“I had a good time,” Flambé added.
“Good. You look like a sleepy kitten.” He wrapped his arm around her and brought her under his shoulder, up close to his body, a claiming move, a bit proprietary, waiting for her to stiffen or object. She did neither, but she didn’t settle or relax against him either.
“Thanks, Ania. Flambé is important to me.” Sevastyan wanted to make that very clear. “She had a traumatic day.”
“That bastard hit her,” Ania acknowledged. “She told me.”
Before Flambé could protest the topic of conversation, Sevastyan tightened his arm around her, pressing her front to his side. “I don’t want her thinking about him anymore. He’s my problem now. She’s going to be designing the landscaping for the property. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with. Since she’ll be staying with me, I’ll get to see her process. She’s going to be working hands-on. Maybe you’d like to come over and watch sometime, Ania?”
“Would you mind, Flambé?” Ania asked, excitement edging her voice. “I can bring your crew Evangeline’s baked goods. Trust me, I won’t make them myself. I nearly burned down her bakery trying to help her once and learned my lesson when it came to that kind of baking crap. It isn’t as easy as it looks. She even had the dough made up.”
“Really?” Flambé tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t. She burst into laughter.
Sevastyan didn’t make the mistake even though both women were laughing. He’d seen his cousins fall for the same bullshit over and over and get into trouble. He just looked down at the two women impassively. Ania sobered up first, looked up at him and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t be all judgy, Sevastyan. I know you want to laugh.”
He didn’t say a word. He simply turned toward the door, taking Flambé with him. At the last moment, he remembered to keep his strides shorter to allow her to keep up. They headed out to the small Jeep he had purchased so that it could fit in the tunnel he’d renovated, allowing him to drive between the two properties unseen.
“I like her. I’d never had a chance to meet Ania Dover. She was always working or taking care of her father. We only went out a couple of times when her father wanted more trees planted. That was before the accident and then the robbery.”
He settled her in the Jeep. “You do know what happened with her mother and grandparents wasn’t really an accident, right? Someone deliberately ran them off the road and killed them. The same people tried to murder her father and make it look like a robbery.” He walked around the hood of the car to slide behind the wheel. He really detested telling her the truth, but mates didn’t lie to each other. Even if some did, he wasn’t built that way. He expected her to trust him. In order to do that, he had to tell her the truth, no matter how difficult it was.
By the silence, he could tell she hadn’t known or even suspected. He glanced at her as he put the vehicle in motion and drove it straight toward the entrance to the underground passage.
“Is that true?” Flambé put one hand to her throat defensively. “Why would anyone target the Dover family, Sevastyan? They’ve been around for generations. That’s not right. Was it because they’re a shifter family?”
“Unfortunately, it’s more complicated than that.”
Flambé rubbed her temples as if she might have a headache. “I don’t understand why people are so ugly to one another.”
“I don’t either, baby. Just put your head back and rest. I’ll get us home and you can go to sleep.” He kept his voice pitched low and soothing.
“If I fall asleep and don’t have a chance to tell you, thank you for dinner and stopping by my house to get my clothes and my own garden tools and laptop. Things like that are important to me.”
“Naturally. If we couldn’t have gone ourselves, I would have sent for them. It was just nicer for you to choose what you wanted to bring with you.” He wanted the chance to see her home. To see how she lived and what she surrounded herself with. Whatever made Flambé comfortable was what he was going to provide.
“You’re a very thoughtful man.”
He glanced at her again. Those long red-gold-tipped lashes had fallen, leaving her looking young and vulnerable whenever the lights from the tunnel hit her as they flashed past. Her hair would briefly blaze to life and then darkness would settle around them like a cloak. He wasn’t a thoughtful man—not as a rule—not for others unless it came down to security details. It was just that she mattered to him. He found it astonishing and disconcerting just how quickly she’d come to matter so much. How every little detail about her counted.
It wasn’t just that she was going to be his leopard’s mate and by default, his. He was already intrigued with her. More than intrigued. So much more. He wanted this woman the more time he spent with her. The pull between them grew stronger, and the chemistry hotter.
He knew the leopards had a lot to do with it, but it wasn’t all about their leopards. He was far too disciplined and in control to allow himself to to be swayed to this extent by his cat. It was the promise of Flambé. The way she looked at him. The brush of her gaze moving over his body and then retreating. He knew women. He read them easily. He was a shifter and he had all of his cat’s enhancements. He could smell her arousal. Her interest. Her submission. Her needs and demands.
Right now, she sat in the Jeep, seat belt tight around her, clad in the power suit she’d worn to his house earlier in the day. The silk blouse clung to her generous breasts, showing a hint of the darker bra beneath it. She had to have known, when she slid into the seat, that her blouse had come unbuttoned, those first three buttons, but she hadn’t tidied them. She’d left them, so the upper curves of her breasts showed where the material was pulled apart.
He didn’t need the lights in the tunnel to see her. His leopard was close, and he saw every detail of her bone structure along with her satin skin and the fall of silky hair as he drove fast through the passageway. She was beautiful. He couldn’t wait to see her laid out for him like a feast. In the meantime, he was looking forward to getting to know her, finding out all the things that pleased her, made her smile and laugh, that mattered to her.
Sevastyan drove the Jeep from the underground tunnel straight into the garage with no lights and parked it, turned it off and just sat there listening. He called Shturm close, wanting the cat to ensure no leopard or man was in the garage or close by. He hadn’t perceived danger near, but he wasn’t taking any chances with Flambé.
When Shturm assured him the garage was clear, he woke Flambé gently and gathered her suitcases. “Let’s go, malen’koye plamya. Stay very quiet. I don’t want any of Franco’s men to hear us. They think we’re inside.”
“They’re still out there?” She turned her face up toward him, the back of her head rubbing against his chest.
She was very tactile. As a rule, Sevastyan forbade touching. His leopard would never have stood for it. When he went to the clubs, the women didn’t touch him unless he commanded them to do so. Most of the time, he didn’t allow it. He looked forward to skin-to-skin touch with Flambé. He also knew it would be advantageous if she needed a continuous physical demonstration between them. It had bothered him that she hadn’t taken his hand at Mitya’s house when he’d offered it to her.
He bent to brush a reassuring kiss on the side of her cheek and skimmed one hand down her nec