Weremones (6 page)

“I wouldn’t know. I didn’t exactly stay long enough to ogle him.”

Liar. She’d done plenty of ogling. Then she’d run like a scared rabbit.

Diana’s stomach muscles tightened. Behind the shower curtain where Karen couldn’t see, she ran a finger over the slight roll in her belly. Like a man, or a sexy werehunk like Adam Weis, would be interested in a single mom nearing middle age with the ability to soak up other people’s emotions like a sponge.

She’d gone stark raving loony when she’d bumped into her tall blond knight in sweatpants. By the time she’d pulled into her own driveway, Diana had decided she’d acted like an idiot. Whatever he was, he’d definitely rescued her last night.

She had a lot of the details muddled. But she clearly remembered the coyotes’

bloodlust. Diana was reasonably sure those coyotes weren’t normal. Then there were the two wolves that had leaped over her. Which two boys had interceded for her?

“You’ve met Adam Weis?”

Diana pulled back the curtain to look at her daughter. Her nerves skittered at the thought of her pretty, innocent daughter involved with a group of werewolves. Or was that a pack?

Okay, Diana was sure her daughter wasn’t quite as innocent as she wanted to believe. But hey, sometimes a mom had to go with the fantasy or go insane with worry.

“Uh-huh.” Karen nodded her head. “I see him in the school office sometimes. He’s, like, a foster dad to the guys. Remember how they used to come over?”

Karen had the optimistic cheerfulness and sexy athleticism required of all cheerleaders her age. She bounced up gracefully to stand. Her curly ponytail danced with the motion.

“Yeah. Neat.” Diana agreed in a flat voice. “I remember them.”

Watching Rick change from a wolf to a boy wasn’t something she was likely to forget anytime soon. She’d thought they were
dogs
? Diana frowned at her own naiveté.

Pouring shower gel onto the squishy scrubber, she squeezed the thing until suds overflowed her hands.

“Bradley, Brandon, Mark, Seth, and Rick. You used to drag them home for dinner nearly every night. That’s kind of hard to forget.”

“Uh-huh.” Karen’s cheerful tone faltered. She picked backup her perky tone again. “The football coach says that he wishes he had those boys on the team.”

“Which ones?”

“Bradley and Brandon.” Karen picked up the nail pick from the silver vanity tray of colorful polishes and fingernail files. “Bradley, definitely. Our school would go all the way if he was team captain.”

Diana didn’t doubt it. Bradley Starr was one intense kid and the uncontested leader of the little group that had hung out at her house. She wondered how Adam Weis fit into the group dynamics. There was bound to be some friction between a new father figure in the house and a teenage boy feeling his way to manhood. That was something Diana knew a little about.

“So, why don’t they play football? I imagine they’d be good.”

Actually, the idea of a werewolf quarterback was kind of scary. Maybe it was a good thing the Starr twins had passed on sports.

Karen turned a noisy, distracted circle around the small bathroom. Diana retreated to use her scrubber in private.

“I don’t know. Maybe they don’t like sports.”

Karen didn’t sound convinced of her statement.

“They’re usually in trouble about one thing or another. That’s why Mr. Weis is in and out of the school office so much. “

Diana peeked around the curtain to see a secret smile hover around Karen’s lips.

Her eyes sparkled.

“Bradley’s in my Chemistry class.”

Chemistry. Oh, joy. This keeps getting better and better. Not Biology, please.

Diana frowned. Bradley, young and hunky, was definitely the focus of her daughter’s fantasies.

Ouch.
Diana didn’t even want to go there.

“Mmm-hmmm” Karen leaned back against the door again, oblivious to the robe she dislodged. It fell to the floor in a soft terry pile.

Diana didn’t really want to talk about the boys. She needed to
think
. And she definitely had reservations about her daughter and a werewolf.

“They seem like nice enough kids.” Diana kept her tone carefully light. “But you know, you don’t really need any trouble.”

“Well, they’re not really bad—and it’s usually just the younger ones. Bradley has the tortured, brooding hero aura mastered.”

Karen wrapped her arms around herself and hugged tight. Her features took on a dreamy faraway stare.

“Got that whole Heathcliff thing going on, huh?” Diana asked.

Karen wrinkled her nose.

“Gah. Literature. Nope, more like Angel.”

Diana glanced up from scrubbing her foot.

“Angel?”

“You know? Tall, pale, and sexy. The vampire detective.”

Vampires? What vampires? There were vampires too?

Diana stared, clueless, sponge poised midair. Karen rolled her eyes.

“
David Boreanaz.
Jeez, Mom. Someday, you’re going to have to cut loose and watch more TV than just the news. Go out on a date or something.”

“Hey! I get out.” Diana feigned outrage.

“Right. Work, the grocery store, various school functions featuring
moi
.”

Karen’s chiding tone brightened. Mischief danced in her brown eyes.

“But things are looking up. You spent the night with Mr. Weis.”

“Karen!” Diana poked her head around the shower curtain.

Her daughter sniggered.

“That’s enough, young lady. Besides, I want you to be careful. Those boys aren’t like us. They’re
different.
”

She pinned her daughter with a significant look, using the scrubber to make her meaning clear.

“Or Mr. Weis either.”

The force of Karen’s shock made Diana flush. Indignation rolled from her daughter. In the cooling water, Diana felt small, petty. Or was it her hot skin that suddenly made the water cooler?

Karen stood with her hand on the door, the picture of an outraged teen. Diana felt smaller still.

“Mother! I can’t believe you said that. Like this house is
normal
.”

Karen jerked the door open in a huff. Her ponytail swung madly. She stopped.

Her eyes had a familiar vague look. Her voice was cool and distant with the gift of precognition.

“You might want to hurry up, Mom. Grandma Ridley is about to call.”

Karen shut the door behind her and sure enough, the phone rang. Diana finished rinsing off, fortifying herself to talk to her ex-mother-in-law, who would no doubt be calling on Matthew’s behalf, again. Richard’s mother believed that Matthew should be living with his father, going to a university college in a bigger and better town. Not living with his strange mother and sister in a nothing town like Palestine and its community college annex.

Diana dismissed Mrs. Ridley from her thoughts. She’d always be at odds with that woman.

She focused on her newest pack of issues.

Karen was right, and not just with her psychic telephone predictions.

What right did Diana have to judge a household of werewolves, when she, an empath and her psychic daughter had their own weird set of problems?

She was an idiot all right. A paranoid, delusional idiot. That’s what she got for getting what little information she had on supernatural creatures from Jax, the randy gnome and a witch that did magical home security systems. Those two had her jumping at shadows.

Thinking back on this morning, Diana realized that she’d gone off the deep end big time. She owed him and his boys a big apology.

Mr. Weis had played Good Samaritan and saved her a big emergency room bill when all she’d had were a few bruises and scratches. Okay, a lot of scratches. And not getting eaten by coyotes was a big bonus. Was there a such thing as werecoyotes?

So, the boys were werewolves and after she woke up, the monster movie footage had gone straight to comic relief. Boys fight. That was a fact of life. No biggie if one of them had been a wolf at the time? Well a decent sized biggie since there was more room for bloodshed.

Diana covered her face with her hands and sank lower into the water. Adam Weis.

Oh, God. Had she actually kneed him in the …
nuts
? Water covered her head but she drowned in humiliation.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.

———

Monday night Diana checked her watch and pulled into the Kal-Mart Supercenter parking lot for a quick round of after work Dash-Through-the-Store.

She would have had more time if the darned computers at the insurance office hadn’t locked up. Diana didn’t know a server from a modem, but if that thing didn’t start working right, she was going to kick it right in its hard drive!

At least she didn’t hate her job. When she was young, Diana had wanted to go into business for herself, doing something fabulous like opening a small, romantic restaurant. She’d taken a few cooking classes and fancied herself an up-and-coming chef.

But then she’d met and married Richard and her plans took a backseat while he climbed the grocery store company ladder. He was a regional manager now and enjoyed the fruits of his labor.

For Diana, insurance wasn’t a bad way to earn a paycheck. It was an interesting business. She met all kinds of interesting people. It certainly beat the heck out of bagging groceries and flipping hamburgers.

She didn’t rely on anyone, especially her ex, The Dick, for help. He paid his dues for their two children. But sometimes Diana felt like she suffered for every dime he forked over, Karen and Matthew being the only worthwhile things from that union.

Diana wheeled the basket past the snack food aisle. Hers was a healthy household.

Despite her love of old fashioned comfort food, pre-packaged junk foods were on the forbidden list. They were full of preservatives and additives.

She bought exercise equipment periodically with every intention of working out.

After a few weeks, some family crisis blew away all of her plans. After that, she could never muster up the same enthusiasm for exercise. Said equipment slowly got carried out to the garage.

Yet another destructive pattern in her life. At least Richard the Dick was no longer around to heckle her about her lack of will power.

She sighed and tried to push away thoughts of her telephone confrontation with her son. He’d left her to the wolves,
literally
, in the park then run off to his dad’s without notice. Yes, he’d come home after she called. The apology for his lack of responsibility had been begrudging.

Too often of late, Richard’s expressions flowed from her son. He was eighteen years old. Did she really have to know where he was every second of the day? He was legally a man. And he’d be gone to college soon.
Geesh Mom. Get a life.

Diana had exploded and Matthew had driven off in an angry huff back to his dad’s. Later Richard had called with his usual accusations and insults.

Was she too controlling?

Diana didn’t know. In her house, she believed that her rules should be respected.

What was overbearing about that?

Should she ignore Matthew’s actions? Write them off as a phase? Let him sow his wild oats?

Matthew
should
have called back and told her that he’d gotten his car to start the other night. He
should
have come home at the appointed time instead of staying out.

She didn’t give a flying fig for his wild oats. If he wanted to stay at his dad’s, then fine. She would stay firm even if she felt like Matthew had defected to the enemy and ripped her guts apart. Diana wanted her son back home, but not at the expense of her pride. Richard had taken that away from her once before. She wouldn’t let him use her son to do it again.

———

Adam tossed a box of sugared rice puff cereal in the basket. He considered his choices, then grabbed a couple of boxes of the cocoa puffs too. The fruit crispies were good and the marshmallow kind always went over well with the boys. He remembered that Brandon liked the Apple O’s just as the scent of vanilla, citrus, and woman hit his olfactory and jolted through his body.

He usually ignored the bombardment of odors that came with a trip to the store.

But that particular scent seemed to have burned itself into his sensory memory, waking the wolf. Primal instinct, beast, whatever, that part of him that ran wild rose to shimmer under his skin. The wolf demanded release, demanded a hunt. Adam could no more deny the instinct that gripped him that any other physical necessity.

He tossed two boxes of the Apple O’s into the basket and followed the intriguing scent to its source. Because food was another necessity, the basket was not forgotten in his hunt.

There were all kinds of hunts. The hunt for food. Tracking for the adventure and curiosity. For play. Wolven did not need to kill in order to satisfy the need to hunt.

Hunting was about using their senses, to track and find what was needed at that moment.

At that moment the wolf needed to find the woman. The one who smelled soft and delicious. The female had bested him. That was unacceptable to the wolf. The man found it intriguing. Both parts of him wanted a rematch.

He stopped, cocked his head to one side, and watched her reach for a jar on the top shelf. She was short enough that she had to stand on her toes to reach. Every sense focused, his eyes riveted on the way her pants snuggled tight to her lush ass. Soft, full breasts strained against her blouse as she stretched her limit.

Adam swallowed and tried to take in a breath. The scent of her filled his nose. His body swelled and hardened. Damn, he had to get a grip. She’s just a woman. A human.

Not his kind.

She was a psychic and female. That made her fair game. That she resided in Adam’s territory made her his responsibility.

The wolf didn’t care about politics. The wolf wanted closer.

“Here, let me.” Adam reached up and grabbed a jar. He barely noticed the contents, olives.

She squeaked and bumped into him, giving him a chance to bury his nose in her hair. More soft female scent. Inside, the wolf howled in delight.

She turned, depriving him of her hair, but gracing him with the brush of her body.