Fierce Dancer (Sierra Pride Book 5) by Liza Street

one
    Quentin Armstrong parked in front of the Stark Street Diner and scrolled through his texts, looking for his next job. He paused over a request from the Weston Pride in southern Oregon—they needed someone to safely transport one of their daughters to Arizona. If anyone asked, he would have said he liked transporting jobs because they usually involved women, and he liked sitting next to them and looking at them and smelling them in his car. But the truth of it was, he didn’t care who he transported; he just liked pretending—for a few hours or a few days—that he belonged with a family group.
    Real cougars were solitary creatures, but shifter cougars were primarily human, and to Quentin, solitude was pretty fucking lonely.
    He started to text the Weston Pride’s alpha, but stopped. Did he feel like pretending again? Every time, he’d drop off the woman and face a trip back to nowhere or anywhere, alone.
    Never make a decision on an empty stomach , his mom used to tell him. So he shoved his phone in his pocket and went into the diner.
    Myriad scents greeted his nose—buttermilk pancakes, spicy breakfast sausages, eggs, cheese, grease, coffee. He settled into a booth, his jeans sticking against the vinyl, and opened the menu.
    A server sashayed over, her mouth wide in a smile. Her hair was reddish blond—not the white-blond of Quentin’s close-cropped cut—and fell in curls around her shoulders. She leaned in close to Quentin, and he could see straight down her v-neck shirt. Black lace bra.
    Maybe she lived close by. Maybe he wasn’t so hungry after all, at least not for food.
    “What can I get you?” she asked, a flirtatious lilt in her voice.
    He could think of at least a dozen things, and he opened his mouth to say so.
    His damn phone rang.
    He almost picked it up. It never rang, so it might be important. But he was mesmerized by those tits and that lace. He pushed a button to ignore the call.
    The corner of the server’s mouth quirked up.
    “You can start by giving me your name,” he said.
    “Jenny. What’s yours, blondie?”
    “Kyle.” He always lied. He lied every time, because he’d never stick around long enough for it to matter. “When do you get off work?”
    She glanced at the other server, a brunette who stood at the cash register watching the two of them. The brunette gave Quentin a quick finger wave when she saw him looking at her.
    “Friend of yours?” he asked.
    “She’ll cover for me. I could leave now.”
    “That sounds—”
    His phone rang. Again. With a curse, he picked it up and looked at the caller ID.
    If it had been anyone else, he’d have silenced it and probably chucked the phone in the trash for good measure. But it was Gabriel Fournier.
    “Shit,” he said. “I have to take this.”
    He stood up to go, and she put out a hand as if she wanted to stop him. “Will you be coming back?”
    “Don’t know.” He was already pulling the phone to his ear.
    “At least let me give you my number—”
    But he was already out the door. Too risky to have phone conversations with other shifters while he was in public. Sometimes things slipped or sounded weird. It wasn’t something he was willing to risk.
    “Q!” Gabriel said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Long time, man.”
    “Cut the shit, Gabe. What the fuck do you want? You don’t call for years”—almost four, to be exact—”and then you call me twice in five minutes.”
    There was silence on Gabe’s end. Quentin turned and leaned against his car, staring toward the diner. Jenny was talking to the other server, waving her arms with emotion. Well, that was one bridge burned. Probably for the best.
    “I deserve that, Q, I do. I’m sorry we’ve been out of touch. But we need you.”
    “I’m trying to get out of this. Not take more work.” Lie. “I want to settle down.” Truth. “But funny, no one’s offering to let me stay in their territory.”
    “You still want that?” Gabe said. “Territory?”
    Quentin took a