She paused before she sent it. The message sounded too needy. Too personal. Too intimate. Too permanent. She erased Missing you already and tried to think of how to end it. She thought about mentioning Thompson, but that would only concern the brothers, and they were still in Belize City and unable to do anything about him.
See you tomorrow evening at the club. Night.
How to end it? Maya? Love, Maya? Too intimate. She sighed. She was overthinking it. Or TTYL, as in talk to you later. That could work.
She stared and stared and stared at the message as if it would tell her how to sign off. Hell. She signed it: Maya.
“We have our marching orders,” Wade said to his brother as he put away his phone before boarding the plane.
“Is Martin okay with us setting something up at the dance club?” David asked.
They showed their boarding passes to the airline staff. “Yeah. He doesn’t want Kat there, though. With her being pregnant, if something goes wrong, he’s afraid she might be injured.”
“Connor won’t want to leave Kat home alone, but he won’t want his sister in the fray, either.”
David and Wade took their seats on the half-empty plane.
“The good news is that Martin got hold of Maya’s cousins, Huntley and Everett. They’re arriving this afternoon. They’re going to help with our case,” Wade said.
David smiled. “Whose idea was that?”
“The brothers. Martin went along with it, but if he’d wanted to give them another case to work on instead, they weren’t buying it.”
“Good. So… are they meeting us at the club or taking care of Kat?”
As the plane took off, Wade leaned against the seat and closed his eyes. “They wanted to drop by the Andersons’ place, meet Kat and Connor, and bring Maya to the club if she’s willing.”
“Are you going to dance with Candy if she’s there?”
Wade opened his eyes and looked at his brother. “Now, how am I going to win Maya over if I’m chasing some human woman at a club?”
David smiled at him. “Just thought you were up for the game of trying to learn more about Bettinger since he’d given her his real name and asked her out. Besides, maybe if you danced with Candy, Maya would change her mind about seeing other guys.”
“Or be so annoyed with me that she would see only other guys.”
David shook his head and ordered a cup of orange juice from the hostess.
“Two,” Wade said, holding up two fingers.
“Have Huntley or Everett heard back from their sister, Tammy?”
Wade frowned at David. “Why? You’re not hoping to meet her, are you? She wouldn’t come to the club the first time because she was busy having a date with a human.”
“No. Remember what the brothers said? They were having her look into the situation concerning the missing jaguar from the Oregon Zoo.”
“Thompson,” Wade said, recalling the man who was searching for the stolen jaguar. “Hell. I forgot all about him. Connor will have a fit if the man bothers them when they get home.”
“At least Connor won’t allow Thompson to badger Maya any further. Maybe Tammy’s got some good news. If she’s found the stolen jaguar, that’ll be the end of that problem. Besides, surely Thompson wouldn’t be hanging around all this time while the Andersons were in Belize, waiting for their return. Don’t you imagine he’d be off somewhere else looking for clues?”
“Yeah.” Wade leaned his head against the seat. If Thompson had been a shifter, Wade would have liked him for his obvious concern for the missing jaguar. But because Thompson had targeted Maya, believing she had something to do with the stolen cat, Wade was ready to tear him apart if he harassed her any further.
As if he was afraid to ask the most important question until last, David finally said, “Did you hear from Maya yet?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d she say?”
Wade smiled at his brother.
“Well? Was she all gushy? Saying she missed you terribly? Or is there hope for me yet?”
Wade knew his brother was teasing him. He shook his head and drank his orange juice, but didn’t say. It was what Maya didn’t say that made him smile again.
When they arrived in Houston, they got a rental car and drove to their hotel.
Dumping his bag on the floor of the economy hotel room, Wade noted the two queen-sized beds with standard floral bedspreads, the television, writing desk, and black-out curtains for sleeping late. He checked his phone to see if he’d gotten any messages from Maya or Martin.
“I’m taking a shower, then getting some sleep,” David said, “before we have dinner and go to the club.”
“Just texting Maya to let her know that we’re here.”
Maya,
David and I arrived early. We’re staying at the Santa Anna Inn in Houston. Look forward to seeing you soon. Wade
He heard the shower end.
David walked out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. “Did she respond?”
“That had to be the quickest shower you have ever taken.”
David usually used up all the hot water before Wade could take a shower when they shared a room. He wondered if David was afraid he’d miss out on hearing from Maya.
“I wasn’t very dirty,” David said with a gleam of amusement shining in his eyes.
“There was no response from her. She might be out checking on the garden.”
Wade headed for the bathroom, and David pulled his phone out.
“Don’t you text her, too,” Wade said, a warning in his voice. Before he closed the bathroom door, he saw his brother gave him an evil smile.
Chapter 21
That night, when Wade and his brother arrived at the club, Wade couldn’t help but look for Maya. Maybe he should have been more concerned about watching for Lion Mane, Candy, and whoever else might lead them to clues about the buyer, but Maya had been all he could think of since he left her at the airport yesterday afternoon. He half expected to see her and her hulking cousins, but there was no sign of her.
“She can’t be here yet,” David said, bumping Wade’s arm as he motioned to an empty table. The club was filling up fast. “Huntley and Everett’s flight wouldn’t have arrived that early, and then they still had the drive out to her place. She won’t be here for another hour or so.”
“We should have picked her up.”
“They wanted to meet Connor or Kat. They’ll be here.”
Wade hoped they’d all be more prepared tonight. Martin had checked out Houston and the surrounding communities for any other place that the buyer might go, but he’d concluded that as territorial as cats were, this was it. He’d also researched Thompson’s background and discovered he had been rescuing animals from hunters from the time he was ten years old. He was definitely one of the good guys where wild animals were concerned. If the zoo man had been a jaguar shifter, Martin would have already recruited him.
The music was playing and the drinks flowing while David and Wade spent more than three hours observing the crowd. Then Wade smelled Maya’s sweet fragrance and instantly stood up from his seat. Despite the mob, he glimpsed her headed in their direction.
He just gaped at her. She was wearing a sexy red minidress with a low-cut bodice showing off the swell of her breasts. Wade wished he could take off his shirt and cover her, feeling that she was way too exposed for this horde. Before he could greet her, Maya rushed between him and his brother, brushing against them the way cats would in greeting when they didn’t move out of her way fast enough.
They just stared after her before they followed her, Wade wishing she hadn’t left her sweet scent on his brother, too.
“Where are your cousins?” Wade asked, just short of tacking on a “damn it.”