The Mane Attraction (13 page)

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Authors: Shelly Laurenston

BOOK: The Mane Attraction
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No. She was going to make Mitch pay.
“Done,” Dee told them as she walked back. “See? Not brain surgery. You need a lift, Sissy?” Sissy smiled, and Dee took a sudden step back. “What?”
“Well ... he has—literally—eaten me out of house and home. Think you can take me to the Mega Store?”
“You have a car.”
“I have a
rental
car. Not a pretty little Camaro that you won unfairly.” The Camaro hadn’t been Sissy’s first, but she’d loved it like all the others. “Dee, don’t make me whine.”
Dee held up her hand. “Please don’t. You know how that sound annoys me.”
Sissy held her hand out. “Keys.”
“You’re not driving.”
“Hell I’m not. Gimme.”
Dee blew out a breath and handed the keys to Sissy.
With a grin, Sissy stood. “Come on.”
“Shotgun,” Mitch called, and Dee shook her head.
“I’m not sure that’s such a—”
“He called it,” Sissy cut in. “Shotgun for the cat it is.”
 
 
Mitch walked out onto the sidewalk and glanced around. Smithtown was a nice little place. Real homey and clean. The kind of place where people left their front door unlocked during the day. Even with all the local canines glaring at him, he still felt pretty comfortable. Although he had checked each burger to make sure no one had spit in his food.
Opening the passenger door to the ’78 Camaro, Mitch waited until Dee-Ann got into the backseat, then he slid himself in. The car had been expertly maintained and practically had Mitch purring as he sank into the seat.
“Buckle up,” Sissy told him.
He almost snorted again. What? Did she think she could scare him by going eighty or something? One of the reasons he’d become a cop was because he’d become so friendly with the ones who’d pulled him over on a regular basis. Finally, one told him he wouldn’t take him in for speeding—again—if he’d stop by during the high school’s job fair that week. It seemed like a real easy way out of a ticket or jail time, so he went. And shortly after Mitch turned twenty, he was a cop.
To humor her, Mitch buckled himself into the seat, chuckling when he realized they had the kind of safety harness the NASCAR racers used in their cars.
“Locked in?”
“Yup.” He grinned at her. “Go for it.”
Sissy smiled back at him. “If you say so.”
Mitch wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Dee-Ann grunt something—the woman was not a big talker—before Sissy Mae turned over the motor and Mitch’s desire to purr got even worse. Nothing sounded sweeter than a souped-up engine.
Slowly, Sissy pulled away from the curb. She glanced down both sides of the street and made a U-turn.
Sitting in the middle of the street, the motor rumbling, Sissy stared at him, and Mitch stared right back. Eventually, when the staring went on past what even shifters would consider normal, he grinned. The one he used when he really wanted to annoy her. He’d gotten more things thrown at his head using that smile. This time, however, Sissy only smiled back. Even Mitch had to admit she had a killer grin. Kind of like her brother’s, but Sissy’s did stuff to him Smitty’s damn sure never could.
“Hold on,” she murmured, and he briefly wondered if she ever used that particular tone of voice in bed.
Mitch snorted, trying to stop where his thoughts were headed—again. “Yeah, yeah. Show me what ya got, sweet—
Mother of God Almighty!”
Sissy never knew Mitch had such a colorful vocabulary until she shifted her old Camaro into gear and hit the gas.
When she took those tight turns on Deer Road doing about ninety, he called her all sorts of names her daddy would slap him upside the head for. When she played chicken with a couple of her cousins—at least, she was pretty sure they were her cousins—in that pickup truck, he slammed his hands down against the dashboard and gritted his teeth. When she was doing about a hundred and thirty on Duckbill Drive, she might have actually heard some rather violent roaring and a whimper or two. But when she hit one hundred and sixty-four and took that turn on Watermans Way, she knew she’d have to replace the dashboard for Dee. Those claw marks would do nothing but devalue the vehicle.
With gravel and dirt flying, she spun into the store parking spot. A grocery store that catered to their kind safely ensconced between canine, cat, and hyena territory. The simply named Mega Store was one of the few local “safe zones” where different breeds could mingle comfortably.
Sissy cut off the engine and tossed the keys to her cousin sitting quietly in the backseat. “Man, that felt good. You just can’t do that sort of thing in New York.” She patted Mitch’s knee, delighting in the way his entire body jerked away from her. “Come on, Mitchy. Let’s get some supplies to handle that lion-sized hunger.”
Biting her lip and enjoying her life way more than she really should, Sissy got out of the car and headed toward the big glass doors of the store.
 
 
When she realized Mitch Shaw wouldn’t be moving anytime soon, Dee-Ann Smith moved to the other side of the backseat and got out of the driver’s side of the car. Leaning down, she looked in and frowned a bit when she saw how pale the big cat had gotten since she’d first met him.
Pale and a little green.
“There’s a quiet little spot behind the garden outlet over there. If you need a few minutes.”
Without looking at her, Mitch nodded his head. “Thank you.”
“Sure.” She stood and closed the car door, careful not to slam it shut since she really didn’t want the man unloading his cookies inside her vehicle.
Dee-Ann caught up with Sissy right inside the store. She had tears in her eyes, and Dee knew she’d been laughing at poor Mitch.
“You are mean.”
“He asked for it!”
“Right now, that poor boy is yakking up his cookies behind the garden center and you—”
“Ooh! Give me your phone. I wanna take a picture.” She tried to grab for it, but Dee caught her arm and yanked her back.
“I’m not in the mood to tussle.”
“You don’t know how to have any fun.”
Dee didn’t even bother arguing. She knew her cousin to be amazingly oblivious and clueless about many things. She could be selfish, slightly obsessive, and a shitstarter of the highest order. But overall, Sissy was a good person, and Dee had been real sorry to see that her cousin wasn’t Alpha Female of Smithtown. Of course, Dee hadn’t known Sissy had moved to New York for good until she’d gotten home. Her life the last five years hadn’t offered much opportunity to get regular updates on her kin.
And Sissy had been right. Dee didn’t know how to have any fun. Not anymore. Her life the past few years had not been fun, and she had the beginnings of an ulcer to prove it. But she knew that Sissy had been somewhat deceptive when she told Mitch Dee had been “overseas.” To Mitch, that probably meant Dee had been fighting in Iraq like the rest of the Marines she’d trained with. But that would be wrong. She’d been sent off to do other things and had never even been to any Arab country, much less fought in one. When she’d been honorably discharged from duty, she figured coming back to Tennessee would be the best thing for her. But except for her joy at seeing her parents and the territory she loved to run and hunt on, she was already getting fed up.
But Sissy had a way of bringing out the “fun” side of anybody if she’d a mind to. To quote Janie Mae, “Sissy came out of my womb with her middle finger raised.”
Mitch walked up to the women, his glare for Sissy and Sissy only. He’d gotten some of his color back, and he was already popping a piece of chewing gum in his mouth—yeah, he’d lost his cookies behind the garden outlet, she realized with a smile.
Sissy grinned up at him. “How ya doin’ there, Mitchy?”
Gold eyes narrowed, and Sissy, to Dee’s shock, tried to make a run for it. But Mitch caught her, spun her around, and suddenly, his hands were in the waistband of Sissy’s shorts.
“Mitchell Shaw, don’t you—
ack!”
But it was too late. He’d already reached inside the back of her shorts and yanked up, giving her the wedgie to end all wedgies.
Sissy’s squeal hit notes Dee never knew her cousin capable of, irritating every shifter in the building, before Mitch stepped back, briskly brushed his hands against each other, and grabbed a shopping cart. “All right, ladies. Let’s go get me some supplies.”
Trying for a modicum of dignity, Sissy tossed her hair back and kept her spine straight as she headed toward the bathroom so she could dig her underwear out of her ass.
And that’s when Dee realized that she’d never met a man brave enough to give Sissy Mae Smith a wedgie. Beyond the entertainment factor alone, Dee found the whole thing kind of interesting.
 
 
Mitch slowly pushed his cart down the meat aisle. He loved shifter-friendly stores. Not only could he find the largest cuts of meat anywhere, but he could also find the most interesting.
Yumm. Impala.
It had been ages since he’d had impala.
Grabbing a frozen rack of rib meat, he dropped it into his carriage and moved on.
He was eyeing the leg of zebra when he realized he was being eyed the same way, and he turned to find three extremely hot lionesses standing behind him.
“Hey,” they said in unison.
Mitch grinned. “Hi.”
“I’m Paula Jo Barron. These are my sisters, Lucy and Karen Jane.”
“Hi. Mitch Shaw.”
“You’re new to town, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Any chance you’re planning on staying?”
“Well ...” Mitch watched their expressions change as they looked to his left side. He followed their gazes and stared into the big, dumb dog eyes of a wolf. Another male. Who were all these males? How many did they have in this area anyway?
“What?”
“Sissy with you?”
Mitch felt the desire to bare his fangs. “Why do you ask?”
“Just wanted to say hey.”
Then he stood there, saying nothing. Smitty did that sometimes. And the Reed boys. They’d just stare for absolutely no reason whatsoever. It was irritating.
“Well, she’s not here at the moment.”
“Is she staying at her parents’ house like usual?”
“You’re gonna walk away now, and I won’t hurt you because you walked away.”
The wolf nodded. “Fair enough. Tell her Lou said hey.”
The wolf ambled off, and Mitch shook his head. What weird Southern shit was that?
Mitch heard a throat clear, and he looked up into three sets of gold eyes watching him. “Yes?”
All those gold eyes blinked in surprise, but before Mitch could figure out why, another cart slammed into his.
“If you think,” Sissy Mae snarled, pulling back and slamming her shopping cart into his again, “for a damn second I’m paying for zebra meat, you’ve lost your goddamn cat mind!”
“That’s impala. I haven’t even grabbed the zebra yet. And you are too paying for it. And who the hell is Lou?”
“Who? And what makes you think I’m paying for shit?”
“Because I want it.”
“I want world peace and not to have you around. And yet we don’t all get what we want.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ll pay you back, you whiny canine.”
“We can hunt deer down right in the backyard,” she told him, exasperated.
“Hunt? Me?” He placed his hands on his hips. “Your job is to
bring
me food. Why haven’t you grasped that concept?”
“I can bring you a fist sandwich.” Then she put her fist under his nose. “It’s my specialty.”
Just to disgust her—and because he kind of felt like it—Mitch dragged his tongue across her knuckles.
“Eww!” she quickly wiped her hand on his T-shirt. “You’re disgusting!”

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