How to Flirt With a Naked Werewolf - Molly Harper [11]
Abner told me that if I moved into his cabin on the outskirts of town, my feet would always be warm and the toilet seat would always be down. I thanked him for the tempting offer. He winked at Evie and toddled back to his burger before the very cute Grundy High chemistry teacher asked me to join him for a beer. I declined for now.
Something about the way these men approached me made me think I was being evaluated as breeding stock. I’d inherited my dad’s thick coal-black hair, which I’d cut off two years ago after finally conceding my lifelong battle with Mississippi humidity. Kara had said I looked like a shorn angel, in the best possible way, that somehow the spiky pixie crown balanced out the high cheekbones and slightly top-heavy lips passed down from my mother and the large more-gray-than-blue eyes I’d inherited from I don’t know where. However, I think my potential suitors were thinking more along the lines of: Breasts? (Check.) Pulse? (Optional, but check.)
Vaguely inappropriate old men notwithstanding, I hadn’t considered the possibility of starting a relationship in Grundy. For one thing, I didn’t know how long I would be there. Second, I hadn’t known what the candidate pool would look like. True to Mr. Gogan’s word, that pool was deep and well stocked. My history consisted of relationships that could be packed away in neat little boxes once we’d parted. No recriminations. No burning of their stuff. I received Christmas cards from most of them. What would I do if I got stuck there for a whole winter, dodging the hang-dog face of a fling gone terribly awry? Besides, my vast goodie-drawer collection of condoms had been entrusted to Kara during the move, since she was far more likely to need them on her one-woman tear through the male population of Mississippi.
“Is this some sort of screw-with-the-outsider scenario?” I asked Evie after Leonard Tremblay offered to show me “a good time.” Evie shook her head, and after Leonard departed with a good-natured grin, she warned me that his idea of a good time was firing up the home-rigged hot tub on his back porch. I was going to ask how one home-rigs a hot tub, but the look on Evie’s face told me I was better off not knowing.
She smirked. “Oh, honey, you’re reasonably attractive and have all your teeth. You’re the hottest thing this town’s seen since Herb Thorpe got half-scrambled Cinemax on his satellite.”
“I don’t see why the ‘reasonably’ was necessary, but thanks,” I muttered, sipping my Coke. “That must be why your waitress is staring daggers at me.”
Lynette, the waitress/cleaning gal, was the girl-next-door type, if you happened to live next to a cathouse. She was probably pretty once, but chasing the next good time had aged her quickly. Her hair had been processed into an indeterminate shade of pale something. The too-bright lipstick was already starting to feather into the tiny networks of lines that spider-webbed out from her mouth. Her hip bones jutted sharply from under her fraying jeans. I would learn later that even in subzero temperatures, she wore midriff-baring tops under her parka . . . so she was a smart girl to boot.
“Don’t mind Lynette,” Evie said, rolling her eyes. “She convinced herself a long time ago that she is always the hottest thing in the room, and she lives to prove it. It actually makes her a pretty great waitress. She knows how to go after the tips. But having every guy in the bar talk to you just to hear your accent must be annoying the hell out of her.”
“Is that why they kept asking me to say ‘ice’?” I asked, a little irritated. I’d worked for years to downplay my accent, a mix of my mother’s faint Texas twang and my classmates’ slow Delta