This was so freaking cool!
Katy had arrived early, and Drea wasn’t here yet, so she moseyed on over to the bar top and grinned brightly at the bartender.
“What can I do you for?” he asked as he set a coaster in front of her. The logo was a frog in a swamp. Cute.
“Um, what’s your specialty?”
“The Swamp-Grider is good,” said a man down at the very end of the bar.
He wore a baseball cap and a long-sleeve threadbare denim shirt. He had a dark, heavy beard. And when he looked over at Katy, she gasped. His entire face was scarred and disfigured from temple to jaw on the right side, but that wasn’t what shocked her. His eyes were gold like Kannon’s.
“Are you in the Tarian Pride?” she blurted out.
His eyes narrowed slightly, but he smiled a little. “I’m in the real Tarian Pride.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what that meant. “So, you know Kannon?”
The smile fell from his face, and he looked back at the half-empty whiskey on the rocks he cupped between his hands. “I sure do.” His voice had gone all snarly though, and there was a growling sound in his throat. Katy didn’t like this.
And apparently neither did the bartender, Josiah, because he said, “You take that shifter shit outside, Abel.”
“I can take it wherever I want to. This is our territory, you—”
Slam! Josiah hit the counter with the flat of his palm loudly. “Not anymore. I heard what happened. I know how many of you there are left. You don’t have rights to trash this town anymore. You have to act like decent, law-abiding citizens, same as the rest of us now. Or we can run you out of town. Pretty sure I could wrestle up a big enough mob for that. Y’all have pissed off a lot of shop owners over the years. Now, your money is still good, but we aren’t taking your shit anymore. No more broken windows or fights. No more costing us money. No more scaring townsfolk just because you feel like being an asshole. There’s rules for you Old Tarians now.” The bartender arched his bushy eyebrows. “Tell the others.”
Abel sat back in his creaking chair and tossed the rest of his whiskey back, then glared at the bartender thoughtfully, scratching his lip with the edge of his thumbnail. “But I suppose there’s no rules for the New Tarians, is that right?”
“There’s rules for all you shifters.” Whooo, there was venom in Josiah’s voice.
And now the three of them were drowning in awkward silence as the two men glared at each other like they were having a staring contest. Their faces were turning red.
It was about this time that Katy realized she’d had a weird reaction to their argument. She had her hands up in the air like she was in the middle of some stick-em-up shootout with pistols at noon. Clearing her throat, she lowered her hands and said, “You got margaritas here? I think I need a margarita.”
“Sure do.” Josiah grabbed a glass from behind the bar and started mixing up her drink.
“You think you run the entire world, don’t you?” Abel asked.
“Me?” Katy looked behind her, but no one was there. He was definitely looking at her. “I don’t run anything. I trip on my own shoe laces three times a week and barely remember how to spell my middle name.”
“You think your rules are important and that everyone should follow them.”
“In my defense, my mom was a bit of a hippie and made my middle name Meadow. But she wanted to be different so she spelled it M-E-H-D-O-H.”
“Nobody fuckin’ cares about your stupid rules,” he said, rudely ignoring her interesting story about middle names.
“Get out,” Josiah told him as he did a long pour of tequila.
“Or what, human?”
The cocking of a gun was deafening in the quiet bar. Katy’s hands went back in the air, but it wasn’t her Josiah was aiming at. It was Kannon’s Pride-mate. He should probably take lessons in manners from Kannon. On a scale of one to ten, Abel’s rudeness hovered right at eleven.
Wait, maybe this was one of those interactive bars that had shows like the Wild West? It would be more convincing if the gun Josiah was holding was a Peacemaker and not what looked like a Glock.
Abel’s smile was downright evil, and he threw up his hands as though he surrendered. But the look in his blazing eyes said he surrendered nothing. “Sleep good tonight, Josiah. There’s still enough of us around to make a little ruckus.” He threw his glass against the back wall, shattering it into a hundred pieces. And then he made his way slowly to the door.
“Tell Kannon I said hi,” he called over his shoulder without looking back.
“Um, you can probably tell him yourself. Since you’re in the Tarian Pride?” Shifter dynamics were confusing. She turned to Josiah. “He didn’t pay.”
“They never do. Pieces of shit, all of ’em.”
“But…Kannon seems nice.”
“Kannon ain’t one of them. Not anymore,” Josiah said, frowning at the door. “Advice from a stranger, for what it’s worth. Don’t talk to the shifters in this town. It ain’t like Damon’s Mountains where they are accepting and all have a good side. You never know what you’re gonna get in Telluride.”
He set the gun back in its place behind the bar and finished making her margarita just as Drea sang out, “Whooo whooooooo!”
Grinning, Katy turned. She cupped her hands around her mouth to finish their old chant, “I love youuuuuuu!”
Her curvaceous, dark-chocolate-skinned, statuesque, hilarious, grinning, drop-dead-gorgeous bestie of a friend came running for her. Their laughter was so loud as Katy got all swept up in one of Drea’s infamous hugs.
“God, I missed this,” Katy murmured, squeezing her so tight.
“I missed you!”
“I did, too! But…” Katy squeezed her eyes closed so she could keep the moisture building there from falling to her cheeks. “I didn’t realize how much until just now.”
With a chuckle, Drea released her and flopped a gift bag onto the counter. “What’s she having, Jo?”
Josiah was already grabbing for the tequila. “Margarita. I’m guessing you want one, too?”
“Yes! I haven’t had a drink that wasn’t wine in so long!”
“Triplets keeping you busy?” Katy asked.
“Oh, Lord yes. And I started back to work at the flower shop. Donnie and I are still trying to find the rhythm between both our jobs and childcare and raising three boys under two, and God, I’ve been ready for you to come visit. I need a break from my life.”
Katy laughed and took a sip of her margarita. It was delicious. “Is Donnie watching the kids today?”
“Yep! With strict instructions not to bother me with anything unless the boys are bleeding, cussing, or in an ambulance. This is for you.” Drea pushed the gift bag toward her.
“For me? Why? My birthday isn’t for another two months.”
“Oh, this ain’t for your birthday. This is for that Facebook status update saying you’re single. About. Damn. Time! And whatever boy you’re banging that has Dayton texting me relentlessly, trying to find out more about him…” Drea slow-clapped. “Good for you. And fuck him. I hope he thinks about what he gave up every day for the rest of his life. I hope he sees your face whenever he looks at every tramp he tries to take home, too.”
“Drea!”
“What? I wish that on him. Misery. Misery for a miserable motherfucker. Gonna leave my friend on her wedding day. You gotta ’nother goddamn thing coming. Gonna get me and you matching voodoo dolls of him. Donnie said he would get creative on a voodoo doll, too! He hates Dayton.”
“Oh, I know. Remember right before the wedding? Donnie asked me to choose anyone on the planet but Dayton. I didn’t listen, and look what happened.”
“Yeah…” Drea smiled at her. “Look what happened. You found your backbone, girl. I can tell. Now open this and tell me about the new manfriend.”
Katy gushed about Kannon and all the qualities she liked about him as she tore out the bright green tissue paper. There was a ton of it, and it took a while to get to the bottom of the bag. Nestled in the very last layer was a tiny pocket vibrator. “Oh, my gosh, Drea!” Katy flipped the ON button with the edge of her thumbnail. Buuuuuuzzzzzz. She cracked up. “What is this?”
Drea slurped on her margarita and deadpanned, “I’m assuming it’s a close replica of Dayton’s micro-dick. I say ‘close’ because it’s the smallest one I could find, and I’m assuming he’s an extra extra small.” She frowned through Katy’s laughter. “On second thought, I should’ve got you a bigger one so your body can adjust to your new man’s normal dick. What’s his name?”
“Kannon—”
Drea choked on the sip of margarita she’d been in the middle of taking. Her eyes went round and in a careful tone, she asked, “Kannon who?”
Katy lifted her chin higher and said, “Kannon Haid Killian of the T—”
“Tarian Pride,” Drea murmured, finishing Katy’s sentence. “Shhhhit.”
“’Nother drink?” Josiah asked in a somber tone.
“Yeeeeep,” Drea told him. She held up two fingers. “Make them doubles. And we probably need some food. My friend and I have a lot of catching up to do apparently.”
Chapter Ten
Two margaritas was all it took to get Katy a little too tipsy.
See, here was the problem. She had made a deal with herself years ago to not drink on work days. But her boss had her come in to the shop dang near every single day of her life, so she was now the lightest of all lightweights. The cheapest of all cheap drunks. And currently, the bell of the ball—that ball being the Swampy Frog and a slew of Chris Stapleton songs that played through an old jukebox. Which, by the way, wasn’t very Old West because jukeboxes hadn’t existed back at the turn of the century, but the music was nice.