The Cougar's Bargain (9 page)

“Huh?” Hannah set down her beer and stared at his smirking face until the words made sense. That took a while. She kept getting distracted by the components that made up that face. She wouldn't have called him pretty. His features were too masculine, and like his brothers, he was way too lazy about getting a close shave, but he definitely had that something-something that could make mouths water.

Hannah's mouth certainly was, but that might have been due to the exceptional beer.

Yeah right.

“You know,
Tito
?” Sean made a
Come on, you can do it
flick of his wrist.

Oh.
“Really? Tito?”

The glaring lieutenant was a big, fluffy teddy bear of a man. He was good-humored and kind, and just happened to be Lola's son. He had to be five hundred years old, if he were a day.

Sean nodded. “Tito.”

“You're just making stuff up.”

“Nope.”

“Does she know what he is … what
you
are?” If she did, maybe Hannah could get a referral. December might have had a friend who'd like the looks of Sean.

He grunted. “Nah. She's normal and totally out of the loop, and that's one of the reasons Tito doesn't want to mess with her.”

“So he knows she's into him.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“She's not his type?”

“For as long as I've known Tito, which is the majority of my life, I've never discerned him having a type, but I guess he's always had to play his cards close to his chest.”

“His mother would probably be very critical of anyone he dated.”

“I think that's a big part of it.”

Hannah took another sip of beer and remembered something that had been confusing her for weeks. “You never questioned why Tito wasn't getting any older? Or Lola?”

“No. I considered Lola to already be ancient when I was a kid, and back then, it would have been hard for me to discern the difference between a fifty-something and an eighty-something. Tito joined his mother in the glaring when I was around eight, and he presented himself to be around twenty back then.”

“So he aged up to look around forty in that time.”

“Yeah. I guess he won't have to do much of that anymore, once everyone in the glaring knows who he is.”

“Lola's been around since …”

“Sixty years, I think, is the number that's being tossed around. She would have been presenting herself as a young woman when she arrived, and had likely been watching from afar before that.”

“According to Miles, she'd been going around from glaring to glaring before that and looking for one to settle into for a while.”

Miles had the goddess's ear and probably knew more about Lola than any of the Foyes combined.

“Lola's a hard lady to figure out. I don't try to make sense of her.”

December swung by bearing a little basket filled with a variety of pepper sauces and set it in front of Sean, tentatively. “Are you gonna help me out?” Sean reached for the basket, but she pulled it back a few inches and shook her head. “Nuh-uh. Talk. Give me his number.”

“I'm not giving you his number. Talk to him yourself the next time he comes in.”

“Any idea when that might be? I'll make sure I'm here.”

Sean shrugged. “Nope. I don't know his transport schedule anymore. I think it changed recently when the meat packer got bought out.”

“You'd tell me if he had a girlfriend, right?”

“Yeah. Sure, I would.”

Hannah cringed and took another sip of her beer.
She's way too young for Tito.
As sweet as he was, a guy like him would consume her. Hannah wasn't even sure why she cared, seeing as how moments ago, she'd wanted to toss the woman into an open septic tank.

December chewed her lip contemplatively and drummed her fingers on the bar top.

“You don't believe me?” Sean asked.

“I mean, I guess I do. Why do I get the feeling you're not telling me something important, though? Has he said something about me?”

“Not lately.”

Her eyes went wide. “So he
has
been talking about me?”

“Sure.”

She let out a totally cute, very human snarl and gave his arm a swat. “Well, what'd he say?”

Sean pulled the sauce basket closer, apparently lest December whisk it away. “Oh, you know. The usual chatty stuff. He said you were nice and that he liked how you always brought him steak sauce without him having to ask.”

“That's all?”

Sean shrugged. “I'm a guy, you know. I don't really keep my ears open for the other stuff.”

“You need to do better.”

He rubbed his eyes and grinned. “I promise that the very next time he says something about you that isn't in context of food or customer service, I'll make an effort to remember it.”

“You'd better. I'm going to go see if your burger has stopped bleeding enough for the health department's liking.” She strolled away, and Sean cut his tired gaze over to Hannah.

Okay, Foye, point proven.

December obviously had no interest in the cat on the barstool.

Hannah took a long sip of her beer and tried to affect one of the blasé expressions Cougar men were so good at. She could tell from seeing her twitching cheek in the bar mirror that she was failing miserably.

Sean leaned in and gave her shoulder a nudge with his own. “It's taking every ounce of self-restraint I have not to say
I told you so
.”

“Don't say it unless you want to earn yourself a mauling.”

“You shouldn't waste the energy. It probably still takes you forever to figure out the mechanics of shifting back.”

Hannah bit her tongue and held her words for once. He was right. Although the human part of her and cat part of her were in one mental accord, when she shifted, she still had trouble pulling everything back in when she was ready to stand on two legs again. It was like squeezing shaving cream out of the can and then having to wait until the foam deflated so she could get it back into a container, and not even the same one she'd started with.

Besides, if she started running her mouth, she'd slip and say something about how if
he
shifted, the chances were good it wouldn't be him in control, but that snarly cat half of his. She was too tired to argue.

“So, what's your plan for tomorrow?” He pulled a couple of hot sauce bottles out of the caddy and studied the labels. From what little she knew about him, she could remember him to be something of a pepper head. He had crates of the stuff in his basement, and she'd sure spent enough time there. “Mason said the shifters you're scouting aren't morning types.”

“I don't really know what my plan is. I was hoping to set the alarm clock, lie down, and wait for a good idea to come to me in my sleep.”

“How's that usually work out for you?”

She shrugged. “I'd prefer it a lot more than the other dreams I've been having as of late.”

He furrowed his brow and parted his lips as if to speak, but before he could get any words out, December returned with two more beers.

“Food's gonna be a few more minutes, so drink up.” She pressed her forearms to the bar top in front of Sean and watched him drink.

Hannah watched
her
.

“So, what brings you down? Did the other guys come down with you? I didn't think there was a game or anything this weekend.”

“Nah. I brought Hannah down to look around. She's from out east and thinking about finding somewhere with low humidity to settle down. She's got asthma.”

Hannah bobbed her eyebrows at the woman and twiddled the end of her braid.
Asthma my ass.
That the best you can do?

She avoided the Foye men as much as she could, but even she knew that Mason and Hank would have come up with different sorts of lies. Mason would have probably said he was taking his
girlfriend
on a weekend getaway, even as Ellery cut him an evil glare for declaring it. Hank probably would have been somewhat less overt, but no less possessive. He had a knack for asserting his claim over Miles without actually saying anything.

And why it bothered Hannah that Sean hadn't done that, she couldn't say. If she'd been interested in a relationship with Sean, or any of the Foyes, for that matter, she wouldn't have been fighting so hard to get away from them. She wasn't particularly interested in a romantic relationship with anyone at all. Connecting was too hard, and far too often, people didn't like who she was.

That was why she had exactly two good friends, and even making those two had been a struggle. She hated performing, feeling like she was always
on
for people who wouldn't give her any thought once the conversation ended and she wasn't right in front of their faces.

“Hannah.” Sean gave her a nudge and drew her out of her mental meanderings.

“What?”

“December asked what you thought about the area.”

“Oh.” Hannah pushed her empty beer glass toward the waitress and drew the full one closer. “I'll have to reserve judgment. It was already dark when we got here, and I haven't had any time to explore.”

“If you like camping, there are some amazing sites and trails around here. Sean knows about them.”

“I hate camping.” She cleared her throat and stared through the reddish gold liquid to the bottom of her class. The beer brand advertised on the paper coaster beneath it shifted in and out of focus as the booze shimmied and foam popped. She drew in a long breath through her nose, marveling at the bitter, the sour, the tart notes of the drink. She hadn't noticed all the nuances before with her human nose. With her enhanced Cougar sense, everything seemed brighter and deeper.

Sean squeezed her knee and leaned in. He whispered, “you're fixating.”

She looked up to find December, and Hannah's empty glass, gone. “Huh?”

“Fixating. Cat thing. You have to be careful you don't stare at any particular thing for too long. Happens more when you're tired. Sometimes we can't help it, but people who don't know what we are think we're weird when we do it.”

“What's one more thing to be weird for?”

He seemed to ponder that, his stare intent on her face as his grip on her knee increased slightly.

“You're probably not as weird as you think.”

Is that a compliment?
It felt like it. It was a sad state of affairs that she was flattered by such a statement.

He straightened up and pulled his hand away to pick up his beer.

And then she realized what he'd done. He'd touched her. He'd breached her personal space, and her immediate response wasn't to smack his hand away, as it would have been with most other people. She didn't like people touching her. She tolerated it from Ellery and Miles, because they were safe. They didn't agitate her just by being nearby. They were more or less predictable, and they understood her—as much as anyone could.

Her brothers didn't. Her parents certainly didn't. At work, she got on the best she could. Adrenaline helped tamp down her anxiety when she was in the E.R., so there, it didn't matter how crowded it was or how many people she had to touch. There, she had a mission, and that trumped everything else nagging at her.

Maybe he hadn't bothered her because she was on a mission right then, too.

Sean cleared a space in front of him for the plate December held. Hannah did the same, and asked for another beer for whenever December got the chance.

Hannah stared at her burger, then at Sean who'd already moved on from the conversation to tackle his food, and then at the mirror across from her.

She'd been behind him on his bike for eight-plus hours, and not once had she been anxious to get off for any reason
besides
the fact that his driving was frightening. She didn't really mind his proximity. She didn't get upset if he touched her without asking.

She didn't care that his Cougar energy was invading her personal space, and the more he relaxed, the more it made her inner beast sit up and pay attention to him.

The goddess had said that she was for him, but maybe the reverse was just as true and he was for
her
.

She didn't know what to do with that idea, or if she even
should
do anything with it, assuming it wasn't garbage.

They'd already cut each other loose, agreeing not to get in each other's way, and she'd said she'd find him someone else. That was the bargain she'd made.

Maybe it was a bad one. Unfortunately, she had no frame of reference to know if it was. Her longest relationships up to that moment had been two dates each, and she'd never responded to the requests for third dates from the few who'd wanted them. She just hadn't liked being around those men, and had assumed there was something wrong with her if she felt that way about all of them.

She didn't know if what she was feeling was right. She just knew that for once, it didn't feel completely wrong.

“Well, you're gonna have a hell of a time getting up in the morning.” Sean hitched Hannah up so she stood a little straighter and waited for her to find her balance. It took a few seconds.

They were walking at a pace that felt like twenty feet an hour. He knew drunks like Hannah, but they were all men. They could be hammered, and still
look
sober until they had to get somewhere. Then it became quite obvious that they had liquor sloshing where there brains had once been.

“I don't get hangovers. I get even.” She cleared her throat and puffed up her chest.

Sean had to clap his hand over his mouth to stifle the laugh. He didn't want to get her angry. She was shaky enough as it was.

“Are you going to be sick?” she asked. “If you are, turn your face that-a way.” She made a swirling motion with her finger and finally pointed to the street to their left. “Don't barf on my shoes, cat.”