The Billionaire Jaguar's Curvy Journalist: BBW Panther Shifter Paranormal Romance (10 page)

She explained what she’d seen. What she’d said. “I just—I blurted it out,” she said. “I didn’t even think—”

“Well,” he said. “I can’t really blame you. Two jaguars in two days. I might’ve done the same thing.”

“Really?”

“Well, um,” he said, “if I wasn’t a jaguar? We can...tell, pretty quickly. But I totally called a CEO the wrong name last week, if it’s any consolation.”

“Are you going to be safe?”

“Well,” he said, his voice even and serious, “Whoever it was would presumably have as much to lose as I would, and you only said my first name. I won’t say I’m totally unconcerned, but it’s not like you handed some guy on the street my name and address and said I was a shifter.”

“I guess not,” she said. “But I’m still—I can’t believe I did it.”

“Don’t beat yourself up,” he said. “I’m glad you told me. Still taking a raincheck on dinner? I still haven’t eaten, if you’re up to it.”

“I’ll be better company tomorrow,” she said. “If that’s okay.”

“I don’t mind waiting,” he said. His voice was so warm she felt her own body warming.

“Well...good,” she said. “Same time would be all right, if that works for you.”

“That sounds perfect. Should I come pick you up? At your apartment?”

“Sure,” she stammered. “That’d be great. I’ve got a story to work on tonight anyway.”
And I need to figure out who to sell it to.

14

“So she didn’t describe the jaguar at all,” Chris said.

Paul shrugged. “She said it was a jaguar, and she realized it wasn’t me right away. Then she got out of there. Can’t say I blame her. I wouldn’t want to stick around for follow-up questions after that.” He smiled at Chris. “Not everyone can do what you do.”

“Well, we all know that,” Chris said with a grin. “More seriously, there’s not much I can do. Nothing’s come up on my Google alerts aside from the stuff about the rescue. I’ll keep checking the blogs that don’t show up on Google, but...there just isn’t much, and I wouldn’t expect there to be. No one’s going to start bragging about seeing another shifter, even if they do think it’s you. I’ll let you know if there’s a spike in traffic on the website or your social media.”

“It won’t be from that
Salem Beach Now
article.”

Chris snorted. “You can say that again.”

“I should go out there,” Paul said. “See if I can pick up any scents. At least I’d know better what I was dealing with.”

“You shouldn’t go alone.”

“Oh, I was planning on taking you with me.” He gestured upward. “I’ll need that eye in the sky.”

“We have a meeting in half an hour about the Nygard initiative.”

“After that, then,” he said. “I don’t want the scent to fade too much.”

“No,” Chris said. “But if you want people to look at you funny, running off into the woods for no reason...that’ll do it.”

“We’ll just leave early,” he said. “We’ve done that before.”

“And we’ll do it again,” Chris said, going back out of Paul’s office. He paused at the door. “Do you think your father—do you think you’ll have any problems with him?”

“He’ll see the article,” Paul said. “But I don’t think he’s going to do anything about it, if that’s what you’re asking.” Mom had said that his father had made his opinions on shifters very, very clear. Paul doubted anything had happened to change his mind. Maybe he missed his elder son, but if he did, he’d done nothing to reach out, or even indicate that he’d
had
an elder son. Father had written Paul out of his life, and Paul doubted either headline in
Salem Beach Now
would change his mind.

“And your brother?”

“I don’t even know if Aaron remembers me,” Paul said. Aaron was five years younger. Who knew what he’d remember? He’d probably remember his mother and brother abandoning him.

We should have brought him with us,
Paul thought, not for the first time. Mom had wanted to keep both her sons safe, and she’d thought splitting them up was the best way to do that. If she’d taken Aaron, Father would have tried to find them. Probably pulled out all the stops, maybe even exposing them both as shifters.

“We disappeared so we could be free,” Mom had said, the only time they’d really talked about it. “So you could be safe. And I could—he realized, when he knew you could change, that I could, too. He knew you were his son—at least he never doubted that.”

It had always seemed like cold comfort to Paul.

It had made Paul cynical, more cynical than he’d realized at first. He didn’t believe any of the stories his mother had told him about shifters finding their mates. He didn’t even believe her hopes that she could find love again. He’d hated every man she’d gone on a date with. Probably screwed more than one relationship up for her, he’d understood years later.

But that had all been before Abby.

There was something else he felt when he talked to Abby, a passion he felt down, deep into his bones. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful, curvy, funny. It wasn’t just that she was smart and capable. There was something inside her that drew him like a magnet.

That was the kind of woman you could believe in. That you could imagine spending the rest of your life with.

That he wanted to spend his life with.

He supposed it would be premature to propose on their first real date. Maybe they could walk by a jewelry store and see what she liked for rings—

He had a meeting in half an hour. He should really be preparing for that. He buzzed Chris. “Are we ready for that Nygard meeting?”

Chris sounded amused. “Daydreaming in your office again?”

“Just...are we ready? What do I need to know?”

“Come out here and I’ll brief you,” Chris said. “I’m still fixing the agenda.”

The Nygard meeting was tedious, but it went quickly, and he drove Chris out to the park. “So you want me to be eyes up?” Chris said. “Is there anywhere there we could change?”

“I’m not sure,” Paul said. “Port-a-potties, maybe. I’m just hoping it’ll be as quiet as Abby says it is.” His sense of smell wasn’t really much different than a human’s when he was in human form. If he couldn’t change, there wouldn’t be much value in even going out there.

There was no one else at the park, but no port-a-potties, either. They shed their clothes in the back of the car and left the windows open. Chris went out first, his wings skimming the edges of the windows.

Paul could tell as soon as he changed that the other cat was long gone. But still, going out on the path would let him have a better picture. He could easily smell Abby’s rich, lovely scent, and he used that as his guideline.

One his paws began tracing Abby’s steps, he let his nose look for the panther. He found its scent trace easily enough, and he knew immediately the animal had been a fellow shifter, not a runaway from a private home or a zoo. The jaguar was a male, and an adult, though Paul suspected he wasn’t very old—the scent he could pick up had none of the telltale signs of age.

Chris soared overhead, riding the wind currents. It wasn’t often they got out together like this. They spent so much of their time at the office.

Here was where Abby and the jaguar had met—almost running into each other, really, and there’d been a terrified duck in the mix, too. Both of them had turned back in opposite directions—that was a good sign, Paul thought, that the shifter hadn’t wanted to hurt or scare Abby. Now he just wanted to try to figure out who the shifter was and what they’d wanted in the first place.

The smell was a little familiar, but nothing Paul could place. There were the usual smells of modern life—automobile exhaust, metal, fabric and what smelled like fast food. He started following the animal’s path, which followed the lakeside trail. Whoever the shifter had been, he’d been careful. He hadn’t scent marked at all, not even rubbed his sides against a rock on the trail. Was he hoping to run into Abby? Or just hoping not to be noticed?

The scent trail ran out at the edge of the water, where the jaguar had slipped in. Had he emerged in jaguar form or human? Paul decided that he’d better cover as much of the lakeshore as he could. There could be more hints, more scent, something he’d be able to recognize.

Shifters needed to stick together...but only if they could trust one another. He’d need to know a lot more about this stranger first.

Maybe Chris had seen something in the air.

When he’d made the full trip around the public areas of the lake, with no further scent of jaguar, he slunk back to his car, jumping through the window. No sign of Chris yet, which either meant he’d seen something, or he just didn’t want both of them vulnerable at the same time.

Paul pulled his pants and underwear back on. He should have asked Abby to meet them there. Not only would they have gotten her memories, he would’ve had the chance to see her again.

Maybe pull her close. Lose his senses in her hair, her scent.

His reverie was interrupted by Chris, diving in through the window. “People coming,” he panted. “Drive.”

“Um, okay,” he said, and jumped into the front seat. He started the car. “Can we just pull out here?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. He was crouched down in the back. “Just go, I’ll get my jeans on.”

Paul grinned in spite of himself. “We get caught, we’ll be dealing with a whole different scandal.”

“Does she know about me?”

“Of course not,” he said, pulling out of the parking lot just as a black sedan with Michigan plates pulled in. “That’s your secret to tell.”

“She’s your mate, we can trust her.”

“Besides, she might not believe me.”

“The big animals get all the press,” Chris said, popping up in the back seat of the car and zipping up his jeans. “We’re just as tough as you guys.”

“Of course you are,” Paul said, and he really didn’t mean it to sound as condescending as it actually sounded. But in his defense, Chris in his shifted form wasn’t much more than a mouthful to a jaguar. A pointy mouthful with a lot of attitude, sure, but—

“One of these days,” Chris muttered, “I’m going to divebomb your head, and then where will you be?”

Paul smirked. “Annoyed.”

“Big talk,” Chris said. “Big talk.”

“What did you think of the car?”

“Looked like tourists,” he said. “It’s a rental, I don’t know if you realized.”

Jaguars might be more powerful, but it was hard to beat the sharp eyes of a hawk. “How could you even tell?”

“Trade secret.” He winked. “They had a bunch of stuff in the back, looked like suitcases. I don’t think they’re your panther, though I couldn’t say for sure. I can swing back and check if you want to stop in half a mile or so.”

“They might spot you.”

“I look enough like the local birds, no one’s going to notice. If they do, well, we’ll know what we’re dealing with, right?”

“All right,” he said. “But be careful.”

“Always,” Chris said.

He turned the radio on after Chris left. It was nice to have a little time to himself to think about all that had happened. He’d found his mate, and there was the chance there was another jaguar shifter out there. He hadn’t really had any others to talk to since Mom died. He and Chris had shifter friends who understood to some extent, and Chris’s family was great, but none of them were cats, and it wasn’t quite the same.

There was a brief mention of the company in business news, but it was about the possibility of it going public, nothing to do with the
Salem Beach Now
profile.

The business wasn’t going public any time soon—probably ever—but Paul supposed the speculation kept Inti in the headlines. Keeping the business successful had been his primary focus—honestly, his only focus—for so long. That would have to change. He needed to make time for his friends. A wife. Chris had told him over and over again to remember there was more to life than Inti, but he’d wanted to prove his worth. To his father, to himself. And what kind of partner would he be if he could only bring a struggling business to the marriage? Mom had been incredibly savvy, and she’d worn her own gold with her wedding gown. Paul had inherited that pride.

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. Waiting was boring. He’d rather be out, being active, doing something.

He was staring out the window, looking for Chris, when he felt it. Fear. Pure, uncut fear, worse than when he’d felt years ago when he’d first learned Mom’s plane had dropped off radar.

Something was
wrong.

It was Abby. His mate. She was scared. In danger?

Chris was still wheeling around above. They’d worked out a signal years ago, but he still didn’t like leaving his friend alone.

The panic crept along his spine again.
Go. Take care of her. Now.

He reached into the glove compartment and found the bright green-and-yellow ribbon they’d chosen years ago. He pulled it out and threw it out the driver’s side window, letting it unspool as it flew.

Chris would see the color and know Paul would come back for him. Sharp hawk’s eyes counted for a lot.

Paul started the car and headed for Abby’s apartment.

15

To Abby’s relief, the article was an easy sell. There was still a lot of mystery around Inti and a peek inside an innovative recycling system would make a great feature. The
Boston Common
wanted to run a full feature in the Sunday edition; all she’d need to do was stop by and take a few more pictures of her own. Best of all, the money they offered was great. Maybe she could buy that new purse she’d had her eye on at the shop across the street from the office.

She managed to channel all her frustration from the day into writing the article, though at first it wasn’t easy to focus. She couldn’t stop thinking about that jaguar out at the lake. Would Paul be all right?

He’d said he was going out there, and he should be fine. Any guy who could turn into a jaguar would be perfectly fine. It was ridiculous to worry about him.

She moved her attention to Inti. Paul was clearly a brilliant investor, but he also really seemed to care about his employees. Environmental policy had also been a cornerstone of Inti’s work. Made sense, she guessed. Of course a jaguar shifter would care deeply about the natural world. And the innovations they made at their corporate warehouse could set a standard for the rest of the industry. “You don’t have to be a manufacturer to make huge strides in using less and saving more,” he’d told her. She used that quote as her leading paragraph. It gave a better idea of who Paul really was than Laura’s whole butchery of her article did.