LITMIR.BIZ

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she bound his lips together.

      “Tully, I don’t know who Buck Smith is. I mean, I’m assuming he’s family…”

      For a split second, he looked like he might hit her. Or, in more canine terms, maul her. But instead he released her and began to pace.

      “Momma’s gonna lose her mind when she finds out he’s actually here. We all thought he was just on his way, not here.”

      “I don’t—”

      “And Daddy…Lord.”

      “Tully?”

      “I need to let the Pack know. I need to let everybody know. He’s here.”

      Getting frustrated but not wanting to show it, Jamie gently placed her hand on Tully’s shoulder, but he turned to face her so fast, she stumbled away from him, her feet catching, and she fell right on her ass.

      Tully stared down at her with such horror that if she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he’d slammed her to the ground himself. In fact, she knew that he believed he had.

      “Oh, my God. Jamie.” He reached for her. “I’m so sorry.” She caught hold of his hand and instead of letting him pull her up, she tugged until he’d knelt in front of her. “Jamie, I’m so sorry.” She went up on her knees and placed her hand against his cheek. Tully’s eyes closed, his brows pulling down in a phenomenal frown of pain. Whoever Buck Smith was, he could get under Tully’s skin as no one else could.

      Jamie put her arms around Tully’s big shoulders and pulled him in close until his head rested against her neck. She looked up to see her cousin standing on the porch watching her, her face filled with concern. Jamie tilted her head and, after a brief nod, Mac went back inside.

      “Why don’t we go for a walk?” Jamie softly suggested. “We’ll figure it out from there.”

      Only his father could make him like this. Full of rage and uncontrollable fits of violence…like father, like son.

      No. No. He was not like Buck Smith. He would never be like Buck Smith. Not if he could help it. And he would help it even if it took every ounce of willpower he possessed. Yet there was no denying that the one thing that could set him off, that could and would bring out the worst in Tully Smith was his father. Not his daddy. Jack Treharne with all his snarling and snapping and feline ways had earned that particular title, but he’d earned it and kept it with pride. Buck Smith hadn’t earned anything from his son but Tully’s distrust and paranoia.

      “Buck Smith is my father,” he explained to the woman walking beside him.

      “I thought your real father was dead.”

      “No. I said I’d hoped he was dead.”

      “I see.”

      “He said he was staying at your hotel.”

      “I guess he is, but the reason it never occurred to me to say anything was that he didn’t check in himself. If I’m thinking of the right Pack, a woman checked them in. Wanda something.”

      “Pykes. I’d heard he’d hooked up with a full-human a few months back. Can’t believe he brought her here, though.”

      “Why?”

      “He hasn’t marked her as his own from what I’ve heard. We’re more likely to trust a full-human bonded to one of us than one who has no ties. One good argument and she’s running around, telling the world about shifters.”

      “I can handle that if she becomes a problem. Tell me about Buck.”

      Tully winced. He’d rather not, but after yelling at Jamie and knocking her on her ass for no other reason than him being a dang idiot, the least he could do was tell her everything.

      “My direct kin come from Alabama. The MacClancys are my momma’s people and they’re part of the Alabama Smiths. My father had been forced out of town when he was sixteen but he came back four years later when his granddaddy died. My momma was barely fifteen then and he latched on to her like a tic on a dog. Things got bad, again, between my father and his, and Buck was forced out…again. Only this time he took my momma with him because she was well pregnant with me. By the time she was about to pop, they’d made it to Smithville. I was born here about a week after they arrived. Then it started again. My father crossing his uncle and cousins, trying to take control of the Pack and, eventually, the town. They ran him off again but this time Momma didn’t go with him.”

      “Why?”

      “There were lots of reasons she’ll give you. She had me. She wanted to give me something stable. She was tired of traveling all over the place. And there were lots of reasons everyone else in town had: That Buck fucked anything that moved even while she was pregnant with me; that after nearly two years of being together he had yet to mark her as his own; that he was cold to her, rude. And I’m sure all of that was true. Actually, I know it was. But what I figured out, what I know is the reason my momma stayed is that she never thought he’d leave. Not without us. She thought he loved her enough to simmer down and wait until he was really ready to take over. At the time, I don’t think it ever crossed her mind that he would leave her. And then I don’t think it crossed her mind that he wouldn’t come back.”

      “I don’t know which is worse,” Jamie mused softly. “Being so confident in the power of love that you’re willing to risk your heart, or knowing that love is just a cruel joke from the gods and never risking anything.”

      “I’d have to say that last one.”

      “Even after what your mom went through?”

      “Yeah. I won’t say it was easy on her. It wasn’t. For six long years she waited for him. Waited while I grew into the most terrifying devil child this side of the Mason-Dixon.”

      Jamie laughed. “That bad, huh?”

      “Yeah. That bad. So bad Miss Addie and her coven politely suggested that Buck was using astral projection to visit me at night in an attempt to turn me.”

      “It must have gotten better.”

      “I wouldn’t say it got better but nothing lasts forever. And it was a cold, dark day when my momma had to come down to the school to meet with my second grade teacher because there was the suggestion I tried to drown another student in the boys’ bathroom.”

      “A suggestion?”

      “I didn’t see any hard proof other than the little bastard’s word and the fact that he was drenched from his head to his shoulders.”

      Jamie laughed, and Tully laughed with her. A shocking feeling since any mention of his father usually sent him into one of his rare funks for days at a time. But she was calming him down, easing him just by being herself, by being his friend. “I still say they misread the situation,” he went on. “Anyway, my momma was called and she had to leave her job to come down to the school. And while she was waiting, she met Daddy.”

      “Love at first sight?”

      “So they say. I still say the old bastard took advantage of her pure innocence.”

      Jamie snorted but she choked on it when Tully teasingly glared at her.

      “Anyway,” he went on, “Momma and Daddy met and, ignoring the grave indignities they were causing both me and Kyle, decided to get married. They didn’t have to, this is a town of shifters, after all, and if there is one thing very few of us care about one way or the other is marriage. But I kind of understand why they did it, being different species and all. They wanted to show everybody how serious they were about each other, plus they wanted to make sure their children grew up feeling like they were family.

      “But it got back to Buck what was going on and if there’s one thing that man hates it’s felines. So ignoring the fact he hadn’t been back in more than six years, he sneaked into town with a Pack he’d created of forced-out Smiths and stray wolves he’d found along the way.

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