The Cougar's Trade (11 page)

“That’s interesting.” That one eye closed.

“That’s usually what people say when they mean the exact opposite.”

“Mm-hmm.” She wasn’t really there. Autopilot. Nearly asleep. He had one mind—the cougar one—to nudge her and make her whisper some more to him in that sweet voice. The man part of him suggested he let her sleep so he could think in peace.

He scooted a little closer. She didn’t wake, didn’t stir, not even when he tucked his leg beneath hers.

Compromise.

Miles had never had a pet of any sort, so she wasn’t certain waking up to purring was typical for cat owners. Not that she could actually
own
Hank, but the principle seemed much the same. Own. Mate. Two different kinds of possession.

She must have nodded off while they were talking. Rude, but she’d needed the rest. She hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in a month. And maybe all that purring was what kept her asleep. Judging by the brightness in the room, it had to be after nine.

“Welcome to the land of the wakeful.”

Miles bolted upright at the sound of Mason’s voice, throwing the slumbering Cougar’s arm off her torso in the process.

Mason chuckled and put his feet up on the bed. He relaxed in a chair at the bedside, rubbing the stubble on his jaw.

Hank sat up. “Shit, man. Give me my spare house key back.”

“And then who’d come shake you awake when you’re sleeping like the dead? I swear, you and Nick are cut from the same cloth. You could probably sleep through a fireworks show.”

“What time is it?”

“Eleven fifteen. I was going to let you sleep, but Sean is trying to negotiate some sort of peace accord with Hannah, and we’ve got an order to get out this morning. Another boring shop day for Nick since Ellery’s at work. I guess the good news is he’s starting to get used to wearing the ear protection and doesn’t yank it off the moment I put it on him.”

“Might as well look on the bright side.” Hank stretched his arms over his head and popped a few cartilages in his shoulders and spine. The sound always made Miles shudder, but she’d certainly heard worse. There was nothing quite like the sound of a woman’s amniotic sac bursting. She was a neonatal nurse, but she had been gradually transitioning to the maternity wing in the past few months. As much as she loved babies, there was a certain satisfaction in supporting their mothers. Women in general, really. She liked imagining the world as a global village where they all cared for each other and watched each other’s back. She knew it wasn’t realistic, but the thought of it made her smile anyway.

Her motion seemed to pull her back into Mason’s consideration, as if he’d forgotten she was there. She suppressed a sigh. She would have preferred he didn’t remember. Didn’t want to know what he was thinking when he looked at her like that. He’d let himself into the house in that cat
I-own-everyplace
way, and mix that with his big-brother dominance and prerogative as alpha, she kind of felt like he could do whatever the hell he wanted. She just wished he’d have given her a little warning. She had to look like a reanimated corpse.

“Morning, Miles.”

She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and tried to smile.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be dropping in like this often. That’s really more of Sean’s bag. Ellery would strangle me if she knew I was here, but Hank didn’t answer his phone.”

Hank shrugged. “Battery is probably dead. Should have tried the house phone. Darnell called me in the middle of the night. I’ll tell you about it in the shop.” He tipped himself off the bed and padded toward the bathroom. Mason followed.

Miles kept her place in the bed, not certain what she should be doing, besides perhaps trying to get into Sean’s basement to talk to Hannah. That was pressing, but at the same time, she couldn’t get in Sean’s way. No one had ever been able to force Hannah to do anything. She needed time to come around, and to feel safe enough to do it.

Miles rolled her aching wrists and stretched her legs in front of her. Hank had gotten what he wanted, and it was time for her to demand something in exchange. Thinking in such terms was hard because she didn’t generally expect recompense for good deeds, but for the living statue, she’d have to make an exception. If she didn’t, he’d never respect her. He’d never see her as anything beyond someone to be pitied.

She could be greedy and demand her pound of flesh. She just needed to figure out what the Cougar could give her that she didn’t already have.

• • •

Miles had evidently been quiet for too long, because Glenda waved a gardening glove–covered hand in front of her face and said, “Yoo-hoo.”

“Huh?”

“Are you sure you don’t have a little bit of cat in you? You’ve been staring for a while. I had to check to see if you were still breathing.”

Miles chuckled. “No. No cat.” Who could fault her for staring? The view from the greenhouse was so nice. One moment, she’d been contentedly transferring tomato plants to larger pots and sprinkling dirt around, and the next, she’d been transfixed. Hank and Mason were loading large boxes into the transport company’s truck, and apparently that was a shirtless endeavor. She’d seen the man nude—had seen
all
of the men nude, actually—after shifting, but she’d been too polite to stare. Given her profession, she saw a lot of nude bodies, but very few were built like the Foyes. Tall and lithe, but muscled. Shifters in cowboy boots. There had to be a calendar for that. If not, someone could make a mint.

“I’m all right. Just thinking.”

“Uh-huh.” Glenda nodded and wore that sage expression Miles had become so familiar with in the past month. She resumed her scrutiny of her hothouse cucumbers. “How’d you sleep last night? I know Hank’s house is a mess. I can’t sleep in a mess.”

So I’m not the only one who thinks that
. She shrugged. “Slept okay, considering.”

“Nothing like sleeping in your own bed, huh?”

“That’s for sure. I had just started getting used to my bed back at home. I bought one of those adjustable-firmness beds a couple of months ago, and it took me three weeks to figure out I need a soft bed and a firm pillow. Kept waking up with a stiff neck.”

“Hope you didn’t have to sleep with Hank.”

Alarmed, Miles dropped the empty pot she’d been holding, and with burning cheeks, bent to pick it up.

Glenda laughed. “I really don’t want to know your bedroom business. I swear, I don’t, but I know how Hank sleeps. He keeps moving around until he gets into a comfortable spot, and then once he gets there, he won’t move in spite of who he’s displacing in the process. I didn’t mind the other kids piling into the family bed when they were little because they’re only little for so long, but I swear, I never did manage to roll off the bed without a few new bruises whenever Hank was in the mix.”

Maybe that explained the mystery bruise on Miles’s shin that hadn’t been there the day before.

Miles let out a long breath and reached for the bag of potting soil. “I…I told him I’d do what I could for him. He said it’d be easier to keep me safe if I had his scent, so, yes, I ended up in a Hank tangle overnight.”

“Well, the scent thing is true. It seems a very practical discussion to be having, though.”

Miles shrugged again and stole a glance at the truck. Hank and Mason were carrying out what looked like a mahogany headboard. Jamie sat on a stool in the shade, swinging her legs and supervising, apparently.

“I couldn’t think of a good enough reason to say no. I know I should probably be scandalized by the situation, but I think I got most of that out of the way last month. It’s hard to get up in arms about anything right now. I mean, what more could possibly happen?”

“You don’t feel like you’re living in the twilight zone? I certainly did. Took me years to really get integrated into it, but Floyd did try to keep me sheltered from the heaviest of the stuff for as long as he could. Then it was all unavoidable. You can’t have a healthy glaring if non-Cougar mates aren’t pitching in.”

“I don’t know. In a lot of ways, this feels a lot more normal than the way I grew up. I felt like a literary fiction trope—the unwanted orphan. Still do, sometimes.”

Glenda leaned against her table and crossed her arms over her chest. She nodded toward the truck in the distance. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about you girls accepting them. Of course a mother is going to worry. And I’m glad you’ve agreed to be his mate. I like being able to talk to my son when he’s got his human brain switched on and not that cat one. But I also have to admit I’m disappointed in your detached approach to this.”

This time, Miles set down the pot before she could drop it. “What? I would have thought—”

Glenda put up her hands. “You know, not every Cougar has a fated mate. I’d venture to guess that probably a quarter of the men in the glaring who’ve gone out on mate hunts on their own hoping for signs from the goddess came back empty-handed, and multiple times, too. My boys got lucky. I don’t know why their goddess would favor them so, but she did, and I’m thankful for it. This isn’t supposed to be a one-sided arrangement, though. That’s why they’re given a deadline. That’s why they’re given such an incredible incentive to treat their potential mates the way they deserve. By subverting that, you’re shortchanging yourself. You’re not giving him the impetus to fix the shit that’s wrong with him.”

Miles was surprised to hear such a thing coming out of her mouth. Hank was her son. She should have wanted this to be easy for him—or at least easier than Sean was getting it from Hannah at the moment.

“Why would you do that, Miles?”

“For one thing, I love Ellery like a sister, and I’m okay with uprooting myself to be near her. I don’t have anything holding me down in North Carolina, so being here isn’t the huge disruption you’d probably think it would be. Also, I felt bad for you. Working in a hospital, I’ve seen too many people lose children, and you can’t say having a big cat come by to visit is quite the same thing as having your son at your kitchen table. If I could fix that for you, I wanted to try.”

“Oh honey, let me get the Windex so I can polish your halo.” Glenda dragged her sleeve across her suddenly damp eyes. “So, you
weren’t
just being a pushover and letting him talk you into it, then.”

“No. He didn’t have to talk me into it at all, though I imagine if he’d tried, he wouldn’t have to try hard.”

“So, you
do
like him a little.”

Miles’s jaw flapped wordlessly a few beats, before she gave up on the protest. Why bother lying? “He’s a mystery to me…and maybe he’s not so bad to look at.”

“Ha. Wish I could take the credit. Red hair aside, the boys look like their father.”

Yeah, they do
. Miles had seen all the pictures. “I know I’m too laid-back when I should be guarded. I thought about it this morning—about what I could do now to make him work for it. I think he believes I’m a pushover and won’t stand up when the time is right.”

“Or he doesn’t understand that sometimes fighting back looks like different things.”

Miles nodded.

“What’d you come up with?”

“Not much. I keep starting and restarting the list in my mind. Maybe itemizing line items isn’t the way to go, but I feel like if I’m trading my compliance, I should get something just as valuable in exchange. I just don’t know what that would be.”

“What do you
want
?”

“I don’t know. Respect? To be taken seriously, maybe? I know that’s something I have to earn. I’m used to having to earn respect. People look at me and don’t expect much, and then they have to count on me for some reason and I always come through.”

“Perhaps what you need from him isn’t respect, then, but the freedom to earn it.” Glenda gave her chin a thoughtful rub and narrowed her eyes at the men behind the truck. “Cougar men hate being ignored. If I were you, I’d make myself very busy.”

“I get the feeling you don’t mean with tomatoes.”

“Nope.” Glenda slipped off her gloves and tucked them into the back pocket of her work pants. “You’re the second’s girl. Pick up the phone and call any Cougar woman at random. I guarantee you she’ll have something she’d like you to do. And I guarantee you, doing the job you’ve been thrown into is going to drive that son of mine absolutely nuts. Mark my words.”

Miles couldn’t stop her laugh from bubbling out. Could she possibly fluster that statue of a Cougar? “I can’t wait.”

Hank didn’t think anything was amiss when he saw Mom’s pickup kicking up dust on the way up the path. Sometimes she had to run errands midday that took her away from the ranch. Occasionally, she trusted Darnell and the other ranch hands to do what needed to be done without her constant supervision. But then he saw Mom climbing onto her four-wheeler alongside Jamie with the usual lunchtime cooler of drinks and a box of lunches for the hands out in the pastures.
If she’s on the four-wheeler, who’s driving the truck?

He hit the switch on the band saw, took off his ear protection, and tossed his safety glasses onto the bench.

“What’s wrong?” Mason called over the din of the rotary sander he was using to smooth the length of a banister.

“Maybe nothing. Be right back.” The moment Hank stepped outside, he took off at a sprint toward the four-wheeler.

“Mom!” he shouted before she could make it onto the path.

“What?”

“Who’s driving your truck?”

“Miles.”

“How?” And he didn’t mean that she shouldn’t have even been able to reach the pedals, though she likely was sitting on the edge of the seat to do it.

“I gave her back her license.”

The fuck?
“Why?”

“Because you need a license to drive.”

Maybe he wasn’t hearing her right. He closed the distance between the two of them and pressed his hands to the hood. “I don’t think we’re understanding each other.”

Mom gave him the slow-blink treatment. “I understand you just fine.”

“Did you forget why her license and phone were locked up in the first place?” It had been to
deter
any runaway attempts. She might have said yes, but Hannah hadn’t yet. In fact, Hannah wouldn’t let Sean anywhere near her, which didn’t bode well for his ticking clock.