Trusting the Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (16 page)

Well, shit. The sharpness of the disappointment surprised him. It was this case. He longed for it to be over and done with, so he could move on.

If she didn’t return by the time he finished his drink, he may as well retreat to that expensive room Haskell had rented for him and report in.

* * *

So it was Plan B after all.

Just as well. Mindy didn’t like the way Red Hot had watched her while she danced around the couple who hadn’t exchanged Word One before they got up to leave.

No. Check that.

She’d liked the way Red watched her too much. Way,
way
, too much. It was those feline eyes of his, so light a brown they looked pale gold, almost yellow.  Those dimples, that
mouth
, smiling with such ready enjoyment that she’d had this flash fantasy of dancing alone for him, peeling off her clothes, then his, one by one. That tawny hair with golden sun streaks and a dark red undercoat . . . she wanted to bury her fingers in it. She wanted to . . .

Stop that! The Cheater was on the move.

Time to follow. She pulled off her scarf, slipped the beads back over the branch, and dropped the tasseled cloth back onto her table.

The Cheater and Patrice were out of sight by then, but Mindy had done her homework, and knew where Haskell’s suite was. Summer Dress and her friends were getting up to dance as those left behind ordered another round.

In the general movement Mindy slipped out of the bar, and away.

She walked sedately toward the stairway with its back exit. She let herself out, and breathed the fresh summer-warm air of the resort’s inner garden, the trees and shrubs dark except where they’d been draped or wound with strings of tiny twinkling lights.

Haskell’s suit opened directly into the garden. Of course the French doors were locked up tight, the curtains pulled—which was just what she wanted.

She looked both ways, then backed into a thick bunch of ferns that effectively screened her on all sides. With practiced ease she slipped off the dress, which rolled into a tight little ball that she fitted into her soft purse. She pulled out her recorder, and flicked it on. She left the purse and her sandals lying on the moss as she stood up naked. She clenched her fists, scrunched up her face, did that thing somewhere against her spine . . .

And opened her eyes much closer to the ground, her hands turned into dainty little paws, her body covered in tight, close, chocolate-covered curls. A fascinating world of heady scents surrounded her:

She was now a poodle.

A toy poodle, though she hadn’t been toy-sized as a person since she was about three. She didn’t know where the rest of her went, and there was no one to ask, and not sound crazy. She remembered all too well the whispers about her “crazy” Great-Granny.

As always, it took a few moments for her eyesight to adjust to the blur of darkness and her nose to sort the thousands of new scents. Delicately she picked up the recorder in her jaws. With her heightened hearing, she could pick out Haskell and the woman inside the room.

She walked quietly up to the door then sat, like a dog of manners and pedigree, as she set the recorder down, and carefully nudged it with her muzzle directly against the glass the way her step-brother’s tech friend had explained.

“ . . . the problem?” Haskell demanded. “I told you I had an investor to entertain, but the rest of the weekend is just you and me, like I promised.”

“’What’s the problem?’” Patrice repeated, her voice rising. “
You’re
asking
me
what’s the problem? You’re
married.
You’re fucking-A married!”

“What gave you that idea?” Haskell said.

“Somebody—at first I thought it was you—sent me a cute little e-mail, saying surprise—”

Ah, you got it
, Mindy thought, smiling a doggy smile.

“—I got a surprise all right! The link went straight to your wife’s Facebook.”

You clicked it
, Mindy thought in satisfaction. She did always try to warn the Cheatees, if she thought they weren’t aware of the truth.

You know,” the soon-to-be-ex mistress’s voice rose to a fine crescendo of sarcasm. “Your
wife?
Courtney Winterhaldon Haskell? Does good works all over Hollywood. Married to
Jerome Haskell
.  With a big picture of the two of you at your third anniversary a month ago. Two weeks
after
you introduced yourself to me as Henry Jerome, and
told me you were single
.”

“Look, babe, there’s a perfectly good reason why I use an alias—if you knew how the paparazzi harass me every time I turn around—”

“Every time you cheat on your wife?”

“Babe, I’m practically single. It’s over—all but signing the papers. I haven’t touched her in years! Who would? She’s
old
—lied to me about her age. Total witch, wants everything but the shorts I stand up in—I have to fight for my rights! I’ll buy you a—”

“How stupid do you think I am?”

Mindy carefully picked up the recorder in her jaws and carried it back into the ferns. There she shifted back to her human shape, remaining on hands and knees until the dizziness passed. Then she listened briefly to the recorder.
Babe, like I told you, it’s over—

Okay, that much had worked. Then, to make double sure, she pulled out her cell and checked the camera, though she was confident that she’d gotten at least a couple good shots of Haskell with Patrice.

But when she scrolled through, to her horror she discovered that not one of them was any good—dancers obscured either one or the other, or both, and in the one clear shot of Patrice, Haskell was bent away, only a shoulder visible. He could have been anyone. Meanwhile she had about twenty-five shots of Red Hot.

Inside her, the poodle practically wiggled with joy, and she held her breath to keep her dog from popping out again. She groaned, disgusted with herself. All of a sudden, acting like a teenager with her first crush—on a job?

Back to work.

She needed at least one clear shot of Haskell with Patrice, and from the sound of it, Patrice was on her way out. So Mindy hurried into her dress, pulled on her sandals, and snatched up her purse. She walked as quickly as she could to the stair exit, tying her hair up as she did. She made it to the entry to the suite, at the end of a short, discreet corridor, with seconds to spare—from behind the big double doors came Patrice’s shrill tones clashing with Haskell’s snarl.

Mindy nipped her cell out of her purse, heart banging against her ribs. She tapped the camera app—made certain the flash was off—and held the phone up to her ear a second before the suite door opened. She began gabbling as if talking to someone and turned her head sideways, finger pressing hard on the camera button in hopes that one shot could capture the man and woman emerging.

At the sight of Mindy both Patrice and Haskell shut up. And in the sudden silence, the click of the camera was faintly audible.

Oh God oh God oh God—

Someone rounded the corner and stepped into the hall outside the suite.

It was Red Hot.

“Hey,” Haskell began, glowering at Mindy. “Who are you—”

There was only one thing to do. “Darling!
There
you are,” Mindy cried, turning her back on Haskell, and threw herself into Red Hot’s arms.

“Huh?” he said, then nothing more because Mindy, still clutching her phone, reached up (whoa, he was tall, and he smelled so incredible), laced her fingers behind his neck, and pulled him down for a kiss.

She meant to freeze there until Haskell was safely past, then apologize and pretend that she was drunk and had mistaken him for someone else. But the surprised hand that gripped her shoulder her drifted down her back, heating her skin to a tingle. The hard thing that pressed inside her hip—That was not his cane!—shifted into the hollow between her thighs as the lips mashed against hers opened.

And
her
lips opened.

And every cell in her body shot straight into the sun.

* * *

Two seconds after Dennis entered the hall leading to Haskell’s suite, an armful of woman landed softly against him. “Darling!” she said.

It was
her!
Fragrant, curly chocolate-colored hair brushed his chest as she cooed, “There you are!” and the next thing he knew, the hottest, sexiest pair of lips in the history of the universe short-circuited his brain.

He was vaguely aware of Haskell blabbing something, but he was too busy exploring the softest, sweetest, loveliest mouth he had ever kissed, tongues teasing and dueling—hot, shaky breath mingling.

Somehow the key card he’d been carrying fumbled the door open, and somehow he tossed the card this way and his cane that way and she did something magical with those killer hips of hers, and he fitted up and tight right where it counted.

His brain was still back out there going
WTF?
But his body had already tabled that discussion as one heel kicked the door shut behind him. Thump, thump, her cell phone and purse fell to the carpet to join his key card and cane.

He took a step backward toward the bed, nearly stumbled, then caught himself as she fell against him. His arms filled with deliciously curvy woman, smelling of some kind of perfume that drove him wild.

Not the man to question miracles, he bent, closed his hands under her hips, and lifted her. She wrapped her legs around him, her sandals thumping to the floor as those amazing hips of hers did something that made his dick jump painfully in pants suddenly fifty sizes too small.

The backs of his knees found the bed, and they fell, with her landing on top of him.

When they broke for breath, a single brain cell wandered back and he gasped, “Who are you?”

“Call me . . . Payton,” she muttered into his lips.

What was she doing here? Besides driving him batshit wild.

He closed his hands over the silky smooth skin of her shoulders and forced a little distance between them, though he was nearly drowning in those big brown eyes the color of dark amber. “Do I . . . know you?” he said stupidly, trying hard to claw his way back to sanity.

“Who cares?” she said breathlessly.

“Right.” The preliminaries over, he pulled her in for another kiss.

It was even hotter than the first.

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