The Cougar's Bargain (25 page)

She snapped her head toward the bathroom. Steven had the shower going and was singing some Mumford and Sons song—badly—so there was no way he could have heard the low murmurs from the bedroom. After all, he wasn't a Cougar.

“Are you going to bring that up all the time?” She snatched up the white socks and dropped her pile of clothes onto the foot of the unmade bed.

“Not my style. I just wanted to make sure you didn't think it was one of your nightmares, and that you knew I did it because I wanted to.”

“There wasn't anything nightmarish about it.” She fidgeted with the knot of the towel, looking at him, but given the faraway look to her eyes, he didn't think she actually
saw
him. He'd give everything he had to get into that woman's head and make sense of her. The harder he tried, the worse he seemed to be doing at it.

“I'm not mad.” Turning to the bed, she undid the knot, but seemed to think better of it. She looked at Sean.

“I'll go until you're done.”

She sidestepped him and put up a hand. “It's … fine. It's fine. I don't imagine you're seeing anything new.”

Right.
Apparently in her mind, all the bodies of the past just blurred together for him. It wasn't quite true, but if it made her comfortable to think it, he'd let her. Whatever it took for her to come out of her shell and move them forward rather than backward.

She moved back to the bed, drew in a shuddering breath, and let the towel fall. He let his gaze fall along with it. He watched her lift her feet for her panties, then her jeans. He didn't raise his gaze again until she turned and sat to put on her socks.

She tucked her wet hair behind her ears and cut a questioning gaze to him as she rolled one on.

“I don't always look, Hannah.”

“Why not?”

“Just because things are right in front of you doesn't mean you have to consume them.”

She stared at him for a long while, sock halfway applied, and lips parted soundlessly.

Steven turned the water off in the bathroom, and that change of sound seemed to jar her from her temporary stupor. She finished putting on the socks and found her shoes.

“You really think that?” she asked.

“I imagine it'd be the case for me and all my siblings. My mother tried hard to shape us into decent-enough people. We don't always act like it, but we do try.”

“So, you're telling me the ogling pervert thing is just to antagonize your brothers?”

“Only in part. I'm a cat. I'm a bit of a voyeur, but I try to keep the compulsion reined in.”

“Interesting.”

“People usually use that word in place of a less polite one.”

“No, I mean it. I …” She shrugged. “I don't really—”

Steven pulled open the bathroom door. “Can I have one of those towels? All that's left in here are those hand ones. I need a little more coverage than that.”

She rolled her eyes, wadded up both used towels, and carried them to the foyer. She tossed them into the bathroom and closed the door.

Returning to Sean with arms crossed over her chest and pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she furrowed her brow.

“Let me have it, blondie.”

“You left.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“No one ever said anything about it.”

“No one likes talking about it. Including me.”

“You went back because you had to.”

He shrugged. He couldn't deny it, and he wasn't going to lie. He was tired of pretending he'd ever been the perfect son and that the Foyes were the perfect family. They were good at keeping their shit behind closed doors. That was it. No one saw what happened behind the curtains.

Steven shuffled out of the bathroom, whistling that same song he'd been butchering in the shower. “I might not even need that cup of coffee. I've got an idea.”

“Why does that scare me?” Hannah asked.

“Have faith, little sister. If this scheme goes sideways, at least you'll be able to say it was all my fault.”

“You're going to let me throw you to the wolves?”

“Or Cougars, as it were.” He cut his gaze to Sean. “I'm not afraid of a few kitties.”

“You should be. Why are you handling this so well? You should be freaking out more.
I
freaked out the first time I saw them shift.”

“Maybe I've seen worse.”

“Like what?”

Steven's Adam's apple rose and fell with his hard swallow and his dark eyes took on a faraway look.

“Steven?”

He licked his lips and focused on her. “I've, uh … seen you in the mornings. That's probably worse.”

Sean didn't believe him. As far as he could tell, there was nothing hesitant about Steven Welch. Steven had seen
something
that had affected his idea of what was scary.

Apparently, Hannah wasn't going to press, though. She grabbed her bag from the dresser, and headed to the door.

Sean followed. What the hell else could he do but follow? He didn't see where he had a choice.

Hannah wasn't quite sure when she'd appropriated Sean's sunglasses as her own, but for the past hour they'd been sitting in the park in view of
Los Impostores'
house and business, debriefing Steven on all the funky supernatural shit he needed to know that could have impacted his plan. She'd been nudging them up her nose and paying no heed to the fact that she didn't
own
a pair of sunglasses anymore. They'd gotten broken during the campground scuffle and she hadn't gotten around to replacing them. And then she noticed, when she looked down at her lap to brush crumbs from her sandwich off her jeans, that the shirt she had on beneath the unzipped sweatshirt concealing her firearm wasn't hers either. Neither was the watch. She
had
a watch, but her watch was a white jelly thing, not a digital black monstrosity that with its slick little touch screen could probably be used to change the television channel … or detonate a Borg cube.

“Where's my watch?” she interrupted Steven's prattling to ask.

“What?”

She looked at Sean who looked back at her with a smirk. “My watch is white. This is …”

“Yeah, that's mine. I thought you were snatching my shit on purpose.”

“No. I don't remember doing it.”

“Cat thing, I guess. You see something you need, you take it without worrying about pesky human considerations like ownership.”

She took off the sunglasses and held them out to him. “Sorry.”

He shrugged. “I don't need them right now. Keep them. I don't have much, but you can have whatever I do have.”

“I can't just take your things.”

“I'm giving them to you. Let me.”

Her reflex was to thrust it back, in spite of what he said, because it'd become ingrained in her not to expect anything from anyone. She'd become so shitty at accepting small acts of kindness that she didn't know what to do with them.

She slid the sunglasses back on and stared at her lap. She couldn't hide her burning face, but she didn't have to look right at him. “It's still hard being out in bright light. My pupils are doing weird things, and dilating when they shouldn't be. Lola said the changes should start slowing down soon.”

“Who's Lola again?” Steven asked.

“The goddess who spawned the Were-cougars originating in Central America,” Sean said. “She's hiding in plain sight in our Cougar group—our
glaring
.”

“Right.” Steven whistled low. “If you ever tell our parents some crazy shit like that, they'd try to have you exorcized for talking in tongues.”

“And if that doesn't work, they'll suggest therapy,” Hannah said quietly.

Sean looked at Steven. “You seem to be handling the news of Hannah's life change well enough.” He probably couldn't have hidden that note of suspicion in his voice if he tried, and he didn't seem to be trying all that hard.

Hannah cut her gaze to Steven, glad the conversational focus was off her for the moment.

Steven twiddled his thumbs and made that slack,
I don't know nothin' about nothin'
expression he'd pulled on their mother with way too many times during childhood.

Hannah gave him a hard poke with her elbow. “Talk.”

“Shit. Look, I saw stuff overseas. If I'm not freaking out right now it's because I got probably eighty-five percent of the shock out of my system in a desert tent when I was stationed in the Middle East. If the IEDs didn't cause PTSD, the other shit did.”

“What kind of shit? You never said anything about it.”

“Who the fuck would have believed me? You would have thought I was stoned out of my mind. Dad would have been screaming at the VA trying to get me admitted somewhere, and I … I know what I saw, Hannah. I was pretty sure it was real.
More
so now.”

“I'll believe you. Tell me.”

“I …” Steven shifted a bit lower on the bench and wadded his sandwich wrapper between shaking hands. “I don't want to talk about that. Not now, okay?”

Sean gave her right knee a little squeeze and shook his head slightly. She got the hint—the implied
don't
. She understood his rationale, but at the same time, Steven needed to talk about it. The Welches were too damned good at internalizing instead of verbalizing. All those tiny fissures they had in their facades were eventually going to seep down to their foundations. They'd be dropped onto their figurative asses, all because they didn't take care when they were supposed to.

She reached over and squeezed his hands between hers. “Okay. What's this plan of yours?” She held on tight, knowing he didn't expect it. Knowing he wasn't used to it, because she wasn't either.

It took about a minute, but his hands stopped shaking and he straightened up on the bench a bit. “All right. You said those guys—uh,
Los Impostores
—had the tiniest footprint online. I think the very first thing you need to do is follow the trails to the people who've referred them and see what you can squeeze out of them.”

“They're not going to want to talk.”

“Maybe, maybe not. It's worth a try. If you incentivize someone enough, they'll tell you whatever you need to know. And you get to keep some distance from the entity you're investigating. You just have to decide what you're willing to give them.”

“Of course, we won't know that until we get them on the hook,” Sean said.

“Maybe they'll surprise you.” Steven freed his hands from Hannah's and bent to grab his laptop case from the sidewalk. “Of course, that doesn't excuse us from doing in-person engagement. I can do that. I'm not local. I'm not a shifter. I'm not recognizable. So, I can get close and ask questions without being suspicious.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Go right to their fucking door this afternoon and tell them their meter is reading an excessive use of water, and ask if I could come inside and check the connections for them. Being an LEO, I can get an official-looking fluorescent vest pretty easily if I call the right person.” He stabbed his computer's power button with his index finger.

“You're not working in an official capacity right now.”

“Little sister, even when I'm working in an official capacity, I'm not necessarily doing things by the book.”

“Don't tell Daddy that.”

“I don't tell him
shit
. We pass each other in the hallways at work, nod, and go about our ways.”

Hannah cut her gaze to Sean. He shrugged.

At least I'm not the only one feeling lost.

She gave his shoulder a bump with her own and rotated the looted watch a few twists. “How's that inner cat of yours this morning?”

He grunted. “Quiet for the moment. I won't be doing myself any favors if I shift again anytime soon. That, I can tell.”

“You shouldn't have shifted in the first place. Don't tell Mason. He won't yell at me if Ellery is around, but the moment she's not—”

“Hey. He's not gonna say a damn thing. I'm not gonna let him yell at you.”

“Oh.” All that blood rushed to her head again and made her feel a little swoony. A little more
speechless
. It was getting harder for her to have the last word when he kept stealing little bits of her sense the same way she was stealing his clothes and accessories.

She wasn't used to having anyone come to her defense, and she wasn't quite sure how to digest it. Her inner cat seemed to be feeling quite smug, though. Apparently, she found being taken care of in such a small way romantic.

She twirled the end of her braid, pondering that just long enough to discern that, yes, it
was
romantic and that she liked it. Not only that, she realized she'd given herself
permission
to like it.

Maybe there's something to the “fated mate” thing, after all.

Steven was busy typing away on his computer, so she turned her back to him and leaned in to Sean to whisper, “Tell me why you left.”

“Ugh.” He tipped his head over the seat back and rubbed his eyes.

She didn't push, but let him gather his thoughts. Very rarely did there seem to be any simple answers with situations concerning the Foyes. She already knew she and Sean had an uphill battle ahead of them. Their start had been such a contentious one, and a part of her was still afraid of him. Not of what he was, but of what he could do to her psyche. He was her first in so many ways, and would be in ways that were yet to happen, and she had no roadmap for navigating this part of her life. There was no one she could call to ask for advice. Her mother couldn't hold her hand through it, and her friends couldn't truly empathize with where she was. They'd never held themselves back from love, and for Hannah, it had practically been her
raison d'être
. She lived and breathed guardedness.