Accidentally Catty Read online

  “A thought,” she responded.

  “You have them?” he drawled.

  “Why would I let a good breeder like your Katie go? How does that behoove me? She can clearly conceive. That’s a valuable asset.”

  “Because you can have a hundred like her with me,” Shaw responded, still calm. “She’s old, pushing forty-one. While she may not age the way she once did, she was still turned late in life. By the time you’re done with her, she’ll be useless. She can only breed one baby at a time, and we don’t even know if this one will be healthy. Clearly, you haven’t thought this through, Nissa. Father would be so disappointed. Why impregnate one woman when you can impregnate several in one virile shot? Think big, Nissa. Besides, wouldn’t younger females be more desirable?”

  Katie’s mouth fell open. What was a four-letter word for insulting, asshat shithead?

  Oh, wait—Shaw.

  Just when she was getting that warm, gushy feeling in her heart that he’d run in here on his white steed—he’d gone and blown it by calling her old. Forty-one was the new thirty, maybe thirty-five. Dick.

  “While you have a point, she’s still the only successful conception. We have no idea if the combination of the two of you is where the key lies. Thus, you can see why I can’t honor your request.”

  Shaw’s shoulder’s slumped in defeat. “Well, okay. I figured I’d give it a try. You know, just for a test-the-waters kind of thing. I’d be less of a man if I didn’t publicly offer myself up—so I thought it was worth a go. But I see your point now.” His words were affable to the ear, enraging to Katie’s brain.

  What the . . .? In Nina’s words, what the ever-lovin’ fuck was going on? They were just giving up? Just like that? Handing her over like she was some cougar to be trafficked and bred like a hamster? Where was the hot hunk who’d been possessive and sweet? The one who’d charmed her into all that hot lovin’ like he was sexual napalm?

  Nice. Oh, what a bastard. All that talk about loving her, and wanting this baby and how she wasn’t old at all. If she got out of this alive, which was going to happen if it killed her, she was going to tear his heart out, but only after she ripped his forked tongue from his mouth with her razor-sharp teeth.

  Katie raised a finger. “Um, pardon the interruption, but seeing as I’m the ‘to be bred,’ might I make just a small protest?”

  “Shut up, Katie,” Shaw sneered. Sneered. She’d have never thought it was possible for him to be ugly.

  He shook his head. “Always with the mouth. Jesus, you’re like a babbling brook. Why must you always be so negative? Can’t you see there’s no way out of this? Just shut up and accept defeat, you nag.”

  Her head cocked and her eyebrow rose. Tapping him on the shoulder, Shaw half turned to face her. “Did you just tell me to shut up?”

  His eyes, blue chips of ice, stared back at her. “Ohhhh, you bet I did, lady. Want me to do it again? Shut. Up. Katie. There. Want more, Dr. Woods? You never know when to quit, do you? Gab, gab, gab.” He pinched his fingers together, creating an imitation of her mouth constantly at work. “And to think I found you amusing.”

  A snicker from behind Nissa fueled an already hot fire in Katie.

  Katie’s eyes narrowed, her anger washing over her in a flush of uncontrollable rage. “You stinking son of a bitch! Amusing? I’ll show you amused, you mendacious bastard. When I’m done, amusing and me will be like a distant memory for you!” she hollered, ignoring the pain deep in her heart. The one that said she should have known and focusing on the insatiable need to make a pâté out of his balls and serve them up on wafer-thin crackers.

  “Mendacious.” He turned to the crowd at the door’s entry with a showy hand. “That means liar, for all of you who don’t have the broad vocabulary the good doctor has.”

  “Fuck you!” she bellowed. “Is that easier for you to understand, simpleton?”

  But Shaw only laughed, dismissing her with a callous snarl. Then his gaze returned to Nissa. He sighed a put-upon sigh. “Do you see what I’ve had to put up with? She’s intolerable. Her big words, her stupid crossword puzzles. Oh, how I’ve suffered. I almost can’t wait to live in a cage and yank my crank in a cup for you people. So take her. Please. I promise to send a thank-you card in return,” he said, dry and distant.

  Upon Shaw’s words, the goons behind Nissa made a move to apprehend Katie, but a loud hiss from behind all of them had each one of them turning back to look at the opening of the door.

  Katie’s head sprang up and she noted, from some vague place, how incredibly interesting it was that fireballs the size of the planet Mars did make quite the ruckus.

  Just when she was cursing the betrayal of not one loved one in her life, but almost two, the world tilted upside down with commotion and noise.

  Shaw dove for her, scooping her up and rolling with her under the heat of the fire Darnell was shooting from his hands. A quick glance over his shoulder garnered Nina, Wanda, and her favorite demon evah, Darnell—en masse and noticeably enraged.

  Nina was the first to grab two men up by their shirts and give them a hard shake. The rip of the material crackled even in the midst of the melee. “You fuckwits! She’s preggers. What kind of animals are you?” she roared in their faces before hurling them to the ground and breaking their guns in half with her bare hands. “Aw, look. I broke your guns. Guess there’ll be no cops and robbers for you today, fucktards.”

  With the cry of a seasoned samurai, Nina pounced on them, yanking them back up and launching them to the wall behind Katie. They crumpled, falling to the cement floor, lifeless.

  Katie rolled away from Shaw, still smarting from his cruel words, but he didn’t want to let her go. His hands snaked out to drag her back to him, trying to keep her from helping the others.

  “You let me go, you snake in cougar’s clothing!” she yelled, clawing at his hands until she got free, scrambling away, refusing to listen to his protests.

  Wanda’s cry of anger turned Katie’s attention to the man she had by the ear, scolding as she dragged him to the end of the hall. Blood dripped from the side of his head in ugly, crimson drops, and his heels dug into the floor, but to no avail. “How dare you accost an innocent woman with child? What would your mother say, you heathen?” When she reached the end of the hallway, she leaned down and grabbed him by his ankles. Wanda leered in his white-with-shock face. “If you ever try and hurt my friend again, I’ll rip that ear off and eat it whole, bitch!” Lifting him up, she swung him in a high arc, tossing him like he was nothing more than a foam Frisbee.

  Brushing her hands together, Wanda squared her shoulders and took a running leap under a fireball and smack into the fray, where Nina was wrestling three more men.

  Curses flew. Fists connected with flesh. Grunts of pain echoed in the sterile hallways.

  Darnell fireballed his way to her, latching onto her arm and yelling, “Find yo man! No time to explain, but Dr. Green says if he gets mad and shifts, it could be the last time. You gotta keep him on the down low, Doc—keep him calm!” he shouted as another grunting lackey made a beeline for her. Darnell stopped him with one fist to his face.

  Panic set in again—panic and another warm rush of joy. Shaw had been trying to stay calm—so he could help her. Of that she was sure now.

  “Find Shaw!” Darnelle ordered.

  And then Katie noted something. In all of the screeching fireballs and threats of ear a l’orange, Nissa was nowhere in sight.

  No. No. No. Fear gripped her. Stay calm. Find Shaw. If Nissa had Shaw, she wouldn’t stop until she saw him dead. No matter how valuable she claimed he was to her research, Katie knew the kind of jealousy he’d evoked in Nissa. One that had lasted more years than she could count.

  In her mind, Shaw’s existence had stolen her husband right out from under her. If she knew women, Katie knew Nissa would enrage him just to watch him suffer.

  She had to find him.

  Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared, searching for the woman
’s scent.

  She made her way down winding hallways while the roar of explosions rang in her ears. With caution, she peered into empty offices, sniffing the air, stalking. The slap of her bare feet against the cement bounced off the walls.

  “Looking for me?”

  Katie whipped around, facing her captor.

  Who held a big needle.

  For all her years as a vet, she didn’t mind giving shots. She did, however, hate receiving them.

  And somehow, with the fire that burned in Nissa’s eyes, she got the feeling that needle had her name on it.

  But her anger, the sudden swell of a mother protecting her unborn child and her man, made her answer. “Oh, you bet I am!”

  “You do know you’ll die, don’t you, Katie?”

  “Maybe,” she replied, coolly. “But it won’t be before I make you look like so much meat. Now where’s Shaw?” She had to find him. She would.

  “Do you know what this syringe holds?”

  “Let me guess. It’s some sort of barbiturate?” Which, if she managed to inject it, would euthanize her. So not her idea of a party.

  “You are a smart one, Katie.”

  “And you’re incredibly unoriginal.”

  “Unoriginal maybe. But I’ve been called worse. So how does it feel to know you’re going to die, Dr. Woods?”

  NINA gave the last thug a kick in his gut when Shaw, an unconscious man slung over his shoulder like a sweater, approached her. “Where’s Katie?”

  Nina’s dark head whipped around, her eyes scanning the corridors. “Shit, dude. I haven’t seen her since we got here. Wanda! You got Katie?”

  Wanda heaved another man on top of her army-man pile and looked over her shoulder. “No! Oh, Jesus.” She gave a frantic look in Darnell’s direction as he tamped out a fire in one of the men’s hair with his hand. “Darnell! Have you seen Katie?”

  “Nuh-uh, but Ingrid’s safe. I made sho a dat. We need to go huntin’?”

  But Shaw was already gone, sniffing out her scent, running through the maze of halls. His heart pounded out a rhythm of panic he fought to keep at bay.

  And then he saw them on the floor.

  Nissa, on top of Katie, her hand around her throat, a syringe high in the air.

  Katie fought wildly, thrashing against the heavier woman, scratching at her pudgy hands, her feet flailing wildly.

  Her choking gasps sickened Shaw, making his gut rage with fury.

  There was no stopping the wave after wave of anger that assaulted his body. He didn’t even try. Katie and the baby were in danger—that meant Daniel’s advice to stay calm would just have to go unheeded.

  Without warning, he was in cougar form and launching himself at Nissa as though he were a missile, unaware that even though he’d shifted, it wasn’t with the violence he’d come to experience in his last shifts.

  He knew this form. He knew cougar. This was what was right. No matter the outcome.

  Shaw’s eerie screech pierced the air just seconds before he body-slammed Nissa, toppling her backward and cracking her head against the floor.

  But she still held the upper hand.

  Shaw saw the glint of the needle—realized this was probably where he’d meet his creator and had but one regret.

  That he’d called Katie old and a nag.

  He was sorry he’d miss the hell she’d give him for that.

  HARSH breaths fell from Katie’s mouth when she bolted upright to find Shaw in cougar form, sprawled across her in all his buff-colored beauty, and Nissa just seconds from jamming the needle of death into his body.

  It took her only a moment to come to the conclusion that Shaw would die before she had the time to ream him a new one for calling her old.

  No matter the circumstances.

  No way was he leaving this Earth without a good, old-fashioned chewing out.

  And only then would she tell him she loved him back.

  Clawing her way to her feet, her hands bloody, her body one pulsing raw nerve, Katie saw red.

  Her eyes zeroed in on Nissa, the woman’s cherubic face a bull’s-eye for her anger. How dare this woman have the nerve to attempt to kill the man who’d called her a nag before she was given the opportunity?

  Hell to the no.

  Katie sprang, high and long, tackling her, but it was too late. The tip of the needle hung from Shaw’s lifeless neck.

  And that was when enraged took on a whole new meaning. “You fucking bitch!” she screamed, grabbing Nissa’s hair and dragging her down the hall, grunting and sweating as she went. “I—will—kill—youuuu!”

  Footsteps clapped against the floor, squeaking and thumping, but Katie paid no mind. Instead, she threw her back into slamming Nissa against a wall and pouncing on her, straddling the older woman’s body. She grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her upward with so much force, Nissa’s head fell back at an odd angle on her neck.

  And then she began to take out every last ounce of fear she’d experienced in the past weeks, the terror for her child, and her anguish over Shaw by way of Nissa’s head.

  Taking two fists full of her hair, Katie began to slam it against the wall, huffing harsh gasps, perspiration dripping between her breasts. “You killed him! I’ll kill you!”

  “Katie! Katie stop!” Wanda yelled, but her haze of anger was so complete, she couldn’t stop.

  “That’s my girl! Jesus, if I could shed a tear, I would. Look at her fucking go, Wanda!” Nina yelled in proud admiration.

  Hands pulled at her, but her grip was so tight, her fingers were locked in place.

  “Katie! You will let this woman go now! This instant! You’re a physician. You took an oath! Stop, honey! Please stop!” Wanda screamed.

  And then Nina was helping Wanda, muttering curse words and dragging her off a lifeless Nissa.

  Katie fell back against Wanda, who wiped her sweat-drenched hair from her eyes, pulling her close and whispering against the top of her head, “Stop, Katie. Stop. Shhh, now. You have to know your own strength. Breathe, honey. Please breathe and think of the baby.”

  “Goddamn it, Wanda. You are, without a doubt, the biggest harsh to my need-for-death-and-destruction buzz. Why the fuck wouldn’t you let her kill the bitch? She whacked her man.” Yet Nina, for all her “kill the bitch” encouragement, ran soothing circles over Katie’s back.

  “Shaw,” she whispered miserably, tears falling down her face in hot tracks.

  Solid arms, warm and comforting, lifted her away from the scene of Nissa’s prone body. “I got this, Wanda. We need to get her home and let her rest. She got the baby and all. You two do what needs doin’ up in here, and I’ll take the Doc and Ingrid back to the house, make sho they safe.”

  Darnell whispered soothing words into her ear, cradling her in his arms, and carrying her away from Wanda and Nina.

  Away from Shaw.

  Forever.

  CHAPTER 21

  “You got her, Ingrid?” Darnell asked.

  A hand smoothed her hair back from her tear-stained face. “Oh, Dr. Woods. I’m so sorry. I tried. I tried the hardest I ever have. I would never, ever let anyone hurt you.”

  Katie lay in the back of a car she couldn’t identify while Ingrid’s tears fell on her hand. “Are you okay?”

  “Jesus! I’m fine. Just rest, okay? We have to be careful with the baby.”

  “What was that about back there?”

  “When I grabbed you, I did it to get us to the end of the hallway where Nina was. She motioned for me to get you to her. Taking you hostage was a distraction to get you away from all those guns pointing at you. I’m sorry I said all those horrible things. I love you, Dr. Woods. If it weren’t for you, I never would have done anything with my life. But now, I want to be a veterinarian just like you. You made me care again. You took my love of animals and turned it into a reason for me to try and be a better person. You taught me. I would never let anyone hurt you, if I could help it.”

  Katie heard her words, but t
he deep sorrow in her heart made her response slow and sticky. “You thought on your feet, honey. I’m so proud.”

  Ingrid took her hand in hers and held it to her cheek, wet with tears. “I’ll help you. I promise. I’ll stay here in Piney Creek and help you raise the baby. We’ll all help. I swear everything will be okay.”

  The baby . . . She raised a weak hand upward to caress Ingrid’s cheek. “Shhh, Ingrid. Everything’s going to be okay. Promise.” But it would never be okay.

  Shaw was dead.

  That wasn’t okay.

  SHE woke with a jolt, suspended in the painful dream that had jarred her awake.

  Oh, God, Shaw. Darkness settled over her soul, damp and riddled with despair.

  “Dr. Woods,” a husky voice with a British accent said.

  Her eyes fought for focus, grainy and tired. It couldn’t be Shaw. Somehow, while she’d slept, they’d captured her again and they were taunting her with someone who sounded like Shaw. “Are you another goon who wants me to breed babies? Because if that’s the case, forget it. I’m old and a nag. Not good for breeding.”

  A chuckle, raspy and warm, hit her ears. And familiar. Wonderfully, butterflies in your belly, familiar. “I did a little community theater as a child. Good show, eh?”

  Her eyes popped open to find it was Shaw, standing in her doorway with Nina, Wanda, Darnell, Kaih, and Ingrid. But she couldn’t move. Though, if she could, she’d latch onto his ear and yank it. Hard. “You were a seven-letter word for jerk.”

  “Asshole?” Nina cackled.

  “Ding-ding-ding,” Katie confirmed dryly—so sluggish.

  “But it did the trick, right, Doc? He distracted everybody so I could get to that room and catch ’em from behind,” Darnell added. “Why didn’t you think me up? I tole ya, all ya gotta do is think o’ me.”

  She licked her dry lips, her tongue like sandpaper. “I was drugged. I couldn’t think.”

  She heard Darnell’s chuckle, so hearty, so welcome. “S’aiight. Yo man got yer back.”