Lion Lost & Found, Paranormal Romance (Ghost Cat Shifters Book 2) (18 page)

Heath had never released Vivi’s hand, his grip surprisingly strong given his physical state. His eyes scanned Vivi’s face, warmth, affinity, love and a hint of fire held there.

Epilogue

Heath leaned over the kitchen table and stared at Julianna’s math worksheet. “Word problems,” he said, prompting a giggle from Julianna who sat beside him.

He glanced to her. Her dark hair was braided into two long braids, its usual style. She was such an active girl that if her hair was left loose, it became a tangled mess quickly. One foot swung back and forth as she doodled in the margin of her worksheet. “How about I help you with the measurement stuff? That’s where I’m the expert. Word problems, not so much.”

Julianna turned to him and wrinkled her nose, her brown eyes glinted with mirth. “I already did these. It’s your job to check them,” she said, a giggle escaping at the end.

“Oh, right. Okay, hand it over.”

“You didn’t even read far enough to see I already did them,” Julianna said with mock sternness as she slid the paper in front of him.

“I’m reading them now,” he countered, eliciting another giggle from her.

A few minutes later, he handed the worksheet back to her and proclaimed her homework done for the night. Julianna tucked the worksheet in her folder and slipped from her chair to return the folder to her backpack. Jax tackled her feet, a blur of black and white as he scampered away and dashed into the living room. Julianna chased after him, leaving Heath alone at the kitchen table.

He glanced over at Vivi who slid a tray of Julianna’s beloved crunchy mac and cheese into the oven and closed it. She tossed the oven mitt on the counter and snagged a bottle of wine sitting on the counter, along with two glasses from the cabinet. She sat across from him and filled the glasses, holding hers up for a toast. “To homework!”

The clink of their glasses was muted amidst the squeals of Julianna in the living room as she played with Jax. Heath looked over at Vivi, his heart clenching. His mind spun back to the night, over a year ago, when she insisted he come home with her after his altercation with Nelson and subsequent visit to the emergency room. In the time since, their lives had become stitched tightly together. He couldn’t conceive of life without her and Julianna.

She set her wineglass on the table and he leaned across, nudging her chin up with his knuckles and catching her lips in a quick kiss. It didn’t matter the time or place, all he had to do was be near her and his body hummed. He leaned back in his chair and took a gulp of his wine. With Julianna nearby, he needed to keep his body on leash. Vivi’s cheeks were flushed. She set her wineglass down and rested her elbows on the table.

“So, did you happen to hear from Roger today?”

He nodded. “Oh yeah. He called me as soon as the trial was over. The prosecution got what they wanted for Nelson—minimum of twenty years behind bars. It’s a damn relief to have that over.”

In the intervening time since Nelson had been caught, they’d both been tied up in some way or another with the legal proceedings. The shifter smuggling network had finally been extinguished in Painter. Heath was cynical enough to know something like it would probably resurface somehow someday, but what Nelson created had staggered and fallen once the police figured out how he was using the many old logging properties for storage and transfers.

Vivi took a sip of wine and trailed her fingers along the stem of her glass. “I’ll say. Took too damn long, but he’ll be locked up for a good long time.” She lifted her eyes and scanned his face. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” Her words came out raspy.

He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Of course I am. Trust me, that last fight wasn’t so bad. It was the year before that nearly killed me,” he said, referencing his car accident and tumble into painkiller addiction. He didn’t talk about it much, but it had been a frightening time for him. He’d felt lost—as a man and as a lion. He recalled thinking he could never be the man and shifter Vivi deserved. He hadn’t thought of it at the time, but being part of finally bringing Nelson in had helped him find closure around the path he’d stumbled upon after his car accident. He felt a sense of satisfaction in knowing he’d helped end the scourge of what Nelson created.

Vivi’s voice brought Heath back to the moment. “Maybe you thought it was not much, but it scared me to death.” Her eyes glistened, and she bit her lip. “I suppose the good thing is it made me get over myself.”

At that moment, Julianna came skidding into the kitchen, dragging a tattered piece of yarn behind her on the floor. Jax was pouncing and hissing at the innocent yarn. Heath turned to look at Julianna, and his chest almost ached. Somehow he’d not only made it back to the man and shifter he once was, but he’d flat lucked out and stumbled into the love of his life with the blessing of her strong-willed joyous daughter along with her.

A while later, crunchy mac and cheese long gone, Heath lay in bed and listened to the sound of Vivi’s breathing. Her head was resting on his shoulder and her leg thrown across both of his. Her lush curves were soft and warm against his side. He stroked a palm down her back and fell asleep to the rhythm of her breath.

***

“Where are we going and why do I have to wear this?” Vivi asked, as she felt Heath tighten the cotton bandana around her head.

He’d shown up at the door, waving the bandana and insisting she come with him on a drive, although he adamantly refused to tell her where they were going. He finished knotting the bandana. “You’ll just have to wait and see.” At that, he closed the truck door.

Seconds later, she heard him get in on the driver’s side. She felt him turn onto Main Street, but after that she lost track of where he could be going. He drove roughly ten minutes before she felt another turn and the sound of gravel crunching under the tires. Moments later, he was opening the passenger door and helping her out. She tried to shake him off and reached to untie the bandana, but he caught her hands in his and firmly pulled her along with him.

“Just let me surprise you, okay?” he asked, a low laugh escaping after his question.

“Fine,” she huffed as she walked alongside him.

They came to a stop. Without sight, her other senses were heightened. She heard the distant call of a crow and the sound of water running over rocks nearby. The air was woodsy. She surmised they were on the edge of the forest. After a moment of quiet, Heath moved to stand behind her and untied the bandana. When he slipped it away and she opened her eyes, a gorgeous cedar home stood before her, tucked into the edge of a slope. The slope leveled out behind the house into a small field through which a wide stream ran. Her eyes followed the stream up where it disappeared into the trees marching up the mountains in back of the home. The home was clearly new and the ground around it was still freshly turned. Puzzled, she turned to Heath who’d come to stand at her side.

“Is this one of your latest projects? It’s beautiful. I’m sure the owners are happy with what you’ve done.”

His green gaze caught hers, a slow smile spreading across his face. “You think it’s beautiful?”

“Of course! Every house you design is beautiful. Mind telling me why you brought me out here to see it? I don’t mind, but…”

“It’s for us.”

Her heart flew skyward inside and tears instantly pressed at the back of her eyes. She gasped and stared at him for a long moment before swinging to look at the house again. “For us? Really?”

He stepped in front of her and reached for her hands, which were chilly in the late autumn air. The warmth of his touch radiated through her. “Really. I started planning it last winter and worked on it all summer. It’s ready to go. I, uh…” he paused and cleared his throat “wanted to make sure you knew without a doubt that I wanted our lives to be together.” She felt him trace the edge of the engagement ring he’d given her a few weeks prior. She’d thought he couldn’t do more to knot her heart with his, but he’d gone and done it. She thought back to the number of times she’d commented on her tiny house over the last few months and marveled at how well he’d kept this secret.

She tipped her face up and freed her hands, bringing them up to cup his cheeks, the stubble rough under her touch. “You have no idea how much I love this. I can’t believe you went to all this work. Just for us…”

Heath dipped his head and caught her lips in a fierce kiss. He pulled back only a fraction. She could feel his lips move against hers when he spoke. “The work was nothing. I’m just glad you love it. Come on, let’s go inside.”

He turned and tugged for her to follow. The interior was as beautiful as the outside. The main living area was bright and filled with light. The living room stretched into a kitchen. The floors were polished hardwood with cedar ceilings above. The kitchen was modern and sleek, but had a warm feeling with soft green polished granite counters and birch cabinets. The living room faced the mountains with a massive stone fireplace occupying one wall. The home managed to feel spacious and cozy at once. Given that it was currently empty of furniture, Vivi marveled at how it felt inside. There were four bedrooms, including a large master suite with its own bathroom. Vivi considered how mornings went these days—a constant juggle of who needed the bathroom when. Heath had also created a playroom for Julianna.

After they toured the home, Vivi paused beside the living room windows and looked out over the field and mountains. The setting sun glinted off the stream winding through the open field. Heath slid his arms around her waist from behind and rested his chin against her shoulder.

“So?”

“I love you,” she said softly. She’d been about to say she loved the house, but it was Heath who made her love it.

She felt his lips curve against her neck. “Ditto,” he replied before he trailed kisses up her neck.

~The End~

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Please enjoy the following excerpt from
A Catamount Christmas, Catamount Lion Shifters
!

(Excerpt from A CATAMOUNT CHRISTMAS, CATAMOUNT LION SHIFTERS by J.H. Croix; all rights reserved)

Chapter 1

Roxanne Morgan spun around and passed a sandwich over the counter, immediately turning to take the order of the next person in line.

“What’ll it be?” she asked, her eyes quickly scanning the area beyond the counter. When there was no reply, she glanced up. Her heart stuttered and then lunged forward into a wild pounding.

“Hey Roxy,” the man standing across the counter said.

Roxanne didn’t find herself speechless very often, but at the moment, she couldn’t seem to form a word. Max Stone stood in front of her—the one and only boy she’d ever loved and the boy who’d broken her heart when he left Catamount and left their love behind. Her eyes soaked him in—his mahogany brown hair, his amber eyes, and his lanky, muscled body. He wore a black down jacket, unzipped to reveal a charcoal gray shirt, and faded jeans. His eyes coasted over her. She felt bare and exposed and frantically tried to gather herself together inside.

Her cheeks felt hot, but she ignored it. She could do this. All she had to do was be polite. Her body was only reacting because she hadn’t seen Max in so long. It was an echo of their past and nothing more. “Hey Max. Haven’t seen you around in years,” she finally replied, her words belying the turmoil she felt inside.

The truth was it had been precisely fifteen years since Max had been in Catamount. He had moved away with his mother after his father died in an accident at the mill in a nearby town. Roxanne and Max had started dating the year before, and she’d loved him in the way only youth allowed—head over heels infatuation mingled with a yearning to be together forever. The hopes of youth had kept her tendency toward cynicism at bay, and she’d flung herself into their relationship. On an afternoon when Max was supposed to come over, he’d called instead. In a conversation that lasted maybe five minutes, he told her that his father died, they were moving, and he broke up with her. She’d been too stunned to fully absorb what he said. A few days later when she managed to cobble together a coherent thought, she’d raced over to his house to try to say…something…and found the home he’d shared with his parents locked up. No one answered the door after she knocked for what felt like hours.

She’d swung between the emotional poles of grief, her own and for him about his father, and anger about the abrupt end of their relationship. She’d stuffed her grief away and done her damnedest to move on. The first few years after he left, she would occasionally wonder if she might hear from him, or if he would return to Catamount. She finally gave up hoping and wishing, but she never quite got over Max.

Now, he stood here before her. She twirled a pen between her fingers and wondered what to do. A small part of her wanted to storm past him and not look back, just the way he’d left her all those years ago. She couldn’t do that though because she owned Roxanne’s Country Store. An arc of annoyance flashed through her. Max had shown up in the heart of her world.

“It’s really good to see you, Roxy” Max said, cutting through her short walk down memory lane.

Max happened to be the only person who’d ever called her Roxy with any regularity. It chafed to hear him call her that now.

She willed herself to stay calm. Still struggling to form words sensibly, she nodded. She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it was good to see him. A tornado of feelings swirled through her—confusion, hope, joy, anger, sadness and more. She was relieved when another customer stepped to the counter.

Hank Anderson, Catamount’s police chief, leaned against the counter. “Hey Roxanne, can I get the usual today?”

Roxanne glanced to Hank. “Sure. Give me a sec.” She forced a smile and turned away to pour a cup of coffee for Hank. At the moment, she would have given just about anything to have Becky here to help this morning. Becky would normally be here, but she’d called out sick with a nasty cold. Roxanne was reconsidering how relieved she’d been to not be exposed to whatever the hell Becky had. She’d sounded like she was on the verge of death when she called, so Roxanne had happily supported her staying home until she was better. But now, with Max here, Roxanne didn’t have any back up, so she couldn’t busy herself in the back. She had no choice but to stay here and somehow fumble through the next few minutes. She prayed Max wouldn’t stay long. As she fitted the lid over Hank’s coffee, she heard him start talking to Max and anxiety tightened in her chest.