Chapter 1
Cassidy
“Tell me something good,” Alastair looks up when I walk into his office.
“The numbers are in,” I tell him. “They’re fine.” I close the door behind me and head over to the mahogany desk that sits in the center of the room.
“Fine?” He taps his pencil on the desk before pushing away and leaning back in his leather office chair. “That’s not what I wanted to hear, Cassidy. I wanted to hear great. I wanted to hear fantastic. Fine? Fuck fine.” He throws the pencil across the room and it bounces off the wall before falling to the floor.
Yeah, it’s safe to say that Alastair has a little bit of an attitude problem. He’s working on it, or so he’s told me. I can’t tell if it’s a tiger thing or it’s a shitty-boss thing, but he needs to get over this rage issue before it escalates into something bigger than it already is. The last thing Alastair needs is to end up like his dad. Jacob is known for a long of things, but patience isn’t one of them.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say,” I tell him.
“I literally just told you one second ago,” he stands up and presses his palms against his desk. He practically snarls at me. Maybe this works on other people, but it’s not going to work on me.
“Hey,” I snap, and I step forward. I press my own palms against his desk, so we’re practically head to head. His breathing intensifies and I know exactly what’s happening. He’s fucking pissed, livid, but I don’t really give a shit. “Try again, hot shot.”
“You don’t talk to your boss that way.”
“Well, you don’t talk to your cousin that way,” I counter. “Or I’ll call Auntie Jean and she’ll put you right back in your place, which is the corner with all of the other bad boys.”
Momentarily sated, he relaxes and steps back.
“Fine,” he says. “But fix the numbers.”
“Alastair, I’m not a liar, and I’m not a mathematician. The people in Lyon County are ready for something new and different. They’re ready to expand and grow. We’re all hurting for money here.” I take a look around the expensive-looking furniture in his office. “Well, most of us, but that doesn’t change what’s going to happen.”
“Th
is is tiger country, and you know it.”
“Fair enough,” I nod. “It has been for a long time, but things are changing, cousin. We have to change with the times. This county has catered to tigers and tigers alone for years. It’s time to allow some fresh blood into the area.”
He sighs and looks at me before slumping back into his seat. I hate the way Alastair looks defeated. Stressed. Anxious. I know exactly what he’s going through because it’s what everyone who works at Cambridge Real Estate has been dealing with. The world is changing around us and we have to make some hard choices. Are we going to change, too? Or are we going to let the world pass us by?
“Look,” I take a seat. “This is going to be fine. Our company has changed and adapted and grown. It’s made it through every possible fucked-up situation we could ever imagine, and it’s still managed to flourish. What’s so different about this time?”
A recent poll shows that the citizens in the county really are ready for something new and different. They’re ready for new jobs, new people, and new shifters. Lyon County really has been a world for tigers – a haven, really – for many years. My cousin, however, seems to be dragging his feet when it comes to jumping on board with business collaborations that could help launch these new changes.
Why, though?
Alastair is usually such a go-getter. I don’t understand why he’s hesitant to start moving forward with local growth endeavors.
“This time it’s personal,” he says.
“What do you mean?”
Alastair looks at his hands before raising his head and making eye contact with me. My cousin is a lot of things, but a liar? He’s not one of them. He’s always been honest, at least with me, and I know that whatever he says now is hard for him to get out.
“I went to school with the guy who runs Ridge Construction,” he says.
Ridge Construction is one of the biggest companies in town and is the primary reason the city is supposed to see incredible growth by the end of the summer. The company wants to expand parts of town and open new businesses, apartments, and homes that are ideal for college students and other young shifters who may or may not be tigers.
“What? How did I not know this?”
“Because you were off at boarding school,” he shrugs, as though that explains everything, but it sort-of does. As a teenager, my parents thought I needed a conservative upbringing. They shipped me off to an all-girls’ school out of state and left me there until graduation. I moved back later, after they divorced, and started working for my cousin and his real estate firm. The rest is history.
“Well, I mean, were you friends?” I ask. These are the important questions. How did they get along back then? Because things are about to change drastically in Lyon County. Having someone on our side from Ridge Construction could be huge when it comes to harnessing real estate properties and bringing in tenants from out-of-town.
“Not really,” he shrugs, and I feel like there’s more to the story, but I don’t press it.
“Have you had any contact? Does he remember you?”
“Oh, I’m sure he remembers me,” he says in the way that makes me think my cousin must have done something shitty to Mr. Ridge. I’m not of the impression that family members are never at fault. Maybe my cousin was a bully. Maybe he was the one who was bullied. Who knows? All I know now is that Ridge Construction is moving swiftly throughout the town, buying up lots, and building homes designed to accommodate all kinds of shifters: not just tigers.
Cambridge Real Estate has prided itself on being a company that is tiger-friendly. The area was started by a tiger pack long ago that has grown and expanded. There are other kinds of shifters in the area, but they’re few and far between, and the reality is that almost everything is geared toward tigers.
I don’t think Ridge Construction is doing anything wrong.
In fact, I think they’re doing everything right.
“Look,” I tell my cousin, pointing again to the data sheets I brought in. “More than half of the community members in Lyon County want this. They want change. They want more shifters and different kinds of shifters and they want to see activities designed for those families. They don’t want this to be a tiger-only world.”
“What about the other half?” He asks, and I know what he means.
He means people like his dad.