Authors: Shelly Laurenston
Dee-Ann was coming at her when Cella Malone ran through the door. She jumped between them, her arms pressed against their chests.
“Stop it! Both of you!”
“Move, Malone,” Smith snarled.
Livy snorted. “Bring it, Ellie Mae.”
“That is enough!” Cella shoved, and the Siberian She-tiger forced them to either sides of the room. “And no more
Beverly Hillbillies
jokes, Livy. Only
I
can do that.”
Pointing a finger, Dee-Ann snarled, “I will not have that little weasel puttin’ my kin at risk.”
“Can I talk to you outside for a minute?” Cella asked Dee-Ann.
“No.”
Apparently not liking that particular response, Cella grabbed Dee-Ann by the hair and yanked her out of the office.
“We’ll be right back,” Cella said, trying to sound cheery.
While they were outside, Livy saw one of her recent team pics behind what she now realized was Cella’s desk. It had been blown up so it covered most of the wall. And Livy had to admit that as mundane as this work felt . . . she
was
good at it.
The door opened, and Cella and Dee-Ann walked back into the office. Now Dee-Ann looked contrite.
She nodded at Livy. “I’m real sorry to hear about your daddy.”
Livy wasn’t surprised the protection organizations had already heard about what she’d found. Anytime large numbers of honey badgers moved into a single location, the local shifter populace tried to find out why and how soon they would go away.
“Well,” Livy said calmly, “you can take your countrified pity and shove it up your flat, hillbilly—”
“Okay!” Cella cut in. “No need to let this get nasty. We just wish you’d come to us, Livy. You know we would have helped you.”
“I guess calling in my honey badger family was unreasonable of me . . . then again, maybe I just can’t get it out of my head that if you’d found Whitlan when you’d first locked on to him, my father would be alive rather than a stuffed carcass in some rich bitch’s living room. So you’ll have to forgive me if you’re not the first people I came running to in my time of need.”
“Wow,” Cella muttered. “Honey badgers
are
mean.”
Livy slowly nodded. “Yes . . . we really are.”
Vic had taken Livy to the Sports Center after their breakfast, with every intention of going back to the rental house to work with Shen. But then Vic remembered he’d have to deal with Kyle again . . .
Look, Vic would admit it. He didn’t have the brains to keep up with that kid. The twelve-year-old managed to overwhelm a full-grown adult with his arrogance and awkward requests.
Deciding to wait a while—at least until he was sure that Shen was up and functioning, so
he
could deal with that kid—Vic went into the Sports Center. He worked his way through all the full-humans who utilized the top levels for exercise and sports training, and followed the scent of shifters to a hidden stairwell that then led him to the floors below.
Although it was the middle of a workday, it was still pretty packed. Shifters of all breeds and species were there to work out, train, or get a glimpse of their favorite shifter sports star.
Vic didn’t have a favorite sports star. He hated sports. He worked out to keep himself in shape and to work off excess energy that could lead to his shifting into his animal form and rampaging the streets of New York, but other than that . . .
He did tolerate football, though. Could sit with friends and watch it without complaining if he had to. He enjoyed the rigidity of it. The definite lines and rules. He loathed basketball and baseball, however, and seeing really big guys on skates did nothing but weird him out. Of course, he’d felt the same way when he’d seen full-blood grizzlies on skates in Russia.
Stopping by the Starbucks located in the Sports Center—because there really always was one
everywhere
, even among shifters—and getting himself a large coffee and a few honey buns, Vic went and sat down on an empty bench to eat and people watch.
He thought about stopping by Livy’s office, but he didn’t want to crowd her. She hated that, and Vic didn’t want to become someone she actively avoided—like the pretty woman skating by him . . . once . . . twice . . . three times before she finally rolled herself over and stopped in front of Vic.
“Hi, Blayne.”
“Hi, Vic.”
“Honey bun,” he offered out of the Russian politeness his parents had drilled into him for years while he was growing up. But he was really hoping she’d turn him down.
She did.
“So, what’s up?” he asked around another honey bun.
She rolled closer. Blayne really was a beautiful woman. And there were few women who could wear shorts that tiny and still look good. She had long, athletic, muscular legs that said she worked out a lot. Maybe she lived on those skates. Did she wear them all the time? To family events? To bed? Did that meathead hockey player
make
her wear those skates?
“I heard about Livy’s father,” she whispered. “You know . . . about what
really
happened to him.”
That snapped Vic back to the moment and away from Blayne’s skate-wearing schedule.
“How did you hear?”
“I heard it from Ronnie Lee who heard it from Sissy Mae who heard it from—”
“Okay,” Vic cut in, quickly regretting asking her the simple question.
“You know, my mom was hunted, too,” she whispered.
“Oh Blayne. I’m sorry.”
She waved off his words. “It was a long time ago, and after a considerable amount of therapy, I’ve compartmentalized it quite nicely.”
“Okay.”
Blayne moved in a little closer, looked around, leaned down, and added, “Maybe I should cancel my wedding.”
“Well, if you don’t want to marry the guy, of course you should cancel your wedding. Don’t let family or peer pressure push you into a marriage you don’t want.”
Blayne snapped up straight, her hands resting on her hips. “Of course I want to marry Bo. Why wouldn’t I want to marry Bo? I love him!”
“Then why would you cancel your wedding?”
“Because of what happened to Livy’s father.”
Vic stared at Blayne, but she didn’t say anything else.
“I understand you feeling empathy toward Livy, considering what happened to your mother, but I guess I’m unclear on what Damon Kowalski has to do with your wedding.”
“Who?”
Vic took another sip of coffee. Maybe he wasn’t alert enough for this conversation.
“Livy’s father? Damon Kowalski is Livy’s father.”
“Oh! Yeah, I didn’t know his name.”
“Uh-huh. So you want to cancel your giant, double wedding because of a man whose name you didn’t even know . . . because of your mom?”
“No. And I don’t
want
to cancel my wedding, but I’m wondering if I should.”
“Why would you be wondering that?”
“Because Livy’s my friend.”
“She is?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, okay. No need to get upset.” Although he wanted to use
hysterical
instead of
upset
. “I guess the way to look at this is . . . how would
Livy
react if you canceled the wedding for her? Do you think she’d be okay with it? Or do you think she’d throw another locker at you?”
Blayne, after thinking on that for a few seconds, admitted, “Locker.”
“Right. So you may not want to cancel your wedding if the only reason is because of Livy’s father.”
Blayne sat down beside Vic. “What about having her as our photographer?”
“What about it?”
“Do you think it will be too hard for her?”
Probably, but not for the reasons Blayne was thinking. And Vic briefly entertained the idea of using this opportunity to get Livy out of being a dreaded
wedding
photographer—emphasis on the “wedding” part—but then he realized Livy wouldn’t want him involving himself in her career.
No. Livy would have to shoot or not shoot Blayne’s wedding on her own. All Vic could really do was keep her from throwing lockers at poor Blayne’s head.
“Livy is one of the strongest and smartest women I know. And I think you need to let her take the lead on whether she can handle shooting your wedding or not. She’s brutally honest, so if she doesn’t think she can do it, she’ll tell you. And probably recommend someone great who can step in for her. What’s important is that you trust Livy to do what’s right. Because she will.”
Blayne gazed at Vic for what seemed an excessively long time until she slowly began to smile.
“What?” Vic asked. “What did I say?”
“Oh.” She shook her head. “Nothing.” Blayne stood. “You’re right. I need to trust Livy.” She skated a half circle around Vic. “Hey, are you coming to our derby bout tomorrow? It’s just a local bout to help raise money for the tristate teams.”
“I’m not really a sports—”
“Livy will be playing, of course. She’s one of our shortest blockers, but also one of our meanest.”
“She is? Oh. Yeah. Okay. Sure. I can come.”
Blayne’s grin was amazingly wide. “Yay!” She skated off, then skated right back, leaned down, and kissed Vic on the cheek. “Thanks for your advice.”
“Anytime.”
He watched her skate off again, unable to shake the feeling something weird had just happened.
Deciding not to worry about it, Vic ate the last honey bun and finished off his coffee. He was going to go for another walk when he realized that someone was sitting next to him.
Vic turned his head to see Dee-Ann beside him. She glared at him with her dead, soulless dog eyes.
“You got somethin’ to tell me, son?”
Livy was going through some pics she’d recently taken of the shifter girls’ gymnastics team. Although these girls could never get into the full-human sports now that testing had become so invasive, it looked as if the shifter-version sport was about to go worldwide like hockey. Which, when Livy thought about it, was much fairer to the full-humans.
When the full-humans destroyed a kneecap coming off the pommel horse, their careers usually ended. When a shifter did the same thing, it was usually not from the landing but because they’d vaulted themselves too far up and rammed their knee into a ceiling beam. Yet the shifters still managed to nail the landing and were healed within twenty-four hours. So . . . yeah. Not fair to the full-humans.
“Hey!”
Livy looked up from her pics and at Blayne. “Hey.”
“You’re coming to the bout tomorrow, right?”
“Am I?” Livy asked. It was decided that Livy would only come to derby bouts that impacted the championships. Last she’d heard, tomorrow’s bout was simply a fund-raising thing. Something casual between the teams that Livy’s competitive “win or die” nature tended to ruin.
“You’ve gotta come!”
“Well—”
“Great! I’ll tell the team you’ll be there!”
Livy let out a breath, wondering how she was not going to kill that girl at some point.
“She’s just so damn perky,” Livy muttered.
She returned to her work. She was annoyed because she knew she’d taken some pictures recently of the gymnastics team that she really wanted to use, but she couldn’t find them on the memory card she had. She spun her chair around and pulled her camera out of her bag. Livy turned it on and using the LCD monitor in the back of her Nikon, she viewed the first picture that came up. It was a black-and-white one of Vic that she’d taken in Massachusetts.
Smiling, she studied the image. It reminded her of how good she could be when she wasn’t thinking too much about it. When she was just letting the moment lead her rather than the million things going on in her head.
Livy placed her camera on her desk and hooked it up to her computer. She copied Vic’s pictures and enlarged them on her screen. With some miniscule tweaking, she thought at least one of the pics could possibly work for her upcoming show.
Livy dove into the work, forgetting everything around her as she toyed with the images, seeing what she could pull out of them.
She was so lost in her work, she didn’t realize that she wasn’t alone until she stopped and reached for the can of honey-roasted almonds she kept on her desk. When Livy found nothing but empty space, she looked up and found a bunch of her cousins standing around her office, passing her damn almonds around.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We’re bored,” Jake filled in.
“That sounds like a
you
problem.”
“If you want us to play nice at your friend’s fancy house, you better give us a way to work off our excess energy.”
“Can’t you jog like most people?”
“No,” they all replied.
Livy sat back in her seat and looked over her cousins. She thought about seeing if there was some game they could go to in the Sports Center, but that wouldn’t be enough for them. And the additional liquor they’d have access to just screamed “trouble.”
So Livy racked her brain for another option.
Reece Lee Reed pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and walked out of the bedroom, easing the door closed so that he didn’t wake up the bobcat asleep in his bed.
Yawning, he scratched his head and his belly while walking across the Kingston Arms hotel suite he’d been living in since he’d moved from Tennessee to Manhattan. A decision he still hadn’t regretted, although his mother did complain. Apparently her sons had deserted her. No mention of her only daughter, but Reece didn’t worry about that. He’d learned long ago to let his sister and mother fight it out between themselves. He had other things to do.
Like bobcats!
Chuckling, Reece glanced at his watch. It was already midafternoon, but he hadn’t gone to bed until late and then he hadn’t slept until morning. But it was his day off since he had a big job coming up on the weekend, so if he wanted to waste the day away with a very nice piece of feline ass, he could.
Lord, he loved his life.
Reece passed his couch, his eyes briefly straying to the big flat-screen TV on the other side of it, which was when Livy Kowalski suddenly popped up.
Reece screamed, jumping back.
“Hey,” Livy said calmly.
He hated when Livy did this. Curled up on his couch so he couldn’t see her until she leaped out at him like one of those undead killer children in those Japanese horror movies.