Beauty Dates the Beast(11)

I fell asleep picturing myself and Beau in some naughty situations, hoping I wouldn’t say his name in my sleep.





Chapter Four





When I awoke and squinted at the sunlight streaming in through the window, Beau’s side of the bed was cold and he was gone. A note sat on a nearby stack of clothing, along with my keys.



I sat up and grabbed the note—not that I was eager to hear from him. Nope. I squelched the shadow of disappointment that I felt at not seeing Beau this morning. Like I cared how he looked in the morning. Or if he had a five-o-clock shadow.

Or if he had those cute, tousled cowlicks in his hair when he woke up. Or if his eyes had that sleepy look that made my legs jelly. Nope. Didn’t care.

His handwriting was scrawly and loose, but somehow intimate, and just looking at it gave me the warm fuzzies.

Bathsheba,





Mike didn’t find anything unusual in the house. I’m going to go and check things out for myself. I’ll be watching the house to make sure nothing—or no one—returns. If you can, please stay away for a few more hours, until I know it’s safe. I went down to the gift shop and got you both some clothes—I guessed at your sizes. Hope that’s okay. There’s some money in the pocket for a cab, and use my credit card if you need it. You have my cell number. Call me later today and we can make plans. I’m not letting you get away easily.





I sighed.


In true masculine form, Beau had incorrectly guessed at both our sizes. The Dallas Cowboys sweatpants and T-shirt he’d gotten for Sara were about two sizes too big. Her slim form swam in the sporty clothing, but she gushed about how thoughtful Beau was.



My clothes—me being taller and bustier than Sara—were too tight. The shirt was indecent and the jogging pants were so short they could have been capris. I put them on anyhow and wore my minidress over them as a tunic.

“Good thing Giselle is never in the office,” Sara said, rolling up her sleeves. “She’d have a heart attack if she saw us dressed like this to come to work.”

Luck was not on our side. We’d no more than arrived at the small Liaisons office and told the nighttime girls (Ryder and Marie) about our harrowing break-in before Giselle breezed in, a vision in a red minidress. Her dark, wavy hair cascaded over her shoulders.

I swallowed hard at the sight of my boss. “Giselle,” I said weakly. “You’re back early.” Well, shit. That just complicated things.

“Bathsheba,” she called in a clipped accent. “I want to see you in my office. Now.” She didn’t bother to look at the four of us gathered at Sara’s desk.

All my senses on alert, I straightened my clothes. Giselle must have somehow heard about my date with Beau and had come into the office to put the smack down on me. Shit.

Sara gave me a wide-eyed look as I passed, but she didn’t scurry for the file room. The other girls in the office weren’t shifters, and Giselle was a siren. Sirens had a lot going for them, but the preternatural sense of smell wasn’t one of them. It was why we’d been able to work here for so long.

Giselle was not the most understanding boss, however. She kept odd hours, expected her employees to be held to higher standards than her own, and had a bunch of weird quirks that I’d written off as supernaturally based, but she wasn’t a fool. She might chide us for dressing down for one day, but it wouldn’t affect how we answered the phones or handled clients. Her anger had to be because of my date.

I’d let myself get carried away with Beau’s attractive face and my own raging hormones. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

As soon as I entered Giselle’s posh corner office, she shut the door behind me. I picked an empty chair and sat down. Her office was furnished far better than the rest of the building—the chairs were plush and thick, and fine art hung on the walls.

We had one lousy motivational poster in the outer office.

She took her time crossing over to the far side of the room and sat down at her desk, a coy look on her face. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on, Bathsheba?” Her voice was singsongy and deliberately sweet.

Not a good sign.

I plucked at the hem of my dress and hoped she hadn’t noticed that the pants underneath had a sports logo on the hip. “I only met Mr. Russell to tell him that I wouldn’t be going out with him. I tried calling, but you were unavailable.”

Giselle pulled out her cell phone, flicked the screen a few times with her thumb, then offered the phone to me.

I looked at the picture she’d pulled up. Beau and me, sitting at the restaurant table. My eyes were closed, the look on my face rapturous as Beau fed me something.

Whoops.

She leaned over and snatched the phone out of my hand. “Isn’t the first rule of working here that you cannot date the clients? Haven’t I explained to you that humans and Alliance do not mix? Ever?”

I swallowed hard. “I know.” Oh, God, I was going to lose my job.

“And yet you disobeyed my rules.” She pointed at me. “His mark is all over your neck. Do you know how I heard about this?”

“No.” I touched my neck and blushed. The spot where he’d bit me didn’t have a visible mark, though it felt hot to me. Did sirens have X-ray vision?

She crossed her arms. “I had no less than four—four!—calls last night. The werewolf community is quite upset and they’re threatening to boycott my service if I fix up more humans. They’ve made calls to several other important leaders, and I’ve already had one VIP pull his account. Not only is the entire Alliance upset, but they’re furious that I”—she stabbed her finger at her chest—“have given an authorized visa to a human. Even worse, I have not extended the same offer to other leaders as I have to the leader of the Russell clan.”

I put my hands to my forehead and slowly went over everything she’d spouted at me. “Could you repeat that?”

“If one clan of weres can date a human, all can date a human, or so I’m being told. As you can see, I have a problem.” Giselle gave me a look of disgust. “A big problem that you have created. My best clients with the biggest accounts want to know why the were-cougars are so special that they get exclusive treatment over my regular clients. Exclusive access to a papered, pedigreed human virgin—”

“Wait,” I interrupted. She made me sound like a dog. “Pedigreed human virgin?”

She gave me a look that said I should be quiet, then continued. “Rights to a human woman who has been cleared and declared fit for the Alliance. What am I supposed to tell these very important men?” Her eyes narrowed into slits.

I wrung my hands in my lap and hoped she didn’t notice. “I only met him because …”

“Because?”

Could I tell her the truth? That Sara had been freaking out and I’d been distracted by another customer and the answer had blurted out of my mouth before I’d thought about it? Finally, I admitted the truth.

“I tried calling you, but I got your voice mail and knew you didn’t want to be disturbed, so I had to make a decision. He asked me to go out with him, and I thought maybe one teeny date wouldn’t hurt.”

Giselle’s mouth formed a hard line. “You thought wrong. I should toss you out on the street, along with your sister.”

My heart sank. Giselle paid us both very well. If we were fired, it’d be hellish trying to find jobs that paid as much as working here. And here we were safe, because we knew where the packs were and what they were up to. We knew that the were-cougars lived up in Little Paradise on the edge of Fort Worth. We knew that the wolf packs lived on the far side of the Metroplex. We had tabs on every single shifter in the area who used the service, which made Sara safer, knowing who and where to avoid.

If we were fired we’d have to leave the city and start all over again. We had some money, but not enough for a move cross-country into blind territory. What if we moved to Portland or San Diego and the weres were thicker there than here?

“Please don’t fire me or Sara,” I begged. “We need this job.”

Her eyes were hard as they focused on me. “Are you loyal to me and my company?”

“Yes.” Anything to keep my job.

“Will you do whatever it takes to get back in my good graces?”

A few unpaid overtime shifts would be well worth it. “Whatever you want. My schedule is open.”

Giselle leaned back in her chair. “Good. I should almost thank that were-cougar for marking you,” she said absently, staring at my neck. The patch of skin burned under her scrutiny. “His mark makes you infinitely more desirable to others, now that you’ve been staked out as someone else’s property.”

That wasn’t the answer I’d been expecting. “Beg pardon?”