Panther's Passion Read online

  Stella was hesitantly, tentatively, starting to hope so too.

  ***

  Nate

  Nate followed Stella—the client—Ms. Davidson—into the front room.

  He had to work out what to call her. Ordinarily he’d call the person he was protecting by their title. But if he’d just met Ken’s sister-in-law socially, he’d have called her by her first name.

  And Stella was just there, ringing through his mind like a bell, ready to be used.

  She sat on a couch, light and graceful. He’d been struck already by how like a dancer she moved, and how the long fall of her hair and the flowy skirt she wore enhanced the effect.

  She probably did it on purpose, to catch people’s attention. Right? Except right now, her shoulders were tight with anxiety and she kept looking over her shoulder, checking the door, glancing at the stairs where her daughter had disappeared. She didn’t seem interested in catching anyone’s attention right now.

  With effort, Nate dragged his brain back on track. He wasn’t usually this distractible. “Ms. Davidson—”

  “Oh, Stella, please!” she interrupted immediately. “Calling me Ms. Davidson makes me feel like I’m as old and staid as my sister.”

  Nate noted her phrasing. Usually people used parents in that sort of protest, not siblings. “Stella, then.” The name came out a little too slowly, felt too much like he was caressing it with his voice.

  Jesus, he needed to pull himself together. “Stella, first I want you to understand that I’m committed to keeping you and your daughter safe. Ken asked me to come assess the situation, and I can tell you just from what I saw outside that it’ll be a good idea for me to stick around for a little while, get an idea of how this guy works, see if we can’t get him to leave you alone.”

  “Thank you.” Stella’s hands were twisting in her lap. Nate was struck by the—insane—urge to go sit next to her on the couch and take those hands in his.

  Client, he reminded himself. Client, client. Usually he didn’t think twice about making a move on a pretty woman, but that was in social situations. He’d never had to remind himself to be appropriately professional before.

  “Now, why don’t you tell me about your history with this man? The more information I have, the better I can do my job.” He kept his voice warm and calm. He wanted her to feel safe talking about something that might be difficult to remember.

  “Well, Todd and I were in a relationship,” Stella said first. “I guess that was stupid. Dating someone like that.”

  “This sort of behavior often doesn’t start full-blast,” Nate objected gently. “I’m sure he seemed like a good choice at first.”

  She stared at her hands. “He did. He was fun, and thoughtful, and he paid a lot of attention to me. He didn’t mind that I had a daughter, although I guess he never really engaged with Eva that much. He was a shifter, so that was nice—we didn’t have to hide that part of our lives from him.”

  Ken must have told her that Nate was a shifter, too. He wondered what type of animal Stella and Eva were. Right now, Stella reminded him of some kind of rare bird, beautiful and delicate, but looks didn’t always communicate shifter type very well.

  Stella was tensing up again, her shoulders rising, her hands clenching. “We were living with him for a while,” she said in a low voice. “My lease was up and I didn’t—I didn’t have very much money. And I thought it would be good.”

  “But?” Nate kept his voice as quiet and encouraging as he possibly could. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to hear the next part, but it was his job to know.

  And whatever it was, Stella had had to live through it.

  “His pack kept coming over,” Stella said quietly. “They were—rowdy, and they got into fights with each other sometimes, and it was pretty clear that they were into some illegal things. None of them held down regular jobs or anything, but they always seemed to have money. And they’d harass me, sometimes, when Todd wasn’t around. And then even sometimes when he was, and he’d kind of—protest a little bit, but never enough to make anyone stop.”

  She was silent for a long minute. Nate prompted, “And then?”

  “And then they started making comments about Eva,” Stella said, her voice almost silent. “How she was growing up. And I knew I had to get out of there. There was one night—they were drinking, and I didn’t know what they were going to do. My car was in the shop, and I’d been waiting to get it fixed before I left, but it wasn’t going to be soon enough. So I called Lynn. And she and Ken came to get us, and—well, the pack didn’t want us to leave.” She blinked rapidly.

  Nate tried to picture it: a woman alone with her daughter, no indication of any self-defense skills, in a house with...how many men? And all of them shifters. “It sounds terrifying,” he said softly.

  Stella nodded, blinking rapidly. She took a careful breath, though, and no tears appeared; her voice was stronger when she said, “Ken got into a fight with them, and it was over so fast. They had no idea what hit them. But Todd wasn’t...he wasn’t interested in fighting, he just didn’t want me to leave. But Ken was there, so it was okay. We got out. The pack was embarrassed, though, so they tried to show up and get revenge—but Ken called in Colonel Hanes and his mate.”

  “Colonel Hanes,” Nate said, startled. “He’s living here, too?”

  Stella nodded. “You didn’t know? I guess he’s probably not on Facebook or anything.”

  Nate had to chuckle a little at the thought of Colonel Wilson Hanes on Facebook. “Nope. Ken keeps in touch when he’s at a computer, but the Colonel’s pretty reticent.”

  “Well, he found his mate here, at a wedding earlier this year.”

  Nate had been at that wedding. Come to think of it, he remembered the Colonel talking to that pretty woman he’d met—mother of one of Cal’s pack, he thought. Mavis? That had been her name. The Colonel had seemed pretty eager to keep her away from a bunch of single retired Marines, at that. “Well, I’ll be.” He shook his head, then forced his attention back to the matter at hand. Again. “So he and his mate helped you hold off Todd’s pack.”

  Stella nodded. “When they saw that Colonel Hanes and Mavis were snow leopards, they were too worried to come back. There’s a big snow leopard pack in Glacier Park.”

  “Cal’s pack,” Nate clarified.

  Stella nodded. “I—don’t know them very well. I mean, Mavis’ daughter Nina works with Lynn, and I’ve met her a couple of times, she’s very nice. And the pack seems really close. Colonel Hanes suggested to me once that maybe we should try to bring them in and help if Todd really became a problem, but...”

  “But?” Nate pressed.

  “They’ve all got demanding jobs, and a couple have little babies too,” Stella said. “And I didn’t know when this would end. I wasn’t about to make them set up some kind of...free bodyguarding service for me. And since Ken knew a professional, that seemed best.” She bit her lip. “Although Ken said you wouldn’t let us pay you. That seems wrong.”

  “Wrong would be charging my friend for doing me a favor by letting me escape the pile of paperwork in my office,” Nate said, purposefully keeping his tone light. “I’m happy to be here.”

  “Well—thank you, anyway,” Stella said. “If there’s anything I can do to help you out in return, please tell me.”

  “I will,” Nate promised, although in reality he’d probably chew his own arm off before letting a distressed single mother put herself out to help him with anything. “Back to Todd, now. What happened next?”

  “Well, I thought he might be gone for good after we scared his pack off,” Stella said. “But a month ago or so, he started just...showing up in town. At first, he’d have an excuse for why he was there, but eventually he’d just come into my work and sit and watch me.” She shivered.

  Nate was struck once again by the urge to go sit by her on the couch. He quashed it ruthlessly. Professionalism. “What do you do?”

  “I’m a waitress at Oliver’s. The
local diner.”

  There was a certain dejection to how she said it that made Nate think that she wasn’t happy with her job. But that wasn’t his business, surely.

  “So there’s nothing to stop him coming in and sitting down.”

  Stella shook her head. “He’ll just get a cup of coffee and sit for hours. The other servers are good about never making me take his table, but he’s just there, watching...and then he’ll follow me out when my shift changes, say all these things to me...”

  “What sort of things?”

  She wrapped her arms around herself. “That we’re meant to be together, that he’s never going to give up, that he can’t stand the idea of being without me. He hasn’t made any threats or done anything violent, but...”

  “You’re right to be worried,” Nate said, keeping his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “I don’t want to frighten you, and maybe this isn’t the case with Todd, but these situations can escalate, and it’s much better to call for help now, before anything happens. This way we can make sure nothing does.”

  Stella nodded, looking miserable. She looked up from her hands, meeting his eyes—maybe for the first time in the conversation? Nate was struck immediately by their clear golden-topaz color. He’d never seen anything like it. “How do we do that?”

  How do we—of course, the job. “For now, we watch and wait. This kind of stalker can be infuriating, sometimes, because he avoids direct confrontation and he hasn’t done anything illegal. But from what I saw outside, he seems careless. He’ll slip up eventually and do something we can put him away for.”

  “Like what?” Stella asked.

  She was worried about what might happen. “Breaking and entering, violence, something like that,” Nate said quietly. “Listen to me, Stella.”

  Finally, finally, he gave into his instincts and stood, crossing the room to sit on the couch with her. She turned toward him immediately, and when he reached for her hands, she gave them to him right away.

  She was trusting, he thought. Open and honest, ready to give up the whole, hard story without any protest. Reaching out her hands without any hesitation.

  He was going to protect that trust. Keep it safe and intact, so that she wouldn’t have to worry about giving it away in the future.

  “No matter what Todd does, or threatens to do, I’m going to be right here,” he said, looking her straight in those beautiful topaz eyes. “You don’t have to worry about what he might do.” He smiled. “I can promise you that that man is no match for me.”

  She smiled back, tentative but with that same trusting beauty. “I can believe that.”

  “Good. Believe it.” He squeezed her hands once, then reluctantly let go. “Now, I’ll sleep down here tonight—this couch looks comfy enough.”

  Her eyes widened. “You shouldn’t—we have a guest room—well, it’s my grandmother’s old room, and we never actually have guests, but it’s a nice room with a real bed...”

  Nate shook his head firmly. “I’d rather be down here on the ground floor in case anything happens. That’s the only staircase, right?” He nodded in the direction of the one Eva had gone up.

  “It is, but...”

  “But I’d rather be here, where I can put myself between an intruder and the rest of the house, than upstairs where I’d be too far removed. Okay?”

  Stella bit her lip, but nodded. “All right. But let me show you the bathrooms and the kitchen and so on—please do make yourself at home.”

  She led him on a quick tour, getting him blankets and pillows for the couch in the process, and he built a careful mental map of the house in his mind. It wasn’t secure at all, of course, because there was usually no reason for a residential home to be an intruder-proof fortress. But fortunately all the bedrooms were upstairs, and from what he’d seen of the outside, there wasn’t an easy way to scale the walls.

  Unless someone were a shifter that could fly or climb. But Todd was a wolf, so that wasn’t likely to be a problem.

  When he’d seen the whole place, he gave Stella a smile. “Don’t let me get in the way of your evening,” he said. “I’ll set myself up downstairs and stay out of your hair.”

  Stella started to protest, then visibly stopped herself. “Of course,” she said. “You want to do your job.”

  That wasn’t what Nate had meant at all—he wanted Stella to feel free to go about her life, get ready for bed or talk to her daughter or whatever she wanted, without worrying about hostessing. But before he could correct her, she went on.

  “I’m not usually this—” Her hands fluttered. “I feel like I can’t make any decisions. Normally I’m more capable, I promise.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Nate said quietly. “You’re scared. And that’s something that affects your brain. All of the fight-or-flight chemicals are in overdrive right now, and that makes it hard to pull back and do any complex thinking. It happens to everybody—doesn’t matter if they’re a little kid or a big strong man.”

  That last made her smile. “Like you?”

  “Like me,” he confirmed. “I have experience with situations like this, and tools to deal with them. But if it was something else, something I was totally unfamiliar with, I’d be scared too, and I’d know that I wasn’t going to be thinking clearly. It’s okay.”

  Stella took a deep breath, which Nate could have told her was one of the best techniques for dealing with fear anyway, and said, “Okay. That makes sense.”

  “Go try to relax,” he said gently. “I’ll be here.”

  She nodded, hesitated, and then turned and went upstairs. His eyes were caught, once again, by how gracefully she moved.

  Then he shook himself and went to go make up the couch.

  He heard a car pull up as he was finishing, and tensed—but then relaxed as he recognized Ken’s voice. From the tone, he was making a joke. A woman’s low laughter followed, and then they were opening the front door and coming inside.

  Nate went to meet them. The sight of Ken,grinning and pulling him in for a back-slapping hug, was a surprising hit of warmth. Nate had only seen him in person the once in the last few years, at Cal’s wedding, and he’d already forgotten how much Ken’s cheerful, energetic presence could improve the mood in a room.

  When Ken let him go, he turned to the woman with him, holding out his hand. “Nate Sanders,” he said.

  Ken’s mate was short and stocky, with a strong handshake and a no-nonsense tone to her voice. “Good to meet you.”

  She didn’t resemble Stella as much as Nate might have expected, except in the eyes—they had that same striking topaz color. But Lynn’s were sharp and thoughtful, rather than Stella’s open, vulnerable look. This was a woman to respect, Nate thought. She’d be more than a match for Ken, he was sure.

  “Thanks for coming out,” Ken told him. “I really appreciate it.”

  Nate waved a hand. “You're doing me a favor. I'm really hurting for fieldwork these days, now that I'm stuck as management.”

  Ken grinned. “What a hard life. Being your own boss, running a successful company, having all these people working for you...it's a modern tragedy.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Nate laughed. “But still, doing some actual protection work is a good break. I've got myself set up down here for tonight, and tomorrow we can go over what other security measures we might want to take with the house.”

  Lynn frowned. “You mean like alarms and so on?”

  “That, although I'm particularly interested in getting some cameras set up. What we really want is to get this guy removed from the picture, and the easiest way to do that is prove that he's done something he can be arrested for. Then he won't be our problem any longer. And that'll be easier if we can collect evidence, which means video.”

  Ken nodded. “Makes sense.”

  “All right,” Lynn said, a bit reluctantly. “I hate the idea of turning my grandmother's home into some kind of...fortress.”

  Nate smiled internally at the echoing of his earlier tho
ughts, but kept his expression serious. “The equipment will be minimal, I promise. And we can make the setup temporary. No need for any renovations or anything like that.”

  Lynn nodded. “If it's going to keep Stella safe, we should do it.” She glanced around. “Where is Stella?”

  “I sent her upstairs to get some rest,” Nate said. “She and Eva were both kind of freaked out after seeing Todd earlier.”

  Lynn's eyebrows rose. “And she listened?”

  Nate frowned. “Sure. She was tired and scared. I think she's reassured to know there'll be someone down here watching out for everyone.”

  Lynn shook her head, eyebrows still up. “I'm impressed she listened to you. I keep trying to get her to agree to let me go with her places, call the Colonel or Cal or someone, and she always insists she's totally fine, nothing's wrong. It was an uphill battle just to get her to agree to call you.”

  That was...interesting. Nate hadn't gotten the impression of stubbornness at all. The way Stella had acted with him, frightened but trusting, was totally different.

  “Maybe she's just too scared,” Ken said quietly, squeezing Lynn's shoulder.

  Lynn closed her eyes. “Yeah. I wish I could've taken care of this for her.”

  Nate was surprised at how touched he felt, seeing this example of a protective big sister. He was an only child, and he'd never thought too hard about what it might be like to have an older sibling.

  Ken nudged her. “Yeah, but if you took care of it for her, then she'd have to pretend to resent you for it, and you'd have to pretend that she should've been able to handle it herself, and...”

  Lynn punched him in the arm, half-laughing. “Stop it. We're getting better.”

  “You are. But you gotta admit I'm a little bit right.”

  Nate watched the exchange, fascinated. This sibling relationship clearly had a complicated history, and he found himself weirdly curious about Lynn and Stella’s past.

  “Fine, you're right,” Lynn grumbled. “Let's leave Nate to go to sleep.”

  Ken leaned in and kissed her temple. “That's code for ‘get your butt upstairs now,’” he confided to Nate.