Kiss an Angel(33)

“Is that where you were staying?”

“Yeah. She’s already got four kids, and the only reason she’s willing to take me is because Dad pays her and she needs the money. Plus, she gets a free baby-sitter. My mom didn’t used to be able to stand her.” Her expression grew bitter. “He can’t wait to get rid of me.”

“I’m sure that’s not true.”

“You don’t know, do you? He only likes my brothers. Sheba says it’s not my fault because he doesn’t know how to relate to a woman he can’t have sex with, but she’s just trying to make me feel better. I keep thinking if I could juggle better, he might let me stay.”

Now Daisy understood why Heather always carried the rings around. She was trying to earn her father’s affection with her juggling. Daisy knew all about trying to please a disapproving father, and her heart went out to this young girl with her fairy-sprite face and gutter mouth. “Have you tried to talk to him? Maybe he doesn’t understand how strongly you feel about not going back to your aunt’s.”

She pulled on her tough-girl face. “Like he’s going to care. And look who’s giving advice. Everybody’s talking about you. How Alex only married you because you’re pregnant.”

“That’s not true.” The cellular phone buzzed before Daisy could say more, and she went over to the desk to answer it. “Quest Brothers Circus.”

“Alex Markov, please,” a male voice on the other end replied.

“I’m sorry, but he’s not here at the moment.”

“Will you tell him Jacob Solomon called? He has my number. Oh, and Dr. Theobald is trying to get in touch with him.”

“I’ll let him know.” As Daisy hung up the phone and wrote down the message for Alex, she wondered who these people were. There was so much about him she didn’t understand and he seemed unwilling to reveal.

She realized Heather had left some time during the phone call. With a sigh, she locked up the cash drawer, turned off the lights, and left the trailer.

The workmen had already taken down the menagerie tent, and once again she found herself thinking about the tiger. She wandered over toward the place where the tent had been, feeling almost as if she had no control over her destination.

The cage sat on a small flatbed about three feet above the ground. A rim of light cast by the floodlights threw harsh shadows over the animal inside. Daisy’s heart pounded as she approached, and her steps slowed. Sinjun rose and turned toward her.

She froze as she received the impact of those golden eyes. His gaze was hypnotic, both direct and unblinking. A chill slithered along her spine, and she felt herself dissolving in those golden tiger eyes.

Destiny.

The word trailed through her mind, almost as if she hadn’t put it there herself, almost as if it had come from the tiger.

Destiny.

She wasn’t aware that she had walked closer until she smelled the tiger’s musky scent, a smell that should have been unpleasant but somehow wasn’t. She came to a stop less than four feet from the iron bars and stood without moving. The seconds ticked away, growing into minutes. She lost all sense of time.

Destiny. The word rattled through her head.

The tiger was a huge male animal, with enormous paws and a bib of white beneath its throat. She began to tremble as he twisted his ears so that the oval-shaped white markings on their backs showed, and somehow she knew it wasn’t a gesture of friendship. His whiskers fanned. He bared his teeth. Perspiration trickled between her breasts as an awful hissing roar erupted from his throat, a demon’s sound that belonged in a horror movie.

She couldn’t lower her eyes, even though she somehow knew that was what he wanted. His unblinking stare bore a challenge; she was to look away first. She wanted to look away—she had no desire to defy a tiger—but she was paralyzed.

The bars seemed to evaporate between them so that she no longer had any protection from him. His sharp claws could rip open her throat with one swipe of his paw. Even so, she couldn’t move. She stared at him and felt as if a window into her soul had opened.

Time ticked by. Minutes. Hours. Years.

With eyes that no longer seemed to belong to her, she saw all her weaknesses and inadequacies, the fears that kept her prisoner. She saw herself floating through her life of privilege, swept along by wills stronger than her own, afraid to confront, trying to please everyone except herself. The tiger’s eyes revealed everything she wanted to keep concealed.

And then he blinked.

The tiger.

Not her.

With a sense of astonishment, she watched the white markings on his ears disappear. He stretched his great body back down on the floor of the cage, where he regarded her with deadly gravity and delivered his own verdict.

You’re soft and cowardly.

She saw truth in the tiger’s eyes, and her moment of victory for having won their staring contest vanished, leaving her legs weak and rubbery. She lowered herself into the weeds, where she hugged her knees and sat silently watching, not quite so frightened, merely drained.

She heard the closing music from the final act and was dimly aware of the voices of the workmen as they moved around the lot, along with the noises of the concessions being packed away. She’d had so little sleep the night before that she grew drowsy. Her lids sagged but didn’t close. She propped her cheek on her knee and continued to watch the tiger through half-shut eyes as he watched her in return.