Mail Order Tiger Bride Wars: A Scorchingly Hot BBW Shifter Romance (9 page)

21

It was only a matter of time when she tracked down
Esai, brother of Mobutu. The construction site he worked in was in a village called Karanga about a hour outside Brazzaville.

In contrast to the modern cityscape of Brazzaville,
Karanga was mostly made of mud houses with the occasional baked brick building. The construction site in question was for a new sports stadium.

Terry wore her wide-brimmed straw hat and a lot of
sun block. Her clothes were the best from her arsenal. No, she wasn’t looking to get robbed. Besides, she could take care of herself. She didn’t have problems shifting like her sister did.

Several men were
shoveling dirt and carrying bricks and mortar in wheelbarrows. She approached one of them.

“I’m looking for
Esai.”

The man jerked his thumb at a tall man with
a shining bald scalp.

“Thank you,” she said, though she wasn’t used to thanking people.

She went up to the man, who looked her up and down as if he would like to devour her. He was smoking a cigarette.

“You
Esai?”

The man threw down the cigarette and stubbed it with his shoe.

“Yeah. What’s it to you?” He had a French accent.

“How would you like to earn
five thousand dollars?”

He stared at her.

“American dollars?”

“Yeah
.”

22

“You have it in you,” Cole said. “All you have to do is relax.”

She was relaxing. Oh, trust her, she was relaxed. She never had so much sex in her entire life. They were at it three times a day, like rabbits. There were the nights, of course. She had moved into his tent, and they made love every night.

And then there were the days
at the dig. Sometimes, they took a break, and he would pull her into the jungle for a quick fuck. They would do it standing up, with her breasts crushed to a tree, and he would take off her pants and fuck her from behind.

He drove her delirious.
And she knew then that she was madly in love with him. How could she not love him? He was handsome, caring, charming, brilliant, funny and everything she had ever wanted in a man.

But did he love her in return?

He had called her ‘his bride’. He repeatedly referred to her as such.

“Close your eyes,” he was telling her now.
“You’ve done it before.”

“It doesn’t mean I can do it again.”

“Sure you can. You never forget. It’s part of you. It’s inside you.”

“You mean like an ingrown toenail?”

But it was getting to her. Her inability to shift. It was as though she were infertile – that she had somehow failed in her ability to procreate as a woman.

Well, she was failing as a part-shifter.

“My sister never had this problem,” Ellen said miserably.

“You don’t have
a problem.”

“Oh, yes, I do.
I do have a problem. And it’s not something I can talk about in a support group. ‘Hello, everyone. I’m Ellen and I’m a shifter who can’t shift.’”

“I th
ink it’s entirely in your mind.”

“But what if
it isn’t in my mind?”

“It’s in your mind.
And even if you can’t shift, so what? You haven’t shifted since you were thirteen . . . and it hasn’t detracted from who you are a bit.”

“No,” Ellen said doubtfully. ‘But what if it has? I’m not exactly a poster girl for success. I-I haven’t really held a job for more than eight months.”

“And why is that?”

“The first job I got out of college was at the university as a mathematics researcher. My boss was an OCD. Obsessive Compulsive. He would dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. He drove me crazy with his level of detail, and he would breathe down our necks. I was having panic attacks every time I came to work, and so I quit.”

“
And?”

“I mean . . . it means that I’m a quitter. Quitters quit.”

“No, it just means you had a boss you didn’t get along with. We’ve had those along the way. Doesn’t mean you’re a quitter. It just means you had a personality conflict with your boss.” He grinned. “I’ve had a lot of those myself.”

“You did?” Ellen was amazed. Cole seemed so perfect.

“Oh yeah. My first job was as an intern in the archeology department. I was assigned to Professor Asshole, or at least that’s what we all called him behind his back. He was a real anal case. Everything had to be done his way, not any other way.

“
One day, I just gave it to him and called him what he was. An asshole. Actually, I think I used the words ‘Kindly rearrange the following. ‘Hole’ and ‘ass’.”

“You actually said that?”

“I did.”

“So they fired you?”

“Yes, they did.” He laughed. “But I got another internship right away. Something better. Doesn’t mean that if you fail at your first job, you’re gonna be a failure for the rest of your working life.”

“Or maybe it just works for interns.
”

“
Natch. And you know it. Works for every job, every seniority. Sometimes, you even need to change your calling. But the bottomline is . . . it never is as bad as it seems at first.”

They were in the jungle.
Alone. They had just made love and they were both naked. That was when Cole suggested she should try shifting again.

Which, of course, she failed miserably at.

But right, doesn’t mean I’m a quitter.

“Say, Cole?”

She loved the way his pecs gleamed in the moonlight.

“Yeah?”

Her finger strolled to his nipple.

“You’re a handsome, successful, rich man, right?”

“Um . . . yeah. Keep going.”

“Why do you need someone like . . . I mean, why do need to advertise for a mail order bride?”

Her heart was beating quickly. Maybe she didn’t want to hear the answer. But she needed to hear him say it.

Cole gazed at her in the darkness.

“Because tiger shifters are really rare . . . and I have to . . . I
want
to take one as my mate. I’ve fooled around some. But I always knew that when I settled down, I would settle down with a tiger shifter.”

“But surely you had choices even among tiger shifters?
I mean, you look like a guy with plenty of choices. Like with what you’d want on your pepperoni pizza. You can have anchovies or mushrooms, or even ice-cream.”

“Ice-cream on pizza?”

“You know.”

“Nah . . . I’m happy that it went this way.
And I’ll go on the record to say I’ve never had ice-cream on my pizza.”

“
You should try one of those dessert pizzas. They are the rage. So you’re not disappointed I’m not my – ” She faltered.

“Sister?
Nah. And I’ll refrain from making any more mean remarks about her because she is, you know, your sister.”

She was grateful for that.

“Say, I’ve got an idea,” he announced. “We’ve been in the jungle for two weeks already.”

“We’ve been in the pits.”

“Yeah, between the pits and the jungle. I thought it would be nice if we . . . took a little weekend off in Brazzaville.”

Her heart leaped.

“You sure?”

“Of course I am.”

“I mean . . . are you sure you can leave your work?
You do seem quite . . . occupied with it.”

“Well, it is important work.
” He sounded a little sheepish. “But sure. I can definitely leave it for a weekend. It’s time to celebrate those two artifacts we found. In fact, I have an idea what we will do next weekend.”

“What?”

“We’re going to get married.”

23

Cole stared at himself in the mirror.

Was this what he really wanted to do? Marry this woman?

He’s going to cut you off if you don’t.

And face it. She’s perfect.

He found himself smiling as he stared at his own handsome, affably charming mug.
He hadn’t realized how perfect she was going to be. It was a very pleasant surprise – how much he enjoyed being with her. How much he enjoyed making love to her. She was the first big, beautiful woman he ever had, and he was surprised at how much she aroused him.

He wondered how open she would be to
his sexual proclivities. She was rapidly learning very quickly. Perhaps, when he got her to town . . .

He was amazed at how much he looked forward to
being with her. Whenever he thought of her, a funny, squirming feeling went through his gut, and it wasn’t nausea from eating too much canned food either.

No, it was a good thing.

Then he thought about what her sister did to her, and a dark cloud crossed him. Ellen had been rendered into an insecure, babbling mess by the very person who was supposed to love her.

“We fucking won’t invite Terry Moss
to the wedding,” he said aloud to his reflection.

It didn’t matter why he started this whole thing.
The important thing was that he was happy, happy, happy to be going into it. Yes, it was unexpected, but that didn’t dim the airy feeling in his chest.

There was one person he definitely had to invite to the
quickee wedding.

He stared at his sat phone and sighed.
He picked it up and dialed a familiar number.

After three rings, the line connected.

“Hey Dad?”

“This better be good, son.”

“It is.” Cole cleared his throat. No matter how old he was, his Dad still had the power to reduce him to an obstinate child. “You and Mom better pop down here to Congo next weekend.”

“What for?”

“You’ve got what you wanted. I’m getting married.”

Silence.

Stunned silence, if Cole may pat himself on the back.

“What?”

“You heard me. I’m getting married.”

“To a tiger shifter?”

“Yes. And she’s a woman too, can you beat that?”

“
Snark doesn’t become you, son.”

Nor does staying single apparently, to you, Dad.

“That’s unfortunate,” his father said.

This time, Cole was taken aback.

“Why is that?”

“Because I was so certain that you woul
dn’t do anything about your marriage, and then I would really have to cut you off. So I took matters in my own hands.”

“What
?”

“I found you a wife.”

“What?”

Now Cole felt like he was being sucker punched.
So much so that he was repeating his own questions.

“She’s the perfect wife for you.
Tiger shifter. Rich parents who are very particular about who their daughter marries. She’s English. Uncle’s an Earl. She’s a little older than you, but she’s fertile, her father assures me.”

Cole was still at ‘
what
?’ He could see his own reflection in the mirror. His eyes were like round moons.

“But I found myself a bride,” he said.

“Forget her, son. Send her back to whatever chat room you found her in.”

“I didn’t find her in a chat room.”

“Whatever. Just send her back. This is the real deal, son. We have arranged a meeting for you and Julia.”

“Julia?”

She has a name? Fuck, of course she has a motherfucking name.

Julia
.

“That’s right. Knowing how important your work is to you, Julia Fairchild has agreed to
fly to Brazzaville next weekend to meet with you. The two of you can take it from there. This is a good match, son. Don’t screw it up. Julia’s family is counting on you.”

“Next weekend?”
Cole’s voice was strangled.

“Why? You have plans down in that
tar pit of yours?”

24

This was all going wrong, wrong, wrong.

Cole felt like flinging the sat phone into the pit. But then, where would he be without a sat phone, right? Those things didn’t come cheap.

What the hell was he to do?

Marry Julia.

Have enough money to fund your own digs for the rest of your life
.

Didn’t he tell himself that it didn’t matter who he married?
As long as he married someone to please his father?

But now it rankled.

It
did
matter who he married. Right? This was his life. No one had the right to dictate how he lived it.

The fact that he even thought of pandering to his father’s wishes now disgusted him.

Fuck them.

Fuck them all! No one had the right to tell him what to do.

His emotions were a torpid mess of seething anger and
righteous indignation when the flap of his tent opened.

It was Ellen. Her cheeks were bright pink and she
was the picture of absolute happiness.

He was alarmed.

Why was this? What had she done?

Wait, wait. It was not what she had done but what
he
had done. He had asked her to marry him.

Inwardly, he groaned.

“Do you like this dress?” She stepped in and twirled in front of him.

It was a white dress. Not quite a wedding dress, but white and long
, nonetheless. And very pretty, with bunches of floral lace at the hem.

She said, “I wasn’t sure if they had my size in Congo
, and so I brought my own.”

His heart clenched.
She was so pretty. So very pretty. And it blistered him just to look at her and know that she was so happy because he had asked her to marry him.

Now he felt like a total douche.

You are a douche
.

“It’s very pretty,” he said lamely.

God! How did he tell her that this marriage thing was all a sham? That he was having cold feet about going through everything now, that his feelings about the whole thing now resembled a twisted ball of spaghetti?

“I’m glad you like it.” Then she saw his face. “Is there anything wrong?
”

Wrong? Shit. The whole world was falling apart, that was what’s wrong!

“No. Nothing’s wrong.”

She gave a nervous laugh.

“Usually, when people say nothing’s wrong, everything’s wrong. It happened to me too. The weekend I got stood up on a blind date with a guy called Jerry Schaefer, everyone asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ And then I went, ‘What’s wrong? The whole world is peachy. Nothing could be better’. And then of course I went to eat another tub of chocolate ice-cream and cried myself into the cream. Which was really yucky, I can tell you. Like having salted caramel.”

Uhhhh
.

“Nothing’s wrong, Ellen. OK? I just called my Dad to ask him to come.”

“For the marriage registration?” Her eyes brightened again.

They both knew it wasn’t going to be a proper wedding.
Just a registration at City Hall. But she was so excited nonetheless.

And he was . . .

A total douchebag.

His dig.
He was going to have to give up his dig. Unless he got funding.

Quick.

Let’s see . . . he had two hundred thousand dollars on his own. Any inheritance he received form his father would naturally be when the old man kicked the bucket. And that wasn’t a prospect he particularly relished, despite their disagreements.

He was a university professor. They didn’t get paid that much.

He said to Ellen, “Yes. For the registration.”

“And he’s coming?”

“He’s coming. With my Mom.”

And Julia Fairchild.

Ellen’s face paled. He studied it, and a pang stabbed his chest. She was really very pretty, and he had learned to appreciate that despite her round face and double chin.

“Will your parents like me?” she said softly.

Definitely not. I don’t think so, but then, my father hates everything that he hasn’t handpicked. If that makes sense.

“Of course they will.” He leaned down to kiss her.
Out of guilt, mostly. “Anyway, it’s our lives. Not theirs.”

He was buying time.
Deciding what he really wanted to do.

She smiled again, reassured.
Marginally.

“OK,” she said. “Great.”

“Great.”