A Wolf After My Own Heart by MaryJanice Davidson (free romance novels TXT) 📗

“Can we gooooooo? Please? I wanna goooooooo!”

or he’d probably still be standing in Lila’s driveway.

And then he’d compounded his error by going back later that night. What the hell was wrong with him?

His train of thought derailed when he heard the familiar screech of a car driven by a hungry werebear, pounding footsteps, the shriek of the porch door being hauled open, and…

“I came over as soon as I heard about the french silk p—you.”

…there was Annette Garsea, tireless IPA employee (except when she needed a nap), loyal foster sister, and singularly ferocious grizzly–polar hybrid (but only when a kid was in peril or if she skipped lunch).

“Finally,” he sniped back. He was both relieved and disappointed that Annette had shown up before he could decide whether or not to talk to Mama. “We’ve been waiting for hours.”

“My hirsute butt you’ve been waiting hours.” She bent—Mama Mac was short, and Annette was about five foot ten—and gave the older woman a careless smack on the cheek.

“And I’d like to have one family meeting where we don’t talk about your hirsute butt. But here we are!”

“This isn’t a family meeting, Oz.” Annette all but yanked the deliciously familiar red box away from him. “It’s dessert hour. Other places have happy hours, but we’re more ambitious. No, Mama, get the big plates.”

“I will not. You’ll ruin your—”

“Third lunch?” Oz suggested with a smirk. Annette’s prodigious appetite was fascinating and not a little frightening. “Ow!”

“Keep it up,” Mama Mac warned, brandishing the dreaded spoon. “You’re not too old to beat to death.” Which was laughable. Meredith Macropi wouldn’t raise a serious hand to a kid if you stuck a gun in her ear.

“’I’m pushing thirty, Mama.”

“All the more reason. Means time’s running out to teach you manners.”

“That time,” Annette intoned, pouring them glasses of milk, “has passed.”

Mama handed out napkins and plates, and the three of them settled around the table in her sunny kitchen. It hadn’t changed much in the years since he lived there for 122 days: same worn but clean tablecloth, same citrusy smells. Same cupboards filled with spices and dishes and cereal and other things that made a house a home. Same spotless floor (a good trick when you considered how often muddy Shifter adolescents raced across it), which he knew Mama Mac scrubbed by hand, despite the mops and Swiffers he and Annette had bought over the years.

And speaking of muddy adolescents… “Where are Caro and Dev?”

“School day,” Mama replied. “And don’t you dare eat the entire pie. I promised them both a slice.”

Annette sniffed, which was hilarious because she’d failed to realize she was sporting a whipped cream ’stache. “I fail to see how I’m constrained by your prom—never mind.”

Mama lowered the spoon and nodded. “Wise. Now how’s that girl doing, Oz?”

Since Caro was safely ensconced in high school, “that girl” could only be Sally Smalls, recent orphan and current bane of his existence. “Pretty good, considering.”

“Pretty good, considering she gave you the slip for a day,” Annette said, then added kindly, “I told you the work was going to be tricky.”

“Ha! Shows what you know. Sally’s not the problem.” Oz paused, considering. “Or at least, not the biggest problem.” Which was one of the reasons Oz had been happy to hear Annette had been en route. “It gets tricky for a couple of reasons. Big number one…”

“Mama’s new Stable neighbor.” Annette had just cut herself a slice of pie that was as big as a Stephen King paperback and plopped it on a plate, then slid the box to him. “How could Roy Harriss let that happen?”

“Oh, before I forget.” Mama was bustling from the fridge to the counter and back again. “Harry Harriss is back. I guess community college didn’t work out.”

“Normally I despise gossip, but that’s actually fascinating. Harry’s—what?” Annette frowned, doing the math. “Twenty-five? And he’s lived here all his life, except for a week here or a month there, those little tentative stabs at freedom?”

“And he always comes back, poor lamb.” Mama shook her head. “I don’t know why Roy doesn’t either put his foot down or give up and accept that his son will die in that house.”

“Wait, is that the guy who knew he didn’t get into college, lied and said he did, and didn’t come clean until they were physically on campus, trying to help him move into a dorm room he didn’t have? Because that’s commitment. That wasn’t a little white lie, it was the blackest of deceptions, and Harriss just flung himself into it. He packed and everything!”

“That’s him. But with all due respect to the Harriss mob, that’s not our problem. The Stable is.” Annette shook her head. “I still don’t understand how Harriss Senior let that happen.”

Say, now! Here was a chance for some fun. “Because he’s been trying to unload the house for years and beggars can’t be choosers?”

Annette shook her head. “He never should have rented to one of them.”

Oz felt his eyebrows climb. “You hear yourself, right?”

“I don’t have a bigoted bone in my body and you know it,” Annette snapped. “It’s a safety issue.”

He knew what she meant, but he could no more resist the chance to needle her than he could resist thinking about Lila’s curls and what they might feel like. Oz took a two-second mental break and reminded himself, again, that Kama-Rupa was not happening. It was so not happening, in fact, that he’d decided he wouldn’t bring it up. For what? The fleeting pleasure of confirming he hadn’t gone clinically insane in twenty-four hours? No and no and nope.

He forced his brain back on its accustomed “snark all over Annette” track. “Next you’re gonna say property values in the neighborhood are gonna drop like rocks.”

“Well, they might, but that’s more because of the economic indicators that would—dammit, it’s not a race thing!” she nearly shouted. “Or a species thing, rather. I don’t have a problem with Stables. In fact—”

“If you say you