Geek Chic Read online

  Winded, they lay there like that for a moment, not moving. Dewi didn’t want him to move. It hadn’t taken her long to convince him that she enjoyed it when he took charge like that. No, not every time. But enough that she reveled in it, savored it.

  Finally, he sat up and climbed onto the bed, pulling her with him so she could cuddle nestled in his arms.

  He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, now back to her sweet, gentle geek. “Now will you let me get some sleep tonight?”

  She giggled. She had kept him up late the night before, wanting it long, slow, and hard after they’d had to take a couple of days off from making love. A blessing and a curse of being a wolf, she knew when her safe days were. Getting pregnant wasn’t something she was ready to commit to just yet.

  Although now that she had Ken, the idea had pinged her mental radar.

  But on the back side of her self-imposed monthly celibacy, which Ken probably saw as a welcomed respite, came her explosive need, manifested in her relentless friskiness the night before.

  “Yes,” she said, tracing her fingers along his chest. “Besides, I have to get up early tomorrow. Lots of stuff to do before we go hunt down that deadbeat dad.”

  Ken extricated himself from her arms and shut off the lights. He got the covers pulled out from under her and then they snuggled together again in the middle of the bed.

  “You sure you need my help?” he asked.

  “The extra set of eyes. If the guy runs, Badger needs to be able to drive. I wouldn’t ask you if I didn’t think we might need you.”

  “Okay. Just keep in mind I don’t have the temperament or skills to be an Enforcer.”

  “All we’re asking is for you to be a spotter. That’s it. I wouldn’t ask you to do it if I thought you’d be at any risk.” She realized how that sounded as soon as she said it. “I didn’t mean it like—”

  He chuckled, cutting her off. “It’s okay. I knew how you meant it,” he said. “No offense taken. I love you.” He kissed her good night.

  “Love you, too.”

  Ken quickly fell asleep. Dewi lay awake for a few more minutes, listening to the sound of him breathing, his pulse softly throbbing in her ear.

  To her, it was the sound of happiness.

  And now, it was the anthem of her life, the chorus of her soul.

  Chapter Two

  Namiyah Drexler started her morning the way she started pretty much every morning, with her alarm blasting to life at 4:29 a.m. on her dresser on the other side of the room.

  And, as she did every morning, she dragged herself out of her bed and walked over to it, shutting it off.

  Lord, please give me strength today so I don’t kill anyone. Even if they really deserve it. Amen.

  She’d have twenty minutes before she needed to get Da’von up and moving and make sure he was really awake so he could prepare for his classes at Hillsborough Community College. Her little brother was even less of a morning person than she was, but there was no way in hell she’d let him miss school.

  Sacrificing her own college education and potential career so she could raise her three younger siblings meant she damn sure wouldn’t let any of them screw up their opportunities.

  I don’t know how you did this alone for all those years, Momma.

  After shuffling out to the kitchen and getting the coffee started, she climbed into the shower to wake up. Once she ensured her brother was up and moving and would eventually make his way to school, today with Malyah dropping him at their other sister’s house so he could catch a bus, Nami would head for the county’s bus depot, where she’d start her shift. Today was supposed to be her day off, but a friend of hers asked her to swap out with her today and cover her shift.

  Even on her days off, or days when she didn’t have to go all the way in to the depot to get her bus, she still arose this early so she could complete chores. Even if she wasn’t driving that day, and was going to work at her second, part-time job as a seamstress. Her friend, Lara, owned a dress shop. They custom made, altered, and sold prom, wedding, and formal dresses, especially for quinceañera celebrations. Nami helped her out doing alterations, sewing, anything she could to bring in extra money.

  Wasn’t the kind of pay she knew she would have made had she gotten her degree and become an architect, like she’d originally dreamed of doing. At least she’d kept a roof over their heads, had seen two sisters successfully graduate from college, and one of them get married and start her own family. Lu’ana was twenty-eight and had given birth to a gorgeous little girl who was now two and the light of Nami’s life. Her other sister, Malyah, was twenty-four. She still lived at home, but she’d graduated from USF with an accounting degree. Her income had allowed her to contribute more to the household and eased Nami’s financial burden quite a bit.

  Then there was Da’von. Nineteen and headstrong, sometimes their little brother was too much like their worthless father. Last Nami had heard, their father, Jarome Drexler, was still in jail for a variety of gang-related offenses. The last time she’d set eyes on the man seventeen years earlier, she’d been twenty-one, Da’von was a baby of barely eighteen months, and they were burying their mother after her death from aggressive breast cancer.

  She supposed that was why, when he was a kid, her little brother had idolized the man he didn’t know. As the eldest, Nami remembered all too well the bullshit their father put their poor mother through. How their mother had prayed night after night for the man to change. How he would periodically show up looking for love, a hot meal, any spare change, and a place to stay, and sweet-talk their mother just to disappear again for months—or years—at a time with no word.

  The first gap of ten years, he’d been in jail. He had no sooner got out on parole and moved in with their mother, getting her pregnant with Lu’ana, before he was back to his old ways and evading parole officers while he ran wild with his gang.

  Then four years later, back again long enough for Malyah to be conceived. Followed by a five-year gap. Nami had begged her mother not to allow their father in the house, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She was married to the louse and a good Christian. She wouldn’t even divorce him despite the sisters’ pleas.

  And then she got pregnant with Da’von.

  Followed shortly after by their father’s next arrest.

  Fortunately, between the will her mother drew up, and their father signing off on the custody papers from jail, Nami had been able to take over and keep her younger siblings together. There had been times she’d worried the state would try to take Da’von and Malyah away because they were so young, but once she’d landed herself the job as a bus driver for the county HART system, meaning relative job stability and health care benefits, those fears had eventually faded away.

  She swore if the son of a bitch ever darkened her door again that she’d skin him alive and hang him out to dry.

  But not Da’von. He didn’t know any better. His sisters, rightly or not, had tried to spare him the worst as he grew up. Malyah had been a little insulated from some of it, but Nami and Lu’ana knew the full, ugly truth.

  Their father was garbage, and their mother had wasted her life and energy on the man, waiting, praying for him to change.

  After finishing her shower and returning to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee, Nami walked down the hall to Da’von’s room. They’d moved into the three-bedroom apartment two years earlier, thanks to Malyah’s salary. Before, they’d been crowded into tiny one- and two-bedroom apartments, usually government-subsidized housing. Now, they finally had a comfortable apartment in a nice complex north of Carrollwood, not too far off Dale Mabry. Wasn’t a rich neighborhood, but the crime rates were low. She didn’t have to worry about home invasions, or drug dealers hanging out on her front porch, or worrying if her car would even be parked there the next morning.

  And anything Nami could do to keep Da’von away from those kinds of elements, she would do it in a heartbeat. Any sacrifice she needed to make. They’d
had a couple of rough patches with him in high school, but she and her sisters had put the fear of god into the boy, and into the boys who’d tried to involve him in gang activity. Moving away from those boys and getting him into a different high school for his senior year had also helped.

  He’d graduated with good grades. Not enough to get him an academic scholarship, unfortunately, but good enough that, with financial aid loans, and Malyah and Lu’ana’s help, she’d been able to afford to send him to community college. He was in his second semester, studying computer programming. Lu’ana and her husband had given him an inexpensive laptop for Christmas his junior year of high school. It had proven to be something he was not only interested in, but he was darn good at, too.

  Nami hated computers. She only had a smartphone so she could log into the employee website portal for work when she needed. She didn’t have time for FaceTweeting or whatever, even though her sisters and brother had tried to get her to sign up for accounts on all the sites like they had. They might have been fine communicating with each other online, but she’d rather talk to them in person.

  Then she could hug them.

  Or smack them upside the head, if they needed it. Which, fortunately, they didn’t, now that they’d all grown past that rebellious teenaged phase. Texting them was different. It was a quick way to stay in touch with them without needing to spend twenty minutes on the phone for an easy question.

  She knocked on his door promptly at 5:00. “Good morning, sunshine,” she called to him.

  “Go away, Nami.”

  She smiled at the familiar reply. She opened the door and flipped on his light. “Breakfast in twenty.” She walked in and tugged the sheet down from where he’d pulled it over his face. “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.” She planted a kiss on his forehead before turning to leave.

  “Hey, Nami?”

  His tone of voice stopped her. She turned back to him. “Yeah?”

  He slowly sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “I know I haven’t said it lately, but thank you.”

  She blinked back the tears suddenly stinging her eyes. “What for?”

  “Lu’ana tore into me yesterday when I complained about my homework. Before you got there.” After classes, he took a bus to Lu’ana’s house to babysit their niece and study before Nami picked him up after she got off work. It was a way for Lu’ana to get some stuff done without worrying about a qualified babysitter—much less having to pay for one—and a way for Nami to guarantee Da’von stayed out of trouble. He was a devoted uncle and always took good care of the baby.

  Da’von was more like a son to Nami than a brother. Hell, he couldn’t even remember their mother, he’d been so young when she died. Nami had been the only “mother” he’d had growing up.

  She walked back to his bed and sat on the edge. “Listen to me, baby boy,” she said. “You can thank me by getting yourself up and ready for school. Every day you try your best and work your hardest, that’s thanks enough for me. Don’t let me down. I trust you to be the best you can be. You keep doing that.”

  There’d been days in his early teens he’d been so mouthy and ornery, she’d wanted to backhand him until she rattled the teeth right out of his head. Times where he’d made the wrong friends and she’d had to come down, hard and heavy on him and them, to run them off and keep him away from bad elements.

  And then…

  Then there were times like this. Times where he’d managed to quit acting like a dumb-ass boy, and flashes of the stand-up man she knew he would be if he kept trying as hard as he could shined through bright and clear like the rising sun.

  Mornings like this that made it all worth it. Every last bit of sacrifice and scrimping and saving and sweat and tears. Even her divorce.

  “Thanks, sis.”

  She held out her fist and he gave her a sleepy bump back before she hauled herself off his bed. “Twenty minutes, baby boy,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the door. “I’ll even make us French toast, if you hurry.”

  She heard him throw the sheet back. “Sounds like a deal,” he said before she shut the door behind her.

  Their breakfast was ready by the time Da’von made it to the kitchen. They’d leave Malyah’s breakfast in the microwave for her to reheat when she got up in a few minutes. Da’von would use the time waiting for Malyah to get ready to study for his classes.

  In Nami’s house, sleeping later was a reward for working hard. She wouldn’t begrudge her little sister sleeping in since she more than pulled her weight around the apartment with her contributions to the household budget and doing chores. Malyah had even been able to buy herself a good used car several months earlier, completely paid for.

  Nami wouldn’t let Da’von get a job yet. She wanted him focused on his studies. That was his job. Since he didn’t have a job, he didn’t need a car. It was a huge savings on auto insurance, too.

  It also meant one more way she could keep him isolated from hanging out with the wrong kinds of kids. She and her sisters were in total agreement on that. Nami wasn’t totally oblivious to the fact that he needed to have friends, but she’d be damned if she’d let him take the same path their father took.

  As Nami drove her ancient Toyota to work, she fought an uneasy feeling that had settled in her gut. Sure, hearing rare thanks from her brother had felt good. Really good.

  Satisfying.

  Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what else might be going on in his mind.

  Guess it don’t matter. As long as he stays in school.

  * * * *

  By the time Nami reached the main depot and picked up her bus, she was already regretting this shift swap. The radio station she listened to on her drive in reported several accidents in the vicinity of where she’d be running her route. Meaning lots of headaches for her, lots of passengers griping about traffic she had no control over, and even more griping about making them late to their destinations.

  At least it wasn’t raining.

  You’d think with as much rain as we get that people would know how to drive in the damn stuff.

  In the first hour of her shift, she’d had seven near-collisions with drivers who’d refused to obey the law to yield and let busses merge back into traffic, three people trying to board with invalid passes, and another two who insisted other bus drivers made change for them allll the time.

  Somehow, she managed to keep her cool and not blow up at anyone. The busses were equipped with monitoring cameras, both for her safety and that of the passengers.

  It wouldn’t do for her to lose her job because they caught her yelling at passengers on video.

  I can do this. I can make it through the day.

  She just hoped it wouldn’t get any weirder.

  Chapter Three

  “I can’t believe we’re now glorified skip tracers,” Beck grumbled as they stood in the stifling Florida summer afternoon heat and waited for the bus at a stop on north Nebraska Avenue. “Next thing you know, we’ll be hunting down delinquent library books.”

  “Shut it,” Dewi snarled. “I’m not any happier about this than you are, but you know how it works. She’s part of the pack, he’s part of the pack, that makes it a pack problem.”

  “I tell you what,” Beck said. “We catch that boy, he’s getting neutered. This is bullshit. This is, what, kid number six?”

  “Seven. By six different women. That’s what pissed her off the most, that he had five other kids with five other women and didn’t tell her.”

  “Yeah. He’s a numb-nuts. That wolf gets neutered.”

  “Do you hear me arguing?”

  “Just wanted to make sure we were singing the same tune, that’s all.”

  “There will be a wolf singing soprano when I get done with him.”

  “Guys,” Ken said over the two-way radio he was listening in on. “Can we please cut the castration talk? You’re making mine shrivel up.”

  Beck let out a snort. “He said cut.”

  Dewi held up
a fist and got a bump from Beck.

  Ken was riding shotgun in Badger’s truck, with Badger driving. They sat parked outside a convenience store across the street from the bus stop where Beck and Dewi stood waiting.

  Their target was one James Palver. He loved making babies, but wasn’t so great at supporting them. His mistake was screwing over the baby momma of numbers one and seven, Linda Small. When girlfriend number six contacted Linda out of the blue, Linda was, needless to say, not happy.

  Linda was even less happy to find out that Six had tracked down Two through Five via a vital statistics search.

  Now, James’ reproductive days were about to be deep-sixed.

  Along with any money he might have. Although, considering the asshole was reduced to taking a county bus to work and back, Dewi suspected there would be no blood forthcoming from that turnip anytime soon.

  Well, there would be blood, and plenty of it, but there wouldn’t be any money. Not unless the worthless sack of shit hit the lotto or something, because he could barely keep a job.

  Linda had petitioned Dewi, as head of the pack council for the expanded pack, to force James to face the music with her and to support his children. Well, her children. Linda didn’t care about the other five kids. And since the other mothers were humans who had no clue James had a little bit of wolf shifter in him, they weren’t Dewi’s problem. Diluted progeny with no hope of shifting weren’t Dewi’s problem, either.

  As far as Dewi was concerned, Linda wasn’t the brightest bitch in the pack, especially for picking James to be the baby daddy of not one, but two of her pups. But there was no accounting for love, she supposed.

  They were stuck having to track James down via the bus. They didn’t know where he was currently shacked up. Dewi didn’t want to call his parents and ask them for help because she suspected they might lie for him. And since they were living in Arizona, traveling to speak with them in person so she could Prime mojo the truth out of them would only piss her off and complicate her life.