Page 8 of Bearly Hanging On

“You know I can’t die without knowing you’re settled.”

“Nanna!” I cried, grabbing my own teacup and splashing some milk in.

“I won’t live forever and it’d be nice to be able to walk down a church aisle on my own two feet, not stumping along with a Zimmer frame.”

We were in well-worn territory here. Nanna was a different generation, one where men were expected to be providers. My grandfather wasn’t, leaving her with three kids to raise on her own, so she always wanted better than that for us. She looked me over closely.

“You’re a beautiful girl.” A shake of her head. “When you brush your damn hair and pin it back. You have a pretty face. Don’t be afraid to show it!” Her eyes slid lower. “And put a nice frock on for once.”

“I’ll have you know this ensemble got me not one, but three guys’ numbers today.”

Shit. The cards were tossed down on the table, all pretence of playing abandoned. These ladies were all well over seventy, but their minds were like steel traps.

“Which men?” Nanna snapped. “Do I know them? Have you mentioned them before?”

“Don’t worry about that.” Gladys waved her hand. “Do you like them? Are they hot? Are they open to hooking up with you at the same time?”

“And with each other,” Sally purred, then took a noisy slurp of her tea.

“Oh my god, are you fantasising about me having some kind of polyamorous bisexual harem thing?” I paused for a moment, considering the idea and damn. Those guys were freaking huge and all I could see was a sea of muscle rubbing against me and then each other… I shook my head, coming back to the room to see the ladies had caught every second of my minor aneurysm. “Pretty sure that’s not what shifters do.”

“Shifters?”

Uh oh. Nanna sat bolt upright.

“That’s a man that turns into an animal on the full moon,” Sally supplied helpfully.

“I know what a…” Nanna shook her head. “Three shifter men gave you their number?”

“Um, yeah.” I grabbed the card out of my phone case and tossed it onto the table. Gladys and Sally pounced on it like flies on shit. “They offered to put some picture hooks in for me.”

“Pfft…” Gladys made a rude noise. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

“That’s why I dropped around.” I pulled my phone out and opened the camera app. “I said I had some pictures to hang, so now I need pictures of my best girl.”

My hand went out, holding the camera out to take some pics, but she waved me away.

“I can’t have photos taken.” Her voice turned into a low growl. “I don’t have my face on.”

“Pretty sure you do.”

I reached over to grab her cheek, but my hand was knocked away.

“I need to put some makeup on if you’re going to take photos,” she announced. “But…” She shot me the same canny look she’d worn when watching the others playing cards. “These men, shifter men. They’re very loyal, aren’t they?”

“Loyal as dogs,” Glady said, waving her tea cup around. “That’s what they say on the current affairs show.”

“Love only their fated mate forever.” Sally clasped her hands to her chest with a swoon. “But don’t they all have weird dicks?”

“Sally McIntyre,” I said. “You did not just say dick.”

“What kind of shifters are they?” Gladys peered at the business card and then started typing furiously into her phone. For someone who struggled with phone banking, her Google fu was impressive. “A tiger shifter, a bear shifter?—”

“And a wolf.” My facial muscles resisted my attempt to smile when I remembered Mack’s thunderous expression. The guy had these weird pale eyes that were almost yellow and he’d stared at me like I was something on the bottom of his shoe. “But it’s OK. They’re not my fated mates. Trust me on that one.”

“Only one way to find out.” Nanna snatched my phone and leaned in close, the two of us staring at the lens as she snappedoff a few shots before handing it over. “You get those photos printed and some nice frames to go with them.”

“Oh-kay…”

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