The Cougar's Trade (6 page)

“Got it. You’ll be at the meeting this weekend?”

“One or both of us.” Tito eased off his stool, too. He held out his hand to Miles again and gave hers another one of those jiggly shakes. “Hang in there,
señorita
. He can be tolerable when he wants to be, and he knows it’s in his best interest to not be a complete
cabrón
, not if he wants to keep you, anyway. More than enough Cougars around who wouldn’t mind picking up the mess he makes.”

“Sloppy seconds?” She wasn’t sure whether or not she was supposed to be flattered.

“No, no, no, nothing like that. When
La Bella Dama
leads a Cougar to a woman, it’s because there’s something about her that would make her a good mate. Usually works out that if she’s good for one Cougar, she may be good for another. A lot of Cougars will fight for a chance to see if it’s them.”

“Hypothetically, you mean.” She couldn’t imagine anyone fighting for her besides Ellery and Hannah. She tamped her straw against the countertop and freed it from its paper wrapping. “There’s no shortage of women, you know.”

“No, but definitely a shortage of women fit to raise Cougar children. It’s not an easy job. In fact—”

“You were heading out,” Hank said. “Figured you had somewhere to be, so maybe you oughtta get moving.”

Miles looked from stoic Hank to narrow-eyed Tito. She didn’t need to be a Cougar to feel the tension simmering between the two of them. Tito had obviously pushed one of Hank’s buttons, and she was dying to know what it was.
What was Tito going to say?

Tito tossed a twenty-dollar bill onto the counter and sucked his teeth at his Cougar glaring superior. “That’s the problem with you
gringos
. All this cloak-and-dagger shit when you can just lay it out in simple terms. Doesn’t have to be so fuckin’ secretive, you know? Shit. Either she wants you or she don’t. Tell her the whole truth,
ése
. Tell her what being Cougar means. Tell her what being your mate would mean, should she be foolhardy enough to take on the challenge of dealing with your ass on a daily basis.” He looked at Miles. “I doubt you are, though. You’re not the hasty sort, are you, itsy-bitsy?”

She smiled at the silly name. “No. I have enough natural selection strikes against me already. I’m not impulsive.”

“Tell her the whole truth,
ése
,” Belle said to her brother. “All at once, not piecemeal. Especially the part about how you don’t get another—”

“Belle,” Hank spat.

“Keep your secrets, then. Two weeks from now, I’ll mourn you being cursed. Then two weeks after that, I’ll come around to thinking that maybe you had it coming to you for being so dense. Maybe it’s a good thing you won’t procreate.” She grinned and looked to Miles. “Know what you want to eat?”

Tito waved a dismissive hand toward him and strode to the door muttering in Spanish under his breath. Tiny gave a little bow and a mock salute before following.

As usual, Hank’s expression gave nothing away except the slight tinge of hostility he’d been carrying all morning. His gaze shifted from the retreating Cougars back to Miles, and Miles looked at the menu before sliding it to Belle, unable to hold the intense stare.

She’d met Rottweilers that were more approachable.

“Surprise me?” she said to Belle. “Something with chicken, maybe. Something lower in iron.”

“You got it.” Belle headed into the kitchen, casting a glare at Hank over her shoulder.

Sighing, he slipped off his stool and moved to the one Tiny had vacated. He pushed the dirty plates away and entwined his fingers, staring at the shelves full of dishes and condiments behind the counter. “The whole truth, huh?”

“I tend to prefer it to the alternative, even when it doesn’t seem so kind at first,” Miles said.

He twirled his thumbs and glanced behind him, probably to see who was looking and listening. The diner was clearing out. Given it was approaching two o’clock, most folks probably needed to be back at work. “How much did Ellery tell you about Cougar mating?”

Miles let out a breath and rubbed her eyes. “Um. Some, but not all. And your mother wasn’t very clear on why Cougars do what they do, either. She said it was your job to explain, and even when you did, it probably still wouldn’t make much sense.”

“I imagine it wouldn’t to outsiders. Tito was right about one thing, though.”

The cloak-and-dagger part, she assumed.

“Raising shapeshifter kids isn’t easy. There’s no such thing as laid-back parenting when your kid is half animal and tends to think like one when his hormones are out of whack.”

“And you think I can’t cut it.” A statement, not a question. She was used to people doubting her. She’d gotten so she’d expected it. No one ever thought she’d amount to much because she wasn’t loud enough, wasn’t forceful enough, but she always managed to eke by. She could never say she didn’t try. It wasn’t enough just to want something if she wasn’t willing to put the work behind it, even if it meant she had to work twice as hard as everyone else to prove herself.

“It doesn’t really matter.” He shrugged. “I can’t have Cougar kids with anyone except my mate, and apparently that’s supposed to be you. To be honest, the sort of mother you’d make is the least of my problems with this pairing.”

She ground her teeth and let her foot tap the stool’s rung. She’d never had anyone suggest she’d make a bad mother. Even if she didn’t have one herself, she
knew
what the job entailed, and she’d be damn good at it because she had something to prove. “So what does this mean? You’ll cut me loose? Return me to the life I left in North Carolina and hope I can get my job back?”

“No, for one thing, whether I think you’re suitable for this or not, I don’t get a second chance for a mate. I wasn’t even
ready
to take a mate, but here we are. Second, I can’t just cut you loose, because that would be a kind of suicide for me. I have to try to make this work or I’m screwed. Do you understand that?”

“What difference does it make if I do? You’re hostile toward me, and me understanding the circumstances isn’t going to cure you of your assumed futility.”

“Chew on this.” He put his elbows on the countertop and locked his narrowed gaze on her. “Right now, being a Cougar in our glaring is a dangerous thing. In spite of so many people wanting to come together, there’s a lot of turmoil. There are men who don’t think my brother should be alpha and constantly challenge him on it. There are some Cougars who’d try to weaken the leaders by targeting their families—their kids, their mates. We need to not be disrupted so easily, and there’s not always going to be someone around to fight your battles.”

She dropped her straw into her water cup and swirled the ice, watching the miniature floes bob on the surface. She listened to the quiet crackling of carbon dioxide making its way out of the solid cubes and waited for him to say something that wasn’t predictable.

“Do you have anything to say?” he asked quietly.

“I’m not really sure if there’s anything to say at all. You don’t trust me, don’t want me, and you’re stuck with me for…what? Two weeks?”

“That’s how long you have to decide you want to stay. Obviously, I’m not so inclined to send you away immediately. If you don’t stay,
La Bella Dama
makes me a cat for good until you change your mind.”

“Your punishment for not being a good enough man for me. For not accepting her blessing and doing enough to convince me that my place is with you.”

“So you know that part.”

“You may hold your tongue, but your mother doesn’t always. You had to know that she would tell us some things in a month.”

“Because she probably cares more about you than she does me at this point, but anyway. I know you’re just biding your time. I don’t think you’ll run, but you’ll wait it out, huh?”

Congratulations. You’ve pegged me.

She leaned back as Belle slid a platter in front of her. Simple, good food. Roasted turkey and sides. Looked delicious, and normally, she would have dug right in, but her appetite had bottomed out the moment Hank decided to talk.

She picked up her fork and twirled it idly between her fingers.

“What’s wrong?” Belle asked. “Did I pick wrong?”

“No, you didn’t.” Her goddess did, though. She’d just been the afterthought in the trio with Ellery and Hannah, and it was getting harder for her not to feel bruised by it.

“I think you need some chocolate cake. Be right back.”

Miles could see Hank in her periphery straightening up and grabbing his own fork.

He was still looking at her. Watching her. The malice from minutes prior was gone and replaced with some other thing she couldn’t quite make out. Resignation? Hopelessness?

Must have been an awful way to feel, being between a rock and a hard place. Well, actually, she knew all about that. Had been squeezed there so many times before herself.

She hadn’t always had good choices, but she’d always had chances, even when they were hard to take. When she was a freshman in college, Ellery offered a chance to Miles when she’d wanted to drop out—when her scholarship turned out to not be enough. Ellery had quietly paid Miles’s tuition for second term using her savings. “Because it doesn’t hurt me, and it helps
you
,” she’d insisted when Miles asked why she did it.

Looking back on it, it wasn’t a whole lot of money. Miles had paid it back with interest long before that inheritance hit her bank account, but it had taught her that small sacrifices sometimes made big differences. And she didn’t have to be friendly with someone to help them.

Miles set down her fork and straightened it so the tines were perfectly parallel with the counter edge. “You might think I’m strange for this, but that’s fine. I’ve always been a bit of an odd duck for the way I think, but I don’t know any other way to be. I have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“You don’t have to like me. I don’t have to get attached to you. That doesn’t mean I can’t help. Funny how honesty makes people want to do that.”

He furrowed his brow and pulled his spine ramrod-straight. “What are you saying?”

“I’ve become very good at figuring out ways to minimize drama. Not every problem needs to explode into a huge ordeal.”

“You have a solution to this, then?”

“Mm-hmm. I think I do.” She stared at the lush, dark chocolate frosting on the cake Belle set down. “The clock’s off, Hank. You’ve got yourself a mate. That is, unless going about it this way is explicitly against the rules. I imagine this could be considered cheating.”

It seemed to take him a moment to process what she said. His forehead furrowed and he formed silent words with his lips, but he said nothing for maybe a minute. “What just happened? Did you…just…”

She forced on a smile before digging into the cake she wasn’t in the mood for. “I guess I did. Don’t thank me yet. Thank me in two weeks when you have proof it worked.”

“It’s a favor. I’ll repay you for it.”

Of course he would. Hank cut deals every day of his life, probably, and this was just one more business transaction for him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I honestly don’t know.” But maybe she did. Deep down.

When she looked at how happy Ellery was with Mason, and everything Ellery had gained from saying
yes
, Miles wondered what she could possibly get, too. The family she’d never had, perhaps? A place to belong?

She wanted a clan—to be folded in like Ellery and to belong to a group that respected her. And perhaps, more selfishly, she wanted to be looked at the way Mason looked at Ellery when he thought she wasn’t looking. He revered the woman, and he
needed
her. Miles wanted to know what that felt like. She doubted she ever would, though, and certainly not with Hank.

“I’ll let you know. We’ll figure out an equal trade.” She slipped some cake between her lips, but tasted nothing.

She needed to figure out just how much her end of the bargain was worth.

Hank led Miles down Main Street, considering his words carefully. She was doing him a huge favor, and the least he could do was act like he appreciated it. He knew he hadn’t done a great job back at the diner, but he hadn’t known what to say. Still didn’t.

Although stunned, he’d known Miles’s words were truth the moment they came out of her mouth. Skepticism was one of his favorite pastimes, but there was no room for doubt as far as his curse was concerned. It was like a heavy log had been lifted from his shoulders and tossed away, only to be replaced by some other burden. Not a curse, but a debt. He didn’t know what he could possibly give her besides his protection, and really, he had no choice in that.

He needed to stick to her like glue until his scent stuck. That could take days, or even weeks, but once she took on a bit of his essence, no Cougar in his right mind would approach her because she’d smell
taken
. She’d smell like a Foye, and Foyes didn’t lose fights. That didn’t stop people from picking them, but most thought twice. He’d worry about the other ones later.

“Listen,” he said, turning to her in time to catch her flinch.

Gods, she does that every time I open my mouth.

He kept moving backward, checking behind him on occasion to not run afoul of one of his hometown’s charming little sidewalk sinkholes. “I need to follow up on the situation from last month and see if I can shake down any new leads about where the Sheehans might be hanging out.”

She nodded slowly and rotated one of her pearl studs, not meeting his gaze. If she had been Cougar, he might have found her averted gaze disrespectful, but he was used to it. He sure as shit wasn’t going to chastise her about something half the glaring did.

“You still think they’ll come back after their part in hurting Ellery?”

They rounded the corner onto Third Street, and he turned to face forward. “I don’t know,” Hank said. “Part of me feels like they’re stupid enough to try it—to expect that bygones will be bygones and that we can forgive and forget.”

“Cougars don’t hold grudges?”

“We hold them just fine.” Better than anyone, in Hank’s case. “The thing is, the Sheehans have been in our glaring for almost as long as the Foyes, and there are some vocal members of the group who would suggest that we put aside our differences for the overall well-being of the group.”