“You remind me every day.”
“You know what else I remind you of every day?” He pinned her down on the couch and his hands slid up under her shirt. “That you’re mine. You belong to me. Want to argue about it?”
She felt a rush of arousal. “If I do, do you promise you’ll spank me?”
“Hey, we’ve got trouble!” Chantelle yelled, rushing into the room. Truman and Rusty were right behind her.
Taylor scrambled to pull her clothes back into place. “Really!” she said indignantly. “Have you ever heard of knocking?” Now she knew what blue balls felt like. Ouch.
“What couldn’t wait?” Cliff grumbled. “Is somebody dead? Somebody better be dead.”
“Worse,” Truman said, sounding exasperated.
“What’s worse than someone being dead?” Taylor said, worried.
“The possibility of an entire town full of humans showing up on our doorstep right before the full moon,” Truman said. He held up Chantelle’s cell phone. “Her parents just texted her.”
Chantelle glared at him, grabbing for the phone. He held it up out of her reach.
She turned to Cliff in exasperation. “I sent them a copy of the map that Taylor sent me, so they know where we are. They aren’t buying that ‘need to prepare for the wedding’ thing. They texted me to say that they think Taylor and I have been kidnapped, and if I don’t answer them in fifteen minutes they’ll call the cops, notify the media, and round up everyone in town and show up on your front doorstep. And since this idiot won’t give me back my phone, we’ve got about one minute left before they go viral on your ass.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“He’ll type the text for you,” Cliff said.
Chantelle rolled her eyes.
“Fine. Write ‘Jeez mom cool your jets everything’s fine.’ “
Truman typed quickly.
The phone rang.
Truman glanced at Cliff, who nodded. He handed the phone to Chantelle.
“Mom, for heaven’s sake, what’s your deal?” Chantelle said impatiently as she answered. At the same time, she extended her middle finger at Rusty and crossed her eyes. He looked away with a silent snarl of disgust.
Chantelle began pacing as she talked. “Yes, I know I’ve been texting rather than answering the phone… For heaven’s sake, I’m trying to help Taylor pull together a huge wedding in a couple ofweeks. Weeks, mother. No, we haven’t booked a place yet. Yes, that should have been one of the first things I did. Okay, okay, Barrington Farms on the fifteenth, if you think you can get a reservation. How many? Uh, two hundred. I’ll have Cliff’s business manager contact you about paying for it. Meet with you tonight? No way, we have a bunch of girls coming over for the cake tasting. And tomorrow evening is…uh…the dress fitting. And the day after that we’re going to be doing the invitations. And the day after— All right. Calm down. Fine. Fine. We’ll be there!”
“Excuse you?” Cliff scowled at her in annoyance. “We’ll be where?”
“Three nights from now, we have to be at Finnegan’s Steakhouse at six p.m. for dinner. There’s absolutely no way out of it. Also, my mother will be calling me at noon and six every day until then, and if I don’t answer, shiznit’s going down.”
“That’s the night before the full moon!” Cliff said angrily.
Chantelle shot him a dirty look. “I put them off as long as I could.”
Cliff groaned. “Fine. Fine. We’ll take Truman and Rusty; I’ll say they’re friends. I’ll meet the parents and charm the daylights out of them. I can be pleasant when I have to. I don’t want to have to be a dick about this, but I will say yet again that it is of the utmost importance that you don’t breathe a word about us, for our safety and yours.”
The expression on Chantelle’s face would have made a lesser man cry. It was the look she’d give something she was trying to scrape off her shoe. “Wow, that’s the first time anyone’s mentioned to me that if I tell your secret, Taylor will also be exposed, and I won’t get any more pills so I’ll die. Now if you’ll excuse me, you people are giving me a splitting headache, and I’m going to go lie down.” She glanced at Truman and Rusty. “And I suppose you two bozos are going to come stand outside my door.”
“You’re slightly smarter than you look,” Rusty said coldly.
Chantelle turned her back on him. “You’re slightly less gross than dogshit, but only slightly, dick-face.”
“I’ll be outside guarding her window – you take the door,” Truman said in annoyance. “I don’t want to breathe the same air as you for any longer than necessary.”
“Fuck yourself in the ass, pretty boy,” Rusty growled.
