Cafe in the Park (Siren Publishing Classic) (12 page)

* * * *

Emily tried to keep her mind off Chris. She stared out of the kitchen window and checked her work meeting notes for the third time. She was in love with Chris. It wasn’t understandable after knowing him for only days, but it was welcome. The last week was extraordinary anyway, what with the beautiful mountain lion arriving on her roof as well as meeting Chris. She couldn’t settle until she made the decision to go to the gig that night. She’d surprise Chris by attending. Convinced he’d love that, she finished reading her notes, and put her laptop into her briefcase. She checked her laundry and ironed a shirt for work the next day.

Happily, the afternoon went quickly as she visited the market and stocked up so that she needn’t worry about shopping for the rest of the week.

Emily ate a salad at the outdoor table on her roof garden and looked out for the mountain lion. She hummed as she showered and dressed to go to the gig, aiming to be there at ten when Chris and the band went on stage.

She had to use the sat-nav to find the club and then the nearest parking lots. At ten twenty, she paid the entrance fee and wandered into the club. The band was on stage and most people crammed close to the raised area that sufficed as a stage there. The place was pitch black, the only lights two spots that lit up Chris and the lead singer, the rest of the band only outlined with a blue glow. Emily hoped her eyes would adjust to the darkness and carefully made her way closer. She couldn’t get very far into the throng of people and stopped to watch Chris.

His singing went straight to her heart. The love song seemed just for her. She gazed enthralled until the end of the set, when the crowd erupted in whooping and stamping. People called, and lit their cell phone lights to wave at the band until they stopped exiting the stage and played an encore song.

Emily loved the haunting lyrics. She drifted, entranced as Chris and the lead singer shared the last verse. Chris appeared to be staring out at someone in the front of the crowd as he sang. A frown brought a ruffle of pain to the middle of her forehead.
Who is he singing to?

The lights suddenly glared, signifying the end of the band’s appearance. The crowd applauded, murmured, and dispersed.

Chris jumped down from the raised area, his guitar left propped against a speaker. Before the lights dimmed again to dance floor level, Emily saw Chris with the woman from the night before. He leaned to her, intent on what she said. A crush of sadness brought hot stinging tears to Emily’s eyes. Veronique put a hand on Chris’s arm and he didn’t shake it off, he didn’t push it away.

Emily turned, bumping into Art who’d arrived directly behind her.

“Emily, you’re here. Chris said you wouldn’t be.”

She shook her head in pain. “I can see that. He’s obviously juggling two of us. I see Veronique is all over him. I’m leaving. Please don’t tell him I came here to see him. I think I need to back off, try to forget him.” Her voice cracked and she stumbled away to the door.

Art caught up with her. “Emily, don’t go, Chris will be devastated he missed you. What you saw isn’t what it seems.”

Emily stared at Art in the light from the bar. His face was yellow in the down lights over the door. He looked concerned. The concerned bodyguard who took care of his employer, including covering the slip ups when women accidently saw that Chris two-timed them.

Emily tore away, tripping on someone, apologizing, and then exiting onto the sidewalk, her lungs heaving. Her heels clacked on the paving and faded to a dull tap as she ran into the asphalt lane that led to the car parking lot.

Emily stopped at her car and slumped against the door, sadness exhausting her. “Chris, I believed in you. I’m such a fool.” She spoke aloud, her hurt and confusion shredding her nerves. She fumbled with her keys and accidently relocked the car as she pressed the wrong side of the electronic button.

Emily waited until she stopped crying before she started the engine and drove home, the dulcet tones of the sat-nav guiding her.

Once home, with something like grief urging her on, she read the e-mails from the other two matches she’d received from the speed-dating event.

She answered one with an invitation to meet the next day for lunch, at Café in the Park.
She’d show Chris, get over him as fast as possible by kissing another man, holding him close the way she’d done with Chris.

Her cell phone rang. Convinced it was Chris calling just as he had the night before, she turned it off.

* * * *

A hot wave of fury burned through Chris when Veronique grabbed him. He’d seen her and was about to tell her to leave him alone when she simpered and held him. It gave him the creeps. He leaned in, with what he hoped was a menacing stance.

“Veronique, I thought I’d made it plain last night. I don’t want to be unkind, but I have to ask you to leave me alone.” He grasped her hand to remove it from his body.

“I’m in a bad way, Chris. I need help, more than you gave last night. I know you can spare it. I’ve seen your car, your bodyguard, watched you.”

Chris seethed with anger. Would she approach Emily?

As if she’d read his mind, she spoke again clinging to his arm.

“I don’t think your pretty little girlfriend will understand what you are. I think she will run from you. A shifter. A predator. How long before she can’t stand the sight of you eating raw meat. How long before she stops kissing you? She doesn’t know, does she?”

Chris actually felt the blood drain from his face. It trailed in a cold trickle of fear down his body. He was murderous. “If you go near Emily, I’ll kill you.”

Veronique smiled. “Ah, the secret must be worth a few thousand. That would see me clear of trouble. I could leave town and find a place to live and work.”

She glanced around, and Chris looked in the same direction.

Emily was there with Art. Chris pushed Veronique away. He took a step, but Emily was running. She’d gone. Chris sagged inside. Emily had seen Veronique with her hands on him again.

“I’ll give you a check. Ten grand, and that’s it. Truth is, if you hadn’t threatened, had come to me in a decent way, I might have given more, now I just don’t trust you.”

Veronique grimaced. “I’d prefer cash, but a check will do as long as I get it now.”

“Now?” Chris took a deep breath, exasperated.

Art was by his side. “Art, do we have a check book handy?” Chris saw Art’s eyebrows raise, before his friend took on a mask of indifference.

“Yes.” He took a leather fold from his inside pocket and flipped it open. It revealed the checkbook. A small ballpoint was in a tiny leather loop in the binding and Art took it out. He opened the checkbook and silently handed Chris both the pen and the leather fold.

Chris wrote a check, tore it from the book, and handed it to Veronique.

“Get out of here, and leave me alone. Remember what I said about Emily.”

Veronique grabbed the check from his fingers, turned on her heel, and strode away.

Chris handed the checkbook back to Art. “Thanks. Sorry, Art. This situation just gets better and better. Emily saw again, huh?”

Art nodded. “She did and she’s had it with you.” He handed Chris a cell phone.

Chris sighed. “Fucking hell.” He called Emily. The call rang out. Chris gave Art the cell phone. “I’ll leave it tonight. Give her chance to stop being furious, which she has to be.”

Chris was at Café in the Park early. He hung around under the tree where he’d watched Emily before they met formally. He saw her arrive at the café and was about to go to her when a man, dressed in a gray business suit, dashed up to her. He brandished a folded newspaper at her. It looked to Chris as if they were meeting for the first time. His heart sank. She was meeting someone from the matching agency. That’s what was happening, he felt sure of it, but to do it here and when he was supposed to be meeting her for lunch, hurt like hell.

Chris watched as they went into the café. He experienced a moment of rage, and then deep sadness took over. He couldn’t blame her. She’d be so hurt from seeing him with Veronique. Truth was, if he was Emily, and seen what she’d seen two nights running, he’d be at least suspicious. He’d likely look for someone else. Yes, he would. In pain and sorrow, after the way they’d had sex, he’d think the worst. He’d cut loose the way she was doing, just in case more pain was to come from clinging on.

He walked close to the café. After waiting for a few moments, he went in. Emily and the man were at a table in the far end of the café. Emily had her back to Chris. He got a coffee and went to sit at a table only a couple of yards away. He would have been able to hear the conversation if he’d stayed further away, but he needed to be close to Emily. His chest actually ached with sadness. Chris listened until he discovered they were meeting for dinner that night and where, and then he left the café, his coffee untouched.

* * * *

The mountain lion crouched low on the roof of the restaurant. It sniffed the air occasionally, waiting for the scent that told him his Emily had arrived.

Chris shuffled along the corrugated iron shielding near the kitchen fan vents on the roof. He filtered out the food and cooking smells. Emily had arrived, on foot. Chris identified the man walking with her by smell…adrenaline, a none-too-clean suit, an inexpensive cologne, and arousal. Chris growled low. Tension coiled in his stomach. The man already wanted to fuck his Emily. That wasn’t happening.

Chris waited for what dragged like hours, but was in fact only an hour, and then they came out. They walked along the sidewalk and Chris padded silently along the rooftops trailing them.

They came to a car. Not Emily’s.

Chris growled soft, deep, dangerously. Shock spiked him. The man had picked Emily up from her apartment. He was taking her home again. Chris lifted his head as the car drove off, and yowled. His strange cry echoed in the night. He took off at speed to Emily’s apartment.

When Chris arrived, he stopped on the adjacent roof and tried to calm down. He sat for a few minutes listening and waiting, and then he silently leapt the gap and padded onto Emily’s roof garden. They were in the apartment. They talked low, but Chris heard every word clearly.

Emily came into the kitchen. She started making coffee.

The man followed and asked if she had a beer.

Emily gave him one. She didn’t take one herself.

Chris knew from her tone and her scent wafting through the open kitchen window that she was nervous, unsure. A low growl of worry shook him.

The man drew close to Emily and nuzzled her neck.

White-hot fury surged through Chris. He fidgeted, his tail swishing back and forth, before he took the attack position and held it, frozen there, waiting.

Emily was afraid. Chris scented it.

She walked away from the man. “Let’s sit on the roof. It’s still warm. You can drink your beer.”

Chris sensed her regret.
She doesn’t want the man there in her home.

The roof garden door opened. Chris remained frozen in place.

They walked out to the little table and chairs Emily kept in the middle of the roof garden. They had no idea he was there under the window against the wall. The darkness enveloped him as he waited. The decorative roof lights circled Emily’s garden table setting and trailed along one of the crenellations. Chris crushed down his lion instincts to protect his lover. Perhaps the man would simply leave when he realized Emily wasn’t into him. Chris didn’t want to terrify Emily with an attack on her companion.

“Sit down, Peter. Let’s talk. I’d like to get to know you better.”

Emily’s voice gave her away.

With every sense Chris had, he was certain she wanted rid of this guy, but the man had other intentions. He wanted Emily. His scent was pure male hormones, aggression, and lust. Chris’s lips curled in a silent snarl.

Peter didn’t sit. He put the beer down on the table and grabbed Emily. He kissed her hard, his hands on her ass.

Emily struggled away. “I’m sorry, Peter. I’m just not ready.”

Peter wasn’t taking “no.” He rushed at Emily and dragged her back toward him with the neckline of her dress. “Emily, you brought me up here. You must have known what that meant. Come on. Just a few kisses and you’ll be in the mood.”

Chris saw red. He leapt the pots of flowers and low growing shrubs Emily had between the apartment wall and the garden table. He landed growling only inches from them.

Peter let go of Emily and staggered back a pace. “Fuck me. A fucking mountain lion.”

Emily took a pace to be next to Chris.

He scented her relief.

Her hand on his huge shoulder muscle grasped at the fur there.

Chris growled at Peter. The deep sound was a warning he meant business, should the man touch Emily again.

Peter backed away toward the door.

“You know this thing? What, it’s a pet?”

Emily nodded. Her voice a whisper. “Yes, he’s my pet. He saw you grab me and he’s protecting me. You better go now. I’ll calm him down or he’ll hunt you in the night.”