His Purrfect Mate (5 page)

The full moon glowed overhead, a giant, luminescent pearl fixed against the black velvet drapery of the sky.   A fat stone cupid in a fountain held a pitcher which poured an endless stream of water into the fountain’s bowl.  When the weather grew colder, the fountain would be shut off so the water didn’t freeze. 

Chloe shivered in the chill night air, and
she quickly pulled her sweater on. Now the glamorous ensemble was complete.

“Would you like my jacket?” Kenneth asked.

Oddly, her heart leaped in her chest at that. She realized that she desperately wanted to say yes, to have his jacket, warm from his body heat and smelling of him, wrapped around her like big strong arms.

But of course she couldn’t say yes to this man, the grandson of the man who’d betrayed her grandmother in every way that a man could betray a woman
…this man who was photographed with a different woman on his arm every week, as she’d realized when he started leaving her messages weeks ago, and she’d looked him up online. 

She’d felt an odd sensation the very first time she saw his picture – a sensation which had made her even more determined to avoid him at all costs.

Great job I’m doing with that, she thought to herself.

“Oh, no, the sweater’s plenty. My mother knitted it for me,” she added, not knowing what else to say.

“She’s very talented,” Kenneth said politely.

“
Your date was stunning. I see a real love match there,”she said to Kenneth, wanting to steer the conversation away from family, and also, wanting to needle him. He was being all gentlemanly and charming, and she needed for him to stop it immediately.

He rose to take the bait.  “
I couldn’t agree more.  Of course, I don’t think she and I shared as much of a connection as you and your almost-fiance.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. That man you were pointing at? I’ve never seen him before in my – ouch!” she tripped on the gravel path as her heel sunk in and caught on something. Kenneth reached out to catch her, but she quickly stepped back. “I’m fine!”

“And graceful as a cat, I see.”

Actually, for a member of the cat species, Chloe was exceptionally clumsy. It was her secret shame that once, when she’d been up a tree in panther form, and she’d leaped to the ground…she hadn’t landed on her feet. 

Well, it would have been her secret shame, if it hadn’t happened in front of all the other third graders on the playground. “Clutzy Chloe” had stuck as a nickname until high school.  Then it became “Four-Eyes.”  Most panthers didn’t wear glasses in their human form, either.

“Shut up,” she grumbled, as they kept wa
lking. Their breath left puffs of condensation in the chill air.   “If you were a gentleman, you would have pretended not to notice.”

“Did I say that I was a gentleman?”

“Well, you dress like a gentleman, you talk like a gentleman…”

“But if I were a gentleman, would I lead a beautiful woman that I barely know out into the dark…” she suddenly realized how far they’d wandered from the old mansion. They were alone in the dark, cold night. “…and do this?”

And before she could say a word, he’d spun her into his arms, making her stumble again in the gravel, and she fell into his arms, and then…he kissed her.

It was like no kiss she’d ever experienced before.

His strong arm circled around her, and he tipped her chin up with two fingers and pressed his warm lips against hers.  She was so startled that she didn’t protest…her lips parted, and she accepted as his mouth claimed hers.  He tasted like the whisky he’d been sipping earlier, smoky and intoxicating. 

His tongue swept through her mouth, caressing, probing. 

She felt herself melting into him, with a sense of rightness and belonging that she’d never experienced before. She never wanted the kiss to end. He was ravishing her mouth, conquering it like a pirate, leading her tongue in a slow, sensual dance, and it felt delicious…He was so warm, so strong…how could she ever tear herself away from this embrace?

What was this sorcery that made her feel exactly as if this man was her fated mate?
Of course he couldn’t be. The coincidence would be too bizarre.

She pressed her hand up agai
nst his chest, against the pleated white tuxedo shirt. Beneath it, his chest was broad and rock solid, a wall of muscle.  Her entire body tingled with pleasure, and she felt a throbbing between her legs, a deep hunger and a need to be filled by him, only by him.

His
muscular arm tightened against her waist and pressed her up against him as if he wanted to meld with her, and she let out a little whimper of pleasure deep in her throat, and heard a responding growl rumbling up from his chest.

And suddenly it occurred to her – why her grandmother had gone crazy. To have this, and then to have it snatched away,
and worse, to find out it was all a cruel lie –

And surely this must be a lie. A man like Kenneth wouldn’t be her fated mate. His fated mate would be like him, sleek and sophisticated and self-confident
, a ruler of the jungle, not some nearsighted, stammering cat that tripped over its own paws. If he was kissing her, it was because he wanted something from her.

Summoning up the last reserves of her rapidly fading willpower, she wrenched herself from his arms and stepped backward.
  It hurt; it was like ripping off a band-aid, and where she’d felt warm and safe in his arms, now she felt cold and empty.

All the more reason to get this over with and get away from this dangerous man.

“Why do you keep calling me and asking me to work for you? Why me, of all the experts in the world?” she demanded. “I know I’m very good at what I do, but there are many others who are equally as good and who’d jump at the chance to work for you.”

He looked down at her, his eyes glazed with passion – or
pretend passion.  That must be it. A man like him would be able to fake any emotion to get what he wanted.

“Are you sure you want to talk about this now?” his voice was husky with desire. Could he really be faking it? Could he stir so much raw passion in her without feeling it himself?

His grandfather had done it, she forced herself to remember.

“Yes.” Her voice trembled in the cold night air, and she hugged herself.

“All right.”
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You are a world-renowned expert on the culture of Sumer. There have been several break-ins at homes that I own in Europe, where I have artwork displayed. There have been brutal assaults on the employees who live in my houses; one of them is in the hospital still, unresponsive, not expect to recover.”

“I’m sorry
to hear that.” She stared up at him, baffled. “But what does this have to do with me?”

“All of the artwork that they took was ancient Sumerian statuary, from a time period circa 3000 B.C. 
In every case.”

Her heart pounded in her chest.

That sounded very much like the artwork that Kenneth’s grandfather had stolen from her grandmother right before he dumped her, so many years ago. Could her grandmother somehow be stealing it back now, perhaps having hired people to do it for her?

“This particular collection of artwork has never been catalogued before.  I’m not sure why; just about everything else that my grandfather collec
ted has very thorough documentation.  I want you to come with me to my house in Italy and catalogue the collection for me. I want to know where it’s from,  what time period, what its significance is.  This might help me to figure out why thieves are suddenly targeting it.”

“You want me to
do what? School is still in session!”

“You have one more week left before Thanksgiving break, and the
dean told me that he’d find another professor to stand in for you as long as you need to.”

“I bet he did,” she muttered.  Of course the dean had; he’d do anything to get the endowment that Kenneth had promised him.

“But you still haven’t explained, why me, in particular? I would think I’d be the last person that you’d want to hire.  My family has a very unfortunate history with yours, and we have no reason to trust you.”

“Trust me, how? I will pay for your services up front.” Kenneth looked genuinely puzzled, as if he didn’t know. “As for our family history, that’s part of the reason I specifically wanted to hire you. I know that your grandmother worked as an assistant to my grandfather when he brought back a collection of Sumerian artwork in the 1960s.”

“You know…what?” the lie was so huge that it was like a slap in the face. His assistant? As if! Kenneth’s grandfather had been Sophronia’s assistant, when she was a famous antiquities dealer and professor at the University of Upstate New York in the 1960s.  He’d seduced his way into her good graces…and the rest was family history. Bitter, ugly family history.

Chloe fell back a step.

He kept going, unaware of the turmoil he’d stirred within her.

“Hamish Stewart, who’s worked for my family for fifty years managing our art collection, says that your family has approached
my family in the past, trying to buy that collection of Sumerian artwork.  Since your grandmother was working for – what’s wrong?” he finally noticed her horrified expression.

“Working for him? Are you trying to tell me that you don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?” He looked genuinely puzzled.

“Your grandfather and my grandmother were fated mates, and they were engaged.
He was working for her, not the other way around, and she owned the art collection.  Then he broke off the engagement, stole the collection of Sumerian artwork, and banned her from his house.  He threw her over for your grandmother, who was wealthy and had connections.   He hired security to keep her away from him; when she showed up at his house to ask why he was doing this to her, they tossed her out on the street. Physically. Violently.”

“Chloe, that…that doesn’t make sense. That simply doesn’t happen with fated mates.”
Kenneth looked genuinely shocked.

“I’m sure she thought that too.”  Chloe was backing away from him now, heading back towards the
mansion, glaring at him furiously. “Maybe he just convinced her they were fated mates.”

“That feeling simply can’t be faked.
You know that, don’t you?”  He stared at her intently, as if silently asking for an acknowledgement of how he made her feel.

“And yet, he broke it off with her and broke her heart. Would a real fated mate do that?”

“But…she got married to someone else. Obviously.  She had your mother.   Chloe, there’s got to be some mistake here, none of this makes sense.”

“She remarried several times, she was widowed several times, and it doesn’t matter. She never recovered from the loss of your grandfather. She
went crazy. Went crazy, is still crazy, thanks to your grandfather. Don’t talk to me again, Kenneth. I’m not going to work for you, or talk to you, or kiss you again, not now, not ever.”

To her utter mortification, she realized she was choking on a sob.

She turned and ran back towards the house, ignoring him as he shouted her name. Kenneth had made an utter fool of her.   He was probably doubling over with laughter right now; she couldn’t bear to turn and look. 

She’d actually let the man kiss her.  No, worse, she’d kissed him back, quite enthusiastically.

And even worse, apparently her grandmother had meant so little to her fated mate that he hadn’t even bothered to mention the relationship to his own family.  Kenneth had apparently not even known that Barrett and Sophronia had been engaged.  Sophronia had been cast aside like a used up dishrag as soon as Barrett got what he wanted from her.

Tears burned her face as she raced around the side of the house, heading for her car.

She stumbled in the gravel, dodged around bushes, slapped at the tree branches that swatted her face – and ran right into the handsome man who’d been eyeing her earlier at the party.

“Are you all right?” he asked her, as she staggered back. He held his hand out to her and grabbed her arm to steady her.

Although he was every bit as handsome as Kenneth, she didn’t feel a thing when his fingers closed on her arm.  There was no delicious zing of pleasure shooting through her body, a sensation she’d never experienced before Kenneth touched her.

“I’m fine.”  She was aware of how utterly awful she must look right now. Her nose turned red when she cried.  Her mascara and eyeliner would be running done her cheeks in muddy rivers. She was wearing a sweater over an evening gown.

Resolutely, she walked around the side of her house towards her car, and the man followed alongside her.

“I saw you talking to that man, earlier. Kenneth Chamberlin.
  I just wanted to let you know…he’s not to be trusted.  Everything that he asks of you or tells you…he’s got his own agenda.”

“What? I mean, I know, but…”

Chloe realized to her shock that hearing him talk about Kenneth that way actually made her really angry. She suddenly wanted to leap to Kenneth’s defense, to verbally lash out at the man and tell him he was wrong and he didn’t know Kenneth at all.