Page 4 of Tiger Betrayal

He was the most terrifying and most interesting man she’d ever met.

Chapter Two

Stellan glanced at the clock, and positioned a tire onto the old Acura, then eased it on and leaned back so he could check the parking lot. Laramie still wasn’t here.

“Hurry up, man,” Craig said as he bolted the front tire on.

“Piss off,” Stellan gritted out. Sometimes he fantasized about setting Craig on fire.

“You’ve been distracted all day.”

“And yet I’ve gotten twice as much work done as you,” Stellan told him, straightening to his full height and squaring up to him. “And what are you going to say to that, Craig? You know it’s true. Murph doesn’t go to you to get something done the right way. Guess who he goes to?”

Craig looked pissed and shook his head. “Whatever.”

“Clock in, shut up, clock out, go home with all your teeth still left in your mouth. Best advice I can give you.”

Craig didn’t say anything. Good.

The sound of a car touched Stellan’s sensitive eardrums, and he leaned back again to look out the two open garage hangars to the parking lot.

A little silver Eclipse parked in one of the customer spots, and out stepped Laramie. Stellan froze. She’d changed her clothes and had pulled her dark brunette hair out of her ponytail. It was longer than he’d realized. She was wearing jeans and some close-toed boots, and a fitted blue button-down shirt. She looked nervous. Quickly, she checked herself in the window reflection and then turned for the building.

Stellan flinched back to avoid being seen.

She looked…nice. Nice? No, she looked better than nice. She looked pretty, and hot, and gorgeous. Even fully clothed in a modest outfit, she looked entirely fuckable.

Stellan blinked hard and went back to putting the last two tires on the Acura. Focus. He was behaving like this because he hadn’t had sex in a while and he was wanting it bad lately. That’s all.

It was hard to concentrate when Laramie was just inside talking to Murph. He loaded a tire on the machine wrong, and it wasn’t lined up to break the beads to pull the tire from the rim. He had to turn it off and restart. What if Murph didn’t give her the job? Sure, Stellan had asked him for a favor, but Murph was Murph. He did whatever he wanted.

Not fifteen minutes later though, the door to the shop opened and out came Murph. He nodded at Stellan, and then turned to say something to Laramie, who stopped in her tracks the second she locked eyes with Stellan.

He couldn’t tell if she had brown or green eyes. They were a color right between in the sunlight that was filtering through the open hangar doors.

Murph said something to her and touched her elbow, and that pulled her out of whatever charged moment they had just shared.

She gave Stellan a little wave and then smiled politely at Murph as he led her around a car to finish his tour of the service side of the shop.

“Is that the new receptionist?” Craig asked Brant from the next lift down.

“I guess so. Murph doesn’t let anyone in here unless it’s serious,” Brant said from where he was patching a nail in a tire.

“She’s hot,” Craig said, full on staring at Laramie as she walked behind Murph.

Stellan hated the hungry look in his eyes. “Work,” Stellan barked out.

“Chhh, what crawled up your ass this morning?” Craig asked, turning to get back to the F150 they were working on.

Honestly, Stellan didn’t know what was wrong with him. Of course the guys would notice Laramie. She was pretty. She probably got attention everywhere she went.

The damn growl was in his throat, and he had to swallow it down and close his eyes before he took three steady breaths. Maybe he needed to Change soon. His tiger had been off lately. Well, his tiger was always off, but lately he’d been a handful.

It was probably the Ledger Ambush reunion hanging over his head like a freaking guillotine blade.

This was his least favorite week of the year.

Mars and Dame had both been calling and texting him non-stop. He was this close to blocking both of them and moving to Mexico.