The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady by Richard Raley Page B

“This won’t take
long.”
    My hands shuffled my formula papers to have
something to do while my eyes kept on staring like a love-struck
freshman. Give me break, okay? I’d been busy working on the rings,
it’d been awhile since the stupid part of my brain had gotten to
come out and play. You’re lucky I wasn’t drooling.
    “Can I help you with anything?” I asked in
an attempt to hang on to some professional dignity.
    “Yes,” she said. She let the word sink in.
Then she smiled. Knowing Ceinwyn Dale, I know smiles. This one was
damn good. She could bend her lips without really moving them.
Something like that can make a man groan just looking at the woman
who does it. Makes a crude man like me wonder what else the lips
can do. “You own this store, yes?”
    “Last I checked.” My hands put my formula
papers away. She might have been hot-stuff but for all I knew she
was from the Guild trying some corporate espionage on me. Takes a
lot more than a pretty face to catch me completely off guard. Give
me some credit. Survival instincts like the ones I learned as a kid
were baseline. They worked with either my smart or stupid parts
leading the way.
    “ You are King Henry Price?”
    Price. My eyes went over her again,
searching for clues as to who this magnificent creature was. She
knew my name. Interesting. Not here for teapots then. The antique
people don’t know about Price. Made the smart part wake up a bit.
“I am . . . and who are you?”
    “I’m Anne,” she told me.
    Anne. Simple name. Never trust the one’s
with simple names.
    My gaze went to the large golden ‘ B ’
at her throat. Anne B. A name comes to mind straight out of
history, but I didn’t say it. With my name being King Henry ,
I couldn’t say it. If I said it then I’d know without a doubt that
the Mancy was playing a practical joke on me.
    “Bonnie?” I guessed.
    Could have been T-Bone’s mommy, right? Named
after a pirate chick by parents as screwed up as mine. Sure . . .
nurses totally look like this . . . in romance novels and porn
movies at least.
    “Not quite,” she said. She was middling
height for a woman, so not that much shorter than me. With her
heels, we were about even as she got right against the register to
study my face. “I expected you to be handsome,” she complained. “I
suppose it doesn’t matter . . . but spending time with a handsome
face is so much easier, don’t you think? Handsome never ceases to
remind me to enjoy my lot in life.”
    An insult. Nothing quicker to get my smart
brain back in the driver’s seat. My shoulders set tight. Muscles
bunched. I forced myself to keep my hands where they were on the
counter, flat against the top. They strained against it, wanting to
curl into fists. Eight years from that little boy and I still
wasn’t over wanting to smash a person’s face in over teasing. “Does
the ‘ B ’ stand for bitch , then?” I asked. “Anne Bitch?
Or Anne Bitchly maybe?”
    She laughed it off with a placating little
smile that was still all lips. “You’re King Henry, I’m Anne . . .
what could it possibly stand for? Did you study English
royalty at your school or have they nixed those classes for
creationism?”
    I ignored the obvious again. That would just
be too weird. The Mancy couldn’t be so cruel. “My luck with women’s
still holding,” I muttered to myself. “You’d have to be a total
whackjob to come in here and be as hot as you are.”
    Anne’s head tilted from one side of her
shoulders to the other, long neck bending with it. Like she’s
trying to see if the view changed my appearance. The ‘ B ’ on
her neck shined with a flash, a damned beacon trying to get through
to me.
    “King Henry Price?” she asked again.
    “I already answered you.”
    “I’m sorry.” She shrugged, hands on her
hips, rings rubbing against rough denim. “You’re just so ugly,
aren’t you? Broken nose . . . so many scars. There’s nothing
perfect about you. I thought with