Walk on the Wild Side

by Christine Warren

  The stall door opened, and she stepped hesitantly into the fluorescent lighting of the open restroom. "I don't have an accent," she said, tugging self-consciously on the hem of her shirt.

  The overnight bag had yielded a pair of casual black sandals and snug jeans with faded areas of wear along the seams and down the fronts of her thighs. The denim looked battered and comfortable and almost as soft as her skin. Her T-shirt had an equally lived-in look. The thin, blue cotton with darker sleeves and trim looked like it might have been part of a high school softball uniform, but this was the first time Max could remember lusting after an adolescent shortstop. The word "Owls" stretched across her breasts in a way guaranteed to raise his blood pressure. Especially when he realized it did so in the absence of a bra.

  As soon as he pried his tongue from the back of his throat, he mustered what he hoped was a drool-free smile. "Right. Because 'fine' is really spelled with an a-h in the middle," he teased. This time, when he ran his gaze over her, he did so in a purely impersonal manner. Or at least he tried. "How are you feeling? Anything hurt?"

  She shouldered her bag and shook her head. "I thought I'd cut the back of my head when he knocked it against the tile, but I felt around in there and I couldn't find anything. I must have imagined it."

  Max frowned. "Come here. Let me check."

  She didn't exactly look comfortable with the idea, but she stepped in front of him and turned her back nonetheless. Parting her hair, he ignored the silky feel of it and searched her scalp for signs of an injury.

  "I don't see anything," he said finally. "It's probably healed."

  "Or I imagined it, like I said." She faced him again, her pointy little chin firmed with determination. Or maybe that was stubbornness.

  Max felt his lips quirk. "You don't know much about being Leo, do you?" Her green eyes fixed on him with suspicion. "Healing is part of the package. We can heal most minor injuries just by shifting forms. Even things like broken bones, if we're in good health otherwise. If we're lucky, something life-threatening to a human, like a bullet wound, will look like a three-week-old scar after a shift. Comes in handy."

  "Why? Do people shoot you often?"

  He grinned. "No, but I've had more than one tell me they wanted to."

  He heard her mutter something that sounded like "can't imagine why," but since she was looking away from him and inventorying the remains of the fabric and notions that lay scattered across the tile floor, he couldn't be sure.

  "That was my favorite pair of tennis shoes," she said mournfully, throwing the ruined scraps of canvas and rubber into the waste bin, along with the pile of rags that had been her clothes. "I'd just gotten them broke in right." She turned back to Max. "So, I'm assuming that since you haven't attacked me like that other guy, you aren't a friend of his?"

  "No. Like I said before, I work for your father. I'm Max Stuart."

  He held out his hand, which she looked at warily but didn't grasp right away. "And who do you think my father is, Mr. Stuart?"

  "Martin Lowe. He asked me to meet your flight and drive you to the hotel."

  "And you knew who I was because he showed you the picture I sent him?"

  She was a suspicious little thing, but considering the evening she'd had, he couldn't say he blamed her. "No, as far as I know, he doesn't have a picture of you. But he did give me your flight number and tell me how old you are. None of the other passengers I saw get off that plane were Leos, so it wasn't hard to work out." He paused, and his eyes roamed over her face again. "Plus, you have his eyes."

  Max had thought that bit of proof might relax her, and she did look slightly less wary, but if anything, the tension in her muscles increased.

  "I wouldn't know," she murmured, but she did take his hand and shake it briefly. Her palm was dry, her grip firm and pleasant. And a spark of heat leapt from her skin to his. "I'm Kitty Sugarman."

  Oh, that was just too much to let pass. He cleared his throat. "Kitty?" he repeated carefully.

  She made a face. "Trust me. Until a few weeks ago it was completely devoid of irony. My great-grandmother's name was Katherine, but the family called her Kitty. I always thought I was named for her."

  "And now?"

  "There are very few things I would put past my mother, Mr. Stuart." She adjusted the strap of her bag, her body language making clear that she was done talking about herself and her family for the moment. "If your offer is still open, I'd appreciate a ride to my hotel. I was going to pick up a rental car, but I'm not sure it's such a good idea for me to be driving around a strange city at night. Especially after what just happened."

  Max accepted the change of subject, but he didn't miss the significance of those "No Trespassing" signs. He'd get the story out of her eventually. She intrigued him too much for him not to.

  Placing his hand under her elbow, he guided her back out and into the terminal. "Certainly; that's what I'm here for. And I think it's a wise move to wait to rent a car. You may find you won't even need one. But if you do decide you still want a rental, a concierge at the Savannah will make the arrangements for you and have the car delivered there."

  Max had deliberately shortened his strides to make it easier for her to keep up, but he found her short legs carried her through the airport with surprising efficiency. Even when she turned a confused face toward him, she didn't slow her stride.

  "How did you know where I'm staying?" she asked, a hint of her quelled suspicion returning. "I'm fairly certain I never mentioned it to my father. He wanted me to stay at his house."

  "I know. He mentioned that," Max said, keeping his expression open and doing his best to be reassuring. "He's still hoping you'll change your mind. But as for the reservations, Martin booked a room for you for tonight. He thought meeting him and the family at the end of such a long day might be a bit of an overwhelming way to start off your visit."

  She fixed her gaze forward again and seemed to soften slightly. "That was considerate of him. And he's right. I'm not up to any more stress at the moment. I need some sleep first. And maybe a hot bath."

  Shit, she had to go and say that, right? Now, instead of seeing the pale, glistening floor tiles under his feet, Max was seeing pale, glistening bubbles slowly dissolving over her spiced cream skin. This was insane. It was like someone had spiked his bottled water with Viagra.

  "Talk about coincidences, though," Kitty mused beside him, mercifully derailing his train of thought. "It's kind of funny to think that my father would have booked me a room in the same hotel where I already made reservations for myself."

  That got Max's attention. "You booked yourself into the Savannah? That wasn't necessary, Kitty. Your father fully intends this trip to be on him. Even if you insisted on staying at the hotel, he'd want to have your room comped. We'll arrange it with the desk when you check in."

  "Comped?"

  She said the word like it came from a foreign language, and Max smiled. Sometimes he forgot that not everyone lived in Vegas. "Given to you with the compliments of the house," he explained. "Free of charge."

  "Oh, right. I've heard that casinos do that for people who gamble a lot," she said, sounding mildly disapproving, but more in a "don't they have better things to do" way than in a "gambling is a hobby of the devil" way. "I guess that means my father spends a lot of time at the Savannah." She shook her head. "Well, even if he wants to do that, I'm paying my own way on this trip. I don't like to be beholden to people, even if they are relations. And I don't want my father to give up his comps. He might want to use them himself some other time."

  Max had led the way out of the gate area, through the security checkpoint, and onto the escalators that would take them down toward Baggage Claim. Out of habit, he placed one hand on the moving railing as they rode the stairs down. It was a good thing, too, because she'd surprised him enough that if he hadn't been holding on to something, he probably would have tumbled headfirst down the entire story between Security and the luggage carousels.

  Kit
ty thought her father was a gambler? That he could get her room comped because he spent so much at the casino that they were willing to do him favors? Didn't she realize who her father was?

  And that part about using his comps later. Did she not know how sick Martin had gotten? Had he not told her he was dying?

  Max gave a mental curse. So much for his gold-digger hypothesis. It was starting to look like Kitty Sugarman was less cunning than she was clueless. Damn Martin for thinking he could let her walk into this blind.

  And damn Max's own luck for being the one to find out and feeling obliged to straighten things out for her. This was the kind of job that called for diplomacy. Oh, he could manage that well enough when he had to, but he'd gotten used to relying less on charm and more on the fact that everyone who worked for him knew better than to piss him off. Maybe he should look at this as a valuable opportunity to polish his rusty skills.

  Right. And maybe while he was at it, he'd look into castration as an acceptable method of birth control.

  Mostly as a way to kill time, he glanced down at the bank of video monitors at the foot of the escalator. "Your bags will be coming in on Carousel Seven. That's toward the left."

  On the stair above him, Kitty shook her head. "I didn't check anything. This is it." She patted the small overnighter she carried on her shoulder.

  Max let his surprise show. "That's all you brought with you?"

  "I'm only staying the weekend," she explained with a shrug. "And I'm not much of a clotheshorse. I usually pack light. I'm actually lucky I even brought a second pair of shoes." She gestured to the casual black sandals that had replaced her ruined tennis shoes. "I usually don't bother."

  Holy Christ, Max thought. Her siblings and cousin were going to eat this girl alive. Had anyone in the history of the universe ever been less prepared for what she was about to walk into?

  "Well then, we can head straight to the car," he said, praying that by the time they reached it he'd have thought of a gentler way of breaking this to her than saying, By the way, your father is a multi-millionaire, you're staying in a high roller's suite at the hotel he owns, your half sister is a barracuda who will probably try to rip your throat out the first time you see her, and if you don't mind, I'd like to see you naked again within the next couple of days, preferably with your legs spread and your ankles on my shoulder.

  Oh, and don't forget to fasten your seat belt.

  * * *

  Chapter Five

  ANY TRIP THAT BEGAN WITH SOMEONE TRYING TO KILL her on the floor of a public restroom could only get better as it progressed, right?

  That's what Kitty told herself as she slid into the passenger seat of Max Stuart's elegant silver Mercedes. After a beginning like that, how could things possibly get worse? Just because the last stranger she'd met had been the homicidal maniac in the bathroom didn't mean there was anything wrong with putting herself in Max's—also a complete stranger—hands on less than half an hour's acquaintance.

  Lord. She just might be too stupid to live.

  Kitty put a hand to the back of her head, to the place where there ought to have been a cut or a lump or some kind of evidence of what she'd been through, and sighed. For two weeks now, she'd spent every waking moment alternating between anger and denial, and here it took a good whack upside the head to demonstrate the reason for it. Apparently she'd gone through all that because being mad or pretending everything was normal were the best ways she could think of to blot out the emotion that underlay all the others.

  Pure, abject terror.

  Kitty was scared witless.

  Oh, she'd put on a good act. She'd told herself—and anyone around her—that the knots in her stomach and the nightmares and the lack of appetite were because she was working up a good mad at the man who'd impregnated and abandoned her mother and never bothered to so much as wonder whether or not he might have left a little bit of his own flesh and blood behind. Kitty claimed that she'd accepted his invitation to visit him at his home in Nevada so that she'd finally have the opportunity to tell him just what she thought of him. But the truth was, she was terrified.

  Everything scared her these days, especially the thought of what she might be capable of if the animal living inside her kept coming out without her permission. So far, she'd been lucky. Her instinct to survive had overpowered everything else, so all she'd done had been to defend herself and help her mother when they'd been in jeopardy, but what if the next time she didn't change because of some kind of threat? What if the next time she changed because someone made her angry? What if the impulse driving her wasn't fear, but anger? Did she really want to find out what she could do to someone else when she had claws like razors and teeth like kitchen knives?

  No matter what Kitty told anyone, that was the real reason she'd come to Vegas. She needed to learn some control, just like her grandfather had told her. Getting an opportunity to tell off her biological father was just a bonus.

  But it was starting to look like her animal side wasn't the only thing she had to fear these days. Twenty minutes in Vegas and already someone had tried to kill her. Completely out of the blue. Kitty didn't like to toot her own horn, but she thought that most people liked her. She couldn't think of anyone who didn't, or any reason why someone she'd never laid eyes on before should hate her enough to want her dead. She just plain wasn't the kind of woman who made enemies. At least, she hadn't been before.

  Before, she hadn't been a lot of things.

  She jumped a little when the driver's door opened, then scolded herself when Max slid behind the steering wheel and gave her a friendly smile. She pretended to look for something in the outside pocket of her bag while she waited for her heartbeat to slow down.

  "It's not far to the hotel," Max said, his voice sounding even deeper and rougher in the close confines of the car. "The airport is fairly close to the Strip. We'll have you checked in before you know it."

  "Thanks." She forced a smile and zipped her bag shut. No sense in looking like as big a coward as she really was.

  Max paid a parking attendant and then steered the car expertly out of the airport and into traffic. Setting her bag on the floor at her feet, Kitty folded her hands in her lap and chewed on the inside of her lip. The man beside her settled back against the leather upholstery and kept his attention on the road, giving Kitty the chance to study him unobserved.

  She had to admit that what she saw didn't do much to soothe her nerves. In her experience, men who looked like Max Stuart tended to be as ugly on the inside as they were beautiful on the outside. With that dark, sun-streaked hair, those vivid, copper eyes, and that bodybuilder's physique, the man probably had women throwing themselves to the floor in front of him just for the chance to play his mattress. And that was exactly the kind of thing that tended to turn a man rotten. When the universe gave men everything they wanted, they tended to think themselves entitled to even more. Normally, just the sight of a guy like that was enough to set Kitty's teeth on edge.

  Tonight, though, the only thing tightening her jaw was the memory of the nut in the restroom. Even alone and technically at Max Stuart's mercy, Kitty surprised herself by realizing that she didn't feel threatened by him. Her instincts had always been good, and since the wreck, they'd proven to possess an almost eerie accuracy about people. Right now, her internal alarm system remained quiet, at least about him. Her attacker, on the other hand, had seriously upset her equilibrium.

  "You know, I wasn't thinking clearly earlier," she said, her voice sounding loud in the quiet interior of the car. "I should have contacted airport security before we left and filed some kind of report. Or maybe I should have just called the police. I'm not sure how it works here."

  "Normally, you would have told airport security, and they would make the decision on whether or not to involve the police," Max answered, his eyes fixed on the road.

  "Should I go back and do that before we get all the way to the hotel?"

  "I doubt it would be worth it. Whoever th
e mugger was, he's long gone by now."

  Kitty mulled that over. "Still, I could fill out the report anyway and give them a description. What if he tries it again and attacks some other woman? I'd feel horrible—"

  A thought occurred to her and Kitty broke off, remembering something from those frightening moments.

  You shouldn't have come here, bitch!

  What if that really had been what the mugger had said? What if it hadn't been a random robbery attempt and Kitty had actually been the target?

  What if someone really was trying to kill her?

  A wave of dizziness spun through her head, and she wrestled back the urge to panic. Why on earth would anyone want her dead? Sure, there were a few wacko conservatives out there who thought all Others should be put down like rabid dogs, but even if her newly discovered abilities made her a target, who in Vegas knew what she was, other than the man sitting next to her and her biological father? Since both of them where just as non-human as she was, they had no reason to target her for extermination. Maybe she was just being silly.

  Kitty cast Max a sidelong glance. If she were being honest, Max had actually come to her rescue earlier. He'd been the one to scare her attacker away, and he'd been nothing but concerned and polite in the time since. He'd shown no evidence that he thought the incident had been anything but an ordinary mugging, and she didn't need to have known him long to have the impression that very few things got by this man. The chances of him overlooking attempted murder seemed more than a little remote.

  Maybe Kitty's attacker had really said, "You shouldn't have come here." As in, "It was a mistake coming into this restroom, because now I'm going to steal your purse and kill you so I won't get caught." That made a lot more sense, didn't it?

  "What's wrong?" the man beside her rumbled, his low, deep voice serving to remind her how large he was, how much stronger than her. "Is something bothering you? Would you feel better if we went back and you made a report?"

  Forcing a smile, Kitty gave her head a quick shake. Somehow even the idea of telling him she thought she'd been a specific target of the attack made her feel like an idiot. Time to change the subject.