hear it, she could read it all over Charlie. Like a misery shroud.
“And why?” Charlie asked. “Because you have a disability. The worst disability anyone could ever have.”
Max quickly caught Keane’s arm before he could storm over to Charlie and slap the crap out of her. “Let her finish.”
“You have the painful, cruel disability . . . of being the daughter of Freddy MacKilligan.”
“There it is!” Max announced.
“So, you might as well go back to your home,” Charlie said to Natalie. “Go back. Pretend you’re a Malone. And pray that being a MacKilligan won’t catch up to you . . . but it will. It will catch up to you. And when that day arrives, come back here. Because if there’s one thing the three of us can do, it’s help you through the nightmare of your bloodline.”
With that, Charlie sadly looked off across the street, placed her left hand over her heart, and let out a long, pathetic sigh of despair and misery.
See? It was always despair and misery.
After a few seconds, though, Charlie suddenly announced, “Now I must bake.”
She disappeared into the house, and that’s when Max finally noticed the older man who had been sitting on the stoop with her sister.
“Mr. Vargas?” she asked.
He gave her a faint smile and held up the paperback book she’d written her address in.
Zé came to the top of the stairs and glared down at his grandfather. “What are you doing here?”
Nope. Max didn’t like that at all, but she knew she couldn’t be the one to interfere. Zé knew her too well. He’d never take her seriously.
“Stevie,” she said, motioning her sister over. “That’s Zé’s grandfather and Zé is being rude to him.”
“He’s your grandfather?” Stevie shook her head. “Zé, don’t be rude to your grandfather! Grandfathers are the best! Well . . . not all. But most! And you should be nice. Whatever he did or didn’t do, he did for you.”
“Stevie,” Zé said kindly but firmly, “stay out of it.”
Stevie gasped and Max cringed.
“Not smooth, dude,” Max warned.
“I will not stay out of it!” Stevie told Zé. “You will be nice to your grandfather! In fact,” she added, looking around at everyone, “all of you will be nice! Do you know why? Because we’re all family now! Whether we like it or not! So here’s how this is going to roll!” She turned and pointed her finger at Natalie. “You’re our sister and we do care about you. I have no idea if we like you, we may not, but we won’t know until we get to know each other. We will get to know each other.” Her finger moved to Keane. “You will not keep your sister away from us. Do you know why? Because we’re all family! All of us. So if she wants to come see us, you’ll let her. If she wants to call, you’ll let her. But you guys are welcome here, too. Because you’re family.”
Stevie spun again and now that finger was pointed at Zé. “Now you will take your grandfather into the house. You will invite him to dinner. The triplets will arrange for the meal. While we’re waiting for food, you two will talk. It will be a nice conversation because it will be between a grandfather and grandson who love each other!”
Max winced because that last bit was screamed quite close to her ear.
Stevie took in a calming breath and let it out before asking, “Have I made myself perfectly clear to everyone?”
When no one answered, Stevie’s face turned a bright red and her hands curled into those tiny fists again.
That’s when everyone quickly agreed that yes, she’d made herself clear.
She relaxed and the redness left her face. “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said before going back into the house. Shen and the triplets followed behind her.
Max looked over her shoulder at Natalie. They smiled at each other and Max winked. Then Keane and his brothers stepped between them.
Turning toward the tigers, Max threw out her arms in direct challenge and asked, “What? Ya got a problem?”
With growls and snarls, the tigers led their sister away, and Max really hoped she’d see the kid again. Then she remembered that “kid” had taken out their cousin Mairi, and she wondered if seeing her again would actually be a good idea.
“Eh,” she said with a dismissive shrug. She wasn’t going to sit around worrying about her murderous little sister right now. She had more important things to deal with!
“Would you gentlemen like a couple of beers?”
“That would be nice,” Mr. Vargas said. “As long as it’s American beer.”
“We always have Coors for my friend Dutch.”
She carefully stepped around the full-human. When she was next to Zé, she pointed at the old man and mouthed, Talk to him! Zé rolled his eyes, so she added with a vicious frown, Be nice!
Confident she’d gotten her point across, Max changed her frown to the smile she was much more comfortable with and went up on her toes to kiss Zé on the cheek. But before she could, he brushed his head against her cheek, her chin, her throat. She felt his purr moving across her flesh.
When he pulled away, Max walked to the door and went into the house. Once she was inside, she bent over at the waist, put her hands on her knees, and let out a long, shuddering breath.
There wasn’t a lot in the world that rocked Max to her toes, but those feline moves . . . ?
Damn.
* * *
When Max disappeared into the house, Zé looked down at his grandfather. “Are you coming or what?”
“Are you going to help me up?” he snapped back.
“Why are you sitting down there anyway?”
“Just help me up.”
Zé held out his hands and with a simple heave, he easily brought Xavier to his feet. They stared at each other.
They were silent for a long time until Zé said, “You should have told me.”
Xavier nodded. “I know. But after your mother and grandmother. . . I couldn’t risk losing you, too.”
“You couldn’t lose me. Apparently once cats find people they like, they stick with them.”
A small smile curled Xavier’s lips. “You learn that from those badgers?”
“I’m learning all sorts of things from those badgers.” He motioned to the house. “Let’s go inside. We’ll talk.”
“Anything to keep that little blonde from yelling at us again,” Xavier complained as he moved to the front door. “She’s terrifying.” He stopped, looked up at Zé. “The one with the purple hair, though? Max? She seems really sweet.”
Zé laughed so hard that Xavier had to ask, “What the hell’s so funny?”
“Don’t worry,” Zé promised, putting his hands on his grandfather’s shoulders and gently leading him into the house. “Just like me . . . you’ll figure it out.”
Shelly Laurenston is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Pride, Call of Crows, and the Honey Badgers series, as well as winner of the RT Book Reviews Readers’ Choice Award for her 2016 novel, The Undoing. When she’s not writing about sexy wolf, honey badger, lion, and other fang-filled predators, she’s writing about sexy dragons as G. A. Aiken, the acclaimed and bestselling author of the Dragon Kin series. Originally from Long Island, she now lives on the West Coast and spends most of her time writing and making sure her rescued pit bull doesn’t love everyone into a coma. Please visit her online at ShellyLaurenston.
It’s not every day that a beautiful naked woman falls out of the sky and lands face-first on grizzly shifter Berg Dunn’s hotel balcony. Definitely they don’t usually hop up and demand his best gun. Berg gives the lady a grizzly-sized t-shirt and his cell phone, too, just on style points. And then she’s gone, taking his XXXL heart with her. By the time he figures out she’s a honey badger shifter, it’s too late.
Honey badgers are survivors. Brutal, vicious, ill-tempered survivors. Or maybe Charlie Taylor-MacKilligan is just pissed that her useless father is trying to get them all killed again, and won’t even tell her how. Protecting her little sisters has always been her job, and she’s not about to let some pesky giant grizzly protection specialist with a network of every shifter in Manhattan get in her way. Wait. He’s trying to help? Why would he want to do that? He’s cute enough that she just might let him tag along—that is, if he can keep up . . .