To Tempt A Tiger(14)

An advantage he used now. “What’s going on?” He put his hands on his hips and glared at his brother, infusing as much annoyance into his tone as he could muster.

“What’s going on with you and Rose?”

“None of your fucking business.”

“Come on, man. You haven’t seen her in what…four years? Now I find you at her parents’ house.”

“That’s why you were talking to her? You were looking for me?” He waved his cell phone in Anton’s face. “Use the fucking phone next time.”

Anton’s eyes narrowed and Vlad saw suspicion even though his brother tried to hide it. None of his brothers could lie to him as well as he could lie to them.

“How did you find me here?” Vlad asked. “Where are Andrey and Yuri?”

Anton’s eyes shifted slightly as he said, “Yuri went to the Callaghan’s office and Andrey went to Rose’s house.”

“What the hell? Why?” Vlad let outrage and fury fill his voice and scent. They were strong emotions he had no trouble letting out. And they overrode the underlying terror he was desperately trying to suppress. What if he’d arrived a few minutes later? What if he’d never learned his brothers had booked flights to Phoenix? If one of his contacts hadn’t tipped Vlad off to their plans, he might have stalled longer, trying to figure out how best to approach Rose.

He might have been too late.

“You still haven’t explained why you’re here?” Anton said defensively.

“I already told you it’s none of your business. Besides, I have more right to be here than you. Rose is my ex. I’d like to know why the hell my brothers are hunting her down?”

“The little girl…she’s got Mother’s eyes. Your eyes.”

Vlad used every ounce of self-control he had not to react to the implied threat. “She’s got brown eyes,” he said, evenly, with as much irritation as he could infuse in his tone. “Lots of people have brown eyes. The bastard Rose cheated on me with when she got pregnant? He had brown eyes. What’s your point, Anton?”

“With what we know now, we thought, maybe…you were rethinking the ‘cheating’ part.”

“Oh. Is that what you thought? And what? I’m here to kill the kid?”

Anton shrugged. But a hint of something pungent and sour crept into his scent, a flavor that spoke of suspicion and distrust, like rotting plant life.

“You here to help?” Vlad asked.

“We just wanted to check on you. We were worried.”

Since his brothers had booked their flights before Vlad, he’d have known Anton was lying even if there wasn’t a faint tinge of it in his scent. But Vlad hid his knowledge behind a resigned sigh.

“I’m not here because I think the kid is mine. She’s not. Rose cheated on me. I almost killed the guy when I found him, except he’s human.”

“Then why are you here?”

Vlad ran a hand through his hair again and played up his part to the best of his acting ability—abilities he’d honed at the granite wheel of their father. “After all the shit with Mom’s suicide and Dad’s death, I guess I was feeling… I don’t know. I missed Rose.”

Anton’s eyebrows rose sharply. “You really are trying to get back with her? I thought that was just some shit you told her.”

The disbelief and surprise were the exact reactions Vlad had been hoping for. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t,” he snapped, putting on the defensiveness of a man caught doing something stupid.

“Vlad, man, she broke your heart. You haven’t been the same since. And now you want her back? When she’s got some other man’s kid? What the fuck?”

His brother sounded sincere in his concern, but Vlad caught the continued suspicion in his scent if not his tone. Anton was playing a part, too.

“It’s been four years,” Vlad said. “I’m not getting a tiger mate. I want kids.”

“Some other man’s kid?”

“Same as if we’d adopted. Or if I’d met her after she had a child.”

“No, it’s not. She cheated on you with some human.”

“She’s human.”

“Even worse.”

“You sound like Dad now.”

Anton sighed. “I just don’t know how you can come back to a woman—a human woman—who cheated on you. How you could possibly want to get back with her. Aren’t you disgusted by her?”

“Just because you don’t like human women doesn’t mean I want to be celibate for the rest of my life.”

“You want to get laid, pick someone new.”