Lane and Joey (2nd in werewolf series)

Chapter Six

After Joey had showered and pulled on her clean clothes she walked back down the hall and downstairs. Her hunting senses were on high alert. The house seemed almost silent. She had been taught by harsh experience that silence often meant that bad things were coming.

She was about to turn off of the stairway and into the kitchen when she heard someone coming around the corner. She kicked to defend herself but her leg was caught and swatted away by a long, tan graceful arm. Joey found herself face to face with the bombshell blond she had met the last time she'd been here.

"You really need to work on those violence issues." Bethany said with a smile. Joey looked at her and saw that her smile and her eyes were almost identical to Lane's.

"Sorry...Bethany, right?" Bethany nodded shaking out her mane of golden hair.

"Yep that's me." she said.

"I'm sorry about that. The house just seemed so quiet."

"And you were afraid that us freaks were hidden and lying in wait to ambush you?" Bethany asked raising a brow. Joey turned red with embarrassment.

"Yes." She replied. Bethany laughed and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"You need to learn how to relax, red. Nobody in this house wants to kill you. Lane might want to do some other things but I can assure you that killing you isn't one of them." Joey could only imagine what those things were.. She had never even felt a mans kiss let alone the other things that Bethany was hinting at.

"I'm pretty sure he'd be open to killing me." Joey replied thinking back to the anger in his eyes as he'd stormed from her room.

"Who Lane?" Angela walked out of the kitchen and up to the two of them still standing at the bottom of the stairs.

"Yea." Bethany said walking into the living room and stretching her long legs out on the couch. Angela sat down on the loveseat folding her legs beneath her and Joey sat in the recliner in the other corner.

"He is in a bad mood this morning." Angela admitted as she picked up a magazine off the coffee table. "He stormed past me in the kitchen mumbling something about stubborn ass mortal women and how he was seriously thinking about becoming a damn monk and living on top of a mountain or something like that. I reminded him that monasteries don't allow alcohol and then he said some things that I won't tell his brother about. You wouldn't happen to know what put him in that mood would you, Joey?" Joey just sat there and stared at Angela.

"Don't mind her, Joey. She tends to ramble when she's upset. Jake usually shuts her up with a kiss but he's gone on a diaper run."

"Diapers?" Joey looked at Angela more closely and realized that she was not pregnant anymore. "You had the baby."

"Yes." Angela said smiling happily. "A little baby girl.. I don't get to see much of her because her grandmother seems to have become attached."

"When did you have her?" Joey asked.

"Day before yesterday." Angela replied.

"You should see my big brother.. He has always been the strong silent type. I guess that comes from 250 years of being a hunter but now he's walking around whistling and cooing and making all kinds of baby noises.. It's quite disturbing." Bethany stated as she curled her nose.

"I don't think it's disturbing.. I think it's cute." Angela said jumping to her mate's defense. Joey thought back to her impression of Jake and before she could stop herself spoke up.

"Cute? Jake?" Bethany and Angela both laughed and the tall man that Joey remembered to be Bethany's mate Greg walked in.

"Sure Jake is real cute. In a 'you so much as look at my mate or baby in the wrong way and I'll rip your head off and shit down your neck without so much as breaking a sweat' kind of way." Bethany lifted her long legs allowing Greg to sit down before laying them back down across his lap. The three family members sat there laughing and talking for a long time. Joey simply watched them. Now and then when they directed a question at her she would reply but mostly she just observed.