Purr For The Alpha (A Paranormal Romance) (Timber Valley Pack) (2 page)

Ty Battle could barely contain his glee. He’d known today was going to be a great day from the minute he’d bounced out of bed.

Here she was, his sexy lynx shifter fantasy, who he’d been lusting after for all those years.
It was payback time. 

She’d made a total fool of him back in high school.
Ten long years, and he still remembered the sting of humiliation and rejection that he’d felt – a completely unfamiliar sensation to him at the time, and one that he didn’t enjoy at all.  He’d been so sure she’d be another one of his easy conquests, but he’d ended up sitting at a movie theater by himself, his friends sitting nearby and snickering at him every time he glanced up at the big wall clock and wondered where she was.

Hell, he probably deserved it back then. He wasn’t ready for anything real. 
He hadn’t even tried to call her the next day. He’d forced himself not to pursue her any more, wanting to wait until the time was right.

He’d thought that time had been a year ago, when she’d walked in the door
of his nightclub and every nerve ending in his body had lit up with excitement. She’d flirted with him, teased him, seemed to submit to him with a sigh of surrender…oh, God, he’d had the most raging hard on of his life.

Then she’d ditched him, probably laughing her ass off with her friends all the way home.
  That was twice she’d stood him up and left him aching.

Well, now the table
s were turned. Now he held all the cards.

He looked across the room at her,
studying her without caring how obvious he was being in his appraisal.  Karen stood framed in the doorway, dismay and confusion on her face at the unexpected sight of him.   She was bathed in the light streaming in from a window across the hallway, highlighting her corn-silk blond hair like a halo. Oh, that halo effect was deceptive. She was the devil in lynx’s clothing. 

Funny, she didn’t look like a
hellcat at the moment.  She looked like a delicate Botticelli angel. Her wide blue eyes were thickly fringed with black lashes, her small, perfect pink mouth shaped like a rosebud. Her creamy pale skin flushed as she met his gaze, and she stood there hesitantly, as if she didn’t know what to do next.

God, she was sexy in that suit.  Images of her bent over his uncle’s broad desk flashed through his head, images of him
standing behind her and roughly pushing up her skirt while she clutched at the desk and -

Damn the woman for always clouding his head like this.  He cleared his throat.  “Please,
sit down,” he said, gesturing at the chair that faced his desk.

She
strode over, long slim legs scissoring impatiently.

Her body was rigid as she
sat down, nodding at him curtly. “Mr. Battle. How have you been?”

“Mr. Battle?” he scoffed. “I think we’re past formalities, aren’t we, Karen?”

“Ty,” she conceded, with a pained smile.

“Long time no see, Karen,” he said. She flushed, looking away. Good, she should be embarrassed.

“So, we both know why you’re here,” he continued.

She nodded. 
“Yes. The Battle family had my father arrested on the flimsiest of charges, and you’ve been holding him for two days now,” she said.

“He was trespassing
on our land.”

“H
e’s a lynx! He was roaming in the forest, and accidentally wandered on to your land, where, might I add, there are no signs up or fences indicating a property line! Since when do you care where shifters roam? When was the last time a shifter actually pressed charges for trespassing?”

Ty
shook his head at her chidingly. He had to give her credit for trying, but he wasn’t letting her wriggle out of this one. “He also stole tens of thousands of dollars worth of property from us, and he caused thousands of dollars to our building when he broke in.”

“You haven’t charged him with that, so I am assuming that there’
s no evidence proving your claims.”

Ty
shook his head. “You’re assuming incorrectly. Sheriff Battle went out to the site, and picked up your father’s scent inside our shop.  He is certified in Scent Evidence. His testimony is legally admissible in court, if it gets that far.”

A
faint frown creased her forehead, and then vanished.

“He’s a member of your family,” she said curtly.
“Your cousin Steele, isn’t he? Vince Battle’s nephew? No offense, but that makes him less than impartial. I could challenge that in court.”

“You could try.  Sheriff Battle has an excellent reputation in these parts, and your father’s reputation speaks for itself.”

She let out an impatient breath, and shifted in her chair. He could see the tension radiating through her body; she was clutching the arms of her chair so hard her knuckles were white.  “If you’re so confident of your case, why haven’t you charged him yet?”

Because I wanted leverage against you
, he thought. “I wanted to see what you had to say, before we proceed with a full-on criminal trial.”

She took a deep breath and looked him in the eye.
“Well, Mr. Battle, I believe-”

His phone rang, with the ring tone that told him it was
his cousin, Sheriff Battle, calling. Puzzled, he rose from his seat and walked out of the room as he answered the phone.

“
Hey, I’m in a meeting,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Can this wait?”

“I know
you’re meeting with her. I wanted to fill you in on what we just found,” Steele said.

Ty
listened for a minute, thanked him, and then hung up. He walked back in to the room and sat down. Karen raised an eyebrow questioningly, but he was sure that she already knew what the call was about.

“So, where were we?”
She looked considerably more confident. Yep. She knew.

“The most
amazing thing just happened,” Ty said. “Sheriff Battle got an anonymous phone call a little while ago, leading him to our stolen property, which had been left outside in a field in our property.” He wondered who had made that call. Her brother? He was a little young. Probably her best friend Isadora, a troublemaker if he’d ever met one.

“Great!” she said brightly, relief in her voice. “So, I guess we can let bygones be bygones now,
and release my father from custody, right?”

“Wrong.
First of all, there’s the damage to our property that occurred when your father broke in. Secondly, while some of the saddles were covered in plastic, two of them weren’t, and they were damaged by rain and are now unusable. Two very nice hand tooled ladies reining saddles. You’re welcome to inspect them if you question their condition.”

The smile faded from her face
. “No, I take your word for it. How much are the saddles worth?”

“Thirty five hundred each.  And about fifteen hundred dollars w
orth of damage to our building. We have to replace two doors and their locks.”             

Her eyes went wide with
surprise, and then her expression quickly turned neutral again. “I see,” she said carefully.

He knew what she was thinking.
  She didn’t have that kind of money.  Her family was dirt poor, her father a con man and a thief who’d nearly driven them to ruin.  Her mother had abandoned them years ago. 

She’d had to drop out of high school
in her senior year because her father was a suspect in a series of house burglaries, and the Padfoots had basically been run out of town.  They’d moved to Crystal Falls, and she’d never gone back to high school. Instead she’d worked to support their family while their father fled the state and hid out for a couple of years, waiting until he felt safe coming back to town.

Karen was so bright she’d been able to get a scholarship to go to college and then law school, but she’d had to take out loans to support her family while she was in school

She had to make payments on those loans, and she had a fourteen year old brother and twelve year old sister to support. She was waitressing on weekends to put food on the table while she built up her clientele.  Many people wouldn’t do business with her, because of her father’s reputation.

He knew
all of that because he’d been checking up on her. Waiting until the right time to make his move.

He watched her splutter for a minute, struggling for an answer. Finally he took pity on her.

“We can make a compromise,” he said.

“Oh?”

“First of all, your father is not allowed in Timber Valley, ever again. You should know that if we catch him on our property, we will skip the legal system and go straight to a Death Challenge. He’ll lose.”

She nodded enthusiastically. She thought she was getting off easy.

“Secondly, and this is non-negotiable, you will come work for me as a waitress at The Zoo for one month. You will also move to our compound.”

“What?” she stared at him in astonishment. “You want me to waitress? Why, to humiliate me? I’m a lawyer!”

“You already waitress on weekends,” he pointed out, earning him a suspicious look.

“How did you even know that?” she demanded. “That’s in
Crystal Falls.  I’ve never seen you in our restaurant.”

He shrugged. “The shifter community is a small one. Word gets around.”

She shook her head. “I can’t lose that job,” she said.

“You don’t have to. My family does business with the owner of that restaurant; they’ll work with me.
I can send over one of my waitresses to cover your shifts,” he said. He was prepared for every argument that she might come up with. She’d slipped through his fingers twice before; now they’d close around her like a steel trap. A humane trap, of course, not the kind with sharp steel teeth; he wasn’t pure evil.

“That doesn’t make sense.  If you can spare a waitress, why do you need me at your night club? And why have me move here?”

“To make a point.”

“By publicly humiliating me and displaying me as your servant,” she glowered. 

He smiled.  Her heated response spoke of her passionate nature. He’d bet she was a real tiger in bed. The thought of finally making the prim, buttoned-up kitty lose her inhibitions and unleash that passion stoked a roaring firing him, and caused a swelling in his pants that made him very glad he was sitting behind a desk.

“That’s one way to look at it,” Ty said. “We need to make a very public showing of the fact that the Padfoot family is making amends for their transgressions against us. Having you both work for me, and move in to the compound, where you can help us out as needed, will do that.  Let me remind you how things work in the wolf world. It’s not that different with felines. A pack, or a pride, that is perceived as weak is also perceived as vulnerable.  If we let people break in and steal our stuff without some kind of retaliation, people would start to question our ability to defend ourselves. There would be challenges to the Alphas. This is the second time your father has stolen from us in recent months, and we need to make a very public point.”

“Second time?”
Her eyes went wide.

She really hadn’t known.

Ty felt a twinge of sympathy for her, but he wouldn’t budge.  She was very lucky that his pack hadn’t killed her father when they’d caught him.

“Second time,” he said firmly. “We picked up his scent outside of one of our delivery trucks in town three weeks ago.  While our driver was inside Flapjack Fannie’s eating breakfast, he jimmied open the door and stole several of our saddles from the truck. It’s likely that whoever he sold them to wanted more, and that’s why he came to our shop.”

“I
see.” She drummed her fingers nervously on the table top.

“Of course, if you choose to contend our claim, we can turn the matter over for investigation. It would be a joint investigation carried out by Sheriff Battle and Sheriff
Burke, to ensure everything was fair.”

This was common practice when a shifter from one species was accused of committing a crime against a shifter of another species. 
Sheriff Burke, in Crystal Falls, was a mountain lion shifter, so he’d be representing the feline community.  He knew the Padfoots only too well; he’d arrested Karen’s father Ellwood on drunk and disorderly charges several times, and brought him in for questioning on burglary charges.

Ty
knew that he wasn’t playing fair. The last thing that Karen would want was an investigation by Sheriff Burke, who was itching for an excuse to see Ellwood Padfoot locked up.

That was all well and good. Playing fair was for suckers.

“I have a fourteen year old brother and a twelve year old sister. School is out. Trust me, those two can not be left unsupervised. They’d burn the whole town down,” Karen said.

“
Great news. We’re having a sleepover camp on our property,” Ty told her. “I’ll make sure that my cousin Virginia is watching them. She’s great with kids.”

“But – I mean, you’re wolves, we’re cats…” she trailed off, her eyes wide with panic.