Jaguar's Joy Read online

  Diane still wasn’t saying anything, but Misty decided she’d better quit while she felt good about what she’d been saying. She smiled at Diane, then turned and went to find Ty.

  “Hey,” he said, turning away from where he’d been chatting with Carlos. “What’s up? Everything okay?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know, I just—I had the sense that something might be wrong.” He frowned. “It’s strange, now that I think about it. I guess I just knew that you were...agitated, somehow.”

  Huh. This mates thing was more powerful than she’d realized.

  “I was,” she said, “but it was just a difficult conversation, nothing dangerous.” She smiled up at him. “I did my best to channel you.”

  That broad smile. She’d never get tired of seeing it. “Did it help?”

  “It really did.”

  “Good.” He kissed the top of her head. “It’s good to hear that I can help you even when I’m not there.”

  “I’m grateful.” Misty looked around. “Now, are we washing some windows or what?”

  The morning passed with a pleasant sense of hard work and camaraderie. Misty enjoyed working alongside people she didn’t see very often. It made her think about how much of her perspective on her own community was colored by mostly interacting with people when there was a problem of some kind. It was nice to get out and be involved in a project that was all positive, no danger or lawbreaking involved at all.

  Everyone broke for pizza at lunch. Misty suspected that some of the volunteers had come because they couldn’t afford to turn down free food, so she made sure to take only a single slice, leaving as much as possible for other people. Ty, she noticed, did the same.

  “This is a good precedent,” Ty murmured to her, when she shared the observation. “If people start to think about this place as somewhere where they can get food if they need it, but also where they can feel useful, that’ll be a huge benefit. There’s lots of people who hate the idea of accepting charity, but will be happy to take food if it’s in exchange for their own labor.”

  Misty nodded. “There are a lot people up here who are poor but proud. I know Pauline struggled with getting Drew’s mom to accept her help, and she was even family. No one wants to admit that they can’t take care of themselves and their families.”

  “No,” Ty sighed. “But we can make a difference.”

  Misty smiled, thinking about the future.

  Then she had to wonder when the last time was that she’d felt so optimistic. Usually, it seemed like she was just treading water, getting ahead of the inevitable tide of criminal behavior. Her father had always insisted things were getting worse, that there wasn’t enough funding or police personnel to take care of it all, keep everyone in line.

  Maybe he’d been focusing his efforts on the wrong side of the equation. Stopping criminals after they broke the law, rather than before.

  “Hey,” Ty said in her ear. “After we’re done here, do you want to go to dinner with me?”

  She pulled back and smiled up at him. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

  “Want to be sure about it this time?” he asked, eyes sparkling.

  “It pays to confirm these things,” she said seriously.

  “Well, let me confirm: yes, I’m asking you out on a date. Are you interested?”

  Misty pretended to think. Ty pretended to look offended. She started to laugh.

  “I never joked around like this before I met you,” she said, wondering.

  “I love hearing you laugh,” he said. “You should have laughter in your life every single day.”

  That was something Misty never would’ve said she wanted. But hearing it from Ty, with his bright eyes and his big smile, she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than for him to keep making her laugh.

  ***

  Ty

  After a day spent in honest labor—probably not what Sam had meant by vacation, but Ty found it refreshing as all get-out, much more than lying around all day—they went back to Oliver’s.

  Carlos had recommended some fancy tourist place over nearer the Park, but Ty was pretty sure Misty wasn’t a fancy-restaurant kind of a woman. Plus, he wasn’t a fancy-restaurant kind of guy. Most of the restaurants he’d patronized over the last fifteen years or so had been drive-thrus on his way from one appointment to another, or kid-friendly places with plastic booths and crayon placemats.

  Besides, he’d found that he liked Oliver’s. With its dark wood, comfortable booths, and local crowd, it had a homey feel to it that he appreciated. And he certainly wasn’t complaining about the food.

  Or the company. Misty was gorgeous in his shirt, with wisps of hair escaping her bun and framing her beautiful face. He couldn’t believe he got to look at that face every day for the rest of his life.

  “Let’s split some appetizers,” Misty suggested, perusing the menu, not noticing his heartfelt appreciation of her stunning beauty. “My treat tonight, by the way.”

  It took a second for him to hear what she’d said. “Wait a second, I never agreed to that,” Ty objected. “Remember what I told you about my mom.”

  “I’m an independent, modern woman,” Misty said dryly. “I can treat if I want to.”

  Hard to argue with that logic. Still. “It feels wrong.”

  “Get used to it,” she said without sympathy, looking over the menu. “Besides, if we’re mates and we’re going to be together for the rest of our lives, all of my money is your money, anyway.”

  “Then it shouldn’t matter if I pay.”

  “Then it shouldn’t matter if I pay.” Dark eyes locked with his, and Ty found himself not even wanting to win, not really.

  “All right,” he sighed. “Since apparently I’m going to be out of a job soon, anyway. I’ll have to become your kept man.”

  Misty snorted. “There’s an idea I can’t quite get my head around. Have you ever had a lazy day in your life?”

  Ty tried to remember. “Maybe when I was a kid. Although if that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black, I don’t know what is.”

  Misty opened a hand, acknowledging the fair point. “Fine, so we’re both workaholics. What’s your new workaholicism going to look like, up here?” She frowned. “We don’t have as many social workers as we need, but I think that’s more of a funding thing than anything else.”

  “I was talking to Carlos about this today,” Ty said comfortably. “He’s not just paying for the community center out of his private bank account—he’s setting up a community fund, to which anyone can contribute. That fund will provide for the center’s activities, equipment, and staff. I’m going to be one of the staff.”

  Misty’s mouth opened in understanding. “So you can be attached to it permanently! That’s wonderful.”

  Ty nodded. “And I can make my own hours, work with Carlos and Pauline to lay out what a good set of responsibilities would be—it’ll be ideal, really.” He grinned. “Carlos asked if it was weird that he was going to be my boss.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “That he wasn’t my boss, the local community was my boss, and if he ever tried to pretend otherwise, he’d learn pretty fast that he was wrong. He liked that answer.”

  “Good.”

  “There’s going to be a set of people to oversee the fund distribution and so on—Carlos really knows what he’s doing with the finances, which is great because I don’t think anyone else does.”

  “I sure don’t,” Misty said. “An excess of money hasn’t been the biggest problem around here.”

  “Things seem to be turning around,” Ty said thoughtfully. “I see some little businesses around. There was a sign advertising a local shopping district—I heard this one tourist woman talking about how cute everything was.”

  Misty smiled. “That’s partially thanks to Mavis, Colonel Hanes’ mate. She used to be a financial advisor to small businesses in the city, and when she moved here to be with her daughter, Nina, she
shifted her focuses to helping out the local community. She’s really started to turn the place around.”

  Ty had to smile to himself. “Looks like I got lucky. My sister’s going to be jealous of me, moving out of the big city to somewhere as gorgeous and up-and-coming as this.”

  Misty shook her head, the smile lingering on her lips. “No, we’re the ones who got lucky, to have you here with us.”

  Ty had to reach across the table and take her hand, and they smiled at each other like dumb teenagers in love until the waitress arrived. He wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  ***

  Misty

  Ty mentioning his sister reminded Misty of something that she’d been meaning to ask him.

  “I hardly know anything about your family,” she said as they were eating their appetizers. “What’s your sister’s name? Where did you two grow up?”

  Ty blinked, looking surprised. “I suppose I haven’t talked about her much, have I. Too focused on what’s been happening in front of me.” He gave her another warm look.

  Misty blushed—she’d blushed more in the last two days than she had in the last ten years—but wasn’t about to be distracted. “Tell me about her,” she pressed.

  “Iris,” Ty said. “Her name’s Iris, and she’s my older sister by five years. She got married before I left for the Marines, real young—she and Steve are mates, they dated through high school, real sweet story. When I left she had Acacia, and Leo on the way, and then by the time I got back there were two more, and she ended up with six overall.”

  Misty tried to imagine that. Six children. There were women around here who had that many, and it had always seemed like an impossible task to Misty, who’d never had anything more than a houseplant to care for.

  Well, a houseplant and a town full of lawbreakers. The houseplants usually lost that battle—she wondered suddenly, and guiltily, if there were any desiccated husks hanging around her house right now. Ty was probably going to see the inside of the place at some point, and she didn’t want him to think—

  —what, that she was a workaholic who was never home to water her plants? He knows that already, she reminded herself.

  And he was okay with it. That was another thing that had always made her think she was totally unsuitable to date—her work schedule was impossible and she had no domestic skills or ability to cook whatsoever.

  But Ty clearly wasn’t looking for a domestic woman—a natural-born mom like Pauline was. He liked that she was out in the field, protecting the town. And that was something to treasure.

  “Anyway,” Ty was saying, “even with a devoted husband, it was really hard for her. Steve worked long hours to make enough to support them all, and sometimes he had to travel for work, and Iris was at her wits’ end half the time. So when I got back, while I was in school to become a social worker, I practically moved in with them. I’d write papers with a baby on my chest, take study breaks and play with the kids, cook dinner for everyone to give Iris a break.”

  “Wow,” Misty said. “That’s—really impressive.”

  Ty shrugged. “Everyone is always surprised that I’d do something like that, but they’re my family. Of course I wanted to help Iris and the kids.” He grinned. “And I play a mean game of tag, if you recall.”

  Misty remembered that breathless chase through the woods. “Did you shift with them?” she asked, imagining it with six baby jaguars. “Are they all shifters?”

  Ty nodded proudly. “Every last one. And I brought each of them up to the mountains, taught them how to hide from humans if they were about, to run and jump and hunt if they had to. Uncle Ty’s Wilderness School, they all called it.”

  “It sounds like the sort of thing my father used to do with me, when I was a kid,” Misty said wistfully. “I can’t tell you how valuable it was. Both the education, and the time I spent with him.”

  Ty smiled. “It was great. I wouldn’t trade any of the time I spent with them for the world.” He took a big breath. “But, now they’re all up and out of the house—even the youngest one, Rayanne, just went off to college this fall. And so I’ve been at loose ends. Tried to throw myself into my work, but...” He spread his hands. “You saw how that ended up.”

  “You must miss them,” Misty said sympathetically.

  Ty nodded. “I do, but I’m glad they’re all out there living good lives. I wouldn’t have wanted any one of them to cut off their dreams and stay home just to spend time with old Uncle Ty.” He smiled, looking thoughtful. “And now it really is like I’ve entered a totally new phase of my life. One that’ll be just as good as the last, if not better.”

  That warm look again. He wasn’t even smiling, just...using all the same muscles as a smile would. Misty thought she might like that look even better than the big grin. If that were possible.

  But Misty was still thinking about that enormous family, the big city...”Are you sure you’re going to be happy up here? It’ll be much lonelier than LA. And—I don’t want children of my own. I never have. We wouldn’t have a big family like your sister’s.”

  Ty squeezed her hand. “LA can be lonelier than you can believe. There’s so many people that no one can afford to care about all of them, and it’s easy to get lost in the anonymity. I saw it every day—people slip through the cracks. Up here, it’s small enough that we can actually stop everyone from slipping through the cracks. We can have the biggest family ever: the whole community. We can watch Pauline’s kids grow up, and Cal’s baby, and I can be Uncle Ty forever.”

  He grinned. “Actually, now that I say that, it sounds amazing. I was really missing being Uncle Ty, and I knew it wasn’t going to be the same even when Iris’ kids start having kids of their own. But now I don’t have to lose that, after all.”

  Misty shook her head, wondering. “I really admire how optimistic you are. I’ve never been able to be as cheerful as that.”

  “It takes work,” he said, sobering for a moment. “It doesn’t always come naturally. But when I’m faced with a challenging situation, I have a choice: I can look at it negatively, and think about all the ways it could go wrong, or I can look at it positively, and think about all the ways it could be beneficial. And things always turn out better when I do the second one.”

  “That makes a lot of sense.” Misty bit her lip. “I really admired my father,” she said after a moment. “I used to think that he had all the answers—that I all I had to do was keep living out his vision, keep doing everything exactly as he’d have done it, and I’d have it all figured out. But I’m starting to think that his perspective might have been...incomplete.”

  Ty was watching her, looking thoughtful. “Everyone’s perspective is incomplete. You just have to decide which pieces work best for you.”

  Misty smiled at him. “I’m glad I have your pieces now. They’re working for me better than I ever would have imagined.”

  “I feel the same,” he said.

  Misty wrinkled her nose. “Really?” She tried to think what she was bringing to the table, exactly. She had a strong work ethic, a good sense of community responsibility, and a respectable amount of courage—but Ty already had all of those things, and had had them back in LA, long before they met.

  “Really,” he said. “Just in the last couple of days, I’ve been so inspired by how grounded you are. How much you know what you want and where you belong, without depending on anyone else around you to say what that should be. All of my life, I’ve responded to the needs of others. And while I think that’s admirable to an extent, it can’t carry you through everything. When the others aren’t there, who are you?”

  He picked up her hand and kissed it. “You know who you are, and you choose for yourself, based on your own values. I love that about you.”

  Great. Blush number eighty-seven, right on cue. “Well,” Misty said, trying to get herself together a bit, “it’s good that we can help each other, then. I—I believe in always working to be better.”

  “That’s exact
ly what I mean.” Ty ran his thumb over her knuckles. “I never thought I’d have a mate, and I’m so glad to experience that connection—but even more, Misty, I’m so glad that it’s with you. I couldn’t have asked for a better woman to be my mate.”

  “I couldn’t have asked for a better man,” Misty whispered.

  “Good.” He grinned. “I’m really looking forward to the rest of my life, now. I can’t wait for all the new undiscovered heights of happiness we’ll be experiencing.”

  Misty had to laugh.

  ***

  After dinner, they went back to Misty’s place.

  “It’s kind of dusty,” she said, a little shamefaced. “I’m not here very often.”

  “No shame,” Ty said easily. “You should see my apartment in Los Angeles. With the amount of time I spend at work and the amount of time I’ve always spent at my sister’s place, it’s always been kind of a disaster.”

  “Well, I guess neither of us are domestic goddesses,” Misty said, rueful. She flicked the lights on and led Ty into her little house, past the spartan furniture. “Something to drink?”

  Ty shook his head. “Is this the house where you grew up?”

  Misty nodded, looking around. “I inherited my sense of interior design from my father,” she said dryly.

  Ty chuckled. “Maybe we could—” He stopped.

  “What?” Misty asked.

  “I just realized that I was picturing our life here together,” Ty said wonderingly. “Do you want me to live here?”

  Misty blinked. “I—I don’t know. Do you want to live here?” She looked at the place with new eyes. “It’s not very big.”

  “I might take up a lot of space personally, but I don’t have that much stuff,” Ty said. “I’d fit. You wouldn’t mind me here, in your own house? We could get a new place if you’d rather start fresh.”

  Misty thought about Ty’s big presence filling the empty rooms, she and Ty laughing over how nobody ever swept the floors or hung pictures. She and Ty sitting on the porch when they got older, the porch her father had finally started sitting on, once he slowed down too much to be constantly running around.