In a Badger Way (Honey Badger Chronicles #2) - Shelly Laurenston Page 0,39

my mind.”

“Then there we go.” Charlie kissed her sister’s forehead. “Now go to bed. Get some sleep.”

“Okeydokey!”

Charlie rolled her eyes because only her sister ever used that ridiculous term.

Stevie crawled onto the bed and when she reached the middle, she suddenly dropped; her face buried in the bedding.

Charlie picked up the jeans and T-shirt and walked to the door, opened it. That’s where she found the two dogs. Berg’s purebred Caucasian Shepherd Dog, Benny; and the rescue he’d adopted to keep Benny company, Artemis.

“You two waiting for me?” she asked, but the dogs ran past her and jumped on the bed to lie down on either side of Stevie, who was already snoring.

Knowing that the pair would be watching out for Stevie for a few hours relaxed Charlie completely, and she left the door partially open so the dogs could get in and out as needed.

Charlie reached the first floor and went toward the front of the house. When she stepped out on the porch, she held up the jeans.

“Here you go.”

Kyle’s sister stared at the jeans. “Do they still have pussy juice on them?”

Charlie, shocked, started to ask what the fuck she was talking about, but then she turned and looked at Max. When Max started laughing, Charlie simply went back inside and headed toward the laundry room.

* * *

Shen decided to get in some “sun time.” That’s what his family had always called it. Sitting outside in the sun, usually by water, and enjoying their bamboo. With family, it was a time to catch up with each other. When you were alone, it was time to just be.

He’d always enjoyed the “just be.” It kept him calm. Happy. Unlike other shifter breeds, pandas preferred the quiet life. They preferred sitting around all day, reading or watching TV and eating their bamboo. Jobs were obtained and kept for survival, but there were few pandas that saw their jobs as the end all, be all of their lives. The only things that mattered to a true panda were bamboo and family.

“Aren’t you uncomfortable like that?” a voice asked. And Shen could tell, merely from how superior that voice sounded, it was Kyle’s sister. It had to be a Jean-Louis Parker prodigy. They all sounded like that except Toni, Coop, and Cherise. The three oldest. Whatever their parents did right with those first three, they didn’t quite manage for the rest of the brood.

“If I were uncomfortable, I’d move,” he replied.

“I see.”

Hanging upside down from a tree limb, Shen stretched out his arm and grabbed one of the bamboo stalks from the pile beneath him. He unleashed his fangs and bit down on the stalk, breaking it into pieces. He picked one piece and went to work on it.

“How can you eat all that bamboo?”

“Why do you ask so many questions?”

“How do you learn without asking questions?”

“Except none of you ask questions because you’re actually curious. You’ve already made up your mind. You’re just putting your judgment in question form. It’s irritating, in case no one has pointed that out to you.”

“No. People have pointed it out to me. I just choose to ignore them.”

“Why are you here?” Shen finally asked. “I was enjoying my day.”

“Just killing time until my jeans are washed, and you didn’t look like you were doing anything.”

“Gee, thanks.”

The back door of the house opened and Kyle yelled. “Your phone is ringing.”

Before Shen could ask the idiot to bring him his phone—since he was hanging upside down from a tree—Charlie yelled from the kitchen, “I said to take the phone to him, you idiot!”

“I’m not his servant.”

“Kyle!”

“All right, all right.”

Kyle started across the yard and Shen’s phone started ringing again. Shen recognized the ring. It was chosen specifically for his oldest sister. What he was hoping, though, was that Kyle wouldn’t look at the caller ID because—

“Wait.” Kyle stopped walking, gawking down at the phone. “Do you know Kiki Wen Li?”

Actually, her name was Ming Wen Li but, when she was four, she apparently informed their mother that everyone was to now call her “Kiki” as she would not answer to anything else. Their mother had thought it was a phase. It had not been a phase. Thirty-three years later . . . she was globally known as Kiki.

Now, of course, the question was whether he told Kyle the truth. Of course, lying would only put the kid off for so long. It was the modern age. If Shen lied, the kid just had to hit the