“No! I mean, it’s a very nice bottom, but…” Now all the ladies were glaring at him like he was some kind of sex-starved pervert.
Blake wasn’t sure quite how the conversation had got to this point, except that you got happy drunks and angry drunks, and Hattie was apparently an as-crazy-as-a-box-of-frogs drunk. So far, she’d blamed him for wolf whistles, wolves in sheeps’ clothing, crying wolf, and wolfing his food, and she’d said “I’m not speciesist, but…” three times. Well, actually she’d said “shpeesheezhiz…isht”.
Where the hell was Krista? He’d been in the army for eight years, but he’d never needed backup as badly as he did right now. In fact, he’d take enemy fire over this any day.
“Taking a vixen as a mate’sh a very shound idea though,” Hattie was saying. She hiccupped, then screwed her face into what was probably supposed to be a coy smile. She put one hand on her hip and gave a geriatric wiggle. “Stone-cold foxes,” she explained. “An’ very relia… liable. Known for guarding henhouses.”
Blake scowled and sniffed the air as Hattie grabbed a jug from the table and refilled her cup. What the hell was she drinking?
And then it hit him. Hattie was drinking straight up lemonade, no alcohol.
He looked down at her. She wasn’t drunk at all. She was lying to him. Stalling him. Why?
“Hattie! What gives?” he snapped. “What is Krista up to?”
Hattie’s face turned smug, and she pulled something out of her pocket and shoved it into his hand. She stopped swaying where she stood, all pretense gone.
“If you wanted to know what my niece is up to, you shouldn’t have bugged her. You should have just asked her.”
Dumbly, he stared down into his hand at a small listening device which had been crushed flat.
That was why she’d been so cold. Krista thought that he’d put a bug on her somewhere. She thought he didn’t trust her.
And now she was gone.
