As the first teacher for Breeds in a public school, Jonas said he considered her a resource and a liability, so he gave her the best to protect her.
A Jaguar Breed. A Cajun who had been buried in the swamps for most of his life, a Jaguar that he had promised was as antisocial as any Breed living. She wouldn’t even know he was around.
Fat chance.
“You shouldn’t eat that.” He took the TV dinner that she had picked up out of her hand and replaced it in the freezer. “Fresh meat is much better for you.”
Her teeth clenched tighter as a young mother giggled across the aisle, and her dimple-cheeked baby waved shyly at Saban. Evidently, he was social. The young mother blushed prettily, and the little girl’s smile widened as Natalie jerked the dinner back from the shelf and plopped it in her cart before moving on.
This wasn’t going to work. She was going to end up jumping his bones, and if she did that, she might as well shoot herself. Why wait for those sneaky Council soldiers she was told still lurked in the shadows? She’d take care of it herself.
“That boxed food will give you a heart attack before you’re forty,” he murmured as he followed her. “Are you always so stubborn?”
She clamped her lips tight and moved on.
All she wanted to do was buy some groceries, go about her business in relaxed comfort, and get ready for the coming school year. She didn’t want to deal with a Breed who didn’t have an antisocial bone in his tall, hard, handsome, too-damned-arrogant body and made her heart race, her lips tingle for a kiss, and her thighs weaken in need.
“You are going to hurt my feelings, boo, if you keep refusing to talk to me.” He sighed as she moved into the checkout lane and began lifting her purchases to the counter.
He moved to her side and began taking items out of her hand and placing them himself with an amused quirk to his lips and laughter gleaming in his dark green eyes.
That laughter was almost impossible to ignore. Bodyguards were to be seen, not heard, she told herself.
Who could have known that the normally taciturn, sober, somber, quiet Breeds could have a complete anomaly in their midst? This breed was a maniac. He drove a twenty-year-old four-by-four black pickup that sounded like a monster growling. She couldn’t even step in it by herself for God’s sake.
He flirted. He cooked food so spicy hot the fire department should be put on call, and he watched cartoons. He didn’t watch action movies or the news, hated the world events channel, and flat-out refused to watch any of the documentaries concerning the Breed creation.
If he wasn’t watching cartoons, he was watching history or baseball. He watched baseball with such complete absorption that she wondered if he would notice a Council soldier walking in front of him.
He was taking up more room than her ex-husband had and invading her life more fully. It was going to have to stop before she lost her heart.
As her cart emptied, she moved forward, paid for her purchases, and smiled at the young man bagging and loading them back into the cart. That smile froze on her face as she heard a growl behind her. The lanky young man loading the bags paled, fumbled the bag that held her eggs, and swallowed tightly, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
Yeah, that was something else he did. He growled. He growled at the delivery guy, he growled at the mailman, and he actually snarled when one of the other Breed males had stopped to talk to her while she was in a department store in town.
Natalie wiped her hand over her face and took her cart after paying for her purchases. She stalked outside to her car, fury pumping through her system.
This was supposed to have been an independent move. Away from friends and family and her ex-husband. Away from preconceived notions of who or what she should be so she could just be herself for a change. Instead, she was babysitting a snarly Breed male who made zero sense to her and threatened to invade her heart as well as her life.
“Here, boo, let me.” He took the keys from her hand as she pulled them from her purse and moved to open the back of the compact SUV the Breed Ruling Cabinet had given her to drive while employed to teach their children.
She was the first teacher to be allowed to teach Breed children who wasn’t a Breed. This was also the first year a Breed child had been allowed in a public school. And she was going to have a nervous breakdown before the news of it ever hit the world.
“I’ll follow you back to the house. I have one of those barbecue grills that I saw on television the other day. I could fix steaks tonight.” He gave her a mocking yet hopeful look.
“You didn’t buy steaks.” She broke her silence, it was just too much. A Breed who was going to grill steaks, and he hadn’t even bought any.
He smiled, satisfaction curving lips that were too damned eatable for her peace of mind. She wanted to take a bite out of them. Taste them. Devour them. And there wasn’t a chance in hell she was going to allow that to happen.
“They’re in the cooler in the truck.” He nodded to the black behemoth parked beside her little dove gray front-wheel-drive SUV. It gleamed, black and sinister. She almost smiled, almost softened.
Natalie shook her head, jerked her keys from his hand, and stalked to the driver’s door of her own vehicle. She hit the lock release on the key and pulled the door open before stepping into the sweltering confines of the interior.
She didn’t check to see where he was; checking meant she cared, and she wasn’t giving in to it. She drove back to the little two-story house just outside town, pulled into the driveway, and stormed to the house. She didn’t bother with the groceries; he was just going to beat her to them anyway.
Instead, she left the door open and entered the house, aware of the disapproval that followed her inside. She wasn’t supposed to enter the house without him; she wasn’t supposed to breathe without him testing the air first; and by God, she was not supposed to melt inside because he did it with such subtle moves that she felt cuddled rather than smothered.
“Chay, you and I are gonna have a talk.” Just as she suspected, he stomped into the house, six feet four inches of irritated male, decked out in denim and boots as he plopped the groceries on the table.
Natalie stared at the bags and wondered if her eggs had a hope in hell of having survived intact. Anger surged inside her, but it was at herself more than at him. Anger that she was letting another man close, risking her heart and her independence on a man she knew would be impossible to get out of her system.
“You know,” she finally said carefully, “I do have a name.”
She lifted her gaze to him, adopting her most severe expression. The one she reserved for the most difficult of children. And it didn’t even seem to faze him.
He glowered down at her, his head bent, his shoulder-length, straight black hair falling around the face of a fallen angel. Green eyes glittered with sparks of irritation, and his expression was too damned sensual to be scary in anything but the most primal of ways.
Oh yeah, Saban Broussard terrified her. She was scared to death she was going to lose control and jump his bones one night when he was parading half-naked around her house. Wouldn’t that look good on her résumé?
“I know your name, boo,” he growled. “As well I know who your bodyguard is. Me. You do not run from me like a scared little rabbit scurrying from sight. I won’t have it.”
“You won’t have it?” She widened her eyes in amazement. “Excuse me, Mr. Broussard, but you do not have a leash around my neck or ownership papers with my name on them. I do as I please.”
“You do not.” His head lowered, his nose nearly touching her, as anger sparked inside her like wildfire flaring out of control.
Her hands pushed out, flattening against his chest and trying to push him back. Trying, because he wasn’t budging an inch.