The Mane Attraction

  He grinned and turned back to the lionesses, who only stared at him. “We’re friends,” he explained.

  Sissy grabbed a box of cereal. It was the biggest box they had. This should work. She dropped the box into her carriage.

  “Might as well grab four more if you want it to last past today.”

  Sissy briefly closed her eyes. “Tell me you’re just being cruel ’cause we hate each other.”

  Paula Jo shook her head. “Wish I could, you know, ’cause I do hate you. But it’s true. Of course,” she gave a slow smile, “you could send him my way. Me and my sisters know how to take care of lion males, and we’ll get him off your hands. And you can go back to whatever it is you do. Lick your ass. Chase your tail.”

  Sissy barely heard the old insults. They didn’t even register. She was too busy realizing that Paula Jo was serious. She wanted Mitch. For herself and her Pride.

  And Sissy would be damned before she let that happen.

  “Sorry. I promised I’d keep him with me.”

  “Yes, but he’s eating you out of house and home. And he’ll keep doing it, too. We both know times are tough right now, so why don’t you let me have him?”

  Sissy pressed her hand to her chest. What was this strange feeling she had? It was something ... weird. And she’d never experienced it over a man before. But she’d felt this way once before with Paula Jo. When the lioness had taken the first deer Sissy had ever brought down on her own. It was just a little thing and sickly, but it was Sissy’s. Then Paula and her sister Karen Jane came out of the woods and chased Sissy and Ronnie Lee off. As Sissy watched them eat her prize, she’d been so angry she couldn’t see straight.

  Lord in heaven ... she was jealous!

  “Sorry, Paula Jo. Unlike y’all, when wolves make a commitment—even to a cat—we keep it.”

  In typical fashion, it was at that moment that Mitch suddenly glided by at the end of the aisle. Really. He glided. Because he had his feet on the cart and had pushed himself past.

  “Was he—” Paula Jo frowned. “Ballet dancing?”

  Based on the positions of his arms ... “I think he was, yes.”

  Sissy rubbed her eyes with her fists and wondered how much shame she’d bring to the Smith name if she actually ran away from Paula Jo.

  The lioness slowly inched away. “Interesting.”

  Mitch stuck his arm all the way to the back of the potato chips shelf, made it a little U, then dragged it forward. The big bags of chips fell off the shelf and right into his cart. He did the same thing with some pretzels.

  His nose sniffed the air, and he glanced over his shoulder. “Hi, Dee.”

  “Hey.”

  “Stocking up.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She walked around him and looked into his cart. When her gaze met his, she didn’t say a word.

  “What?”

  “Nothin’.”

  Mitch pushed the cart forward, Dee falling into step next to him.

  “Dee, can I ask you a question?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”

  That seemed an odd response, but ... whatever.

  “Who is Lou?”

  “Lou? I know lots of Lous. You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “He’s wolf and was asking for Sissy about ten minutes ago.”

  “Oh. That Lou. Yeah. I know him. He’s from Smithtown.”

  “What does he want with Sissy?”

  “What every male in Smithtown wants from Sissy.” Dee stopped by the candy and grabbed a Hershey bar. Nothing fancy. No almonds or caramel. Just simple milk chocolate. He had a feeling that explained Dee really well.

  “And what’s that?”

  “To fuck her.”

  Mitch suddenly looked around. He never expected such a ... blunt response. Not even from Sissy. And he didn’t like that particular blunt response one damn bit.

  “That’s it?”

  She bit into her chocolate and chewed. He hoped she still planned to pay for that. He was still a cop for the time being. “And to mark her.”

  “Just like that?”

  “She’s Sissy Mae. A born Alpha. And direct Smith bloodline. Plus, I’ve always heard she’s a wicked fuck in bed.”

  “Okay. Stop.” Mitch held his hands up. “Just ... stop.”

  “You asked.”

  “Yes. Because I’m an idiot. Thanks for the reminder.”

  For the first time, Dee grinned. It didn’t make her any prettier, but it took away that perpetual glare. “You’re welcome.”

  “How much?” Sissy demanded when the cashier gave her the final price.

  Mitch nudged her shoulder. “Pay her. I’m getting hungry.”

  Feeling sick, Sissy looked at him. “Again? You just ate an hour ago.” At this rate, the man would use up all of Smithtown’s food supply. And eat her right into the poorhouse.

  “Almost two. And you’re not driving this time. Give the keys back to Dee-Ann.”

  “Don’t tell me what to—”

  “Now. Or it’s atomic wedgie time.” She knew he wasn’t kidding either.

  Growling, she handed her mother’s credit card to the cashier—she’d owe that woman a fortune when she got back into town, but Sissy couldn’t risk using her own card—and Dee-Ann the car keys.

  “I hate you.”

  “How could you hate this face?”

  “Easily.”

  “But I’m adorable.”

  “More like psychotic.”

  Feeling ill at how much this single food bill came to, Sissy signed the receipt while Dee stared at all the food the two grocery clerks bagged. “We’re not going to get all this in the Camaro.”

  Sissy wasn’t exactly surprised. They’d filled up three large carts with all the food they’d purchased. She wasn’t exactly sure where she was going to fit it all in her momma’s house either. They only had two freezers.

  “Sissy could walk home while you drive me and the groceries back.”

  “Or,” Sissy countered, “I could gut you here and let your rotting corpse attract the hyenas while we go home and enjoy a nice, quiet meal at my parents’ house.”

  Mitch thought about that a moment but finally shook his head. “That doesn’t really work for me.”

  “Then shut up.”

  It took some work, but eventually, they managed to get all the food and all three of them in the car, although Sissy ended up driving because Mitch couldn’t fit in the backseat with all the groceries and she refused to get in the backseat since she refused to look weak. It really was never easy to be an Alpha wolf. Mitch suggested he could drive, but Sissy and Dee only laughed at him.

  But if Sissy even went above sixty, Mitch started roaring, which got real old real fast ... and did nothing for her sensitive ears.

  Once they got back to her parents’ house, she and Dee spent another hour trying to figure out where to put all the food. Of course, Mitch wasn’t much help there either. “I’m too hungry to think,” he’d claimed and ended up sitting on her parents’ couch, eating a big bowl of Frosted Flakes and milk.

  “Okay. On my count ... one, two ... three!” The cousins slammed the door on the chest freezer, and somehow, it sealed shut.

  Sissy let out a breath. “Good. We got it to fit.”

  “You know, in two more days, you’ll be buying more food for him.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  They walked back into the kitchen. “You want to stay for a while?”

  “Can’t. Promised Momma I’d be home for dinner.”

  “Stop by tomorrow if ya want.”

  “Okay.” Dee started out the door. “And remember to watch your back.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “Watch it more,” Dee told her before slamming the door closed.

  Sissy shook her head. “As always with that girl ... clear as mud.”

  Mitch cleared his .45 and checked the clip. “Did you bring any other ammo with us?”

 
Sissy walked in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. He didn’t know what the hell she was cooking in there, but Christ Almighty, it smelled so freakin’ good.

  “Wha?”

  He held his clip up. “More ammo? Or is this it?”

  “That’s all I brought from New York.”

  He winced. “This isn’t much.”

  “I know.”

  They stared at each other for several seconds. Finally, Mitch said, “Thanks for your high level of concern.”

  “It doesn’t quite live up to your high level of whining.”

  “I’m not whining, I’m concerned about our safety.”

  Sissy tucked part of the dish towel into the waistband of her shorts and walked across the room. She pushed aside a wood shelf holding all sorts of little curios and things. Stuff that Mitch would only accidentally break so he never had any of it in his own home.

  Sissy didn’t remove the shelf attached to the wall; she simply pulled it open. That’s when Mitch saw the false wall behind it. She moved that aside, revealing a serious safe. He knew the make. It was one of the high-end kind. Sissy punched a code in and pulled down the handle. She opened the door, and Mitch let out a choked breath.

  “Holy shit.”

  “This is Momma’s stuff,” Sissy said as she stepped back so he could get an even better look at the arsenal behind the wall. “You can use anything in here but her blades. Don’t mess with her blades. I nicked one once when I was twelve, and she tore my ass up. And since she seems to like you, I’ll be the one to suffer.”

  When Mitch simply sat there and stared, she motioned him forward. “Come here. I’ll show you what she’s got. Then I’ll show you Daddy’s upstairs.”

  Slowly, Mitch stood. “Can you guys legally have this stuff?”

  “Hunting is a way of life around here.”

  Mitch reached into the eight-shelf safe and pulled out the Tech Nine semiauto. “And what, exactly, do you hunt with this, Miss Smith?”

  “Anything,” she said simply, “that ain’t supposed to be on our territory.”

  And Mitch knew she wasn’t talking about any damn deer.

  Chapter 7

  Sissy didn’t know feeding Mitch would be so enjoyable—except for the expense, of course. He’d pretty much groaned and purred during the whole meal. Everything she put in front of him made him smile, and then he’d feed like he hadn’t eaten in days.

  It had done her ego a world of good and took the sting out of all the money she’d spent earlier. She so rarely cooked these days, she forgot what it was like to have someone appreciate her efforts.

  Of course, she did make him clean up the dishes while she took a shower. He’d tried to fight it, but when she promised him zebra stew for the next day, he’d shut his mouth and gotten to work. When she’d walked through that kitchen an hour later, it sparkled like angels had touched it.

  Now, with beer in hand, she got to sit out on the front porch swing wearing her favorite old baseball jersey and enjoying the late summer night. This was what she missed about living in Smithtown. Nights like this. In New York, it was never quiet, and while she adored the energy, there was something to be said about being able to hear crickets and the night-loving birds.

  As she combed her wet hair, the howling started. At the farthest part of Smithtown, one wolf would start it, and it would spread until all of Smithtown was alive with the sound. Grinning, Sissy leaned her head back and howled right along with them. She simply adored that sound. Adored the meaning behind it. The power. The—

  “Shut the hell up! I’m trying to sleep!”

  Sissy’s eyes crossed as the howls abruptly stopped. Lord, she’d hear about this until she was in her grave.

  With a sigh, she headed up to her room and closed the door. While she finished combing her hair out, she flipped through an old car magazine she’d found shoved in one of her desk drawers. It made her smile, seeing all the notes she and Ronnie Lee had made. Picking out their dream cars and marking all the necessary parts they planned to get one day. Back then, they’d liked their cars the way they’d liked their men. Big, powerful, and mean.

  Of course, Mitch wasn’t mean. Never on purpose, anyway.

  Wait. Where did that thought come from? Why was she thinking about Mitch and what she liked in men at the same damn time? What was wrong with her? And when did she start asking herself so many questions? And why couldn’t she stop?

  An abrupt knock yanked Sissy back to the moment, and she ended up glaring at her poor defenseless door.

  “What, Mitchell?”

  Mitch pushed the door open and stood there looking too good to be remotely fair. He had on a fresh pair of sweatpants and ... nothing else. They rode low on his hips, teasing cruelly. She wasn’t a saint, dammit!

  “Sexy, sexy,” she growled at him before she could stop herself.

  “You treat me like a whore.”

  “You are a whore.”

  He grinned. “This is true.”

  She stared up at him. “You can’t sleep, can you?”

  “I tried.”

  “The howling?”

  “No. That was just really annoying.”

  “Around here, it’s nightly, so get used to it.”

  “Great.”

  Sissy pulled her legs up, wrapping her arms around them. “Do you have bad dreams?”

  “Not like I used to. Mostly because I simply don’t sleep. Guess I’m definitely feeling better since I seem to be back to my old habits.”

  “Your appetite is A-OK, though.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  He walked into her room, looking at all her pictures and toy cars.

  “Did you sleep last night?”

  “Uh ... yeah. I did.” He glanced at her through ridiculously long dark gold lashes she’d never really noticed before. Lord, help me. “I think it was because of you, though.”

  “Me?” Don’t read too much into that. Don’t read too much into that.

  “Yeah. I think it was your snoring. It was quite soothing, and all that drool reminded me of a waterfall.”

  See? Sissy grabbed one of her pillows and pitched it as his head. “Bastard.”

  Mitch laughed. She appreciated the fact that although the man had been through hell and was forced to stay in a strange town where everyone hated him on principle, he still loved to laugh.

  “So do you have a diary I can read?” he teasingly asked. “It would be a saucy tale about a young, firm Sissy Mae discovering her passionate sexuality.”

  “Have a diary? Around my momma? I thought you had more sense. My daddy doesn’t call her the Great Detective for nothin’. If the woman put her mind to it, she could probably find D.B. Cooper and Hoffa. So having a diary with all my deepest and darkest secrets would be one of those dumb things I try not to do.”

  She reached under her bed and pulled out a photo album. “But I do have pictures of me and Ronnie Lee in bikinis.” She moved back on her bed and patted the mattress.

  Mitch removed his Glock first, then dived on the bed like a ten-year-old. Once he got himself comfortable with his back braced against the headboard and his too-long-for-the-bed legs stretched out, Sissy placed the album in his lap.

  She opened the cover and flipped past a few pages, but Mitch stopped her. He stared at her when she was eight and Bobby Ray ten.

  “Wow. Jess was right, Sissy. His head was huge.”

  Sissy crinkled up her nose. “I know. It took him a while to grow into that thing. The Navy really helped there. His head never got any smaller, but thankfully, his body got much bigger.”

  Mitch began flipping pages himself. He smiled at a picture of her when she was about eleven. She wore a bikini top with denim shorts and had her middle finger raised to the camera.

  “Dee took that one. She was in the photography club at school.”

  “Has your mother seen this picture?”

  She laughed. “Oh, yeah. She’s torn it up six, seven times—but Dee has the
negative and a darkroom.”

  After a few more pages, Mitch stopped on a picture of her, Ronnie Lee, and her cousin Katie out of North Carolina. All three were in bikinis, and you could see three tigers in the background watching them.

  “How old were you here?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Man, even then.”

  “Even then what?”

  He didn’t answer and instead asked, “Who are the alley cats?”

  “Some boys we met when I was on vacation in Smithville. You ever been there?”

  “No. I’ve heard about it, though. It’s supposed to be fun.”

  “If you like fighting bears and tigers and hyenas for your zebra dinner, it’s a blast. I love going there, but I haven’t been in a while.”

  “Is it true they have seals there?”

  Sissy shrugged. “Yeah.” She lowered her voice. “Only during the winter, though. They’re for the polar bears. They just sit by this saltwater lake and wait for those seals to come close enough.”

  “You have moral issues with that, don’t you?”

  “At least my dinners can run fast.”

  Mitch turned a few more pages. “Uh ... Sissy?”

  “Hhhmm?”

  “Why are most of the pictures in this section missing half?”

  “Oh, yeah. That.”

  Mitch chuckled. “Ex-boyfriend?”

  “Yup. My first boyfriend. Actually ... my only boyfriend. The males I’ve been with since I would never call boyfriends.”

  “Bad breakup?”

  “Something like that.” She rubbed her forehead and yawned. “What about you? Did you have a girlfriend back when you were sixteen?”

  “Yup. A She-wolf. See ... I’m the United Nations of the shifter world. Willing to take all comers.”

  “A She-wolf, huh? Do I remind you of her?”

  “No.” Mitch flipped through a few more pages. “She was really nice.” Sissy slammed her fist into his left shoulder. “Ow! What was that for?”

  “Are you saying I’m not nice?”

  Mitch chuckled. “That’s not what I meant. No, you don’t remind me of her, and she was really nice. Not that you don’t remind me of her because she was really nice.”