Melted By The Lion: A Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance (20 page)

We soon went to bed, both of us exhausted. Though, it turned out, not quite so exhausted that we didn’t find our hands wandering after a little while, leading to a round of lovemaking that lasted until nearly midnight.

When I awoke around eight in the morning, I found that my only bed mates were now the dogs. After quickly showering and dressing, I took them out to use the bathroom, trying to hurry them along so that I could go back in and check on Veronica upstairs. I never made it to check on her, though. With all the dogs on leashes, they’d just pulled me over to a small pine in the side yard when the town alarm siren pealed.

*

I jumped at least a mile at the sudden noise of the siren. The dogs startled, too, all three of them whipping their heads up to look into the clear blue sky, as if the source of the noise might be found there. I didn’t waste even a second looking around myself, even though my knee-jerk reaction was to want to try to see if there were any gators already coming up the road to the house or coming out of the forest. I knew there was no time.

After wrapping the leashes around my fist to get a better hold, I immediately began leading the dogs back up to the house, where we’d be safe. “Come on, guys. Time to go now. Let’s hurry.”

Trevor was going to be proud.

Princess and Buddy, both of them looking more than a bit frightened with their shiny brown eyes wide, practically led
me
up to the house in their haste to get there. Rascal, who’d now grown to be a very healthy, strong, good-sized “teenage” golden retriever, was a different story, however. Straining on his leash nearly hard enough to choke himself, he resisted being led to the house, looking up at the sky, barking, as the siren continued to peal. I didn’t let him bring our group to a stop, though, and within a minute or so, we’d made it, and not a second too soon for me. I hadn’t spotted any gators near the house, but I’d been determined not to waste any time specifically looking, and I’d kept
feeling
like one was going to come charging up behind us at any second.

After ushering the three dogs inside, I slammed the door shut behind us, bolted it, and then rested with my back against it. “Good job, guys. We’re safe.”

At that moment, Jeannie came tearing out to the foyer, dressed in her usual navy-and-white work uniform, but with curlers still in her hair. Barely even pumping her brakes, she grabbed me by the arm and began dragging me out the way she’d come. “Hurry. We need to get down with everyone else in the basement. No way of knowing if a gator might try to break a window and get in, but the basement doesn’t have any windows, and the entrance door has several locks on the inside for a security emergency such as this. We’ll be much safer there.”

That made sense to me, so I jogged along with her, with the dogs jogging along at our heels.

Very soon, we arrived in the mansion’s vast basement, where Gerald, Sophie, Margaret, and one of the part-time maids, another older woman named Jane, were already sitting at a large, dust-cloth-covered circular table, one of several dozen pieces of cloth-draped furniture scattered around the wide room. Poor Sophie was wringing her hands, crying, saying that she’d never before in her life had such a fright as when the alarm siren had pealed while she’d been having a cup of tea out on the back patio. Gerald had an arm around her and was telling her that everything was all right now. Margaret and Jane were just sitting silently, their faces equally pale.

It wasn’t until I’d wrapped the dogs’ leashes around a chair leg and had sat down that I realized someone was missing. Two someones, actually.

Stifling a groan, I jumped up from my seat, incredulous. “None of you thought to get Veronica and Snowball from the second floor?”

Everyone’s suddenly slack-jawed faces told me that no, none of them had.

Apologizing, Gerald rose from his chair. “I’ll go get them right now.”

I shook my head, already making my way through all the furniture to the stairs. “Thanks, but I’ll get them. Veronica has some issues lately—things with footsteps and counting—and it’s really complicated. But I think she’ll probably only be able to make it down here with my help. I might need to piggyback her again.”

Once at the stairs, I began sprinting up them, knowing that Veronica and Snowball were probably both scared out of their minds. And probably wondering just where in the hell everybody was. But about halfway up the tall flight of stairs, I sprinted a flip-flop right off and had to turn around and dash down to the bottom to get it, wasting precious seconds. When the same thing happened when I was about halfway up again, I just kicked the other flip-flop off and kept on going.

It was only at the top of the stairs that I realized that I wouldn’t be able to re-lock the door behind me; someone else would have to come up and do it, and then wait there to unlock the door again when I returned with Veronica and Snowball. Wasting a few more precious seconds, I debated whether or not having the door locked for the short period of time I expected to be gone was even necessary, but ultimately, I decided it was best to just be safe, and I hollered down the stairs for someone to please come up and be the door locker and un-locker.

Because the house was so large, it took me nearly a minute to dash from the basement door to the second-floor stairs, where the sight of a white ball of fluff streaking by made me gasp.

“Snowball! What are you doing? Where’s Veronica?”

As if Snowball was going to suddenly develop the capacity to speak in English and answer me.

What she was now
doing
was speeding toward the animal wing, seemingly scared. I couldn’t blame her. The alarm siren was still blaring, and it was loud enough to be heard inside the house, even through the closed windows.

Thinking that maybe Veronica was upstairs dressing or something, or maybe was unfortunately “stuck” trying to count the steps out of her room, I chased after Snowball, thinking that I’d grab her and then quickly head upstairs. It crossed my mind to call Veronica to tell her that I’d be racing on up to her as soon as I could, but I realized I didn’t even have her number. Being that we hadn’t been friends until just the day before, we’d never had a reason to communicate by phone.

Snowball, normally so loving, friendly, and sweet, now proved to be nothing but infuriating. When I’d finally reached the animal wing, I couldn’t find her, and no amount of quietly and soothingly calling her name as I went from room to room, looking under beds and chairs, could coax her out. Frustrated, I paused in my search just long enough to call Trevor to tell him where I was, as he’d asked me to do if I ever heard the alarm siren. Surely already in his lion form, he didn’t answer his phone, so I just left a quick voice mail, saying I was at the house.

On my second sweep of the rooms, I looked under all the beds and chairs again, though this time lifting up all bedding and pillows as well, but I still couldn’t find Snowball.

Growing increasingly agitated, I now began shouting her name instead of trying to be soothing about it. “Snowball! Please come on out! We need to get Veronica and go down to the basement! If you come on out, Snowball, I promise I won’t let anything hurt you!”

Panting from exertion, I stood still in her favorite bedroom briefly, straining my ears for any tiny meows she might be making, but all I could hear was the alarm siren in town. Besides, I’d already thoroughly searched the bedroom, had thoroughly searched
all
the bedrooms, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t missed her.

With a heavy heart, because I knew a gator could come crashing through a window at any second and possibly get to Snowball, wherever she was, I finally decided to head upstairs and get Veronica; and I decided this precisely because a gator could come crashing through a window at any second. At least Snowball could move to dart away, but I knew Veronica would likely have more difficulty, even if her life was in danger. Also, from what I’d heard about gator shifters, one wouldn’t have any trouble climbing stairs. With their increased size and strength, things that would be impossible for regular alligators were no problem at all for them.

On my way out of the animal wing, I dashed into my master bathroom for a lightning-fast drink of water, desperately thirsty. I wrenched the faucet on, filled a cup, and then chugged, draining it in a few seconds. I’d just tossed the cup in the sink and was beginning to race back out of the bathroom when I heard a quiet meow. Snowball was sitting in my shower, lazily swishing her tail, looking as contented as if she were enjoying a lovely tea party.

“Oh, you naughty, naughty little thing.”

I picked up her up and began speed-walking out to the hallway, hastily apologizing to her for calling her naughty. I knew she hadn’t meant to be; she’d just been frightened, and I knew cats tended to hide in strange places and react in strange ways when scared.

Once on the second floor, I jogged down to Veronica’s room, calling her name. Being that it had now been at least a good twenty minutes since the alarm siren had first sounded, I was kind of surprised to see that she at least wasn’t out in the hallway, trying to make her way to the stairs. She wasn’t, though, and her bedroom door was shut.

Wondering if it was possible that because of her extreme exhaustion the night before, maybe the siren hadn’t even woken her up, I flung open her door, but found her bed, and her room, empty. “Veronica? You in the bathroom?”

A quick search revealed that she wasn’t, though on my way out, I spotted a piece of paper on her writing desk, and I didn’t remember seeing it there the night before. After zipping over, I saw that the piece of paper was a note, and I snatched it up to read the sloppily-scrawled lines.

Savannah- I don’t think I’ll ever beat it, and I’m tired, and now I have an opportunity to make it all stop without actually having to do it myself. Please take care of Snowball for me. Thanks for being my friend. -Veronica

“What does she mean? Where is she?” I immediately heaved a sigh, realizing I was again asking questions of a cat, who obviously didn’t have the ability to answer. “Let’s go find her.”

I, of course, had a vague idea of what Veronica meant and what she was planning to do, but the idea didn’t really fully gel until I was about halfway down the stairs. Now I realized that she meant to kill herself by allowing a gator to attack her.

“Oh, shit. Oh
shit
!”

I practically flew down the remaining stairs, then sprinted across to the basement door, and pounded on it. “Open up! Hurry!”

Gerald whooshed open the door right away, and I just about threw Snowball at him. “Cat coming in; don’t wait for me and Veronica, just lock the door again. Thanks!”

I knew where she was now, just
felt
it, and once I’d raced from the basement door to the northern-facing windows of the formal living room, my knowing was confirmed.

On her back, arms open and out to her sides as if she wanted to hug the sky, Veronica was beneath the weeping willow in the side yard, the one she’d planned to rock her and Trevor’s babies under. Even from a pretty fair distance, maybe twenty feet or more, I could still see that her face was calm and relaxed. Tranquil. She looked perfectly peaceful.

I, however, was now frantic.

After unlocking and flinging up the window, I punched out the screen, as if the absence of that thin sheet of mesh would allow Veronica to hear me so much better. “Veronica! Get over here and get inside right this second!”

Seeming to be in some kind of an un-startle-able trance, she didn’t even turn her head to look at me, just spoke in a clear, steady voice loud enough to be heard above the still-pealing siren in town. “Savannah, look at this. This big, big sky, it’s all for me. It’s going to take me up.”

“Veronica, goddammit! Get over here right now!”

Paying me no heed, she didn’t respond, just kept looking up at the sky. Desperate, I decided to try a different tack.

“Snowball is crying her little eyes out right now, you know. I found her circling your bed, just wailing with long, stuttering meows that sounded like actual sobs, as if she couldn’t understand why you left her. And now she’s down in the basement still crying. You’re not even gone from the world, and she misses you already.”

I wasn’t even stretching the truth; I was outright lying, and I knew it. However, I figured the ends definitely justified the means in this instance, and I was gratified when I saw that my lying had produced the desired result.

Veronica had turned her head to look at me, and she now spoke in a voice just as loud though a little less steady than the one she’d spoken in before. “Is Snowball really crying? Was she really circling my bed?”

I nodded emphatically. “Yes. And when I tried to pick her up to take her to the basement, she dug her nails into your sheets, and I practically had to drag her. I think she thinks you’re still coming back. Imagine how heartbroken she’ll be if you never do.”

Slowly, frowning now, Veronica pulled her arms in, then pulled herself up to sit, facing me. “I didn’t think she’d be so attached to me yet. I didn’t think I’d be leaving her so heartbroken.”

“Well, she is, and you did. Some cats are just like that—they bond pretty quickly and strongly, and obviously, Snowball did that with you. She obviously loves you already.”

Dropping her face with a shake of her head, Veronica said something I couldn’t quite catch above the alarm siren.