Free The Cougar's Bargain by Holley Trent Page B

“Tito.”
    “You’re just making stuff up.”
    “Nope.”
    “Does she know what he is … what
you
are?” If she did, maybe Hannah could get a referral. December might have had a friend who’d like the looks of Sean.
    He grunted. “Nah. She’s normal and totally out of the loop, and that’s one of the reasons Tito doesn’t want to mess with her.”
    “So he knows she’s into him.”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    “She’s not his type?”
    “For as long as I’ve known Tito, which is the majority of my life, I’ve never discerned him having a type, but I guess he’s always had to play his cards close to his chest.”
    “His mother would probably be very critical of anyone he dated.”
    “I think that’s a big part of it.”
    Hannah took another sip of beer and remembered something that had been confusing her for weeks. “You never questioned why Tito wasn’t getting any older? Or Lola?”
    “No. I considered Lola to already be ancient when I was a kid, and back then, it would have been hard for me to discern the difference between a fifty-something and an eighty-something. Tito joined his mother in the glaring when I was around eight, and he presented himself to be around twenty back then.”
    “So he aged up to look around forty in that time.”
    “Yeah. I guess he won’t have to do much of that anymore, once everyone in the glaring knows who he is.”
    “Lola’s been around since …”
    “Sixty years, I think, is the number that’s being tossed around. She would have been presenting herself as a young woman when she arrived, and had likely been watching from afar before that.”
    “According to Miles, she’d been going around from glaring to glaring before that and looking for one to settle into for a while.”
    Miles had the goddess’s ear and probably knew more about Lola than any of the Foyes combined.
    “Lola’s a hard lady to figure out. I don’t try to make sense of her.”
    December swung by bearing a little basket filled with a variety of pepper sauces and set it in front of Sean, tentatively. “Are you gonna help me out?” Sean reached for the basket, but she pulled it back a few inches and shook her head. “Nuh-uh. Talk. Give me his number.”
    “I’m not giving you his number. Talk to him yourself the next time he comes in.”
    “Any idea when that might be? I’ll make sure I’m here.”
    Sean shrugged. “Nope. I don’t know his transport schedule anymore. I think it changed recently when the meat packer got bought out.”
    “You’d tell me if he had a girlfriend, right?”
    “Yeah. Sure, I would.”
    Hannah cringed and took another sip of her beer.
She’s way too young for Tito.
As sweet as he was, a guy like him would consume her. Hannah wasn’t even sure why she cared, seeing as how moments ago, she’d wanted to toss the woman into an open septic tank.
    December chewed her lip contemplatively and drummed her fingers on the bar top.
    “You don’t believe me?” Sean asked.
    “I mean, I guess I do. Why do I get the feeling you’re not telling me something important, though? Has he said something about me?”
    “Not lately.”
    Her eyes went wide. “So he
has
been talking about me?”
    “Sure.”
    She let out a totally cute, very human snarl and gave his arm a swat. “Well, what’d he say?”
    Sean pulled the sauce basket closer, apparently lest December whisk it away. “Oh, you know. The usual chatty stuff. He said you were nice and that he liked how you always brought him steak sauce without him having to ask.”
    “That’s all?”
    Sean shrugged. “I’m a guy, you know. I don’t really keep my ears open for the other stuff.”
    “You need to do better.”
    He rubbed his eyes and grinned. “I promise that the very next time he says something about you that isn’t in context of food or customer service, I’ll make an effort to remember it.”
    “You’d better. I’m going to go see if your burger has stopped bleeding enough for the health