Trusting the Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (2 page)

She clamped her mouth shut before she could babble anymore. What was wrong with her?

That was a silly question. She knew exactly what was wrong with her. The hottest guy she had ever seen had just saved her life. Well, saved her skin from a bunch of embarrassing bruises, at least.

She sneaked a look sideways and caught his eyes flickering away from her. Had she thought his eyes were brown? Maybe it was a trick of the light but they seemed gold-colored now.

She blinked, and his eyes were brown again.

It must have been a trick of the light. Toni had been amazed all day by how clear and bright the light was this far from the city. No exhaust fumes here, just the sweet smell of flowers and green growth.

I wish I could stay here forever
, she thought wistfully, looking up at the wide blue sky. There wasn’t a cloud in it—just endless blue, with the sun blazing white-gold in the middle.

“Oh, it might look nice now, but wait until winter and all of this will be frozen under six feet of snow and ice,” Jack said absently.

Toni stiffened. Had she—? No, she was sure she hadn’t said that out loud.

Jack must have caught the edge of her thoughts. That could happen with non-shifters sometimes, Toni knew. Toni had been the same before she had trained herself to hear and speak with her family in that way.

She needed to be more careful. It had been so long since she used mind-speak that she had gotten rusty at sharing and protecting her thoughts. It had taken her almost half the car ride here to re-learn how to think her thoughts
at
Lexi and Felix, rather than just let them bounce around her own brain. Clearly she had now gone too far in the other direction.

Toni sighed. Trust her to screw things up. After spending the whole drive out to the campground practicing mind-speak with the twins, she probably now needed to practice
not
mind-speaking.

“Do you live around here, then?” she asked lightly. No point drawing attention to anything strange.

Jack raised his eyebrows expressively. “That’s right, the Silver man in the Silver house in the Silver Forest. That’s me. It’s a bit House-that-Jack-built, I know.”

“Oh, come
on
,” Toni teased. “You can’t go and live in a
house
called Silver and then complain that everything’s named after you. That’s got to be on purpose.”

He spread his hands innocently. “Oh, I suppose next you’re going to say I could change my own name, too? Or just never have moved here?”

Toni laughed out loud. “What? You moved here? I thought it must be an old family thing – come on, if you
chose
to be the Silver man in the Silver everything, that’s all on you. What, did you move here just so you could complain about it?”

“You’ve got me!” Jack threw his head back and grinned up at the sky, his eyes shining. “My life is so terribly perfect, I have to seek out these embarrassments where I can.  Every week, I order in a new set of silver cutlery just so I can complain when I unwrap it.”

Toni’s laughter escalated into an unladylike gurgle, which she hurriedly stifled.

They paused on the edge of another path to let another battalion of BMXers past. Toni tried to see if Lexi or Felix were among the group, but they all passed by so quickly she couldn’t tell if they were there or not.

Like all the paths in the grounds, so many wheels had grooved the dirt that the track itself was almost a foot lower than the surrounding brush and walking trails. Jack held out his hand to help Toni across once the last of the bikers had sped away. Blushing –
again! –
she took it. His hand was warm, and large, the slight roughness of calluses brushing against her skin.

Toni licked her lips, trying to find something to say to distract herself from the feeling of his skin against her own.

“Is that what you do, then?” she joked. “Professional silverware-appraiser and gnasher of teeth?”

She closed her hand over itself as he let it go, holding on to the feeling of his fingers pressed against hers.

“Nothing so exciting, sorry. I’m – I guess you could say I’m in management. My company looks after a number of wildlife preserves around the world. Places that might otherwise be leveled for construction, no matter what sort of natural beauty would be destroyed.”

“That sounds exciting to me,” Toni said. “You must see so many amazing places. I’d love to see more of the world.” Her mouth ran on ahead of her brain, which was still occupied by how hot the man walking beside her was. “This vacation is the farthest I’ve been from home in years, and it’s only a half a day’s drive from the city!”

Toni blushed. Why had she said that? Maybe her life wasn’t the most exciting, but that wasn’t the sort of thing you broadcast to hot guys you were trying to impress.

She sneaked a look sideways. Jack was smiling ruefully.

“You want to know the truth?” he said, gesturing to encompass the woods around them. “I’ve only been back here for a week, and this is already the most time I’ve spent in the outdoors in years. Turns out that being CEO means flying around the world to see the inside of a lot of conference rooms, and not much else.” He chuckled. “The only time I get to actually
see
the parks my company looks after is if my assistant organizes a publicity shoot at one of them, and even that’s just…”

His voice faded away. Toni could imagine what he was going to say. A photo shoot would mean being surrounded by a team of people, photographers, makeup artists, journalists – the opposite of the solitude of open spaces you wanted when you were exploring the wilderness.

“That sounds worse than never seeing the parks at all,” she said, musing aloud. “All that wilderness to explore, and you’re stuck in front of a camera all day.”

“That’s exactly it! And at the end of the day everyone hightails it to the nearest hotel. For more
meetings
.”

Toni bit back a laugh. It was probably deliberate, but Jack sounded genuinely upset – and a little bewildered – that being successful had led to him being promoted out of his favorite part of the job.

“If you’re in charge, can’t you … I don’t know, de-promote yourself? Or give yourself a new job, one that requires lots of important looking at trees?”

Jack laughed. “Manager in charge of running off and hiding in the woods: got a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

He paused, a question in his eyes. Toni sighed. Jack had pretty much bared his soul – she might as well do the same. Besides, it wasn’t like she was ever going to see him again after this weekend. He would return to his hundreds of conference rooms, and she to her own daily grind.

She took a deep breath. Grumbly, but light-hearted – that was the tone to go for. The same tone he had used, though it was clear there was real emotion under his joking words.

“Please do the tactful thing and don’t ask what
I
do for a living, or I’m going to have to reveal that I’m one of the pathetically underemployed, here babysitting her niece and nephew because my hours got axed so I’m free to play babysitter whenever Ellie and her husband are out of town.” She made a show of looking around, as if sizing up the park. The sun was so bright it made her squint. “Hey, you don’t need a live-in hermit for your forest here, do you? I’m sure I could find a suitable tree to live in. And you could ship me to one of your other campgrounds during those six-foot-snow winters. My rates are very reasonable,” she continued as Jack dissolved into laughter.

The trees thinned out. Just ahead was a wide clearing, buzzing with activity. A few trucks and cars on the far side suggested there was a road somewhere. The area was dotted with picnic tables and, along one side, a series of packed-dirt jump ramps. No one was using the ramps at the moment, but Toni could imagine the chaos that would unfold when the group of BMXers returned.

“Here we are,” Jack said. “The main control center. Chairs, drinks, and shade. Some of it’s even not covered in mud.”

Toni shaded her eyes. “No kids, though. What a shame, guess I’ll have to sit down…”

“…and have a drink?” Jack finished. “I’ll find you a chair – unless you’d prefer to start testing out a few trees?”

Toni giggled, unable to stop a delighted grin from lighting up her face. She sat down under a tree whose leafy branches cast a wide, cool shadow and watched Jack lope across the clearing. The “control center” he had pointed out was a truck with its trunk open to reveal a grill and a cooler of cold drinks.

Maybe, she let herself think, just maybe, this weekend wasn’t going to be as bad as she had feared. Even if Jack disappeared back into the forest after this afternoon, the memory of those golden eyes would give the whole weekend a warm glow.

Well. His eyes, and … other attributes. Toni enjoyed the view as Jack walked across to the truck, but quickly looked away as he turned back, drinks in hand. Her eyes stayed firmly on the trees, bike path, and everywhere else that wasn’t his perfect pecs as he strolled back.

“Coke, or beer?” he asked, holding out two dripping wet cans. Toni took the soda and popped the tab.

“Thanks,” she said gratefully. The sun was still high in the sky, and she was parched.
Because you’ve been panting over this guy so much
, her inner voice teased.

“Here’s to freedom from meetings and retail jobs,” she said, raising her drink. “Even if only for one weekend.”

The air under the tree was cool, and its leaves cut out the harsh sunlight that had left them both squinting at each other as they crossed the maze of bike paths. As Jack sat down opposite Toni and raised his beer to her toast, she looked directly into his eyes for the first time, and he into hers.

Jack’s whole body tensed. He dropped his drink on the ground.

“Are you all right?” Toni leaned forward and put a hand on Jack’s arm. His muscles were so tense they were jumping under his skin. His whole body was shaking. She looked into his face. His eyes were rings of gold, almost drowned by his huge, black pupils.

“I – oh, shit,” he muttered roughly, and broke her gaze. He passed one hand over his face, ruffling his hair. “I’m sorry, I – I have to go. Excuse me.” He rose suddenly, kicking his can in his rush to get away. Beer splashed out onto the dry dirt.

Toni stared after him, shocked. What had happened? Had she said something—?

No, she realized dismally as she followed Jack’s unsteady flight away from her. He was running so fast he practically collided with a blonde woman. Toni recognized her from earlier that day: Karen, the woman who had organized the BMX tournament.

Karen was petite and toned; her long blonde hair, pulled back in a perfect ponytail, shone like gold as it caught the sun. She was everything that Toni wasn’t.

A lump of sour unhappiness lodged in Toni’s stomach. It was clear as crystal what had happened. Big, ungainly Toni Oglietti would always come second best to someone like Karen.

Toni realized she was gripping her drink so hard the aluminum can was buckling. She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. She’d met guys like Jack before. He probably hadn’t even been flirting with her, just being friendly. And if he dropped her like a hot potato the minute someone he liked better came along … well, yeah, that hurt. It hurt a lot. But it wasn’t like she would ever see him again.

It’s just like all those assholes who come into the shop looking for someone to bitch at
, she told herself.
It says more about them than it does about you
.

Toni had just managed to make herself feel, if not entirely better, then at least not totally miserable, when a shriek cut through the air.

“Auntie Toni! Auntie Toni, watch me-e-e-e-e-e!”

Toni’s new-found calm went flying. She looked up and automatically flinched as a bicycle whizzed past her. Lexi, barely recognizable under her safety gear and a thick layer of mud, raced at top speed toward one of the jump ramps.

Toni closed her eyes tightly. One of the many things she had not inherited from her family was their ability to enjoy acrobatic feats of insanity without being terrified someone was going to get hurt. She couldn’t even watch Lexi take the jump without feeling sick to her stomach.

A small hand plucked at her elbow.

whispered a soft voice in her mind – Felix. Then he said out loud, “You can look now, Auntie Toni!”

Toni opened her eyes just in time to see Lexi hanging upside-down six feet in the air. Her stomach flipped as the slight figure sped earthward, somehow twisted right-side-up, and hit the dirt wheels-first in a skid of pebbles.

She shut her eyes again. “Thanks, Felix. Your sense of timing is just so, so great.”

Felix flung his arms around Toni’s shoulders. “Come on-n-n!” He giggled. “You know we have to trick you, or you’ll never watch us do
anything
.”

<
Besides
> he added, <
You know we’re never going to actually get hurt. Bikes are
way
easy
.>”

Toni sighed, but she couldn’t argue with that. As cat shifters, Felix and Lexi were almost magically athletic. Like everyone else in Toni’s family, the two of them had grown up with perfect control of their shifter and human bodies. So, as dangerous as the BMX tricks looked, Toni logically knew they weren’t in any danger.