CHAPTER ONE
Nick Balam was on special assignment for his newly mated Alpha, billionaire Mark Pepard. Nick didn’t like being away from the safety of the Clan or unable to keep tabs on the Alpha. As Beta of the Clan, it was his responsibility to make sure the Alpha came to no harm. Ever.
But Nick also had a duty to obey the Alpha, and right now, Mark had convinced Nick that he could best serve the interests of the Clan by being here. In Hollywood. Watching over a human starlet who might have learned more than she should have about the Clan and their secrets. Nick was here to assess the situation—and the girl—and see if she needed to be silenced permanently.
It wasn’t something Nick would do lightly, but to protect his Clan, he would do more than kill. He would lay down his life for the Clan, if need be. Arranging an accident for a single human was a small thing compared to the allegiance he owed his people in their bid to make a new life for themselves on Jaguar Island.
For the Jaguar Clan was rebuilding. Slowly. They’d been decimated by the drug wars and the lack of a strong, central gathering place where they could seek shelter in numbers. Living as wild cats, each with their own private territory, hadn’t worked out well as drug cartels moved in on the jungles the jaguars had called home. So many had been slaughtered, caught up in the senseless killing and violence, each trying to drive the interlopers from their territories.
It was Mark Pepard who had finally put forward a plan and, with approval of the remaining elders, put it into motion. He’d purchased an island in the Caribbean—a dormant volcano that spoke to the fire of the jaguar that lived inside them all. He’d also found an architect, who turned out to be his mate, to design a community that his people could live in together, and grow.
For the first time, Nick thought they might actually have a chance at rebuilding the might of the Jaguar Clan and adapting to the brave new world the humans had created. So much, though, depended on secrecy. And the actress, Sullivan Lane, had seen and heard things she should never have been allowed to witness.
At least, that’s what Nick was here to investigate. He was deep undercover, acting as Sullivan’s bodyguard, watching her every move and doing his best to discover if she had knowledge that needed to be erased. Which would, of course, mean erasing her. Permanently.
So far, she hadn’t given any indication that she’d go running to the tabloids with her story or the proof they thought she might have. It was Nick’s job to, first, see if she did have the feared evidence of the existence of jaguar shifters, and second, if she did, to make sure she never got a chance to pass it on to anyone else. Above all, their secret must be maintained.
Sullivan was a lot different than he’d expected. He had met her only briefly. Introduced by her manager as the replacement for another bodyguard who had been contracted only recently to see to the up-and-coming actress’s safety. She’d been receiving death threats ever since her new movie had opened last week.
It had been the night of the premiere that she’d been involved in a situation that had let the cat out of the bag—almost literally. One of their younger and much more foolish Clan members had been working as a valet, parking cars at the director’s mansion at an exclusive after-party that had a guest list in the hundreds. Only a teenager, Rafael hadn’t fully mastered his jaguar yet, which normally wouldn’t have been that much of a problem, except that one of the other youngsters had been showing off and lost control of a very expensive vehicle, nearly hitting Rafael in the middle of the dark parking area.
Rafael had not only jumped clear of the oncoming car, but in his panic, his cat had come out. The poor kid had shifted in mid-air, then been unable to shift back because of the panic and fear that had made his animal a little crazy. The other kids had tried to talk him down. They were Clan members, too. But none of them had realized until it was almost too late that Sullivan had come out to get her car and had probably seen the entire episode. She had her phone in her hands, and they couldn’t be sure she hadn’t taken video of Rafael’s change.
Rafael and his folks had been given one-way tickets to Jaguar Island, where the teen could learn to better control his inner cat with others his age. The elders there would help him, too, and if he shifted in public, nobody would care because every single person on that island was a trusted Clan member. It was a place where they could let their jaguars run free without fear.
So unlike the human world, where they had to watch their every step. This little incident could blow up in their faces if not handled properly. Nick was the expert in the Clan when it came to security and protection. Mark might be Alpha, but in their culture, the Alpha was the big-picture position. The Alpha had to dream the dream that kept the rest of the Clan on track. He was the leader, but each member of his support staff had their own important functions.
Nick was the Beta, which meant he headed all security for the Clan. When it came to protection of their personnel and their secrets, Nick was the leader. The Alpha of the Clan’s security team, as it were.
When a human had witnessed a shift, it could usually be explained away by the introduction of drugs or alcohol, which was a much nicer way to lead an unsuspecting human to believe they’d been seeing things. But, when there might be actual evidence, that was a high-priority security breach. The fact that they weren’t sure and couldn’t just go rifling through Sullivan Lane’s home or personal effects without triggering her own security brought it to the level where Nick had to be called in to preserve the best interests of the Clan as a whole.
He’d finagled his way onto her security team by calling in more than one favor from acquaintances he’d made over the years. The fact that Sullivan’s star was on the rise with the release of her new film meant that she was more protected than she ever had been. The death threats that had accompanied her new-found fame had led her—very sensibly, if somewhat inconveniently—to hire a full-coverage security team from one of the best companies in the business.
Luckily, Nick had contacts in the company and was able to get his friends to shuffle a few things so he could join the team already in place. A human guy who’d been unhappy with the gig was taken off the team, and Nick was put in charge of the night shift—a perfect placement that would allow him to do a little covert snooping in the starlet’s home while there on legitimate duty.
If she had video evidence of Rafael’s shift, Nick would find it.
*
The new guy on the security team made Sal want to purr. He was fit and handsome in a way she hadn’t expected. All the other guards looked like bulked-up gorillas to her, but the new guy—Nick was his name—was all sleek lines and graceful motion. He was big and burly, too, but in a way that reminded her of a sinuous dancer…or a jungle cat.
That thought gave her pause.
She knew she’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to see when she’d left the after-party at the director’s mansion early. She’d seen a young man turn into a leopard. Or a jaguar. Something with spots and big scary teeth and claws. He’d scurried into the shadows, but the wide-eyed fear on his friends’ faces when they saw her standing there was enough to tell her that the boys were all in on the secret that their friend was hiding a powerful magic in his teenaged body.
Sal knew a little about magic from her mother, but not enough to really know what she’d seen. She knew enough to keep her mouth shut, though. One did not talk about magic, unless one wanted to be committed and put in a room with padded walls and no windows.
Like her mother.
Being labeled crazy was something Sal wanted to avoid at all costs. If she’d had a chance to talk to the boys, she would have told them their secret was safe with her, but they’d all disappeared, leaving her to find her car on her own that night. Luckily, it hadn’t been far away, and she’d been able to leave without a lot of fuss. She hadn’t wanted to make a big production out of her departure from the party that had been getting increasingly wild.
When the drugs had come out, she’d made her exit. Cocaine had been passed around on mirrored platters like hors d’oevres, and pills in every color of the rainbow had been displayed like candy. It had made Sal uncomfortable, and rather than say anything that might get her ostracized from the crowd that could easily dictate whether she ever worked on another film again, she’d just left. Quietly. She’d just used a touch of the magic she never openly acknowledged to make herself disappear.
They gave her mother all kinds of drugs in that place. They’d dulled her mind so much that her mother rarely even recognized Sal when she found the courage to visit. The drugs had just about destroyed her mother’s mind, quieting her wild magic and making her a docile shell of the woman she’d once been.
Of course, her mother had been violent. The magic hadn’t been a fuzzy, soft friend. It had been a harsh roar of passion that demanded attention and lashed out when it wasn’t given what it wanted. The violence was what had gotten her mother sentenced to that place. A home for the criminally insane.
The shame and horror of it was what had first driven Sal to change her name. The need to hide her origins and reinvent herself over and over had led to a career as an actress. She knew her existence as Sullivan Lane, flavor-of-the-month, could be even shorter lived than usual if her secret got out. Sally Lannier could be dug up any old time and used to blackmail or discredit her reincarnation as Sullivan.
In a way, Sal hadn’t really wanted the new movie to get such good reviews or critical acclaim. Being a star had drawbacks enough for a normal person, but with her background and the skeletons hiding in her closet, Sal would have been better off if she hadn’t risen so far, so fast. A good, steady job was all she’d wanted. Now, she had to deal with fame and death threats because the subject matter of her last film had apparently touched a nerve among some of the more unstable elements of society.
The movie had been about a fictionalized account of a real-life serial killer case, and Sal had played the female detective who had cracked the case and almost become one of the victims herself. Sal had met with the detective—Elaine Mercado—and talked to her about her experiences working on that case and others. It had helped Sal get a feel for the role she had never expected to launch her into stardom, but that’s just what had happened.
And now, someone was stalking her, much as Detective Mercado had been stalked by the real-life Lewiston Strangler twenty years ago. Sal hoped the person stalking her wasn’t going to live out the entire fantasy and start killing people, but the tokens he’d been leaving for her ever since she’d taken on the role had been escalating. The last straw had been a decapitated squirrel, left on her front doorstep the day after opening night.
The idea that the stalker had gotten that close had frightened Sal into upgrading her security. The team she’d had in place for about a week now had been good, but the night shift supervisor had been replaced with the new guy. Nick. Too short a name for a man like that. She wondered if that was short for Nicholas, or some other more exotic variant.
And she was spending way too much time thinking about her new bodyguard.
Sal got out of bed and padded downstairs to the kitchen. It was the middle of the night, but she couldn’t sleep. Maybe a hot cup of tea would help.
Nick came to alert the moment he heard her get out of bed. His superior jaguar hearing allowed him to put away the papers he’d been examining in her desk and make it look as if he’d never spent the past hour snooping in her study. He went back to his security station in the front foyer of the large house, checking the camera feeds behind the little desk that had been installed to hold them.
The house was a rental, which made it easier in some ways to protect since it had already been wired for top-notch security when they’d moved her highness in a week ago. In fact, the security company had decided where to put her after a stalker put a dead squirrel on the front doorstep of her previous residence.
Good move, taking her away from a site that had already been compromised. Nick would have advised the same, had he been on the case last week. The new house had been rented furnished, which meant Sullivan Lane had only a few of her personal items here. He’d already perused the inventory lists from the moving company they’d hired to move her in four hours flat. The security company had coordinated that, as well, screening, hiring and overseeing the movers who did the actual work.
Fame and fortune could buy all sorts of services in this town, it seemed. Nick hadn’t spent a lot of time on this coast, but he was familiar with the area from several trips he’d made while he’d been a young adventurer hell bent on seeing the world. He’d done his traveling mostly on Uncle Sam’s dime as a Special Operator. The reputation, friends and contacts he’d made, then, had stood him in good stead all his life, including on this most recent mission.
He heard Sullivan come down the staircase in her slippers and head for the gourmet kitchen. It wouldn’t be out of character for him to check in on her. He was supposed to be keeping watch inside the house at night, after all. He’d be a pretty piss-poor guard if he didn’t check on the noise in the kitchen. Or so he told himself.
His decision had nothing at all to do with the fact that Sullivan Lane was one of the most attractive females he’d ever seen. Nope. No, siree. Not at all.
He peered around the corner into the kitchen doorway and stopped in his tracks. Her scent wrapped around him as it had earlier that day when he’d first met her. Warm cinnamon and spice. Like a holiday fruitcake he wanted to gobble up.
Whoa. Down, kitty.
“Everything okay, Miss Lane?”
Nick tried not to notice that his voice had come out in a deep rumble that meant his jaguar was very near the surface. Kitty was riled by the luscious scent of the woman, and his human side definitely noticed the way she filled out her clingy silk nightgown and whisper-thin robe.
She startled and whirled to face him, one hand going to cover her heart. Her eyes were wide with alarm until she recognized him in the doorway. He hadn’t meant to scare her. He was glad when relief replaced fear in her deep blue gaze.
“Sorry, you scared me. I’m just making some tea. Want a cup?”
Her invitation surprised him. Wasn’t she some rich bitch, stuck-up actress? Hmm. Maybe not.
“I shouldn’t leave the camera station unattended too long, but if there’s an extra cup, I’d be very grateful,” he told her.
“How do you take it? Cream or sugar? Lemon or honey?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just plain.” He wasn’t a complicated guy. At least not with his choice in tea.
She waved him on, giving him a gentle smile. “You go back, and I’ll bring it out to you.”
“Much obliged,” he said, surprised as the old-fashioned words came out of his mouth. Was he a cowboy in some bad Western now? Who said that anymore? Argh.
He made his escape, going back to the foyer and sitting down. There were two chairs in the station. During the day, there were two guards on duty. One to watch the cameras and one to deal with anything that might come up. At night, there was just Nick inside the house and a whole lot of technology set up in strategic places around the perimeter.
He checked the monitors and status lights. Nothing was moving outside, or in the public areas of the house, for that matter. Miss Lane had drawn the line at having her private rooms set up with cameras, but she had panic buttons and sound sensors that would alert to any loud noise, which was the next best thing.
Of course, with a jaguar shifter on duty in the quiet of the night, he’d probably hear anything happening in the house long before a sensor would detect it. Like right now. He heard her slippers making little shuffling noises as she walked down the marble tiled hall toward him. His sensitive nose had picked up the scent of hot tea wafting toward him from the kitchen long ago and now mixed that aroma with the delicate scent of Sullivan’s skin and the light floral shampoo she favored.
It was a delicious combination that made it hard for Nick to concentrate on his mission, but he was a professional. He’d manage. Somehow.
“Here you go,” Sullivan said as she approached.
He noticed she had two steaming mugs in her hands, walking carefully so as not to spill any of the contents. She held one out to him, which he took in his much larger hands, the contrast between her delicate bone structure and his big paws making an emphatic statement in his mind about the differences between them.
He thanked her as he stood to take the mug, and then, she surprised him by hooking one slipper-shod foot around the leg of the empty chair and drawing it closer. She sat down with him, behind the little desk of the security station, and smiled as if having tea in the middle of the night with a stranger she’d hired to protect her was perfectly normal.
Nick sat back down, leaving as much space as he could between them within the tight confines of the desk area. They both had to rest their hot mugs on the desk, after all, so they needed to squeeze in to be within reach. Plus, he didn’t want her to think he was shying away from her. On the contrary, it was hard to hold a distance with his inner cat wanting to rub right up against her so badly.
What had gotten into him? He’d been around beautiful women before, and none had ever affected his inner beast so much. Although, to be honest, Sullivan wasn’t a classic beauty. She had a sharper edge to her than the porcelain-skinned dolls or darkly curvaceous beauties currently in favor in Hollywood. She had a style all her own that was both striking and nontraditional.
It was her acting ability that had driven her to stardom. Nick had taken time to see her new movie—as well as a few of her older films. He counted it as research but had found himself staring at Sullivan Lane up on the screen for reasons he couldn’t quite define. She intrigued him on every level, and he was hoping like hell that she wasn’t going to turn out to be a rat looking to make an even bigger name for herself by outing shifters to some tabloid.
If she had the proof they feared, she could very well screw up the shifter world with her revelation. No group of shifters wanted to be the one to open that particular can of worms. If the humans did find out, Nick was determined that it wasn’t going to be because of a silly jaguar kid taking a fright. How ignominious.
“So, what do you think of the night shift so far, Nick? I can call you Nick, right?” Her smile was as enchanting in person as it was on the silver screen.
He nodded. “It’s been pretty standard, so far, until you showed up with the tea. Thank you, again, by the way. I’m not a coffee man, so tea is actually perfect for me,” he told her, trying his best to be non-threatening.
His Alpha’s new mate had been calling him Attila the Bodyguard lately, and he didn’t necessarily like it. She had other names for him, too, which weren’t exactly complimentary. Of course, they’d met under trying circumstances when he’d been interrogating her about an attempt on his Alpha’s life. Nick had seen her talking with the gunman before the shooting and justifiably suspected that she might have something to do with the assassination attempt.
He’d done his duty and grilled her for an hour or more before the Alpha had come back with the news that she hadn’t been involved after all. He’d spent the hour doing his own investigation at the hotel, where she and the gunman had coincidentally both been staying, which revealed that not only was she innocent but also, very likely, his mate.
Nick had been as stunned as the rest of the Clan. Mark had searched the world over for his one true mate and had never even come close to finding her. Then, all of a sudden, like lightning, there she was. It had taken a bit of getting used to, but Nick was beginning to like the new Alpha female of the Clan. She had good ideas for the new community they were building and seemed to have her heart in the right place.
There was no forgetting the fact that they had gotten off on the wrong foot. She still wasn’t all that friendly toward him, but he hoped, someday, she’d realize that he’d only been such a hard ass because the safety of his Alpha came first. He hoped, in time, she’d forgive him for being so rough on her. That day hadn’t quite come yet, though.
“A man who likes tea, who isn’t British. Cool. I feel like I just discovered pirate treasure. You’re a rarity, my friend.” She raised her mug in joking salute before taking another sip. “You’re not British, right?” she asked after, her brows drawing together in question.
“I don’t think so,” he replied. “My family hails from various parts of South America, but the States are my home for now.”
“All of them? Or just California?” she teased, a very attractive joyful light shining in her eyes.
“California is the most recent, but I spend a lot of time in New York, too.” He kept his answers deliberately vague.
“An international man of mystery,” she mused. “I like that.”
They sat in silence for a few moments, each enjoying their tea. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, Nick found. Just two souls sharing the quiet of the night. There were hidden depths to Sullivan Lane, he was discovering.
“To answer your question, the night shift suits me just fine,” he said some moments later, hoping to draw her out a bit more. Who knew when he’d have another chance to talk to her like this? He had to develop a feel for her personality in order to gauge how much of a threat she was to his people. Best to not waste any opportunities. “I’m nocturnal by nature, I guess.” An old master at subterfuge, Nick knew just the right amount of truth to add to his words.
“You’re a night owl, huh?” she asked with a slight grin.
“Something like that,” he agreed. Though he had fur, not feathers.
“I’ve worked nights, so I know what you mean. There’s a different energy to the world at night. Sort of crystalline and delicate, yet powerful. I always enjoyed the drive home at four in the morning when almost everyone else was asleep and there was nothing but me and the stars to light my path.”
Hidden depths, indeed.