by Zoe Chant
Trevor wriggled past them into the house. “I can show you my room, Daddy!” he said eagerly. “And my trains! I have...” the rest of his excited babble was lost as he scurried inside.
Andrea remained on the porch as Shaun started to follow him, then paused and turned back to her.
“Would you like to... ah... come in?”
“Yes,” she said helplessly.
She wanted to follow this man anywhere he led her.
Chapter 5
Shaun held the door open for Andrea and stood carefully out of the way. It took every ounce of his self-control not to reach out and touch her as she passed; the silky fall of her hair was tantalizing.
“There’s a light, probably,” he said, looking for the switch next to the door.
“Over here,” Andrea supplied, showing him where it was, half-hidden behind the heavy curtains.
There was a moment of confusion over who was going to turn it on, both of them reaching towards it when they thought the other wouldn’t. Andrea flipped it on after a false start.
Shaun gave a sheepish chuckle. “You know my house better than I do,” he said.
“Shall I give you a tour?” Andrea offered lightly.
“Much appreciated,” Shaun accepted.
They stood looking at each other for just a moment, and Shaun thought that her face looked even prettier flushed.
Was she aware that they were mates? If the stories were true, humans usually felt an immediate attraction, but without an animal breathing down her neck like Shaun’s tiger was doing to him, it probably didn’t feel much more than an unexpected wave of desire.
It occurred to him that he was going to have to explain to her that he was a tiger shifter, if he wanted to try to tell her about the mate instinct.
As Andrea led him through the living room, through the kitchen, pointing out the utility room and the tiny downstairs bathroom, he stared at the back of her head with consternation. How did you even start a conversation like that?
Weirder still, he wanted to tell her.
“Come see my rooooom,” Trevor hollered, already halfway up the stairs.
“Be right up,” Shaun promised.
Andrea continued around more quickly, pointing out the pantry under the stairs, and the formal dining room, filled with the ugliest, uncomfortable-looking dining set Shaun had ever seen. It all looped back to the living room, and they were standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“The... ah... bedrooms are up there, of course,” Andrea said, chewing on her lip.
“Come see my roooooom,” Trevor called.
Don’t let her leave, Shaun’s tiger insisted.
As Shaun was trying to figure out any excuse to get her up the stairs, Trevor added, “Miss Andrea! Miss Andrea, I made a house and you have to help me with the roof!”
Not sure if he should be insulted that his son didn’t think he was capable of the task, or just grateful for his interference, Shaun let Andrea walk up the carpeted steps first. When her sweater slithered from her waist, he was rewarded with a view of the most gorgeous ass he’d ever seen, cupped in paint-stained blue jeans.
He caught the sweater before it could reach the steps. “Got it,” he said cheerfully, and did not offer to hand it back to her.
With a blushing backwards glance that suggested she’d seen through his ruse, Andrea finished her ascent to the top floor. Shaun followed two steps at a time and reluctantly gave her back her sweater.
“Come, come look!”
Trevor proceeded to show him into the messiest room that Shaun had ever witnessed.
A sheet over a table, clipped to chairs, formed a house in the middle of the room, decorated with pillows and stuffed with buckets of tinker toys and stuffed animals and... toys that Shaun couldn’t even identify.
Completely unruffled by the mess, Andrea helped Trevor secure the loose edge of the sheet, and they spread the chairs to make it big enough for Shaun to fold uncomfortably into.
“I should probably get home...” Andrea started to say, but Trevor took her by the hand and dragged her into the house, to Shaun’s delight.
“You have to test it with us,” Trevor insisted.
It was a very small space, and although she was a small young woman, they all had to sit quite close together to fit. She and Shaun carefully did not look at each other, and he wondered if she was as hyper-aware of his closeness as he was of hers.
Trevor, utterly delighted by their attention, proceeded to show Shaun each of his most prized possessions.
Shaun was flattered to find that some of the gifts he had sent were favored toys, and puzzled to discover that old packaging and scraps of ribbon and scribbled receipts were equally important to Trevor. He and Andrea indulged the boy’s imagination and let him playact that he was a ‘seller,’ demanding pretend money for each treasure that he handed them.
Shaun was willing to pay any price the boy named, but Andrea bargained with him shrewdly. “I’ll only pay one thousand dollars for that book,” she teased. “Look, it has teethmarks on it!”
“I chewed it when I was a baby,” Trevor conceded. “Okay, it’s free.”
Shaun felt a stab of guilt. He should have been there when that happened. He should know these stories already, not be watching his new neighbor out of the corner of his eyes for all the clues he needed.
“I have to stretch out,” Andrea said, just as Shaun recognized that his muscles were protesting the uncomfortable position he was trapped in. “This is a little boy tent, not a grown-up sized house.”
They all crawled out carefully, Shaun trying not to stare at Andrea’s perfect, curvy body as she navigated the cramped space.
“We should buy you some new shelves to put this all on,” Shaun said, looking around at the disarray of the room as he finally managed to wriggle from the sheet-constructed house without collapsing it.
Trevor yawned, and Shaun remembered how long their day had been. Did Trevor still take naps? There was so much he didn’t know. A glance at his watch showed that it was later than he had expected; outside, the sun was fading fast.
“Want some dinner, kiddo?” he asked.
Trevor brightened. “Yeah, I’m hungry.”
“I should get home and get my own dinner going,” Andrea said, sounding shy.
“Can Miss Andrea have dinner with us?” Trevor begged.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” Andrea said. “You weren’t expecting a guest. You just got here!”
“We’d love to have you,” Shaun insisted, even as he realized he had no idea what the kitchen held.
Andrea looked up at him, and her look was complicated and full of longing. “I...”
“Pleeeeaaaassssse?” Trevor managed to pack about a dozen extra vowels into the plea.
Shaun was somehow relieved to find that Andrea was no more immune to Trevor’s big-eyed entreaty than Shaun was.
“I’d like that,” Andrea agreed. She smiled. “I only had sandwich ingredients at home anyway.”
Shaun smiled back, and stood chivalrously aside to let her go first.
At the top of the stairs, Trevor slipped his hand into Shaun’s, and Shaun looked down at him in surprise; the act of trust hit something inside that he hadn’t expected.
They followed Andrea down to the kitchen.
Chapter 6
Shaun slammed the refrigerator door shut immediately after opening it and cleared his throat. “That’s going to require an exorcism,” he said.
“What’s an exercise em?” Trevor asked.
Andrea smothered her laughter, wondering how Shaun was going to tackle the topic as he met her eyes with a briefly panicked expression.
“Bleach water,” Shaun improvised sensibly, rather than trying to explain demonic possession. “The fridge needs lots of bleach water. Let’s see what’s in the pantry.”
The pantry had a family-sized box of macaroni and cheese that made Trevor’s eyes light up with glee.
“It’s not fancy, but it’s the k
ind with the sauce in a foil package, no questionable milk or expired butter required,” Shaun said, reading it thoughtfully.
“It sounds delicious,” Andrea said without lying. “As a connoisseur of boxed food and canned soups, I can assure you that is very high end.”
“What’s a can of sewer?” Trevor asked.
Andrea had no luck whatsoever muffling her amusement at that one, and Shaun gave a hearty roar of laughter.
Trevor laughed hesitantly, trying to figure out the joke.
“A connoisseur is someone who’s got really good taste,” Andrea explained.
“I think mac and cheese tastes really good,” Trevor said earnestly.
“There we go then,” Andrea said cheerfully. “Two votes for mac and cheese.”
“Look out!” Shaun said, turning and nearly tripping over Trevor, who was standing directly behind him. “I’m going to be boiling water, so be careful.”
There was a moment of tension, and Andrea could see him regret his strong voice as Trevor’s chin trembled and he started to slump out of the kitchen.
“You don’t have to go that far,” Shaun said swiftly, before Andrea could remind herself that it wasn’t her place to comfort the little boy.
“Here,” Shaun suggested, finding a footstool. “Why don’t you sit here and tell me what to do next.”
“I can’t read,” Trevor confessed shyly, taking the box. Andrea pulled a chair up next to him.
“You can make it up,” Shaun suggested. “I’ll do whatever you tell me.”
Trevor stared at him, glanced at Andrea for support, then looked down at the box tentatively. “Um... first you have to make the water hot.”
Andrea directed him to the cabinet for a pot of the correct size. Shaun filled it in the farm-style sink and figured out how to light the gas stove without her assistance. “What’s next?”
Trevor pretended to consult the box. “It has to bubble. Then add noodles.”
Shaun retrieved the box and dumped the noodles into the water once it started boiling. “How long do they cook?” he asked, returning the box.
Trevor considered. “One hun-red minutes.”
Andrea giggled and, reading the box over his shoulder, held up eight fingers for Shaun.
Shaun set the timer. “Yes, boss.”
Trevor giggled. “We need the bowl with holes in it.”
Andrea pointed out the cabinet for the colander and Shaun found it quickly.
Drunk with his new power, Trevor commanded, “Put it on your head!”
Shaun obediently did so, to Andrea’s delight.
Trevor nearly fell off his stool chortling and Andrea giggled helplessly. Her initial impression of Shaun had been of an aloof man in a business suit. But with his jacket off, his sleeves rolled up, and a colander on his head, there was no way to take him too seriously.
While the noodles boiled, Trevor directed Shaun through a series of increasingly ridiculous tasks, laughing harder with each antic until his commands were completely unintelligible and Andrea’s sides hurt from laughter.
The timer finally hauled them back and Shaun burnt his tongue testing a noodle, then drained them and mixed in the sauce.
They took their bowls into the dining room and Trevor threw himself onto his hyper-colored noodles.
Andrea was glad for his enthusiasm; if he had not been so busy trying to get her attention and tell her things through his mouthfuls of food, she knew she would be gazing in helpless longing across the table at Shaun. She thought she’d done a decent job so far of playing herself off as just a friendly neighbor who knew his son, not a helplessly smitten idiot who couldn’t stop imagining him taking his shirt off.
Her train of thought was not helped by her hawk, who was keeping up a monotonous chorus of Ours, ours, ours in the back of her head, despite several pleas to just stop.
It was hard enough not to watch Shaun eat.
The way his jaw worked, and the amusement in his eyes as he put more noodles into Trevor’s bowl after the first was vacuumed up... Andrea made herself look back at Trevor and stop thinking about Shaun’s eyes.
After his third refill, Trevor began to look glazed-over, his hysteria ebbing away to a tired stupor.
“I think it’s time for bed, kiddo,” Shaun suggested. “Finish that last bite.”
“Let me help clear up,” Andrea insisted, standing and gathering the empty bowls.
“Don’t wanna go to bed,” Trevor protested, eyes heavy and slow.
“You’re going to anyway,” Shaun said firmly.
Trevor looked like he might protest and Andrea backed carefully into the kitchen. She knew better than to get in the way of a test of wills between parent and child.
It was weird and intimate, watching them navigate each other. She knew that Shaun couldn’t have been in Trevor’s life much; she had lived next door to Trevor for two years and had never seen his father. They were clearly just starting to build trust... and already it was apparent that there was a beautiful bond growing there.
As attracted to Shaun as Andrea could not deny that she was, she was happier yet to see Trevor with a parent that would care about him. She had always adored the sweet little boy, and wished a better life for him.
She was putting the dishes in the dishwasher, listening to Trevor’s whine and Shaun’s growl without being able to hear any words, when there was an unexpected soft thump and a very growl-like growl.
She put the pan in the bottom tray of the dishwasher and looked up as Shaun, looking rather wild around the eyes, came into the kitchen.
“Thank you for your help unlocking the house and showing me around, I will have to make you a real dinner at some point, it was lovely to meet you, Trevor will see you at preschool tomorrow morning.”
Without really understanding how or why, Andrea let him herd her out of the kitchen and out onto the front porch.
“I... uh... thank you for dinner,” she said, baffled. “Good...”
The front door closed firmly in her face.
“... Night.”
Andrea stared at the door for a long moment, trying to make sense out of any of it.
Ours, her hawk muttered unhelpfully.
She turned away slowly, glancing back over her shoulder at the house.
They aren’t ours, she said firmly.
Even if she already wanted them to be.
Chapter 7
“You have to go to bed now,” Shaun insisted, grateful that Andrea had taken the dishes to the kitchen and wasn’t witnessing his complete inability to do a basic parenting task like convince a completely exhausted kid to go to bed. “Finish that bite.”
Perhaps recognizing that the macaroni in his spoon was all that was between him and the horrors of bed, Trevor sucked a single noodle off of it and spent a good minute defiantly chewing it.
“You’re just trying to waste time,” Shaun said crossly. “Put it all in your mouth.”
Trevor got another single noodle into his mouth.
Shaun recognized the challenge, and knew that Trevor was testing him. And what was he going to do? Throw him over his shoulder and haul him off to bed?
“Mommy let me stay up and watch TV,” Trevor said slyly, watching his face.
Shaun could feel his temper, stretched like an abused rubber band and threatening to snap. “I am not your mother,” he growled. “And I am not going to do things the way she did. And you are going to finish that bite and you are going to go to bed and Andrea is going to go home. Right. Now.”
Trevor’s eyes got big in his face and he froze, spoon still suspended in front of his mouth. His face got redder and redder, and then, like mercury, he shifted into a solid, fluffy little lion cub swimming in little boy clothing. The spoon clattered to the table and sent the final few cheesy noodles spinning in every direction.
Standing on the chair with his tail fluffed up and his front paws, too big for his frame, on the table, lion-Trevor opened his mouth and gave a wail of surprise that turned
to a growl.
Shaun swore, then remembered that Trevor still had ears. He resorted to his own growls when he failed to find safe words that did the situation any justice at all.
A clank of pots from the kitchen drove panic into Shaun’s heart.
He had to get Andrea out of here.
Even if he had considered telling her about himself, it was one thing to confess to being a shifter, and quite another to expose a five-year-old as what most people fearfully considered a freak of nature. Trevor’s secret was his own to protect.
And he couldn’t even spell protect yet.
“Wait here,” he told the lion cub. “Don’t move.”
Andrea was putting the last dish into the dishwasher as he came into the kitchen, and her warm smile as she stood nearly made him forget why he was there.
Trevor.
Trevor was a lion.
“Thank you for your help unlocking the house and showing me around, I will have to make you a real dinner at some point, it was lovely to meet you, Trevor will see you at preschool tomorrow morning.”
Shaun let the words tumble from him as he herded her directly for the front door.
While she was still thanking him, puzzled, for the dinner, he shut the door on her and dashed back to the dining room.
Trevor had given in to sleep at last, and was lying in a boneless heap on the clothing he had squirmed out of.
A boneless, furry heap.
Shaun hadn’t started shifting until puberty; he hadn’t even known that shifting this young was possible.
Bad enough that he didn’t know the first damn thing about being a father, now he was the father of an unpredictable shifter child.
But looking down on the slumbering cub, Shaun could find no regret.
He was glad this had happened with him, not with Harriette; surely she would have brought something like this up if it was something Trevor had done before?
Probably, this was the first time Trevor had shifted, all worked up after too long a day of traveling and his whole life being dumped upside down.