Melted By The Lion: A Paranormal Lion Shifter Romance (5 page)

Then he was out the door and gone.

After shutting the door and locking it, I went in the bathroom and took a shower, then untangled my hair and dried it, and then dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals that someone, I could only guess Betty, Martha’s replacement nurse, had left on my bed. It was only then that I opened the door, and my “sensitive little ears,” as Trevor had called them, were immediately assaulted by loud, high-pitched laughing coming from somewhere out in the hall, maybe from another room. The laughter was immediately followed by someone speaking just as loudly.

“Well, with muscles like that, maybe you could!”

More laughter. Veronica’s. It had been her voice I’d heard, the same voice I’d heard calling Dr. Moore and Martha bitches. And though, being that I was just getting in on the conversation, I had no idea what she was talking about, I could somehow just tell who she was talking
to
. Trevor. A low, quiet chuckle in response to Veronica’s continued laughter confirmed this.

I wasn’t sure, but I thought his chuckle had seemed a bit weak, as if he was just being polite. As Veronica started talking again, though in a quieter voice, making me unable to catch what she was saying, I stood at one side of the doorway listening, intensely curious to hear if Trevor would chuckle again, and if so, if it would sound genuine or weak. But within a few seconds, when Veronica began laughing again, I abruptly shut my room door.

“Why do I even care?”

I had no idea why I was acting as if I did. I didn’t care if Trevor found Veronica genuinely amusing or not. I didn’t care what he thought about her at all. I didn’t even care if they hit it off so well that they flung off their clothes and started trying to make a baby right there in her hospital room. And, in fact, all the better for me if they did. I knew I’d have to stay at Trevor’s residence for a little while, until I could find somewhere else to live, but I was pretty sure that that’s what I’d eventually do. And when I did, maybe Trevor would be more inclined to just give up and let me go my own way if Veronica was already pregnant. She could fill his mansion with “business arrangement” babies, the sooner the better.

I watched jugball on TV until noon, when Betty, a smiling nurse with gray hair streaked with bright silvery white, came in with my lunch tray.

After she’d introduced herself, she set the tray on my lap, took the lid off a covered plate, revealing a vegetable salad with grilled chicken on top, and then frowned at me. “Now, is it okay that the kitchen put whole cherry tomatoes in yours?”

Confused, I set the TV remote aside, looking at her. “Well, sure. It’s fine. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Oh, well, because the young woman across the way and just down the hall a little just had a terrible fit that hers hadn’t been cut into fourths. She told me to take the tray back and tell the kitchen staff that they should all be fired for such an error. I thought that maybe having cherry tomatoes cut into fourths was how they were served back in the time that you young women remember, before you were frozen.”

I made a noise between a sigh and a laugh, though feeling bad that Betty had had to deal with Veronica’s little fit. “No, cherry tomatoes were still served on salads whole even hundreds of years ago, from what I can remember. But I’m just guessing Veronica was still throwing fits about them not being cut into fourths even then.”

Shaking her head, Betty pulled up a chair over to my bedside. “I sure wish Commander Beaumont would come back. She was a perfect angel when he was here.”

I snorted. “I’m sure she was. An angel very interested in his muscles, from what it sounded like.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, nothing. Just something I don’t even care about anyway.”

After sweetly insisting on unwrapping my silverware from my napkin, and then opening my milk and juice cartons, Betty asked if I’d like to eat alone, or if I’d like some company.

When I said I’d love some company, she took a seat in the folding chair she’d pulled over, smiling. “I was hoping you’d say that. I love getting to know new people.”

Wherever Betty lived, I began wondering if she had room for a guest.

Over the next couple of hours, I learned that she didn’t. We talked about many different things, including how things had changed, and hadn’t, since the time I’d lived before the nuclear disaster, and before I’d been frozen. In past decades, technology had pretty much reached pre-disaster levels, so most people now owned TVs and cell phones, just like I remembered. Some people even owned personal computers.

However, Betty said, the thing that had used to be called the internet wasn’t what it once had been, how I remembered it. “You see, even after all these years, there’s still not enough people on earth to give it all the content that it once had, I’m told. And here in Beaumont City, we don’t have a lot of computers anyway. We have some here in the hospital, but they’re not quite the household item that they are in DC these days.”

After some more discussion about computers, we switched gears to geography, and Betty told me exactly where we were in Louisiana.

“We’re just west of a place that used to be called New Orleans back in your time, though sadly, that city was completely leveled by the disaster. It’s all wild swampland now. Beaumont City is a lot less marshy, though things do get a bit wet just to the north by the bayou, which is south of a little lake where the Renards and all their people live. You’ll never want to go there.”

“Why not? And who are the Renards?”

“Oh, they’re a large family of alligator shifters headed up by Emile Renard. There’s maybe a couple hundred of them, and some wives and kids, though not many, and they’re nearly all related in some way. Perhaps all their inbreeding explains the way they behave—vicious and uncivilized—as if they weren’t shifters, but complete animals a hundred percent of the time. Commander Wallace of the United Free States warned Commander Beaumont about them, but Commander Beaumont was already well aware. There are other branches of the Renard clan spread all around Louisiana, and Commander Beaumont had tussled with many of them during his wandering days. Then, when he was given Louisiana by Commander Wallace and decided to situate Beaumont City right here, he really drew the ire of Emile Renard. Commander Beaumont is still sticking to his plan, though.”

“Which is what?”

“Well, in a nutshell, it’s to clear the entire nation of all vicious, bloodthirsty gator shifters over a period of several decades, from the south to the north. He and his men hope to clear the first part, meaning take care of Emile and his clan, and then in future years, as our population grows, Commander Beaumont will disperse some of his men and their families to the north, to start cities and clear away gator shifters there as they go along. Anyway, all this is why you’ll never want to go to the north of the city, into bayou territory. That’s where the Renards lurk, and they will kill a non-kin person with no questions asked, just for fun. In fact, when Beaumont City was first established, we had a few losses, sadly. And at one point, not long before we all settled here, there was even a small town called Sunny’s Swamp, inhabited by all-human, non-shifter residents to the west of the Renard clan’s lake, but the Renards destroyed it one night in a raid. Didn’t leave a single soul alive. City limits here in Beaumont City are very clearly marked, though, and always guarded by members of Commander Beaumont’s pride. Just stay within the limits, and you’ll never have anything to worry about.”

Betty went on to tell me more about Beaumont City, including describing the type of dwellings most people lived in, and that’s when I learned that moving in with her probably wouldn’t be a possibility. She said that most people, including herself, lived in very small “starter homes,” temporary dwellings until grander, more permanent homes could be finished.

“You see, we’ve only all been here a couple of years, and when we first got here, the primary focus was on clearing the land, and building the infrastructure—roads, this hospital, the various businesses and government buildings in town, and of course, the commander-in-chief’s mansion, which was a point of pride for all of us, that the commander of our new nation be housed in a residence befitting his title right from the start. So, in the meantime, while the infrastructure was being created, we’ve all made do in our simply-constructed little homes. Now our bigger homes are finally being built. Might yet take some time, though. Oh! Speaking of time.” Betty glanced at a large clock hanging on the wall beside the TV. “Dr. Moore will be here soon to give you one final checkup, and then Commander Beaumont said he’d be here at five to take you and the other thawed young woman home. Better pack up if you have anything to pack.”

Other than a toothbrush, a bar of soap, and a bottle of shampoo I’d been given, I didn’t have anything to pack, though I kind of wished I did. Suddenly feeling like I wanted to delay leaving the hospital as long as I could, I wished I had the kind of packing that would take hours. For some reason, I just couldn’t stand the thought of not only hearing Veronica and Trevor laughing and chuckling together, but actually seeing them together. Which was funny, because I kept telling myself that I didn’t care.

*

Veronica was beautiful. Although that word hardly described her. She was beautiful in the way that Trevor was handsome, which was to say, almost indescribably.

She was of average height and had a slender, willowy figure, though one with fairly ample breasts. And even as a female not attracted to other females’ breasts, I couldn’t deny that they were spectacular. Perfectly rounded and almost impossibly perky for their size, they seemed to defy gravity like silicone breasts, though the way they jiggled and bounced when she moved was in a way that only real breasts did. My own breasts were of similar size though not quite as high, despite the fact that I’d been just twenty-five at the time I’d been frozen, as I’d been able to recall. I was sure Trevor had admired Veronica’s breasts when he’d met her earlier that day. Not that I cared.

Veronica’s willowy-yet-curvy physique was also extremely toned. Her longish legs, nearly all of them visible in the denim shorts she was wearing, which she’d rolled several times to make them as short as possible, appeared perfectly firm. A gap of at least two or three inches was visible between her thighs, even when she walked. The only part of her body that displayed any softness was her breasts, and maybe also her rear and hips a bit.

My own legs weren’t quite as perfectly trim and firm. When I’d put on my own pair of shorts, I’d noticed that my thighs were just slightly jiggly, just enough to make me slightly self-conscious about wearing shorts. My body was healthy and strong, though, and therefore, it was beautiful, I’d told myself while studying my legs in the mirror. But that had been before I’d seen Veronica in shorts.

And her body wasn’t the only beyond-beautiful thing about her. Her face, even without a stitch of makeup, could have graced the cover of any high-fashion magazine. She even seemed to be poised for that opportunity at any second, with her pillowy pink lips fixed in a seemingly permanent pout. Her big, ocean-blue eyes were fringed with an amount of thick, long, dark lashes that one could usually only get from a strip or two of false ones. Her perfectly arched, dark cinnamon-auburn brows matched the gorgeous shade of her bouncy, voluminous, near-waist-length hair. It was a shade that seemed to be the color that I had been striving for my own hair, an unremarkable reddish-brown, but never attained.

I knew I wasn’t ugly. I knew my looks would probably even be considered very pretty by most people. But I wasn’t like
her
. I would have wagered that maybe only one in a thousand women was.

I didn’t
need
to be her, though, I told myself, after Trevor had perfunctorily introduced us out in the hospital hallway. I wasn’t going to compete for his affections. Even if I had been the only woman in the mix, I knew I still would have been having serious reservations about entering into the “business arrangement” of having a child with a man I didn’t even know, especially one as seemingly cold as Trevor. Veronica could have him all to herself without me vying for space in his bed, or even a minute of his time, for all I cared.

Though at the same time, I’d developed a problem that afternoon, even while I’d been visiting with Betty and listening to what she’d been saying. Every so often, I kept remembering how Trevor had said my hair was “very pretty,” as was my “sweet, heart-shaped” face. I kept remembering the warmth present in his voice when he’d said those words, and wondered if it were possible, just maybe, that Trevor wasn’t entirely the cool-as-a-cucumber businessman that he made himself out to be.

Currently, though, I was forcing myself not to have those thoughts. Walking Veronica and me out of the hospital, Trevor was too close, and too stony-faced, for me to contemplate a possible well of warmth deep inside of him without feeling silly. Just looking at his stern expression, any reasonable person would have guessed that his heart was equally as stony.

Veronica had been civil to me, saying that it was nice to meet me when we’d been introduced. I’d said the same. But neither of us had smiled, and now, walking down the corridor with Trevor, I could see her periodically casting dirty glances my way behind his broad back, glances so dirty I half-expected her to stick her tongue out at me. It occurred to me that maybe I’d vastly underestimated my looks, because she sure seemed to be awfully jealous of me, or threatened, or
something
, already.