Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1)(2)

“You don’t say.” Shit. I couldn’t help myself from saying snarky things to this female.

“I do say. She says you come in every morning.”

“Says?”

Her face fell. I was doing it again.

“Said. Sorry. It hasn’t been long enough. I still talk about her like she’s here. Let me get your order.”

She bent down to retrieve my donut then swung around to pour a cup of coffee. It wasn’t my regular cup, but it would do. And I was right about the grab-worthy ass.

“Oh.” She looked at the cup. “Sorry. This isn’t your regular. I’ll get it right tomorrow.”

Marie must’ve told her about my cup, too. “Still tastes the same, I suppose. What’s your name?”

“Tansy.” She did a little curtsy, the smart-ass.

Tansy moved on down the counter and smiled at all the right times, but there was a sadness in her eyes—and a bit of sass in her walk—and she was beautiful as all get out. I looked down the aisle at the display case. Some things were different, like the new colored donut glazes, but some were just the same.

“Anything else you’d like?” she asked, a little more sweetly this time. My beast growled inside at the thickness of her insincerity.

“Nope. One and done. How much do I owe you?” I reached for my wallet and waited.

She looked surprised. “Oh, um, nothing. Meemaw said you eat for free. She said you had already earned everything you could eat in a lifetime.”

I hadn’t. Not yet, anyway.

I smiled and nodded. “She told me to protect you. Not you, but whoever took over this place after she was gone. She made me promise. So, if you need anything or…”

Her fist was back on her hip again, and damn it all if I didn’t want her fist to be my hand, kneading the curve there. A blush the color of the setting sun on the bayou flamed in her cheeks and at the tops of her ears. Damn, her blush was sexy.

“I don’t need anything from anyone—especially your kind.”

My kind? Did she know? My stomach flipped, thinking Marie had given away my secret. I didn’t even know if Marie knew my secret. She’d alluded to it once or twice but hadn’t outright said it.

“My kind?”

“Yeah, you. Male, men, boys. I don’t need the kind of help I’m sure you’re offering.”

For some damned reason, I took the chance to wink at her. When the fuck did I start winking? “I made your Meemaw a promise, and I intend to keep it. You call if you need anything and, if you don’t, I still kept up my end. Here.” I slammed a five-dollar bill on the counter with a little too much force, causing her to jump back. “Keep the change, Tansy.”





Tansy

“Arggggg.” I couldn’t believe the asseryness oozing off of that man. What was it? Eti rhymes with yeti, which made all kinds of sense in my anger. After all, he was ginormous and had those eyes that weren’t quite right and not even because of their color. Something sat just beneath them. Something dark.

And what was with everyone in this stupid place knowing him? Three deep breaths later, he was out of the lot, and I was able to regain some sense of rational thinking. What was it about the man got him under my skin so easily? It wasn’t his sexy smirk, because I was all done with men, especially men who thought they were in control. Never again with that crap.

Grabbing the five dollar bill, I gave Gina a quick excuse for my leaving her alone to fend for herself as the morning crowd slowed. Meemaw had some explaining to do. It was no surprise to see her ethereal self, standing by the sink with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile slapped across her face.

“Yeti boy is nothing like what you said he would be.” I watched as she opened her mouth to correct me on his name and then immediately snapped it shut again. She knew when I was this riled up, correcting me would only make it worse.

“You made him sound like this old man who took a liking to you. Seriously, the man is huge and not much older than me.”

“And hawter than Hades.” She fanned her face with her hand while raising and lowering her eyebrows, which looked ridonkulous on a woman her age and exponentially more so on a dead one.

Growing up, I hated my gift of seeing the dead. Now that I’d lost Meemaw, I finally started to appreciate it as the gift it was. It gave me extra time to come to terms with her death and figure out how to keep her bakery going, which was far more important to her than it was to me. It saddened me that she was stuck here, but she swore it was of her choosing, and fighting with Meemaw was never a productive endeavor.

“Please, Meemaw, like I have time for that.” I mean, I did have time since I knew nobody here and the bakery, while hard work, was only open through lunch. That didn’t mean I was looking at his smexy rear as he left. Not much, anyway.

“And what was with the money?” That part made no sense to me. If someone says no cost, you don’t give them double the normal amount. That accomplishes nothing at all. “I thought he was all free all the time. Did you set me up to be the fool on purpose?”

I cringed at my words. Of course she hadn’t. She might have been setting me up for a plethora of other reasons, but not that.

“You, my sweet girl, have never been a fool,” she lied, but that was neither here nor there. It was a mistake I never planned to make again. “That northern boy was a manipulator who took advantage of you. You need to forgive yourself and start moving on, or you will find yourself alone.”