The Cougar's Bargain (4 page)

“Someone should apologize.”

“Who? I'll go out of my way to get you what you need if it'll start the healing process.”

She angled her face more toward him and her left cheek twitched. The one with the scars.

Shit.
Those were his fault. He should have done a better job of protecting her, even if she hadn't told him “yes.”

“Look, I'm not trying to put my foot in my mouth. Like I've told you time and time again, this isn't the way I would have gone about taking a mate. None of us were ready, but ignoring missives from our goddess is rarely a good idea. We did what she told us to.”

“To avoid a curse.”

He shrugged. “Can you really blame us? Maybe it would have been different if it were just one or two of us, but she sent all three of us out at the same time. Do you have any idea how much turmoil this ranch and the woodworking business would be in if all three Foye men had ignored her? Not to mention Nick not having a father anymore. Mason wasn't going to stand for that.”

Nick was Mason's one-year-old son. He was the product of a one-night stand, but much loved anyway. Mason had custody of him because Nick's mama was a flighty Were-coyote who sometimes forgot she had a baby.

The only reason survival of the fittest hadn't yet done away with the annoying Were-coyotes was they tended to be much more aggressive about building their numbers up than other shifter groups. Mason's conservative estimate of how many of the local Coyotes were born ones rather than made ones was about forty percent.

That mattered. Born was always stronger than made.

“I do get it,” Hannah said. “You did what you had to do.” She looked forward again and twiddled her thumbs atop her knees. “That doesn't mean I had to sit back and just accept it because
your
life was going downhill. Mine was … it … it was just
fine
before y'all snatched us up from that campground. You needed me more than I needed you.”

He knew it was true, so he didn't respond.

That hadn't been the case with Mason and Hank, though. Ellery and Miles would be the first to say now that they had been looking for fuller lives. For a while, Sean and Hank hadn't been able to tell which woman was meant to be whose, beyond the fact that Ellery was obviously Mason's. It had seemed logical that Hank be the one charged with gentling Hannah because he was probably the most hard-ass of the Foye brothers. Miles had a more cheerful disposition, and was more tolerant of Sean's stupid jokes. But, when it came to Hannah and Miles, the
obvious
choices weren't the right ones.

If Miles was right for Hank, then it followed that Hannah was right for Sean. Damned if he knew how, though.

Seeing as how the goddess lived in town, he had one mind to just ask her himself … as soon as he got out of his basement.

He lay back and entwined his fingers behind his head. “Well. I'm sorry, anyway. I'm sorry for being so scared of losing myself to a curse that I kidnapped you. I'm sorry from cutting you off from your work and your family. I'm even sorry you got turned against your will, because none of us wanted that for
any
of you. We didn't want mates at all. Not yet.”

“Well, now you've got them.” She said it so quietly, that if he hadn't had a Cougar's hearing, he might not have been able to make out the words.

“Yeah, we've got them. But you don't have to stay. You didn't have to accept me. You know that, right?”

“Mm-hmm.” She ground her teeth and stared at anything but him.

A growl started rattling in his chest, but he breathed through it and tried to keep the beast at bay. His prideful inner cougar half didn't like being an afterthought, even if he had known something didn't seem quite right about her coming around. He didn't like to think there was truth to it.

“I can't go home, anyway,” she added. “Not like this.”

“You could go. No one would know. Make some excuse. People believe what they want.”

“You want me to go?”

He shrugged and let his gaze rove between the tiles of the drop ceiling. He'd finished the basement years ago to rent out to his mother's ranch hands for extra cash, but lately, he hadn't wanted to be bothered playing the landlord game. He had too much shit on his plate as it was.

“You don't have to be here to be my mate,” he said. “I don't have to see you. You don't have to see me. I appreciate you bringing me out of the curse—I
swear
I do, even if I don't understand why you did it—but if you want to go, I'm not going to hold you back.”

He'd only ever have one mate. He'd never be able to have Cougar kids with anyone but her, but at the moment, he couldn't muster up enough give-a-damn to see the problem in it.

“Fine,” she said.

“Cool.”

Maybe he didn't need to complete her life the way his brothers did for their mates.

Maybe her job was already done. And his, too.

The moment Hannah heard keys jiggling on the other side of the basement door, she was on her feet and vaulting herself up the staircase. Being in the same room with Sean—regardless of the fact it was over four hundred square feet—sparked anxiety in her she hadn't known since she was a child. She'd been camping with her father and brothers near Mount Mitchell in North Carolina. There'd been reports of bears spotted in the area, but her father had insisted the chance of them getting up close and personal with a black bear was slim.

He'd been wrong.

She'd been alone at the tent as her father and brothers showered, and bears approached from two sides. She'd been too scared to even scream, but fortunately, they just sniffed around and made off with some unsecured food—ignoring her as if she wasn't worth the energy they'd need to digest her.

It had taken her fifteen years to reclaim her enjoyment of nature, and she still hadn't told Ellery and Miles the real reason she'd wanted to go camping with them. She'd suggested the U.S. states camping bucket list, saying that visiting fifty different campgrounds would be an adventure.

In truth, she thought it would take her nearly that many trips to convince herself that nothing bad was going to happen, and that if something did—she could handle it. They'd started the list going in reverse alphabetical order and had only made it as far as Utah. She didn't know what her friends would think of her if they knew the trips weren't just about fighting boredom. They'd always thought she was the one who had her shit together, but in truth, she was just the best actress.

The only thing the camping adventure had done for her was reinforced her fear that she was never truly safe and that nothing was predictable. Looking at Sean reminded her of that. He was really no different from that bear. He was a wild, unpredictable thing who'd eat her alive if she made one wrong move, and he wouldn't even have to touch her to do it. Words were enough.

She rushed past Mason, and out the back door of Sean's house before her alpha could get a word out. She didn't turn to look behind her a single time until she was at Glenda Foye's front porch.

Mason leaned in the doorway with Sean—wearing a bed-sheet toga—beside him. Neither called her back, and that suited her fine.

“Miles, is that you back here already?” Glenda said. “You're just in time. I've gotta take these lunches out to the ranch hands and I need you to watch this bubbling pot. I turned the damned thing up too high.”

“Um.” Hannah stopped in the living room, and shifted her weight from foot to foot while she plotted her next move. She and Glenda didn't really have conversations. At least, not the kind Ellery and Miles did. Their relationship was contentious, at best, with Glenda having acted as her jailer for the first month after Hannah's arrival at the ranch. Glenda had been as inconvenienced by the women's arrival as they had, but having been in their position once herself, she was empathetic. Still, Hannah knew her allegiances lay firmly with her sons, and not the women they'd snatched for mates.

“Miles?”

“Uh. No.” Hannah let out a long breath and scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “It's Hannah.”

“Hannah? Is Sean …” Glenda appeared in the doorway wringing a potholder between her hands.

Hannah nodded. “He's back. He's at his house with Mason.”

Glenda closed her eyes and turned her face heavenward, her shoulders sagging with apparent relief. “That's three.”

Three sons. Three mates.

Hannah had been the missing puzzle piece that would keep the Foyes together. She'd said yes to Sean out of guilt and fear, but she was relieved, too. It pained her to think of him that way, but Sean was someone's little boy.

Glenda righted her head and opened her eyes, and they were red and watery. “Hannah, I—”

Pops and hisses sounded from the kitchen—a pot lid clattering and food boiling over into the flame. “Dammit.” Glenda hurried toward it.

Letting out a long breath, Hannah walked slowly toward the kitchen, grateful for the distraction of the pot. She didn't know what to say to the woman or what she what she wanted Glenda to say to her. The easiest thing for Hannah would have been if she didn't have to speak to Glenda at all. She wouldn't step on any conversational landmines that way—wouldn't insult the woman more than she already had.

Hannah made her way carefully past the sharp corners of furniture she'd bruised herself against so many times during her first month there. Glenda had a lot of furniture, and not enough space for all of it. Hannah had always wondered why she didn't cull some of it, but she'd never asked.

She leaned into the doorway and watched Glenda scrub food splatter off the counter.

“Just give me one minute,” Glenda said. “Just stay right there.”

“Take your time.” Hannah wasn't even sure why she'd gone to Glenda's in the first place. The movement had seemed instinctual. Or perhaps the part of her that was the unpredictable animal had been feeling masochistic. “I … I don't know what I wanted.”

“Were you hungry?” Glenda pulled the pot back onto the burner and picked up a sheet of aluminum foil from the counter nearby.

Hannah watched her tuck it around the edges of a long casserole dish.
Food for the ranch hands, probably.

“Hannah?”

Hannah pulled her gaze up from the cooler waiting open at Glenda's feet. “Huh?”

“I asked if you wanted something to eat.”

“I don't know. I … don't know anything.”

Glenda stopped wrapping and looked at her with concern.

So confused.
Hannah wasn't sure what she was supposed to be doing with herself now that Sean was out and she'd gained some independence. Was she supposed to go home? Was that why she was in Glenda's kitchen—because she wanted to go home?

Or had she just wanted to tell Glenda that Sean was up before Hannah went to do some important thing?

Mostly, while Sean had been stricken by his curse, she'd been doing small jobs for Lola. Things like confronting swindlers who'd bilked money out of elderly glaring members or just popping in at random places in town to show her face. She was a known Foye associate, so sometimes just being present was enough to make people stop engaging in activities that could expose the Cougars to the non-supernatural world. Nobody really wanted Mason pissed at them.

Beyond that, she didn't have any direction. She had no idea what to do.

Someone needs to tell me what to do.

“Are you going to call your parents?” Glenda asked quietly. She nestled the casserole dish into the cooler, followed by a roll of paper towels and some disposable utensils.

Hannah dragged her tongue across dry lips and gave her braid a tug. “Uh. I'll call them once I figure out what to say that'll be in character for me.”

Ellery had smoothed things over with the hospital where she, Miles, and Hannah worked, and with their families the best she could after she'd committed to Mason, but Hannah was going to have to pick up the lie and run with it. Ellery told Hannah's family that she'd decided to extend her camping trip into a sabbatical, and now Hannah had to figure out how to tell them she couldn't come home.

She couldn't remember delivering any kind of big news in the past almost-thirty years without having been given their passive-aggressive brand of the third degree. It was draining. If she could get away with not talking to them at all, she would, and she doubted she'd feel any guilt over it once the initial days had passed.

“I guess the truth is out of the question, then.” Glenda closed the cooler lid, and gave a bubbling concoction on the stove's back burner a stir. Smelled like chili. She made chili all the time for her dozen ranch hands. Most were Cougars, and the few who weren't Cougars
knew
about Cougars and the various other varieties of weirdoes in the area, too.

Hannah let her breath out in a sputter. “Definitely out of the question. They don't know shapeshifters exist, and knowing them, they'd rather shoot me to put me out of my misery than try to adjust to me.”

Glenda stopped stirring. “You've got an awful sense of humor, Hannah.”

“I've been told that plenty. Trust me when I say that nothing was funny in my house growing up,” Hannah said at a nearly inaudible volume, “but I'm actually not joking.” She wrapped her finger around her braid and twirled. “This isn't exactly natural.”

“In your opinion,” came a mellifluous voice from the direction of the living room.

How Lola always managed to enter a room without ever making a single floorboard squeak, Hannah would never know.

“I didn't realize you were here,” Hannah said.

“I'm always here. The food is good.”

“And free,” Glenda said.

“
Sí
.”
Lola pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sank into it, looping her purse strap around the back of her chair. She was in her familiar
abuela
form, as she usually was. That was how most people in town recognized her. Most still didn't know who she really was—including many people in the glaring. They thought she was just another old lady, and the glaring higher-ups had all agreed that perpetuating that ignorance was the best policy at the moment. Rooting out subversive troublemakers would be easier if none of them knew Mason had their goddess in his back pocket. He needed them to show their cards and not disappear before he'd had a chance to deal with them.