In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,22
boundaries and your group comes in and pretends to be above it all?”
MacKilligan started toward her but Shen was there to catch her, pulling her back.
“Perhaps we can all meet later,” he suggested. “For a tasty lunch? Or coffee!”
“Yes, that’s what we want,” Irene teased. “For your little friend to shift into King Kong in the middle of a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue.”
“King Kong?” MacKilligan screeched, coming for Irene again. But the bear caught her around the waist, held her back with big, strong arms.
“How dare you—”
“I’m just joking,” Irene said, not letting the girl finish. “Can’t your generation of trailblazers take a joke?”
Irene moved across the room and sat in a large club chair, crossing her legs and staring at the seething MacKilligan and uncertain Li. “Now, we must figure out what we’re going to do about you, little miss.”
“Do about me?” MacKilligan snapped. “You mean put me down like a stray dog?”
“Trust me. If any government gets its hands on you, they’ll treat you much worse than any stray dog. In fact, you’ll be lucky if all they do is put you down.”
* * *
Stevie stopped struggling in Shen’s arms and stared at the woman she’d hated since she was fourteen. She’d been working on her dissertation for her first PhD. It had been suggested by one of her benefactors that she take her work to Irene Conridge in Washington State for a “frank overview.” As someone who had read all of Irene Conridge’s books before she was six, she was thrilled by the very idea.
Until she’d actually met Conridge. Without even looking at her, Conridge had tossed Stevie’s manuscript onto her desk and sneered, “Is that really the best you can do?”
Shocked, Stevie had taken her paper and gone home. She’d worked for a few more months before going back to Conridge.
And had gotten nearly the same response, “Really? Is this the best you can do?”
Another few months of work. Her sisters began to worry. Her stress level went up. But she wasn’t about to be defeated. Her idol wanted a perfect dissertation, so she’d get one.
The third time she’d sent her dissertation ahead and followed a week later. With her long legs up on her desk and her black and gray curly hair in a very messy bun, Conridge had asked, “Honestly, child, is this really the best that you can do?”
That’s when Stevie’s rage had welled up. She could feel her fangs itching to break free. Her claws nearly clearing past her nails. She knew there was only one way to hold back the tiger-striped badger yearning to break free and tear a chunk out of Conridge’s very human throat . . .
“As a matter of fact,” Stevie had snarled, “it is the best I can do, you old cunt!” Then Stevie had swiped her dissertation off the desk, making sure to knock down the pictures of Conridge’s smug husband and their smug-looking children, and stormed out.
The fact that the third iteration of her dissertation ended up winning nearly every award known to science for that year short of the Nobel—and she’d only lost that to an entire group from Norway who’d invented a functioning mechanical heart that worked in pigs—meant nothing. All those awards and citations and newspaper articles spouting about how she was the future of science were boxed up somewhere in her grandfather’s house in Wisconsin. She couldn’t even bear to look at them. Because all she’d wanted was Conridge’s approval, and she’d never gotten it. Something she’d hated the old bitch for ever since.
At the time, Charlie had been terrified that Stevie would walk away from science, and Stevie had definitely entertained the thought. But, to quote Max, “She’s too stubborn to give up shit.”
And Max had been right. Although Stevie felt the disappointment every day, she’d refused to give up something else she loved after she’d already walked away from music.
Stevie pushed Shen’s arms off her waist and walked around the bed until she could sit on it while facing Conridge.
“So what do you want?”
“To help you.”
Stevie couldn’t stop a harsh snort. “You? Help me? Why?”
Conridge leaned forward and said, sounding deeply earnest, “Because I love you.”
Shocked, Stevie blinked and jerked back a bit. “What?”
Conridge laughed. “Just kidding. I barely love my children and I actually ejected them from my own body. If that’s how I feel about them, why the hell would I love you?”
Shen let out another long sigh. “I don’t see how this is helping anyone.”