****
The next couple weeks were just so normal; looking back on them, Cade couldn’t pinpoint anything remotely weird. He and Celine talked more, certainly, but there was more to talk about – Becca was teething and starting to crawl. She was babbling nonstop (like her nanny) and showing signs of turning into a real person. Celine somehow convinced him to do a Daddy and Baby class at the Bounce House. He felt silly as hell – and he wasn’t the only one – but Becca ate it up. Her obvious joy made it worth the potentially devastating humiliation if any other Pack Alphas ever learned of it.
For months afterward, when he went back over those events in his mind, trying to spot any signals of the impending debacle he might have missed, any indication he did something to cause it, he came up empty. He was tempted to think fatherhood had somehow shorted out his sixth sense – but he was still able to read everybody else with his usual accuracy.
Just not Celine.
It was a beautiful day, still technically winter, the air clear and chilly but unmistakable signs of spring popping up everywhere. They cleaned out the big stone fire pit in the grassy center of the compound and threw an impromptu barbeque. Pack members who lived in town came up, and those who had regular girlfriends brought them. Celine loved hanging out with the females, who all cooed and fussed over Becca. Cade saw her drinking wine, but she didn’t show any signs of being drunk. As the evening wore on, and couples began to drift away, she excused herself to put Becca down and turn in herself.
Some of the wolves had gotten furry and gone running, others adjourned to the woodshop, where a poker game would probably break out. He lay in the grass a while with his eyes closed, enjoying the sharp night air rippling over his skin, listening to the comforting howls of his wolves, and thinking about his family, and Becca, and life. He was blessed, no doubt about it.
He was also tired, so he told everyone good night and went inside. The house was silent, Sindri long since retired to his lair beneath the kitchen, Celine and Becca asleep upstairs. Cade and Michael were the only two wolves who lived in the main house, and Michael was still outside in the circle with the guys.
Cade didn’t remember closing his bedroom door. When he opened it, the sight that greeted him made him think, initially, that he’d interrupted someone’s tryst. Maybe they’d figured he would stay out later.
So first he looked around for one of his wolves hiding somewhere. When he realized there was no one there but the two of them, he cleared his throat and said, “Celine. Why are you in my bed, and where are your clothes?”
****
Michael lounged on the porch of the wood shop, enjoying a rare and well-earned smoke and watching Roman dowse the last embers in the fire pit. Inside the woodshop a poker game was starting. Someone cranked up Lyle Lovett, and way too many of them started to sing along.
From the main house came a high-pitched sound, something between a shriek and a sob, followed by footsteps pounding up the stairs and a door slamming. Immediately Becca began to wail.
Roman looked over at him with a “should I go see about that?” expression. Michael shook his head and waited.
Cade walked out of the house and across the grass with an….
odd
look on his face. Stopping in front of Michael, he asked, “Where’s Felipe?”
Michael gestured over his shoulder. “Back here.
Felipe!
”
The teenager appeared in the doorway. “Hey. Y’all need me?”
Cade nodded. “Yeah. Cash out your hand. You need to run an errand for me.”
“Sure, Boss. What is it?”
Cade took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair, tugging at his curls. “You need to go inside and keep an eye on Celine while she packs. She’s kind of upset.”
“Cade, what the hell?” Michael asked. Felipe just stood there looking stricken.
“And once she’s packed, I want you to drive her into town. I told her she could stay the night” – it was almost eleven – “but she insists she can stay with a friend. I want you to drive her, make sure the friend is home and Celine gets in all right. Also – there’s an envelope for her on the desk. I paid her through the end of the month and added enough for a plane ticket home. Go on, now. Go.”
Wide eyed and pale, Felipe nodded and trotted off to the house. When he was gone, Cade dropped down beside Michael, holding out his thumb and forefinger. “May I?”
“Of course.” Michael passed him the joint.
Cade took a deep drag and didn’t pass the reefer back. “So. Did you know Celine has tattoos?”
“Um, no. No, I did not. “
“Well, she does. A moon and stars on her – let’s see – right tit. A crown with a banner that says “princess” on her hip, and--”
“Which hip?”
“Um, left. Then she’s got a big blue Celtic-looking symbol on the inside of her thigh – her left thigh. And a pretty little rose on her pussy.”
“
What?”
“You heard me.”
“
On
her pussy? Like, what – inside?”
“Ok, not the pussy pussy. The mons pubis, technically.” He took another long drag. “Yep,” he croaked. “Right smack on her mons pubis.” That time he dragged the phrase out and then bit it off – “monnnssss PUBis.”
They looked at each other and dissolved into helpless, choking laughter.
“But wait, there’s more,” Cade gasped when they’d both caught their breath.
“What else?”
“Her clit’s pierced.”
“Oh, fuck me!”
“That’s what
she
said.”
They spent another couples minutes laughing so hard they didn’t make any sound, which was just as well because Michael didn’t want all those idiots in the woodshop to hear what they were talking about.
“Oh, oh shit,” said Cade as he struggled to stop.
Michael thumped him on the back. “Oh shit’s right. They’re coming out. Quick.”
They dove off the porch and around to the side of the woodshop, where they waited until Felipe and Celine got into the truck and left. Then they collapsed back down on the front steps.
“Holy shit, Cade. Ho-ly shit. I thought – Jesus. I was halfway joking about the nympho thing. I mean, I figured she wasn’t as innocent as she seemed, but – shit. I never would’ve guessed this. Damn. Heh.” He lay back on the porch and stared up at the ceiling. “So, what --- did she strip for you, or what?”
“Nope. She was waiting for me in my bed.”
“Naked?”
“Butt nekkid.” He said it in his best Georgia drawl, and they started laughing again.
Michael stopped abruptly. “She looked good, didn’t she?”
“Oh fuck yeah. But you know what really freaked me out?”
“What?”
“The first thing I thought wasn’t – ‘goddamn, she’s hot.’ The first thing I thought was, ‘goddamn, does her daddy know about all this?”
Michael grinned at the ceiling. “So you turned her down and she started crying?”
“No. Actually, she was sort of pissed. Said I’d been leading her on.”
“
What?”
“Yeah.” He blew out a breath and shook his head. “I didn’t think she was the smartest female I’d ever seen, I figured she had some boundary issues, but – I dunno. Maybe she’s nuts?”
“Who the fuck knows with females?” Michael sat up. “Shit. We have to hire another nanny.”
“Yeah.”
“Am I gonna tell PPC what she did?”
“Hmm.” Cade was lying on his back now as well, and he closed his eyes. “I don’t see any reason to ruin her shot at another job – I mean, she took good care of Becca. She’s not dangerous, she’s just…weird as hell.” He was silent a minute. “I swear to God, Michael, I never did anything to make her think I wanted to fuck her.”
“I believe you. It’s my fault. Should've gone with an old one.”
“She slipped under my radar, too. That was just-- damn. That was just bizarre. Hey. Got another joint?”
“Matter of fact, I rolled two.” He pulled the second one from his shirt pocket and lit it up.
“I really did wonder about her daddy.”
“You’ll never have to worry about something like this with Becca.”
“No?”
“No. We’re gonna raise her to think all guys are pigs, and sex is dirty.”
Cade grinned and took the proffered joint. “Thanks.”
“Just leave it to Uncle Michael. The next one will be perfect.”
Yours, Mine and Howls
The Nanny Years, Part 3
“So, where you wanna go tonight?” Michael asked.
“I don’t care. We haven’t done Mexican in a while. El Rincon?”
“Sounds good.”
“Let me close it down here and tell Ingrid I’m leaving.”
“She went out for the night. Sindri’s got Stinky Butt duty.”
“Oh. Okay. Then I’ll tell Sindri I’m leaving.”
****
Becca and Sindri were in the kitchen, she in her highchair and he standing on a chair spooning food into her mouth.
When Cade walked in, Becca pointed at him and shouted, “Daddeh!” It reminded him of Timmeh! from
South Park.
He pointed right back at her. “Becca!”
She always thought that was hilarious. Cade always thought it was cool to be announced every time you walked into a room.
He bent down to collect a bunch of sticky kisses, said goodbye to Sindri, and went to join Michael.
****
“So Ingrid’s made friends in town?” Cade asked his second once they were in the car and headed for Fremont.
“Yep, looks like. You don’t mind her going out like that, with no notice?”
Cade shrugged. “No. Technically, her hours are six to six. She just hangs out with Becca at night because she enjoys it and there’s nothing else to do. Did she have a date?”
“No. Said she was meeting friends from church.”
“Well, good. I’ve been afraid she’ll get bored stuck out here with us and Becca. If she makes friends, she won’t get lonely and quit.”
“She seems happy enough. And Becca loves her. Course, Stinky Butt loves everyone.”
Cade chuckled. At eighteen months, Becca was a loud, kinetic bundle of happy. Her new nanny was crazy about her and called her
mi tornado.
Cade – and Michael, too – had been hesitant to hire Ingrid Prieto at first. She was older and more experienced than the previous and disastrous Celine, but she was still hot, albeit in a riper, Earth Mother kind of way. He’d faced the same difficulties in attracting qualified applicants as he had the last time – not a lot of nannies wanted to live on a ranch with one little girl and a bunch of single werewolves, with the closest town thirty minutes away. They got applications from women too young or old to be hired by “normal” families – and the young ones tended to be way more interested in the wolves than in Becca.
Half Irish, half Argentinean, voluptuous and statuesque, Ingrid had a master’s in childhood development and years of preschool teaching behind her. She hadn’t nannied for long, though. When Cade tried, diplomatically, to discover why she’d want to work on a somewhat isolated ranch when she’d lived in big cities around the world, she’d said something about needing to simplify and re-order her life.
The thirty-four-year-old exuded calm competence, treating the wolves with a detached amusement and absolutely no flirtation. Less perky and more self-possessed than Celine, her hotness didn’t disturb the peace of the pack. Even if she turned out to have a wild side like the pierced and tattooed twenty-two-year-old Celine, Cade didn’t expect to find her naked in his bed at some point.
Of course, he hadn’t expected it with Celine, either. He didn’t trust his once vaunted instincts like he used to.
They got a table on the patio at El Rincon so they could smoke cigars with their tequila. The November night air was a tad chilly for humans, and they had the area to themselves.
Michael knocked back a shot and motioned to Kelly, their favorite waitress, for another round. He took a deep drag on his cigar, stretching with a sigh. “This is good. I like moonless a lot more than I used to.”
“Yeah. Moonless works for me too.”
They’d started doing this a few months ago, right after Ingrid came to the ranch.
Werewolves didn’t run on new moon nights, at least not in packs. It was a cultural, not a physiological, thing. Alphas could change any time they wanted to and while betas could only shift at night, they didn’t need to be able to see the moon to use its power. It was just that running on a new moon night felt weird. A moonless night sky was cold and unwelcoming, so they’d wait for the first sliver to show before they gathered again.
Cade and Michael had started doing Big Boys Night Out on the first night of the new moon. It was nice to get away from the responsibilities of the Pack and the ranch – and, in Cade’s case, fatherhood – one night a month. Some of the Pack’s wolves lived in town. There was an unspoken rule – or, knowing Michael, maybe not so unspoken – that any wolves in a given establishment when Cade and Michael showed up would quickly clear out. “If I have to hang out with the guys on my night out, it’s not my night out,” Michael liked to grouse.
****
They each put away three full orders of fajitas.
“That’s almost as good as fresh off the hoof,” Michael grinned as Kelly started clearing the plates.
“You would’ve preferred mooshi?”
“Moo-- oh. Moo—shi. I get it. Funny.”
“Do wolves really do that?” Kelly asked with a grimace.
“What, take down cows in the field?” Cade asked.
“Yeah. It just seems – I dunno, brutal.”
“I don’t know if it’s any more brutal than a slaughterhouse, but it’s stupid,” Cade replied with a cocked eyebrow. “Cows belong to people, and people shoot.”
“Oh, yeah. I wasn’t thinking.” Kelly grinned sheepishly. “There’s really no such thing as wild cows, are there?”
“I took down a feral pig once,” Michael boasted. “Big sonofabitch. Tusks this long.” He held his hands out three feet apart.
“Sure they were,” Cade said, and Kelly laughed.