Cougar Bait Read online

Stop crying! What are you even crying about? You’re fine!

  But she wasn’t fine. She kept thinking of Keller—imagining what it would be like if she had the same relationship with him that her sister had with Mathis. She’d never had that with any man. For a little while in college she’d thought she had found Mr. Right, but, as she liked to joke, he’d turned out to just be Mr. Right Now. Plus he’d wanted her to quit school to settle down with him. Samantha had refused—she had always known what she wanted and settling down to be someone’s little wifey wasn’t it.

  Still, watching Mathis comforting her sister made her weep for what might have been . . . what would never be now, she was sure. She could feel the bond with Keller fading from her mind more every day.

  That’s a good thing, she told herself firmly. You want the bond to fade—right? But if that was true, why did it make her feel so sad and alone?

  At last Sadie wiped her eyes and looked at Samantha.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered in a choked voice. “Maybe . . . maybe we should get going.”

  “We should if we don’t want to miss our plane.” Mathis kissed her again and looked at Samantha. “You sure you’re okay with us leaving? If you feel uncomfortable, we’ll stay.”

  Samantha understood that he was offering to stay and protect her, purely because of his love of Sadie, and felt touched.

  “Thank you, Mathis, but the two of you have uprooted your lives long enough for me.” She forced a smile for Fiona too. “And I’m sure all the, uh, Shifters in Cougarville are missing their pharmacist.”

  “Undoubtedly,” Fiona remarked calmly. “But I go where I’m needed.”

  “Well, let me load the bags in the car. And you come get the AC set where you want it,” Mathis said to Sadie. “You know I can never get it just right to suit you.”

  “All right.” Sadie gave Samantha one more kiss and whispered in her ear, “Tell me when you know.” Then with a single backward glance, she followed Mathis out to get their bags.

  Samantha was about to breathe a sigh of relief about having her house to herself again when she noticed that Fiona was still just standing there, staring at her.

  “Um . . .” She shifted uncomfortably. “Can I . . . get you anything before you leave, Fiona? I mean, can I help you?”

  “No, but maybe I can help you, child.” Fiona stepped closer, turning the full force of her large, dark eyes on Samantha. There was deep wisdom in them—the knowledge of centuries. It made Samantha wonder how old the wise woman really was. At times Fiona seemed ancient, and at times she seemed ageless. All Samantha knew for sure was that the intense gaze was making her feel incredibly uncomfortable.

  “Uh . . .” she began, not knowing what she was going to say, but Fiona held up a hand to stop her.

  “No—just listen. I am going to do something I have never done before. I am going to break a confidence and tell you a secret which is not mine to tell.” She took a deep breath. “Some years back, Liam Keller came to me looking for information—he wanted to know if I knew of any way to turn a female who was not a Shifter into one.”

  “Why?” Samantha frowned, remembering that Keller had spoken briefly of his research into that area, but that he hadn’t seemed to want to elaborate.

  “I asked the same thing. And while he was reluctant to tell me, it soon came out that he had fallen deeply in love with a human. He knew that a long-term relationship with a female who was not a Shifter would be difficult, but that wasn’t the only reason he was so desperately seeking an answer to his problem. You see, they had been careless and the young lady was pregnant. Liam wanted badly to know—”

  “If he could turn the mother and baby into Shifters so he could have a proper heir?” Samantha finished for her, frowning.

  “No, my dear—he wanted to find a way to make the pregnancy easier. Such matings between a Shifter and a human don’t always go well—especially if the male in question is an Alpha with an extremely strong and active Gene.”

  “Oh . . .”Samantha wasn’t sure what to say to that. “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “I know what you thought, and what you still think about Liam. But I need to let you know the truth,” Fiona said softly. “Before he could find an answer to his problem, he—rather unwisely, I think—revealed his true nature to his fiancée.” Fiona sighed. “She, unfortunately, did not take the news well.”

  “She didn’t?” Samantha’s mouth felt suddenly dry. “What . . . what happened?”

  “She aborted the child and told Liam she never wanted to see him again.” Fiona shook her head sadly. “After that, he withdrew, concentrated on building his business empire and, I believe, swore off matters of the heart forever.”

  “That’s so sad.” Samantha felt a lump in her throat which she swallowed with some difficulty.

  “It’s doubly sad when you understand that the relationship between a Shifter father and his children is much stronger than it is between humans and their offspring,” Fiona said. “You hear so much in the human world about ‘deadbeat dads’ and the like, but you’ll almost never find that in a Shifter community.”

  “Oh? And why is that?” Samantha asked.

  “Soon after a Shifter baby quickens in the womb, the Shifter father forms a bond with it, similar to, though not as strong as, the bond he shares with its mother, his mate. It gives him an extra layer of connection to his offspring—he would no sooner cut off his own hand than leave his child.”

  Samantha thought of the look of delight on Mathis’s face when he placed his big hand gently over Sadie’s belly and felt the baby move. She’d thought at the time that her sister just had a really strong relationship with her new man. But could it be that all Shifter relationships were that close?

  Well, mine with Keller certainly isn’t, she thought, and a little voice in the back of her mind whispered, Because you haven’t let it be, Samantha.

  Uneasily, she pushed it away and focused on Fiona.

  “That’s . . . a really sad story,” she said. “But he doesn’t actually want me, he just wants the baby that he lost.”

  “He does want a child, but not to the exclusion of everything else, my dear.” Fiona patted her hand. “He also wants you to be the mother of that child. It’s my belief that he opened himself to love again when he found you, and that is not an easy thing for a man like Liam Keller to do.”

  “I . . .” Samantha shook her head, at a loss for words.

  “Give him a chance,” Fiona murmured. “And remember this—no matter how strong a bond is in the beginning, it will fade if you neglect it. My intuition tells me your bond with Liam is fading fast.”

  “Oh, um . . .” Samantha thought of the way her connection to the big Shifter felt fainter every day.

  “You have been given a gift, Samantha.” Fiona gave her a long, intense look. “I know it’s frightening—any big change is—but it is a gift nonetheless. Don’t throw it away lightly, my dear.”

  “I . . .” Samantha swallowed hard. “I’ll think about it,” she said at last. “I can’t promise anything but . . . I’ll think about it.”

  “That’s all I ask.” Fiona took her hand and pressed it, then leaned over to brush Samantha’s cheek with a light, feathery kiss. “Good-bye, my dear. I hope to see you in Cougarville sometime soon.”

  Then she left, sweeping royally from Samantha’s kitchen in her flowing green caftan, looking for all the world like a queen in exile going back to her court. Samantha shook her head and then followed her slowly out.

  As Samantha stood on her front porch and waved while Sadie, Mathis, and Fiona drove away, she couldn’t help thinking about what the older woman had said and what it might mean.

  Could it be that Keller wasn’t behind everything that had happened to her? That he really did care for her as a lover and a mate and not just the possible mother of his heir? And should she really give him a chance?

  Her cell phone, vibrating in her pocket, broke her train of thought.