Cute But Psycho (Gator Bait MC Book 3) Read online

  Or whatever the fuck that was supposed to mean.

  Dad worked.

  He worked a lot, too.

  Yet, my stepmother had stopped controlling my father the moment that he’d felt like breaking away. Which he’d done pretty early in their marriage.

  “Well maybe you should tell your fucking wife to stop taking money out of my account when she needs some for her or her kids,” I suggested. “I can’t even pay bills out of that account, Dad. I had to open a new one, and get a part-time job, to make sure that I had enough money in my account to pay for my electricity bill. Even though, I’d like to point out, that the money that she’s taking out of my account is mine.”

  My dad sighed. “I’ll talk to her.”

  He would, but she wouldn’t stop.

  Eight years ago, my grandmother had died, and my grandfather had decided to divide their money up before his death. I’d been left with a sizable trust. That trust dumped into the account that my stepmother always stole from. At one point in time, I’d made a big deal of it. I’d screamed, cursed, and threw a fit.

  Yet, nothing had changed.

  When I’d gone to a lawyer to see what I could do, they’d frustratingly informed me that there wasn’t anything that could be done because the Deverauxs owned every fuckin’ thing. Literally everything.

  Every lawyer I went to had somehow worked with the Deveraux family before, making it a conflict to work with me.

  People I asked to help said they couldn’t burn a Deveraux bridge.

  So… that left me with nothing.

  Which was when I’d decided enough was enough, and had moved out of Louisiana. I’d found a new home in Florida, and I’d started working as a vet tech part time to help pay the bills. Something in which my stepmother hated, but no longer had any control of.

  “You could try,” I said. “But it won’t change anything.”

  He knew I was right, and didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll fix it,” he promised.

  He would try. Just like he’d been ‘trying’ for a while.

  But since my dad was married to my stepmother—and wouldn’t divorce—that was it. There would be no fixing it if it messed up their marriage.

  According to him, he couldn’t fuck up a second time. Their marriage contract, and their prenuptial agreement, wouldn’t allow him to.

  Leaving me with very little to do to fix what was broken.

  And my father with one of his hands tied behind his back

  It was bad enough that he still had contact with me.

  If it was my stepmother’s choice, I would be a forgotten grain of sand on the bottom of her shoe.

  “I have to go,” I finally said instead of anything that I wanted to say. “Don’t worry about my bills, though. I have those covered.”

  More than covered.

  I was officially done with school as we spoke.

  And, if our luck hung true, we had the “building a vet practice” thing figured out, too.

  Which was why I was at a diner—Moe’s—waiting for my best friend, Diana, to figure out what miracle she’d performed to make it happen.

  Speaking of best friend, she whipped off her apron, hung it up behind the counter, and made her way to me where I sat in a bigger booth than usual.

  When I’d gotten here, she’d pointed at one that could fit someone twice our size. She’d explained that we were meeting with someone.

  I just didn’t know who.

  “Hey,” she slid into the booth across from me. “Bain is on his way… and Bain’s friend. We’re going to discuss the building.”

  I frowned. “What?”

  “His friend is an architect and builder. Though, he usually does more high-scale, commercial things. He agreed to talk to us before he heads back to Louisiana.”

  I frowned. “Louisiana?”

  “Louisiana,” she confirmed.

  Before I could say anything more, the dangly bells on the side of the front door jingled, and I turned to watch two very large men making their way into the diner.

  One, a tall tatted one, was Bain, Diana’s new beau.

  The other was a very familiar one. One with dark, glossy brown hair, penetrating blue eyes, and a goddamn cat in his hands.

  A hairless one that I’d seen when I’d been driving down the highway to home.

  The hairless cat was a sphynx. A bright, green-eyed one that looked so regal and cute.

  The cat’s owner, however, he looked… different.

  So different than when I’d last seen him.

  This time, his black t-shirt fit him well. It was snug, but not overly so, silently proclaiming the shirt hastily put on.

  His jeans were dark washed and fit a whole lot better, too. But they still looked worn and used, well loved.

  He had on the same black motorcycle boots, though.

  Along with a ball cap that covered up most of that brown hair, pulled down low, concealing his eyes.

  But the moment he looked up… my heart seized in my chest for a few long seconds.

  Then his grin displayed a row of perfectly straight white teeth, and I felt my ovaries do this little dance.

  A dance that they shouldn’t be able to do when there would never be any kids on my horizon.

  Not with my stepmonster able to control the world like she did.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “And why are you carrying the cat around like it’s a dog?”

  Cats were unpredictable. Cats were lively and rambunctious, and did whatever the fuck they wanted.

  He showed me his collar, then showed me his leash that I hadn’t seen tucked away in his hand until right then. “I have him under control.” He looked at me more solidly. “I wouldn’t have tagged you for a vet. You look like a porcelain doll. But it makes sense now. Your preoccupation with my cat.”

  I closed my mouth so tight I could practically feel the fine lines forming. My stepmother would’ve murdered me had she seen this face. She called it my butthole face, and said that I needed to control my reactions or I’d be ugly by the time I was fifty.

  “What can I get you four fine people?” Shawna, Diana’s work wife, asked.

  Diana snorted. “I already placed everyone’s order but Etienne’s since I didn’t know what he’d want. They’re sitting on the computer ready to be submitted. Etienne?”

  “I’ll have a Coke.” Etienne paused. “A Dr Pepper. And chicken and waffles, hold the butter.”

  “You got it.” Shawna took her notepad, shoved it in her back pocket, and swayed to the computer where she put in the orders.

  I watched her until she was finished for some reason, then turned back to the man with the cat.

  “Why are you holding the butter?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Because,” Etienne said, “I don’t want to have a heart attack at the age of thirty-eight.”

  “Thirty-eight?” I paused. “That’s a lot.”

  That wasn’t a lot. That was just about right, if I went off of my favorite-aged men to date—even though that hadn’t happened in a while.

  Dates, working, and going to school were a thing of the past for me. I barely had time to catch four hours of sleep a day. Let alone date.

  But if I had… Etienne would definitely be in my wheelhouse.

  Until I heard the next statement by him when I asked how he and Bain met.

  “So,” I said as I looked from Bain to Etienne, “how did you two meet? Old college friends?”

  Etienne grinned wickedly. “We met in prison.”

  I licked my lips nervously as I said, “Really? What were you in for?” I looked at Bain. I knew his story. Surely, he wouldn’t be friends with a man that was in prison for something bad… right?

  Etienne leaned back in his seat, eyeing me. His cat butted his hand and he absentmindedly started to stroke his head.

  My fingers itched to do the same.

  I was neurodivergent. I had sensory issues. And every single cell in my body was urging me to reach over and touch the cat. I bet he felt like a warm peach…

  “Do you want the condensed version?” he asked. “Will it matter what I did when I’m going to be helping you build your clinic for damn near cost?”

  I blinked. “I guess I’ll take whatever you give me.”

  A lazy expression overtook his face, and a smirk started to tick up the corner of his beautiful mouth.

  I couldn’t tell what was hotter. The face. Or the attitude.

  “My nephew, who is on the spectrum, told a lady that he liked her shirt. He really liked her shirt. He reached over and touched it,” Etienne’s eyes were intense now. “Just the shoulder. But it was enough to freak the lady out. She went home and told her husband. And they decided that the best course of action would be to beat the absolute holy hell out of him. Almost to death. Then try to toss him in a lake when they thought he was dead.”

  I blinked. Then blinked again.

  “When I found out, I did what any sane uncle would do.” Etienne picked up a straw that Shawna had set down earlier and crimped it in half. “I snapped their necks.”

  I shook my head. “Wow.”

  But, having heard that, I knew they deserved it.

  I wish someone had been an advocate for me when I was in that awkward stage.

  “I’ve wanted to reach over and touch that cat since you got here,” I said softly. “Which happens to practically be in your crotch. When I was ten, I wanted to touch my stepmom’s purse. I did, and broke off a Swarovski crystal, and she beat the holy hell out of me for it.”

  Etienne’s eyes went understanding.

  It was Diana that broke the tense silence.

  “She’s like a crow,” Diana teased. “Show her shiny things, and she just has to touch them. No matter what.”

  “It’s awkward, and a compulsion that I sometimes can’t ignore,” I said softly. “Is your nephew okay?”

  I saw a smile break through his intense stare. “He’s doing okay. He has some issues with touch now. Won’t get anywhere near a woman if his life depends on it. But he’s getting there.”

  “And how many years did you spend in prison for protecting him?” I asked.

  “Six. And if you’re wondering, I didn’t kill them. Which was the only reason that I didn’t go for life. But I did break both of their necks in my haste to teach them a lesson. One of them is a paraplegic now.”

  “He deserved worse,” I replied.

  He held his cat out for me, and I couldn’t help myself.

  I touched it.

  It was exactly like a warm peach.

  I shivered in delight and dropped my hand, my gaze meeting Bain’s, who hadn’t said a word up until now.

  I wasn’t sure about Bain sometimes. He seemed super intense to me. Brooding. Scary. Unapproachable.

  But he was looking at me curiously now, as if I finally made sense to him.

  I looked away as Shawna made her reappearance with the drinks. “Who had the suicide?”

  I raised my hands gleefully.

  I allowed myself one caffeinated, sugary drink a day. And sometimes I couldn’t choose just one.

  “That’s me,” I chirped, bouncing on my ass as I did.

  The man at my side chuckled as he reached for his Dr Pepper she held out next.

  After everyone’s drinks were placed out of the way, we got to work.

  But not before I took a slurping drink of my concoction.

  “Ahh,” I sighed. “Heaven.”

  The man at my side looked over at the outburst.

  “No straw?” Etienne looked at me, surprised. “How un-American of you.”

  “She loves straws,” Diana offered. “She just hates listening to her stepmother tell her she’ll have a butthole face when she’s fifty if she doesn’t stop.”

  Etienne glanced my way, studying my mouth. “I don’t see it.”

  I blew out a breath that I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

  “Let’s talk about this clinic,” I suggested, my patience wearing thin after thinking about her so much. “I have about an hour I can spare. I need to leave by one to get to the clinic the next town over.”

  “The vet clinic?” Etienne asked.

  “Yes,” I confirmed, wondering why he cared.

  “I’m going there.” He grinned. “Want to give my cat a ride?”

  I frowned. “Your cat? And not you?”

  “I’m riding my motorcycle,” he offered. “I wasn’t sure how he would do on it, or I wouldn’t ask.”

  “How will you get him home?” I asked.

  “I’d arranged for a car service to pick him up. But if you can do it…” He left that hanging.

  I shrugged. “I’ll take him.”

  “Thanks,” he pulled out a notebook from his backside that was legal size. Where he’d been hiding it, I didn’t know. “Let’s talk about what y’all want out of this clinic. Is it small animal or large?”

  The next thirty minutes we talked about what we wanted to see out of the clinic. We talked about budgets—me nothing, Diana almost everything—and we talked about what we didn’t want.

  Which were closed-off rooms.

  “I want everything to be open. I want the dogs in the rooms to be able to look out and see the other dogs. I don’t want to have any questions, either, about what we’re doing in the back with their babies. I want them to be able to look and see, whether that’s via monitor, or glass walls.”

  “Glass walls.” He wrote down a few notes. “What about the trauma rooms, though? You want them to be able to see into that?”

  “Yes,” I said. “If they so desire. The only rooms I want privacy in are the bathrooms and staff areas. We also need to make sure we have a few housing areas for us that sleep overnight. Because this is going to be a twenty-four-hour vet clinic.”

  “Really?” he asked. “Interesting. I didn’t know they even had those.”

  I snorted, ready to reply, but Bain beat me to it. “Those are the ones that make a shitload of money.”

  I nodded in confirmation. “It is. But that’s not why we’re doing it. There’s just not one in this area that’s available, and we think it’ll be profitable.”

  “Plus, there are two of us to man it,” Diana added. “With the hopes of bringing one more on in the next year after we get up and running. We have a candidate in mind who graduates this semester.”

  “Who?” Bain asked curiously.

  “A girl that you’ve never met, I’m sure,” I muttered. “She’s extremely introverted, and I’m already going back and forth with your ‘Luce’ because of it.”

  “Is she bad?” Etienne asked curiously.

  “No, not at all,” I added. “But I’m already bad enough with my sensory issues, and my neurodivergence. Once we get more established in the new business and add Folsom… let’s just say we won’t be known as the nicest people around.”

  “That, and she’s only taking this course because she wants to prove to her brother that she can do it,” Diana added. “She’s not even sure she wants to practice. She just knows that she wants to piss her brother off.”

  I hummed. “I know that feeling.”

  “You have a brother?” Etienne asked curiously.

  I nodded. “Unfortunately.”

  His lips quirked. “I sense a story there.”

  “Mattie doesn’t have a story. She has a soap opera’s worth of stories,” Diana scoffed. “You really have no idea how bad this family of hers is.”

  I could sense that he wanted to ask, but he wisely chose to keep his mouth shut.

  But Diana didn’t.

  “Maybe we should ask your stepmom to fund this,” Diana joked.

  I knew she was joking. The rest of them at the table didn’t.

  I didn’t know what spurred me to do it, either. Maybe it was the confusion on Bain and Etienne’s faces. Maybe it was my mood. Maybe it was the phone call from my father today. Whatever it was, I was freakin’ over it.

  “Here, let’s ask.” I grinned.

  I hadn’t annoyed my stepmom in a while. It would be fun…

  “Matilda Jane,” my stepmother answered on the second ring. It would’ve been the first, because she always had her phone in her hand. But she hated me, so she always hesitated. “What can I do for you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “My father called and yelled at me about my bank account being overdrawn today. Yesterday it had over ten thousand dollars in it. And today, it had nothing. Do you know what happened?”

  There was silence from Etienne and Diana.

  “Your brother, Garth, needed a little extra, and you were the only one that had it at that moment in time. I’ll have Garth replace it the moment that he has it to spare,” she replied.

  Meaning, never.

  “Well, there was an overdraft fee of two hundred dollars. Do you think, possibly, he could spare that?” I asked, already knowing the answer. “So it’s at least zeroed out?”

  “No, dear,” Judy Elizabeth, the lying whore of a stepmother, said. “Sorry.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “We’re building a new clinic in town,” I started. “I was wondering if I could have access to my trust fund from Daddy, the one that I’m supposed to get this year, early.”

  “That’s out of the question,” she answered almost immediately. “We’re in the process of getting that reversed, anyway. It’s frozen.”

  I snorted.

  Why was I not surprised?

  “I thought that the trust fund was mine, legally, due to my last name,” I said. “Grandpa Eric left it to me.”

  “He did, but you know how Garth needs it more.” I could practically see her waving her delicate hand in the air.

  “Does he?” I asked. “Why?”

  “Because, you know. He’s just so delicate,” she lied.

  He was not delicate. He was the devil himself.

  “Because he needs the money now more than ever. He has children on the way.” She paused. “And Grandpa Eric isn’t cooperating. So we’re having to go through the courts.”

  I honestly felt like she thought I actually considered myself to be inferior to her just because of my mom’s heritage.

  Truly.

  She thought I thought I was a piece of shit.

  But I didn’t think that of myself at all. In fact, I thought very highly of myself.