The Cougar's Bargain Read Online Free PDF Page B

unpredictable animal had been feeling masochistic. “I … I don’t know what I wanted.”
    “Were you hungry?” Glenda pulled the pot back onto the burner and picked up a sheet of aluminum foil from the counter nearby.
    Hannah watched her tuck it around the edges of a long casserole dish.
Food for the ranch hands, probably.
    “Hannah?”
    Hannah pulled her gaze up from the cooler waiting open at Glenda’s feet. “Huh?”
    “I asked if you wanted something to eat.”
    “I don’t know. I … don’t know anything.”
    Glenda stopped wrapping and looked at her with concern.
    So confused.
Hannah wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be doing with herself now that Sean was out and she’d gained some independence. Was she supposed to go home? Was that why she was in Glenda’s kitchen—because she wanted to go home?
    Or had she just wanted to tell Glenda that Sean was up before Hannah went to do some important thing?
    Mostly, while Sean had been stricken by his curse, she’d been doing small jobs for Lola. Things like confronting swindlers who’d bilked money out of elderly glaring members or just popping in at random places in town to show her face. She was a known Foye associate, so sometimes just being present was enough to make people stop engaging in activities that could expose the Cougars to the non-supernatural world. Nobody really wanted Mason pissed at them.
    Beyond that, she didn’t have any direction. She had no idea what to do.
    Someone needs to tell me what to do.
    “Are you going to call your parents?” Glenda asked quietly. She nestled the casserole dish into the cooler, followed by a roll of paper towels and some disposable utensils.
    Hannah dragged her tongue across dry lips and gave her braid a tug. “Uh. I’ll call them once I figure out what to say that’ll be in character for me.”
    Ellery had smoothed things over with the hospital where she, Miles, and Hannah worked, and with their families the best she could after she’d committed to Mason, but Hannah was going to have to pick up the lie and run with it. Ellery told Hannah’s family that she’d decided to extend her camping trip into a sabbatical, and now Hannah had to figure out how to tell them she couldn’t come home.
    She couldn’t remember delivering any kind of big news in the past almost-thirty years without having been given their passive-aggressive brand of the third degree. It was draining. If she could get away with not talking to them at all, she would, and she doubted she’d feel any guilt over it once the initial days had passed.
    “I guess the truth is out of the question, then.” Glenda closed the cooler lid, and gave a bubbling concoction on the stove’s back burner a stir. Smelled like chili. She made chili all the time for her dozen ranch hands. Most were Cougars, and the few who weren’t Cougars
knew
about Cougars and the various other varieties of weirdoes in the area, too.
    Hannah let her breath out in a sputter. “Definitely out of the question. They don’t know shapeshifters exist, and knowing them, they’d rather shoot me to put me out of my misery than try to adjust to me.”
    Glenda stopped stirring. “You’ve got an awful sense of humor, Hannah.”
    “I’ve been told that plenty. Trust me when I say that nothing was funny in my house growing up,” Hannah said at a nearly inaudible volume, “but I’m actually not joking.” She wrapped her finger around her braid and twirled. “This isn’t exactly natural.”
    “In your opinion,” came a mellifluous voice from the direction of the living room.
    How Lola always managed to enter a room without ever making a single floorboard squeak, Hannah would never know.
    “I didn’t realize you were here,” Hannah said.
    “I’m always here. The food is good.”
    “And free,” Glenda said.
    “
Sí
.”
Lola pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and sank into it, looping her purse strap around the back of her chair. She was in her