didn't trust him for it now. He hadn't been there at crunch time.

Hannah tapped Sean's arm, then gave his sleeve a yank for emphasis. “Answer him. He doesn't believe me.”

“Sorry.” Sean let out a ragged breath and toyed with the toothpicks that had held his sandwich together. “What was the question?”

“I asked you how quickly you're trying to get in and out of this scenario. A day? Do you have a week?”

“I'd prefer to get home as soon as possible.”

Hannah put her beer to her lips and wriggled her eyebrows over the top of the glass. “No one's keeping you here. You don't have to be my shadow. Lola would never know if you left.”

“She'd know, and given our history, I don't particularly wish to be insubordinate.”

“Who's Lola?” Steven asked.

Sean put his elbow to the table and propped the side of his head against his fist, staring at Hannah. “Tell him who Lola is, Hannah.”

She narrowed her eyes and set her beer glass down flat. It took her two tries. She nearly missed the table with the first one and almost dropped the glass onto the floor. “You know who she is.”

“Yeah, I know who she is. I'm not the one who wants to know. Steven is.”

She blew a raspberry and craned her head to her brother, who sat on the adjacent side of the C-shaped booth's bend. “She's our boss, kind of.”

“Your
boss
?” Steven said with a note of hard-to-miss incredulity in his tone. “You already have a job back in Durham.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “I'm on sabbatical, exploring my p—” Her snort turned into an uncontrollable giggle that seemed to go on and on. “P-
passions
.”

Steven sighed, but Sean just watched her laugh. The only times he'd seen her laugh during the first couple of months of their acquaintance had been when she was around Nick. Apparently, the toddler had been the only Foye she stomached.

“Tell me about your passions,” Steven said. “Last I knew, the only ones you had were busting my balls and steering Dad ever closer to a massive stroke.”

“Yeah right. How long did it even take for him to realize I hadn't come back?”

Steven drew in some breath through clenched teeth and leaned back against the booth. “Not gonna lie. It took a while.”

She poked his shoulder. “See.”

“But when he
did
realize it …”

“He did nothing, I'm—” She clapped her hand over her hiccup and giggled once more. “Nothing, I'm sure, besides grumbling and getting Mom chattering about a lot of shit she knows nothing about but insists on having an opinion on regardless.”

Let's not go there again.
Sean got the sneaking suspicion that once Hannah started venting her spleen about the slights her family had inflicted on her, they'd be there until the bar closed, and closing time was an hour away.

He dropped his fangs into his mouth, dragged his tongue over the points, and then cleared his throat.

Hannah kicked his shin beneath the table, and Steven bolted to his feet.

Sean put the teeth away and pushed soggy potato chips around on his plate. “Like I was saying, I think it would be a good idea for us to deal with this little mission in as timely a fashion as possible, don't ya think?”

Hannah growled and ground the heels of her palms against her red eyes. “Am I not allowed to make
any
decisions on my own mission?”

“Um, Hannah?” Steven tapped her shoulder several times, then cuffed her bicep as if to pull her out of the booth.

“God,
what
?”

“Did you see that?”

“See what?”

“He has
fangs
. I haven't had that much to drink that I'd be seeing things. He has fucking
fangs
.”

“I know, bless his heart. He's not gonna bite you.” She scrunched her forehead. “I think he's more of a licker.”

“Hannah …”

“
What
?”

“He had fangs and then the fangs went away.”

“Yeah, they're supposed to do that. See, mine do that, too.” She grinned hard at him like a little kid who'd just lost her first tooth. Her upper incisors elongated and gave shape to her kitty overbite.

Steven jammed his eyelids shut, shook his head hard, then opened them again.

Hannah wriggled her eyebrows at him and then scrunched her nose when she couldn't put the teeth away. “Shit.”

He held up an arm and flagged December. “Yeah, uh. We need … to … the check. We need the check.”

Hannah clapped her hand over her mouth.

“Everything all right?” December asked.

“Yeah, yeah. Sure. Woo!” Steven whistled low. “Oh, boy. What kinda beer y'all serve down here? Last time I drank something that had me seeing things, I was in the Middle East and knew exactly what I was getting into when I did it. It's one thing having a vacation from reality when you're doing it on purpose, but I don't like being taken by surprise.”

She canted her head to the side and furrowed her brow.

“It's all right, D,” Sean said. “He's just tired from traveling. The beer probably didn't help.”

“I was gonna say, that was only seven percent alcohol.” She left the bill on the table and padded away.

Sean tossed a couple of twenties onto the table and slipped out from the booth. Hannah followed, cringing at her brother as she sidled up next to him. “It wasn't my fault.”

“I don't know what's happening. I'm seeing things and you're talking in riddles. Who are you and what did you do with my sister?”

“How about we talk about this outside?” Sean said. “No need getting the locals stirred up.

“Talk about what? I thought it was just tiredness and the beer.”

Hannah pushed him along by the small of his back and Sean brought up the rear, waving at December at the bar as Hannah opened the door.

“Tell Tito to call me,” December yelled.

Sean winced and waved again, noncommittally.

In the parking lot, Hannah pointed left, then right, furrowed her brow, and let her breath out on a sputter. “Maybe we should go to a park or something.”

“I don't think that'll be necessary.” Sean worked his way between the two of them and started down the alley and toward the motel. “At least, it isn't for me. I don't need a lot of space.”

Steven caught up in just a couple of seconds. “A lot of space for what?”

Sean waggled his eyebrows at him. “To show you what kind of monster I am. That's why I called you here, after all.”

“What?”

Hannah growled and flung herself onto Sean's back for the second time in a day as if to take him down. He wrapped his arms under her knees and kept moving without a hitch. “Thanks, blondie. We can probably move faster now. You're not so good at the straight-and-narrow thing when you've got a bit of booze in your system.”

“Whatever. I'm as sober as a nun.” She cleared her throat, hooked her chin over his shoulder, and let out a long, indulgent sigh. “Maybe I should have become a nun. Might have made more people happy that way.”

Fuck.
Her mood was going downhill and fast.

Steven jogged around the two of them and walked backwards, swaying a bit. He gave Sean's chest a poke. “What the hell are you two talking about?”

“Gonna show you. Hannah will probably tell you it's all my fault.”

“It's totally your fault. It's his fault, Steven. I'm just an innocent bystander. I was minding my own business, freezing my ass off in that tent you loaned us—” She groaned and slipped a bit down Sean's back.

He stopped to hitch her back up and renewed his grip on her legs. “Better?”

“You're smarter than my car. My car doesn't talk and ask me if I'm okay. I wonder how much you would cost brand new off the lot.” She giggled and put her chin on his shoulder again. “
Vroom-vroom
, kitty.”

Jeez
.

“Kitty?” Steven couldn't have sounded more incredulous if he'd tried.

Sean made a long arc around him and picked up the pace.

“Yep. Remember when we were kids and watched
Thundercats
when Mom and Dad left us up to our own devices on weekends?”

Steven jogged in front of them again. “What about it?”

She giggled yet again. “He's
so
a Thundercat.”

“That's a new one,” Sean muttered. He'd been called a lot of things, but no one had ever compared him to a cartoon.

“You're talking gibberish,” Steven said. “It's a good thing you called, because obviously you need to be saved from yourself.”

And me
. Steven had to have thought it even if he didn't dare say it aloud to Sean.

“We can fly home in the morning.”

“I'm
not
flying home,” Hannah said. “I'm not going there. I can't.”

“Why?”

She tightened her arms around Sean's neck and dug her thighs into his waist.

Even if her mind was an alcohol-drenched sponge at the moment, her inner cat knew the score. That cat reached out to Sean, pawing at him, nudging him for the assistance the woman part of her probably would have been too stubborn to.

In some ways, he needed to tread carefully. She hadn't asked to be brought into his world. She'd been dragged kicking and screaming—literally—into it. She hadn't asked to be launched into the goddess's favor. She hasn't asked to be his mate, but she
was
. Those were immutable things. That didn't mean Sean couldn't protect her from some of the hard stuff. He could do that for her. He was used to things being hard. He was used to scrambling for any attention he could get.

“You're in for a rude awakening,” he said to Steven. “That's half the reason why you're here and why I allowed you to come.”

“
Allowed
me to?”

Sean grunted and cut across the motel's rear lot. “Hannah will probably tell you a lot of things about me, most of which are unflattering, and I probably deserve that. But it's true that she's not going anywhere that she doesn't want to go, and I'm not so hot on the idea of her leaving, anyway. I guess, if you had a mate, you'd feel the same way.”

“You're both talking gibberish, and I know for a fact you haven't sipped anything stronger than coffee tonight.”

“I'm not talking gibberish. I'm just saying things you don't understand, and that you probably wouldn't understand, even sober.” He bounded up the stairs, trying not to jostle Hannah too much, but still managed to make a few hisses from her.

“My poor tits.”

“Hey, you jumped on
my
back.” He reached around and patted her back pockets for her room key, and if Steven had been capable of baring a bit of fang of his own at the moment, he probably would have. He had a sneer that rivaled even Hank's.

A sneer had never been enough to deter Sean from what he wanted, though. He'd grown up around too many alphas, and folks who knew Cougars considered him to have the qualities of an alpha himself, not that he bought it. He had neither the ambition nor the organization skills.

He wriggled the key out of her pocket and jammed it into the lock slot.

Hannah giggled again. “Impeccable aim. You got it in on the first try.”