The Bobcat's Tate (2 page)

Her gaze moved down and she saw that his biceps strained at the sleeves of his black
T-shirt, and his stomach was plank-flat. A worn leather belt with a silver buckle threaded through the loops of his jeans. She realized that she was actually openly checking him out. Head to toe. Giving him the once-over.

And the most amazing thing was
, he was staring back at her exactly the same way, with an unnerving intensity. His ice-blue gaze swept over her, making her shiver again. He took in her face, her generous cleavage, her broad hips, her plump legs…and the look on his face said that he liked what he saw.

He was so close that she could smell a hint of bay rum aftershave, as well as freshly tilled earth and the sweet scent of flowers
. He’d just been working in a garden, she was sure.

“I’m Tate Calloway,” he said, thrusting his hand out to shake hers. “And you are?”

His gaze was like a tractor beam, holding her pinned in place. Her heart started beating very fast, and she felt her mouth dry up.

She swallowed hard and ran her tongue over her lips. “I’m sorry, I…what did you say?”

He was staring at her intently. She felt her cheeks burning, thinking how foolish she must look and sound.

He
stood there holding out his hand, a look of amusement quirking his full lips.

Flushing with embarrassment, she reached out and took his hand, which was large and strong and rough with callouses. His hand closed around hers and squeezed hard, and a jolt of arousal shocked her
. She suddenly felt her panties go damp, and her nipples swelled into stiff little peaks. Goosebumps pebbled on her arms, even though the air was as warm as a pie fresh out of the oven. Her mouth was so dry that her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and she literally couldn’t speak.

Another man, a
nother wolf shifter, ambled up to Tate, holding two glass bottles of Coca-Cola. The men bore a strong resemblance to each other; they were clearly related. The man who wasn’t Tate had a gold wedding band on his ring finger; Tate had none, not that Lainey had any particular reason to be checking out his marital status.

“Here’s your soda. Who’s this lovely lady?
A member of the wedding party?” The man looked at her with interest.

Tate didn’t answer him. Instead, he popped the top of the soda bottle off and handed it to her. It was ice cold, and the glass was dewy
. “You seem a little parched,” he said. “Have a drink.”

She took a long, sweet swallow, and then cleared her throat.

“I’m Lai- sorry, what was the question again?” she said quickly. “I think the heat’s addled my brains.” She’d almost said her real name.
Good going
, she scolded herself. She made a big show of glancing at her wrist watch. “I, ah, I’m late. To check in at Imogen’s boarding house. My name’s Katherine.”

“Katherine?
Very pretty. And you’re a bobcat. I think I’ll call you Kat,” Tate said, drawing the word out slowly. He caressed the word with his tongue, and she suddenly felt light-headed, imagining him caressing her with that tongue.

Kat
. She liked it. It sounded sexy and dangerous. It sounded about as far away from a chubby, nerdy wallflower as one could possibly get.

“Nice nickname,” she said boldly. “Maybe I’ll keep it.” Wait, did that make sense, or had she just said something incredibly dorky? She couldn’t tell. Something about this wolf shifter muddled her thinking.
All the blood that should be going to her brain had apparently rushed to her crotch. Strange, she’d thought that only happened to men.

He moved a little closer to her, and her heart sped up even more
. “So you’re in town for the wedding, Kat?” he asked. “Are you friends with the bride, or the groom?”

“Wedding?
Whose wedding?” Those eyes. She could fall into those eyes and drown in them.

He nodded his head at the sheriff and the
plump redheaded woman. “My cousin. Sheriff Loch Armstrong, and his lovely fiancée Ginger,” he said. “They’re getting married a week from this Sunday. You really didn’t know? How could that be?”

“
Ahh…I…the reservation was made a long time ago. A year ago, actually.” She was desperately trying not to lie any more than necessary. It was true. The reservation had been made a year ago. Just not by her.

“Interesting
. What brought you to town?”

A broken heart and parents who’d turned out to be something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale.

“Oh, you know…from time to time, you just want to get away from it all.” That wasn’t even a lie. She really needed to get awayall—for at least two more weeks. Then she might be safe from her parents’ desperate attempts to control her.

He was still staring at her with those intense blue eyes, and when he looked at her that way, she felt as if she were the only woman in the world.
Everyone else fell away and vanished, and she basked in the warmth of his attention.

“So will you be staying long?
” The way he asked it made it sound as if the answer to that question meant a great deal to him.

And suddenly
, she found herself wishing that the answer could be yes. “Well, I—”

“Tate, could you please come here?” the sheriff called out to him, and Tate grimaced, glanced at him and then said apologetically
, “Excuse me just a minute.”

She nodded as he walked away
.

Would he really come back? Could this be happening to her
? Men who looked like Tate just didn’t go for women like her. Well, not without an ulterior motive, so she’d discovered.

I can’t just stand here like a love-struck cow,
she thought.
If he wants to talk to me again, he’ll come and find me.
She strolled away from the crowd, finished off the rest of the soda, and found a garbage can to toss the bottle into.

The sheriff was talking to an attractive older woman now, she noted. The woman was in her fifties, reed thin, wearing a tailored business suit.
Wolf shifter. She shot dirty looks at the sheriff’s fiancée. The sheriff said something that made the woman angry, and the woman turned on her heel and stalked off, climbing into a Lexus. She drove off with a screech of tires.

“Well, hello there. I haven’t seen you here before
. Friend of the bride, or the groom?” a handsome man said to her. He looked to be in his thirties or early forties, a coyote shifter, with wavy brown hair that made him look like a matinee idol. He had an oddly sensual air about him, and brown eyes that bored right through her with an unnerving intensity. She caught a whiff of expensive cologne. He wore the same brand as her father, which surprised her. At two hundred dollars a bottle, it didn’t seem like the kind of brand that would sell in Blue Moon Junction.

He was attractive, but in a completely different way than Tate Calloway
. Tate was earthy and masculine and genuine. This man was smooth and polished and moved with a kind of practiced charm. Lainey suspected that he was the kind who flirted with women automatically, for his own ego as much as theirs. Not that it was unpleasant; he was easy on the eyes.

“Neither,”
Lainey said. “I’m staying at a boarding house. Just came here for some peace and quiet. I actually didn’t know there was a wedding going on.” She glanced over at the Lexus as it drove away. “What was all that about?”

“Oh, that’s Aurora Sinclair
. She’s had a running feud with the sheriff ever since he chose to propose to that redheaded witch instead of Aurora’s niece. Aurora used to be a member of the Shifter’s Council, and she blames the sheriff’s family for getting her booted off. It wasn’t really his fault. The fact was, she’d made a lot of enemies, and she was easy to defeat.”

“Wow
. All this intrigue and drama,” Lainey marveled. “It’s like I walked onto the set of a soap opera.”

“Yes, there’s a lot more running underneath the surface here than you’d think. If you would like a guided tour of the town
, do let me know. I’m Hamilton Hooper. You can find me at the jewelry store, once all of the excitement dies down.” At her surprised look, he added, “My father owned the store, and now I’m doing my best to fill his shoes. So far, obviously, my best isn’t near good enough. Well, I hope I see you a lot more of you.” He winked at her and walked off.

W
ell, that was about as direct as it gets
. She wasn’t interested, but it was nice to be flirted with, at any rate.

“Good heavens, isn’t it just too much?” one of the women in curlers said to her. She was an older woman, in her seventies at least,
a panther shifter with golden eyes.

“What’s that?”
Lainey said.

“That poor bride’s wedding tiara being stolen like that. Wasn’t that what the deputy was asking you about?” The woman glanced over at Tate, who
was still talking to the sheriff. The sheriff turned and walked into the jewelry store, and Tate followed him.

Lainey’s
heart suddenly turned into a leaden fishing weight that slowly sank in her chest. He hadn’t been interested in her as a person; he’d been interrogating her as a potential suspect. Of course, it made perfect sense he’d be suspicious of her, since she was a stranger in town, and she wasn’t there for the wedding.

“He’s a deputy? He’s not in uniform.” She tried to make her voice sound light and casual.

“Oh, he owns a landscaping business with his family, but he’s also a volunteer sheriff’s deputy from Anhinga County. Next county over. They’re such a small county, they don’t even have a full time department. He’s the Alpha of his pack, you know.” The woman spoke in the confiding tones of a seasoned gossip who was delivering some juicy secret.

“
He’s a real looker, isn’t he?” the woman continued. “I think he was a little sweet on you, in fact.” She winked at Lainey.

Or a little suspicious of me,
Lainey thought. She forced cheer into her voice. “He sure is a looker. By the way, I’m staying at Imogen’s Boarding House. Could you give me directions? I need to check in. I’m…I’m Kat, by the way.”

A
ll the women from the salon were staring at her now, although not in an unfriendly way. They were looking her up and down with unabashed interest. They probably didn’t get a lot of new people in town.

“Her and Tate…funny, you don’t usually see cats and dogs getting together, but I could see it
, I sure could,” said the older panther shifter to one of her friends.

Lainey
found herself blushing again.

“Imogen’s is two miles further down this road, then you turn left at
rural route 332 and go another mile,” one of the other women said, patting gently at her curlers, which were covered with a disposable plastic cap from the salon. “It’s the big white farm house on the right. There’s a rooster weathervane on the roof.”

“Thank you! See you around, then,”
Lainey said, and hurried to her car without a backward glance.

As she climbed in and pulled away, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing in the rearview
mirror. Tate was staring after her and…writing on a pad of paper. He was writing down her license plate number.

Well, good luck with that,
she thought irritably. She’d had Katherine book the rental car under her name as well, and reimbursed her for it. She was going to do everything that she could to avoid letting her family track her down.

Yep, he was definitely interested in her as a suspect and nothing else
. She felt surprisingly deflated as she headed down the road
. What difference did it make?
I’ll be gone in two weeks, anyway.

Tate walked out of the jewelry store, frustrated. Whoever had stolen the wedding tiara, an heirloom that had been in Ginger’s family for generations, had sprayed the air with a concoction made from the scentsbane herb, which interfered with his shifter ability to pick up any identifiable scent he could track. He and Loch and several of Loch’s deputies had tried anyway, shifting into wolf form and running through the store, exploring every nook and cranny, but the scentsbane clogged their nostrils and thwarted their task.

H
e’d accomplished nothing, and the luscious brunette had left before he’d had a chance to chat with her any more, to breathe in her heavenly cinnamon scent and enjoy the way she made his pulse race in a way he hadn’t felt in years.

Ginger was
standing near the store, chatting with several of the older women who’d come out of the beauty shop. “I’m sorry, Ginger,” Tate said to her. “I’m sure we’ll find it. Something as distinctive as that tiara – the minute someone tries to pawn it, it’ll be flagged.”

“Thank you, Tate, I appreciate you trying,” Ginger said, with a sigh. “
My mom’s flipping out, of course. I hope they find it before the wedding.”

“You’re not flirting with my woman, are you?” Loch said from right behind him, his tone saying that he was joking.
Mostly. But the way that he threw his arm around Ginger’s shoulders left no question as to his feelings about the plump, sexy redhead.