Молли Харпер - How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

“Just give me time, Evie, and we’ll be busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest in here,” I promised.

“Oh, how I love your genteel Southern patois,” Evie said, eyeing my overcaffeinated, jittery self with an expression I can only describe as wary concern. “I thought you belles were supposed to be all verandas and mint juleps.”

“How about this one? We’ll be busier than a one-armed paper hanger.”

She pursed her lips. “Why are all your metaphors amputation-based?”

“I honestly don’t know,” I said, shaking my head.

“Well, lost limbs aside, this is great. I’ve wanted to revamp the menu for a while,” she said as we whispered over the crackle of the fryer. “But when you don’t do the cooking, it’s pretty difficult to try to change what’s cooked. We’ll just tell Buzz that Pete dropped all of the menus in the sink and we have to print new ones.”

“There’s no way Buzz is going to believe that,” I said with a laugh.

“Hey, Pete,” she called into the dining room. “Could you bring me that stack of menus?”

I watched in shock as Evie went to take the menus from a compliant Pete, bumped his arm, and sent the menus plopping into the dishwater with a loud splash. My mouth popped open. Pete stammered an apology.

“Oh, honey, don’t worry about it. It was mostly my fault. Why don’t you go serve Abner his coffee, and I’ll clean this up, OK?” Clearly rattled, Pete nodded, grabbed the coffeepot, and slunk out of the kitchen. Evie looked very pleased with herself.

“I underestimate you,” I told Evie.

She shrugged. “Most people do.”

Eager to erase the dirty gray smear Teague had put on the Glacier for me, I threw myself into our plans for the next week. I even solemnly stood by Evie as she fed Buzz her “Pete dropped the menus” story with an alarming lack of guile.

One afternoon, fresh from Larson’s Antiques, a glorified secondhand shop that specialized in the leavings of former Grundy residents who wanted to make a fast escape from town, I breezed into the saloon. I had a mile-wide smile on my face as I carefully balanced a box of glass cake plates on my hip. I’d managed to get six plates for fifty dollars and hired Sarah Larson’s son, Nick, to come chop a load of firewood for me that weekend. All in all, it had been a very productive afternoon.

“Hey, Mo!” Buzz said in his best impression of Curly from The Three Stooges. It had taken him all of a week of knowing me to come up with that inside joke, but now that he considered himself my de facto big brother and protector, he felt free to tease me at will. Quietly pulling me aside a few days before and telling me that Teague’s body had been positively identified had been some sort of bonding moment for him. Alaskan men were very strange.

Pete stepped around the bar and helped with the heavy box of leaded glass.

“Look what I found, Evie!” I said, gingerly unwrapping my purchases. “I figured we could use them to display the new desserts. None of them match, but I thought that would be sort of quirky and fun.”

“Looks great, Mo.” She offered a wide smile as I tied on an apron and looked over the pending orders.

“When’s the big launch?” I turned to find Cooper sitting at the counter, glaring at me despite the relative calm of his voice.

“We start the new menu on Monday. What can I get for you?” I asked.

“I’m not hungry, thanks,” he said. “I’ll stick with coffee.”

“Not hungry,” Evie scoffed. “I’ve seen you eat five of Buzz’s flapjacks and tell him to hurry up cooking the sixth.”

Cooper shot Evie a warning look. She took her coffeepot and circulated among the booths.

I started to carry the stands into the kitchen before Cooper grumbled, “Settling right in, aren’t you?” He didn’t even look up to speak to me. Just stared down into his coffee as if he could divine my answer there.

“What is your problem?” I asked, taking another pot from the warmer when I saw that his cup was nearing empty. “I’m helping out a friend. I didn’t expect to make friends here or get a job that I love, so I’d like to do what I can to pay Evie back for her kindness.”

When he looked up, there were dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn’t slept well in weeks. “No, you’re setting Evie up for a fall. She’s already started depending on you. Her business is picking up, because people want to come in and get a look at you. And when you pack up and leave, she’ll suffer. But you’ll be too far away, ‘finding yourself’ in some other place, to give a damn.”

I felt like growling that if getting attacked in the alley behind my workplace didn’t scare me out of town, not much would. But Cooper didn’t know about that, and I didn’t particularly feel like sharing with him.

My throat tight, I said softly, “Has it occurred to you that this is none of your business, and you should let Evie and me figure it out?”

“Has it occurred to you that you’re never going to find whatever you’re trying to find up here, contentment or fulfillment or a closer connection to the land or whatever you outsiders come up here looking for?” he growled back. “If you didn’t have it in the lower forty-eight, you’re not going to find it just by switching locations. You come up here in your Range Rovers and your three-hundred-dollar hiking boots and spend God knows how much setting yourself up in houses you don’t need because the first time the temperature dips below zero, you figure out, ‘Oh, my God, Alaska is cold!’ And you whine and you complain to anyone who will listen because you can’t find your favorite brand of toothpaste. Or because you have to drive four hours to get to a Starbucks. And you turn on everybody around you, treating them like shit because they’re content to live in ‘a little pissant town’ and making them miserable until it’s thawed enough for you to make tracks for the nearest airport. And you, you’re worse, because you’re trying so damn hard to pretend that you belong here—”

“Enough.” At first, I didn’t realize that raw, harsh whisper had come from me. I pursed my lips to hold back the torrent of angry, hurt responses. Because they would have been loud, possibly quite profane responses, and I didn’t want to cause a scene.

“Pour your own damn coffee,” I said, dropping the pot next to his cup with a clatter. “Evie, I’m going to get some air.”

“Sure, sweetie.” She patted my back as I ducked through the kitchen. I heard her smack Cooper’s head and Cooper’s sharp oath. “What did you say to her?”

I shut the staff entrance door behind me with a click and leaned against the cold brick of the alleyway. The tears I expected to come rushing out stayed settled in my chest, a heavy weight against my heart. I doubled over, braced against my knees, and rubbed at my sternum with a shaking hand.

Returning to the scene of the crime didn’t really help my frame of mind. The scrape of the pavement under my shoes, the sour smell of the Dumpster, brought images bubbling back to mind. I could feel his breath on my neck, the warmth of his blood soaking my shoulder. Suddenly nauseated, I closed my eyes and took deep breaths. I thought of the sweet, heady scent of honeysuckle, the huge trucks that hauled cotton from fields every summer back home, leaving bits of snowy white in their wake.

“Evie says—”

“Gah!” I screamed, swinging out and clipping someone’s jaw with my clenched fist. My eyes flew open.

I hadn’t even realized I’d been making a fist, but just the tiniest part of me was happy to share that with Cooper.

“Jesus!” he yelped, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “What was that for?”

“You startled me!” I cried, shoving at his chest. “What the hell is wrong with you, sneaking up on someone like that?”