Here Kitty, Kitty! (19 page)

Angie swung her legs off the table and sat up.  “What?  Why?”  Christ, her nipples hardened at the mere mention of the man.  Was that sort of thing even normal?

“I’m guessing he was worried about you.  You can get pretty scary after one of those out-of-the-blue calls from your parents.  Me and Sara used to call those your ‘episodes.’  Of course, if he’s worried that means only one thing…”

“Shut up, Kendrick.”

“Someone’s in love.”

“Shut.  up.”

“I haven’t had a chance to add shifters to the List.  You could get him in under the wire.”

“Would you let it go?”

“I could… but where’s the fun in that?”

Angie sighed and ran her hand through her hair.

“So, Santiago…”

“What?”

“You like him?”

She shrugged, “I don’t
dislike
him.”

“Well, for you that’s almost marriage.”

“Very funny.”  She wanted this conversation to stop.  Now.  “Look, could you put Zach on?”

A long pause followed that request.  “Why?”

Angie let out an annoyed sniff.  “Just put the man on, would you please?”  Good a time as any to let someone at least remotely sane know about the proposed truce and the truth about Sara’s mother. 
Especially
the truth about her mother.  Sara never knew her mother and her father worshipped his mate.  So all Sara ever heard were the good things about her.  Finding out the woman and her lioness buddy went after hyena territory like Donald Trump with a little Gambino Mob family thrown in for color wouldn’t be easy to get across to her friend.  They’d murdered her, at least that was how it seemed.  They weren’t human when they did it, but they’d hunted down and murdered the Matriarch of the Leucrotta Clan…and Dianne Leucrotta’s mother.  Who killed the lion and who killed the wolf afterward, no one really knew.  But Kylie Redwolf’s hunger for territory put her on that path and everything fell apart from there.

So Angie needed Zach’s perspective, his calm demeanor…

And his ability to physically hold Sara down when she snapped.

***

Angie found Nik’s note tacked to the inside of the front door.  “Had to go into town for business.  Try and stay out of trouble.  My brothers are around somewhere, so you’re not alone.  And please feel free to put on another pair of shorts for when I get home.  –Nik.”

She smiled as she thought about Nik’s eyes on her last night at the party.  He did seem to like her legs, especially when she wrapped them around his neck.

The knock at the front door caused her to jump back three feet.  She took a deep breath.  When did she become such a jumpy mess?

“Yeah?”

“It’s us, Angie.”

Well, now she had a Carolina “us” and a Texas and California “us.” 
How cool am I?

She opened the door to find Kisa there.  “Hey.  What’s up?”

“Nothin’.”

Angie stared at the woman.  “You wanna go shoppin’, don’t ya?”

Kisa crinkled up her nose in an adorable way,  “Yes, please.”  She stepped back and motioned to Reena.  “We brought daddy’s pickup.  The real big one.”

“Why?”

“For all the clothes!”

Angie grinned, “Of course.”

***

Nik never understood why his father insisted on doing business like this.  Sitting in a restaurant and signing important contracts between orders of chitlins and pigs feet.  What made this time worse…his father seemed to have an agenda.

“So, boy, are you taking care of your little house pet?”

“Don’t call her that, she’s completely safe at my house, and I’m not having this conversation with you.”

“You can’t play with this one, ya know.  She’s special.  There’s something about her that says she’ll happily kill you in your sleep.”

Nik smiled, even while he kept his head over the paperwork in front of him.  “You like her.”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t
dislike
her.”

“Hell, boy, for you that’s marriage.”

“I thought we were here to work?”

“Don’t blow this by being a chump.  A woman like that comes along once in a lifetime.”

He sure hoped so.  He didn’t think he could handle more than one Angelina Santiago.  Face like an angel.  Body like a demon.  Mouth like a Bronx trucker.

But he never planned on keeping her.  He wasn’t his father.  At least, he kept reminding himself of that over and over again.  But still… a woman who practically snaps your neck when she’s coming, was
not
a woman you tossed aside easily.

“Look, old man, I refuse to discuss my life with you.  Now or ever.  So let it go.”

“All right, if you want your future slippin’ away from you cause you ain’t got no sense…”

“
Why can’t you be normal
?”  Nik didn’t mean to bark it, but his father’s pushing had finally gotten the best of him.  “Why can’t you be like everybody else?  Have yourself more than one female.  Have yourself twenty!  Why are my brothers, my brothers?  And not my half brothers?  The only ones who should be from the same mother is Kisa and Aleksei because they’re twins.”

“Being normal is boring.”  His father looked around at the greasy diner he always insisted on going to.  Full of shifters, mostly tigers but a few Pack and Pride, they all openly stared.  Most likely hoping for a full-on fight between the old tiger and the younger one.  Old tigers never went down quietly.  “These people are boring.  Your Momma, though…that woman has never been boring.  Crazy.  Mean as a snake.  Snobby as all hell.  But never borin’.”

“And what makes you think Angelina is never boring?  Right now she’s back at my house reading
Vogue
…again… and whining about how there’s no TV.  Does that sound interesting to you?”

“Really?”  His father nodded toward the window.  “Isn’t that her in one of my pickup trucks?”

Nik’s head snapped around.  Sure enough, Angie—most likely one of the most dangerous drivers in the Carolinas from what she’d told him—was behind the wheel of his father’s Chevy dually pickup.

“And ain’t that your sisters next to her?”

He rubbed his eyes. 
I leave the house for five goddamn minutes and all hell breaks loose
.

“See, boy?  Never borin’.”

***

“What do you think?”

Angie sipped her champagne.  She debated whether to be kind.

Nah
.

“I wouldn’t, hon.”

“Really?”

“It makes ya look dumpy…and fat.”

The lioness turned and stormed back to the dressing room.

Reena, a little tipsy on all that champagne, stretched out on the couch.  Her head rested against Angelina’s side and Angelina felt the urge to toss her off the couch.  But she didn’t have the heart to be so bitchy.  Not today.

“You know, Santiago, you should feel damn proud of yourself.”

“Oh?  And why’s that?”

“Because this is the first time Fallons Department Store ever had tigers, lions, she-wolves, a couple of cheetahs, and a few bears all in the same place without beatin’ the hell out of each other.”

“I thought these places were neutral ground for you shifter types.”  She liked this place.  It reminded her of Neiman Marcus or Bloomingdales.  Big, spacious, with all the great designers.

“They are.  Humans shop here, but it’s run and owned by shifters.  Still, we can usually smell each other.  And the lions stay away from the tigers.  The hyenas away from the lions.  Etcetera, etcetera.  This is the first time that I can recall this level of inter-mingling.”

“How many of these stores are there?”

“All over the states and Europe.”

“Cool.”  Maybe she could drag Sara’s ass to one close to the Pack den and get the woman some hot clothes without the Harley-Davidson logo on it.  “I find out something new everyday.”

Kisa sat on the couch, “Like what else?”  The more she talked to her, the more Kisa opened up.  Like a turtle sticking her head out of her shell.

“Well, I had no idea Manolo Blahnik made size thirteen shoes.”

“Well, they don’t make them openly.  But the bears and wolves have huge feet,” Reena whispered.

“We heard that!”

Angie stood up, laughing as Reena’s head slammed against the couch.  “Sorry.”

She headed off toward the bathroom, stopping several times to dissuade two women to never wear orange again and to urge a wolf to consider waxing her brow into two distinct ones.

She reached the bathroom, her hand on the door, when her hackles raised off her neck.  She remembered feeling that way before.  When she turned around to find a hyena female standing behind her outside her shop.

Angie turned slowly.  A different female stood behind her this time, but a hyena just the same.

The woman didn’t speak, but she bared her fangs.  A whole mouth full of them.  Little, needle-sharp fangs that could easily tear the flesh from Angie’s body.

What a pleasant thought.

The hyena took a step toward her and Angelina tensed her body, ready to start hurting anything that got near her.  Most normal people would run.  But Angie didn’t run unless someone told her too.  Otherwise she stood around and started swinging.  Since neither Sara nor Miki were there to tell her to run that meant one thing…

“Is there a problem, Angelina?”

Sahara Lyon stepped around the corner.  A wolf female beside her.

“We thought we smelled somethin’ funky,” the She-wolf grumbled.  “So we decided to come check.”

The hyena female stared at Angie.  She knew that look.  The look of someone desperate to kick the living shit out of her.  She’d seen it more than once over the years.  And Angie bet her face mirrored the exact same sentiment back to the hyena.  She could almost taste the beating she’d planned to give her.  She could practically feel the flesh and bone give as she laid into her.

“What will you do,” Angie whispered.  “So close and yet you just can’t get near me.”

The female took another step toward her and Angie thought she might have goaded the dumb bitch into a fight.  But to Angie’s eternal surprise, Kisa stepped in front of her.  Big tiger fangs bared.  She opened her mouth wide, a tiger growl ripping through the store.

Angie glanced at Sahara who shrugged in mutual surprise.

Kisa grabbed the woman by the throat, yanked her close, and then threw her.  The hyena flew over several racks and into a few other hyena females.  Racks hit the floor, glass broken, clothes damaged.  Angie winced. 
Well this is gonna cost
.

The hyenas picked up her challenger, not even stopping to brush the glass off, quickly moving off toward the escalators as Kisa walked back to Angie.  “I think I’m going to get that blue dress I tried on.”

“You do that, Kisa.  It looks really good on you.”

The tigress walked off.  Angie glanced at Sahara.  “Okay.  She’s a little scary.”

“A little?”

***

Nik stood on Main Street next to his brothers.  “When did you first see ‘em?”

“Just today.”

Male hyenas.  Weak, subservient bastards.  Probably from one of the Raleigh Clans.

Nik watched them skulking down the street.  Trying to fit in.  But every shifter in town watched them walk by.  And smelled that they didn’t belong.  Hyenas didn’t live this far away from a city.  And that really wasn’t very surprising.  One breed at a time they’d happily fuck with, which was easy enough to do in a town like New York or San Francisco.  But two, three, six breeds all managing to live together in a small town in the middle of nowhere?  No.  Hyenas stayed near the big cities where they felt safer and could do more damage, steering clear of the small shifter-filled towns.

“What do you want us to do?”

“Do what the South is famous for.  Run their asses out of town.”

His brothers grinned.

Chapter Thirteen

Nik threw open his front door.  “
Angie
?”

“Kitchen.”

He froze. 
Kitchen
?

He walked toward it with trepidation, but as he neared, he smelled food.  And it smelled really good.

He walked in.  Angie sat at the kitchen table, her feet up on the sturdy wood.  The latest copy, he assumed, of
Mademoiselle Magazine
open on her lap.  The relief he felt at seeing her safe practically knocked him back out the door.  When his brothers pointed out the hyenas in town, he immediately thought the worst.  And seeing female wolves and lions hanging out in front of Fallons Department Store just confused him.

“What’s that smell?”  He liked that he didn’t have to start every conversation with the usual pleasantries.  In fact, he got the feeling Angie hated pleasantries.

“My kick-ass spaghetti with meat sauce.”

“You can cook?”

She glared at him, “Yes.  I can cook.  I often choose not to, but I
can
cook.”