Ash smiled at his girl. It was nice having a cheerleader in his corner. He had always wanted to date a cheerleader, but they’d only ever been after his daddy’s money. For half a second he had a filthy thought about asking Rosemary to wear a cheerleader costume, and about the things he would do to her while she wore it.
“Ashton wrote that jingle, Daddy. He’s extremely talented,” Rosemary chirped.
“I’ll bet he is,” drawled Lionel.
Ash decided to pull back to the question at hand. “And to answer the original question, Daddy drives a Tesla now,” he said proudly.
Lionel sat back and rubbed the front of his linen vest. “Well, isn’t that just the bee’s knees? Is he still driving himself around town? How quaint.”
Ash knew what Lionel was doing. He was trying to put him in his place by boasting about how the DuChamp family members didn’t need to drive themselves because they had drivers. Well, that would never suit old Jimmy Boudreaux, and it wouldn’t suit Ash. They were men, after all. They liked to drive. Manual, if possible. Shit, Ash even still enjoyed doing donuts in the mud with his crew whenever the mood struck. A driver? Fuck that.
But he kept all of that to himself. He was here to help Rosemary, he was here to help her get her mom and dad’s approval, not to bring up old useless rivalries that had nothing to do with Ash or Rosemary.
Ash remembered his mindful breathing, a practice he’d been taught since childhood to keep the beast under control. But pretty soon it wouldn’t matter. He wished he could hurry this night up.
Finally, he gave Rosemary a pleading look and pointed to his watch. She looked at him with an arched eyebrow and ever so slightly shook her head “no.”
They say you only get once chance to make a first impression. Well, Ash decided he was just going to have to work harder on a second impression at another time because he was about to drown this first impression like a rat in a toilet bowl.
The alpha was coming out, and he had no choice but to let it happen. Picking a fight with the old man and storming out was better than pretending to be sick and hobbling out like a pansy-ass. Besides, fake sick and you’re sure to have the mother and the staff fussing over you and even worse, offering to make you some ginger tea or some other nonsense.
So he dove in and rattled off some stats, whether or not Lionel was asking.
“Let’s see, sir. I’m sure there are plenty of other things you’d like to know about me while we wait on you to give the signal to the staff to reheat those delicious-smelling lamb shanks. So let’s get to the point. I never graduated from college. My one major accomplishment was writing the JB Chicken jingle. I work full time for an ad agency because it’s fun. I travel all over the world just going where the wind takes me. I like to drink whiskey, but I’m not real particular about fine bottles of Scotch. I’m in a flag football league with a bunch of kids in the Lower Ninth Ward. I love Mardi Gras parades like a drunk tourist on steroids—the louder the better—and ain’t nothing going to change that. And also, finally, we’re all descended from a long line of…Protestants.” Now Ash’s voice was starting to change. He could hear it himself. It was getting lower, louder, and was starting to have an edge of a growl in it.
“Actually,” Ash continued, on a roll, “not a single one of us goes to church at all nowadays. So if that’s all fine and good with you, sir, now I’d like your blessing for your daughter’s hand in marriage. And if I don’t get it, well that’s okay too, because you know what? Your daughter is a goddamn adult, and she will get married anyway. All I really need is the mother’s approval, anyway. That’s the way it works in my family. So, I hope I haven’t offended you, Rosemary’s mom. You seem like a real nice lady.”
Betsy was utterly silent, as usual.
Everyone, even Rosemary, waited wide-eyed for Lionel to speak.
They didn’t have to wait long. His voice came out like a crack of thunder. Probably his pounding of the table helped with that. “What in the Sam Hill are you thinking, coming into my house, talking to me this way? If you think I’m gonna let my baby daughter run off with a piece of new money white trash, you got another think coming…”
The bloviating went on, but it was time to go. Ash had done his worst. He leaned over and kissed his baby girl on the lips. It was not a chaste kiss, but it was just the icing on the cake he felt this moment needed. Then he whispered in her ear, “I’m so sorry. I’ll explain later, but I gotta go. Don’t you worry, everything’s gonna be fine.”
He was out the door before Lionel had finished his list of similes to the word “trash” as it related to the Boudreaux.
He was still thundering on about new money when Ash started to shift. His skin itched and heated like he had hives. His heated blood raced in his veins. Everything around him—the roses in the backyard, the squirrels, the opossums—he could smell every living thing. All his senses heightened, and that’s when the change always happened. He was barely halfway out of the back garden when the moon shone down directly and ended his pain and anxiety. The wolf appeared, the coal-black fur of his hackles raised, as he could still hear the voice of his beloved’s father raising hell through the open windows of the dining room.
Now feeling his super-human strength, he hopped the 12-foot stone wall that separated
