The anonymous donation didn’t make sense coming from someone she already knew. None of her members or supporters had ever donated
that
kind of money before. The downturn in the economy was playing havoc with their checkbooks. Their offerings were getting smaller, not bigger.
“Was it an online donation?” Matt asked.
“No. It was a check. But it was issued from an accounting firm. A big fancy place in LA. I looked them up online.”
“Whose signature was on the check?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t legible.”
Once again, she scanned the guests. There were almost a hundred people there, and some had already finished their meals and wandered into the silent-auction tent, checking out the items on display.
“Whoever the donor is, he or she is a stranger,” she said.
“Okay, but I still think it could be a guy who has designs on you, especially with that kind of money involved. Oh, wow. What if it’s him?”
“Him who?”
Matt gestured with his chin. “The dude at the second table, sitting next to the woman in the bedazzled top.”
She shifted her gaze to the aforementioned people. The man in question was as ancient as a moldy hill, and the sparkly old lady was probably his wife. “Knock it off.”
Matt grinned at his little joke.
She blew out a sigh, and he laughed. She wished that he would take something seriously just once. Her cousin was twenty-six going on twelve. He’d been weaned on the rescue, too, but he preferred the sand and surf. He lived in a messy apartment in Santa Barbara with a zillion other skater/surfers. He visited her and the cats only when the mood struck him.
“Holy shit,” he said suddenly. “I found him. This time for sure.”
She refused to follow his line of sight. “Just quit, okay? Stop it.”
“No, really, Jenny. I was just kidding around before, but I’m serious now. Take a gander at the guy coming out of the auction tent.”
Like an idiot, she glanced in that direction. Then she did what she’d been taught not to do. She stared.
Moving with the rangy grace of one of her cats, he was tall and leanly muscled, with bronzed skin and long, licorice-black hair. While the wind snapped at his clothes, autumn-tinged leaves fluttered in dust-devilish circles around his feet, as if the environment, the place she called home, were attaching itself to him with magnetic force.
“You’d better be careful,” Matt said. “A guy like that will fuck you raw.”
Jenny gulped the night air, blasting her lungs with a much-needed breath. “No one is going to do anything to me.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, he’s coming this way, and if he’s the man with the money, you’re in trouble.”
It was pointless to ask Matt to stick around. He was already searching for an escape route. Clearly, he didn’t want to get involved other than to dole out unsolicited advice.
He gestured to the buffet line. “I’m going to grab some chow.”
“Go ahead.” She wasn’t going to let him fill her head with nonsense. The hunk of burning man walking in her direction wasn’t going to save this place for a piece of tail, least of all, hers.
She didn’t move forward. She waited for the stranger to approach her. When he did, she plastered a smile on her face and hoped it wasn’t wobbling.
“Jenny Lincoln?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Noah. My accountant sent a check over today.”
Oh, Lord. He
was
the donor, and up close he was even more handsome, with a wildly ethnic edge: deep, piercing eyes and cheekbones chiseled to perfection.
Before she lost her manners, she extended her hand. “Thank you. It was an incredibly generous donation.”
His hand enveloped hers, and a jolt of heat, of sheer sexual energy, nearly knocked her off of her feet. She actually planted her boots in the ground to keep herself steady.
“There’s more where that came from,” he said.
The heat? she wondered.
He continued, “But I’m not going to give it to you tonight.”
She blinked out of her haze. He was referring to the rest of the money.
“I’d like to meet with you privately,” he said. “And I want you to give me a tour of the rescue.”
She caught her breath. That was doable. “I’d be glad to show you around.” Why wouldn’t he want to see the facility he was sponsoring before he handed over another check? That made total sense.
He suggested the when and where. “Tomorrow morning around nine? At the main gate?”
“I’ll clear my schedule for you.”
He fixed his dark gaze on her. “Good.”
Suddenly she realized that he hadn’t told her his last name. She couldn’t Google him later and find out more about him. But she assumed he didn’t want her to have that advantage.
He smiled, but it didn’t soften the moment. It actually made him seem more predatory.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
“Yes, I’ll see you,” she parroted.
He didn’t move, so she waited for him to walk away. Instinct told her not to turn her back on him.
Instinct?
Was she making too much of this? Feral as he seemed, he wasn’t one of her cats.
But still, she waited.
He finally departed, walking away with the same feline grace with which he’d appeared, light on his feet, his muscles bunching and rolling.
As he disappeared into the crowd, she put her hand against her heart, struggling to calm the erratic beats. Matt was right. She needed to be careful of the man with the money.
In the morning, Noah returned to Big Cat Canyon. He parked his truck, climbed out of it, and activated the car alarm. He owned other vehicles, but the four-wheel-drive Ford fit his mood and the terrain.
He headed toward the front entrance and saw Jenny in the distance. He’d expected her to be on time. He suspected that she’d been early. He’d sensed her nervousness last night, and it was running rampant today, too.
He closed the gap and approached the gate. They looked at each other through the bars, as if there were a cage between them.
Noah said, “Hello.”
She responded with a shaky, “Hi,” and unlocked the gate.
Her wariness aroused him. Everything about her gave him a rush. He’d been preparing to take her as his lover.
Take
being the key word.
He lowered his chin and studied her, making his perusal obvious. She was fresh-scrubbed and free of cosmetics. Tendrils of wavy blond hair fought to escape a girlish ponytail. He was dying to see her hair loose, to run his hands through it, to tug on it with masculine vigor.
She glanced away, but he kept looking at her, enjoying the chase.
“Tell me about this place,” he said, prodding her to engage with him. “Give me the sales pitch.”
Her gaze found his, even if her voice wasn’t quite steady. “It’s not a sales pitch. It’s home for captive-bred animals that have nowhere else to go.”
Nervous as she was, her dedication shined through. That made her all the more fascinating.
She continued by saying, “My grandfather was a large-animal veterinarian, and this used to be his ranch. When he retired, he turned it into an exotic cat rescue.”
Noah already knew a bit of the background based on what he’d read on the Big Cat Canyon website, but he was curious to know more, especially with her relaying the details.
He asked, “What motivated him to do that?”
“He volunteered his services at other rescues, and he realized how grave the need was for more facilities like this. We have an on-site medical-care center that enables us to perform examinations and surgeries without transporting the cats. We provide exercise trails for the animals, too.” She waited a beat. “For our guests, we have picnic areas. We also have a gift shop.”
Coffee mugs and plush toys didn’t interest him. Nonetheless, he was ready to start the tour.
It began with the food preparation area, which was impressively spotless, with several employees already hard at work.
Jenny said, “We prepare nutritionally balanced meat-based diets. They’re flash frozen with no by-products, hormones, antibiotics, or preservatives.” She added, “Felids are strict carnivores.”
Noah remained deliberately quiet, allowing her to educate him about something he knew far too well. He was part “felid” and he was carnivorous as hell.
She went on to say, “A felid is a member of the
felidae
family, which is the biological family of cats, and felids belong to two subfamilies:
pantherinae
and
felinae
.”
Once again he stayed silent. She’d yet to relax in his presence, and he reveled in the anxious sound of her breathing and the pulse that beat quickly at her neck.
“Sorry.” She made a face. “Sometimes I get carried away. Those words are probably just mumbo jumbo to you.”
“No, it’s interesting.” He pushed the boundaries of who he was, playing his predatory game. “I’m curious—what are the scientific terms associated with mountain lions?”
“They belong to the
felinae
subfamily. Their genus and species name is
Puma concolor
, but it used to be
Felis concolor
.”
Noah considered himself a subspecies. A hybrid, for lack of a better description.
She tilted her pretty little head. “Are mountain lions your favorite exotic cat?”
As if he had a choice. “Yes.”
She continued the lesson. “Aside from the scientific terms, they have a slew of other names. The
Guinness Book of World Records
recognizes them as the animal with the most names. The most common is cougar, of course.”
“And here I thought a cougar was an older woman who dated younger men.”
She wrinkled her nose, and they both laughed. Apparently she didn’t like the urban slang definition any better than he did.
A moment later, she said, “Some of the other names are puma, catamount, mountain screamer, painter, mountain demon, mountain devil, ghost cat, sneak cat, Florida Panther, Indian devil—”
“Like me?” He made another deliberately bad joke, but it wasn’t intended to be funny and neither of them laughed. “I’m from the Seminole Nation.”
She studied him. “So you’re Native American?”
“Yes, but I lived in Mexico for quite a while. I’m fluent in Spanish. I speak the Mvskoke language, too. But it’s been a long time since I used it.” He didn’t fit into modern Seminole society. He didn’t fit anywhere, except for the environment he’d created for himself. “I descend from the Tiger Clan.”
“Oh.” She made a perplexed expression. “But you’re more interested in mountain lions?”
“In the old days the Seminole referred to mountain lions as ‘tigers.’”
“I knew that European explorers mistook them for tigers, but I wasn’t aware of Seminole history.” She offered to oblige him. “Would you like to head over to see the mountains lions now? We have two that live here.”
“I’d rather see the other cats first.” Noah wanted to save the most important for last.
The tour continued with an introduction to a four-hundred-pound Bengal tiger. She was obviously still thinking about his association to the Tiger Clan, even if he wasn’t connected to the animal in a literal sense.
They stood on the other side of the tiger’s compound and watched it sleep.
“His name is Ankal,” Jenny said. “It means ‘whole’ in Hindu. We chose that for him because when we rescued him he was broken, physically and emotionally, and we strived to make him whole. He came from an abusive situation.”
Noah gazed at the napping tiger. He seemed content, or as content as a captive-bred creature could be.
“When he first arrived, he used to hide in his den when the keepers approached his enclosure. Now he plays in his pool when they’re around, splashing and showing off.”
Ankal yawned as if he was bored by the conversation. Noah quirked a smile. Jenny did, too.
She remarked, “In the wild, tigers hunt between dusk and dawn and consume between thirty to ninety pounds of food at one sitting.”
“How do they make a kill?” He intended to ask her the same question about mountain lions when the time came, even if he knew as much as or more about them than she did. But that was part of the thrill, of what had led him to her.
She responded, “Tigers stalk, chase, and attack, then bring down their prey with a bite to the nape of the neck or the throat. They’re considered man-eaters, too. They’ll consume human flesh.”
“Ankal isn’t as timid as he looks.”
“None of them are.”
Noah knew that better than anyone.
She interrupted the quiet. “Ankal’s best friend is an African lion named Larry. They explore the trails together.”
“Larry the lion?”
She laughed a little. “They don’t all have exotic names.”
He considered the lion and tiger’s alliance. “They wouldn’t get along in the wild, would they?”
“No. But it’s different when they’re in captivity.”
He got curious about her social life. “What about you? Who’s your best friend?”
She tucked a stray piece from her ponytail behind her ear, struggling, it seemed, to answer. Then she admitted, “I don’t have one. I’ve always been more of a loner.”
So was he. But that was indicative of the subspecies he’d been turned into. There had been a time when he’d enjoyed sharing his life with other people, when he’d felt a gentle connection to humanity. But those feelings were long gone.
Without further discussion, they proceeded on the tour, where more tigers were contained. They visited Larry the lion, too. After that, they stopped to admire two spotted leopards.
“They belonged to a Las Vegas entertainer who struggled to give them up,” she said. “He treated them well and loved them. But he couldn’t make ends meet.”
“Much in the way you’re having trouble keeping this place going?”