His Purrfect Mate (6 page)

Of course, neither did she, but she didn’t like hearing the man insult her fated mate like that.

What? Where had that thought come from?

Oh dear lord, help her. No.  The universe was not that crazy.  Kenneth’s grandfather
had been her grandmother’s fated mate – how could two people in the same family – no. Just no.  That one drink had really gone to her head, or the kiss, or both.

She kept stomping towards the car, and the man kept following her.

“Who are you, and what do you want with me? I’m not having a good night, and this is not a good time,” she snapped.

He reached into his pocket, grabbed a business card,
and handed it to her. “My name is Alfonse. My phone number is on there. I have a business proposition for you.  Will you call me tomorrow?”

“Probably not
. ”  She walked faster, and he stopped following her.

Kenneth stood next to his chauffer, watching her rush towards her car. Her sweater caught on a bush, and she wrestled with it for a good 30 seconds before wrenching it free. . Then she dropped her keys underneath her car and had to drop to her hands and knees to fetch them.

He’d already noted the man who’d tried to talk to a minute earlier, fury rising in him when the man put his hand on her arm.  His claws had shot from his fingers and he’d barely been able to force himself to sheath them.   It was a good thing the man had stopped following her; he wasn’t sure he could have contained himself much longer.

“My God, that woman is a total mess,” the limo driver said scornfully.  “A walking catastrophe. She’s”-

“The woman I’m going to marry.” Kenneth cut the limo driver off with a look.

“She – what? I mean – of course. What I meant to say- ”

“We’re good here,” Kenneth said, and, seeing that Chloe was safely driving away, climbed in the back of the limo
usine and shut the door.

He saw the man who’d been following Chloe climb into a rented BMW, and quickly noted the license plate number.

He’d been dying to rush over and free her from those bushes, to get her keys for her from under her car, but he suspected that now was not the time. He’d try to talk to her again tomorrow when she’d had time to calm down – and when he was armed with some facts about what had really happened between his grandfather and Sophronia.

He knew one thing.  Chloe was the kind of woman who would always be tripping over things, falling into things – and he was going to be the one to catch her, every time.
For the rest of his life.  He’d find a way to make it happen, no matter what it took.

He’d try to deny it at first, but the moment his lips met hers, the moment her lips parted sweetly to accept his kiss…he was lost.

He closed his eyes and ran his hand wearily over his face, leaning back in his seat.

How would he make it happen?

The usual things that swept women off their feet, that made women melt into adoring puddles in his presence, wouldn’t work on her.

She didn’t care about his money. 
She didn’t care that he had the looks of a movie star. His charm bounced off her bulletproof exterior as if she were made of charm-repelling Teflon.

Oh, he could tell she was attracted to him – but as long as she believed that his family was evil and had somehow wronged her grandmother, she’d fight that attraction fang and claw. 

Well, one thing he did have going for him – he had staff. He had resources. Time to start making phone calls.

He grabbed his telephone.

Nine thirty now in New York, so 3:30 in the morning in Italy, where Hamish lived…

The hell with it.
This was an emergency, as far as he was concerned.

His fated mate despised him for something his grandfather may or may not have done, and he needed answers now.

“Hamish,” he said.  “We need to talk.”

“Sir?
Is everything all right?” the bleary voice on the other end of the line mumbled.

“I just met Chloe Novak, and she made some bizarre
accusations.  She said that my grandfather and her grandmother were fated mates, and he broke things off with her and married someone else.  She said that he actually hired security to keep her away from his house.”

“That’s true.”

Kenneth sat stunned. Why had his parents never told him this before?

“He broke up with
Sophronia Littlefield for another woman?”

“
No.  He married your grandmother five years after his relationship with Sophronia ended.”

“Wait. So, he didn’t leave my grandmother
for Elizabeth?”

“Good heavens, no.” Hamish paused. “Since your grandfather’s been dead all these years…I suppose I wouldn’t be betraying a confidence.”

“Tell me.” Kenneth’s voice was low and dangerous. “Tell me about my grandfather and Sophronia.”

“Your grandfather and
Sophronia Littlefield were utterly besotted. Deliriously in love.  He owned a very successful art and antiquities dealership in Russettville.  Sophronia was an adjunct professor at the University, and she started working with him as his assistant after they got engaged. She travelled with him on his acquisitions trips.  Then, they went on a trip to the country of Turak, and returned with a large new collection, acquired from several dealers. They brought the collection to Barrett’s home.  He had a warehouse on the property where he stored artwork and had it authenticated and catalogued before selling it.  Everything seemed fine between them when they returned.  I remember that it was a Friday.” He paused again, and took a deep breath. His voice was suddenly heavy with emotion. “I remember that because I returned to the house on a Monday and everything had changed.”

“What had changed?”

“Barrett was a wreck. He looked as if he hadn’t slept all weekend. He told me that under no uncertain terms was Sophronia to be allowed on the property.  He didn’t want her hurt, he was very clear about that, but she was not to come on the property. He hired security to keep her off.”

He paused. “She tried to break in to the property
many times.  And she hired people to break on to the property.  At first Barrett refused to press charges, but finally he did.  She broke in again, and ended up doing six months in county jail. She lost her job at the university.”

Kenneth sat trying to absorb this astonishing information.

“Your grandfather was a changed man after that. Grim. Driven.  He travelled the world constantly looking for something, but he never revealed what he was searching for.   I never saw a genuine smile on his face again.  Sophronia married an art dealer right after she got out of jail, and as I recall, the man died of a heart attack shortly afterwards and she inherited everything he had.  Then she married again. Another wealthy man.  He died of cancer.  I know, because Barrett kept tabs on her, but still wouldn’t go anywhere near her.   It was five full years before your grandfather married your grandmother Elizabeth, and no offense, but in all honesty, everybody knew that it wasn’t a love match for either of them.”

“I know,” Kenneth said quietly.  His grandparents tolerated each other, but their marriage was clearly for political reasons, uniting two powerful and wealthy panther clans. They never even tried to pretend that they were fated mates.

His father had ended up doing the same thing.  His parents had never bothered to get divorced, but took great pains to make sure that they stayed in opposite hemispheres from each other.  His mother was currently enjoying Australia and her latest boy toy.

Kenneth had thought loveless marriages were his family curse, and had vowed never to marry. H
e hadn’t even believed that a Chamberlin could find a fated mate – until his lips had met Chloe’s in the garden, and the world had tilted under his feet.  .

“So
Barrett never confided what he was looking for?” Kenneth said.

“The only thing that I can tell you is he became obsessed with ancient Sumerian art, and with the country of
Turak.   He went back there again and again. He tried to speak to the person who’d sold him the art collection, but the man had vanished; it turned out that authorities were looking for him because he’d illegally looted ancient tombs and sold the contents.  Barrett consulted experts in the field, he studied ancient texts, but he never found what he was looking for.   When his plane went down over that mountain pass in Turak, he was still searching for answers.”

Barrett had died
when Kenneth’s father Maxwell was ten years old. Kenneth only knew his grandfather from the oil paintings that hung in his father’s house.

“I know that
Sophronia approached my grandmother after the plane went down, wanting to buy his collection of ancient Sumerian artwork,” Kenneth said. “I don’t know a lot of the details, but I do know that my grandmother refused to have anything to do with her, and Sophronia continued to approach my family over the years.”

“If I can find out anything more, I’ll let you know,” Hamish said.

“All right. Go back to sleep. My apologies for disturbing you.”

Then he called Tyler so that his computer genius friend could trace the license plate number that he’d written down. Tyler had ways of accessing national legal databases – ways that Kenneth chose not to question.

He was shocked when Tyler gave him the answer.

“Hammersmith Security?
What could they possibly want with Chloe?” Hammersmith Security was a rival security agency, run by humans. Their agency frequently employed shady tactics.  He’d poached several of their best employees, as well as taking in Jax Mackenzie, whom they’d fired rather than give him is portion of a substantial reward.

Were they here to interfere with his investigation, purely out of spite? Did they have some financial interest in this matter?
Kenneth couldn’t imagine what interest that would be.  He should have been relieved that the man wasn’t pursuing Chloe romantically, but every time a picture of the man’s hand on Chloe’s arm flashed through his mind, he wanted to shift and shred the man’s face with his claws.

Next Kenneth called his father, several times in a row, leaving increasingly irritated messages on his answering machine.

Four hours later, Kenneth was pacing in his hotel room in panther form, which he tended to do when frustrated, when his cell phone rang. Kenneth quickly shifted back to human form, sparing a glance at the wall, which he’d shredded with impatient swipes of his huge paws. He was going to have one hefty hotel bill.

It took
a healthy heaping of wheedling and flattery, but finally his father told him what little he knew.  .

Maxwell
knew that before Barrett married his mother, he had been engaged to Sophronia, and the engagement had ended, quite badly. There was some kind of blow-up between the two of them, with Sophronia accusing him of stealing artwork from her, and repeatedly breaking into his house in Russettville. 

His grandfather had eventually abandoned the house in
Russettville where he’d once planned a life with Sophronia.  He boarded it up and never returned.    He married Elizabeth, and the two had moved around among his houses in Europe, a house in California, all over the world.  Maxwell remembered his father as a workaholic, grim, serious, given to locking himself up in his workshop until late at night, when he was home at all.   He seemed to spent most of his time travelling.

Maxwell remembered his father’s obsession with
Turak, and also how he’d been shown a picture of her and warned that if she ever were to approach him, he was to run away from her and tell the nearest adult.  When Maxwell took over his grandfather’s various business interests as an adult, both Sophronia and her daughter Hilary had contacted him attempting to buy any artwork or statues of Sumerian origin that his family owned, but Maxwell honored his late father’s wishes, which were written into his will: never to have any business dealings of any kind with Sophronia or her family.

Kenneth finally settled in for a quick cat nap as the sun rose, frustrated and feeling no closer to the truth about the mysterious
Sophronia and her strange obsession with an obscure collection of artwork from halfway around the world.

The country of Turak, located in modern-day Sumer

Bobbi and Pixie stood next to their luggage, watching the plane disappear into the horizon.

Bobbi had called in a major favor from an old contact of hers to find a mercenary willing to fly her and Pixie into Turak, to the outskirts of El-Shehar, where the family of El-Debar lived.  Some might even call it blackmail; having worked as a member of the Enforcers for the National Shifters Council, she knew where a lot of the bodies were buried. Whatever.  She was in Turak, which was all that mattered.

She didn’t even want to know what kind of cargo the plane was transporting, and she thanked her lucky stars that the plane hadn’t been shot down out of the sky during their highly illegal landing.

They were now on their own for one week.  A week from that day, Kenneth had arranged for a plane to land several miles outside the city limits to pick up Jax and Heath; now, Bobbi and Pixie would be on that plane as well. It was the safest day of the year to fly, because it was a national holiday, and there would be a temporary cease-fire between the two warring factions which were tearing Turak to pieces.

“You look so modest,” Bobbi said to Pixie. 
“So demure.  So…law-abiding. It’s freaking me out.”

Pixie, true to her promise, was wearing an ankle-length cotton dress and a headscarf. She’d taken off all off her makeup and taken out all of her facial piercings.

“I know, right? I kind of like this.  Usually I dress like a total ho-bag, but now I’m a stealth ho-bag.”

Bobbi was dressed in similar attire.
Turak was a relatively modernized country, so they wouldn’t be forced to wear a burqa, but they still had to dress modestly, which was actually helpful in the current circumstances. Their outfits would disguise them and allow them to blend in with the general populace.

The El-Debar family
lived in the city of El-Shahar, center of the civil war. They’d been dropped off several miles outside of town, and a jeep was waiting for them. 

They had fake passports and identification papers.  And they had the address where
Jax  and Heath were staying.

“Can you believe that they tried to stick us with a babysitting job?” Bobbi asked Pixie.

“Seriously.”

“I mean, I can still smell that little cheetah shifter,” Bobbi grumbled. Then she froze. “I can still smell him.
I really can.  I shouldn’t still be able to smell him. His scent should have dissipated long ago.”

Bobbi’s suitcase started moving, and then began unzipping from the inside.

“No,” Bobbi said.

“
Noooo,” Pixie said.

“Ta
daah!” Prince Reginald stood up, triumphantly.

“Oh my God.
Oh my God.” Bobbi clutched at her chest, hyperventilating. “No. This can’t be happening.”

She had a very specific itinerary in
mind when she’d commissioned the plane to take them to Turak.

Show up on the doorstep of
Jax’s hotel room, punch him in the face hard enough to make him bleed, bounce a lamp off her brother’s head, then go talk to the El-Debar family and get the information that Kenneth needed.

Her plans did not, in any way, involve babysitting an eight year old Cheetah prince stowaway in the middle of a war zone.

“How did you get here?” Pixie demanded.

He climbed out of the suitcase. “I followed you to your house, and then I followed you to the airport.”

“But how?  Who took you there?”

“Nobody.
I am a cheetah. We’re the fastest land mammal on the face of the Earth. I can accelerate from zero to sixty miles an hour in under three seconds,” Reginald said smugly.

“He’s right,” Bobbi said to Pixie. “I remember that from grade school. Damn it.”

“In fact, I frequently had to slow down so I wouldn’t get ahead of you.  You drive like my grandmother,” he continued.

“She does, doesn’t she?” Pixie rolled her eyes.

“Hey! Don’t encourage him.” Bobbi glared at her.  Then she turned back to Reginald. “I don’t understand how nobody realized you were missing.”

“Easy. Right after you left I locked myself in my room and told everyone not to come in. They have to obey me; I’m the prince.  Then I climbed out the window and jumped from ledge to ledge until I was close to the ground, and then I followed you.”

Bobbi fixed a dangerous scowl on her face. “Well, we do not have to obey you. We can, in fact, spank your butt and send you to bed without supper. Keep that in mind. Now, do you understand that you have snuck your way into an incredibly dangerous war zone?”

“Of course!”
Reginald was practically dancing with delight. “I heard you talking about it.  That is why I came with you. This will be much more exciting than Disneyworld. I can help you with your investigation. I will be a detective.”

Bobbi turned to Pixie. “Okay, we are screwed. We’re stuck with him. The plane will not be back for a week, we have no other way to get him safely out of the country. We’re going to have to let
Jax and Heath do all the investigating, and we’re stuck on babysitting duty after all. They win, and I hate them for it.”

She grabbed her satellite phone and walked a short distance away.  Praying that the satellite signal would cooperate, she called Tyler to update him.

“My God.”
Tyler was appalled. “I can’t believe it. If Reginald’s parents find out…”

“We’re all in huge trouble, and so are the bodyguards, and the nanny, for that matter. We need to keep this quiet.  The plane will come to pick us all up in a week; we just need to keep Reggie safe, and keep this on the q-t, until then.
Unless you can think of any way to get Reginald out of here sooner.”

“In the middle of a war?
No. We have to stick with the plan. Kenneth is going to kill me when he gets back,” Tyler groaned.

“We’ll have adjoining graves.  We are all so dead,” Bobbi agreed. She glanced back at Pixie and Reginald. Pixie was pretending to pull a quarter from behind Reginald’s ear.

She walked back over to them. “We’re stuck here for the week,” she said.  They tossed their suitcases into the jeep and climbed in. Bobbi restrained her natural impulse to let loose a stream of curses;

“I can’t believe that
Jax and Heath won,” Pixie grumbled as they drove into town.

An idea started to formulate in Bobbi’s mind.

“Or did they?  We do know where they’re staying,” Bobbi said. She glanced speculatively at Reginald.

“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?” Pixie asked.

“Probably.”

Bobbi turned to Reginald. “You are now officially recruited to Team Shifter.  I have part one of your assignment,” she informed him.

* * *

“And I thought Playa Linda was hot,” Heath said, mopping the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief.  

They were sitting by the window of their hotel room. The warm breeze drifting inside did little to cool the thick, hot air.

“This is nothing. Try coming here in the summer,”
Jax said.  “I was in the region a year ago rescuing an oil pipeline worker who’d been kidnapped by a local tribe, and it was like walking through an oven. It’s even worse when you shift; then it’s like wearing a fur coat in an oven.”

The two of them were planning on travelling to meet the El-Debar family in the morning.   If everything went as planned, they’d have the information that they needed, and the El-Debar family would fly out of the country with them next week.

They were staying in a half-empty hotel on the edge of town, a scarred concrete building  with boarded up windows.

The electricity at the hotel was sporadic, and the water that trickled from the tap was rusty.
Fortunately, they were next to an ancient mosque, and so far the two warring factions had respected the venerable religious building and kept the gunfire to a minimum in their neighborhood.

“I’d love to see the look on my sister’s face right now,” Heath said.

“Yeah, me too,” Jax grinned. Then his smile faded a little bit. “I’d like to see it from here. On a satellite TV. I have a feeling we’re not going to like it too much seeing her in person when we land on U.S. soil.”

“Nope,” Heath agreed solemnly.

It was worth it, Jax thought.  The assignment was dangerous in every possible way, and even more dangerous for a woman in a country like Turak, where women were viewed as second-class citizens. Yeah, Bobbi was going to be furious at him, but she’d just have to deal with it. 

There was a sharp rapping on the door. Heath and
Jax glanced at each other with raised eyebrows.

They weren’t expecting anyone. 

The two men rose to their feet. 

Could anyone be aware of their mission here?  They weren’t violating any laws, but at the moment, travel was restricted for foreigners. One of the regimes vying for control of the country was sympathetic to Americans; the other was decidedly hostile.

Whatever the case, anyone who attempted to take on Jax and Heath would be making a very big mistake.  Jax was a werewolf shifter and a former sheriff’s deputy who’d worked in private security for the last year.  Heath was a bear shifter who’d worked as an Enforcer for the National Shifter’s Council for several years, including a six month undercover stint in a federal prison.

“Got it,” Heath said, and he walked over and yanked open the door.

Prince Reginald stood there, grinning from ear to ear, carrying a small bag slung over his shoulder.

“Hello,” he said.

Heath pushed past him and ran down the hallway. He could see Bobbi running out the front door. By the time he made it to the front door,  all he saw was the cloud of dust kicked up by the car racing away from them down the street…and Pixie’s hand sticking out of the passenger side window, with her middle finger extended.

Cursing furiously, Heath ran back up the stairs.

The prince turned to look at him questioningly.

“Which one of you
is Heath, and which one of you is Jax?” he demanded.

“I’m Heath. He’s
Jax. We’re so screwed,” Heath groaned, burying his face in his hands.

The prince lashed out with his foot so quickly that even Heath, with his lightning quick reflexes, didn’t have time to stop him; he landed a painful kick to Heath’s shin.

Then the prince leaped on to the table and smacked Jax upside the head, hard, with his bag. The small bag was surprisingly heavy.

“What the hell?”
Jax shouted, raising his hand.

“Ah, ah, ah,” the Prince chided, shaking his index finger at them.
“You can not hit me. I am a prince, and I will tell my parents, and then it will not go well for you.  That was from Pixie and Bobbi, by the way.  Also I am supposed to bite you, but I will do that later, when you least expect it. Probably while you are sleeping.  Also, Pixie says that anything that I steal from you, I get to keep, after I give her half.  Now, I want you to read me a story.” He reached in to his small bag and pulled out a stack of books.

“Let’s see, which one shall I have you read me first?”

Chapter Eight

“Yep, perfect house for a recluse,” Chloe muttered to herself as she parked her car in front of
her grandmother’s sprawling old Italianate mansion.   The dilapidated house was tucked away deep in the woods, at the end of a half mile long, winding driveway.  Apparently Sophronia’s distaste for human contact extended to handymen.  The pale blue paint on the exterior of the house was blistered and peeling.  Bald patches were scattered like mange on the roof.

The house looked on the verge of
being swallowed up by a jungle of shoulder high weeds and rosebushes run wild.   Weeds thrust through random spots in the asphalt driveway, which was forked with cracks like lightning bolts.    It was a shame; the house had clearly been beautiful once. 

Chloe
had an odd feeling when she climbed out of her car, a trill of alarm that ran through her.

It’s all right, she told herself, I’m just
creeped out because this house looks like a horror movie setting.

She walked up th
e steps and saw that the front door was ajar.  Was that normal for her grandmother? She’d never been here before, so she had no way of knowing.  Nervously, she reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone.

No bars.
No service.  She was far from any cell phone tower.

“Grandmother?” she yelled from the doorway.

She was greeted by silence.   The cawing of birds in the trees lent a horror-movie feeling to the whole eerie scene.

Well, she thought uneasily, as she stepped inside the
front entryway, the advantage of being a panther shifter is that I can usually hold my own.

Unless…

The smells swirling through the air all hit her at once. She stopped where she stood, standing perfectly still.