To Tempt A Tiger(11)

“It’s not that simple,” Vlad said. “I need to teach Zoe—”

He was interrupted by Zoe bouncing back down the hall. “Mommy, need help with blankie. It won’t fit.”

Rose narrowed her eyes. “How much did you pack?”

“What I needed.”

“Uh huh.” She gave her daughter a suspicious look and went down the hall to her room. She wasn’t entirely surprised Vlad followed, but having him casually walk through her home, having him around her daughter, set her nerves on edge.

Suddenly this spontaneous vacation seemed like a really good idea. The farther she was from him while she figured out how to deal with the news he’d delivered, the better.

To her surprise, she wasn’t turned off by watching him shift. It had been a pretty horrifying process. Something out of a nightmare. But for some reason, it did nothing to kill her ever-present desire for him, that edge of lust and love she’d only ever experienced with him. Which sucked. She didn’t want to feel anything for him but anger. Damn the man. She should not still be thinking sexy thoughts about him after he’d just done…what he’d done. She should not be thinking sexy thoughts about him, period.

When she reached Zoe’s door, she realized why her blanket wouldn’t fit in her backpack. The little blue monkey pack was overflowing with toys. “Baby, you’re gonna need clothes as well as toys. You know that.”

“Don’t,” Zoe insisted. “I be naked!” She giggled and spun around.

Rose laughed. Shaking her head, she opened the backpack. “I’ll pack your clothes with mine, but you have to leave some of these toys here. Or we can leave blankie behind?”

“Nooooo!”

“Okay, okay, no reason to yell. Here, why don’t we leave these two dolls? And we can pick up a new pack of crayons and a coloring book along the way. As a treat.”

“Yay!” Zoe threw out the offending “old” crayons, reluctantly put the dolls back on her bed, and then shoved her blanket into the backpack.

Rose marveled at her daughter. Not an hour ago, she’d been curled up in excruciating pain. Now she was all exclamation points and energy, not even a hint of the trauma she’d gone through earlier. Rose’s heart ached with love as she watched her little girl. And her fierce protective instincts roared. If anyone thought they’d hurt her daughter, they were in for a rude and bloody awakening.

That went for Vlad, too.

She packed up a few necessities for herself and Zoe in her own well-worn travel backpack, tossed everything into her SUV, and buckled Zoe into her seat in the back while Vlad hovered over her shoulder.

He smiled when she straightened. “Still a light packer, I see.”

“Habit. You can leave now. We’re good.”

“I’ll go with you. I want to make sure you get out of town.”

“Don’t you need to take care of your brothers?” She could tell by the way his eyes narrowed she’d hit a soft spot. “Thanks for your help this morning and for the warning.” When he still didn’t move, she said, “You’d better go find your brothers. Or do you want them to find us first?”

She was playing dirty, but she didn’t want him to follow her. She didn’t want Vlad anywhere near her anymore. Her feelings for him, and about him, were too complicated. She needed space and time to consider the future and how she would keep her daughter safe.

When he frowned and glanced at the street, she knew she had him.

“Good luck,” she said, then slipped into the driver’s seat, buckled up, and backed out of the driveway, ignoring Vlad as he watched her go. Her brain was buzzing, so full of confused chatter and emotion she couldn’t sort through it all. So she focused on driving, getting to her parents’ office, taking the next steps to get her daughter safely out of town. She’d untangle all the chaos of the morning tonight, after Zoe was asleep and she was curled up in front of a fire with a glass of wine, or whiskey. This situation seemed to call for whiskey.



*****



She’d left her parents’ office with the keys to the Alpine cabin and was on her way to their house for one of her dad’s rifles, when she started getting nervous for some unexplained reason. She kept checking traffic, looking for cars that might be following her.

Damn Vlad. He had her all paranoid.

Despite what he’d shown her, she had no real reason to believe anything he’d said beyond the fact that tiger shapeshifters were a real thing. Maybe he was the only one. Maybe what was happening with Zoe had nothing to do with the shifter stuff. Rose only had Vlad’s word that his brothers might really try to hurt her daughter, and what good was his word to her after all these years?