Page 16 of Stripped

She nodded, tapping her chin with her finger. “I liked that boy. He was good for you. Reminded you to laugh and have fun. You are too serious.”

Mama had a thick southern accent and a life-long wish that she'd been born Italian. “We're still friends,” I said. “He'll still remind me to laugh.”

She turned her razor-sharp focus to Zane. “And who is this? Your new boyfriend?”

Crap, now I had to lie to Mama. She was never going to forgive me if she found out the truth. Mama treasured loyalty and honesty above all else. “This is Zane,” I said. “He and I just recently started dating.”

She narrowed her eyes in Zane's direction. “You have a problem with Abby taking her clothes off and dancing for men?”

I suspected I should have warned Zane about Mama, but the only sign he gave that she shocked him was a slight tensing of his shoulders. “Dancing makes her happy,” he said. “How could I have a problem with that?”

I let out a breath I didn't even realize I'd been holding.

Mama glared at him with narrowed eyes for a moment longer before she smiled. “You're okay. Don't even think about taking her back to that pack of yours in the mountains, though, or I'll change my opinion of you.”

Mama spun on her heel and left. “Have you met her before?” I asked, wondering how she'd known he was a werewolf. I'd longed suspected Mama wasn't quite human, but Rixton had been tight-lipped on the subject and I hadn't dared to ask Mama.

“No,” Zane said, watching her go. “She's got a good bit of harpy blood. She could scent I'm wolf. Guess she assumed I wasn't part of Alpha's pack.” He didn't look quite convinced.

“Mama always seems to know everything about everyone,” I said. “I didn't think there'd been enough time for gossip to spread about you, though.”

“Hi, I'm Marty, and I'll be your server today,” a tall, lithe teenager with smoky blue eyes said. “What can I get you to drink?”

We gave him our drink and dinner orders, since we both knew what we wanted.

“You didn't even look at the menu,” I said to Zane after the waiter left.

He shrugged. “I like to stick to what I know. I know I like chicken parmigiana and every Italian restaurant serves chicken parmigiana. Why change?”

I just stared at him. “Because there might be something different out there you've never tried that you'd like even better.”

The left side of his mouth ticked up. “You didn't look at the menu.”

“I've eaten here so often that I've tried every vegetarian dish Mama makes. I'm in the mood for gnocchi.”

“Have you ever tried meat?” he asked. “Maybe you'd like that better than rabbit food.”

“I ate meat growing up. I love it. I miss it so much sometimes that I want to cry.”

He frowned like he was worried for my sanity. “So why don't you eat it?”

I shrugged. “It's healthier for one thing. And it's better for the environment. But I guess I really became convinced when I went to work with my dad one day. He worked at a hog farm. You know one of those factory farms? The hogs were kept in tight enclosures with barely any room to move. They lived their whole lives in a big box, crammed in with other hogs, doing nothing but eating and breathing. It's a terrible system.”

“You could eat meat from pasture-raised animals,” he said. “You could hunt.”

“I could. But I've been vegetarian for more than a decade now. My body can't handle meat anymore, no matter how much I miss it. I'm healthy and no animals are killed to feed me. I don't have a compelling reason to change.”

“Are you close to your parents?” he asked, catching me off guard with the subject change.

I hated having this conversation. “My parents passed away when I was seventeen.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice gentling.

His gentleness and the way he reached across the table to grab my hand, offering me physical comfort instead of empty words, brought tears to my eyes. I tried not to think of the worst year of my life, the year I learned how cruel life could be, how quickly and carelessly the people we loved most could be taken away.

He rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand. “I'm close to my parents,” he said. “Sometimes too close, because they live next door to me. I can't imagine losing them, not having them at my back.”

I was grateful for the subject change. “When you say next door do you mean…”

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