Melted By The Lion: A Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance (19 page)

Her physical condition might have made my pity for her swell at that moment,
if
I hadn’t known that she’d brought it on herself by being unreasonable and demanding. Besides, her rudeness to me when I’d just wanted to check on her had made me mad, and now I was kind of enjoying giving her a piece of my mind.

“Jeannie’s right to be tough with you, you know. If you’re hungry right now, it’s you own fault, and you deserve it.”

Surprising me, Veronica’s vivid blue eyes suddenly filled with tears, and her scowl became replaced by a trembling lower lip. But before I could apologize for my harsh tone, before I could really even
think
about it, she just wiped her eyes with the back of a hand and all but spit her next words at me.

“Look. Why did you come up here? What the hell do you want?”

Feeling emotionally drained after just spending a minute with her, I began backing down the hallway with a shrug. “You know what? I don’t want anything. Have a nice day.”

With that, I turned and continued heading down the hallway. Shouting at me to go to hell and then slamming her bedroom door was Veronica’s response.

The next couple of days went by with the same level of activity and busyness that they had been. I hosted my first formal adoption day at the shelter, though it was really more of an evening open house, with people invited to enjoy cookies and punch on their way to tour the shelter and view the animals. Making the event a success even beyond what I’d hoped for, I adopted out the three Buddy and Princess lookalikes, two mutts of very uncertain breed mix, three adult cats, and seven kittens.

The next day, though, a new wave of animals arrived, supposedly the last of the forest dwellers, adding to the several dozen still remaining in the shelter. Among the new arrivals were five pregnant cats, two of them about to give birth any day, according to Dr. Ericson. Two of the five new dogs rescued were also pregnant, and the three that weren’t had each been found with a litter of very young puppies. Apparently, all estimates about just exactly how many animals remained in the forest had been just a bit off, and with all the pregnant new arrivals, I had a feeling that the shelter was going to be in business for quite some time.

I called Trevor to say hi and tell him about the new influx, almost losing my train of thought at the sound of his deep, rich voice. Even over the phone, sometimes it was enough to make me curl my toes.

But on this day, I forced myself to stay on track, filling him in about the animals and then telling him that Dr. Ericson and I were considering leaving a few cats and a few dogs unsterilized for breeding at some point, so that the town, and the whole nation, would have a supply of house pets for decades to come.

“
If
that’s all right with you, though. I told Dr. Ericson I’d check with you and see what you think.”

When he spoke next, Trevor’s voice was full of unmistakable tenderness.

“Whatever makes you happy, Savannah, is exactly what I want. I wasn’t kidding the night I told you that I want to make you happy in every possible way.”

I smiled, a rush of tingly warmth seeming to creep from my chest all the way down to my curled toes. “When do you think you’ll be coming home tonight?”

“Sometime on the later side, unfortunately, but I
will
be home, and I really can’t wait to see you.”

A short while later, I practically bounced up the trail back home.

When I entered the animal wing and began making my way down the hallway to my room, I was still in kind of a buzzy daze, so much of a daze, actually, that sounds coming from the farthest bedroom didn’t even really register at first, even though it should have instantly struck me as odd, since the dogs were out on a walk with Jeannie and Margaret. But soon I paused, listening, and heard that it was the sound of a female speaking in a gentle, hushed tone, as if talking to one of the animals. I couldn’t tell whose voice it was, though. Thinking it was probably one of the part-time house maids or Sophie, I cupped my hands around my mouth, directing my voice to the half-open door.

“Someone down there?”

Whoever had been talking stopped immediately. A long, silent pause of a few seconds, and then Veronica emerged from the bedroom and began striding down the hallway.

“Nothing to see here. Just go on about your business. I was just visiting your weird cat, because you’re gone so damn much I don’t think you’re taking very good care of her.”

Even in the dim illumination from just a single hallway light that was on, I could see that Veronica’s eyes were bloodshot. Clearly, she’d been crying with Snowball again, a fact that made me sad, despite Veronica’s continued attitude.

She tried to breeze by me, but I gently grabbed one of her alarmingly bony shoulders to stop her.

“Hey. Just hold up a second.”

She wrenched her shoulder away and continued on down the hallway. “Go to hell.”

Deciding to ignore that comment, I turned toward her. “I was just going to tell you that you’re welcome to come visit Snowball any time. It doesn’t even matter if I’m home or not home, just whenever you feel like it.”

Now it was Veronica who was seeming to be ignoring
me
. She’d slowed her steps to a stop, then had taken two backward, and was now advancing again, or
trying
to, it seemed. Muttering to herself, she was moving her feet forward slowly, mechanically, as if they didn’t quite want to work but she was forcing them to. Wondering if her ankle was hurting with each step and she was just trying to be tough about it, I asked her if she wanted me to get her crutches, which were in an alcove adjacent to the foyer.

She didn’t respond right away, just kept slowly putting one foot in front of the other, until she reached the end of the hallway and the door that led to the rest of the house.

There, she glanced at me over her shoulder. “Go to hell.”

Over the next several days, I ran into her numerous times while she was either coming to see Snowball or departing from Snowball’s favorite bedroom. She was still walking in a funny sort of way, as if her ankle was still bothering her, but I didn’t ask her about it. We actually didn’t speak even once during these many run-ins. My threshold for being told to go to hell was kind of at its limit.

At the end of that week, though, I came down to the animal wing after a late dinner and found her leaning against the hallway wall, face in hands, sobbing. Snowball was rubbing up against her legs, nuzzling one of them with the side of her sweet, furry face, obviously trying to be comforting.

I really had no idea what to do. Part of my brain was telling me to just go in my room, pretending I hadn’t seen anything, even though Veronica had glanced up and seen
me
when I’d come through the animal wing door, humming. But another part was telling me to take a cue from Snowball and at least make an attempt to pull something from my quickly-dwindling reserve of compassion. And in the end, it was this second part of my brain that won out.

Gritting my teeth, I approached Veronica in the dimly-lit hallway, came to a stop a few feet from her, and leaned against the wall myself, mirroring her pose. “I’m just going to preemptively tell myself to go to hell to save you the trouble. Savannah, go to hell. There. Now that that’s out of the way, maybe you’d like to tell me what’s wrong.”

Figuring I probably hadn’t told myself to go to hell with as much venom as she would have liked, I fully expected her to lift her face from her hands and do the job properly herself. She did lift her face right away, but, to my surprise, her expression didn’t hold even a hint of malice. And in fact, with her big blue eyes seeming even bigger because of her recent weight loss, she almost looked childlike. Scared.

She spoke in a tear-choked voice with a clear edge of panic in it. “I can’t get back up to my room this time. It just won’t let me.”

I now saw that the look in her eyes wasn’t one of fear, it was more like terror. As if “it” was some malevolent supernatural creature or something.

Slightly unnerved, I asked her what “it” was. She didn’t respond, though, just dissolved into sobs again, returning her hands to her face.

CHAPTER 14

Very tentatively, I extended a hand and gave Veronica’s shoulder a squeeze and a few pats. Snowball, who’d been purring, now really cranked up her motor, still nuzzling Veronica’s ankles and legs.

After a short while, Veronica lifted her face, tears still streaming, and glanced down at her. “She knows it’s hard for me to come see her and then get back to the stairs, so she’s started trying to help me. And she’s so sweet about it, always kind of nudging me down the hallway, but tonight even her sweetness isn’t enough to—”

Fresh tears began streaming down Veronica’s gaunt face, and she squeezed her eyes shut, sniffling.

Absolutely baffled, I just studied her for a few moments. “Is it your ankle? Does it hurt?”

She shook her head, wiping her tears away, even as more immediately replaced them. “It’s not my ankle. It’s just… it’s so much sadness and frustration. I just can’t—I can’t even explain the sadness and frustration. It’s like…”

She covered her face with her hands and began sobbing again, not seeming like she was going to finish the thought, so I took a stab in the dark.

“Do you mean sadness and frustration over Trevor? Do you get so sad that you feel like you just can’t move sometimes?”

I was feeling so bad for Veronica that I actually experienced a completely bizarre, irrational flash of anger toward Trevor for having rejected her.

But, to my surprise, Veronica lifted her face and wiped her eyes actually smiling a little. “Ha. No, my problem isn’t Trevor. I’m over
that
whole situation these days. Now I
wish
my biggest life issue was just my complete failure to seduce him. We never even slept together, you know.”

“I know.”

She brushed a few more tears away, and I thought for a few moments before speaking again.

“Well, do you think you’re so upset because your food preferences have left you not eating much lately?”

The word
demands
had been on the tip of my tongue, but I’d thought of the more diplomatic-sounding
preferences
in the nick of time.

Again, Veronica smiled a little. “I don’t do it just to be a bitch, you know, all my special food things. I do it because… I don’t even know why. It’s like I
have
to. I can’t
not
. I have to have my food arranged a certain way, and when I eat it, I have to take a precise number of bites, and it’s different for different kinds of food; and if there’s a food-within-a-food, like blueberries in pancakes, there can only be a certain precise number of berries, or chocolate chips, or whatever it is, and the number’s different for each food. And then the whole thing with taking only a certain number of bites. If I
don’t
do that, I just feel like something terrible is going to happen, like my skin is just
crawling
with—with just, plain
wrongness
, and I can hardly even breathe again until I thoroughly brush my teeth to ‘reset’ everything and then eat a different food with the ‘correct’ number of bites to make things ‘right.’ That’s how it all started, from the very first day I was thawed… it all started with food things that just kind of got progressively worse.”

A lone tear had trickled its way down to the tip of Veronica’s small, gently-cleft chin and was just hanging there, and she brushed it away before continuing.

“But then lately, I’ve even been getting hung up on different number things not even having to do with food: the number of steps I take to enter and exit a room, the number of steps I take to go down a hallway, the number of knocks I make when I knock on a door, like that. And with door knocking, it even extends to other people’s number of knocks, like when you came to see me. If people don’t knock ‘correctly,’ then I have to ‘reset’ things after they leave by knocking the ‘right’ way, and it takes me a really long time, and it makes me really upset. The worst thing now of anything is the footsteps, though. This hallway is hard, because it’s so long that the number that feels right tends to fluctuate. Before you got here, I reversed to the bedroom and kept restarting with today’s new ‘right’ number of steps at least ten times, but I kept not counting the steps right in my head, and then I just kind of got ‘stuck’ here. Sounds absolutely stupid, I know.”

I shook my head. “No, it’s not stupid.”

“Well, thanks, but it sure makes me
feel
stupid sometimes. I’m sure it’s all like some kind of an obsessive disorder or something. I have no idea if it’s something I had before being frozen, or if being frozen and thawed rewired my brain in some weird way, because I don’t have a single memory from the time before being frozen. Maybe I
did
have it before being frozen, and the fact that my brain was already wired differently is the
reason
I can’t recover any of my memories. I don’t know.”

“You can’t remember anything at all?”

“Nope. Which is another of my sadness and frustration things lately. I seem to be the only frozen woman
ever
to not get even a single shred of her memory back. It’s a good thing my name was etched onto my cryo tank so at least I have
that
, because I literally don’t remember anything—not my family, my friends, if I even had any, what I did for a living, nothing. Not even the tiniest snippet of anything. Not even the flicker of a memory. Which is why, as you’ve probably already realized, I lied about having been a famous rhythmic gymnast. You’d just recalled your heroic-sounding past of running an animal rescue, and I was jealous. I just wanted to have a heroic-sounding past of my own, so I made one up. Although who knows? Since I can’t remember anything, I guess I don’t know that I
wasn’t
a gymnast. These days, though, it would probably take me three hours just to walk out in front of the judges with my messed-up numbered steps, let alone do a gymnastics routine.”

Veronica made a noise between a sigh and a brief chuckle, and I gave her a little smile, heart aching for her. While she wiped her eyes again, sniffing, I just studied her pale, thin face for a long moment before speaking again.

“I’m so sorry about all this. I’m sorry you’ve been having to go through all this alone.”

She lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug. “Well, I know I haven’t exactly made it easy for people to get close to me. Obviously, my most natural state of being is complete bitch mode. See, I know full well when I’m being nasty, but it’s like I just keep feeling compelled to push people away, even though sometimes I feel bad about it later. Which makes me think that I’ll never be able to make friends, or find someone to love me, and it makes me think that my life is hopeless. Sometimes I just feel like the world would be a better place if I weren’t in it.”

“That’s not true at all.”

She shrugged again. “No one would miss me. Let’s be real about that. People would probably even be outright happy. And if I were dead, yes, I’d lose all chance of happiness myself, but I also wouldn’t have to deal with this messed up
thing
that’s happening to me that I can’t make go away. It would just stop. It would finally be over.”

Making a sudden decision, I knelt and picked up Snowball, who’d been purring with her head resting on one of Veronica’s bare feet. Once upright again, I held her out to Veronica. “Here. She’s
your
cat now. She’s your friend, and so am I. We’d both miss you if you were gone.”

Eyes filling with tears again, Veronica took her and nuzzled her neck. “Thanks.”

“You’re more than welcome. Now, let’s see if we can get you ‘unstuck’ from this hallway. Do you feel like you can walk now?”

“Well, I guess I’m not sure. I can backtrack again, and see if I can really focus on getting my steps ‘right’ this time.”

I didn’t like the sound of that, fearing that she might become very upset again if she
couldn’t
get her steps ‘right.’

“Well, is there anything I can do to help?”

Kind of gently rocking Snowball, she shook her head. “Thanks, but I don’t think so. Nothing helps. Well, nothing except sometimes if I’m able to eat something, then I’m able to sleep, and then if I’m well-rested the next day, then sometimes things temporarily get a little better.”

“Well, this helps. Because now, at least, we know what you need for tonight. First, I think we need to get you up to your room so you can lie down and try to relax, then second, we need to get you something to eat. I’ll bring you up anything you want, and I promise I’ll make the food and the tray just the way you need it to be, even if it takes me a hundred tries. Just tell me what you want. Anything.”

“Well, on a plain plate, no tray or silverware, could you maybe bring me three orange wedges still stuck together? I have this thing where I can’t eat more than three wedges, and only after I’ve counted them a few times before I separate them. And maybe could you also bring me a sandwich made from just two slices of any kind of bread and a plain baked chicken breast in the middle? That’s all. Oh, and maybe put the food on one of the plain white plates with the navy blue border. The square plates with the geometric pattern on the sides, they’re just...they’re not good.”

“No problem.”

“Thanks. I’d try to get the food myself, if I can ever move from here, but I tend to get really hung up in the kitchen if I don’t get things out in the exact right order and set them out on the counter in a very precise way.”

“I understand. But I guess now we still have the problem of getting you out of the hallway.”

“Well, let me just see if I can backtrack and count off the steps ‘right’ this time. It might take me a few different times, but I’ll try not to get so hung up this time.”

“Well, I don’t want it to make you feel stressed again, though, because I can tell you’ve had enough of it for one day. So, maybe let’s just totally take walking out of the equation of getting you out of the hallway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe you can be carried out. I don’t think I can do it alone, and Trevor won’t be back until late, but Jeannie should be back any minute from taking the dogs for their long evening walk, and maybe she and I together could kind of...”

“No way. Please keep that old witch away from me.”

“Okay. Then, just let me think of… Hey. I probably can’t carry you in my arms, but I know I can piggyback you.”

“Really?”

“Easily. I can probably even take you right up the stairs to your room.”

“Well, fortunately, stairs aren’t a problem for some strange reason. They don’t hang me up at all, haven’t even once. They so clearly mark the number of steps almost doing it
for
you. I wish all floors in the house were made of little stair levels or something. I can handle them so easily.”

“Well, good, then. I’ll just give you a lift right to the stairs, and then I’ll piggyback you again from the second-floor hallway to your room, if you need it. We’ll have you resting in bed and eating a late dinner in no time. Zero footsteps on your part required.”

Veronica gave me a little smile. “This is pretty tempting.”

I gave her a smile in return, then turned around, presenting her with my back. “Hop on. You can set Snowball down, and I’ll come back for her and her litter box.”

A short while later, with Veronica on my back, we’d cleared the animal wing of the house and several rooms of the main floor, and we were now crossing the foyer to head to the stairs, both of us giggling like kids.

Jeannie had just come in with the dogs, and she just looked at us for a moment, mouth open, before seeming to speak only to herself. “If someone would have asked me this morning, ‘Jeannie, what’s the very last thing you expect to see today?’”

She didn’t seem like she was going to finish the thought, and Veronica and I were already climbing up the stairs, still laughing about the piggyback ride I’d given her.

Within an hour, after eating her orange pieces and chicken sandwich with just a few minutes spent rearranging things on the plate pre-meal, she was resting comfortably with Snowball in her arms. She looked incredibly drowsy, but seemed as if she didn’t want me to leave yet, so I sat with her for a little while, just telling her a few things about the animals at the shelter, until she fell asleep.

When I went back downstairs, Trevor was home, and he’d already heard from Jeannie about Veronica’s and my giggly piggyback trip through the foyer. With his expression nearly as shocked as Jeannie’s had been, he asked me how the whole thing had come about, saying that he couldn’t even imagine.

I exhaled in a rush, taking a seat at the kitchen table. “We really need to talk.”

A while later, after I’d told him the gist of Veronica’s troubles, I said that I was sure she’d need some kind of professional medical help in order to overcome, or at least learn to live with, her disorder, and Trevor agreed.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think the two doctors at our hospital here have any experience dealing with this sort of thing. So, first thing in the morning, I’ll make a call to Commander Wallace of the United Free States, to see if he can send down a specialist who might be able to help.”