Hollywood Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (Hollywood Shifters Book 3) (8 page)

“This will only take a minute. I need to pick your brain, as you know everybody in the news world.”

“Well, not
everybody
,” Tania said, with a smug undertone. Like most people, she always had time to dispense advice, or gossip. “What, or rather, who?”

“Do you know the name Dennis O’Keefe?”

“
The
Dennis O’Keefe, the photojournalist? Are you kidding?” Tania’s voice rose. “Where do you bury your head, Mindy? Just last year he and one of
our
guys, along with a bunch of Brits and Danes, won the European Press Prize for that expose of human traffickers running out of a fake Doctors Without Borders office—”  She stopped herself. “How do
you
know him?”

“We ran into one another. At a thing.”

Tania’s voice dropped. “Well, run in the other direction.
If
he gives you a second look, that is. “

“Why? Is he an asshole?”

“No! If anything, the total opposite, so I hear. He’s charming, and fascinating, and supposed to be hot in the sack, but he’s a
total
hit and run. You remember Melani Welch? Dated her once and moved on. Melani! Who was still modeling for Schiaparelli at age thirty!”

“Is that all?”

“He’s a complete maverick. He turned down megabucks, Mindy, a
dream
package offer from Fox News. Dave even tried to lure him to NBC. All he said was, he hates bosses, suits, and ties.”

“Well that doesn’t sound so bad.”

“If you like guys who throw away money in the bank, just so they can hare off and watch natives picking flies at the butt-end of nowhere because he feels like it. A guy like that is
never
going to settle down.”

“I guessed that much.”

“Are you interested in him?” Tania’s voice dropped a note. “Mindy, as your friend, and sort-of relation, I feel I should say that if you have a
hope
of catching his eye, you will seriously need to drop thirty pounds—”

“Thanks, Tania. I don’t want to keep you. I know you have people coming.”

“
At least
twenty-five pounds, Mindy,
really
. And don’t think I don’t I sympathize! If you think it’s
easy
for me to keep myself from bloating past a size two, you can guess again—”

“Bye, Tania, thanks. Say hi to Dave.”

Mindy hung up, and curled up in a ball with her chin on her knees, aware of a sense of intense relief. As if the relationship with Dennis could go anywhere. It would have been easier if he’d turned out to be a total phony—oh, who was she trying to kid?

This was going to hurt no matter how it played out.

“Friends with Mick Volkov,” she said out loud.

She turned her head toward her full length mirror—and caught sight of her hair, which had still been wet when she and Dennis left for the restaurant.

Total
poodle.

She groaned.

* * *

In the library parking lot, Dennis stayed long enough to see Mindy safely off. She wouldn’t look at him for some reason, but that meant he could watch her. A spark of delight lit inside him at the sight of that little wriggle of her hip when she got into her car. She was even cute putting on her seatbelt, with those graceful hands, and that cloud of hair . . . And then she drove off without looking back, and his gut tightened.

Shit. It felt like she’d reached inside his ribs and yanked.

Mate.

Shut up
, he told the tiger.
I’ve got the brain. I’m the boss here
. Granted, sex with Mindy was mind-blowing. But the world was full of women who liked mind-blowing sex, right? And she didn’t even try laying strings on him, which was exactly the way he liked it.

That whole mate thing was nothing but a pretty name for baggage. And Dennis O’Keefe did not do baggage.

He drove back up the hill, and prowled around JP’s house, picking up and putting down things while he waited for Agent Sloane to get back to him.

He’d taken this gig on a whim, because his old unit mate Greg Ling had called him just after Mick’s wedding, when Dennis had been stuck in Sanluce, feeling out of sorts while his broken leg finished healing.

It wasn’t the leg that caused the crappy mood, Dennis had known even then. Shifters heal fast. It was that left-behind sense now that both his best buddies had managed to find their mates. A year ago, none of them had even believed all that hearts and flowers stuff about mates. Well, Mick half-believed because his grandparents, who had raised him, were as tight a mated pair as you could find. 

Poor Mick had fooled himself into mistaking the rush of attraction for finding your life mate, crashing and burning three times before he got it right. And even JP, who had felt exactly the way Dennis did, had done a 180 a month ago and was now completely wrapped up in his opera singer.

The tiger stirred inside him. Dammit! Dennis hammered his fist against the door frame, then whirled around and glowered at the glittering city lights of L.A.

He knew he could call either Mick or JP, but all he’d get would be hearts and flowers blah-blah about how perfect their women were. How amazing the bond.

He’d already seen their sincerity. He’d even sensed the bond in the way the couples looked at each other, but that was after they’d settled it all out. How did they
know?
It would be so easy to fool yourself—and anyway, supposing Mindy really was his mate, Dennis was not at all sure he wanted the yoke of a wife any more than he could stand the yoke of an office job at some magazine or studio, and a boss telling him what stories to go after.

He grimaced and kicked a harmless footstool. What an asshole he sounded like, even to himself. He should look at it the other way: what decent woman, what awesome woman (like, say, Mindy) deserved to be stuck singing the Empty Bed Blues for months on end while he was in Moldova, or Guam, or the South Pole, chasing stories?

Wasn’t the ready go-bag behind his parents’ divorce?

He flopped back on the bed and punched up his dad’s number.

“Dennis! Long time no hear. How’s the leg?”

“Great. Listen, Dad, got a minute?”

“Sure. Hang on.” Various clanks and thumps, then he was back. “Cooking up a vat of chili. Then I freeze it in bowls, and I’ve got instant meals for a week. Don’t have to think about cooking. What can I do for you?”

“You and Mom weren’t mates, were you?”

A brief silence, and then his dad said cautiously, “Not in the sense I think you mean, no.” Of course Dad wouldn’t talk about shifters over the phone. Too many years of dealing with sensitive material in the military world.

“But you got married anyway.”

“Yeah—we liked each other fine. You know, Sanluce is a small town. We grew up knowing each other. No surprises. She was great fun. Knew I was going into the service the way my dad had, and was cool with it. Then there was the, ah, connection with your Uncle Thomas.”

Dennis thought of his mom’s brother, a wolfhound shifter. Mom now lived at Uncle Thomas and Aunt Kuniko’s ranch, taking in abused and abandoned animals.

“Right,” Dennis said. So Mom had been attracted to Dad because he was a shifter? Okay, she’d grown up knowing about shifters. And if you knew, it really was pretty cool. But if anything, his situation with Mindy was the opposite. Supposing they did get serious—and supposing by some miracle she was even down with him traveling—what was she going to say if she came over unexpectedly one day and found a tiger?

“So you weren’t mates, and it didn’t last,” Dennis said.

“We’re still friends,” Dad said.

“But you got a divorce.”

“Well, actually, we never got around to filing the papers. And we’re okay with that. You know we get together once in a while, and my insurance is important for her, at our age. Where’s all this coming from? You think you’ve found someone?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I want to know.” He felt the tiger stirring again.

“Not one of us, then.”

“Right.”

“Okay, here’s what I understand. Whether or not they’re one of us, they feel it, too. You both do. And the rest works out.”

“Got it. Thanks, Dad.”

“I made extra chili if you happen to be sick of L.A.”

“Maybe when this gig is over. We’re kind of in the middle of it right now.”

“Well, I’m on leave for another month, so don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t. Thanks.”

They rang off, and Dennis tossed his phone onto the bed, which was still rumpled. He picked up the second pillow and buried his face in it. God, it had her smell—the most elusive, amazing perfume ever made. He’d have to sneak into her place and find out what it was called.

He dropped the pillow and sighed. They couldn’t be mates, then. She obviously didn’t feel anything. She was fun and generous and hot in bed, and a terrific listener, and smart and funny and hoo-
boy
she could swing those hips. And she was easy to talk to, but other than unimportant crap like musical taste and the like, she didn’t talk about herself. All these great things added up to the best casual date ever, but every time he tried to take one step closer it was like he came up against a glass wall.

So . . . not mates. Just a nuclear-powered attraction.

Easy come, easy go, tiger. You were wrong, but it’s okay
.

The obvious course would be to ride it out as long as it lasted, and then move on.

So why was he so depressed?

Chapter Eight

The phone went off by Dennis’s ear.

He shot upright, fumbling for it as he tried to remember where he was. Shit-fire, where the hell was the light?

He knocked unseen things crashing to the carpet before he found the phone. Greg Ling. Adrenaline shot through him as he sat up in bed. Guest house. JP’s.

“Yeah?”

“Dennis, Torvaldsen has been sitting tight for days, and we couldn’t get near. But now he’s suddenly on the move. I’ll try to stick with him, but be on the watch in case. Whatever is happening is today, I’m sure of it. We lose either of them, we’re hosed.”

“Fuck.” Dennis raked his hand through his hair as his dream came crashing back around him: Mindy and he, running through the mountains high in Tibet, only he was a tiger, and she—

He found the damn lamp, flicked it on, and the shadows jumped back, taking the last of the dream with him.

“Dennis? You awake?”

“Yeah. What do you want me to do?”

“Stick to Haskell like glue.”

“What about the money? He’s going to keep pressuring me to write him a check without a contract.”

“Amanda says, if you have to give him a check, do it, but as late as possible. She said she can bounce funny money around the world, but at most we’d have twenty-four hours. Today being Sunday definitely plays in our favor.”

Dennis shuffled into the bathroom to crank the shower to max as he said, “What time is it anyway? Mindy and I aren’t supposed to be at the location until seven, when the sun is full up.”

“4:38. I have to go, but I suggest you two get there as early as you can, game faces on.”

“Got it,” Dennis said.

He ended the call and stared at his phone, then thought, What the hell. If this was the last day he saw her, why not start it earlier? He hit her number. Two rings, and she answered, her voice husky with sleep. “What is it?” He got a sudden, vivid picture of her rosy from her warm bed, hair wild, her soft lips  . . .

“Dennis?” Her voice cleared with awareness.

“Looks like things are happening. The location is only a couple miles from here. How about getting a good breakfast into us while we put together Plan A and Plan B?”

“Who’s cooking?” she asked warily.

He laughed silently. “A chef at the bottom of the hill here. They do their own pastry on site. How far away do you live?”

“Under five miles.”

“Great. By the time you get here I can have it hot and ready.”

“You have food, I will travel,” she said after the tiniest hesitation.

Exhilarated to a crazy degree, he said, “See you in a few.”

They rang off. Mate debate aside, this was going to hurt like a sonofabitch when she said sayonara, but fuck the future. He was going to ride the wave as long as it rolled.

* * *

This is crazy, Mindy kept thinking as she showered, conditioned the hell out of her hair and then added half a bottle of relaxer. This is totally unprofessional, she thought as she racked through her clothes, but what could she wear that would be a sleazy Payton dress but pretty for breakfast with Dennis,
and how many kinds of idiot am I being?

Nobody answered any of the questions, of course. Instead her poodle wriggled happily in her. Dogs never think of consequences, she thought as she carefully did her makeup. Dogs live in the moment. Okay, since the dog in her wanted this even more badly than she did, then she was going to approach it with dog-think rather than people-think: enjoy every second of her time with him, because once the job was over and he flitted off to Timbuktu, life would suck whether she enjoyed today or not.

She settled on a Marilyn Monroe halter dress in hot pepper red, with shoes and lipstick to match, then walked out to her car. It was time to go.

Her apartment was considerably closer to JP’s house then five miles—barely two, straight up into the hills. She pulled into the short driveway next to the Lexus, and when she got out, she found the front door standing open.

“Come on back,” Dennis called from within. “Perfect timing. Just finished the coffee.”

The enticing aroma of fresh-ground Kona drew her like a magnet down the split level house to the guest room and the terrace beyond. Dennis had dragged another little round table out. Both were covered with environmentally friendly containers that steamed gently.

Dennis was dressed in black again, his freshly washed hair gleaming in the light of the candles he had lit and set along the balcony, as dawn was still barely a smear in the east.

“Wow, this is nice,” she said.

He flicked a grin her way. “Glad you like it. I figured we’d want to see what we’re eating. I forgot to ask what you like, by the way, so I ordered enough for an army. I figure whatever we don’t eat will save.”

As he spoke he lifted container tops to reveal pancakes, croissants, blueberry muffins, fluffy scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, two kinds of omelets, pots of salsa, jam, and a bowl of fresh fruit.

Then he glanced at her in horror. “Please tell me you’re not one of those women who eat a single bite of yoghurt in the morning and then moan about the calories?”

“You should know by a look at me that I like food,” she said. “My least favorite step-brother used to call me Wide Load.”

“Point the schmuck out to me and I’ll clean his clock for him,” Dennis retorted, dropping onto the wicker love seat beside her.

There were at least six inches between them, but once again she breathed against that skin-tightening, tingly frisson of intimate space, and fought the urge to sidle up next to him.

Instead, she busied herself loading a plate. The first bite was heavenly. The second just as good.

As he talked lightly and intermittently about his search for the perfect breakfast place, she worked her way through each delicacy, at length closing her eyes to enjoy the excellent food, the soft early morning air . . .

The gentle sense of anticipation.

And opened her eyes to see him watching her, twin candle flames dancing in the yellow-rimmed black pupils of his eyes.

She put her fork down on her empty plate. “What?”

“I like watching you eat,” he said with that dimpled smile. “Actually, I like watching you do everything.”

Heat flared through her at the warmth in his tone. “You realize that’s practically a challenge to shove part of this muffin up my nose. Or your nose.”

“What?” He spread his fingers across his chest, pretending an injured air. “You think I’m kidding?”

“I think you should finish that food before it gets cold. Which would be a crime—it’s too good to be disrespected. And by the way, didn’t you say this was a working breakfast? Did something change?”

His grin thinned, his expression positively piratical. “My friend Greg called this morning. Basically, we’ve got to stick to Haskell as close as we can. Something’s going on, but this much we know: this is the endgame. We are going to nail this SOB.”

“At a location shoot?” Mindy asked doubtfully. “I mean, what’s he going to do to get him caught in front of a zillion spectators? From everything I’ve ever heard, those are about as public as you can get.”

“I know. Which is why I’m confused as well. But others can handle the covert stuff. Between the two of us, we should be able to lock down the head honcho. He’s not going to go anywhere without one of us right there with him.”

“Okay,” she said. “Though the thought of hearing that horrible laugh one more time,
hurr hurr hurr
,” she grunted, “makes me want to toss my cookies.”

“Okay, then we won’t talk about him until we’re done. It really would be a crime to spoil this breakfast.”

“Except,” she noted, “your plate is empty.”

“As is yours,” he murmured, still with that steady gaze.

The warm tingling had flared into heat. “So by breakfast, you didn’t mean the food?”

“The meal,” he said low in his chest, “was delicious.” His gaze drifted down her body as he leaned an inch closer, his breath stirring the top of her hair. “But what I was thinking of was dessert.”

Her breath caught.

He leaned closer, and said even more softly, “One question driving me crazy is, what are you wearing under that skirt?”

Who was she kidding? She was already wet.

“If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” she whispered back.

The first time, they didn’t even make it to the bed. The second time was a reprise of the shower, only he took her from behind as she knelt hands and knees on the shower bench, hot water pounding all around as he brought them to a volcanic climax that left them both squeaky clean and utterly wrung out.

Presently they lay side by side in the bed as a ray of peachy-gold early morning sunlight touched the candles, paling the flickering flames, and began to climb slowly across the terrace.

“Tell me,” he said suddenly, picking up one of her hands and playing with her fingers.

“Yes?” she said drowsily, faint alarm kindling far, far below the surface of her placidly sated mind.

“That grandmother of yours that Mrs. Haskell mentioned? The one who thought she was a Shetland Pony?”

“My great-grandmother. Yes.”

“Did you ever consider that she was one?” he asked mildly.

She shot him a suspicious look. “Are you making fun of my great-grandmother?”

“Not at all.”

“It’s just that you’re the first person, ever, who has suggested that. She was perfectly sane.”

“I’m sure.”

“The sanest person I ever knew.”

“She sounds like it.”

“You’re agreeing with me,” Mindy said warily. “Nobody
does
that. Unless . . .”

“Unless?” he prompted.

“Nothing.” She bit his ear. “Unless you’re hinting that you think I’m insane. Menace.”

“No,” he moaned in fake agony. “Don’t go there, Mork. I had to beat up every kid in fourth grade before they stopped the Dennis the Menace crap.”

She grinned unrepentantly, loving the way his entire body quaked with laughter, silent except for that rough growl deep in his chest that reminded her of a purr. “Men-ace!”

The last came out a squeak when he nipped her earlobe.

“Ah,” she squeaked, laughing. “We’ve got to stop. We have to turn back into Payton and Dan, and not be late.”

“I know. But I want every second of Mork I can get.”

She closed her eyes, the alarm growing into a hard thing in her chest. She’d let the poodle be happy, but it was time to be a people—rational. Careful. Protecting them both. No, protecting all three of them, poodle, Mindy, and Dennis.

“I have loved every second with you,” she murmured into his chest. “It’s been so good I want to go out on the high.”

“Do we have to go out at all?” he asked,

She sat up and gazed at him, not missing the subtle widening of his eyes, as if he’d surprised himself.
Grown-up
, she reminded herself.
Grown-up with a poodle inside
. “It’s me. It’s just that I am terrible at relationships. Look at the example I’ve had! And you’ve been so awesome it would be a criminal act to spoil the memories.”

“Got it,” he said, but low—his gaze sliding away. “And I’m not much of a bargain. I live out of my go-bag. That’s no way to treat someone.”

She should stop there—but she couldn’t help it.

“Do you like living out of your go-bag?” she asked.

“What? Oh. Yes—no. Sometimes I wish I had a better home base, but I know better than to settle for the yoke of a salary just to get something like this.” He waved a hand around the guest room. “It’d become a prison, and a cubicle job would turn me into a maze rat.” As he spoke he got up, and methodically began picking up his clothes, still not looking her way.

The sense of shared intimacy had vanished, and she picked up her things and retreated to dress. A spurt of anger at the impossible situation made her leave her hair wild after all. Let it poodle. Thinking he would somehow guess about the dog inside her was idiotic—no, it was displaced worry about how the breakup would happen. Because of course it had to happen.

By the time she emerged from the bathroom, he had picked up the food containers and carried them to the kitchen. When they reached the driveway, Dennis paused, his face in shadow from the early morning rays when he looked down at her. “Shall we drive separately?”

“Might be easier,” she said.

“Let’s see if we can park near one another,” he suggested.

As it turned out, she was able to fit the Honda into a tight spot, but the Lexus, so much larger, required some circling outward. She waited in the Honda until he texted her,
Found a spot. On my way
.

She dumped the text into an archive to be saved with the other brief messages from him, and every one of those photos from the bar that first night. She felt like a teenager, but the hell with it.