Open All Hours (Carnival Magic 2) (2 page)

“No, man. Something else entirely.” He pulled the struggling kitten closer to his chest. “We got any more tuna?”

The cat hissed, pushing away from the Vol’s chest with its front paws.

“Yeah, we got some.” He gestured toward the animal. “But I don’t think he’s cool with fish.”

“She,” Vol corrected, unsure of why he did so. Going with his gut wasn’t something he was used to. Running a successful business took that out of you. He’d have to ask his cousin Arthur how he managed to do it so well. Must be the magician thing, having to scan the audience for their reactions and going on a sense of what they wanted to see. And then giving them the opposite to heighten the surprise. He’d also need to ask Arthur if anyone had come to his carnival across the road seeking a lost black cat. Odd that he didn’t have the desire to find her owner just yet. It wasn’t too late to call his cousin and get the search started as the carnival kept late hours, usually until two in the morning. But he held off. “What do you think she wants? Think I need to go and get cat food?”

Tone flipped a line of four burgers at once with his oversized spatula, keeping the miniature feline in his peripheral vision. He slid one of the patties inside a bun with no other toppings. “Cow, high and dry. You lettin’ her eat here?”

Vol looked at the cat, which was now watching its prospective dinner and purring low in its chest. “No, give it shoes. I’ll take it upstairs.”

* * *

Leesa lay on the couch licking her paws and watched the man called Vol leave after giving her a gentle rub on the head. He’d seemed shocked when she tried to pick up the burger with her paws, then he chuckled and tore the delicious smelling sandwich into pieces. Leesa had begun to eat by picking up bits carefully with her mouth, not sure which was worse, eating on the floor or eating with her face in a piece of greaseproof paper. She’d quickly become comfortable with the man -- he was obviously an animal lover and wasn’t intent on hurting her. Though it was better than tuna -- she hated fish -- Leesa was skeptical about eating a plain burger. Lettuce, tomato and pickle would have been her preference of toppings, with a squirt or two of spicy mustard, and she was starving. But she needn’t have worried. The burger was fantastic -- juicy, tender meat perfectly seasoned on a fresh soft roll.

Now that her belly was full, she wanted to rest. She was so tired. Leesa had no idea how far she’d run in her blind panic from the woods. Or how much had she run as a human and how much as a cat? She shook off her fatigue and leaped off the sofa to look around the apartment for a clock.

The man’s home surprised her. He looked like someone you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley -- broad and powerful in the chest, arms and shoulders. He had sparkling green eyes and a close-cropped haircut that hinted at inky black. It was his eyes that captured her in the first few moments that she’d seen him behind the diner when he lifted the box she’d crawled under to hide. They were intelligent and kind, giving his face a playful look despite the massive muscles. A thrill went through her, freezing her in place as he reached down to lift her out. It was then she thought to struggle, but pressed against the steady thump of his strong heartbeat, her urge to flee disappeared.

Leesa padded silently through the apartment. The place was immaculate, with a deep comfy couch in front of an expensive looking stereo system and tall speakers. Soft beige walls showed off black and white framed posters of music icons -- B.B. King, Elvis, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry -- some of them signed. She thought he’d be more Harley Davidson than classic crooners and Motown sound.

She leaped up on one of the tables to get a better look at one of the pictures when a shiver went through her. Her great gran would have said it was someone walking over her grave, but Leesa wasn’t superstitious. She thought she’d caught a chill from her romp through the forest, but she’d been inside for over an hour now. Then the shudder changed to a searing heat that burned through her veins like twenty-year-old whiskey. Her body stretched and retracted, making her cry out more from surprise than pain. Pain came when her cat limbs lengthened again, the fur receding into her follicles, leaving her smooth ebony skin feeling exposed and bare.

“Ugh,” she said as the agony hit again, leaving her gasping for breath. Leesa fell from the table, taking the brunt of the impact on the shoulder that was in the midst of shifting. The socket joint protested, and she curled on the floor to cradle it through the rest of the change. If she continued to change. In the woods, she hadn’t felt this suffering. It was shock, she told herself, and disbelief. She’d been convinced that she was going to stay a cat forever until now. But now it was just her and this change. She wasn’t sure which she preferred.

After lying on the floor a few minutes to catch her breath, Leesa got shakily to her feet, unsure it was over. She shuffled down the hall over to a door on the far left that she’d seen Vol disappear into earlier, presumably the bathroom. Hesitantly, she stepped to the mirror over the sink and looked at her reflection. Other than looking a little wild-eyed, she was the same. So, this curse was to teach her a lesson.
Curious little cat, stay out of our business.
Yeah, she got it.

But the public had a right to know and as a reporter, she had an obligation to tell them. Now to get out of here. She lifted her arms to smooth her hair before dashing out of the apartment, and saw the tops of her bare breasts in the glass.

How had she not noticed she was naked?

This was a problem. Fully clothed, she could blend into the customers leaving the diner and find her way. But without clothes… And where was she going to try to make it to? Her car? Back to her condo? She searched the remaining rooms for a bedroom. He had to have something she could wear. Leesa felt a little bad, and silently promised that anything she took, she’d return as soon as she got back home. He’d been nice to a little cat, but how would he feel about a woman in his home? He’d think she broke in, and as some of her prior news stories had shown, blacks didn’t tend to fare well in those situations.

His bedroom was just as tidy as the rest of the place. There were few clothes, mostly jeans and T-shirts, with the occasional soft plaid lumberjack-type button down. None of them fit her. The man was massive. The jeans were a joke. They pulled up over her breasts, then fell to the floor when she let got of the waistband. The shirts hung, covering her in a manner more suitable for going to bed, rather than going to catch a taxi. What was she going to pay with? Leesa groaned. She didn’t relish the thought of walking at -- she looked at the chrome-edged clock on the wall -- one in the morning through the woods barefoot. Damn.

She could call someone. Someone from the paper? No, they’d ask questions and maybe put together what she’d been onto. No -- this was her story and she needed a big headline desperately. Her mom was no good, she was getting on a bit -- she’d had Leesa when she was almost forty -- and just getting a phone call at this time of night might not let her get to see eighty.

Her sister, Lou Ann, was the only other option. Lou Ann would curse her out, tell her that she had some nerve, but she’d come. Then she’d have to listen to an hour of life instructions on why she should have chosen a different career, how it might have allowed her to stay married to Shaun, and that just because their mother had her at forty, didn’t mean she had to wait that long to have children.

She cursed as she shrugged into the lumberjack shirt. Fine. Next time, she’d make a better contingency plan. Or even make a plan in the first place. Now for that phone…

There wasn’t one. After a scan of all the rooms, Leesa couldn’t find a phone. Things had changed in the past twenty years since she left journalism school. Few people had landlines anymore, and exclusively used cell phones. It seemed that Vol was one of those people.

She heard a soft whir behind her and a dot of light caught her eye. Leesa had her hand over what looked like a normal table until she found a white electrical cord. She slid her fingers down the sides of the table and lifted the top. It folded inward to reveal a computer desk, complete with laptop. It was one of those Apple models that you were supposed to leave on all the time, but Leesa wasn’t as familiar with them as she was with a regular PC. She lifted the lid and the screen flashed on, revealing a desktop picture of two brown bear cubs playing. Odd, she thought, but cute.

There was no mouse, only a thin silver track pad to slide her finger across. After a few tries, she finally got the cursor to move. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. Just as she got the pointer finger to hover over the web browser icon, a shadow fell over her, accompanied by a deep, angry voice that seemed to shake the room.

“What the hell are you doing in here?”

A surprised squeak escaped Leesa’s mouth and she jumped away from the computer, her feet sliding from underneath her. As she fell, she shifted, turning her yelp of alarm into a mewling cry.

“Think we need to have a talk, darlin’,” Vol said as he handed her a fleece robe to drape around her nakedness once she regained her human form a few minutes later. It was impressive nakedness too; she was all smooth skin and gentle curves and he longed for another look. If he wasn’t mistaken, she also had a neat triangle of dark curls between her thighs. He wasn’t a huge fan of the waxed, shaved look that was so prevalent. A woman’s excitement clinging in little dewdrops to crinkly pussy hair was one of the most arousing sights he could think of and it made his mouth water. He swallowed. He hadn’t had a relationship -- or even a lot of female company for a while -- because starting his twenty-four hour diner had been a full-time job for the past few years. Now though, he had a full staff and a second chef, so he could take time away when he needed to.

He’d seen her fear and anxiety for a brief moment before she dropped into her feline form. Vol knew from experience that falling that quickly into the change could be painful and was reserved only for emergencies. As a grizzly shifter himself, he’d only had to shift that quickly once and he’d been sore for a few days after, like he’d run a marathon without training first. But she hadn’t looked like she was purposefully executing a life or death shift. She’d been a surprised woman one second and nervous cat the next.

It wasn’t normal. That kind of uncontrollable change only happened to children who had just begun to learn how to take on their animal forms. And young children at that -- six or seven -- like the picture on his computer desktop of his nephews playing in their cub forms. Something was wrong. It was hard to tell with her perfectly smooth unlined skin, but this woman had to be around his age, thirty or thirty-five, maybe. If she were a true shifter, she’d have mastered the art of the shift long ago. He’d heard about people who had the ability to shift into more than one animal, but he’d never met one. Was that her issue? Somehow, he didn’t think so.

Vol put down the stack of dish towels he’d brought upstairs to make the kitten a bed for the night. After a long day, he’d been ready to turn in and get some rest before he started the breakfast shift at five-thirty, but for the moment, answers from the beauty in front of him were the priority.

The woman wrapped herself in the robe and sat on the other end of the couch from him. The garment was huge on her slender, but curvaceous frame, but at least she could belt it and be covered. His cock twitched in his jeans and he leaned forward to place his elbows on his knees to cover the growing bulge. She met the kindness in his eyes with a gaze of defiance. “I’ll scream,” she ventured.

“And I’ll say you broke into my apartment, so I’d be justified in restraining you until the cops got here.” He leveled a glittering green look at her, softened only by a warm smile. “But we both know that’s not the case, is it? So why don’t you tell me your name and maybe I can help you.”

* * *

Leesa was glad he was sitting down, because she would have had to crane her neck to see his face otherwise. Keeping her eyes on him, she responded, “You’re right. I didn’t break in here.” What else was she supposed to say? He was a good-looking man, and she imagined he didn’t have any issues with finding female company, but he wouldn’t have forgotten that he left a woman in his place.

Her body had noticed his attractiveness as well. She was hyperaware of him, of how big he was. Her skin prickled with sensitivity where it rubbed against the soft, downy, fleece robe and she felt a strange sensation to crawl over to him and sit on his lap. The thought of sitting on him brought flashes of sexual images to her mind lightning fast: him peeling the robe off, then taking a tight nipple into his mouth and grinding what looked like it might be an impressive cock against her damp heat. Leesa shifted on the couch and crossed her legs, hoping the scent of her growing excitement wasn’t obvious.

She marveled that she didn’t feel concerned about being with him here alone in his place. Maybe the instant comfort her cat had felt from earlier remained with her. But now that sense of security had changed into something more. Leesa finally found herself able to observe the man without any other outside distractions.

He was at least a foot taller than she was and had a strong jaw kept from being model perfect by lips a shade too full to grace a fashion cover. He also sported a sprinkling of silver in his military-style haircut. She liked that he didn’t try to conceal the fact he was getting gray. Maybe he was about her age?

Vol didn’t seem like the kind of man to worry about surface things and seemed comfortable in his own skin. He wasn’t threatening to her, but she imagined he could be to anyone who crossed him. But his eyes were kind, yet serious, and that spoke to a deeper core part of her that flared into life after so long living as a divorcée. Oh sure, her body responded to him -- it had been a long time, after all -- but there was more than that. There was being aroused by the ability to trust a man with not only your body, but with your secrets.

She realized he hadn’t said anything more and she’d been in her own thoughts far too long without revealing any more information on why she was here. Vol must be a patient man. He was also remarkably calm, but he had to have seen her… transformation? Change? Whatever it was, it scared her, so he must be hella confused. “I didn’t break in,” she repeated lamely, unsure of what else to reveal.