She wriggled her shoulders as they stepped up onto the verandah of his house.“I try not to be.I live in a small-ish apartment.Well, small for my family’s standards.It’s large to a normal person.It has to be.It sleeps all my…” She swallowed, ducked her head.“He slept in my home, Ryan.How could he do that to me?”
“Money talks, sweetheart,” he replied softly, stepping forward to wrap her in his arms.“You’ve no idea how unbelievably sorry I am about what happened tonight.The last thing I ever wanted to do was frighten you.”
She stiffened in his arms.“It came as a surprise,” she enunciated carefully, then swallowed a grin when he laughed.
“Why do I feel like diplomacy was bred into your bones?”
“Probably because it was.Along with decorum classes and God knows what else my mother and father deemed vital for an oil baron’s heiress.”She grimaced.“This is a lot to take in.”
“I wish that was all you had to take in tonight, El, but I have some other things I need to share with you.”
She tensed in his arms.“Other things?You’re not going to kidnap me too, are you?”She eyed him warily.“Do I need to call for Shawn?”
He scowled at her.“No.You don’t.And of course I’m not!It’s about my Pride.”
“You don’t mean ego either, do you?”she asked a little ruefully.
“No, I don’t.I mean the customs of my people.”He sighed, loosened his hold on her, and said, “Come on.I think we could both do with a drink.”
“I’d prefer to brush my teeth first, Ryan, if that’s okay?I didn’t intend to vomit on your dahlias.”
He snickered.“I like your humor, El.”
She wrinkled her nose.“Probably a good thing considering.”
“Considering what?”
“That it’s how I cope with most disasters.”She sucked in a breath as he opened the door to his admittedly lavish home, and confessed, “This isn’t the first betrayal, nor will it be the last.”
“That makes my heart sad to hear,” he said softly, coming up behind her to wrap her in his arms.He pressed a kiss to her temple.“Lions aren’t like humans, El.We don’t act like your people do.”
“No?When it boils down to it, people see me as dollars and cents.Your people might be Lions, but I saw their reaction to my surname.”They’d been intrigued, curious.“The leopard doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“It does.Of course they’re curious.You’re their leaders’ new mate.Plus, you’re American royalty.But they don’t see you as dollars and cents.If anything, they’ll protect you with their lives, El.That’s how we work.If you’re safe anywhere, it’s here.With my people.”
She bit her lip.“I really want to believe that.”
“After tonight, I can’t blame you for being cautious.If anything, I applaud you for it, but you’ll live and learn.That’s the best way, anyway.”
The hall was an open circular space with a round table in the middle.It housed a large and effusive bunch of lilies in the middle.Around the walls there were doors, and in between the doors there were paintings and photographs.Anything from a couple of cubs playing in the bush—which took on another meaning now she knew there were men who could turn into damn Lions—to a regular looking picture of an older man and woman laughing in each other’s arms—the man looked the spitting image of Ryan.
“Your father?”she asked softly, pointing to the picture.
“My parents,” he confirmed with a smile.“A hundred years they’ve been together.They still laugh like that every day.”
She gulped.They’d been together a century?“How old are you?”
“I’m sixty-four.”
“I’ll assume there’s some kind of slow aging miracle that comes as part of being a werelion?”she demanded, gawking at him.“Because you look my age.”
“Yes.Tales of our traits have bled into human literature, thanks to people who have either taken advantage of their knowledge of us or simply found it amusing to disperse such truths through movies and the like.We heal quickly, we don’t age, we do have a mate that means the world to us, but we don’t need the moon to shift.As you saw tonight,” he said with a grimace.
“Yeah, I did see that, didn’t I?”Memories of those moments when the handsome man before her had turned into a monster at her side had her legs shaking, and as she passed the hall table, she clung to the side for support.
How had tonight ended the way it had?
There had been such promise, such excitement at the notion of a first date with what seemed like a really nice, genuine guy…
