Chapter Two
Savannah’s lips wrinkled in a wordless smirk as she popped up out of the foxhole near her family’s restaurant. The whole town of Foxhaven was riddled with underground tunnels, and she knew the location of every one of them. Austin didn’t know the area like she did, and he was no fox, so he’d never catch her in these woods.
Ditching Austin had been a breeze. That part had been fun.
Losing that big fat bounty? Not so much.
Her smile faded. She’d won the battle but lost the war.
A warm breeze rustled her fur, stirring the underbrush and whispering through the towering Douglas fir trees that scraped the blue sky overheard. The fox hole would be all but invisible to an outsider, set among wild grasses and sword ferns and thorny blackberry bushes.
She slid through the prickly branches into the open and shook herself hard, scattering the dirt off her fur. Then she let her human self take over. Fur sank back into her skin, her tail vanished, colors brightened, and the thousands of scents swirling in her nostrils faded. The air around her shimmered as she quadrupled in size. She knelt there for a moment, letting herself mentally readjust as her fox settled down inside her. Then she climbed to her feet from a crouching position.
“You don’t look happy. Why don’t you look happy? What went wrong?” her younger brother Niall called out as he trotted over to her. She was stark naked, but shifters were very comfortable with nudity.
She shook her head and snapped open the lid of the plastic bin full of clothing that they kept near the family foxhole.
“Austin, that’s what went wrong,” she grumbled, pulling out a pair of underwear. As she quickly dressed, donning jeans, sneakers, socks and T-shirt, she explained what had happened, and Niall’s face twisted in dismay.
“I can’t believe you let the mark go,” he groaned. He was a redhead like her – like all fox shifters – but where she was short and curvy, he was a tall, skinny beanpole. With his thick thatch of red hair sticking straight up, he looked like a match that had been struck. “That was five thousand bucks. We really needed that money.”
“I know,” Savannah said glumly. “But we wouldn’t have had the money either way. Austin would’ve taken it. And there was no way I was letting that dickwad take my bounty.”
“Do you think he would have at least split it with us? Since you did all the work finding the guy?”
“Him?” Savannah scoffed. “Hell to the no. If you look on the periodic table of the elements, there is a compound called asshole-onium. And guess what Austin is composed of?” She pulled on a pair of sandals.
Niall arched an eyebrow. “Um, if I have to go along with this tired attempt at science humor, I’m guessing he’s pure, one hundred percent asshole-onium?”
“No, actually, he’s about eighty percent asshole-onium, twenty percent dickbreath-onium. And no, he wouldn’t have split the bounty with me.”
“Yeah, whatever. I might as well start packing now. To get ready for being homeless,” Niall said glumly, and headed back towards the restaurant.
As she followed him, she wondered if she was right.
Ever since Austin had shown up in Greenville, the town bordering Foxhaven, three months ago, he’d been a hard one to read.
He was temperamental and deadly in a fight, but she knew that in his off time he went hunting and donated all his catch to the local food bank. Rumor had it that he came from an extremely wealthy wolf pack in North Dakota, the owners of Bronson Pharmaceuticals, one of the richest of all the shifter packs in the world. He was actually a billion-were. But he’d left them behind after some disagreement with his family. And apparently he wouldn’t touch a cent of their money.
He certainly didn’t live like a rich man. He was renting a little trailer in Greenville, he drank at that godawful Watering Hole, he drove an old truck, and he wore cheap jeans and scuffed boots.
So did money really mean that much to him?
She hadn’t even asked if he’d split the bounty with her – she’d just gone in hot and tackled him, because she’d wanted to show him up. And also, maybe, if she was absolutely forced to admit it, because rolling around on the floor writhing under Austin’s rock-hard body hadn’t been the worst experience ever.
Had her stubborn pride just cost the family money that they desperately needed? Twenty-five hundred dollars would have been better than nothing.
As she trudged through the woods toward the restaurant, with her brother hurrying on ahead, she tried to imagine herself asking Austin for half the bounty.
Ugh, what if he’d made fun of her and demanded that she ask nicely?
And then what if he’d said no?
She imagined her rage, her humiliation. Her fists clenched just thinking about it. Years of schoolyard teasing rang in her ears.Fatty, fatty, two by four… She instinctively sucked her stomach in.
But she didn’t know that Austin would have turned her down. Her mother always said she loved to borrow trouble. Personally, Savannah found that anticipating the worst and sometimes being pleasantly surprised was less painful than thinking everything was fine and having her heart broken.
Her heart sank as she realized that if the situation happened again, she would probably have to swallow her pride. She’d have to at least try to be nice to Austin Bronson.
