Page 63 of Purrfectly Trapped

The quicker she finished, the quicker the skinny woman could get the heck out of her store. Maybe she should start offering snacks while people waited?

In her opinion, hungry people were nasty people, and this woman was very thin. Not just thin, she looked emaciated, unhealthy, and her skin had a yellowish tint to it. Definitely not the way the Shifters Gretchen had already met looked.

We can bite her in two, her Tiger suggested.

Gretchen wanted to laugh but bit her tongue and tucked away the suggestion for later.

“Well, I’m surprised someone like you has managed to catch Reg’s interest,” Pamela remarked, fishing for gossip.

“Oh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. I am just pointing out the obvious,” she replied and eyed Gretchen’s fuller frame as if that said everything.

“Ow!” shocked eyes looked up at Gretchen who shrugged.

“Sorry,” she said, and didn’t mean it. Gretchen had always been a no nonsense woman and she sure as fuck was not sugarcoating things for this mean-spirited woman. “Pamela, I have to be real here, you have a lot of knots, and some serious damage to your hair due to over-processing. If you want it to be healthy, I am going to have to take off more than a trim,” Gretchen said.

“What? Are you sure?” Pamela asked, clearly shocked and worried. She looked at Gretchen warily. “You do have good hair,” the woman said. “Okay, you can cut my hair, but before you do, look, I didn’t mean anything by what I said. I just meant that you know how men are. They’re all a bunch of players and Shifters are worse than humans.”

For a moment, Pamela looked vulnerable and a little beaten, truth be told. As if life had been very hard on the female.

Gretchen still didn’t exactly trust Pamela, but in the spirit of female solidarity, she felt herself softening towards her. The other she-Tiger was very pretty underneath all the paint and hair spray. Maybe she’d been used before. Maybe it left her angry and bitter.

It wasn’t Gretchen’s problem, but she could try and help. Too often did women pit themselves against other women. Gretchen was so over the wholeallwomen were in competition with each othercliché.

She might not be ready to share her deepest fears with the woman, but she could help her with her hair for one thing. It wasn’t all bad. Pamela simply used too many harsh products for her locks to be healthy.

In fact, everything about Pamela seemed overdone. Her makeup was thick and unflattering under the lights of the salon. It added a sharpness to her that was hard and cold, not very appealing to Gretchen.

“True, men can be pigs. But Reg is a good guy,” Gretchen said.

Her Tiger hissed at the idea of anyone thinking or speaking badly about him. She soothed the beast by sticking up for him.

Good mate.

“Yeah, well, he certainly made his way through the Pride, breaking hearts. Even had a crush on Jessica before she hooked up with Brayden.”

Gretchen’s heart pounded inside her chest. Was that true? She’d come to think of Jessica as a friend, but the woman had never mentioned anything between her and Reg. Her Tiger snarled as anger and jealousy threatened to overwhelm her.

“Shifters are all the same. Love ‘em and leave ‘em, you know? Get a female to pop out a few cubs then it was out the door to thinner, younger pastures, if you catch my meaning,” Pamela said, her eyes unfocused.

“Well, what about Elissa and Hunter?” Gretchen replied, clinging to the one couple she knew were inseparable.

“Oh, but that’s different, isn’t it? He is the Neta. He needs his mate at his side to rule. Of course, he should have picked from his own Pride, but she went through thePuspa, so that part is fine for now. It’s all in our laws, the ones the Shifter Council rules by,” she told a wide eyed Gretchen, shrugging as if that explained everything.

“I suppose.”

“The rest of these males are just a bunch of tomcats. Strutting around and sampling a new female every other month. Of course, for females it’s different. We need a man during our heat to breed, but other than that we can do as we wish. Why, some females even share a male between them! It’s not uncommon for either sex to have multiple partners.”

“And what about mates?”

“Oh, well, when you’re hooking up, you’re considered mates, but nothing lasts forever, does it? Mates don’t always work out…,” she replied trailing off at the end.

Gretchen swallowed audibly at that little tidbit, missing the harsh expression on the other woman’s face. She cut and styled Pamela’s tawny-colored locks, pushing her thoughts aside and concentrating on her work. This was not the time nor the place.

There were too many people, and besides, she shouldn’t be having this talk with a stranger. So, Gretchen kept on working without missing a beat, losing herself in the familiarity of her chosen profession.

There was just something about hair that she loved. So many different colors, textures, and styles to work with. She sometimes felt like an artist, but instead of paints and brushes she used scissors and hair as her medium. Some of her up-do styles had even been featured in a few hair magazines and blogs.

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