A Yowling Yuletide (4 page)

Rachel had been right. Tanya was totally
wrong for him.

Miranda, on the other hand...

His lips curled into a slow smile as he
recalled all the mornings he'd watched her bustle into the office,
shaking off snow like a fastidious feline.

She wasn’t fond of being cold and wet, but
she was feisty enough to accept whatever the weather threw at her.
Just like she'd accepted all the crap Matt had been throwing at her
over the past week.

He felt another wash of guilt tighten his
gut and wished that he hadn't been such an asshole to her.

Miranda was an amazing woman, but he just
didn't think he could trust himself in another relationship.

He'd pretty much destroyed the last one by
pushing too hard and too fast without considering what Tanya felt
or was being motivated by.

What if he did the same thing to
Miranda?

He started heading for the master suite and
a hot shower, when a sound made him hesitate.

Was that just the wind or somebody
screaming?

Tilting his head from one side to the other,
he listened, trying to discern the source of the alarming sound.
After a few seconds he realized it was coming from the garage door
where he’d just entered.

Padding barefoot back to the solid barrier,
he wasn’t really sure what to expect. But it wasn’t the diminutive
red tabby cat that raced past him through the open door and
vanished somewhere beyond the open kitchen space.

“
Damn it,” he growled,
realizing it could be any number of half-wild cats that lived and
hunted among the old farm outbuildings. But none of them were
housebroken, so why would the little creature choose to take refuge
from the storm here, rather than in the warm barn or the hayloft
with the rest of its relatives?

Perhaps the snowstorm had caught it off
guard in the pasture? The snow was thick and deep out there. It
must have found the trail that he’d broken through and followed him
all the way home.

Well, Matt was sure of at least one thing,
he had to get it out of the house before it left him with a mess to
clean up.

Due to the storm, he thought the best option
would be to put a few towels into a box in the garage for it to
sleep tonight, then in the morning he could carry it back down to
the barn where it belonged. But after an hour of searching every
possible hiding place, he began to wonder if he'd imagined the
cat.

He couldn't find a single hint or hair of
the creature.

It was almost eight and he hadn’t showered
or eaten dinner. As much as he hated the idea, he’d just have to
wait for his furry intruder to reappear from whatever mystery spot
it had found to hide in.

He relocked the garage door and went ahead
with his plans for the evening.

Dwelling on the possibility of waking up to
a cat mess on his carpet, he showered and ate quickly, then stayed
up half of the night reading in bed, hoping the feline would
finally make an appearance. But he was beginning to suspect it
wasn’t going to happen.

Wherever the cat was hiding, it must intend
to wait out the storm there.

With a sigh, he gathered up the files he’d
been studying and stacked them in a semi-orderly fashion on the bed
table. The old grandfather clock downstairs was just striking
midnight as he crawled under the covers and reached out to turn off
the lamp.

Yet before his hand could reach the cord, a
movement captured his attention, drawing his gaze quickly towards
the bedroom door.

He’d left it partially open, giving him a
shadowy view of the dark hallway beyond. But the hallway was no
longer empty. A small, graceful figure was slowly creeping towards
him through the shroud of night.

As if sensing his gaze, the creature paused
and looked up, its golden eyes reflecting the light and seeming to
glow in the dark.

It was the little red tabby cat.

He hesitated, not wanting to spook it back
into its hiding place. Maybe if he waited until it came into the
bedroom, he could close the door and trap it in a smaller area.
That might make it easier to catch the critter.

So he held quiet and still in his bed,
praying the feline wouldn’t change direction and pad off into his
office or the guest bedroom – which were currently doubling as
secondary storage areas.

Both rooms were filled with boxes and stacks
of paperwork. If the cat got into either of them, it could cause a
lot of havoc before he caught it. He really didn’t relish the idea
of sorting all those pages back into their proper stacks and
files.

To his great relief, the cat continued down
the hallway and paused just inside his bedroom door.

A few of the farm cats were tame enough to
enjoy being held and petted, but after the way this one had
scrambled to escape him earlier, he didn’t think this was one of
them. Which left him with a dilemma. If the cat didn’t explore
deeper into the room, away from the doorway, he’d never trap it
inside.

He was scowling down at the cat in growing
frustration, when everything that he’d ever believed in was
abruptly turned upside down and inside out. All sense of reality
warped right before his eyes.

One moment the cat was staring up at him
with softly glowing eyes. The next moment it gave a long, luxurious
stretch, as if it had just awakened from a lengthy summer nap. But
it just kept stretching, longer and larger.

Its delicate little muscles flexed and
glided into new positions as it abruptly reared up onto very human
legs.

Red fur appeared to fade away, revealing
creamy soft skin, and he immediately recognized the spritely figure
and angelic features of the creature now standing before him.

Her curly red hair hung just over her
breasts, giving her a small measure of modesty that was helped by
placing trembling hands down over her pubic area. But a pink blush
still stained Miranda’s cheeks as she offered a shy grin.

“
Hello, Scrooge. I’ll be
playing the part of your Christmas ghost this evening. Are you
ready for a glimpse of your future?”

O Holy Night!

Matt had to be dreaming, that was the only
explanation for the stunning, naked woman now standing in his
doorway. But if this was only a fantasy his mind had conjured up,
why had he imagined her as a cat?

He shook his head. Who cared? Miranda looked
incredibly beautiful and nervous as she chewed on her lip and
waited for him to do something other than sit and stare at her like
a damned fool.

His mouth opened a closed a few times as he
fumbled for a voice.

“
I really need to read
that Charles Dickens version,” he at last managed, in something
between a hoarse moan and a growl. “If this is a preview, those
movie adaptations really didn’t do it justice.”

Her laughter sounded relieved and happy,
awakening a fierce need in him to see that she remained that
way.

Never in his life had he seen a woman appear
so vulnerable and so determined at the same time, he could hardly
pull his eyes away from her long enough to crawl out of bed and
fetch a long soft bathrobe from the closet.

“
As much as I’d love to
just sit here and stare at you,” he grinned, holding the robe open
towards her. “It’s pretty cold tonight. You look like you might
appreciate this.”

She stepped forward into his robe, and into
his arms, and he quickly closed both around her. This might be a
dream, but it felt incredible to be holding her again, making him
wonder why the hell he’d let her go the first time.

“
Thank you,” she murmured,
looking up at him with hopeful eyes. “You’re really taking this a
lot better than I expected. I was prepared for a lot more shouting
and throwing of nearby objects. People can be a little hesitant to
accept the existence of shifters.”

“
Shifters?” He was only
half listening to her as he tried to memorize every detail of her
beautiful face. It was as if he were really looking at her for the
first time. And maybe he was. He’d done everything but throw a wall
up between them these last few days.

“
Rachel calls us
werecats,” Miranda shrugged. “But both terms pretty much mean the
same thing, right?”

Rachel? This fantasy was taking an
unpleasant turn. He usually preferred that his dream women didn’t
mention family members, business deals, or other mundane
subjects.

"Oh," she looked uncomfortable, like a child
caught with her hand in the cookie jar. "She didn't tell you... I
mean, of course she didn't. I guess that's not exactly something
you just blurt out at Thanksgiving dinner, right?"

Matt frowned. He hadn't gone to Thanksgiving
dinner. His subconscious knew that, so why...?

"This isn't a dream, is it?"

She didn't need to answer, because it really
wasn't a question. But Miranda still slowly shook her head and eyed
him as if she expected the top of his head to suddenly explode.

Matt took a good hard look at the situation
bearing that possibility in mind.

The woman he'd spent the last week both
fantasizing about and tormenting, was actually wrapped in his arms
wearing nothing but his bathrobe.

However, she'd gained that position by
disguising herself as a cat and hiding until he was preparing to go
to sleep.

A cat shifter... A werecat.... He tried
spinning it a few different ways, but his cynical lawyer's brain
found it extremely difficult to accept.

"I'm really not sure what to say," he
admitted, but he didn't let go of her either.

"I wanted to tell you that day in the
library," she murmured softly, hesitantly, still trying to gage his
response. "When I was explaining about my grandmother's records of
all the witches in her coven."

He shook his head.

"I don't understand. Is this some kind of
curse?"

Miranda scrunched her nose a bit.

"Kind of, but not in the way you think," she
explained. "What they did was cast a spell to bring handsome
strangers to town, who would instantly fall in love with them. But
they unwittingly used a feline shifter as their model."

"They turned him into a cat?" Matt struggled
to understand.

She shook her head.

"He was born a shifter, just like I was. But
the spell guides creatures like him and I to seek out and fall in
love with members of the coven...and apparently their
grandsons."

What she was saying sounded like an
extremely twisted version of predestination and love at first
sight, both notions best left to fairytales and lonely hearts. But
he'd just watched a cat turn into a woman, which was a whole lot
harder to believe.

"So you're saying that we were destined to
fall in love, the moment you walked through the office door and
into my life?"

Her lips curled up into a wicked smile that
sent a flood of heat racing through his system.

"When I suggested Christmas ghosts visiting
you tonight, I bet you never expected to see anything like
this."

Matt just shook his head and tried to force
his lungs to breathe again. When she smiled that way, he found it
hard to think of anything but the need to touch and to taste. He'd
managed to keep his hands off from her at work - at least for the
most part - but she was in his bedroom now, and all bets were
off.

She must have sensed the change in him, as
her eyes darkened slightly and she licked her lips. He groaned
harshly, unable to resist that wet invitation. His arms tightened
around her waist as he pulled her closer, lowering his head to
capture her mouth beneath his.

The breath escaped her in a tremulous gasp.
The sweet scent of her filled his lungs.

At first slow and seductive, he tasted her
mouth, nibbling and teasing until she opened just enough for him to
slip his tongue inside. Then he devoured her, plunging and
thrusting, a heated glimpse of the passion he’d been holding back
for so long.

All of the emotions he’d been hiding, all of
the desires that he’d suppressed, now clawed their way to the
surface with a ferocity and a hunger that threatened to destroy
them both.

Her nails raked his shoulders as she sought
for more, reaching up to clasp her arms around his neck. A shivery
moan escaping her lips as he eagerly accepted all that she was
offering and then demanded more.

Matt kissed her until the world was spinning
and his hands trembled against her skin, then he withdrew and
rested his forehead against hers, allowing them both to catch their
breath.

“
I don’t deserve you,
Miranda,” he sighed, already craving another taste. “After all that
I said and all that I’ve done to chase you away. I don’t know why
you would still want to be with me.”