Inhaling deeply, his already broad chest expanding to full capacity, Chase got his laughter just barely under control. Watching the grizzly try to act like he wasn't enjoying Buck's embarrassment would've been funny, if the honey badger hadn't been the butt of his own joke. Instead, he could only stand there and groan as Chase asked, “So, did the little woman see you try to blow yourself up?”
“No.”
“Does she know it happened?”
“Yes.”
“So, she’s another cadet?”
“No.”
“Wait!” Miranda stepped between Buck and her hubby’s back-and-forth. “Is she a teacher or a staff member?”
"What's the difference?"
"Oh my Goddess," Janice squawked, reentering the front of the bar just in time to chastise her eldest son. "Did you seriously eat the academy handbook? How have you lived this long? I worry about my grandchildren."
"I know the difference." He sighed. "I just…" Hand back in his hair, he groaned, "I need another beer. Hell, make it a shot of Jack."
Taking the clear highball glass containing two fingers of his favorite amber drink, Buck downed it in one gulp. Taking a second to enjoy the fiery burn, he mumbled, “It’s Freddie Lightfoot.”
Hoping everyone was still too busy discussing his inability to discern between a teacher and a regular staff member, which wasn't what he'd meant but would never get the opportunity to correct.
As if I didn’t know. Good Goddess, can a guy get a break? I’m telling the toughest crowd in my entire world the name of my mate. Can I get a little love? Damn, I hope Chase and Miranda don’t know her. Please, please, please…
But of course they knew her, and so did his big dragon brother-in-law.
"No, shit?" Abe bellowed, smiling with way more teeth than Buck was completely comfortable with. "Met her at a DPA..." Glancing at Chase and Miranda, he explained, "Dragon Protection Agency meeting." Then back to everyone, he continued. "Matt Firestone brought her to talk to Gil, my boss, about some aerosol solvent she's working on. It encases a bomb so it can be moved to a safe place to be defused, or maybe, it was that it paralyzes people so we can apprehend them with less chance of a fight and innocents getting hurt. Hell, it was something."
"You're really into the technical shit, huh?" Buck snorted.
“Don’t sass your elders,” Shauna snapped, swatting his arm. “My honey knows a lot of stuff. Don’t you worry about that.” Not even taking a breath, his baby sister switched gears, the twinkle in her eye turning devious. “So, how did you meet? When are you bringing her home to meet everybody? Where’s the wedding? Do I get to be a bridesmaid? Are you—”
“Hold it!” Buck roared, giving a single sharp clap of his hands, which echoed throughout the suddenly silent Sundowner.
Taking a deep breath and looking around the room as he exhaled, the honey badger nodded to Abe then to Chase before beginning. “Since you will not let up until I am completely and totally humiliated, I will tell you that there was no permanent damage to the explosives lab, or to me. Thank you very much for asking. Sheesh! With friends and family like y’all, I’m safer facing all Kole’s goons and Mastermind’s and Mother Jones’ at the same time with one arm tied behind my back and my honey badger taking the day off.”
Thank goodness I'm up to date on the recent villains FUC's faced. At least I sound like I know what I'm talkin' about. “Baffle 'em with bullshit, Buck, my boy,” Dad used to say.
Not letting anyone talk and working hard not to burst out laughing at the shocked looks on everybody's faces, he went right on ahead and told them the whole story. Not bothering to leave out the part where he ran his head into the wall. Winding up, he chuckled. "And I shit you not, Nurse Thomas threatened to take my temperature rectally."
Holding his hands up shoulder-width apart, he went on. "With a thermometer I know they use on elephants. She then added that she would lock me in a room with the Rat Sisters—twin cadets who truly personify everything about their alter egos— if I ever showed up in the clinic with pieces of aluminum can in my 'manly bits' again."
He made exaggerated air quotes with both hands to be sure they understood that was precisely what the crow shifter had said before ending with a perfect imitation of the nurse. "‘And take a shower. You smell like a brewery.’"
"That's old Hetty for you." Miranda chuckled. "She's something else. Best drill sergeant the Academy could have. Awesome nurse, too. Shitty bedside manner. But she really is one in a million."
“You’re tellin’ me.” Buck guffawed. “She scared the shit right outta me.”
For a few seconds, the honey badger thought he might actually be off the hook. That because he’d been honest and told them the whole mortifying story, his family and friends might just let it all go and enjoy the evening. But he was wrong…dead wrong.
It took less than a minute before Shauna was up on her feet, marching back toward him and asking, “So, why didn’t you go find this Dr. Lightfoot? Sweep her off her feet with that Buck Blackthorne charm?”
Pinching his cheek, she gave him a slobbery kiss on the exact same spot. "Don't tell me when faced with the one woman in all the world made for him that my big brother, the roughest, toughest, sweet-talkin'-est honey badger ever born"—she lifted her arms and flexed her biceps and kissed the right one just like he used to do in his much younger, much stupider days— “choked.”
Making the loudest, most horrible gagging and coughing sounds, his little sister, Goddess bless her heart, kept right on ragging on him like it was her birthday and he was the piñata. "Did you *cough* choke *gag-choke* big bro? *ahem*?"
Arm slung over her tummy as she fought a serious case of the giggles that refused to be stifled, Shauna leaned into her mate and burst out with, “Did you lose your nerve? Did that cute little smarty-pants get ya’ll tangled up in your underwear? The white cotton BVDs, not the pink silk ones you use for bombmaking?”
Shaking his head and rolling his eyes, Buck downed what was left of his beer as everybody took a turn picking on him. He knew it was all in good fun. Hell, he would've done the same to any one of them had the boot been on the other paw.
Finally, as things died down, he answered his sister's last question. "For your information, Mrs. Shauna Silverblade, I did go back to talk to her, the next day, after I was all healed and did not in the slightest resemble the walking dead. I even looked her up, found out her schedule, and went to see her when I knew she'd be alone, but she wasn't there."
“According to my friend with the magic fingers”—wiggling his own digits in the air and waggling his eyebrows, Buck chuckled—“who could hack the Pentagon if we needed her to, Dr. Freddie Lightfoot is on a mission in Brazil.”
"The coffee field burnings." Miranda asked, her eyes shooting to Chase's as her ever-ready smile turned to a frown.
“Yeah, that’s what the classified file said.”
“Son…” Chase scolded with that single word as he shook his head. “You’re gonna get your ass kicked out before you barely get started. Hacking classified FUC files? What were you thinkin’?”