Hometown Pride, page 11
Tremaine stared at him, shoving down a hundred complaints about free spirits who ditch their girlfriends when they’re pregnant. Most of what he wanted to say was too far buried and would open wounds that were best left scarred over. He would sound like a whiny brat. And he was glad this guy hadn’t tried to raise him, because he would have been screwed up. And he had an excellent step-dad who loved him fully and fiercely, and not because of genetics. And his mom might not have mated with his dad if she’d been trying to stay with Russ.
The door at the other end of the mudroom opened and the air brought him Angelica’s smell mixed with his own.
“Well, good morning, young lady,” Russ said in his twangiest aw shucks accent.
Her nose wrinkled. “Isn’t that ‘little lady’ if you’re going all out for the sexist cowboy vibe?”
“Sexiest, you say?”
Angelica snorted in disbelief and turned back toward the kitchen.
“Are you inviting me in?” Russ called to her and she flipped him off, which only made him chuckle.
God, Tremaine lo… liked her.
Tremaine entered the alarm code to release the back door, being sure to shield his hand from his bio-dad. There was another code for quick escape in case they needed to leave in a hurry after the bolts deployed, which he’d forgotten to show Angelica the day before. He grabbed the key from the shelf and unlocked the regular bolt on the security door, opening it wordlessly, but blocking Russell as he grabbed a t-shirt from the dryer. He finally led the older man into the kitchen where Angelica was standing in front of his fridge, glowering at the meager contents.
“Bacon and eggs?” she asked because there was nothing else in there except a bowl of rice and chicken, the bag of salad from the night before, and some dried-out pasta.
“I’ll cook,” he said.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “How do you like your eggs?”
Fertilized, he thought, but he was too smart to say that out loud before she’d decided he was good enough to father her cub. She noticed his smirk, though, and shook her head before glancing back at where Russell lounged in the doorway.
“Sunny side up,” Russ answered.
And even though he wanted his the same way, Tremaine’s instinct for pettiness overwhelmed his thought processes and he said, “Over easy.”
She shook her head. “Oh, because that’s super simple, flipping a gooey mess upside down.”
He leaned in and nuzzled her ear. “I’ll make the eggs. How do you like yours?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Sunny side up.”
“You do the bacon and I’ll cook eggs.”
Russ sounded all saccharine and flirty as he said, “What you want me to do, sweetie?”
“Nothing, cutie,” growled Tremaine, misunderstanding on purpose and stepping slightly to the side to keep Russ from even looking at Angelica. “Just sit there and look pretty.”
They worked side by side in silence, not touching, his bio-dad droning on about a truck full of car parts he’d driven to Arizona. It was not how Tremaine had wanted to spend this morning.
Angelica found the loaf of bread and sniffed at it dubiously. Which was smart, but he really had just bought it a couple days before. As the toast popped up, she built a sort of house of cards with it to, as she said, keep it crunchy. He pulled the empty soup can he kept bacon grease in out of the fridge and she grimaced at it before pouring the excess grease in. “My mom did this. So gross.”
“You don’t dump it down the sink do you? That’ll clog the drain.”
She shook her head. “I eat turkey bacon and once it’s cold, grease goes in the trash where it belongs.”
“It’s great for frying up potatoes,” he told her. “But really, most of the time I end up filling the can and throwing the whole thing away.”
She smiled, which was what he liked to see.
Once the bacon was all but done, Tremaine ladled some of the grease into his biggest cast iron pan and broke all the eggs into it one by one.
“We can’t eat all that.” Angelica looked shocked. “Cholesterol. Fat.”
“You have as many as you want and I’m sure Russ and I can eat the rest.”
She glanced over her shoulder and Russ smirked at her some more.
“Yep. Still there,” muttered Tremaine.
Angelica huffed, so Tremaine kissed her on that pouty mouth.
“The eggs, Freight Train,” she said when he pulled away.
They were a bit harder than he really liked them, so he didn’t even try to turn some over for himself for show, and when his sperm donor commented on it, he glared.
They ate in silence, buttering toast before mopping up egg yolk and crunching bacon to get the protein like any good lion did after heavy exertion. Delicious, delicious cholesterol and fat.
“So why the hell are you here?” he finally asked.
Russ chuckled. “Well, I wanted to talk to you last night, but you dodged me. Too busy for your old man.”
Tremaine bit back denial that this old man was his in any way, but he was pretty sure his scowl conveyed that just fine.
“The two of you look a bit alike, with all that frowning.” Ross chuckled, apparently thinking he was funny.
“What. Do you. Want.”
“All right, Mr. and Ms. Too Serious, I think it’s time to move in. Take over.”
Tremaine was already shaking his head. “Number one: it’s lucky for you I told Angelica about this plot of yours or she’d be pissed at me right now. Number two: we are not doing anything. You have no link to this pride other than through me. This is not your land, not your people.”
His sperm donor’s eyebrows shot up. Tremaine wondered suddenly if his bio-dad knew about his ancestral link to this pride. “Not really yours either, son.” He sure did know where to stick the knife.
Tremaine had grown up mostly in Oregon and Washington, blending in with humans, but his mother and his uncle and cousins were all from here. Certain members of the pride, thinking he was only half lion, had always looked down on him. It rankled even more whenever he thought about being all lion because of this dipshit, when the father who raised him was “only” human. Sure, everyone had human blood in their family tree, the legacy of colonialism and slavery and true love, but he was mostly lion shifter.
“As much Tremaine’s as anyone’s,” Angelica declared. “Definitely not yours.”
He turned his head to narrow his eyes at Angel. Carol must have dropped some huge hints to get her looking in the right direction. He wondered how deep she’d dug, past what they’d discussed the night before.
Angel glared back in warning, but tipped her head to ask a question.
He tipped his head too, then shook it. It was a question for later.
She rolled her eyes.
He said, “Anyway, we have to wait for Carol to come back.”
“What?” yelped Angelica, turning to frown at him. “She’s safer where she is.”
“Well, I looked it up and it pretty much takes all the elders of the pack, especially historians and other…non-combatants, shall we say. They have to witness it and sign off on it. Otherwise, it’s an illegitimate coup.”
Russ chuckled again. “Well, once it’s over, it’s over.”
“If I’m doing this – and it would be me doing it, not you, not any dipshit friends of yours, and I don’t give a fuck how wild lions from outside a pride take over all the time – I’m doing it right. There are formal challenges that have to be observed. Stuff like that.” He looked at Angelica who was still glaring at him. “If I’m doing it. Because if I did and then wanted to be a loner again, everyone would be worse off in a power vacuum. And if I have to fight to become alpha, I’ll sure as hell be choosing my own successor.”
If he had Angelica as his mate, they would make the decision together and it would be off his shoulders. She’d be kind to the half-lions and the people who didn’t fit in. But she wasn’t as physically strong as Ella and Bradley. He still needed an alliance with some powerful female to make this work. It was rare for a pride to be led by a male and he didn’t want it. And he was pretty sure it wasn’t just his lifelong resentment of Russ that told him not to hand it over to him.
“That’s why you need me,” said Russ.
Tremaine blinked at him, his mind still on the list of females whom he could trust to run the pride right, if they had him as backup. Still circling around Macey, Angelica’s pick. Still not liking any of the other candidates he knew and liking the ones he didn’t know even less. “Like you’re going to stick around.”
“I’d stick around.”
“Because you’re so good at sticking around,” Angelica drawled. “What do you really want from this? The pride’s not rich, so it must not be money. It’s not particularly powerful, what with its people spread all over the place. It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, to be honest. To reestablish a base of loyal people who can offer services and build businesses. Build up the tax base.”
“Now you’re thinking like an accountant, sweetheart,” Russ said in his most sarcastic, most Texas accent. He’d never made a secret of his disdain for Tremaine’s accounting career, which had only made Tremaine persist in it longer than he should have.
“Shut up, Russell,” Tremaine said, drawling out the words to be as fake-Texan and sarcastic as he could manage. “She’s right about all of that. And I’ve been wondering for a long time what you would gain.” He thought about the Singh family connection they had discussed the night before.
His fake dad pursed his lips. “A home, I guess. I see a weak pride and I want it.” He looked serious, his eyes didn’t shift in an obvious tell that he was lying. Perhaps this was the deep reason. Perhaps not.
“If you can behave, you can make this your home without spilling any blood. Just drive up and ask to join. We have empty apartments with cheap rent.”
Russ’ lip curled in disgust. “A dominant loner doesn’t put himself at the bottom of some pecking order. I’d have to be here on my own terms, and those are being in charge.”
Tremaine scoffed. “You are 65 years old, not a male in the prime of his life, not able to fight off usurpers. All you need to do is to retire, Grandpa.”
The disgust deepened. “Watch your mouth, son. I’ll be a grandpa when you give me grandkids and not before. Even then, I’m the fun, lively grandpa, got it?”
Tremaine shuddered at the thought of having his cubs around this guy. He wondered what would happen to the cubs of the pride if Russ took over, if the young families would feel safer far away from this asshole. They probably would pack up and sneak away in the night. More likely, they’d fight. Russ would lose the alpha seat almost before he sat down in it. Tremaine rubbed his face. If he was doing this, he was doing it without his sperm donor. He wished his dad, the one who had raised him, was there to advise him. He wished his mom were alive.
Angelica squeezed his arm and he thought, by her hard expression, that she was thinking along the same lines he was. He stood abruptly. “Well, this has been lovely, Russell–”
“You should call me Dad.”
“No, I really shouldn’t. This has been lovely, but it’s time for you to go. Back to Texas, preferably. Get well outside of pride lands. I have some thinking to do and we are definitely waiting for Carol to get back before we make any moves.”
He herded his birth father to the door and locked up behind him, throwing all the bolts.
Angelica was filling the sink with hot, soapy water when Tremaine leaned against the counter beside her, crossing his arms over his chest and dropping his chin to stare at the floor, deep in thought.
She dumped in all the silverware and began working on the plates, scrubbing off the egg yolk, rinsing them in the second, smaller sink, and setting them in the drain basket. After a few minutes of this, she couldn’t keep quiet any more. “You really need a dishwasher.”
His head came up quickly and after a couple of seconds, he half-smiled at her. “Not what I was expecting you to say.”
“You’d still have to soak the yolk off the plates, but it would simplify things. Grab a towel and start drying.” She turned back to the sink and started working on the glasses. She was thinking just as hard, but at least she was doing something useful while she did.
“I guess I could use a dishwasher. It hasn’t been worth installing one for just me and my roommate. It would’ve been convenient, of course, but I don’t have enough dishes to fill one.”
She nodded, having seen how empty his cupboards were. There was one plate left in the cupboard after dinner the night before and breakfast with Russell. She had boxes and boxes of her mother’s china, both everyday and fancy, and of her own mismatched plates and cups from when she’d lived on her own before moving back in with her mom. It was all in his spare bedroom and he’d carried much of it up the stairs himself, so he probably noticed how many heavy, rattling boxes were marked “kitchen”. Her urge to open those boxes became almost overwhelming.
But she wasn’t ready. She had to know how this challenge would come out. She had to know the children and weaker members of the pride would be safe. She had to know he would stay with her.
“Do you have anything planned today?” she asked instead.
“I have to check on the fence we put up yesterday, get the owner to sign off. I have to go talk to another guy about his roof. He wants me to do a little patching, but it’s so old and there’s so much damage, he really needs to bring in a roofer and redo the whole thing. I can subcontract it out and even help, but roofs aren’t my forte.” He sighed and set another glass on a shelf. “I can do the patching, but when it starts leaking again, he’s going to tell everyone I did a shitty job.”
She looked up from where she was washing flatware. “Sort of like the pride.”
One side of his mouth quirked up in the smirky way that had made her angry just a few weeks before, but which now made her pulse flutter. “Now we’re ready to talk about it?”
She shrugged. “You came here because you needed a change and liked to fix stuff. Hank retired and suddenly the town needed a handyman and general construction contractor.”
“And because my sperm donor was pushing me to come in and help him take over.”
“You don’t want to take over. But after a year or so of inspection, you see the whole roof needs to come off and be rebuilt, not just patched.”
He nodded. “It’s straining the metaphor, but yes, basically. Tear it off and build a new one.”
“But you also recognize that you and your dad can’t build a new one. Or you don’t have the confidence that you could be the alpha.”
“I could if I had to, but I don’t want to be an administrator and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life throwing my weight around. I want to tear it down, build it and move on, you know. There are other things to be torn down and rebuilt. I’m happy to come in and fix stuff, but I don’t want to own it.”
Her heart sank. Because though she would never be owned by anyone other than herself, it sounded like he was going to change her life and move on. She turned back to the sink and set the frying pan in it.
“On the other hand, I’ve fixed up this house and don’t want to leave it. I’ve put in security, mostly as a way to keep out Russell, and I keep seeing things that could be fixed and improved. The downstairs bathroom needs a refit and I’m thinking of squeezing in a shower stall opening onto the mudroom so I can clean up down here after working and put my clothes in the washer just around the corner. The patio out back is pretty dismal and not a good advertisement for a contractor. And now a dishwasher. I guess right here by the sink, right?” He stepped back and looked at the lower cupboards, then swept his eyes around the room. “The whole kitchen could use an upgrade. Probably refinish the cupboards. It’s big, so I don’t want to move any walls, but new counters, because this Formica is tired. Definitely work on the lighting.”
He turned back and saw her watching him and his smile became softer. “It’s the best house I’ve ever lived in and I don’t want to give it up.”
“And it’s the best pride you’ve lived in?” She looked down and used her fingernail to scrape at the at the nonstick pan on which smears of egg yolk were stuck. She needed to dig out her cast iron pans and teach him how to care for them.
He crowded up against her, breath hot in her ear. “And the best relationship I’ve been in. Early relationship, at least. Is that what you want to know?”
She took a deep breath before nodding slightly, her body shivering with his presence, her internal lioness begging her to jump him and hold him down and mate.
“My parents weren’t always perfect. My dad, the one who raised me and took care of me, while a great guy, is a pushover. He’s too nice. And there’s a fine line there. I got away with all kinds of shit. Vera was a demon and my mom was the only one who could get her to obey. But…” he paused and took a breath, sniffing at her hair and leaning against her slightly. “But Mom and Dad were always building their relationship. Always talking things through. Mom usually got her own way, but Dad would get her to make concessions. Compromises.”
She calmly rinsed the egg pan, now egg-free and set it in the drainer. Instead of picking up the greasy bacon griddle, she took the dish towel from Tremaine’s shoulder and dried her hands. Finally, she turned fully to face him and looked into his eyes, holding that dominant stare with a bit of a thrill. “So, to strain that metaphor again, once the roof is replaced, you constantly work on smaller projects to make your home better.”
His smile went from soft to wicked and he set his hands on her hips and stepped further into her space, his burgeoning erection growing against her hipbone. “That’s about it.”
They didn’t make it upstairs to the bed, instead he backed slowly down the hall to the living room, hands sliding up her torso, their kiss only breaking when he lifted her shirt over her head and whipped his own off to press their naked chests together.
