“Hence the many pups.”
“Exactly. While my ex’s dad was banging his secretaries. But my parents are the ones living in sin? Really?”
“Full-humans do love to judge.”
Toni gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. Shifters can be judgmental.”
Ricky waved his spoon. “No, no. It is not the same. Our kind are born with preconceived notions about each other. Cats hate dogs. Wolves hate coyotes. Nobody trusts the foxes, and everybody fears the momma grizzly. These are givens based on centuries of surviving in the wild together and putting up with each other’s bullshit when eating at a Van Holtz restaurant.”
He did have a point.
“So what happened?” he asked again. “Did he push for marriage?”
“He did. But that wasn’t the main problem.” Toni brought her legs up and turned her body so she could face the wolf, suddenly eager to have this conversation. She could have talked to Coop when it happened, but he’d been on tour. She could have spoken to Cherise, too, but she took it so personally when anyone hurt any of her siblings that Toni didn’t want to be responsible for what she might do out of anger. There was also Livy, Toni’s best friend. But if upsetting Cherise was a bad idea, then upsetting Olivia Kowalski, American-born, Chinese-Polish daughter of two take-no-shit immigrants was a mistake on a global scale.
“The main problem was that he couldn’t understand the connection I have to my family.”
“Of course he couldn’t,” the wolf said flatly. “Do you really think some full-human gal can understand leaving my bed some morning, walking out into my living room, and finding my entire Pack snoring on my floor or eatin’ my yogurt while they watch the Brickyard 400?”
“Am I supposed to know what that is?”
He sighed, long and deep. “Poor, pretty Yankee. That’s NASCAR, darlin’. You do know what that is, right?”
“Yes,” she replied eagerly. “Troy and Freddy like to watch it for mathematical and scientific reasons—I think they’re secretly planning to build a car. Kyle likes to watch it because he says it’s fun to see what the”—and she used air quotes here—“ ‘average’ human being does in his or her time off.”
“It must be hard for ol’ Kyle to be so—”
“Arrogant? Rude? Condescending?”
“I was just going to say snotty, but those words work, too.”
“He’s really not that awful,” she admitted. “Unfortunately . . . he doesn’t know he’s not that awful.”
“I have to say, though . . . I like Kyle.”
“You do? Because you’re one of the very few.”
“I like his attitude.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. You know why?”
“No idea whatsoever.”
“Because he is what he is. I like that in a canine.”
“You’re an odd man.”
He scraped the last bit of melted ice cream at the bottom of his bowl. “Some might say.”
“So,” Ricky asked as he placed the empty bowl on the coffee table, “how did it end with your boyfriend?”
“I did something . . . reprehensible.”
Ricky leaned back and waited for her to tell him what that was rather than pushing her. And she did tell him.
“I left him alone with Kyle.”
“You are a cruel woman.”
“I know, I know. I still feel bad about it. The man graduated from Harvard Medical School, and by the time Kyle was done with him, he had to take a sabbatical from the hospital.”
Ricky started laughing at the full-human’s weakness.
“It’s not funny. I still don’t know what Kyle said to him, but he was only in there for ten minutes. Fifteen tops. I thought he was just going to scare him off or something. Prove to him that my entire family was a bunch of spoiled brats that no normal man would want to be around. But it turned out Kyle really didn’t like him. At all.” She grimaced. “I think he was crying when he left. And Kyle was smiling . . . then again so was my dad, Coop, and Freddy.”
“If your daddy didn’t like him, that should have been a clue.”
“My father has never liked any of my boyfriends.”
“All full-human?”
“That’s who I was around. Except for the Van Holtz Pack, but all that Pack talks about is cooking. I still make Hamburger Helper.”
“I love Hamburger Helper.”
She grinned. “Me, too. Any time we know Uncle Van is out of town, we invite Aunt Irene and her kids over and I make a big batch of Hamburger Helper for everybody.”
“Why when he’s out of town?”
She was quiet for a moment before saying, “Everything is pretty much a joke to my uncle Van except three things. His daughter, Ulva, who I decked once during a family soccer game because she made Cherise cry; the cleanliness of his kitchen; and his food. Uncle Van takes his food very, very seriously. So, yeah, we keep our Hamburger Helper nights completely top secret. And you better never tell, either.”
“Your secret is safe with me. The Reeds are known for the ability to keep our mouths shut. In fact, I have a couple of cousins in Midwest prisons just for that reason.”
“You know that is something I’d suggest not telling people.”
“Funny, my momma says the same thing.”
“You should listen to her.”
Toni’s phone rang, and she pulled it out of the backpack she had resting against the couch.
“Fancy phone,” he said while she stared at it.
“It’s the one I got at the job . . . and yet Kyle already has the number.”
Ricky chuckled and Toni answered her phone. “Yes, Kyle? No, Kyle. No, you may not tell her she’s fat. Because she’s not and because it’s wrong. No, you cannot push her into an eating disorder. No, you cannot convince Troy that Dad isn’t really his father and he’s really the slow boy Mom adopted. Can’t you all just work together?” Sighing loudly, Toni closed her eyes and Ricky saw all the tension that had eased out of her over the last couple of hours come right back up. “No, you are not superior. You are one of us and you will work together. Goddammit, Kyle, I am not playing around.” She looked at her watch. “Fine. I’ll be home in—”
That’s when Ricky snatched the phone out of her hand and while she watched, he crushed the little technological marvel in his fist. “Uh-oh . . . look at what I just did. My big, clumsy wolf hands crushed your itty-bitty fancy phone. You know what that means?”
“That you’re insane?”
“No. That ol’ Ric Van Holtz is gonna be real upset with me because he’ll have to get you a new one. So upset he’ll have to send Dee-Ann Smith to pummel me because he can’t risk bruising those lily-white hands of his.”
“Don’t pick on Ric. He’s one of my favorite not-really-cousins.”
“ ‘Not really cousins’?”
“With a hyphen between each word. In other words, he’s like family but not by blood.”
“So you just make up ridiculous terms for no reason?”
“Pretty much.”
Ricky shrugged. “Okay. So you wanna make out?”
“No, I do not.”
He stared at her, waited about a minute, then asked, “What about now?”
“No!” But she was laughing and no longer tense.
“If I wait another five minutes . . . ?”
“The answer will remain the same.”
“But I’m crashing here tonight—”
“When did I invite—”
“—and you can’t expect me to just lie out here all alone with a beautiful woman in the very next room . . . can you?”