Jaguar Fever

Chapter 20

When Maya kissed Wade good-bye at the airport, she felt as if he was going off to war or something—or she was. Maya couldn’t help feeling awful, but she was annoyed with herself. What was wrong with her?

As soon as she entered the plane, she knew what was wrong. In her heart she was already falling for the hunky jaguar shifter. Afraid that she was going to be like her mother and her father with their doomed relationship, she was trying hard to keep her emotions intact and maintain some distance from the cat who made her hot with just a whisper of a kiss or a caress of his fingers across her bare skin. Distancing herself from him wasn’t working.

The problem was trying to figure out what made for the perfect couple. As she and her brother and Kat flew home, Maya stared out the window at the majestic cotton-white thunderheads hanging aloft in the clear blue sky.

Connor and Kat’s relationship was close to being perfect. Sure they’d argue sometimes, but making up seemed to be wonderful. She hadn’t seen Connor this happy in years, and Kat was so much like family that it was if she had always been with them. Being with Connor was home for Kat.

Maya couldn’t believe that Wade would be willing to move to Texas to live near her family. What was not to love about him? The notion that he’d want to return with her to Belize when Kat and Connor couldn’t was just as appealing.

She sighed and glanced over at Kat, who was sitting in the middle seat beside her, watching her. Connor had closed his eyes, head leaning against the reclined seat, his hand clasping Kat’s. He was in his shielding and territorial male jaguar persona—sitting in the aisle seat, claiming this row, protective of his wife and sister. As if anyone was going to bother them on the flight. Still, it was an instinctive part of his behavior.

“What?” Maya mouthed to her virtual sister, wondering what she wanted to discuss because Kat wouldn’t be staring at her if she didn’t want to talk about some issue—most likely one that Maya wasn’t interested in discussing. At least not on the plane while Connor listened in.

Kat smiled. “You love him. Don’t deny it.”

Maya frowned at her, really not wanting to bring the topic of Wade up right now. She was too unsettled about her thoughts concerning him. “He’s pretty nice.”

“But?”

Maya sighed. “What if it doesn’t last? What if after the babies came…”

Connor’s eyes popped open, and he turned to look at Maya. Kat’s lips had parted, her expression one of surprise.

“I’m not pregnant,” Maya whispered harshly. “Sheesh, we just met. I’m just saying…” She scowled at her brother. “Go back to sleep. Or something. Quit staring at me. Kat and I are having a private conversation.” As if they could when they were seated next to each other in such a confined space.

Connor shook his head, closed his eyes, and leaned against the seat back again. But she knew he would be listening to every word.

“Your mother and father had issues, obviously. They weren’t a match.” Kat reached over and squeezed her hand. “If it’s to be, it’ll be. Don’t project your parents’ relationship onto yours. You and Wade are two totally different people.”

“He wanted to meet you in the beginning. He was obsessed with getting to know you,” Maya insisted.

“We’d corresponded. He thought I was a shifter. When he came to Connor for the spare keys to your place, he told me that he would never have changed me. He would have wished me well, thought it was nice that I loved jaguars so much, but that would have been the end of any blossoming relationship.”

Maya stared at her, trying to see the situation in a new light. She stopped short of saying “oh” and let out her breath instead.

Kat smiled at her. “He wished you hadn’t been Connor’s wife. He said it really hit him hard to learn you were Connor’s sister instead.”

Connor didn’t open his eyes, but he smiled a little.

Maya frowned at her brother. If he hadn’t been so overprotective, she might have met someone earlier. Probably everyone who saw them together had the same misconception. “What if… well, if we tried it, what if the relationship didn’t work out?”

“What if it didn’t?” Kat said. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

True. Maya tended to think in terms of all or nothing. “What if I had kids?” Maya could see feeling like her mother, stuck with twins and no one to help out. No father to assist in raising them or love them.

“You’d love them to pieces. I’d become an aunt. Connor would be an uncle, and we’ll have that extended family you always wanted. And you could look for another mate. Your mother isolated herself from others of our kind. She didn’t want another mate, from what Connor says. Seize the moment. Make the most of your relationship with Wade. If it doesn’t work out, at least you can say you gave it your best try.”

“I don’t know.”

“You know, maybe your mother pushed your father out of the house,” Kat said, her words soft as if she was trying to cushion the blow. “Maybe your father wanted to stay.”

Maya shook her head.

“There are always two sides to every story.”

“Okay, so if he wanted to be with her, why didn’t he at least keep in touch with Connor and me? He never did. We were born, and he left.”

“He left after you were born or when he learned of the pregnancy?” Kat asked.

Maya hesitated. Would it have mattered?

His eyes still closed, Connor said under his breath, “When he learned of the pregnancy.”

Kat pondered that for a moment and then said, “What if they had agreed not to have kids and she’d broken the promise? Or what if you weren’t his kids?”

When Maya and her brother and Kat arrived home, they were dead tired, Kat especially. She went straight to bed. But Maya couldn’t help wondering if Kat was right. Was Connor and Maya’s father not truly their father? If he had learned her mother had gotten pregnant by some other man… oh God, what a mess. Then another thought hit her. Everett and Huntley wouldn’t be their cousins.

Connor had to have heard Kat’s question on the plane, yet he hadn’t said a word. Had Kat and her brother already discussed the issue? And he was afraid to mention it to Maya?

Her thoughts scattered when Bear, one of the men who worked for them when they were away, hurried to meet with her and Connor. His wary expression warned her something had gone wrong while they were absent.

He bowed his head a little, looking nervous as the other workers packed up their belongings and placed them in the pickup truck. “We had trouble as soon as Miss Maya left for the airport that morning,” Bear said to Connor.

Connor glanced back at the gardens. “Not another busted water pipe.”

The last time the water bill had cost them a small fortune.

“No, no. A man by the name of Thompson was asking about cats.”

“Cats?” Connor said, his face darkening.

Maya’s heart began racing. Connor had to know that Bear wasn’t talking about the wild kitty cats that meandered through their gardens.

“Jaguars.” Bear looked down at the gravel beneath his feet, as if he was afraid of mentioning the jaguar word to a jaguar god and goddess.

Connor and Maya suspected Bear and his family, who were originally from Columbia, knew they were jaguar shifters, but still, there wasn’t any way they’d come out and tell them the truth.

“The stolen jaguar from the zoo,” Maya reminded her brother.

“Oh, that.” Connor waved the notion away. “No problem. No stolen jaguars here.”

“No.” Bear looked around at the woods as if he was afraid someone might be listening.

Maya glanced around, her eyes narrowed as she watched for any movement other than the leaves fluttering in the hot, humid breeze. She’d never seen the man so anxious before.

Bear swallowed, his eyes on Maya, as if she’d been the one who’d invited all the jaguar gods to the gardens. He whispered, “He said there were four male jaguars. Four of them. One black.” He waited for Connor to acknowledge the sighting.

Connor looked down at Maya as if she was the cause of all the trouble. She shrugged and said, “Thompson must have been drunk.”

Connor nodded. “That would explain it.”

Bear looked from Connor to Maya. But when she just sweetly smiled at him, he nodded and said, “That was it. But he’ll be back. He asked when you were returning, and I told him.”

“You did fine, Bear.” Connor handed him a check. “We’ll see you next time.”

Bear gave a worried smile, then hurried to the truck and drove off with a wave.

Connor escorted Maya into the house before he began questioning her. “How the hell did Thompson see so many of our kind in the gardens?”

“Our cousins fought Bettinger when he came to see me.”

“If you hadn’t gone to the club in the first place, none of this would have happened.”

Ignoring that, she said, “I had no idea Thompson was skulking around in our woods when it all happened. It’s really late, Connor. I’m going to bed.”

Connor shook his head. “Hell. What next?” He plodded off to his bedroom and shut the door with a clunk.

Maya thought about Wade and David. They wouldn’t get in until sometime tomorrow afternoon. She already wished he was in her bed tonight. She glanced at the recliner where he’d slept. It seemed like so much longer than a week ago.

She peered out the kitchen window at the garden, which was peaceful tonight, and thought about her cousins fighting Bettinger in their jaguar forms. Watching the big cats fight in the garden, Thompson must have nearly had a heart attack. Served him right for spying on them. He wouldn’t be able to prove a thing of what he’d seen. Thankfully.

Not that the whole situation should have ever happened in front of the human. They were just lucky he’d been alone. At least she hoped he had been.

Grabbing her bag, she rolled it into her bedroom. She collapsed on her bed and pulled out her phone, then texted Wade.

We’re home. Missing you already.

She paused before she sent it. The message sounded too needy. Too personal. Too intimate. Too permanent. She erased Missing you already and tried to think of how to end it. She thought about mentioning Thompson, but that would only concern the brothers, and they were still in Belize City and unable to do anything about him.

See you tomorrow evening at the club. Night.

How to end it? Maya? Love, Maya? Too intimate. She sighed. She was overthinking it. Or TTYL, as in talk to you later. That could work.

She stared and stared and stared at the message as if it would tell her how to sign off. Hell. She signed it: Maya.

“We have our marching orders,” Wade said to his brother as he put away his phone before boarding the plane.

“Is Martin okay with us setting something up at the dance club?” David asked.

They showed their boarding passes to the airline staff. “Yeah. He doesn’t want Kat there, though. With her being pregnant, if something goes wrong, he’s afraid she might be injured.”

“Connor won’t want to leave Kat home alone, but he won’t want his sister in the fray, either.”

David and Wade took their seats on the half-empty plane.

“The good news is that Martin got hold of Maya’s cousins, Huntley and Everett. They’re arriving this afternoon. They’re going to help with our case,” Wade said.

David smiled. “Whose idea was that?”

“The brothers. Martin went along with it, but if he’d wanted to give them another case to work on instead, they weren’t buying it.”

“Good. So… are they meeting us at the club or taking care of Kat?”

As the plane took off, Wade leaned against the seat and closed his eyes. “They wanted to drop by the Andersons’ place, meet Kat and Connor, and bring Maya to the club if she’s willing.”

“Are you going to dance with Candy if she’s there?”

Wade opened his eyes and looked at his brother. “Now, how am I going to win Maya over if I’m chasing some human woman at a club?”

David smiled at him. “Just thought you were up for the game of trying to learn more about Bettinger since he’d given her his real name and asked her out. Besides, maybe if you danced with Candy, Maya would change her mind about seeing other guys.”

“Or be so annoyed with me that she would see only other guys.”

David shook his head and ordered a cup of orange juice from the hostess.

“Two,” Wade said, holding up two fingers.

“Have Huntley or Everett heard back from their sister, Tammy?”

Wade frowned at David. “Why? You’re not hoping to meet her, are you? She wouldn’t come to the club the first time because she was busy having a date with a human.”

“No. Remember what the brothers said? They were having her look into the situation concerning the missing jaguar from the Oregon Zoo.”

“Thompson,” Wade said, recalling the man who was searching for the stolen jaguar. “Hell. I forgot all about him. Connor will have a fit if the man bothers them when they get home.”

“At least Connor won’t allow Thompson to badger Maya any further. Maybe Tammy’s got some good news. If she’s found the stolen jaguar, that’ll be the end of that problem. Besides, surely Thompson wouldn’t be hanging around all this time while the Andersons were in Belize, waiting for their return. Don’t you imagine he’d be off somewhere else looking for clues?”

“Yeah.” Wade leaned his head against the seat. If Thompson had been a shifter, Wade would have liked him for his obvious concern for the missing jaguar. But because Thompson had targeted Maya, believing she had something to do with the stolen cat, Wade was ready to tear him apart if he harassed her any further.

As if he was afraid to ask the most important question until last, David finally said, “Did you hear from Maya yet?”

“Yeah.”

“What’d she say?”

Wade smiled at his brother.

“Well? Was she all gushy? Saying she missed you terribly? Or is there hope for me yet?”

Wade knew his brother was teasing him. He shook his head and drank his orange juice, but didn’t say. It was what Maya didn’t say that made him smile again.

When they arrived in Houston, they got a rental car and drove to their hotel.

Dumping his bag on the floor of the economy hotel room, Wade noted the two queen-sized beds with standard floral bedspreads, the television, writing desk, and black-out curtains for sleeping late. He checked his phone to see if he’d gotten any messages from Maya or Martin.

“I’m taking a shower, then getting some sleep,” David said, “before we have dinner and go to the club.”

“Just texting Maya to let her know that we’re here.”

Maya,

David and I arrived early. We’re staying at the Santa Anna Inn in Houston. Look forward to seeing you soon. Wade

He heard the shower end.

David walked out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. “Did she respond?”

“That had to be the quickest shower you have ever taken.”

David usually used up all the hot water before Wade could take a shower when they shared a room. He wondered if David was afraid he’d miss out on hearing from Maya.

“I wasn’t very dirty,” David said with a gleam of amusement shining in his eyes.

“There was no response from her. She might be out checking on the garden.”

Wade headed for the bathroom, and David pulled his phone out.

“Don’t you text her, too,” Wade said, a warning in his voice. Before he closed the bathroom door, he saw his brother gave him an evil smile.