“Oh, my tastes are very eclectic, Cindy. I’m not sure you’d be into them,” he retorted with a sly grin, leaning forward and giving the blonde the full weight of his jewel-toned stare.
Ethan, having had enough of this sexually charged exchange, said, “We’ll take three orders of the cheeseburger platters, rare, all with bacon and jalapeno cheese. We’ll also have three orders of the double fried cheese fries. Thank you.”
Cindy could barely tear her eyes away from Flint’s as she tried to scribble down our order on her tiny pad. “Got it. Anything else?” She asked breathlessly, staring hopefully at Flint as she sucked on her lower lip in anticipation of his response.
“That’ll be it,” the big tease replied disappointingly. “For now, at least.”
The promise of more later nearly drove the woman’s hormones, and libido, through the roof. I didn’t have to be a ware to pick up on that. It was written all over her face.
“Sounds good,” she stuttered, nearly walking directly into another waitress as she turned to go, still caught in a fog of lust over the charismatic ware at our table.
However, as I suspected, Flint acted like he’d forgotten the poor woman the minute she was out of sight. Ware whore.
“I’m going to need the backstory,” he demanded like a middle-school girl, as soon as Cindy was out of earshot.
“Flint!” Ethan cautioned, as he put a protective arm around the back of my shoulders. “Now’s not the time.”
“It’s okay,” I soothed, loving how considerate my mate was of me. “We can talk about it. I think I might need to talk about it just to understand this whole sordid situation for myself.”
Flint actually seemed sympathetic to my plight. “I can’t imagine learning something like that about myself out of the blue one day. It must have blown your mind.”
He wasn’t kidding. “Yeah, it was intense,” I agreed. “Especially how I found out.”
I quietly explained about being attacked in the alley outside of Maverick’s by Garrett. How Ethan had shown up at justthe right moment to save the day. Because we were in public, I didn’t explicitly state how things ended, but Flint got the gist just fine.
“I wish I’d been there,” he stated heatedly, bloodlust brimming behind his glittering green eyes. “I’d have liked to get a few good shots in on that son of a bitch for myself.”
I didn’t doubt what he said. From Flint’s dark expression, I could only imagine what he and Ethan would have done with the man if they’d only had more time.
“So, you’ve never shifted before?” Flint queried subtly then. “Ethan, do you have an idea why that is?”
Ethan hugged me closer to reassure me there was nothing wrong with that. “From what I’ve heard over the years, separation of the pack can cause a delayed response in some. Maybe it’s nature’s way of keeping our secret. Maybe it’s hormonal. Either way, it happens quite often,” he assured me, as he placed a warm kiss on the top of my head.
“Do you think Jenny might know more about her failure to shift?” Flint asked then.
Ethan frowned. “Don’t go there, Flint. Not right now. It’s all too fresh.”
Loathe as I was to admit it, I was thinking along the same lines as Flint. My mother, as much as I was furious with her, might have the information I needed about my past to help explain my current situation.
“Do you think my mother might know what the problem is?” I asked my mate in a hopeful voice.
Ethan glared at his brother for bringing the subject up butsoftened his expression when he turned his attention back to me. “I don’t know, Princess. It’s possible.”
“It might be worth it. To talk to her. See what she knows,” I reasoned. Though I hadn’t thought I was ready to do that until this moment, it might make more sense to do so sooner rather than later. “You told me that my father was going to confess to me in Alaska that my mother was alive. Surely, he would have taken me to see her, if he hadn’t been…,” I paused as I cleared my throat of the thickness gathering there, “attacked. There’s no way he would have told me something like that and not expected me to demand to see her. My father knew me far too well for that.”
The waitress arrived with our drinks then, noting how serious the mood had turned. “Your food shouldn’t be much longer,” she stated, glancing wistfully in Flint’s direction, like she wished he was on the menu instead of the burgers.
When everyone simply nodded, she walked away with less pep in her step. I actually felt bad for her.
“It wouldn’t be safe to contact Jenny right now,” Ethan explained in very low tones. “The last thing we want to do is alert the Tupilaq pack that you exist. We can’t forget that your mother went to a lot of trouble to hide your birth from those people. If your own mother didn’t trust them with that information, why should we?”
It was a fair point. However, the need to talk to my mother, to find out why she’d done what she’d done all those years ago and why I’d never shifted, was burning a painful hole in my chest.
“Maybe we can discretely reach out to her. No one else needs to know,” I offered after a moment of thought.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Ethan stubbornly argued. “We have no idea what her current relationship with the pack is. Based on what she did, we can’t assume she’ll be able to keep you safe from them.”
Flint leaned against the back of the booth, his arms stretched wide along the length of it. “I could do it.”
