“She does?”
“I am fully in the know about the feline nature of the majority of our clientele,” Davey assured him with a grin as she slid a bowl of peanuts toward us. “The cat is out of the bag, you might say. But let’s not spread the word about that, okay?”
He gave her a solemn nod, promising to keep her secret, then he twisted to look around the room again. “I thought this place was a rumor.” He turned back to the bar, his dark brows arched, evidently impressed. “In fact, I bet on it. Which means I’m out fifty bucks.”
I smiled as I set a beer in front of him.
The stranger sipped from his glass, still looking around. “You know where I can find Eamon? I need a word.”
The entire bar went quiet. Seriously, you could have heard the ends split on a single strand of my hair.
“Eamon MacLean is no longer a member of the Mississippi Valley Pride,” I said in as neutral a tone as I could muster. “If you have business with the Marshal, you’ll want Charley Studebaker.”
He frowned, clearly put out by the news. “Well, can you point me in his direction?”
Brows arched, I extended my hand for him to shake. “Charlene Studebaker. Marshal of the northern zone.”
“You’re…?”
Davey laughed. “She is.”
“But you’re—” His mouth snapped shut.
“A bartender? Yeah. I can also whistle all ofBohemian Rhapsody. I am a woman of many talents.”
He had the decency not to admit that the word tripping him up waswoman. “What happened to Eamon?”
Before I could decide how to answer a question most people would never have the nerve to ask, the bell over the door jingled again, and four women in their mid-twenties came in, giggling. I could tell from the glazed eyes and easy laughter that three of them were already half-drunk.
The tone in the bar changed immediately. The awkward silence surrounding the Eamon question morphed into the buzz of casual conversation and the clink of ice in glasses as the ladies made their way to the bar, but beneath that I could feel a tension that was the natural result of both a secret that must be kept and genuine excitement over the opportunity for a bunch of mostly straight men to drink with the female of the species.
Well, the female ofaspecies, anyway.
I arched a brow at the newcomer, and he nodded to let me know he understood what had just happened.
We don’t get many humans at the Fat Cat, but they aren’t entirely unexpected on the weekends. And they’re almost always women; human men rarely make it over the threshold. It’s something hormonal. Something in the scent of a bunch of male werecats that they find subconsciously threatening.
Women, though… Any human woman looking for a strong, confident, capable, employed man will find what she wants at the Fat Cat. It’s my job to make sure that sheonlyfinds what sheactuallywants.
So far, that hasn’t been a problem. Ours is a good crowd, by and large.
“You got this?” I asked Tucker. He nodded, while Davey started taking the women’s orders.
“Nope, no margaritas,” my sister said with a shake of her head. “No mojitos. No daiquiris. No cocktails of any kind. But I can throw a cherry on top of a Jack and Coke, if you want.”
“Perfect,” declared a woman with a pink blouse tucked into her boot-cut jeans. “This place isadorable,” she whispered to her friends. “So rustic.”
That’s us.Sorustic.
I made eye contact with the newcomer. “Let’s go have a chat.”
He stood, beer in hand, and I motioned for him to follow me. Vance fell into step with him as I led them through the kitchen to my office.
“Am I in some kind of trouble?” the stranger asked as I held the door open for him.
“Have you done something wrong?”
“No. I just heard that if you visit the northern zone, you should check in with the Marshal at the Fat Cat.”
