A Hollywood Shifters' Christmas: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance Read online

  And Jan began to sing. Her voice was exquisite, so perfectly projected by the sound shell into the balmy afternoon air that the entire audience fell into a listening stillness, a different sort of hush from the usual polite boredom of most events like this.

  The aria was over in three minutes—Mindy could have listened forever—and as she swallowed the lump in her throat, heady with emotion, a woman stepped up from the front row. Mindy realized she must be a rabbi from her clothes and the kippa on her head, but being a veteran of so many weddings, Mindy recognized as soon as the woman began to speak that this was not the regular Jewish ceremony.

  It was something the two of them had written, but it was drawn from the old rituals, a blend of traditions.

  Jan’s voice echoed, steady and strong: “ . . . to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

  Mindy’s throat clogged. Her eyes stung. She discovered she was holding Dennis’s hand tightly, and made a conscious effort to loosen her grip.

  This wedding was utterly unlike all those she had attended. Oh yes, the setting was beautiful as only money could afford—the flower bowers alone would have cost quite a bit, even using blooms from the extensive gardens.

  But no one in that audience was looking at the decorations, or watching one another—there was no one-upmanship, and except for Jan’s mother (who was now dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, her pout apparently forgotten), no angry relations, bitter exes, or rivals smirking with cold, judging eyes.

  Mindy was totally unused to this scenario.

  JP made his vows, the rabbi made it official, and it was over. Simple, tasteful, heartfelt. Elegant. So why did Mindy want to cry?

  Chapter Seven

  For Jan, the wedding they had prepared for so long passed in the blink of an eye.

  The aria went beautifully. JP’s smile over the piano meant more than anything to her, and she made a vow to herself that, no matter how busy they got, they were going to continue to make music together.

  After, as the guests filed onto the terrace where the caterers waited for the signal to serve the buffet, she and JP posed for only two formal pictures. She had said she wanted natural shots, with people being themselves, and not standing stiffly, leering with fake smiles at the camera.

  Then it was time to go around for the greet-and-smile, which JP handled with his usual grace. Mrs. LaFleur quietly oversaw the smooth operation of the party from a distance as Mick offered the wedding toast. “All our lives, JP has never been very far away from music, and I hoped if he ever got married, it would be to someone who loves it as much as she loves him. We can all see how happy they are—here’s to a lifetime of it for JP and Jan!”

  “Hear hear!”

  Jan raised her glass of ginger ale—if the baby really took, she might as well begin the baby diet now—and everybody drank.

  Then it was Dennis’s turn. “Mick stole my lines—as usual. Trust a filmmaker for that.” He paused as people chuckled. “Here’s to a beautiful day, a beautiful ceremony, and two people who deserve beautiful lives. Jan and JP!”

  Another cheer, another drink, and JP’s dad stood up. “I trust you’ll excuse me if I sound incoherent. I’ve been in the sky for the last fourteen hours—on a commercial flight.”

  Some smothered laughter met that, and Jan thought of the secret shifters in town, who understood the real meaning.

  “I have not yet had a chance to get to know my new daughter, but I look forward to that opportunity. I just want to say I am proud of them both. JP: well done, son. Jan: welcome to the family. Here’s to you both!”

  A third cheer, Mrs. LaFleur signaled the caterers to start the trays around, and people turned to their own conversations.

  Leaving Jan to her personal duties. She went to her mother’s table first, and was relieved to be greeted with a smile, even from the “stepdad” who had never given a damn about her. She chatted to them, and left her mother getting tipsy on the champagne, and bragging to a couple of local people about Jan’s singing awards in high school—as if she’d encouraged them instead of resenting them as reminders of her dad. Who hadn’t even shown up.

  But, Jan thought as she slowly made her rounds, determined to talk to every person who had come, she had a new family now. She would never turn her back on her mother, but she had learned long ago not to depend on her. Now she did have people to depend on.

  After a while her back began to ache, and her beautiful shoes to pinch unmercifully at her feet. She began to wonder if Cinderella’s glass slipper had been invented by a bride with aching toes.

  That thought sent her looking for Shelley. People were beginning to leave as the shadows got long, and a cold breeze rose. It was time for phase two of her wedding plan: getting those thank you notes done and out the door, because she knew she would not want to come back to them after her honeymoon.

  She crossed the terrace, scanning across all the tall people for Shelley. JP stood with Mick and Dennis, Shelley leaning against Mick, her fingers absently rubbing over her stomach as she sipped at her ginger ale.

  Mindy stood near Dennis, wearing the polite smile people get when others are sharing reminiscences and you weren’t there. Jan recognized it at once. She’d been the outsider all through high school, until she met Shelley her first year of college.

  Mindy was just like Jan remembered when first meeting her, bright and friendly, with those soulful brown eyes. She didn’t act the least bit like the rich snobs who had been so annoying at UCLA. She hadn’t overdressed to impress, or underdressed to insult—she looked pretty in a simple blue dress that flattered her full figure.

  On impulse she walked up to her and said, “Want to get out of those shoes?”

  Mindy turned her way, her expression going from that polite, fixed smile to a hint of relief. “Oh, would I.”

  Jan caught Shelley’s eye and beckoned. Shelley betrayed equal relief.

  The three women walked inside, and Jan led the way to the room that was now her office. There, she stepped out of her exquisite but painful heels as she said, “Go right ahead and de-shoe, if you want.”

  Shelley’s shoes were sensible, low heels, but she usually wore boots, and so she gave a sigh as she kicked off hers and dropped into one of the waiting chairs.

  “Okay,” Jan said to Shelley. “You know what comes next.” And to Mindy, “You can relax if you want, or cheer or boo or just chat. Don’t feel obliged to move a muscle. I roped Shelley a long time ago into helping me deal with these.” She nodded at the pile of wrapped wedding presents in the corner. “I knew some would ignore the NO GIFTS part. So I made a master plan.”

  She sat down at her desk, uncapped the fountain pen, opened the box of cards, and nodded to Shelley. “Which do you want, list duty or present opening duty?”

  “I’d be glad to help,” Mindy said. “Just tell me what to do.”

  “I’ll take presents,” Shelley said. “I’m good at ripping and tearing. Mindy, if you want to write down names and what it is, in case we get ahead of Jan, that would be great.”

  Mindy said, “Sure,” and Jan handed her a pencil and legal pad.

  Shelley reached for the first present. “Your mom.”

  “Set that aside,” Jan said. “It will be a quilt, and I know what to write to my mom. Next?”

  Shelley put the quilt box to one side, and reached for a long, rectangular fancy box. “Obviously booze of some sort . . . and the card looks like something corporate.” And sure enough, she read off the name of a record company with which JP did business.

  “Okay, book, how do you thank a business associate for booze for a wedding?” Jan said, opening the top one of the two etiquette books, and turning to Thank You Notes, Weddings.

  Then she looked up, appalled. “These examples are awful. I can’t write any of these. They sound like Robot Wives from 1952.” She tossed the book aside, and opened the second one, which wa
s specifically about wedding etiquette.

  She flipped to the end, where Thank You Notes had a chapter, as she muttered, “I knew I should have looked at these, but the book store lady promised they were perfect. . . . Oh God. This one is even worse. ‘We look forward to drinking this in honor of you. Thank you for traveling all this way.’ Except they weren’t there, and does anyone drink in honor of a corporation? I don’t think so. Crap!” Jan slammed the book.

  Then, to her surprise, Mindy cleared her throat, then said, “Um, may I make an offer here?”

  Shelley glanced up from hunting among the boxes, and Jan said, “Offer?”

  Mindy looked at them both, her frizzy hair fluffing around her face as she picked up the booze box. “It’s just that I’ve been to so many family weddings—including repeats—that I know all the ins and outs of competition gifts, corporate product gifts, hate gifts, homemade gifts, guilt gifts, and everything between. I’ve had to deal with thank you’s for charity events and fundraisers as well as corporate events masquerading as little kid birthday parties my whole life. Until I ran away from it all. But like riding a bicycle, you never forget. I still know exactly how to field these suckers.”

  Jan sat back, staring at Mindy as if she’d seen a vision. “Oh, you are a life-saver. Please tell me what to write.”

  “Okay, here goes,” Mindy said.

  And she was as good as her word. She reeled off formal notes in three polite lines, more informal ones with variations so they didn’t sound alike, and how to phrase gratitude for the stemware that you knew was a “free gift” come-on for some sales pitch, the hideous orange place mats and table cloth set, (“so cheerful on gloomy days!”) and so on.

  Between cards she told stories about wedding horrors she’d experienced, like the drunken best man who fell into the cake, the actual fight between a groom and an ex from only six months before, the cruise wedding when a storm hit, making everyone sick, and the one where the father of the bride was arrested for embezzlement as a squad of FBI guys swept in to lock down the mansion the wedding was taking place at. “I was twelve,” she finished.

  The way she told the stories, as if she’d been a detached witness, soon had Jan and Shelley in stitches, which made the work go faster. But as the hour got late and they finished up, Jan began to wonder what the emotional cost really had been.

  Maybe that explained the prenup that Shelley had finally told her about. With that kind of background behind her, asking for a prenup probably made all kinds of sense, in sheer self-defense . . . except wasn’t the proposal supposed to be a surprise?

  Did Mindy have any idea what was going on?

  Jan wrung her aching hand, then made herself address the last card. Rather than ask directly, she said, “If I’d been through all that, I think I’d be allergic to weddings.”

  Shelley said, “I was just thinking that Las Vegas and Elvis impersonator officiates would begin to sound real good.”

  Mindy said in a low voice, “It’s not weddings so much as marriage.” Then she blushed to her ears, and said, “Um, sorry, forget I said that. Not much sleep last night.”

  Shelley said seriously, “You don’t have to answer this, but I thought you and Dennis are mates.”

  “We are,” Mindy said in a small voice. “Both ways. Dog and tiger.”

  Jan said, “Neither of us is a shifter, so we’re still learning about the whole shifter thing. But we thought mating was for life?”

  “It is. I hope,” Mindy said. “I’m a shifter, but I never knew there were others until I met Dennis. So this bond thing . . . I feel it. I want to spend the rest of my life with him.” She blinked, her eyes gleaming with a sheen of tears. “But, well, I just spent a whole lot of time describing what I used to think of as our family wedding luck—and you haven’t even heard the worst ones.”

  Shelley’s eyes rounded. “There’s a worse one than the FBI raiding the house?”

  Jan added, “And people barfing over the side of the boat as it tossed in twenty foot waves?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mindy said. “Like the 24-hour one. That wedding—marriage—whatever, it never got to the present-opening. It was my mom’s second,” she added grimly. “Wanted to get to the altar before Dad, so I think she ignored all the signs—until right after the ceremony, when she caught my would-be stepdad having drunken wedding sex with Mom’s step-cousin in the men’s dressing room.”

  “Wow.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “I guess I’ve been afraid that the entire idea of marriage is a jinx. Then I was listening to you, today, and your vows, and . . .” She shook her head. “Sorry about core dumping!” She turned a bright smile at them, without meeting anyone’s eyes. “This is your wedding day, and here I am glooming it up. I’ll go find Dennis. It was a beautiful wedding. Thanks for inviting me.”

  She shoved her feet into her shoes and slipped out the door.

  “Wow,” Shelley said again.

  “She has no idea what Dennis is planning,” Jan said slowly.

  Shelley nodded. “That means all that prenup stuff is Dennis. Who I don’t really know well enough to ask him about.”

  “Neither do I. Only met them that once. Should we say anything to our guys?”

  Shelley sighed and leaned back on her elbows, rubbing her stomach again. “I could ask Mick, but I already know what he’ll say: butt out.”

  “JP would, too. From what I’ve heard, Dennis is the most volatile of them all. So I think we better leave him to the guys who know him. But listen, we’re all getting together at your place in L.A. before the premier, right?”

  Shelley nodded.

  “I want to suggest a change in plans. Let’s make it a girls’ day. Invite her early, for lunch? In case she wants to talk it out.”

  “We can’t spoil Dennis’s surprise.” Shelley sat up.

  “No, but we could . . . talk around it, maybe.”

  Shelley shook her head. “I’ll invite her, but weddings are off limits, unless she brings it up. Dennis made Mick promise, which he then passed on to me.”

  Jan thought of those big brown eyes brimming with tears, and sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Shelley’s phone buzzed. “That’s Mick. He’s gotta fly back tonight. I’m going to go kiss him good-bye.”

  Jan nodded and sank back into her chair, staring at the neat piles of finished thank you notes, and considered what she’d heard.

  JP showed up a short time later. “Dad’s on his way back to London, and everyone else is gone. Including the caterers.”

  “My mom?”

  “Asleep, I suspect. She was pretty wobbly when her husband led her off to their room. Said to tell you she’d see you in the morning.”

  “Okay, good. I’ll take them out to breakfast.”

  “I talked to Dennis before they left. He wants me to help him arrange some music, if the Rose Garden Tea Room will let us.” JP grinned. “But I’ve got a better idea, and I happen to know the right person to talk to over there, as I’ve done a couple concerts over in the Chinese pavilion. And Mindy’s favorite music is eastern folk. I know just the group, if I can coax them on such short notice. I’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse.”

  “Won’t that cost poor Dennis a lot?”

  “He’s not going to find out. He’s never asked me for anything before—and if he balks, I’ll insist it’s an early Christmas present. What do you think?”

  “I think it’s a great idea.”

  He tipped his chin toward the door. “There’s plenty of food left if you’re hungry, or we can go out.”

  “Neither. What I want right now is exactly what I have: it’s just us, husband,” Jan said, rising at last and tugging him in the direction of their bedroom.

  JP said with his elegant, glinting smile, “Any idea what to do, wife?”

  “Give you three guesses. No. One.”

  He laughed, and kissed her.

  Chapter Eight

  Mindy kept it together during th
e short drive from the LaFleur estate to Dennis’s modest house on a side street filled with little houses.

  Dennis yawned a couple times as they drove, apparently okay with the silence, while her thoughts roiled. She wanted to talk, but she didn’t know what to say. That fear of marriage, of weddings, of vows so easily broken—she could laugh about jinxes, but she believed it.

  And couldn’t get past it.

  Dennis parked the car, and they got out. Each noise in the soft night air was distinct: the thunk of the Jeep doors, the high metallic clatter of keys, the muffled metal clicking of a lock.

  Their footsteps. Dennis’s breathing right behind her.

  She whirled and faced him. “Make love to me,” she whispered. “I want wild, mind-blowing Dennis-my-Menace sex.”

  Dennis grinned as he yanked off his tie and dropped it on the table. “Your wish is my command, Mork.”

  The expensive, carefully chosen periwinkle blue dress went flying, landing unnoticed over a lampshade, followed by his shirt. Dennis grabbed Mindy by the shoulders, kissing her wildly as she dug her hands into his hair, and raked them over his back, and plunged her fingers into the front of his pants so she could close her fingers around his cock.

  He pulled away from her only long enough to get rid of his pants, boxers, and socks, and then he took command of her mouth, his talented tongue making her moan against his lips.

  He palmed her breasts, thumbs ravishing her nipples, and then he took her by the waist, whirled her around, and threw her top half on the bed.

  Her legs were still on the floor, her butt in the air.

  “Spread ‘em,” he growled.

  “Oh, yes,” she hissed, and did, arching her hips up high.

  He slid in with exquisite slowness until she moaned, “Take me now!”

  He obeyed, and began thrusting fast and hard, his hands sliding beneath her to fondle and squeeze her breasts. He pinched her nipples with each thrust, jolting electric zaps of pleasure deep into her core as he worked deeply into her, hitting every pleasure point.