Tiger Magic

“No, I’ve got it. I want to.” Being driven around in Ethan’s expensive cars or in the limos he hired for special nights out had made her feel like a princess. But today Carly wanted to feel powerful, like a kick-ass chick in a superhero movie.

She waited until Tiger and Ellison were settled inside the car before she opened the garage door, started up, and backed out. The neighbors wouldn’t be able to miss Tiger sitting in the front seat with her, but they’d be more freaked out if they caught the whole massive bulk of him.

Ethan didn’t live far away, time-wise, but his neighborhood might as well have been on another planet. People with big money lived on this hill above the river and had either inherited their riches or made money through the big corporations that had settled in Austin, or both.

When Carly pulled into Ethan’s long driveway, she felt both sick to her stomach and elated. Yesterday—had it been only yesterday?—she’d driven here so secure in the knowledge that she was going to marry a rich, successful, stable man. A man not at all like her father, a man who was already planning what they’d do on their ten-year anniversary. Someone who wouldn’t disappear into the night, leaving her with all his debts and nowhere to live.

Ethan’s obvious indifference toward her had kicked her in the teeth. Carly still didn’t know who the woman had been. Someone from work? Friend of a friend?

Did it matter? It was over. Carly had her job, she had friends and her mama and sisters, and she didn’t need Ethan. And now she was making friends with Shifters and carrying around men wrapped in duct tape in the trunk of her car. Strange how the entire world could change in one crazy afternoon.

Carly still had her keys to Ethan’s house. She unlocked and opened the front door, not bothering to knock.

Tiger and Ellison followed her in, Tiger in his usual silence, Ellison carrying the box of stuff Carly had brought with her. Ellison observed his surroundings with interest, but Tiger behaved as though he couldn’t care less where they were. Didn’t seem to mind that he was revisiting a place where he’d been shot yesterday either. Trauma like that was supposed to linger in the psyche, but Tiger walked into the house with complete indifference.

Ellison whistled. “Shit, what a spread. I could go for this.”

At one time, Carly could have too. She’d loved imagining herself living in this splendor. Now the decor seemed overdone and cold.

They went through the palatial front hall with its graceful spiral staircase and on through the massive living room, toward the kitchen. The pristine furniture in the living room had been overturned, and the door to Ethan’s study hung off its hinges, the doorframe splintered.

“Did you do that?” Carly asked Tiger.

Tiger nodded without speaking, but he had a satisfied glint in his eye.

“Good,” Carly said.

As they strode into the huge kitchen, Ethan, phone in hand, rose from a table that held his laptop and a mess of papers. “Carly? What the hell . . . ? I need to call you back,” Ethan said into the phone before he clicked it off and dropped it to the table. “Carly, what the f**k are you doing bringing that back in here?” He pointed an unsteady finger at Tiger. “He attacked me. He nearly killed me.”

“And you shot him in the stomach,” Carly returned. “Seven times.” She motioned for Ellison to put the box on the table, which he did, letting it thump down. Carly started going through it, trying to ignore Ethan.

Why had she ever thought Ethan handsome, fun, charming? He had a rather small face, which went with the compact body he kept honed by working out with a trainer. His dark hair was perfectly cut and combed, his nails manicured. He was the epitome of the young man who’d made it.

Ethan had picked out a wife who knew how to smile at people and throw parties. Of course he had—Carly had met Ethan at the gallery when he’d come in to look at some art for his office. He’d wanted to pick out the art himself, he said, because he was the one who had to look at it all day. Carly, for some reason, had thought this showed depth of character.

She understood better now. Ethan was just fussy and didn’t trust anyone. He’d wanted to marry Carly, she realized, because he’d been looking for someone who knew how to give dinner parties and impress clients. In other words, he’d wanted his own personal caterer and receptionist. In return, Carly would get to live in a big house on the river with a pool and a view and money to do whatever she wanted. She would quit her job, of course, because any job in the art world was dead-end.

All that might have been fine if Ethan had loved and cherished her, if he’d had any compassion in him, any respect. Looking back, Carly had to wonder if Ethan even liked her.

“He looks fine to me,” Ethan snapped, glaring at Tiger. “Obviously I missed him or just grazed him.”

“Show him, Tiger.”

All this time, Carly had been hearing Tiger’s low growls, which strengthened whenever she drew closer to Ethan, lessened when she moved away. She liked it—like a Geiger counter indicating when she was getting too near Ethan’s tainted presence.

Tiger inched up his T-shirt to expose a stomach of a tightness Ethan tried desperately to achieve. The pink scars of the healed bullet holes pockmarked Tiger’s abdomen.

“See?” Ethan said, though he sounded less certain. “They must have glanced off.”

“No,” Ellison said from right next to Ethan. “They didn’t. Went straight inside and had to be dug out. But Shifters heal fast.”