Diaries of an Urban Panther (18 page)

Putting the trash on the table, I held the coat at arm’s length and carefully patted down the sides. Who knows what I might find in the pockets? Doggie treats? What was left of a tennis shoe? Because a wallet with an address would be just too easy.

“Whatcha got there?”

“Something’s in the pocket.”

Chaz looked over the top of the couch with a deep furrow between his brows.

Grimacing with the thoughts of the sludge that might be in the pocket of this coat, I slid my hand down into the left side pocket and my fingers brushed a moist paperback.

Dropping the smelly coat to the ground, I looked at the book. It was an almanac. A wet soggy almanac. Nothing special. I thumbed through the pages and found one dog-eared page towards the end. I tried to ignore the obvious pun.

As I opened to the page, a picture of me slid out. It was a candid Polaroid in the front of my coffee shop. I shivered. That opened up a whole other can of weird.

Chaz’s warmth chased away the slimy fear crawling up my arm as he stood just over my shoulder. “What . . .” His question dropped off as he pulled the Polaroid from my fingers. “Well, I guess it’s official.”

“What? They can’t afford digital.” I looked up at him. I needed some of stalwart strength by proxy.

“You’re on his radar.”

“I’m guessing that beating up a pack of wild dogs probably wasn’t exactly under the radar.”

“I’m guessing those mutts were Haverty’s. He’s testing you, Violet. He’s finding your weak spots.”

“I’m guessing that there is way too much guessing going on right now and not enough sleeping.”

Chaz’s eyebrow rose sharply.

“Whoa there boy. You’re on the couch.”

Chapter Seventeen

I
shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing my eyes, and went straight for the coffee already brewing. It was the good French roast with a stick of cinnamon in the filter. The smell of coffee and pancakes had pulled me from my restless sleep.

“Good morning,” Chaz greeted as he flipped pancakes on the grill.

Finger up between us to stop any further notion of human speech, I poured myself a cup of coffee, put in my two sugars, and a splash of milk from the jug in the fridge. Then I took a long warm sip and leaned against the counter. “Morning,” I managed.

Slightly amazed or slightly still asleep, I watched mesmerized as he flipped the most perfectly round pancakes. Did I even have pancake mix in my cabinet? There didn’t seem to be a box anywhere. In fact, the kitchen looked cleaner than it looked last night. Oh God, could he be a morning person?

Bandages gone, the only remnant of the wound itself was the funky way his hair stuck out in the morning light. Still in the undershirt, he’d traded the suit pants for an old pair of sweatpants I’d dug out of the back of my dresser.

“Did you know this is the first meal I have fixed in probably three months?” He gave me a wide smile as he flipped another perfect golden circle without even looking.

“Show off,” I whispered. “Those look good.”

“I thought you were a coffee-only girl.” He kept his voice low, pointing the spatula to my usual morning breakfast held tightly in my hands

“Turns out a girl can’t live on caffeine alone.”

Chaz chuckled and put a heaping pile of pancakes on the breakfast bistro set in the sunny corner. I slowly moseyed around the small kitchen space and got the syrup, again, that I didn’t know I had. Even managed to pour a cup of coffee for him.

“Thanks,” he said as he sat down in the puddle of morning light.

Chaz didn’t waste any time, pulling two pancakes off the top and drenching them with syrup.

Slowly, I sat across from him and watched him eat. He had an amazing amount of gold in his hair in the morning sun. Guess I hadn’t noticed since we had more of a sundown relationship. A relationship where I knocked people unconscious to protect him. And vice versa.

Eventually, he looked up at me with a guilty look. “What? Did you want me to wait?”

I shook my head. “No. Your head looks a lot better this morning.”

“Feels better,” he smiled before he completely filled his mouth with a forkful.

I still wasn’t a breakfast person but I managed to cut up a few of the perfectly fluffy pancakes and push them around my plate with puddles of syrup running trails around the Corningware.

“So what’s the plan for today?” he asked.

“Work. I’m two days late with my part of a script rewrite. And I’ve got three blurbs due yesterday.”

“What about last night?”

I shook my head. My brain hadn’t shut off after I’d tucked him in on the couch and I went up stairs. Even the second hot shower that rinsed away the residual smell of sewer water didn’t calm my brain. I spent most of the night thinking up what to do next. Hence, the desperate need for coffee this morning. “Ever think running is what they are expecting? They are going to be looking for two scared people running out of town. They’re not going to be looking for a screenwriter and the gardener?”

Chaz stopped chewing and just looked at me.

“Well, I don’t want you to get too far away if I’m wrong and you seem like you’d be handy with a weed whacker for protection and lawn care?”

“How do you know that?” he protested.

I just raised an eyebrow. “Are you?”

His shoulders slumped, his eyes dropped to his plate. “I might have something to do,” he grumbled before he swallowed his cheek-full of pancake.

“I’m sure you do,” I said as I playfully took a sip of coffee. “But what would those Powers of yours think if you let me get kidnapped.”

“Fine.” His response was simple and casual. “On one condition.”

And here was the catch.

“I want a story.”

“It’s a little early. Maybe after coffee.”

He shoved another forkful of pancakes in his mouth and then asked, “The picture on the mantle. I’ll mow your lawn for the story of the woman on the mantle.”

My mouth fell open and I felt the blood rush from my face. I shook my head.

Chaz finished chewing and took a swig of coffee. “I’m ready when you are.”

I shook my head again. I wasn’t ready for this; I wasn’t ready to tell anyone really. My skin goose-bumped with fear.

He leaned across the table and the golden in his eyes danced. “Just tell me who she is.”

Watching him, I knew that this was a test. Some sort of cosmic test. Like what happened last night was some sort of a test to see if little Violet Jordan was strong enough for something.

“She’s my mother.”

The churning sensation in my midsection lessened when Chaz leaned back in his seat and smiled. “You look just like her.”

He stood up and put his plate in the sink.

“Seriously?” I asked as I turned around in my chair as he put the rest of his cooking utensils in the sink.

“Could be twins. Mower in the garage?” he asked as he headed out the back sliding glass door to the garage.

I sat there for a moment, slightly confused. There wasn’t any crying. No painful backlash, not that I really knew what I expected. But he now knew more about me than anyone.

I shook my head. Stop postulating, Violet, and get to work.

M
y second floor office overlooked the lovely street I lived on. I could sit there and type all day and be happy as a kitten. And watching Chaz mow the front yard of the fourplex without a shirt on wasn’t hurting my mood any. So I’d just gotten myself a yard man. Unless there was some sort of underwear modeling emergency.

Staring out the window, lost in all the other types of emergencies the modeling field might have, I nearly missed Jessa’s BMW pull up in front of my house.

I jumped up and watched as she sauntered past Chaz as he took a long swig of water from the bottle, ignoring the woman trying to be noticed.

I ran downstairs and opened the door before she even had a chance to ring the bell. “Jessa, what are you doing here?”

“Now I see why you work from home so often,” she said taking one long glance back at the new gardener.

“Yeah, guilty,” I said with a quick smile as I stepped behind her, shuffling her into the house quickly and closing the door.

“What are you doing here?” I repeated,

“A client gave me these, thought you might like them,” she said as she handed me an unopened bag of Godiva chocolate-covered espresso beans.

“Thanks Jess. Why don’t you have a seat?”

I sat down opposite her on the couch in my living room. Had to be a record for me to have two houseguests in one twenty-four-hour period. “So how have you been?”

Jessa kept looking around the place, inspecting it. “Great. You’ve been pretty hard to find lately.”

“Working on this new project.” I lied. Didn’t like the taste it left in my mouth. I’d never lied to Jessa about anything. Never had a reason to until that stupid thing in the stupid alley.

“What’s it about?” she asked, seeming interested. But she was more interested in the reflection of the glass surface of the coffee table.

I just shrugged. “Have to wait and see.”

Jessa waved it off with her hand. “By the way, you look great. A glow in your cheek. Did you finally find a diet that worked?”

“I’ve been running.” It wasn’t really a lie. Wasn’t like I could tell her that when I run, it fulfills one of my primal urges and helps me keep control of the panther that sleeps within my chest. But I thought that may be too much information for such a causal visit.

Jessa stood up and looked around with a little nod, her long ponytail swinging around her shoulders.

I thought she was going to move for the door. I thought she was going to leave and go back to her side of the world, back into her niche on the non-weird side of my life. I really didn’t want to explain the insanely hot gardener mowing the lawn outside. Hadn’t had enough coffee yet today.

“What’s that?” Jessa asked innocently as she walked in front of me and to the other side of the couch.

Her manicured hand reached under the corner of the couch and pulled out a white button-up shirt.

My heart immediately stopped in my chest as I watched frozen as she unfolded Chaz’s shirt from the night before and held it up before her. The blood spatter was dark across the crisp shirt and I could see the shadow of it from the other side.

“What’s this, Violet?”

“Nothing. Just an accident.”

Jessa dropped the shirt to her waist, from the air between us, keeping it clenched in her little hands. “When did you start wearing Calvin Klein?”

It was the most confused I’d ever seen Jessa’s face. Her lips drew into a tight line and her perfectly shaped eyebrows almost touched with a firm wrinkle between them.

The little do-gooder in the back of my head leapt up and screamed I needed to tell her, I needed someone to talk to. People could actually explode by keeping stuff like this inside. Spontaneous combustion is real.

The buzz of the lawnmower stopped, creating a sudden chilly silence in the room between us. I couldn’t bring myself to say the words out loud.

“Did you get hurt?”

I stood. I needed to be on my feet for this, for what I felt brewing in the air around us. “It was nothing.”

“A nothing like the nothing in the bar?”

“No. We got mugged.”

“We?” her voice was high and tight as she clamped down harder on the white cotton.

“I had a date last night.” I thought I’d had a date last night. Jury was still out on that one.

“With who?” Jessa asked. “Was it Brian? Did he ask you out?”

My answer was meant to come out casual. It was meant to be just a small little answer that might prompt her to leave but it came out harsh. “No one you know.”

“Where was the heads up?” She dropped one of the corners of her shirt and her hand went to her hip. “Come on. It’s the first date I’ve heard of since you moved here,” Jessa said with a faint smile.

“Wasn’t that big of a deal.” Another lie. I was two for two now.

“We could have gone shopping.”

I frowned. “I don’t need you to pick out my clothes.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Jessa tried to backpedal. “I just meant that we could have done your hair, or something.”

And there she was, toting the
Let’s change Violet
banner again. This is wasn’t what I wanted to hear right now. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like there was anything that needed changing. And I thought I looked good last night, pre-panther, that is.

My face was beginning to ache with the frown now etched upon it. “I managed.”

Jessa crossed her arms, keeping the white shirt clutched in her fist. “Why didn’t you tell me, Violet?” There was a hard edge to her voice, a seriousness in her looks I had never seen in Jessa.

“You didn’t ask.” That bit of truth flew in from left field. It actually felt kind of good to say, like running endorphins but better. Felt much better than lying. So I continued. “Come to think of it, lately it’s been all about Jessa.”

“So tell me now.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m asking.”

“Doesn’t work like that Jessa. Can’t just pick and choose the scandalous parts of my life to suddenly be interested in.” I felt better, getting some things off my chest, and the frown had slowly melted away.

Her jaw was clenched tight and I could have sworn her skin glowed. “But nothing happens to you. You locked yourself up in your tower, barely interacting with the world. I’m surprised you have anything to write about at all for your . . . movies.”

“Missing an adjective there, Jess?” I snapped with a raised eyebrow. I didn’t know where she was trying to go with this little visit. Except to insult me, and frankly, only I got to do that.

Jessa struggled for words. The word was there; she just didn’t want to release it.

“Stupid? Maybe. Lame,” I offered.

“Well, yeah.”

My blood began to boil. “They are not stupid movies,” I growled.

“
White Snake Ridge
,
Shadow Stalker
, oh and my personal favorite
Goblin Rock
. Yeah, not exactly winning Oscars there, Vi.”

I felt the skin prickle between my shoulders, couldn’t help my head from sinking down as my weight shifted uneasily between both feet. “We all can’t be rich, princess. Some of us have to work. So don’t you judge what I do. Mommy didn’t buy me a penthouse downtown.”

“I work hard too,” she demanded, pointing her tiny finger into her no doubt designer blouse, perfectly tailored to fit her small frame.