by Jade White
“Are you scared?” She looked at Gus, wondering what was going through his head right then.
They had taken all the precautions, just in case the curse wasn’t broken. Everything Tiffany was going to need to know about raising a Shifter child, as they were called, was written down for her and she now knew several people who were going to be more than happy to help her in the process of being a mother.
Regardless of the fact that she had people there for her, no one could substitute for her Bear. She wanted him with her for the rest of her life and as Delilah slept in her arms, all she could think about was how terrified she was.
“No,” he said bravely, looking at her with a smile on his face. He couldn’t stop staring at their beautiful little girl and she knew this was going to complete their lives. Neither of them knew there was a little girl shaped hole in their lives waiting to be filled, but Delilah told them they needed her the moment she was born. Now that she was here, neither of them could imagine life without her.
“She’s so perfect.” Tiffany laughed, the tears running down her cheeks. “Do you want to hold her?”
He nodded eagerly, always glad for a chance to hold his daughter. She watched him holding her and as she stared at him, she felt the exhaustion seeping into her bones, filling her up like she was full of sand. Her eyes fluttered and she slowly closed them, drifting off to sleep as she listened to him humming to his daughter, rocking her gently with a sort of happiness she never knew was possible for a man to experience.
When she awoke in the middle of the night, she saw he was still holding his daughter. It had been two hours since she had involuntarily passed out from the exhaustion. She looked at him and saw that he was still rocking her, still humming to her as his daughter slept in his arms.
Tiffany looked at the clock. It was the following day and that meant the curse had officially failed. Sinking back into her bed, she watched him humming to their daughter and she smiled. Everything was going to be just fine. Everything was going to be perfect, in fact.
THE END
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BOOK EIGHT
THE PLAYTIGER
BILLIONAIRE
A PARANORMAL BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE
MARIA AMOR
Copyright ©2016 by Maria Amor
All rights reserved.
About This Book
Playboy WereTiger Billionaire Nick came to realize that he needed an heir. He knew that the tiger life was one that was full of danger and having someone to pass on his fortune to was of mass importance.
However, having not had a serious girlfriend in years meant the Playboy had no one to turn to in order to help him out.
So he decided he had no choice but to hire a woman to be a surrogate to his future tiger baby.
That woman was the cute and curvy student Cynthia. Living life paycheck to paycheck was no fun for her and the pay off from Nick's proposal was well worth her while.
So she agreed, but she really had no idea just how dangerous the tiger life could really be and she was about to find out in more ways than one...
Chapter One
Cynthia could feel the slight wobble and shudder shaking her car as she pulled up to the last intersection before the highway on-ramp. The old tank of a Volvo had been acting up lately, but usually it managed to smooth out by the time she got onto the interstate. She glanced at the panel, her gaze taking in the RPM meter, the speedometer, the fuel and the temperature gauge. None of the indicator lights were on. Relax. It’s just idling a little rough. It’s no big deal.
The last time the car had broken down—three months before—the cost of replacing the fuel pump had wiped out all of Cynthia’s savings, which hadn’t been much to begin with.
“I’m just being paranoid,” she said to herself, looking up to see if the light had changed.
It didn’t help; her heart still beat in a rapid little flutter in her chest. Cynthia turned the volume up on the ancient aftermarket stereo she’d gotten installed for her birthday, hoping against hope that the soothing, even tones of Elliott Smith would calm her frayed nerves.
The light turned green, and Cynthia took her foot off the brake, breathing slowly and deeply as she accelerated through the intersection, glancing at each of her mirrors. It wasn’t quite rush hour yet, but she could already see the signs of distracted morning drivers, sipping coffee and eating breakfast in their car with one hand while they steered with the other, or snapping at children in the back seat, heads turned for just a second too long. Cynthia turned on her signal as she approached the on ramp for the highway, glancing around once more to make sure that she wouldn’t be blindsided as she moved into the turn lane and then onto the ramp.
Assuming traffic held up—and assuming there weren’t any major accidents on her route—Cynthia thought she might even have time to make some toast and eat it at her desk before she had to focus down on the work of the day. Three weeks until my evaluation. Three weeks and maybe I’ll get a pay bump. The car smoothed out a little bit as Cynthia sped up, merging into the center lane.
She had been at Lane Holdings for almost a year; Cynthia had hoped to hold out for a better job offer, but by the time she had interviewed at Lane, the calls from the student loan companies had already started. While the assistant account management position had brought her more and more responsibility, especially in the last six months, her pay hadn’t gone up yet—and even to start, it had been designated an entry level position, which meant that she earned under thirty thousand dollars a year. It was just enough to cover her expenses every month: four hundred dollars in student loan payments, four hundred in utilities and bills, and nine hundred for rent on her tiny, one-bedroom apartment, with just enough money left over for gas and food. It had been months since she had been able to afford to go out with her friends.
The car shuddered around her, and Cynthia’s gaze darted down to the instrument panel in a jolt of fear. None of the lights were on; she clenched her teeth and glanced at each of her mirrors.
“Come on, baby,” Cynthia said, stroking the edge of her steering wheel. “Come on, you can make it.” She swallowed against the tight, dry feeling in her throat.
The car smoothed and then shuddered again as Cynthia tried to keep up with the fast-paced highway traffic.
“Please, please don’t do this to me,” Cynthia said, looking at the steering wheel. “You can do it, baby. You can do it.” She glanced at a sign as she passed it; her exit was still another six miles away. “Come on. Just another ten miles. You can do it.” The car shuddered harder, the steering wheel vibrating in her hands. A low whimper left her lips and Cynthia tried to suppress the rising sense of panic that welled up in her.
She heard the engine sputtering—barely louder than the music playing over her stereo—and when Cynthia glanced down at the temperature gauge, she saw the needle swinging slowly but inexorably towards the red mark.
“Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.” Cynthia’s eyes stung and she blinked quickly to try and keep the tears that formed from hazing over her vision.
She reached out, remembering some piece of advice she had heard about how to deal with an overheating engine. Cynthia turned the air conditioning off and twisted the temperature control around to heat, and the fan on to max. She would be a sweaty mess, but with any luck she might be able to keep her engine from overheating.
Traffic had picked up just enough that Cynthia’s panicked gaze saw no clear way to get immediately onto the shoulder. She sped up—hoping that the faster speed might suck more air into the engine compartment and help matters, as well as getting her to where she could pull over—and tried to find an opening to the right-side shoulder. She had already given up on the idea of getting into the office early; Cynthia knew just enough about cars to know that she would have to, at the very least, let her engine cool down
with the car shut off before she tried to finish her commute.
“Come on, you assholes,” Cynthia said, her voice deepening into a frustrated growl as she tried to get around the cars in the next lane over. “My car is about to fry itself! Either speed up or slow down! You can see my blinker—you know I need to get over.” Her hands tightened on the wheel and Cynthia looked at the temperature gauge desperately; it was climbing in spite of the oven-like heat blowing through her vents. “Move!” Cynthia’s throat tightened in a spasm of panic as she tried to get over, tried to get to the shoulder to get the engine off before it blew up on her.
Her panic increased when Cynthia saw, to her horror, a plume of either smoke or vapor—she wasn’t sure which—flowing out from under the hood of her car. “Come on, you assholes, let me get over! You can see my car overheating!” Cynthia whimpered as she finally managed to get into the next lane. Her frenzied gaze searched the line of cars in the next and final lane she had to cross to get to the shoulder, trying to find a way in. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” Cynthia’s fingernails dug into the rubbery material of her steering wheel as she struggled to find a way around the cars that blocked her path to the shoulder, even as the smoke from her engine compartment widened from a plume to gusts. She could hear the way the engine itself was starting to complain, groaning and stuttering.
The car started shaking more violently, and Cynthia could barely maintain control as it shuddered all around her. She could smell the cloying scent of radiator fluid burning off, leaking a little through the vents. The inside of her car was like a furnace, and in the back of her mind, Cynthia could feel the sweat dripping down her skin, making her clothes stick to her all over.
Finally—finally—she found her opening and changed lanes, working her way towards the shoulder. The steering wheel bucked and jittered under her hands, the engine pinging, its groans taking on a higher, whining pitch. She braked, and as she reached out for the gearshift, Cynthia saw the temperature gauge edge into the maximum. A constellation of lights winked on all at once on her control panel, and the car shuddered and shook as it came to a stop. Cynthia turned the key in the ignition, even if she knew—with a leaden feeling of dread in her stomach—that she was too late.
The car shut off, but the smoke continued to billow out from under the hood. “Fuck. Fuck—fuck—fuck.” Cynthia stared miserably out through her windshield.
In the relative quiet, she could hear the whooshing sound of cars passing her on the highway, just a few yards away from where she’d finally come to a stop. As if to cap her realization that her car was irreparably destroyed, Cynthia heard a squeal, and two loud thunks in rapid succession, followed by quieter pinging sounds.
“I am so totally and completely screwed,” she said numbly, as tears welled up in her eyes. Cynthia scrubbed at her sweaty face, not caring in the slightest that it would ruin her makeup; as far as she could tell, she had probably already ruined it from the heat of the car.
For several long moments, Cynthia sat in her baking-hot vehicle, not quite sobbing but simply letting the tears roll down her cheeks as the realization of how terrible her situation was deepened. She wasn’t just going to be late to work; she was going to have to have the car towed to a mechanic’s shop, and find a ride the rest of the way to the office. She was going to have to find some way to pay for the repair. She was going to have to cut into the little disposable income she had, and if she couldn’t make it happen—if it cost more than the scanty three hundred dollars she had in her account at that moment, which Cynthia was sure it would—she would have to take the unreliable city bus indefinitely.
Leaning forward, Cynthia pressed her forehead to the top of her steering wheel, a ragged sob working its way up through her throat. She shuddered almost as violently as the car had in its final moments, her breath catching in her throat as more and more consequences of the freak malfunction rose up in her mind. If she couldn’t make it to work on time and reliably, she would get fired; if she got fired, she wouldn’t have enough money to get the car fixed—or to replace it, if need be. She would be unemployed indefinitely—and might then be evicted from her apartment.
Slowly, Cynthia’s panic reached its peak and then began to ebb. “Okay,” she said out loud. “Okay. First things first: call the office. Tell them you’re going to be late.”
She reached into her purse and retrieved her phone, wiping at her face with her other hand. She found her boss’s number in her contacts list and tilted her head back against the headrest as she listened to the phone ring once, twice, and then three times. Cynthia glanced at the screen, seeing that it wasn’t yet time for anyone to be in the office.
The voicemail prompt began. “Hey, Carly,” Cynthia began. “My car just broke down. I’m on the side of the highway right now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get a tow, and then get into the office.” Cynthia took a breath and exhaled on a sigh. “I’m really, really sorry about this. I’ll call back once I have some kind of ETA.” Cynthia closed her eyes, feeling a jolt of guilt and frustration. “I’ll be in touch.” Cynthia ended the call and forced herself to take another deep breath.
The next obvious step was to call the roadside assistance service that came with her phone service. The inside of the car was broiling hot; Cynthia opened the door a crack, just enough to achieve some kind of airflow. She had a back-of-the-mind paranoid fear that if she opened the door all the way, one of the passing cars speeding in the right lane would collide with it and knock it off.
She picked up her phone again and found the roadside assistance contact in her list. Cynthia’s eyes watered once more as the fact of how thoroughly helpless she was weighed on her.
“Yes, good morning,” she said when someone finally answered the call. “My car just broke down on the side of the highway. I think my engine overheated. I need a tow to a mechanic.”
One thing is certain at least, Cynthia thought as the agent on the other end of the phone line started asking questions about the make and model of her car, about her phone number, and all of the details she needed to get the tow truck to where Cynthia was pinned down in her car. There is no possible way this day could get any worse than it is right now. It’s impossible.
Almost unwillingly, Cynthia began to look at the situation more positively; she knew—or at least, very strongly suspected—that her car was irreparably broken. But the prospect of burying herself in her work when she finally got to the office, and of possibly getting a pay increase in a few weeks when she came up for her review, along with one or two other details that she made herself remember, pulled her out of the deep spiral of anxiety and dread and depression. After one or two more calls, all Cynthia had left to do was wait for the truck to arrive, and hope she could get a ride from the mechanic’s shop to work.
*
Nick sat down heavily on the big, comfortable sofa in his living room, closing his eyes and rubbing at his temples slowly. “That’s it,” he said to himself. “The funeral is over, the will’s been read and reviewed, and the board has been notified. Maybe now I can finally get some sleep.”
His father had passed away a month before. Nick had received the news from his mother in the midst of a business dinner, while discussing business matters with one of his father’s associates. In the weeks since his father’s death, Nick had packed thirty hours of work into every twenty-four hours: while Alexander Trocaire had done his best to plan his estate and make things as smooth as possible for his heirs, he hadn’t counted on dying suddenly. Nick, as his father’s only son and the heir to the Trocaire fortune, had had to reassure shareholders, speak to lawyers and brokers, and take care of his grieving mother.
His father had left him the bulk of the fortune, along with the businesses that generated it: a dozen companies, of varying sizes and degrees of profitability, most of them self-sustaining, but requiring the occasional check-in. For Nick’s mother, there was an extremely generous trust fund and shares in the holding company that owned the companies; but the
responsibility for running everything fell to Nick himself.
It helped that Nick had been working for his father ever since he graduated college; slowly, he’d taken over one project and then another, until he had been the de facto chairman of one of the businesses, and his father’s accepted second in command. He could—in theory—live off of the trust fund his father had established for him in his will, and give up his ownership of the business empire, letting it devolve to the board and shareholders, taking no more part in anything than a regular trustee. But Nick knew that his father didn’t want that; and in fact, he knew that he himself didn’t want it.
The main reason that Nick knew that it was important for him to maintain the control of the Trocaire empire was the employees. The regular nine-to-five people that worked for his father mostly wouldn’t notice the difference in leadership, but there were about two dozen employees who definitely would: employees who needed a few days off every month, who had special requirements for their health insurance benefits. Of all of the people on the board, there was only one other person besides Nick who could understand and cater to those employees’ needs.
Alexander Trocaire had impressed on his son Nick the responsibility that came along with their status; from a young age, even before his first transformation, Nick knew that they were special, that they were different. His parents—and Nick himself—were were-tigers, that made them different not only from regular humans, but also from other types of shifters. Not for them the pack or pride that wolves and lions grouped into; at most, were-tigers had a counsel of elders to answer to—and the counsel was not particularly involved in the day-to-day lives of the tigers. The Trocaire business empire employed shifters who didn’t have any affiliation to a particular group: lone male lions, lone wolves, were-bears, and one or two were-dragons—the rarest of all the shifters that Nick knew about, rarer even than tigers like himself.
