Some Were In Time (3 page)

"Whoops, my bad," he said as he walked buck ass naked except for the stilettos back to the fitting room to get his clothes.

"Holy shit," Lori gasped as she turned several shades of red and began frantically gathering all the dresses Dwayne had tried on. "We'll have to have all of these dry cleaned now."

"Sorry about that," I mumbled as I yanked Granny and a mostly clothed Dwayne out of the shop. "I'll call and make another appointment."

"Don't hurry," Layla said sweetly. "Oh my God, I meant we'll see you soon," she stuttered as she hustled away in embarrassment.

"Those Weasels are a bit odd," Dwayne said, buttoning his pants as we walked across the street to the diner for lunch.

"Oh, they're nice girls," Granny said as she dropkicked her phone into the fountain in the middle of the town square. "They're just not used to peckers touching the inside of their dresses before they've been sold."

"Oh dear lord," Dwayne gasped, completely mortified. "I'll wear panties next time."

"There will be no next time," I muttered as I retrieved my Granny's phone from the water.

"Well, aren't you a party pooper," Dwayne huffed.

"Yep," I told him. "And you…" I dangled Granny’s now useless cell phone in her face. "I am not getting you a new phone. This is the third one this week you've destroyed."

"No problem," she said with an evil little grin on her face. "I'll play Scrabble on your laptop."

"That's just awesome," I said in defeat.

No getting felt up, no dress and soon no laptop. This day rocked.

Chapter 2

"I've got the pictures back from Jamaica." Dwayne squealed as he pulled a large envelope out of his man-purse and slapped it down on the table of our booth. "Granny, you are gonna flip!"

Hank, Granny, Dwayne and I had just spent an awesome week in Jamaica. I'd gotten engaged, sunburned and had more fantabulous sex with Hank than I'd ever had in my life. Jamaica was now my favorite place in the world. Of course Hank and I were already mated, which in the Werewolf world was as good as married, but since we inhabited the human world too we decided to tie the knot.

"Please tell me you didn't snap one of Granny in her thong bikini," I pleaded. I took a huge sip of my Coke and said a quick prayer to all the angels and saints.

"Oh for heaven's sake, no. But I did get some gritty yet artistic nudes of her," Dwayne said with glee.

"Left side or right?" Granny inquired as she carefully folded her straw wrapper into a small football.

"Right," he answered as he examined a few shots.

"Good, because my right boob is slightly bigger than the left one. Wanna show my best assets."

"Okay, let's start today over." I positioned my fingers in a goal post so that Granny could flick her paper football. "We have three days left in Hung before we have to report to Chicago. I need to pick out a wedding dress."

"And invitations," Dwayne interrupted.

"Yes, invitations. And we have to brief Junior so he can take over the Pack," I continued.

"And pick out your flowers and a cake," Dwayne added.

"Yep—cake and flowers. And we have to make sure Granny can still shoot a gun straight," I said, trying to steer the conversation back on track of what was actually important.

"I resent that, sugar lips," Granny said as she downloaded Scrabble onto Dwayne's phone.

"And we have to get a caterer and a band and a photographer and a…" Dwayne reeled off his list like an auctioneer on crack.

"I'm gonna elope," I hissed as a large and ugly headache exploded between my eyebrows.

There was silence.

Blessed silence.

And then there were tears.

"Do you hate me?" Dwayne blubbered.

"Um… no?" I answered wondering if this was a trick question.

"Well, I am feeling hate. I have only been in one wedding in my three hundred years. The bride was an absolute cow and the groom had three teeth."

I winced at the image he'd just planted in my brain and hoped this was going to be one of his shorter diatribes.

"There were a total of three blind people and four others that no one knew at the wedding and I had to wear a robe."

"Why in tarnation were you wearing a bathrobe?" Granny asked.

I kicked her under the table. We did not need to encourage these nightmare-inducing stories.

"It wasn't a bathrobe," Dwayne huffed indignantly. "I have far better taste than that. It was a clerical robe."

"I'm about to ask a question that I'm sure I don't want the answer to, but… why were you wearing a clerical robe?" Because as much as I didn't want to hear the rest of the story, my morbid curiosity always got the better of me.

"It was when I was a Catholic priest," he said as if that were even a little bit logical.

"I got nothing," I mumbled as I held up my hand and tried to get Donna Jean's attention so we could order, eat and leave.

"I wasn't an
actual
priest," Dwayne explained. "It was because I was bald. The monastery was full of hair-impaired fellas and I fit right in. It was winter and they were an unending blood supply. It was totally awesome. Plus those holy men had a wonderful glee club and they let me sing tenor."

"You ate monks?" I asked as the headache moved to my temples.

"Noooooooooo, I just sipped. They were a bit bland, but what would you expect?"

I decided to ignore him and move on. Sometimes that was the easiest thing to do with Dwayne. The waitress, Donna Jean, was clearly on her break as she was sitting at the counter and had taken off her shoes. She was a Were Fox and had bunions. That was a mystery to me since all the Weres I knew were exempt from most human ailments. Granny said she was just lazy and I tended to agree.

"Guys, we're out of here," I said as I stood to leave. "Donna Jean has her shoes off. That means she's about to go out back and have a smoke which she'll make Chauncey hold so she can pretend that she quit. Getting fed is out of the question."

"Seeing as Dwayne doesn't eat food and I had five breakfast burritos this morning, I'm good with that," Granny said.

I gaped at her and wondered where she put it. She was tiny—looked like a young slim Sophia Loren. She was eighty but didn't look a day over forty. Werewolves aged very slowly.

"Doesn't anyone want to hear about my time as a man of God?" Dwayne asked, a bit miffed.

"You weren't a real priest, were you?" I asked as I slurped down the rest of my soda.

"Oh heavens, no."

I paused and placed my glass back on the table. "Oh my God, all their lives that woman and her three-toothed husband thought they were legally married."

"Sweet Baby Jesus in a thong," Dwayne gasped as he paled even more than his usual shade. "I never thought about that. There could be thousands of toothless bastards running around the world thinking they're legitimate. Sweet mother of Lady Gaga," Dwayne wailed, attracting the attention of everyone in the small diner. "What have I done?"

In his distress he began to levitate. I quickly yanked him back into the booth before anyone saw him. I did not want to explain Vampyres to unsuspecting humans. It was enough to digest that the Council wanted the Werewolves out of the closet. Vampyres would cause mass hysteria.

"What's done is done," Granny stated with a chuckle. "Who knows if they even procreated? Were they Weres?"

"They were Were Cows," Dwayne whispered in a strangled voice.

A burst of laughter escaped my lips and I had to sit back down so I didn't fall. "Oh. My. Hell," I said as I wiped the tears from my eyes. "There are no such things as Were Cows."

I looked to Granny for conformation, but she had paled a whiter shade than Dwayne. In fact, I was certain she was about to puke. What in the mother humper was going on here?

"There is no such thing as a Were Cow, right?" I repeated in a whisper so the humans in the diner wouldn't hear. They lived blissfully unaware of the paranormal world around them and I wanted to keep it that way.

"Yes, there is," Granny muttered tightly and shook her head.

"So wait," I said to Dwayne. "When you said she was an absolute cow, you meant Were Cow—not that she was fat?"

"For Cher's sake," Dwayne said as if I was two years old. "All Were Cows are fat and yes, when I said Cow I meant Cow—fat, magical and deadlier than a Dragon."

Again in his agitation he started to float to the ceiling.

Again I yanked him back down.

My smile was now gone. How in the hell was there a species I didn't know about? Cows? There were freakin' Were Cows—and they were dangerous? This was too much.

"Where's the camera?" I asked.

"What camera? My hair is a mess," Granny said alarmed as she ducked under the table in terror.

"Never mind." It was too much to hope I was being punked. "Out. Now," I snapped at my dysfunctional little posse. "We're going over to the sheriff's office to talk to Junior."

"That's good," Granny said as she cased the diner for cameras. "We'll have privacy there."

"Can Junior hack?" Dwayne asked as he slung his man purse over his shoulder.

"Why?" I asked as I dragged them out of yet another establishment.

"Because I have a potential bovine bloodbath on my hands," he replied hysterically.

"I'm not sure how much worse this day could get." I heaved a huge sigh and grabbed Dwayne's phone from Granny. The least I could do was save the harmless electronic’s life.

"Trust me, if Junior can't hack his way into a few probably obsolete sites, this day could go to hell in a handbasket pretty damn fast," Dwayne said as he rushed ahead.

That's when I noticed he was still wearing the blush pink stilettos from the bridal shop. There was one good thing at least—I could turn Dwayne in for shoplifting. If he had to spend a couple of hours in the pokey maybe I'd have a little peace.

***

"He stole them," I announced to Junior as we entered the sheriff's office with the first real smile on my face since Hank had pulled me over for speeding a couple of hours ago.

"It was an accident," Dwayne whined as he gave me the stink eye.

Granny chuckled with delight.

"Well, boy, you stretched the livin' hell out of those shoes," Junior said with a huge grin on his handsome face as he examined the stilettos Dwayne had grudgingly handed over.

Junior was Hank's older brother by two years. By all rights he should have been the Alpha of the Georgia Wolf Pack, but when their father had retired Junior was too busy chasing skirts and partying so Hank had stepped up.

Hank, besides being hotter than asphalt in August and
my fiancé
, was an outstanding alpha—deadly and fair. Surprisingly there wasn't an ounce of hostility or competition between the brothers. In a twist of fate, their mother had given birth to two Alpha boys.

"You know I'm richer than Midas. I would never steal shoes," Dwayne pled his case as we all grinned.

"That may be so, but the evidence speaks differently," Junior said in his official deputy sheriff voice. "You're gonna have to return the shoes, pay for them and offer up your services for twenty-four hours to the gals at the shop."

Dwayne's scream of pleasure made my stomach drop to my toes and Granny cackle with laughter. The girls were gonna crap.

"Um… Junior, not sure that's the best plan," I said as diplomatically as I could.

"Sure it is," Junior said with a satisfied smirk as he sat back and plopped his cowboy boot clad feet up on his messy desk. "Those bridal Weasels are trying to poison Sandy Moongie's mind against going out with me. Serves them right if Dwayne goes in and shakes it up a little."

Shaking it up was an understatement. Dwayne would have them hosting full on bridal drag shows if he had twenty-four hours. However, Junior's reasoning was interesting.

"Junior, I'm sure your man-whore reputation might be part of the issue," I said as I knocked his feet off of his desk.

"Those days are behind me," he explained.

"Since when?"

"Um… I'm guessin' it's been about a week, give or take a day," he said.

My eye roll was one of the largest I'd ever produced. I knew Junior had it bad for Sandy. The entire reason I had come back to Hung Island, Georgia was that I'd been sent down here undercover by the WTF to find out who was kidnapping Weres. It had turned out to be some egomaniacal Were Dragons who were trying to crossbreed species and take over the paranormal world. They were now dead thanks to a disastrous mind meld by Dwayne that killed two and my ripping off the head of the third.

Sandy had been one of the kidnapped Weres we had saved and she was far too smart to get involved with Junior…