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Besides, he didn’t have anything else to do. If he went home, his mother would find some sort of chore for him. She was on a campaign to teach him “some real life skills,” as she put it. Charlie had to admit, he’d had no idea what it took to keep a household fed and clean and clothed. He’d discovered that his mother worked like an ox, and expected him to do no less. 

No, it was better to stay away from home for a while. Instead, he drove into the parking lot at McPherson’s. He couldn’t go inside; his flannel shirt and dungarees wouldn’t pass the dress code. But he could wait. 

Charlie parked next to Briar’s car in the farthest corner of the lot, where there weren’t many cars. He pulled a book from his pocket and retrieved the flashlight he kept in his glove box for exactly this purpose. Charlie had been looking forward to the new Steinbeck novel, a sequel to
Cannery Row
, and with a sigh he settled in to read as night fell around him.

He fought to concentrate for almost thirty minutes. When he realized that he had read the same sentence three times, he killed the flashlight and tossed the book onto the seat next to him in frustration. He wanted to get caught up in Doc’s adventures on the California coast, he really did. But he couldn’t think of anything but what he was going to say to Briar. 

Someone opened the door to the supper club, and light and music poured out. It had been years since he’d been here. Since … the last night before he went to college. He and Angela had danced under the sparkling lights of the chandeliers. That might, he reflected, have been the last time the two of them were really happy together.

They grew up together, but Charlie hadn’t paid much attention to her until the first day of sophomore year, when she walked into third period history wearing a bright red sweater that seemed to say “go” instead of “stop.” Angela had grown up over the summer; more accurately, she had grown out in all the right places. He didn’t remember much from Mr. Jackson’s class, but he sure remembered that red sweater. 

For her part, Angela didn’t seem to notice him until he made the varsity baseball team. She was a cheerleader. After the first game, when he hit three home runs and made a double play, she had been the first to run out to the field and hug him. She’d pressed those beautiful breasts into his chest and whispered, “you’re the best player on the team” in his ear. 

And that was that. For the next two years, Angela was by his side for every festival Independence Falls could come up with. Everyone seemed to take for granted that they made a perfect couple. Angela was beautiful—she had the sort of tall, curvy body that made his teammates waggle their eyebrows at him in the locker room, and shiny dark hair that she wore in a side-swept bob that showed off her dimple. 

He’d given her his pin senior year, and vowed that once he got his career on track, they would be married. 

It all seemed so long ago now. 

The fights had started almost as soon as he left for college. He didn’t write enough, didn’t call, didn’t bring her back presents when he managed to make it home for the weekend. She had been convinced he was fooling around on her. She couldn’t get past the idea that he was out in the wide world while she was stuck in Independence Falls, waiting for him. 

They’d been fighting again, that fateful winter night when he’d come around an icy corner too fast to avoid the buck standing in the middle of the road. 

For a moment, the memory of dancing with her was so real he could almost smell her perfume. He could almost feel the warmth of her in his arms. Then a breeze rocked the truck, sweeping the memory of her away. 

He didn’t often think of her anymore. Guilt over his role in her death and worry over his own recovery had made it difficult to truly mourn her. He almost didn’t recognize the boy he’d been the last time they had danced together. He was a man now, shaped by tragedy. 

A man, he thought, who would never dance with a pretty girl under twinkling lights again.

As the night wore on, Charlie questioned his decision to wait for Briar. His leg was aching from sitting still so long, and his stomach was growling. It was still fairly early, and Briar would probably be working for hours yet. 

But then, as if he’d conjured her, the back door to the supper club banged open, and Briar came out. 

Charlie figured that was his cue. He carefully maneuvered his way out of the truck, groaning a bit as his sore muscles stretched. He limped his way over to her car and leaned against her hood, hoping it made him look debonair and not just crippled. 

“Evening,” he called out. 

His brain seemed to stutter to a stop as he took in her outfit. Her shapely legs were displayed in fishnet stockings that made his mouth dry. Her waist was cinched impossibly tight, and her luscious breasts were all but spilling out of her top. There was some sort of iridescent hat tangled in the blond hair tumbling over her bare shoulders. 

“I don’t need any more problems tonight, Charlie,” she said, stomping past him to the driver’s side of her car. 

He rose from the hood and stood with his cane propped in front of him. “Rough night?”

“Not my best.” She was digging in her bag for something, and the longer it took her to find it the angrier she became. “I don’t have a job anymore.”

“The old man fired you?”

“It’s none of your business.” 

“I’ve never seen you this upset.”

“Well, of course not. I never let you. But now I can’t hide anything and it’s ruining my whole life!”

Briar’s voice cracked on the last word, and to Charlie’s horror she began to sniffle. He preferred her angry. Crying women were not his forte. “It’ll be okay,” he said.

“Don’t lie to me,” she wailed. “It’s not going to be okay. I’m broke, I’ve got no chance of getting another job, and my aunt will kick me out if I can’t pay rent.”

“You’ll figure something out,” he said, painfully aware that there weren’t a lot of job opportunities in Independence Falls. Now that the rockslide was blocking the way out of town, she wouldn’t be able to look for work anywhere else. 

 “I just can’t do this anymore! It’s too much, trying to be social. Trying to be normal. I’d be better off living in a cave and not talking to anyone.”

“Well, that sounds great to me,” Charlie said. “When do we start?” 

She choked out a small laugh and dashed the tears that were forming at the corners of her eyes. “I miss pretending that everything was a-okay,” she said hoarsely. “I was so good at it, I even had myself convinced.”

“Yeah, you always were good at that.” 

That put her back up. She sniffed back her tears. “I don’t need this right now, Charlie. I need a hot bath and my bed and not to talk to anyone for at least ten hours. I don’t need to be lectured about how stupid I am. I already know.”

“I didn’t say … what are you doing?”

“Getting rid of this horrible hat!” she said, yanking at the sparkly bauble tangled in her curls. “I hate it! It pulls my hair and makes me look ridiculous. Good-bye, hat!” she said, tossing it into the breeze. Her loosened hair streamed in the wind. 

“And these stupid, useless fishnets,” she continued, kicking her way out of her shoes. 

Before Charlie could say anything, she was reaching under her skirt and unhooking the tights from her garter. He caught a glimpse of her milky-white thighs under the frothy pink material of her skirt, and his brain clicked off entirely. 

By the time it had clicked back on, Briar was scraping the offending garments off her feet. 

“God, that’s better. These things are as uncomfortable as regular hose, but without the benefit of being warm. Good-bye, fishnets!” she called, balling them up and winding up to throw them away. 

They fluttered to the ground less than a foot away from her. 

Charlie laughed. The sound was rusty. He realized he couldn’t remember the last time something had made him laugh out loud. 

Briar grabbed the hose off the pavement and marched up to him. “What? You think you can do better?” she taunted. 

She grabbed one hand off his cane and stuffed the balled-up hose into his palm. They were still slightly warm from her body, and Charlie felt his heart rate accelerate with the knowledge that these garments had been clinging to her slim legs just moments ago. 

For the second time that night, he caught a whiff of perfume. Roses, wild and sweet.

But Briar was no ghost. She was standing in front of him with tears in her lashes and fire in her eyes. Her tangled blond hair glowed like gold silk, and her soft red lips were parted with indignation. 

He took a sharp step back from her. He wasn’t here to kiss her, no matter how much he wanted to. 

The hose were still in his hand, and he tossed them straight up in the air. A sudden gust of wind coming across the valley tore them from his hand and they disappeared into the night. 

“I guess you can do better.” Briar stepped back too. There was an exhausted stoop to her shoulders as she leaned over to pick up her bag. “I’m tired, Charlie. I want to go home. Can you please just leave me alone?”

“No,” he said. His voice was harsher than he intended because his body was still buzzing with desire. 

She was to blame for that. He was cold and achy and hungry and so riled up that he could hardly think, and all of it was her fault. “I need you to promise that you won’t tell anyone about the other night.”

“Oh God, not this again,” Briar said. 

“You act like this is no big deal. This is my life we’re talking about.” 

“Do you really think I don’t know that? After the article in the paper this morning, I don’t blame you.” 

“Okay,” he said slowly. Maybe his brain was still on the fritz. “So why won’t you promise?”

“If someone asks me directly, can Charlie Huston shape-shift into a mountain lion, I’ll have to tell them the truth.”

He snorted. “Lying has never been a problem for you before.”

“I know,” she said, with an unbearably weary look on her face. “It is now.”

Charlie didn’t think getting her mad was the answer, so he kept a tight rein on his own temper. “Listen … nobody else knows about me. And I want to keep it that way.”

“If it’s a secret, you probably shouldn’t be transforming in front of people.”

“It was an emergency,” he said, stiff with dignity. 

She finally found her keys in her bag, but made no move to open her door. “If it’s a secret, you probably shouldn’t go up to girls in the woods and let them pet you.”

Because he didn’t have an answer for that, Charlie went on the defensive. “You shouldn’t have been out in the woods alone anyway. It’s not safe.”

She laughed. “Why, because a bear might emerge from the trees and cuddle me up in its lap? Are there others like you, Charlie?”

“Not that I know of.”

“I’d be thrilled, if that was my power.” 

The wind was picking up, and Charlie could smell the distant pine trees. “It’s different for me. If people knew about my power, they would treat me even worse than they treat everyone else.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious? I turn into an animal.”

“So what?”

“So I turn into an animal,” he repeated. “The worst kind of animal, too. Do you know how much my uncle hates mountain lions? They attack his sheep. He kills at least two a year.”

“That’s disgraceful. He’s the one who plunked down his farm in mountain lion territory.”

“You don’t think it makes me … subhuman?”

He hadn’t realized he felt that way until he said it. 

“Of course not!” Briar protested, and stepped toward him again. “Charlie, what you can do is incredible. I can only imagine how it must feel to become another creature. And especially for you, with your leg. It must be so satisfying to be fully functional again.” 

She must have seen the blank shock on his face, because she clapped a hand over her mouth. 

“Sorry, did I say too much? I seem to have lost my sense of tact.”

“No, it’s okay,” Charlie said, and he meant it. 

He was tired of people pussy-footing around his injury. At least Briar addressed it head on. “You’re right, that is the best part for me. Being able to move again … and not just move, but move like a cat! It’s nothing like being a human, all the muscles are different. And the tail! Having a tail is great. I don’t know why our ape ancestors got rid of them.” 

The words were spilling over themselves in his mouth. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to talk about his power until now. 

“When you came out of the woods, I was terrified,” Briar confessed, a mischievous smile on her lips. “Then when you started playing with my shawl, I told myself that I had to be dreaming.”

“It was fun.” When he grinned, he felt foolish and young. “I see why kittens play with yarn.”

“What does it feel like to purr?” 

“It feels like … it feels like humming, only more intense. Like there’s a piping hot coal rumbling around where my heart should be.” 

He stiffened when she laid her hand on the center of his chest. 

“It sounded like a roaring engine. My hands were vibrating. I had never imagined what it would be like to touch a wild animal like that, like …,” she trailed off when she raised her eyes to meet his. When she spoke, her voice was a husky whisper. “Like I was snuggled up with a big old house cat.”

“I’m no house cat,” he growled, then captured her mouth with his. 

It wasn’t like he had imagined. It was better. 

He crushed her to him, running his hand up her elegant back so her lovely breasts were pressed into his chest. She gasped, and he took advantage of her parted lips to plunge his tongue into her mouth. 

A moan echoed in his head, and he had no idea which one of them it came from. Her hand flexed against his chest, and she managed to run her fingers up to his open collar. With small movements, she stroked the hollow of his throat and teased the springy chest hair she found there. 

Her touch had felt incredible when he was a cat, but it was even better as a man. His heart was pounding, his blood singing. 

He ran his hand back down her spine, stopping just above her bottom and pressing her body against his. She had to feel his arousal pressing hard against her stomach, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she rocked her hips into him.