It was driving her nuts. Miko threw down her fork. "I need to get out."
Sam wiped his mouth with his napkin. "You want to go to town?"
"No, I want to go for a run."
"Absolutely not," said Jeremiah. "Not until the hunters have been stopped. And until they’re caught in the act, you’re not safe."
"They can’t be out hunting every night," she argued.
"This is Texas," Same said. "You think hunting every day is out of the realm of possibility?"
He had a point, but she refused to give in. Her mind raced. "So the plan is to simply wait for the law to do something?"
"It’s not a great plan, but those are our orders, and we’re going to follow them," said Jeremiah.
“They’re not my orders.” Miko stood from the table and gave them both an impassive look. “It’s not your life being put on hold while we wait for this thing to blow over.”
“Isn’t it?” Sam retorted. “We’re here babysitting you to make sure you don’t run off straight into a pack of rabid hunting dogs. Again.”
Miko flinched.
“Sam,” Jeremiah said in a placating voice.
“That’s not what I meant,” Sam said, wiping his mouth with his napkin and giving her a frustrated look.
“Isn’t it?” The sad thing was that she understood his frustration – she didn’t like sitting around and waiting any more than they did. She understood it, she really did. “No need to apologize to me, Sam Thorpe. I can’t wait for you to get out of my hair either.”
And with that, she turned and left the room.
“That went well,” Jeremiah commented as Miko stalked out of the room.
Sam gave him an angry glare. “She’s being impossible.”
“She’s not the only one.” Jeremiah stood and began to calmly clear the dining room table, even though he was disappointed that she’d left. He always missed her when she wasn’t in the room. Just her presence warmed him. “You told her we were babysitting her. Of course she’s going to get offended.”
Sam raked a hand through his messy hair, and frustration made his jaw clench. “That’s not what I meant to say. I just…hell.” He grabbed a few of the discarded forks and began to toss them onto the plates that Jeremiah held. “She gets to me. I worry about her.”
Jeremiah remained silent, his thoughts caught up with the petite were-fox. He recognized the look on Sam’s face – he wanted Miko for himself. And if he was a good friend, Jere would back down and let Sam have her, because Sam needed a good woman in his life. Except the thought of backing off and seeing her with Sam left him with mixed emotions. He’d be happy for his friend, but Miko…
He couldn’t let her go. Even the thought of backing away left a sour taste in his mouth.
“I want her, Jere.” Sam said in a quiet voice. “And I know you do too.”
Jeremiah swallowed. Thoughts of Miko flashed through his head. Miko, smiling up at him over a hand of cards. Miko with a smudge of graphite on her nose, bent over her art table as she worked on a sketch. Miko, naked and arching up from her chair, her small breasts tight with longing. No, he couldn’t back off. “I do. So the question is, what do we do now?”
Silence hung in the room for a long moment. Neither man had the answer. Trying to quell his own emotions, Jere left the plates in the sink and paused, bracing himself against the counter. He wasn’t ready to give up on her just yet, but he was torn. Sam was his closest friend, and he wanted him to be happy.
He gripped the edge of the countertop and glanced over at the door frame, where Sam waited.
“No other option, brother. We have to let her choose,” Sam said.
Jeremiah nodded. But he knew very well that her choice would tear the two of them apart.
Sam gave him a hopeful look. “Do you suppose she—”
“Nah,” Jeremiah said. “Wishful thinking, there.”
Even though the men were content to wait around her house, Miko was not. She stalked up and down on her big wrap-around porch, her mind full of rushing thoughts – of the men in her house, the hunters, and, oddly enough, her mother. She headed back into the kitchen and picked up the phone again.
“Miko-chan?” Yui said softly when she picked up. “Is everything all right?”
The worry in her mother’s voice made Miko sick with guilt. She never called unless something was wrong, and immediately she felt like a jerk. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that Miko had issues reconciling her fox half. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that hunters had moved into the area. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that Miko hadn’t known about Hayami. Her mother had tried, and Miko had interrupted her, accusing her of matchmaking. She sighed. “Hello, Mother.”
Yui’s voice was mild, tentative. “I worry about you, Miko-chan. Are you well?”
“I’m fine,” she said softly, in English.
“You do not take good care of yourself, daughter.”
“I know.” Miko grimaced and leaned against the wall. “Look, Mother, I’m sorry. I know I should keep in touch more. I just get…caught up in things.”
“You want control over yourself. I understand these things,” her mother said in a wry voice. “When I was your age, I fought hard to be a normal human girl so I could please your father and make him happy. And in the end, I had to realize that I could not fight my nature. It is who we are, Miko. We are kitsune. It does not make us wrong. It just makes us different.”
She sighed. Normally she would roll her eyes at her mother’s teachings, but for once they had a ring of truth. She was so tired of fighting her attraction to Jeremiah and Sam. Would it be so terrible to choose one? To bring him to her bed and end this awful war with herself and her hormones? But even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t the answer.
The fox wanted both men, of course. And that was the part she kept getting stuck on. Even if she could pick just one…how fair would it be to try to build a relationship, only for him to discover that he wasn’t enough for her after all? That she’d crave more than one man to sate her restless fox side?
That was the tricky part.
“Thank you, Mother,” she said softly. “For sending them this week. They’ve been a big help.”
Her mother gave a soft, knowing chuckle. “I sent you more than one strong man, Miko-chan. Your kitsune would be quite happy with two men in your bed, you know.”
Oh jeez. How quickly they went from a truce to TMI. “Thanks, Mother,” she said dryly. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“It would do you good to embrace your fox side, Miko-chan. Trust your mother.”
Embrace her fox side. A horn blared in the distance, so faint that human ears would never catch it. Miko stared out the window. She could embrace her fox side. Once and for all. “I will, Mother. Thank you. I’ll come by tomorrow.”
Yui made a pleased noise of surprise.
“Gotta go,” Miko added quickly, before her mother could say anything else. “Love you.”
She hung up the phone and stepped back outside onto the porch. In the distance, her heightened senses picked up the faint sound of a horn again, and her hands tightened into fists. Who was it the fox club was hunting now? Hayami again? One of the other foxes? Or was her mother next?
No matter who it was, she couldn’t sit idly by and wait for something to happen. It was sweet that her two protectors were concerned for her safety, it really was. But her fox form had a human brain, and she didn’t intend to end up as prey.