Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1)(3)

In hindsight, she was right. Dante left so many clues along the way. Clues I chose to ignore because hormones and sweet words and bein’ a damn fool.

“You’re the last one to be talking about moving on, Meemaw. You have been dead for a month now.” I hated to push her out of this realm. I loved having her here, but from what I had gathered over the years of seeing and hearing far too many dead folks, if you stayed too long, you never moved on, and I didn’t wish that on anyone, especially my Meemaw. “I love having you here and all, but be real. There’s a better place for you than haunting your bakery.”

“Sweet thang, I am exactly where I want to be for the moment, and you might not realize it, but so are you.”

“Where I want to be is in Paris, but that’s not gonna be a thing,” I mumbled like a spoiled bratikins. It wasn’t Meemaw’s fault. It wasn’t even Dante’s, not truly. I made the bad choices that got me kicked out of school and shut the door to Paris. Shit, if I had gone to Paris, I wouldn’t have been here when Meemaw needed me. Bratikins McSelfish needed to be my new name.

“You belong here, in the bayou.”

“Says the woman who grew up in Baton Rouge.” Not that it was much different than here. Meemaw sacrificed a lot to come up north and take care of me when my mom got sick and passed. Ma never stuck around afterward, meaning she was in a better place. But as a twelve-year-old kid, I just wanted my mom. Meemaw filled her shoes in all ways, but she never filled the void my mom’s death left. It was only after I went to school that she came back down here and now here I was.

“To find myself here, where I belonged.” She pulled me from my downward spiral of sad. My emotions were all over the map today. I needed to get a grasp so I didn’t yell at more customers the way I had Yeti Boy.

“Now cut it out, buttercup. You have customers who need serving, and I need to teach you my secret recipe for making meringues in this humidity. Mrs. Robertson orders them every year for her husband’s birthday, giving you a week to get it right.”

Leave it to Meemaw to bring the conversation back to her baby, the bakery or, as she liked to call it, the heart of Juneau.

“I know how to make meringues. I was top in my class, you know.” I stuck my tongue out for good measure.

“I see teaching you is going to be amusing.” She was beginning to fade. She’d been doing that more and more lately, and I didn’t like it. I liked it when she looked almost real enough to touch. I needed to learn more about this gift and embrace it fully because I was walking blind, and years of trying to suppress it and ignore it had accomplished nada.

“Tansy.” Gina’s voice echoed from the front.

“I’m needed. Go bother someone else until cookie time.” I shooed her away with my hand teasingly.

“Ha, as if only it were that simple.” She faded, going where, I had no idea. One day I’d get brave enough to ask her. For now, I needed to go sling some king-nuts or change register tape or whatever Gina needed. I threw the five-dollar bill into an empty sugar jar before going to help Gina. No way was I spending that money. Yeti Boy wasn’t going to buy me.





Etienne



I sat in my office longer than necessary, staring at the computer. Something shady was going on around here. People in this town knew when everyone farted, and gossip was their favorite pastime.

So why didn’t anyone know a woman named Tansy, Marie’s granddaughter, would pick up from wherever in the fuck she came from and come down to Juneau so soon after the woman’s death and just take over like nothing ever happened.

“You plannin’ on going out to patrol, or should I put on another pot of coffee? By the way, you look like shit.”

Bruno wasn’t my kind, and listening to him pissed me off beyond reason. But he was my boss, so I guess I had to pay attention.

“I’m going. I was just going to run a background check on Marie’s granddaughter.”

His chuckle seemed to be aimed at me and my gator growled inside me, wanting to clamp down on his black-bear ass and swallow him whole.

“No need, Eti. I’ve already done my homework. She’s squeaky clean. Plus”—he rubbed his beer gut a little—“she’s fine as fuck, too. Might have to get me a little of her.”

He couldn’t even see his dick for his bloated gut, and he was thinking about trying to nail the woman who made donuts for a living? Classic.

“If you say so. She’s got a little attitude, though. Might bite right down on you.”

One of his eyebrows cocked up. “Attitude is what we bears like. Oh, and someone said they heard noises down by Shotgun Row last night. Would that be your boys?”

I stood and straightened my shirt, halfway paying attention to the brute.

“Wasn’t my boys. Callum said he heard one of those swamp tours getting a little too close for comfort, so he jumped from bank to bank in front of the boat. Scared the ever-loving shit out of them.”

When I looked up, he was trying to pretend like he wasn’t picking his nose right in front of me. Bears weren’t nasty animals as a rule, but he was one of a kind.

“Good, good. Let’s keep those tourists where they belong.”

Clearing my throat, I adjusted my gun at my hip. “Yeah, except the fine ones who make cakes.”