Chapter 7 #3
“You should read the whole article, not just the part that confirms your own theories,” Tanner pointed out to his brother
with a grin. “You remember the article about parrots . . . ?”
John gritted his teeth.
Josie was fascinated. “Parrots?”
Tanner chuckled. “When we were in high school, he wanted a parrot. So Dad got him a cockatoo. John read up on them but missed
an important point. They have beaks that can crunch bone. Two hundred and fifty pounds of pressure per inch, I believe?” he
asked John.
John, still gritting his teeth, nodded shortly and looked into his coffee cup instead of at his brother.
“And there was one more little note,” Tanner added. “Cockatoos have a powdery down that goes everywhere. Mercedes has asthma,” he added. “So, sadly, goodbye, cockatoo.”
“And hellooooooo, rattlesnake,” Josie said under her breath.
John glared at her.
“Anyway,” Tanner continued, “fangs grow back. And you can’t remove the poison glands, either—they have to have those to digest
food.”
“Well, he’s never tried to bite me,” John muttered. “Not even the first time, when I picked him up and took him out to the
field where all the rabbits were.”
“Rattlesnakes have memory,” Tanner said surprisingly. “They’re the most intelligent snakes, next to cobras. And they form
complex, long-term relationships.”
John was listening intently. “I never found that part about relationships in any of my magazines.”
“I have a friend who’s a herpetologist,” Tanner told him with a gentle smile. “I asked him.”
“Would he talk to me?” John asked intently. “He might be able to tell me what to do for Precious.”
“Sure, he would,” Tanner replied. “I’ll give you his number after lunch.”
“Thanks,” John said. “I know he’s just a snake. But I’ve gotten attached to him,” he added quietly.
Tanner smiled. “You and your odd pets,” he sighed.
“I could have had worse ones,” John said. He grinned. “Remember the Savannah monitor?”
Tanner made an awful face. So did everybody else at the table.
“It lasted one day,” Cole said shortly, glaring at John. “And we almost had to call in a hazmat team to clean the cage!”
“Nobody told me about what happened after you fed them,” John said sadly. “The iguanas didn’t have a bad smell at all when they went to the bathroom.”
“We will never be able to say that about monitor lizards,” Tanner said with pursed lips and a laugh.
John sighed. “I guess I do have my issues with pets,” he confessed.
“And we won’t mention the goose,” Heather said, tongue-in-cheek.
All the men at the table shifted uncomfortably.
“What’s wrong with having a goose?” JJ, who’d been listening quietly until then, asked curiously.
“I’ll tell you after lunch,” Cole replied. He shifted, too.
Josie chuckled softly. She didn’t dare look at the men, but she and Odalie and Stasia and Heather exchanged knowing glances.
Male geese, ganders, always went for a place on men that was extremely painful.
“Not to worry,” Tanner said. “You don’t have to stress about geese,” he told JJ.
“Okay.” He grinned and went back to his plate.
Josie grinned.
They all filed into the living room later to relax over second cups of coffee. “Have you seen the figure that Maddie Brannt
made of Odalie?” Tanner asked while Heather and Stasia and Odalie were talking fashion, and John and Cole were arguing heritability
traits in their purebred bulls.
“No,” Josie said. “I’d love to see it!” she said as he escorted her back into the library where the curio case held the small
statuette. “Does it really look like her?”
“See for yourself,” he invited.
Once they were out of hearing of the people in the living room, he lowered his voice. “I won’t give you away,” he said.
“Thanks,” she replied quietly. “One slip of the tongue . . .”
“I know. Talk to the sheriff. He has a background in black ops . . .”
“Already have,” she said. “He’s my backup. I had to fly down to Mexico, to a border area, with one of Velasquez’s men. They
killed a poor man, at a small bar just over the border. I watched . . .”
“First time?”
She nodded. She couldn’t speak. The memory was a torment.
“What you can’t fix, you live with,” he replied. His eyes were sad and dark blue. “It takes time.”
She nodded again. “I couldn’t have stopped it. It was over so quickly . . .”
“I know.” He heard steps. “See?” he said, putting the figurine into her hands as he raised his voice. “She looks more like
John and Mom than she looks like me,” he chuckled.
“She’s beautiful,” she said, and meant it.
“I’ve always thought so,” Tanner agreed. He turned his head as John came into the room. Luckily, he’d always had ears like
a lynx. “Don’t you?” he asked his brother with a smile.
“I guess so. You look like Dad,” John replied. He sighed. “I guess one of us had to.” And he grinned.
“Do you have siblings?” Tanner asked Josie.
She shook her head. “I had a baby brother. He died,” she said softly, and the expression on her face stopped both men from
asking a single question.
“Mom made pumpkin pie, and there’s more coffee,” John said as his brother took the small statuette of Odalie and put it gently
back into the case. “The Brannts are coming over later with the baby. And Stasia is looking seedy.”
Tanner lifted an eyebrow. “She’s pregnant,” he emphasized. “You’d look seedy, too, in that condition. Morning sickness isn’t
limited to mornings.”
“I guess you’d know,” John said on a sigh, and with a smile.
Tanner clapped him on the shoulder affectionately. “I would. Coffee and pie. I’m starving again,” he teased, and walked out.
John stepped in front of Josie when she started to follow him. “What were you talking about in whispers?” he asked curtly.
She gaped at him.
“My brother isn’t the only one with auditory sensitivity,” he replied. “I can even hear the television whine when it’s on.
Answer me. What secrets are you and my brother sharing?”
“I just met your brother,” she said, aghast and trying to conceal it. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but he was just
telling me about the statuette.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Who made it?” he asked suspiciously.
“Someone named Maddie Brannt,” she replied. “And he mentioned that it looked just like your sister. I agreed that it did.
Why are you asking me about it?” she asked, throwing the suspicion right back at him.
“It was a long conversation.”
“Really?” she asked. She smiled snarkily. “Still crazy about your brother’s wife, are you?” she whispered. “What a shame . . . !”
While she was getting the last word out, his hard mouth came down on hers, and he wrapped her up against him in a bearish
embrace.
It was meant to intimidate but it backfired. She felt his strength and warmth and the expert touch of his mouth and just melted.
For the first time in her life, reason was submerged in pure physical pleasure.
She gave in because she couldn’t help it.
Ever since their first meeting, even through his suspicion of her, his sarcasm, there had been this growing attraction, a burgeoning of sensation that she’d tried to deny all her life.
Sickened by her father’s constant affairs, her mother’s tolerance of it, she’d removed herself from any possibility of being trapped in physical addiction.
And it had worked. Until right now . . .
She moaned under the crush of his mouth, but it wasn’t in pain or protest. It was a feeling so poignant that her body couldn’t
contain it; pleasure so deep that it was almost pain.
He forgot that he’d meant to insult her. He forgot her taunt about Stasia. She was warm and soft and pliant, and he loved
the way she seemed to fit him, despite the disparity in their heights, despite the difference in their backgrounds. She fit
into his arms as if she’d been made, crafted, exactly for him. Her mouth was warm and soft and . . . green as March apples.
Green as new grass. She was alarmingly innocent for a woman her age. And John was experienced enough to know it.
He lifted his head. She looked shocked. He felt shocked. This had been the worst idea he’d had in ages. He was sorry. He wasn’t
sorry. His forefinger came up and touched her swollen lips tentatively. He scowled.
She pulled away from him belatedly and tried to look sophisticated, failing miserably and totally unaware of it.
“I know you must find me irresistible, but do please try to control yourself,” she said shortly and with dripping sarcasm.
His eyes softened. He smiled as he looked down at her. “Must I?” he asked in a soft, velvety, deep tone.
Her heart skipped. Her face flamed red as fire. She cleared her throat, walked warily around him and almost fell in her haste
to get out of the room.
John had discovered a delicious flaw in their guest, and he was anxious to exploit it. She was keeping secrets. He wanted
to know what they were, and if they were dangerous to the family. He liked the taste of her, but he couldn’t afford to overlook
her suspicious background.
He decided not to try to pry information out of Tanner, which would have been impossible anyway.
But he was friends with the sheriff in Percell.
The man had a background in top-secret intelligence work.
Maybe he could find out if Josie had her pretty fingers into any deadly pies.
He couldn’t afford to trust her. No matter how delicious she tasted.
The Brannts were both nice, and Josie loved their daughter Penelope, who was six months old and smiling.
She held the little girl—she almost had to fight Odalie and Heather and even very, very pregnant Stasia to get the opportunity—and
spoke to her in low, loving tones, all eyes and delight.
Once, she looked up at John to encounter a strange, unidentifiable expression on his face as his pale eyes went from Josie
to the baby and back again.
She dragged her eyes back down quickly and her focus was immediately back on little gurgling Penelope.
“Isn’t she a doll?” JJ asked as he sat down on the sofa beside her. “I’ve never been around babies, but now I know that I