“Daddy.”

“I’m just saying . . . it’s something to be aware of.”

“I’m fully aware, and she’s not frail.”

“All right, all right. If it’ll make you feel better, your brothers are jealous.”

“No, they ain’t. They love their mates.”

“Sure they do. But your mate is actually nice to you.”

“She’s not my mate, Daddy.”

“Don’t know what you’re waitin’ for, boy. I marked your momma the first weekend we were together. Knew I had to hold onto her or I would lose her.”

“I can’t worry about that right now. My first concern is keeping her safe.”

“So she can’t take care of herself?”

“Daddy, you’re making me crazy. One second you’re asking me why I haven’t marked her yet and the next, you’re talking about how weak she is.”

“Just making sure you’re thinking with the head on your shoulders.”

Why did Eggie bother? Some days he really didn’t know.

“Maybe I should look into it,” his father suggested.

“No, Daddy,” Eggie quickly said.

“But I just want to—”

“No.” Because Eggie knew his daddy would only make everything worse. “I don’t want you to do anything.”

“Then what did you come to me for?”

“I don’t know. Talk to my father, maybe?” His father frowned. “You know . . . father-son chats.” The frown got worse, and Eggie sighed. “Forget it.”

“I will.”

Eggie was about to get up and head home when his brothers came charging out of their parents’ house.

“What the hell’s going on?” Daddy demanded.

“The girls are in Collinstown jail again,” Bubba told them while he headed for his truck.

Eggie and his father laughed until Benji walked by and said, “Don’t know what you’re laughin’ about, Egbert Ray. Your girl is there, too.”

Darla rubbed her head in a desperate attempt to make her headache go away, but it wasn’t working.

Although that probably had a lot to do with the arguing going on between the bars. The bears had put Darla and her sisters in one cell and the She-lions—sisters from the local Barron Pride—in the other. And none of them had shut up since.

“What did you do to my car?”

Darla opened her eyes and let out a huge sigh. She was so relieved to see Eggie. Then she pointed an accusing finger at the other cell. “That heifer hit your car!”

“Your whore was hittin’ on our males!”

Eggie looked at Darla, raised a brow. “Really?”

“I was not!”

The deputies walked in and began to open the cells. “Y’all can pay your fines out front.”

“The usual?” Bubba asked as he waited for Janie to come out. He didn’t look happy and Darladidn’t blame him. She was five-months pregnant with his child but she was still getting into fistfights with cats. Just . . . no.

“What’s the usual?” Eggie asked as he took Darla’s hand when she stepped out of the cell.

“This one’s not in here for the fight,” the deputy explained.

“She’s not?”

“She was trying to stop it.”

“Then why—”

“She’s in here for doing a hundred and ten in a thirty mile per hour zone.”

The entire jail fell silent, all eyes focusing on Darla.

“I was just . . .” She cleared her throat, tried again. “Seeing what your car could do.”

“And it can do a hundred and ten?” Eggie asked.

“Apparently.”

“Our deputies lost her on Miller’s Road but they’d logged the make and model. Then they got to the fight and saw the vehicle there.”

“Right,” Eggie said. “Got it.”

Eggie glanced at her, shook his head, and started to walk off.

“Uh . . . Eggie?”

He stopped, focused on her.

Darla shrugged and admitted, “We still need to go to the grocery store.”

He growled and walked out . . . not that she blamed him, though.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The sisters all ended up baking at Eggie’s house and once they were finished with the pies, they brought them over to Miss Pauline’s.

By the time the Lewis sisters arrived, the “family dinner” was well under way and Darla would call it more of a party than a dinner. To her, dinners involved sitting at one table inside the dining room, but to the Smiths, it apparently involved many tables set up in rows in the backyard, music, and ’shine. Lots of ’shine. Not surprising, though. For decades, the Smiths had made their Pack money with moonshine.

Darla hadn’t seen Eggie since he’d paid her rather large fine at the Collinstown jail and handed her his truck keys. “Keep it under sixty,” he’d ordered her, and because she’d promised that’s exactly what she did. Much to the annoyance of her sisters.

Oh, what could she say? It was the one thing the Lewis sisters had in common. Their love of fast cars. Even Darla. Nothing was more freeing to her than hitting the gas and making a tight turn without losing control. Very few things in life really beat that feeling as far as she was concerned.

She helped her sisters put out the pies on the dessert table and she had to admit, their food looked amazing. As opposed to each one doing her own thing, they’d all worked together to get the pies done in a short amount of time, and she was really proud of her sisters. Then again, how could she still be mad at any of them when they’d gone after those cats like . . . well . . . like dogs after cats when they’d seen the Barrons hit Eggie’s car? So, for the first time in a very long time, they’d worked together and had done a great job.