Fated to a Cougar: 4 (Cougar Surrender) (2 page)

He gave her a sexy crooked grin that made her pussy clench
with unfulfilled desire. “Yeah. A date. Then we can continue where that kiss
ended.”

At first, Sage didn’t know how to answer Grady. Since she’d
started her career as a police officer, she really hadn’t taken the time to
date. She worked long hours, and her being a cop wasn’t something a lot of men
could handle. Sometimes she had a hard time shutting off that side of her when
she wasn’t on the job. She had to have a tough personality to do it.

“I…ah…” Now she sounded like an unsure teenager being asked
out on her first date. It’d been a long time since she’d had sex, but she
hadn’t thought a mind-blowing kiss would strip her of the confidence she
usually had in spades.

Grady put his arm around her waist and tugged her even
closer. There was no missing how hard his cock was as it pressed against her
stomach. Sage quickly swallowed back a moan before it pushed past her lips.

“Just say yes,” he said.

Sage heard herself agree to the date before her brain could
catch up with her mouth. Grady took her lips in a hard, fast kiss, then let her
go. She vaguely heard him ask for her address, which she gave him. He also
asked her when would be a good time for them to go out. She mumbled that
tomorrow night she was off work. He said he’d see her around seven, then turned
and ran toward the alley closest to them.

She shook her head, coming out of the haze of arousal that’d
taken her over after Grady had kissed her again. What was the matter with her?
She didn’t normally act so ditzy around a guy. She then realized Grady had left
before she could call an ambulance for him.

Sage took off at run in the direction he’d gone, but once
she reached the alley there was no sign of him. For someone with a head wound,
he sure could move fast. Deciding there was no point in trying to chase after
him, she returned to her cruiser and got inside. She turned off the flashing
lights before she put it in drive and drove away.

She really couldn’t believe she’d so quickly agreed to go
out with Grady or that she’d allowed him to distract her enough to slip away
without making sure he went to the hospital. Tomorrow night she’d get to see if
he’d had someone look at his wound or not.

For the rest of her shift, Sage went from looking forward to
seeing Grady again to dreading it. And with no way of contacting him, it wasn’t
as if she could call and cancel. Then there was the fact she’d given him her
home address without knowing anything about him. At least being a cop she would
know how to handle him if things got out of hand. But the big question was, who
would handle her if she got out of hand with him and jumped his bones?

“Ow. Would you take it easy?” Grady asked.

He sat at the kitchen table at his home that he shared with
his parents, his brother and his brother’s mate. Katarina, who’d become mated
to his brother Jase three months before, tended to Grady’s wound.

“Stop being such a baby,” Katarina said. “I thought all you
cougar shifters were tough guys.”

“We are, but that freaking burns.”

“It needs to be disinfected with rubbing alcohol. I know
it’ll be healed by tomorrow, but it’ll help to have it cleaned out.”

“Yeah, Grady, stop being a crybaby,” Jase said with a
chuckle. He sat across from Grady as he watched his mate work.

“Bite me,” he said with a growl. “I still can’t believe
Caleb managed to get the drop on me. But I guess he did me a favor.”

Jase gave him a confused look. “How can getting your skull
almost cracked in two by a metal pipe do you a favor?”

Grady smiled. “I ended up with a date for tomorrow night.”

His brother snorted. “With who? An imaginary woman? Caleb
must have hit you harder than I thought. You’re seeing things.”

“No, Sage was very much real. She’s the reason why Caleb
stopped hitting me and took off.”

“He was afraid of a human woman? I’m assuming this Sage is
human.”

“She is, and she’s a little more than just a human woman.
She’s a cop. She saw Caleb with the metal pipe and turned on her flashing
lights and siren.”

Katarina stopped poking at Grady’s head and leaned around to
look at him. “You have a date with a police officer?”

“Yeah. I asked her out after I kissed her and she said yes.”

His brother’s mate whistled. “You kissed an on-duty cop?
You’re lucky she didn’t try to arrest you.”

“I thought she might, but it was the best thing I could
think of to distract her from calling an ambulance for me. She insisted I go to
the hospital. I don’t think she would have taken no for an answer if I hadn’t
laid one on her.”

“So you only kissed her and asked her out for that reason?”

“No. Sage is gorgeous. I would want to date her even if I
hadn’t been trying to stop her from getting me to go to the hospital.”

Katarina went back to cleaning Grady’s head wound, and he
sucked in a sharp breath. He had to be thankful his mother wasn’t at home. She
would have been fussing over him too much. His parents had gone away for the
week. They’d flown to the Gulf Islands, which was off the eastern coastline of
Vancouver Island in British Columbia. They owned a cottage on their own tiny private
island. It was big enough—and had enough trees for coverage—for them to shift
to their cougar forms and go for runs. Grady figured his parents mostly went
there to have some alone time without him and Jase hanging around.

“At least we now know Caleb is still in Anchorage,” Jase
said, changing the subject.

“Yeah, but he got away,” he added. “And the male human he’d
been talking to when I first spotted him was gone when I went back to see if I
could pick up his trail. He must have had a car in that parking lot because I
lost it there.”

Jase shook his head. “That’s too bad. It makes me wonder
what Caleb was up to. It couldn’t be anything legal if he had that meeting in a
dark parking lot in the middle of the night.”

Katarina gave Grady a tap on the shoulder. “All done. I have
to agree with that, Jase. Who knows what he was up to, but it couldn’t have
been anything good.”

“I was thinking he has to be running out of money,” Grady
said. “The amount he had stashed in that apartment that he took before he went
into deeper hiding won’t last him forever. And as far as Draven has been able
to find out, Caleb still owns his house. There’s a lot of capital tied up in
it. If it suddenly burns to the ground we’ll know what that meeting was about.”

“Actually,” Jase said with a nod, “that makes a lot of
sense. That way Caleb won’t have to go through the hassle of having to sell it.
He’d only have to collect the insurance money from it. That’s a quick way to
turn it into cash.”

The more Grady thought about it, the more likely a scenario
it could be. They’d have to watch Caleb’s house for anything suspicious taking
place around it. And if Caleb did decide to do away with it like that, there
was always a chance he’d risk returning there to take what he wanted from it
beforehand.

Grady stood and walked over to the fridge, where he took out
a bottle of beer. “I think I should tell Uncle Nate. As the leader of our
family group, he could get others to watch Caleb’s house when we can’t.”

“Good idea.” Jase stood, then walked over to his mate and
put his arm around her shoulders. “Now that your head is taken care of,
Katarina and I are heading upstairs.”

He watched them walk out of the kitchen. He wouldn’t be
seeing those two for the rest of the night. And with his room directly across from
theirs, at times his damn sensitive cougar hearing allowed him to hear more
than he wanted to. That was the only part that sucked about living with his
family.

Grady went upstairs to his room. As he neared Katarina and
Jase’s, the sound of feminine giggles came through the door. He continued into
his bedroom and closed himself inside. He put the bottle on his bedside table
and yanked his long-sleeved t-shirt over his head. The collar of it was stained
with blood. Katarina had already put his winter jacket in the washer since it’d
gotten the worst of it. Head wounds always bled like a bugger.

After putting his shirt in the dirty laundry hamper, Grady
settled on the king-sized bed and turned on the large flat-screen LED
television that hung on the wall across from it. He sipped his beer and a small
smile played on his lips as he thought about Sage. He wondered if he asked
nicely if she’d cuff him, then have her way with him.

* * * * *

Since Sage had worked the night shift, she slept until early
afternoon the following day. Usually she would have slept longer, but having
two days off and then going back into work on day shift, she had to get her
sleeping times adjusted.

After she showered, she returned to her bedroom to get
dressed. Seeing the almost overflowing dirty laundry basket, she could no
longer put off doing the washing. Luckily enough, she had something to wear.
She tugged on her last pair of clean jeans and a sweatshirt.

She lugged her laundry downstairs and put the first load in
the washer in the main-floor laundry room. That’d been one of the big selling
points for her when she’d put in an offer for the two-story semi almost a year
ago.

That task done, Sage went to the kitchen and put the kettle
on to make a pot of tea. She grabbed a muffin from the package she’d bought the
day before and sat at the table to eat it while she waited for the water to
boil.

Before going to bed she’d come to the conclusion it wouldn’t
be a great idea to go out with Grady. She hadn’t been thinking when she’d
agreed to see him in the first place, and she wasn’t looking for a steady
boyfriend. Her work kept her too busy, especially now that she was striving to
become a detective. As for having a short fling, she couldn’t separate her
feelings enough to have one.

A knock on her front door brought Sage out of her musings.
She went to answer it, having an idea who it could be. She pulled open the door
and smiled at the woman who stood on the other side.

“I had a feeling it was you,” Sage said as she stepped back
to let her older sister Macy walk through the entrance. She carried an infant
car seat with her six-month-old son Josh inside, almost buried under all the
blankets on top of him.

“Well, you did tell me you weren’t working today and that
you’d be switching to day shift,” Macy said as she set the car seat on the
floor, then took off her winter boots and jacket.

“Very true. I’ll take Josh.”

Sage picked up the car seat by its handle and carried her
nephew into the living room. She pulled the blankets off him, then unbuckled the
straps. She laid him on the couch while she took off his snowsuit. The poor
thing looked as if he couldn’t move in it.

Macy sat on the couch once Sage picked up Josh. “So how goes
the police business?”

“Not bad. I’m still working my way to becoming a detective.
The hard part is finding the time to study to take the test.”

“You work too much. You don’t even have time to date. I know
you feel your career has to come first and that you’re still young, but you
won’t be twenty-four forever.” Macy nodded toward her son. “Wouldn’t you like
to have a rugrat of your own someday?”

“Of course.” Sage gave Josh a kiss on his little pouty lips.
She loved him as if he were hers. “It’ll just be something I do when I’m in my
thirties. Unlike you, I won’t be ready at twenty-six to be married and already
starting a family.”

“You know why I wanted both those things sooner rather than
later.”

Sage did. They’d lost both their parents when Sage had been
eighteen and Macy twenty. Their father had never been a great father or
husband. Even though their mom had tried to hide it, there had been times when
Sage and Macy had seen marks on their mother after their father had lost his
temper with her. Once Sage turned sixteen, their mom finally kicked him out and
told them the truth about her marriage. Then two years later, while Macy and
Sage were away for a week with their grandparents, their dad had forced his way
into the apartment their mom had rented and killed her. He took his own life
afterward.

So Sage understood why Macy had wanted to have a family of
her own. As for herself, Sage had made the decision she’d become a cop. She
wanted to be able to help protect women who were in the same situation her
mother had been in. Something she hadn’t been able to do for her mom.

“I know,” Sage said.

“This is a change in subject, but since you’re off tonight,
do you think you could do me a favor?”

“What would that be?”

“Hank and I haven’t gone out alone since Josh was born. I
was wondering if you’d agree to babysit so we can go out for dinner. I’d have
Josh all bathed and ready for bed. We’ll bring the playpen for him to sleep in.
He’s usually asleep for the night around seven thirty or eight at the latest.”

Sage thought it over, but quickly decided it would be the
perfect way to get out of her date with Grady. She’d just tell him she’d
forgotten she had to babysit. And with Josh already at her place when Grady
arrived, it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it.

She nodded. “Sure. I don’t mind babysitting. In fact, why
don’t you go out for dinner, then go see a movie. And if you want, you can even
leave Josh here overnight.”

“Really? I only thought to ask you to watch him for a few
hours.”

“Seriously, I’m okay with him staying over. I don’t get to
see him as often as I’d like, and he’s growing so fast. It’ll give you a
break.”

“If you’re really sure you want to have him all night, I’m
not going turn you down. You might have to put up with me calling more than a
few times to see how Josh is doing, though.”

Sage smiled. “You can call as much as you want.”

“All right. Then he’ll be all yours tonight. And that being
the case, I shouldn’t visit for too long. I’ll have to get everything you’ll
need for Josh ready. Nowadays, I swear I can’t leave the house with him without
taking half of it with me.”

“Do you have time to stay for some tea? I put the kettle on.
I just have to make it.”

“That would be great.”

Sage passed Josh over to his mother, then stood and headed
for the kitchen. She took two mugs from the cupboard and smiled. Sage was
actually looking forward to having Josh to herself all night, even if he’d be
sleeping most of the time. For now, he was the closest thing to her having kids
of her own.

* * * * *

Grady pulled onto Sage’s street and kept track of the house
numbers until he arrived at her place. He turned into the two-car driveway and
parked next to the vehicle already there. He got out of the car and headed over
to the front door. Before he rang the doorbell, he ran his fingers through his
hair to straighten it. The wind had blown it into his face. He touched the spot
where his head wound had been. It was completely healed, he didn’t even have a
headache anymore.

It didn’t take long for Sage to answer the door. He ran his
gaze over her, thinking she was more beautiful than he’d remembered. Even in
jeans and a sweatshirt she looked sexy. Her auburn hair was down and fell
around her shoulders, which made his fingers itch to run through it.

“Hi,” he said with a smile. “I hope you remembered we have a
date.”

“I do.”

He frowned a bit when she made no move to invite him in or
get her jacket. “Are you ready to go?”

“Actually, no. I have to cancel. I forgot I’d promised my
sister I’d babysit her son. I’m looking after him overnight.”

“That’s okay. Have you eaten supper yet?”

“No.”

“Then why don’t I come in and we can order something for
delivery.”

Sage hesitated before she answered. “I don’t know if that’s
such a good idea.”

“You have my word I’m not some nutcase. Besides, you’re a
cop. I’d be stupid to try something. I can help you babysit. I like kids.”

Grady did, but he hadn’t been around too many of them. Since
cougar shifters lived to be around two hundred years old, they tended not to
have too many kids. Family groups were mostly made up of extended family and
others from outside of it who’d become mated to a member of the group.

She took a little longer answering that time. “Look, I’m
going to be straight with you. I don’t think I have time to have a steady
boyfriend. I hate to say it, but my career as a cop comes first. I don’t think
it’ll work out. And I don’t date casually.”

Grady wasn’t about to let Sage push him away that easily.
The kiss they’d shared the night before told him she wasn’t unaffected by him.
He had to say it’d ranked up there as his all-time best. She was also the first
human woman he’d ever kissed. He definitely wanted to see where their attraction
for each other led.