Still, she saw Mr. Yazzie staring at her with a smile in the mirror as though she were some kind of miracle.
Slowly, he moved the necklace around to her front and tied the leather strap around her neck. It hung just above her shirt collar and stood out brightly against her chest.
“It suits you,” Mr. Yazzie said quietly.
“Thank you, Mr. Yazzie,” Diana said in a breathy voice. Not daring to turn around, not daring to take her eyes off the image in the mirror for fear that it would disappear the moment she did; like the faded memory of a dream.
“Call me Cat,” Mr. Yazzie said quietly.
Then Diana gasped as he leaned his head down to her neck and placed his lips gently on her skin just above the leather strap he had just tied on her.
Diana closed her eyes and savored the warm sensation for a moment before there was a knock at the office door.
Diana jumped and she felt Cat (whom she formerly knew literally a minute a go as Mr. Yazzie) move away from her. She could feel her face glowing red and she hoped her blush would not be obvious to anyone who stepped into the office.
“Come in,” Cat said.
The door creaked open and Amanda stepped confidently inside. She ignored Diana completely and turned her attention to Cat.
“Mr. Gomez just called,” she said, “He wanted you to know that he’ll be in tomorrow at ten am.”
“Good,” Cat said, “he’ll be able to meet Diana.”
Amanda, for the first time, turned her gaze to Diana. At first, she merely surveyed her with the cold disinterest she had always showed. Then, however, her eyes seemed to land on the necklace dangling near Diana’s chest.
Amanda’s eyes narrowed and her face contorted into an entirely different expression. Her cheeks burned as bright as Diana’s but Diana could tell this was not embarrassment that covered Amanda’s face. It was rage.
She saw Amanda take a deep breath and she seemed to struggle to regain her neutral, cold expression as she turned back to Cat.
“Are you finished interviewing Diana, sir?” she asked, “She does have work to do, after all.”
“Of course,” Cat said quickly to Amanda before turning to Diana, “thank you for your time Diana. I hope you’ll enjoy your work here.”
“I’m sure I will,” Diana said giving him a smile and bringing one hand to touch the small talisman he had given her.
Cat smiled at her in turn as they stared at each other for one more moment. They both jumped slightly when Amanda cleared her throat.
Diana turned to her as Amanda beckoned her out of the office. She reluctantly passed through the glass door.
Amanda glared at her once more as she passed and closed the door rather forcefully behind Diana while remaining in Cat’s office.
As Diana hurried out, she was sure she could hear a rather loud argument beginning between Amanda and Cat, but she didn’t dare stay to listen.
Chapter Three
“What did the old bitch want?” Sandra asked as Diana returned to her seat.
Diana, not wanting to reveal what had happened in Mr. Yazzie’s office, thought quickly about her answer.
“She just wanted to let me know that Mr. Gomez would be in tomorrow,” Diana said, remembering the last thing that Amanda had said before she left the office. “She wanted to make sure I understood the tasks I was supposed to perform for him.”
Sandra rolled her eyes.
“Typical,” Sandra muttered, “she doesn’t think I can train anyone. She did the same thing with Olivia when she came on a few months ago.”
Diana gave Sandra a slight apologetic smile, and she silently thanked God that Sandra hadn’t noticed the new necklace swinging against Diana’s chest.
The rest of the day passed without incident. Sandra told Diana more about the troubles with her boyfriend and his various female “friends”. Diana continued to half listen as she attempted to answer email inquiries and post articles to facebook.
Soon enough, the clock above them ticked five and she was saying goodbye to Sandra and heading to her car.
She walked out of the door to the suite and through the large double doors out of the building. As she headed to her car, she thought about the extremely odd events of the day.
Diana didn’t know quite what she had been expecting when she agreed to work for Yazzie Properties, but it certainly had not been that.
Not even in her wildest dreams could she have imagined that Catahasa Yazzie would, not only take an interest in her, but be as fascinated with her as she was with him.
She lightly touched the small, marble cougar that hung against her chest as she neared her car.
Suddenly, the cool marble seemed to grow warm under her touch. It was a slight change that could have been explained by the heat from Diana’s body.
She would have explained it away completely if it hadn’t been for the niggling, frightened feeling that accompanied it.
She began to feel as though someone was following her.
Diana glanced around her for any signs that this was the case. There was no one else in the parking lot. Cars passed along the busy street in front of her. Diana could hear horns honking, police sirens, engines revving but as far as she could tell, there was not another person in sight.
Trying to put the uneasy feeling out of her mind, she slipped into her car and started towards her apartment building.
The uneasy feeling did not lessen on her drive home. The marble talisman continued to burn hotter against her chest. And this heat could not be explained away by either the August sun beating down or Diana’s body heat.
By the time she had reached her apartment building, about twenty miles away from Yazzie headquarters, her hands had begun to shake with fright.
As carefully as she could, she parked her car and stayed, motionless in the driver’s seat for a long while.
She knew she had to get out of the car. She knew she had to get to her locked apartment where, she hoped, she would be safe.
She took several deep breaths and closed her eyes.
“It’s just a feeling,” she told herself, “you’ve gotten them before. They never turn out to mean anything.”
Diana had gotten feelings like this before. Like she was being watched, like she was being followed. The strange feelings had started when she was very young. Once, when she was thirteen years old, the feeling had become so overwhelming that she had had a panic attack in gym class and had to be taken out of school for the day.
Her parents had called her paranoid and perhaps they were right.
All the same, she got out of her car as quickly as she could and rushed towards the door of her first floor apartment. She unlocked it quickly and rushed inside.
As soon as she got inside and closed the door, she slumped against it and closed her eyes, taking two deep steadying breaths.
She was even more unnerved when the uneasy feeling did not cease. Instead it became stronger. Like an insistent screaming inside her head. The marble cougar continued to burn against her skin. Eventually, it burned so hot that Diana cried out in pain.
As soon as she did, her eyes flew open and her breath caught in her chest.
Across from the door where she was standing, outside the glass that lead to her balcony, stood a large, black, menacing cougar.
Diana opened her mouth to scream again but no sound emerged. She told herself to turn towards the door. To run outside. But the animal was outside. And, something in the back of Diana’s mind told her that this cougar was after her.
She stood paralyzed with fear as she watched it pace back and forth for a moment, like an animal in a cage at the zoo.
A moment later, the large, black creature reared back on its hind legs and made a flying leap for the glass door.
The shattering glass was deafening as the animal broke through and bounded towards Diana.
Instinctively, Diana grabbed a lamp from the end table by her couch and swung it at the beast while it lunged for her. This
had no effect.
Before Diana knew it, she was on the ground. Large claws dug into her shoulders causing streams of blood to flow from them. She screamed in pain as the cougar snarled at her revealing its sharp teeth.
She reached out for the lamp once more, raised it and brought it against the creature's head.
The cougar let out a yowl as it bounded off Diana. It took only a moment for the animal to shake off the attack however and before Diana could pull herself up from the ground, the cougar was digging its claws into her shoulders once more.
The animal seemed to smile at Diana. An evil, malicious smile as it bared its teeth and reached its head towards Diana’s throat.
Diana closed her eyes, bracing herself for the bite. It never came.
Instead, she heard the creature let out another yowl and this time, a second snarl sounded from the back of the room.
She opened her eyes, wincing against the pain in her shoulders. As she did, she lifted her head to see what looked like a huge yellow mountain lion squaring off with the black cougar.
She could not tell if this new cougar had been inside her apartment from the start or if it had come in after the black panther had attacked her. Either way, at the arrival of this new animal, the talisman on her chest began to cool, and she knew instinctively that this newcomer would not harm her.
Suddenly, the yellow cougar lunged at the large black animal. Through eyes that were growing more and more hazy, Diana could barely see the two animals locked jaw to jaw in a fierce battle.
Her head began to spin in quick circles as she watched the pair dance almost gracefully, jaws locked across her apartment floor.
Before long, the large, yellow mountain lion, with a loud snarl, pounced on the black cougar and pinned it to the ground.
The mountain lion looked up from the black cougar to meet Diana’s eyes. Its eyes were dark, deep, and fathomless. They seemed remarkably familiar.
This was Diana’s last thought before the world around her faded to black.
THE END
Cougar Romance
The Prophecy
Secret Shades of the Alpha Blood Series Book Two
Paula Knight
Cougar Romance: The Prophecy
Chapter One
Diana Grant awoke to the sound of her alarm clock blaring at her. Groggily, she rolled over on her bed as the harsh bell on her bedside table continued to clang in her ear.
Automatically, she reached her hand out and pressed the button that would silence the machine. She blinked her eyes open peacefully for a moment before she remembered.
The black cougar…
She sat up straight in her bed, suddenly wide awake and breathing heavily. She looked around her bedroom. Everything was quiet.
The faint light of the rising sun shone through her window. The sheets, the carpet, the door to her bedroom, none of them showed any signs of anything at all unusual.
Maybe she had dreamed it.
That was it. The idea of the cougar was just a dream born from the cougar necklace she had been given.
She looked down at her chest and smiled to see that the necklace was still there. She reached out to touch it and grimaced in pain.
Both of her shoulders and the top portions of her arm felt as though they had been nearly clawed off. She attempted to move them again and the sharp, stinging sensation returned.
Diana looked over at her right shoulder and touched her hand to a large band aid that had been placed there. When she looked to her left shoulder, she saw a similar covering.
So, perhaps it was not a dream. Maybe it had really happened.
Still, what would a cougar have been doing on her balcony? And a black cougar none the less. While mountain lions were a fairly common sight in New Mexico, black panthers certainly were not.
That was when Diana remembered the second creature. This one had been tan, almost yellow. Not as large; and it had certainly looked more in keeping with the mountain lions she was used to seeing in the canyons outside of Albuquerque.
But even though this cougar was more familiar to Diana, she could not deny that both animal’s behavior had been odd.
The black panther had looked at her, stalked her not like a hungry animal hunting food, but like a jealous human attacking a rival.
And the tan mountain lion who had come in after...this cougar had completely ignored Diana and instead, focused its attention on besting the black panther. Indeed, it was almost as though the yellow mountain lion was trying to...protect Diana from the black cougar.
And clearly someone had bandaged her wounds because she knew she hadn’t been in any sort of state to do it herself. And someone must have put her in her bed beneath her own sheets.
Diana knew why she thought it was a dream. The whole thing was much too strange to be real. But when she looked down at her clothes underneath the sheets, she saw that she was wearing the same skirt and blouse she had worn to work the day before. When she looked at the chair next to her bed, she saw the jacket she had worn home soaked in blood at the sleeves.
It had clearly been washed, but she could still see the stains.
Diana slid gingerly from her bed and looked closely at the red numbers of the digital clock on her table. They blinked back up at her seven O’clock.
She had to be at work at eight thirty. She wondered if she would even be able to go now.
Her arms still stung when she moved them and she knew that, after passing out, a trip to the doctor would be a necessity.
Still, she cringed when she thought how it would look if she called in sick on her second day on a job.
She hated being thought of as unreliable. Mostly because she had never been anything but consistent and hard working. If she called in that day, it would mark her first sick day since she joined the agency.
While she was still thinking about her options, she spied a small piece of paper folded neatly, lying next to the clock on her bedside table.
Still cringing against the stinging in her shoulder, Diana reached for the paper and unfolded it.
It was a note, printed simply and legibly:
“Diana,” it read, “do not call in sick from work. Do not go to see a doctor. They won’t know how to heal those wounds you got last night. Go to your job as usual. From there, you will be contacted and taken to a safe place. Until then, if anyone asks, tell them you ran afoul of a mountain lion on your way home.”
Here there was a break in the note and in place of a signature, a blocked rune in the shape of a cougar had been drawn. Beneath this, the note continued.
“P.S. Do not trust anyone!”
Diana stared at the note for several minutes. Reading it over and over again until she had nearly memorized it.
Clearly, whoever wrote this note had bandaged the scratches on her shoulders, cleaned her jacket and placed her in the bed.
But she had not remembered anyone else in her apartment that evening.
She tried to think back. She tried to remember if she had seen anyone wandering around her building before she went in the night before. Anyone nearby who could have heard her screams and come in to help.
There had been no one. Her apartment block had looked nearly deserted when she pulled her car into her usual space the evening before.
Not to mention, whoever wrote this note, had mentioned Diana’s job. He, she or they seemed to know where she worked.
Without thinking, she touched the necklace against her chest. The necklace Cat had given her. The necklace that had burned against her skin as she entered her apartment, as though warning her of the danger.
Had Catahassa Yazzie followed her home that evening? Did this talisman she now wore around her neck, carry some sort of...psychological connection to him?
Diana shook her head and nearly laughed out loud at the thought.
This was exactly the sort of superstitious nonsense she usually found comical. Like people who believed in alien abductions or big foot.
Inanima
te objects, she told herself firmly, could not have actual connections to human beings. Not at least, without some kind of mechanical device being implanted.
Perhaps that was it. Perhaps the necklace contained some sort of...tracking device.
But even that seemed paranoid and nonsensical. Why after all, would the CEO of a major company be interested in tracking her?
Head still spinning, Diana looked at the note once more and decided finally to do exactly as it said.
Gingerly, she put her feet on the ground and padded towards the bathroom.
Even in the shower, she never took her charmed necklace off. After its warning last night, she felt a strange sort of connection with the talisman. She felt like, as long as she kept it on she would be safe.
So it stayed near her chest all the way into work.
When she arrived in the building exactly at nine o’clock, Sandra spied her first and gave her a warning look as she headed towards the break room.
“I should warn you,” Sandra whispered as Diana passed, “she’s in a really bad mood.”
Diana didn’t have to ask who Sandra meant. She heard the telltale heels clomping along the tile floor and knew she was in some sort of trouble.
“We expect our employees to be at their desks working by nine o’clock,” Amanda said looking straight at Diana, her face filled with rage.
“I’m sorry,” Diana said evenly, “it won’t happen again.”
There was no use trying to give Amanda some excuse. And Diana knew she would not believe her if she told Amanda the truth. At the thought of the truth, Diana’s fingers absently moved to her shoulder, where her suit jacket covered the large bandages in place there.
“It had better not happen again,” Amanda said, “if it does, I’m going to have to dock your pay. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” Diana said. She kept her face calm and expressionless. If there was one thing she had learned from bullies, it was that they fed off emotion. The less you showed them, the less they had to work with.
“Good,” Amanda snapped back, “now, put your things up and get to work.”
BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: The Unforgettable Southern Billionaires: The Complete Collection Boxed Set (Young Adult Rich Alpha Male Billionaire Romance) Page 22
