Livy retracted her fangs and gazed at the eldest male sibling of the Jean-Louis Parkers. “Not your hands? Most people tell me not to touch their face.”
“I can play without my eyes,” he said, now grinning. “Can’t play without my hands.” He held those hands up. “These babies are insured for a reason.”
Cooper was a pianist who’d been playing for massive audiences since he was five or so. Of all Toni’s siblings, he was the most normal. At least as normal as any child prodigy could be, she guessed.
“What’s going on?” Livy asked.
“We’re giving Kyle and all of Italy a break.”
Livy’s head tipped down as she studied the handsome jackal she thought of as her own brother. “Really?”
“They’re trying to control me!” Kyle yelled from the couch. “Control my brilliance! They have yet to realize they can’t control me! Their narrow, noncreative minds simply don’t understand what I’m trying to do! They can’t conceive—”
“Stop it, Kyle,” Livy cut in calmly.
“Whatever,” the boy muttered. “They don’t deserve me.”
Coop shook his head. “How do you do that?”
Livy was one of the few people Kyle ever listened to, but Livy had no idea why. Although if she had to guess . . . “He may have seen what I did to that squirrel who got between me and that beehive in your parents’ backyard. You know how cranky I get when the squirrels fight back.”
Coop chuckled and handed the phone back to Livy. Together they slowly walked down the hallway toward the kitchen. When they were out of earshot of Kyle, Coop said softly, “Don’t call Toni.”
“I don’t get between you guys and Toni, Coop. You know that.”
“I do know. But there’s no reason for her to come back right now. Cherise and I have control of the situation, and my parents know what’s going on.”
“What is going on?”
Coop smirked, shrugged. “He’s been fighting with all the teachers, making the other students homicidal and suicidal.”
“Aren’t these all adult students?”
“Oh yeah, they are.”
“Then why doesn’t the school just get rid of him?”
“The school doesn’t want to lose him. You should see the piece he made for his midterm project.” Shaking his head, mouth open a bit, Coop searched for the right words. “It was . . . breathtaking.”
If Coop thought it was breathtaking and he was willing to admit it out loud . . . Livy couldn’t wait to see it.
“So it was decided to give everyone involved a break. And since Cherise and I have a concert coming up in Manhattan, Mom and Dad thought a little winter break here would help Kyle.”
“Why not send him to Washington to be with your parents?”
“I think they were hoping a little Kyle-only time would be to his benefit. It’s a bit harder to make that happen when you’ve got five other kids to manage.”
Livy understood that. In all honesty, she’d never figured out how the family managed to do as well as they did. Eleven pups, ten of them prodigies, one of those prodigies a definite sociopath—it shocked many to find out that wasn’t Kyle—how could the family not fall apart? Yet they never did. Instead each of the children thrived in their own way.
The problem with Kyle, though, was that he wasn’t just an artist. He was also kind of a twisted psychologist-in-training. With a few choice words, he could destroy a person’s self-confidence and will to live. And although most of his siblings were so used to Kyle and so certain of their own brilliance, they could handle him, it still made for lots of fights. Fights that could get on anyone’s nerves eventually.
So letting Cooper and Cherise—the two oldest when Toni wasn’t around—manage him for a little while was most likely a good idea.
Unfortunately, it changed everything for Livy.
“Well, as long as you make sure Toni doesn’t get mad at me when she comes back,” she said to Coop.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered.”
“Good. Thanks.” Livy walked around Coop to leave through the front door, but Coop caught hold of her arm, held her.
“Wait. Why are you here?” He raised a brow. “And why are you coming through the front door? You know . . . I don’t think I’ve seen you do that in a decade. Maybe longer.”
“It’s nothing.” She tried to walk away, but Coop gently tugged her back.
“Livy?”
“What?”
“Do you think only Toni can read you? What’s wrong? Why are you here?”
Livy lifted her free hand and dropped it. “It’s . . . it’s been a long week.”
Coop frowned. “And I’ve been tasked with taking care of Kyle. We all have problems, so just tell me.”
“It’s complicated. And I don’t have time to really tell you. I need to find a place to—”
“You can stay here.”
“It’s not just me, Coop. It’s my family. And with Kyle and Cherise here, I can’t bring them—”
“Your family is coming here?” a voice from the doorway eagerly asked.
Livy snarled. “Kyle—”
“Honey badgers? Honey badgers are coming to stay with us?”
“Kyle—”
Kyle clapped his hands together and turned in a goofy circle. “I’m so excited!” he cheered. “Honey badgers! Honey badgers! Honey badgers!”
Livy looked at Coop, but he could only shrug in confusion.
“Kyle, what are you going on about?” Livy demanded.
“Tell me your mother’s coming. Please! You think this time she’ll sit for me? I promise not to ask her to do it naked this time. But she has to wear red. She looks so amazing in red. She has those razor-sharp cheekbones.” Kyle stopped crowing long enough to look Livy over and add, “Guess you get your looks from your father, huh?”
Coop grabbed Livy’s arm again before she could go over there and throttle the kid.
“Honey badgers are coming!” Kyle yelled again. “Honey badgers!” He charged down the hallway and to the stairs. “I need to get my pencils and pad! Because honey badgers are coming!”
Livy and Coop stared at each other for several long seconds until Coop admitted what they were both thinking. “I really never saw that coming.”
Jessica Ann Ward-Smith, Alpha Female of the Kuznetsov wild dog Pack and wife and mate of the Alpha Male of the New York Smith Pack Bobby Ray Smith, was trying to get her daughter into the little T-shirt she’d purchased for her, but somehow that attempt had turned into a tugging match. A tugging match the little wolfdog was winning.
“Give it to me, Lissy!”
Laughing hysterically, her daughter dug her little feet into the kitchen table and kept pulling.
“Lissy, come on. Mommy has to go.”
But her daughter was in what Blayne called the “wolfdog zone,” where she became hyper-obsessed with just one thing. And that one thing, at the moment, seemed to be playing tug with her goddamn T-shirt.
“Auntie Jessie?” one of the other pups asked as he walked into the kitchen.
“Yes?” she growled out, still trying to snatch the T-shirt back.
He climbed up on a chair and reached across the table to grab an apple. “There’s a bunch of limos outside the house across the street.”
“Yes. Some of the Jean-Louis Parkers are coming to stay.”
“I remember them. But the ones outside don’t look like Jean-Louis Parkers.” He bit into the apple, chewed. “They’re . . . wider.”
“Tall and wide?”
“No. Just wide. Like short linebackers.”
Confused, Jess stared at the boy. The Jean-Louis Parkers were jackals, a lean breed of canine like the wild dogs. Actually, all the smaller breeds were relatively lean. The foxes, the cougars. She could only think of one small shifter breed that one would consider wide and that was connected with the Jean-Louis Parkers, and that breed was . . .