To Tempt A Tiger (6 page)

That got a reaction Vlad hadn’t been expecting. Anton’s scent filled with a mix of pungent musk and a sharp acrid, chemical tinge. Vlad’s tiger nose interpreted the combination as fear and resentment. All three of his brothers blamed the elders for their father’s death—even though their father had put himself into the position which got him killed. Vlad had actually had to stop Yuri from talking about outright rebellion.

Even if some of the elders agreed with their father when it came to tiger-human interbreeding, they would not stand for rebellion. The elders were each individually powerful. As a collective, they were damn near omnipotent. At least that was the impression they gave the rest of the community. And they would band together, marshalling all that power against anyone who threatened them.

Vlad might not trust his brothers, or even like them very much at the moment. He might have to fight them to keep them from hurting Rose and Zoe. But he didn’t want them utterly destroyed either. If he could get everyone out of this without anyone dying, he’d consider it a win.

He clapped Anton on the shoulder. “Thanks for worrying about me. But don’t. I’ll be fine.”

Anton’s lips thinned and Vlad could see him considering his next step.

Finally, he shrugged and shook his head. “I still think you’re making a huge mistake, bro, but whatever. It’s your life.”

Vlad pushed his brother toward his rental car, parked at the curb in the spot just behind where Rose’s SUV had been. “Go get the others and get out of here. I’ve got some strategizing to do.”

His brother stood at the car, door open, staring at Vlad over the roof, his eyes narrowed. “You sure?”

“Go away, Anton.”

“Fine. Your problem, then.”

He dropped down into the car and slammed the door. Vlad stood on the sidewalk, watching him drive away as he analyzed the information he’d gotten from his brother’s scent.

His nose assured him Anton had been lying, putting on an act so Vlad would believe he’d given up.

This wasn’t over yet.

*****

Rose was shaking so hard she would have had to stop the car even if she hadn’t needed to move the gun case into the back. She wove through the neighborhoods around her parents’ place so she wouldn’t be easy to find again, then she pulled up next to a quiet house and put the car in park.

She flexed her hands several times, trying to stop the quaking. She was used to adrenaline rushes—she’d spent most of her life craving them and going after them with enthusiasm. But this kind of fear… She didn’t like it.

Knowing Zoe would be scared if she realized how terrified her mother was forced Rose to rein in her emotions and push them behind false bravery. Her daughter needed her to be strong and confident, not a blubbering mess. She studied her surroundings in the car mirrors, then turned to look at her daughter.

“I need to put the rifle in the back, okay, baby. We’ll get on the road again in just a minute.”

“What happening, Mommy? Why you scared? That man really Vlad’s brother?”

Damn it. Rose should have known Zoe wouldn’t miss the tension. “Yes, he was Vlad’s brother. And I’m not scared, just… It’s difficult to explain, baby, but you don’t need to worry.” She hated lying to her daughter, but she couldn’t tell her even a child-friendly version of this truth. Not yet.

“Gonna see Vlad again?”

“Sure,” Rose said, trying to sound positive and upbeat, but knowing her hesitance still filtered into her voice. She wasn’t sure she
should
see Vlad anymore, and she didn’t want her daughter getting attached to him in case he took off again.

She didn’t trust Vlad. She was grateful he’d shown up to help deflect his brother, but the fact that he’d been there meant he’d obviously disregarded her wishes that he leave her alone. The combination of relief and anger was too much to deal with so she pushed her emotions aside. For the moment, she just had to get Zoe somewhere safe. The rest could wait.

They had a drive ahead of them. And Rose couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

Chapter Five

Two days later, safely ensconced in the cabin in Alpine, Rose was still working to convince herself the whole incident with Vlad and his brother was a lot of fuss over nothing. Anton hadn’t actually done anything particularly threatening, except stare at Zoe. Very intensely. But she only had Vlad’s word that his brothers wanted to hurt Zoe, and she already knew she couldn’t trust him.

Rose’s instincts didn’t buy this logic. There had been something in Anton’s eyes that set off alarm bells and had warning claxons sounding in her head. Her every nerve ending screamed at her to keep Zoe as far from Vlad’s brothers as she could get.

And then there was the tiger shifter part.

After two days happily hiking in the woods and playing in the snow with Zoe, Rose could almost believe she’d imagined that. Or that Vlad had somehow drugged her. That the real threat was Vlad’s insanity.

Her instincts weren’t buying this either.

She’d seen him change, watched with her own eyes as the man she used to love turned into a tiger. All the logic in the world wasn’t enough to convince her deep down that it hadn’t happened.

And what about Zoe’s episodes? How else could she explain the pain her daughter went through, when no tests or exams had ever revealed a cause?

During lunch on that second day, while Zoe munched on her sandwich and told stories about squirrels, Rose tried to quiet her inner argument between logic and instinct so she could fully savor the peaceful moment. She loved seeing her daughter like this—feeling good and acting like a typical three-year-old. They were safe for this moment. Rose just had to decide what to do next.

Suddenly, Zoe raised her head and looked at the front door. “Vlad’s here,” she sang.

An instant later, there was a knock.

Frowning, Rose went to answer, more than a little surprised to see it really was Vlad. Her heartbeat sped up like it had three mornings ago when she’d opened the door to find him. A rush of warmth and lust curled in her belly, both surprising and irritating her. For an instant, time collapsed, and they were back in the heady days of their romance, before all the hurt and betrayal. She would have thrown herself into his arms and kissed him just for standing there looking so hot and adorable all at once. She could practically feel his mouth on hers, the firm pressure of his lips, and the dance of his tongue against hers as she tasted him.

When she realized she was staring at his mouth, she shook her head and met his gaze. His already dark eyes were darker still and she could swear he was standing closer than he’d been a moment earlier.

Would this reaction to him ever go away? When they’d been together all those years ago, she’d gotten excited every time she saw him, every time she heard his voice. Apparently, four years of pain and hurt hadn’t lessened her feelings for him at all.

It had, however, broken her trust in him. “What are you doing here? How did you find us?” A light snow had started while they were eating lunch and Vlad’s dark hair was flecked with white, but she didn’t invite him in.

“I went to see your parents,” he said.

“You faced Connor and Marta? That was ballsy.” Her parents hated Vlad for what he’d done to her. And they were extremely protective of their only daughter—and now their only grandchild.

He grimaced. “Your mother did spend an hour scolding me in Spanish. There were a lot of very angry arm gestures involved.”

She chuckled.

Her mother knew perfectly well Vlad didn’t speak Spanish. When they’d first met, Vlad had wrongly assumed that because her huge husband was Irish and she had blonde hair and blue eyes, she must be Irish, too. Marta had not only assured him of her Mexican heritage, she’d gone on to lecture him on the mistake of assuming anything from someone’s outward appearance. Most of the lecture was delivered in Spanish—a habit Marta wasn’t inclined to stop because she knew it frustrated Vlad.

It used to make Rose laugh. She was sorry to have missed it this time. She imagined her mother had some choice words for the man who’d broken her daughter’s heart.

“Did my father hit you?” she asked.

“No, but it was close. He did make a point of reminding me that he kept a gun in the back office.”

“How on earth did you manage to convince them to tell you where we were?” She crossed her arms as the cold air seeped through her thermal t-shirt.

He took in the gesture. “May I come inside and talk? I don’t want you standing here getting cold.”

“I haven’t decided yet. How did you convince my parents to talk to you?”

“My youngest brother, Yuri, went to see them. He got there about the same time Anton found you at their house. Yuri can be…intense.” He lowered his voice to a very quiet murmur. “He doesn’t hide his disgust with humans or his fanaticism well, though he thinks most humans are too stupid to notice. Your parents were extremely suspicious of his questions and put him off. I went to see them the next day—I wanted to make sure my brothers left town first—and they were nervous enough to let me in so they could grill me.”

“Why didn’t they tell me any of this?”

He frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe they thought you already knew everything? I told them you did.” He tilted his head, then winced. “I also made sure they knew my brothers had a lot of resources and they needed to be discreet on the phone.”

“So, basically, you scared the hell out of them.”

He winced again.

“Mommy, you coming in?” Zoe called.

“Just a minute, baby,” she called back. “What did you tell them, exactly?” she asked Vlad.

“That my brothers wanted to hurt you and Zoe,” he answered even more quietly, glancing past her toward the interior of the cabin—and Zoe with her bionic hearing.

“And they believed you?”

“Enough to tell me where you were. Eventually. I did have to do a lot of convincing first.”

Rose trusted her parents implicitly. If they were worried about the danger enough to send Vlad here, she knew she should be worried, too.

“Come on in,” she said, stepping out of the doorway to make room.

When he passed her, his scent reached out and enveloped her, going right to her head. She leaned toward him for an instant before she stopped herself. The urge to bury her face in his neck and breathe in all that yummy male scent was overwhelming. She’d almost forgotten she could feel this much heat and desire just from the way a man smelled. And if that man had been anyone other than Vlad, she might have given in to the urge.

She needed to focus on the situation, not the way Vlad made her feel. “You didn’t tell them about…the other thing, did you?”

“The reason I can help Zoe with her episodes? Not specifics. Just that I could help.”

“So you manipulated their concern for their granddaughter?”

“Not manipulated. Told the truth. I can help her, and you. I just want to keep you both safe, Rose.”

She nodded without actually commenting.

He shook out his coat before taking it off and hanging it on the coat rack in the entryway. She tried not to notice how snug his long-sleeved t-shirt was, or how wonderfully it showed off his upper body, but she failed miserably. Vlad had always been fit and nicely muscled. His shoulders and arms in particular were like chocolate to her—tempting and delicious. Images of him stripping in her living room, standing there in all his naked glory, sent a pulse of heat through her. She let her gaze wander over his beautiful physique for a moment before she remembered she was supposed to hate him.

The fact that she had trouble remembering that whenever he stood too close was really starting to piss her off.

“My brothers bought my story about wanting you back, by the way,” he said. “At least, they pretended to.”

“Well, that’s something anyway.” She motioned him into the dining room.

When Zoe spotted him, she bounced in her seat. “Vlad! Knew you were here.”

“She did actually.” Rose faced him, frowning. “Before you knocked, she announced you’d arrived. Was she just guessing? Or maybe she heard you coming?”

His brows creased. “Zoe, can you…can you feel me when you can’t see me?”

“Yup.” She went back to eating her peanut butter and jelly, grinning around a mouthful of mushed up sandwich.

“Chew with your mouth closed,” Rose said absently. To Vlad, she said, “What does that mean? She ‘feels’ you?”

He was still staring at Zoe. “My…family—” he met Rose’s gaze, “—they can sense each other, even at a distance. I can always tell when another one of my people is around.”

She appreciated his careful avoidance of words like tiger shifters in front of Zoe. “So you can feel Zoe like that?” she asked quietly, hoping Zoe wouldn’t hear—an unrealistic hope. Fortunately, Zoe hadn’t seemed to pick up the implications of the comment as she’d turned her attention to the chips on Rose’s plate.

Vlad shook his head. “I can’t sense her. Which is…odd.”

“Good odd or bad odd?”

“Given my brothers…good odd.” He paused and gave her a look.

Rose nodded her understanding. At least she thought she understood. If tiger shifters were real, and they could sense each other, the fact that they couldn’t sense Zoe meant his brothers had less reason to believe she was Vlad’s daughter. If she wasn’t his, they had no reason to wish her harm.

“But what’s stranger than that I can’t feel her is that she
can
feel me,” Vlad continued. “I wonder if Nila can do that?”

“You said your sister is…not like…” Rose blew out a breath. This conversation was impossible with Zoe sitting right there, listening to every word they said. And Rose knew her daughter would understand most of this—at least as much as her three-year-old brain could. What she didn’t understand, she’d ask about.

“She’s not,” Vlad said, answering her unspoken question. “But in some ways she is, so there might be similarities.”

“You want some?” Zoe asked Vlad, holding out a handful of crumbled potato chips.

Vlad grinned and shook his head. “Thank you. I had lunch already.”

“Your tummy grumbled,” Zoe said.

“Did it? Well, maybe I didn’t eat enough. May I sit down with you?”