Tiger Bound (18 page)

He eyed her in disbelief.

“Did you know about the doctor’s death? The woman who experimented on me?”

Heath’s eyes widened. “Dr. Gail Holmes?”

She nodded. “They announced it on national TV that she committed suicide in her apartment.”

Heath glanced around and took her arm. She shuffled along beside him a few paces, trying to keep up with his long stride. He slowed down and then stopped in the lobby. “Stay here while I get the car.”

“I can walk.”

He ignored her and headed outside. She frowned, crossing her arms over her chest to wait. The man was determined to treat her like an invalid, and no matter how she fought it, she felt like she would never win. Just the effort alone exhausted her.

Soon he drove up, and she got in the car for them to drive a block and a half down the street. Deja shook her head and stepped out to walk up to the room they rented. Heath moved ahead to unlock the door and took her arm to lead her. She jerked her arm away and stomped inside, but then curbed it because it wore on her strength. She cursed that too.

When she dropped into a chair and drew her legs up to stare out the window, she heard him walk up behind her. “Do you want tea and a sandwich? I bought some groceries.”

“No, damn it. I don’t.”

“Deja—”

“I want to go to dinner. I want to dress up and get out of the room for a change. You get to go whenever you like, and I can’t. This is the first day I’m feeling a little better and you should be happy about it, but instead you act like I did something wrong. I’m over it, Heath. You hear me? I’m over it!”

He reached for her, but she slapped his hand away. He moved up behind her and encircled her in his arms. “I understand, and I’m sorry, Deja.”

She pressed her lips together, sniffing even though her eyes were dry. “You don’t get it.”

“I promise I do.” His voice dropped down low as he rested his cheek next to hers.

She hated how her belly fluttered, not from illness, but from his nearness. She wanted to give into him and love him. Having his arms around her meant everything, but she had to stay strong.

“Don’t you think it’s suspicious the way they put it out there that Dr. Holmes died when we’re no longer in Las Vegas?”

“Of course. I thought of that,” she snapped.

“And don’t you think they have some way planned to trap us?”

She stiffened, thinking of her plan. At any moment, she might get a beep on her phone indicating she had a response to her answering the Craigslist ad. If Heath found out about it before she knew if it would pan out to be anything, she was screwed. Hell, she might be screwed either way.

“I get it, okay?” She wiggled out of his hold and stood up to face him. “But get this, buddy. I’m going to dinner tonight. I’m going to walk into a nice restaurant, grab a table, and I’m going to have a glass of wine. Then I’m having a steak or maybe spaghetti. I don’t know, but I’m having it, not that frozen dinner you brought from who knows where.”

She knew as the last words left her mouth that she hurt his feelings, but being a man, he didn’t let it show. He spun away and strode to the bags he left on the table. He picked one up and tossed it into the trash.

“Heath.” He opened the door, and she hurried after him. “Where are you going?”

He paused long enough to answer. “You said you wanted dinner out, didn’t you? I’m going to get you something nice to wear.”

Deja put a hand up to her mouth and watched him go. She turned back into the room, guilty for being so mean to him, but excited too. He’d listened to her and was taking her out. With a gleeful squeak, she hurried to undress and jump in the shower. The room came with its own private bath, a convenient amenity so they didn’t need to go out into the rest of the house. Instead, stairs led up from the street to the second level to enter the room. A second door off the bedroom led to the bathroom. Another one stood at the opposite end of the bathroom, but they’d been told it would remain locked while they stayed.

Deja ran the shower and took the gel Heath provided with her. The hope that started from answering the ad increased all the more with her continued stabilizing health and now the date. After squeezing gel into her loofah, she worked it in her palm until the suds started and then ran it over her skin. What would Heath bring her to wear, a dress? Slacks? No matter, it had to be better than the jeans and T-shirt she’d lived and breathed in for what felt like years.

When she stepped out of the shower, she wrapped herself in a towel, and then stood in front of the mirror trying to think of something to do with her hair. Heath had bought her a comb and brush after her meltdown over her hair the last time. She used them, along with a few products she had, to rework a few of her braids. Pulled into a high chignon was the best she could do, but at least it glistened from being freshly washed and greased. Since she had no makeup, she didn’t bother with it, but dressed up her face with large hoop earrings, another item Heath had spotted in a convenience store and bought her. They were cheap as hell, but she had to give him credit for thinking about her.

Coming out of the bathroom, she wondered if she had been too hard on him. Heath tried. He really did, and she wasn’t sure if she’d shown him her appreciation or if she acted like another voice in his head, tugging him her way. He never spoke about his father and what he felt. She didn’t know if he accepted what he was or even if it hurt to change. She vowed to ask him all that and to just listen tonight at dinner.

Sometime later, when she lay across the bed trying to rest up just in case her health turned for the worse again, Heath came back. He laid a bag on the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. The shower came on, and she wondered if it was okay to take a peek into what he bought.

When the plastic rattled, he stuck his head out with a frown. “Mind your business.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think my business is whatever you got me to wear.”

“Just wait.” His gaze shifted to her hair. “It looks good.” She opened her mouth to thank him, but he disappeared, and she sighed in frustration. Was he angry, hurt, or what?

She climbed off the bed and rummaged through the bags. Inside one was a white bra-top dress that crossed in the front. From the look of it, the outfit would be body-hugging, and it would extend to mid-thigh. She checked the tag and grinned, knowing it would be a good fit. Red sling-backs that were not too high completed the ensemble, and she laid them on the bed and dropped her towel to the floor.

Heath chose that moment to step out of the bathroom, and she froze. “I told you to wait.”

“I don’t do well with orders,” she sassed him with a smirk.

He approached her, his gaze locked on her face, and she waited to see just how long he’d resist at the least a sweeping glance at her goodies. He stopped in front of her, and she noted the towel around his waist. She considered whether she wanted to snatch it off. She had no such qualms about seeing what he had to offer. She’d seen it before and loved it. In fact, her pussy gushed just thinking about getting it, but when Heath pulled in a sharp sniff, she looked up at him. His nostrils flared, and he narrowed his eyes as if angry at her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

Deja chewed her lip. “How did you find me at the library?”

He pretended to be absorbed with removing from the bag the collared shirt and dark slacks he would wear. “I scented you.”

“Scented?”

“Yes, I can pick up scents that I’m familiar with for miles off.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, cool, like a bloodhound.”

“I’m not a hound, Deja.”

“Excuse me, Mr.
Kitty
.” She reached for the knot in his towel. “So you want to…”

He covered her hand. “You’re feeling well now, but there’s no telling when you’ll feel weak again.”

“You’re rejecting me.”

“I’m not rejecting you.”

“You’re talking in this deadpan way, not elaborating, not looking at me. Do I offend you, Heath?” Damn, she didn’t mean to get into another argument with him. What she’d intended when he got out of the bathroom was to apologize for her harsh words and to tell him how much she appreciated him taking care of her. “How did you get all this stuff? I know you can’t use your bank cards because we can be traced that way.”

“I actually did use a card, one I’ve had for years that’s under an assumed name. I never said so, but Tate gave it to me. He said it was just in case, and he made the excuse that he’d watched too many
Enemy of the State
type movies and felt it was necessary.”

“But they took your wallet.”

He nodded. “I just walked into a bank and gave the information needed to replace the card. They had my signature—the assumed one—and other pertinent information Tate drilled it into me.”

She stared at him in awe. “You took a lot of what he said at surface value.”

“He was all I had.”

The sadness in his gaze tore at her heart, partly because she didn’t like seeing him hurting and knew the pain of losing Tate mingled with Heath’s sense of betrayal from the man. Worse was that Heath still didn’t view her as family, or he refused to.

“You said you wanted to go to dinner. We should get dressed. I imagine in a small town, the restaurants don’t stay open late.”

She turned to the dress and held it up. A need to be daring, and to pay him back for keeping her at arm’s length, made her slip into it and ignore the panties he’d provided. The style of the dress already prohibited the use of a bra if one didn’t have pasties, which she didn’t. At least it would hoist the girls up. From the corner of her eye, she saw him look at the panties and go still like he waited for her to put them on, but she bent to pull on her shoes then straightened.

“I’m ready.”

“Don’t you want to…”

She cast him an innocent look. “Want to what?”

She pretended not to see the towel tent in the front. “Nothing.” He turned away and dressed quickly. “Let’s go.”

* * * *

The restaurant was a cute family one without the genuine ambiance she hoped for, but it would do. The tables had alternating red and white tablecloths and flickering flameless lights as the centerpieces. Heath pulled her chair out for her, and Deja smoothed her dress down to take her seat. She smiled at the waiter who approached, and bit off a chuckle when Heath glared at him. Deja reviewed the menu in a few moments and selected what she wanted to eat. The sooner the waiter left to fulfill their order, the sooner she could talk to Heath.

Her conversation with him would be twofold—to get him to admit to her how he was taking this whole shifter thing in hopes she could help him to accept what he was and learn to be happy again, but also, she needed to know what he planned to do next. If they stayed on the road any longer, she would go stir crazy.

“This is nice,” she murmured. “Thank you for bringing me.”

He gave a short nod and scanned the room. The obvious alertness in his shoulders and intensity in his gaze told her she needed to try harder to make him relax. From what she’d seen, the other patrons in the restaurant consisted of a few families and two or three couples on dates like them. There was no one odd, in her opinion, no weird men in suits with operative written all over their bearings. Then again, Spiderweb was smarter than that. Something told her if they were here, though, they would have already grabbed the two of them.

The waiter stopped by to pour them glasses of wine, and Heath asked for the bottle to be left. Deja raised her glass, and Heath clinked it with his. She smiled at him, but only the side of his mouth turned up in a lame effort.

“I think I’ve lost my touch.” She pouted.

His gaze shifted from the door to meet hers. “What do you mean?”

“I used to have you cracking up on a daily basis. Now, you haven’t smiled for real in days. I want you to be happy, Heath.”

“This isn’t—”

“Don’t say that again.” She glanced around the room, but had to admit defeat. Nothing struck her as funny. No snarky comments about the patrons or life in general came to mind, and she faced him instead. “So you’re a tiger shifter. Is it easier to control now with each day that passes? You said you sniffed me out. Is that automatic or like turned on all the time?”

At first, she thought he would tell her he didn’t want to talk about it, but then he downed the contents of his glass on a couple swallows and set it on the table. “It’s becoming more and more of who I am. Yes, I can smell, hear, and see better than before, but then I realized I could do that all along. It had been a part of my life from the beginning, so I didn’t know.”

She leaned forward, eyes wide. “Really? So the pills didn’t completely block out the tiger?”

“No.” He lowered his gaze to her breasts. “They dulled it, almost like keeping a beast drugged so he’s not very aware. But…now, I see things in vivid detail that I never noticed before. I smell…”

Deja shifted in her chair and crossed one leg over the other. She knew he stared at the outline of her nipples through the thin material of her dress, and he must have smelled her excitement the moment she noticed him looking. She licked her lips, for some reason nervous all of a sudden.

“So, you accept it, right? That you’re a tiger? You don’t hate yourself?”

His eyebrows rose toward his hairline. “It never occurred to me to hate myself.”

“I hope it still hasn’t.”

He laid a hand over hers on the table, but then drew back as if she burned him. “You don’t have to worry about me, Deja. I’m fine.”

“But you worry about me. Why shouldn’t I worry?” She hesitated. “I’m not sure where we stand, to be honest. Are we lovers? Are we friends?”

“We’ll always be friends. You know that.”

He didn’t say they were or always would be lovers. That hurt. She stuffed the emotions down and tried talking of other, less weighty topics. Heath spoke in monotone most of the time, frustrating the hell out of her. The rift between them appeared to grow wider instead of narrowing as she’d hoped during this dinner. She considered threatening him, saying she would go back home without him, but scrapped the idea. He might agree, and she’d be left at the mercy of her own bluff. She wouldn’t leave him, not when he needed her the most, even if he didn’t believe it.