“You’ve gotta come!”
“Well—”
“Great! I’ll tell the team you’ll be there!”
Livy let out a breath, wondering how she was not going to kill that girl at some point.
“She’s just so damn perky,” Livy muttered.
She returned to her work. She was annoyed because she knew she’d taken some pictures recently of the gymnastics team that she really wanted to use, but she couldn’t find them on the memory card she had. She spun her chair around and pulled her camera out of her bag. Livy turned it on and using the LCD monitor in the back of her Nikon, she viewed the first picture that came up. It was a black-and-white one of Vic that she’d taken in Massachusetts.
Smiling, she studied the image. It reminded her of how good she could be when she wasn’t thinking too much about it. When she was just letting the moment lead her rather than the million things going on in her head.
Livy placed her camera on her desk and hooked it up to her computer. She copied Vic’s pictures and enlarged them on her screen. With some miniscule tweaking, she thought at least one of the pics could possibly work for her upcoming show.
Livy dove into the work, forgetting everything around her as she toyed with the images, seeing what she could pull out of them.
She was so lost in her work, she didn’t realize that she wasn’t alone until she stopped and reached for the can of honey-roasted almonds she kept on her desk. When Livy found nothing but empty space, she looked up and found a bunch of her cousins standing around her office, passing her damn almonds around.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“We’re bored,” Jake filled in.
“That sounds like a you problem.”
“If you want us to play nice at your friend’s fancy house, you better give us a way to work off our excess energy.”
“Can’t you jog like most people?”
“No,” they all replied.
Livy sat back in her seat and looked over her cousins. She thought about seeing if there was some game they could go to in the Sports Center, but that wouldn’t be enough for them. And the additional liquor they’d have access to just screamed “trouble.”
So Livy racked her brain for another option.
Reece Lee Reed pulled on a pair of basketball shorts and walked out of the bedroom, easing the door closed so that he didn’t wake up the bobcat asleep in his bed.
Yawning, he scratched his head and his belly while walking across the Kingston Arms hotel suite he’d been living in since he’d moved from Tennessee to Manhattan. A decision he still hadn’t regretted, although his mother did complain. Apparently her sons had deserted her. No mention of her only daughter, but Reece didn’t worry about that. He’d learned long ago to let his sister and mother fight it out between themselves. He had other things to do.
Like bobcats!
Chuckling, Reece glanced at his watch. It was already midafternoon, but he hadn’t gone to bed until late and then he hadn’t slept until morning. But it was his day off since he had a big job coming up on the weekend, so if he wanted to waste the day away with a very nice piece of feline ass, he could.
Lord, he loved his life.
Reece passed his couch, his eyes briefly straying to the big flat-screen TV on the other side of it, which was when Livy Kowalski suddenly popped up.
Reece screamed, jumping back.
“Hey,” Livy said calmly.
He hated when Livy did this. Curled up on his couch so he couldn’t see her until she leaped out at him like one of those undead killer children in those Japanese horror movies.
“Why are you here?” Reece asked.
“You made me a promise a few months ago. And today’s the day I need you to deliver.”
Reece made lots of promises to lots of people. He was good about keeping them, but he didn’t always remember them until someone reminded him. So he gazed at Livy, waiting for her to do just that.
She raised those pitch-black eyebrows of hers and tilted her head to the side.
Reece threw his hands in the air. “Oh Livy, come on!”
“You promised,” she coldly reminded him.
“Wasn’t I drunk that night?”
“Very drunk. But a promise is a promise. And I really need it.”
“You’re taking advantage of me.”
“It’s not my fault you can’t hold your liquor and I was the only thing between you and a couple of really pissed-off brother lions. Who told you to drink that tequila anyway?”
Reece shrugged. “I love tequila. It’s so dang tasty.”
“You promised,” she said again.
“Yeah, but—”
“Promised.”
“Livy, it’s just—”
“Promised.”
“I just—”
“Promised.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Promised.”
That was the thing with Olivia Kowalski. She forgot nothing and wasn’t afraid to call in a favor when necessary.
“Is there a reason I need to do this?” Reece asked, wondering why she wanted a favor now.
“Yeah.”
No. Livy wasn’t subtle. But she wasn’t really open, either. Emotion and information didn’t pour from her like it did from the other females in his life. If you asked her a pointed question, Livy would often answer with brutal honesty. But if you didn’t know the question to ask, she wasn’t about to help you.
“All right,” Reece finally agreed, wondering once again what had possessed him to become friendly with a dang honey badger. His mother had warned him. Warned him they were the meanest things on the planet. But he thought she was just being . . . herself. He had no idea there was validity to her statements. “Just let me take a quick shower and call the guys.”
Reece had barely taken two steps when his bedroom door opened and the Southern bobcat he’d met a few days ago smiled at him. She wore one of Reece’s Tennessee Titans T-shirts—something that annoyed Reece greatly because you just didn’t take a man’s Titans T-shirt—and leaned against the doorjamb, smiling. “Hey there, darlin’,” she purred.
Reece cringed at that sexy murmur and moved. Good thing, too, as the sound he found so sexy did nothing but set Livy off. Just as he bolted forward, Livy was already charging across his couch on all fours toward the bobcat. Livy wasn’t in her honey badger form, either, she was just on all fours. And yet she still moved like lightning. Before he could reach her, she was off the couch, fangs and claws unleashed. But he did manage—barely—to catch her around the waist, snatching her out of the air seconds before she could embed all those deadly natural weapons into the bobcat’s pretty face.
While Reece held on to a thrashing Livy, the bobcat had thankfully moved fast, as well, scrambling onto a side table and then onto the wall. She hung there now by her claws, hissing down at him and Livy.
“Darlin’,” Reece said to the bobcat over all the noise, “why don’t you let yourself out and, uh, I’ll call you later. Promise!”
Livy slammed her booted foot down onto the back of the wolf lying in front of her, raised her weapon, and screamed out, “By this paintball gun . . . I rule alllllll!”
Her cousins raised their weapons in mutual triumph, cheering at the complete and utter destruction of their opponents.
Grinning, Livy looked over at Reece and his Pack, who were still standing but also covered in red paint. And it was his packmates who were glaring at poor Reece for getting them into this. He seemed reluctant to turn around and face them. Not that she blamed him.
“What a good idea this was,” Reece’s brother Rory snarled at Reece. “I’m so glad I took off work to do this.”
“We got beaten by a bunch of mighty midgets,” one of the other Packmates grumbled.
“No,” Rory corrected. “We got beaten by a bunch of dang honey badgers.” Rory slapped the back of Reece’s head. “You put us up against goddamn honey badgers!”