Connor’s eyes popped open, and he turned to look at Maya. Kat’s lips had parted, her expression one of surprise.
“I’m not pregnant,” Maya whispered harshly. “Sheesh, we just met. I’m just saying…” She scowled at her brother. “Go back to sleep. Or something. Quit staring at me. Kat and I are having a private conversation.” As if they could when they were seated next to each other in such a confined space.
Connor shook his head, closed his eyes, and leaned against the seat back again. But she knew he would be listening to every word.
“Your mother and father had issues, obviously. They weren’t a match.” Kat reached over and squeezed her hand. “If it’s to be, it’ll be. Don’t project your parents’ relationship onto yours. You and Wade are two totally different people.”
“He wanted to meet you in the beginning. He was obsessed with getting to know you,” Maya insisted.
“We’d corresponded. He thought I was a shifter. When he came to Connor for the spare keys to your place, he told me that he would never have changed me. He would have wished me well, thought it was nice that I loved jaguars so much, but that would have been the end of any blossoming relationship.”
Maya stared at her, trying to see the situation in a new light. She stopped short of saying “oh” and let out her breath instead.
Kat smiled at her. “He wished you hadn’t been Connor’s wife. He said it really hit him hard to learn you were Connor’s sister instead.”
Connor didn’t open his eyes, but he smiled a little.
Maya frowned at her brother. If he hadn’t been so overprotective, she might have met someone earlier. Probably everyone who saw them together had the same misconception. “What if… well, if we tried it, what if the relationship didn’t work out?”
“What if it didn’t?” Kat said. “It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”
True. Maya tended to think in terms of all or nothing. “What if I had kids?” Maya could see feeling like her mother, stuck with twins and no one to help out. No father to assist in raising them or love them.
“You’d love them to pieces. I’d become an aunt. Connor would be an uncle, and we’ll have that extended family you always wanted. And you could look for another mate. Your mother isolated herself from others of our kind. She didn’t want another mate, from what Connor says. Seize the moment. Make the most of your relationship with Wade. If it doesn’t work out, at least you can say you gave it your best try.”
“I don’t know.”
“You know, maybe your mother pushed your father out of the house,” Kat said, her words soft as if she was trying to cushion the blow. “Maybe your father wanted to stay.”
Maya shook her head.
“There are always two sides to every story.”
“Okay, so if he wanted to be with her, why didn’t he at least keep in touch with Connor and me? He never did. We were born, and he left.”
“He left after you were born or when he learned of the pregnancy?” Kat asked.
Maya hesitated. Would it have mattered?
His eyes still closed, Connor said under his breath, “When he learned of the pregnancy.”
Kat pondered that for a moment and then said, “What if they had agreed not to have kids and she’d broken the promise? Or what if you weren’t his kids?”
When Maya and her brother and Kat arrived home, they were dead tired, Kat especially. She went straight to bed. But Maya couldn’t help wondering if Kat was right. Was Connor and Maya’s father not truly their father? If he had learned her mother had gotten pregnant by some other man… oh God, what a mess. Then another thought hit her. Everett and Huntley wouldn’t be their cousins.
Connor had to have heard Kat’s question on the plane, yet he hadn’t said a word. Had Kat and her brother already discussed the issue? And he was afraid to mention it to Maya?
Her thoughts scattered when Bear, one of the men who worked for them when they were away, hurried to meet with her and Connor. His wary expression warned her something had gone wrong while they were absent.
He bowed his head a little, looking nervous as the other workers packed up their belongings and placed them in the pickup truck. “We had trouble as soon as Miss Maya left for the airport that morning,” Bear said to Connor.
Connor glanced back at the gardens. “Not another busted water pipe.”
The last time the water bill had cost them a small fortune.
“No, no. A man by the name of Thompson was asking about cats.”
“Cats?” Connor said, his face darkening.
Maya’s heart began racing. Connor had to know that Bear wasn’t talking about the wild kitty cats that meandered through their gardens.
“Jaguars.” Bear looked down at the gravel beneath his feet, as if he was afraid of mentioning the jaguar word to a jaguar god and goddess.
Connor and Maya suspected Bear and his family, who were originally from Columbia, knew they were jaguar shifters, but still, there wasn’t any way they’d come out and tell them the truth.
“The stolen jaguar from the zoo,” Maya reminded her brother.
“Oh, that.” Connor waved the notion away. “No problem. No stolen jaguars here.”
“No.” Bear looked around at the woods as if he was afraid someone might be listening.
Maya glanced around, her eyes narrowed as she watched for any movement other than the leaves fluttering in the hot, humid breeze. She’d never seen the man so anxious before.
Bear swallowed, his eyes on Maya, as if she’d been the one who’d invited all the jaguar gods to the gardens. He whispered, “He said there were four male jaguars. Four of them. One black.” He waited for Connor to acknowledge the sighting.
Connor looked down at Maya as if she was the cause of all the trouble. She shrugged and said, “Thompson must have been drunk.”
Connor nodded. “That would explain it.”
Bear looked from Connor to Maya. But when she just sweetly smiled at him, he nodded and said, “That was it. But he’ll be back. He asked when you were returning, and I told him.”
“You did fine, Bear.” Connor handed him a check. “We’ll see you next time.”
Bear gave a worried smile, then hurried to the truck and drove off with a wave.
Connor escorted Maya into the house before he began questioning her. “How the hell did Thompson see so many of our kind in the gardens?”
“Our cousins fought Bettinger when he came to see me.”
“If you hadn’t gone to the club in the first place, none of this would have happened.”
Ignoring that, she said, “I had no idea Thompson was skulking around in our woods when it all happened. It’s really late, Connor. I’m going to bed.”
Connor shook his head. “Hell. What next?” He plodded off to his bedroom and shut the door with a clunk.
Maya thought about Wade and David. They wouldn’t get in until sometime tomorrow afternoon. She already wished he was in her bed tonight. She glanced at the recliner where he’d slept. It seemed like so much longer than a week ago.
She peered out the kitchen window at the garden, which was peaceful tonight, and thought about her cousins fighting Bettinger in their jaguar forms. Watching the big cats fight in the garden, Thompson must have nearly had a heart attack. Served him right for spying on them. He wouldn’t be able to prove a thing of what he’d seen. Thankfully.
Not that the whole situation should have ever happened in front of the human. They were just lucky he’d been alone. At least she hoped he had been.
Grabbing her bag, she rolled it into her bedroom. She collapsed on her bed and pulled out her phone, then texted Wade.
We’re home. Missing you already.