by Zoe Chant
If you could afford a phone that could actually run it without freezing and dying, and if you didn’t have to borrow your roommate’s laptop every day to check that your schedule hadn’t been changed at the last minute.
“… and Grant was, well, you know. He’s really sweet and funny. We went to dinner at a restaurant run by a friend of his, and then, um. Back to his place.”
Irina scanned her schedule for the next week, and her heart sank. Sure, she could tell Grant she was free for another date—if he didn’t mind it being in the middle of the night or between the hours of three and four-thirty on Thursday afternoon. She groaned so loud she missed what Clare was saying.
“Sorry, what? I was busy regretting telling my manager I wanted extra shifts this month.”
Clare prodded her in the shoulder. “I said, what was his place like?” She leaned closer. “What’s it like to sleep in a billionaire’s bedroom?”
“A—what?” Irina frowned. “What did you just say?”
Clare stared at her as though she’d just grown an extra head. “Oh, my God, Irina. Grant Diaz? His mother is the Mariana Diaz. The one who owns, like, half of Manhattan.”
“Uh?” Irina racked her brain. I’ve never heard of her. I’ve never heard of anyone. This is why I spent half the year in the mountains, where at least there is no one to know.
“Irina, he is mega rich. Like, an actual billionaire. His mother raised him by herself, right, and he started working at the family business after college and made it rain.” Clare ran over to the sofa and began sifting through old magazines. “I think there was a feature on him in one of these… but I can’t believe you never heard of him! He was all over the internet last year. Especially after someone got a photo of him getting out of a pool and Twitter went nuts. Come on, you can’t tell me you haven’t heard of him.”
“Silverstream doesn’t have Twitter,” Irina said automatically.
“You mean you don’t have Twitter. I’ve been to Silverstream, remember, I know that everyone else in the town lives in the twenty-first century. Did you ever even have the internet put on at the cottage?”
Irina shook her head absently. A billionaire? Grant?
“But he seemed so… normal,” she said faintly.
“Oh, sweetie. Please tell me he has, like, a bath made out of pure gold. With diamond taps. As for his bed…” Clare squinted into the middle distance, lost in wild speculation. “I’m thinking either super space-age, like, oh, like hovers above the ground or something, or… some massive four-poster thing. Space or medieval. Am I right?”
Irina just stared at her. “It was… a bed? A normal, nice bed.”
“Oh, you are hopeless. Okay. Dinner. Tell me at least that dinner was amazing. Where did you go?”
Irina was starting to feel like she was being interrogated. She pinched her lips together. “Um. I don’t know? It was really nice, though, too.”
Clare glared at her through her fingers. “Nice like the bed? Nice like Grant? That’s all you’ve got?”
Irina racked her brains for any morsel of information that might satisfy her friend. “Um. The owner of the restaurant was a friend of his. Moss somebody?”
“Moss? You went to Moss?”
“No, Moss was the chef’s name,” Irina corrected her. Clare snorted.
“And the name of his restaurant. Holy shit, Irina. No one gets into Moss on a Friday night, that place has a twelve-month waiting list. And a waiting list for the waiting list, probably.” She stared at Irina, her eyes like saucers. “Please tell me you at least paid attention to the menu.”
Irina bit her lip and winced. “It’s not my fault! I was distracted!”
Clare collapsed with a cry of despair. “And there I was, working the exhibition, thinking, Sure, Irina might have run off and abandoned me, but at least I’ll get some good gossip out of it. So much for that!”
Irina shut the laptop. And you were worried she’d be pissed that you turned tail in the middle of the event, she told herself, and nudged Clare gently in the ribs as she headed for her bedroom. “So make something up! A bed made out of a giant diamond, was that it?”
“I don’t know, Irina, was it? Was it made out of a diamond?”
“Nope. It was emerald. To match his eyes.” Irina stuck her tongue out and shut the door in Clare’s despairing face. Alone in her room, she put her back against the door and took a deep breath.
Grant is a billionaire? I guessed he was well-off, but… holy shit.
A billionaire? Billionaires were people like Francine Delacourt: polished, remote, and so arrogantly confident in their massive, literal worth that they didn’t bother treating normal people like Irina like, well. Like they were people, and not furniture.
Grant was confident. He moved through the world as though convinced that he belonged wherever he was, whether that was a fancy gallery opening or a grimy back alley. And polished, well, she didn’t imagine that his five-o’-clock shadow was ever allowed to make it to six-o’clock without a careful buzz. But remote? Arrogant?
Irina remembered how Grant had behaved around her. Smooth and suave and, yes, completely convinced of his own good looks. But he had been so—
She didn’t want to use the word considerate. That sounded so dry and stuffy. He’d been… aware. Of her, and of himself, and the space he took up in the world. He was careful. As though he was watching himself watching her and was occasionally mortified by what he saw.
Irina realized she was smiling to herself. Like when he introduced himself to you—that was adorable! Sexy adorable.
She closed her eyes and brought up his face in her mind. The way his brow wrinkled in dismay when he flubbed his pick-up line. Even when he messed up, he was charming. One burning glance from those eyes, and she would forgive him any number of cheesy lines.
And now she wouldn’t be able to see him for a week. More than a week. Her next evening off was nine days away. Monday. The most romantic night of the week. Not.
And she had to do laundry. And buy a new dress. And groceries. And a million other boring, mundane things before she saw him again.
Grant’s emerald-green eyes disappeared in a puff of responsibilities.
Irina pushed herself off the door, sighing. Where was her bag, with her shoes? There—and her stockings, which went straight in the laundry basket.
Do billionaires do laundry? Oh, damn, I must have caught them on something. I bet billionaires don’t have to fix runs in their stockings with nail polish.
Her hand hovered over her phone. The longing to call Grant hit her like—well, like a motorbike steered by a leather-clad maniac.
And if you call him now, you’ll seem like the maniac.
She forced herself to plug the phone into the charger without unlocking it. Then, the moment she turned her back, it started to buzz.
The hairs on the back of Irina’s neck prickled. No way. It’s gotta be work, or…
Or him. The only people who ever called Irina were telemarketers. Or Clare. And Clare was still loudly despairing in the next room.
It’s probably a telemarketer, Irina told herself, barely daring to look at the caller ID.
When she saw that it read Grant Diaz, all her breath rushed out and she sat heavily on the bed. She fumbled with the screen, accepting the call.
“Hello?” she said tentatively, almost in a whisper.
“Irina?”
Irina’s shoulders slumped as a tension she didn’t know she’d been holding faded away. “I wasn’t expecting you to call so soon,” she admitted, then quickly added, “Um, I’m glad you did, though!”
“Is—is everything all right?”
Grant’s voice was hesitant. Irina frowned.
“Yeah. I just got home, actually.”
“Nothing’s wrong? I thought…” he stopped, and Irina could almost see that adorable furrow form between his eyebrows and him rubbing it away with the back of his hand. He chuckled self-consciously. “Never mind. I’m being an idiot.
”
Irina flopped back, landing on a crumpled comforter that didn’t hold a candle to the plush blankets and duvets on Grant’s bed. She closed her eyes, focusing on his voice and the soft sound of his breathing, just audible through the phone.
“I checked my schedule,” she said, figuring that was why he had called. “It’s bad news, I’m afraid.”
She explained about her double shifts, but not that she had been the one to request extra hours in the first place. Rent payments didn’t exactly make for romantic pillow-talk.
“My next day off isn’t until a week from Monday,” she finished, trying not to sound disappointed. “I can talk to my manager then about the following week’s schedule, but we’re pretty low on staff at the moment, so no promises.”
She waited for Grant’s response. There was a tapping noise on the other end of the line, as though he was rapping his fingers on a table as he thought. Then the scrape of a chair.
“How much sleep would you be willing to give up on Sunday night? If I promise to make it worth your while.”
Irina couldn’t help the smile that spread across her face. With her eyes closed, she could almost imagine he was in the room with her. She covered her mouth with her free hand, feeling giddy and ridiculous.
“Oh, well, if you’re going to make it worth my while,” she replied, holding in a giggle.
“Dinner?”
“My shift finishes at ten.”
“Dessert, then. And an adventure.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Diaz.” Irina tapped her fingers against her lips. She would have to mainline coffee all day to keep from falling asleep, but it would be worth it. “But I think I can make time for you in my schedule.”
“When should I pick you up? And where from?”
Irina gave him her address and a time that would let her get out of her work clothes and into date mode. Afterwards, she stayed on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
Sunday. Precisely one week away. Right now, that seemed like an eternity. And after last night’s adventure, she couldn’t wait to find out what he was planning for their second date.
No more running away, she told herself. Not when you’ve got such a great guy to run towards.
10
GRANT
Grant put down his phone and frowned. Lance looked up from his tablet.
“Everything all right, boss?”
“She’s fine. I mean—everything’s fine.” Grant shifted uncomfortably as a cold shiver ran down his spine. The shiver was only an echo of what he had felt earlier: a sudden, bone-cold freeze that left his every nerve on edge. A feeling that something was very wrong.
His immediate instinct had been to find Irina. He couldn’t have explained why—not least to her. Not even to Lance, who looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
He had held off for twenty agonizing minutes, unable to focus on anything except the lingering feeling of unease. And then, when he had finally decided enough was enough, and called her, she was fine. Nothing was wrong.
“I’m imagining things,” he said out loud.
Lance pushed his reading glasses further up his nose and peered at Grant through them. “Things like what?” he asked.
“Just… things.”
“Hmmf. Call your mother,” Lance advised, and returned his attention to his work.
His mother. Grant let the idea spin around his mind, just once, before batting it away.
It was technically a good idea. None of Grant’s shifter friends were mated yet. Lance and Moss were constantly single. Harley was still more interested in his planes than any of the girlfriends he took up in them. Lance… well, he hadn’t known Lance as long as he’d known the others, but he was pretty sure the snow leopard wasn’t mated, either.
Mathis? Six months ago, Grant would have added him to the list, but he had to admit he had no idea. Maybe his old friend had found his mate and that was why he’d gone to ground. If that turned out to be the case, he’d have other things on his mind besides answering Grant’s calls.
Grant stalked around the room, drumming out a beat on the kitchen countertop as he passed it.
His mother was traveling for work. Maybe that was a good thing. Grant couldn’t imagine a situation in which seeing her in person before he figured out what to do with Irina would go well.
To Lance, it probably made sense for Grant to talk to his mother. Grant didn’t know what the mating bond meant for a panther shifter; his mother would; therefore, he should talk to his mother. What a plan.
He could call Mathis’s parents, but that wouldn’t work, either. They were lions, pride animals. Grant needed to talk to someone who knew about panther shifters. And the only person Grant knew who fit that description was his mother.
Tap, tap, tap tap. Tap.
Unfortunately.
Rattle-tap.
How would his mother react to the news? He didn’t need to guess.
Mariana Diaz wasn’t a shifter. Until she was nineteen, she hadn’t known there was such a thing. Then she’d met Grant’s father.
He’d heard the story countless times growing up. A simplified version from his mom, with all of the scandal and most of the pain edited out. But he’d picked up bits of the truth here and there, learned a lot about shifters in general from Mathis and the others, and pieced the story together eventually.
Until he was fifteen, Grant had only ever heard his father referred to as That Man, usually followed by a spit. Even after he found out his father’s name, Grant found himself referring to him with the same epithet. And the same spit.
That Man had turned Mariana Diaz’s life upside down. He was a panther who made grandiose claims about how he and Mariana were meant for one another. He took her on a whirlwind vacation around the world, introducing her to incredible places and experiences. He told her no one could know about his shifter secret, not her friends, not her family, no one. He made her feel special.
Six months later, he skulked out of their hotel room in the middle of the night.
He took Mariana’s wallet and her passport and left her pregnant with a baby boy who turned into a tiny, black-fuzzed cub when he sneezed. A panther shifter.
So, how would Mariana Diaz react to the news that her panther-shifter son had fallen head over heels with a human woman? Probably not with the delight that Lance was imagining.
“Maybe later,” he muttered. He shoved his phone into a pocket, and jumped as it immediately started buzzing.
Frankie? he thought, seeing the name on the caller ID. What does she want?
He remembered how she had treated Irina the night before and bristled.
Whatever she wants, it can wait, he decided, and declined the call.
His circuit of the room took him back past the open-plan kitchen. Tap-tap, taptaptap, ratta-tat. Tap.
Across the room, Lance slammed his palms onto the desk. “Will you stop?”
Grant’s fingers froze mid-tap. “What?” he said, innocently.
Lance slumped back in his chair. “Forget it. I need a break, anyway.” He glared. “I’m going to get myself a drink. Try to restrain yourself from batting it off the side of the table.”
Grant flung himself on the nearest sofa, instead. He listened to Lance padding around the kitchen, pouring himself a glass of water. Bat it off the table? Grant had more control over his cat-like impulses than that.
Most of the time.
Grant groaned. Screw water. He needed a beer.
“You might as well head home,” he called out to Lance.
“Head home? You wish. Grant,” Lance said, sitting down opposite him with a thump, “We need to talk.”
Eyes closed, Grant bit back a groan. He could imagine just how the snow leopard was looking at him. Peering over the top of his glasses.
He glanced across to the other sofa. Yep.
Lance pushed his glasses up his nose. “I don’t understand you. I know you didn’t grow up in a shifter family, but you’re good friends wi
th other shifters. The Delacourts, Moss Taylor, the Ameses—I’m just going off the call log here, by the way. They must have told you about the mate bond. So why are you acting like it’s such a terrible thing?”
Grant sat up slowly. It was true. He’d had plenty of good examples of shifter relationships growing up. His mother had been diligent in making connections with the local shifter community, so Grant would learn about that side of himself.
But none of them were panthers. None of them came from homes broken by a panther shifter’s disregard for his mate.
“I told you,” he said out loud. “I’m done discussing that.”
There was a clink as Lance set down his glass on the coffee table and settled back in the sofa. He pulled off his glasses and folded them into his shirt pocket.
“Very well. Then let’s discuss what you’re going to do next. Your human dating plan.” He paused for Grant to interject, and when Grant remained silent, continued. “It sounds like everything went smoothly last night. Moss sent through the tab, and the apartment manager passed on a very polite note of complaint about residents who think it’s appropriate to sprint through professional kitchens with strange women slung over their shoulders. What am I missing?” He paused. “Oh, yes. The traffic violations.”
Grant drummed his fingers on the back of the sofa. “You’ve got a strange definition of everything going smoothly,” he muttered.
Lance shrugged. “It worked out for you, didn’t it? As for what you should do next… Gifts? Dinner? Er… Sexts?” He fiddled with his glasses again, and eventually slipped them back onto his nose. “You don’t want to tell her you’re a shifter—fine. She’s human. Treat her like one. Lie to her, with casual, believable lies about how you’re nothing but a rich guy who likes to travel a lot, and hope she falls deeply enough in love with that version of you that she forgives you when she learns the truth.”
Grant leapt to his feet. “How dare you?” he snarled.
Lance didn’t move. He looked up at Grant from the sofa, a patient expression on his face.