Lady Killer

entered the kitchen, and the dog squeezed past him and went to assume her Sphinx posture on a rug near the door that led to the rest of the house, making it clear to him his admittance went only this far and no farther.

A wave of his hostess’s hand indicated he should sit down at the kitchen table, so he did. He felt as if he’d been called to the principal’s office, which had the effect of rendering him, for one of the few times in his life when in the presence of a beautiful woman, at a loss for something to say.

Since he didn’t seem to be much good at talking to Brooke, he looked across the table at her son, who had hitched himself halfway onto a chair and was studying him solemnly, with his head propped on his hands. “You’re Daniel, right?” Tony held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Tony.”

“I know.” Daniel ignored the hand and, without actually pointing, indicated the laptop computer lying open but dormant on the table. “I Googled you.”

“Ah.” Tony shifted so he was facing the boy more directly, though he was intensely conscious of the kid’s mother drilling holes in the back of his head with those dark blue eyes. “Then you know,” he said earnestly, “that I’ve done photo essays of all kinds of animals. Wolves, elephants, gorillas…”

Daniel nodded. “You’ve been all kinds of places, in wars and disasters and stuff. So how come all of a sudden you want to do a story about one little mountain lion?”

Tony sat back in his chair, and all he could think was, Wow.

Behind him he heard, softly, “I’d like to know the answer to that, too.”

He turned halfway around in his chair, ready to launch into the story he and Holt had concocted, which he now had no real faith was going to hold up under the scrutiny of these two. “Mrs. Grant-”

Her eyes squinched as if she’d felt a sharp pain. “Oh, please don’t call me that. Brooke is fine.”

“Okay…Brooke. Actually,” he said, glad that this was at least partly true, “I’ve been interested in doing a story on exotic animal smuggling and illegal breeding for quite a while. Like, what happens to these animals after their owners decide they can’t or don’t want to take care of them anymore-”

“That’s not-” Daniel began, but a gesture from his mother silenced his protest.

Tony glanced at him, then forged ahead into the part of his story that was somewhat less than truthful. “I was doing research-yeah, okay, I Googled-and the news story about what happened to your, uh, with your cougar came up. At that point it was supposed to have been a case of-” he threw the boy a look of apology “-an unprovoked attack by a wild cougar who’d been raised as a pet.”

This time it was he who held up a hand to hold off Daniel’s furious denial. “So, since I was in Arizona, visiting my mom at the time, and that’s right next door by Texas standards, I decided to come and see if you’d let me use your lion as the focus of my story. I didn’t know until I got here about…what’s been going on.”

He sat back, relieved that he could at least end on a note that was God’s honest truth. “Look, I’m truly sorry. I know this is a bad time for you. But like I said to Daniel, if doing a story on your cougar can help keep her from being put down…”

“Will Lady be on Animal Planet or something like that?” Daniel’s face was flushed and eager, though his eyes remained wary.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. Or National Geographic, maybe. I don’t know at this point.” He didn’t add that if the story was big enough and went the wrong way, it could wind up on some of the crime shows and even on TruTV.

Daniel looked past him and said, “Mom?”

Tony turned to look at her, too, and they both waited for her to say something.

For a long moment she didn’t and just stood there leaning against the kitchen sink, with her arms folded, gazing at her son the way he’d seen his own mother do when she couldn’t think up a good enough reason to tell him no. Finally, she hitched in a breath-the decision had been made-and Tony held his until she said, “Daniel, why don’t you go see if Lady’s up for visitors?” When Daniel seemed about to argue, she added in a firmer tone, “We’ll be out in a minute. I have some questions I need to ask Mr. Whitehall first.”

Daniel slid out of his chair and was out the door in the shot-from-a-cannon manner of little boys everywhere, and the dog rose to her feet, then sat back down and watched him go, clearly torn by this division in her flock. Tony braced himself while Brooke turned her intent gaze his way.

“Mr. Whitehall-”

“Please,” he said, with a teasing parody of her own wince, “call me Tony.”

She didn’t smile-okay, so evidently she wasn’t going to be affected by his charm-as she pulled out the chair her son had just vacated. She sat in it, then once again fixed him with that stare.

He looked back at her, trying to look guileless and all too aware that he’d never been much good at guile, anyway. The air around and between him and the woman seemed to quiver with suspense, until he couldn’t take it anymore and finally had to break it. “Well, okay, you said you had questions.”

“Actually,” she said, with a defensive little jerk of her head, “I’m waiting for you. So go ahead-ask it. The question I know you’re dying to ask.” When Tony just looked at her in a lost kind of way, she gave an impatient wave of her hand. “Oh, come on. Of course, it’s why you’re here. Did I or did I not kill my husband?” She closed her eyes briefly and corrected herself. “Ex-husband. That’s what you really want to know. I can practically hear what’s playing inside your head. Did she really shoot her husband with a tranquilizer gun, then put him in a cage with a mountain lion, frame the lion for the killing and arrange it so her nine-year-old son was the one to find his father’s body and provide her with an alibi?”

“Jeez,” Tony said under his breath, unexpectedly shaken.

She clasped her hands together in front of her and leaned toward him across the table. “Look, I don’t know if I believe your story about Animal Planet and all that, but what you told Daniel is true. You are in a position to maybe save an animal we love from being destroyed. So, I’m willing to let you do your story-or whatever you call it when it’s photographs-as long as you understand it’s to be about the cougar and only that. Nothing else. Not one word or picture of me or Daniel-”

He sat back and let out a breath through pursed lips. “Ma’am, I don’t think that’s possible. It’s your lion. You and your son raised him, you said. I can’t very well leave you out.”

She put a hand over her eyes. “Oh, hell. No. I suppose not.” The eyes hit him again, fierce and bright. “You know what I mean. You are not to make this about what happened to Duncan. What they say I did. Understand?” She waited for his nod, then sat back, looking like she’d just run a race.

She wasn’t ready to trust him.

He’d had some experience coaxing wary creatures into an acceptance of him and his cameras, and he realized that was how he’d begun to think of her-as someone who needed to be wooed. Not as he would a beautiful woman, but as if she were one of the shy, wild things he’d stalked and filmed in their natural habitat. That experience had taught him that the way to win such a creature’s trust was not to press, not to move too fast, but to hold back and let her come to him.

So, instead of accepting her invitation…demand…challenge…and asking her the questions she’d obviously prepared the answers for, he pushed back from the table and asked softly instead, “Can I see her-your lion?”

“Oh,” Brooke said, and he felt he’d won a small victory when she looked taken aback. “Okay. I guess so. Sure.”

Okay, fine. She led him back down the steps and across the yard to the barn in a grumpy silence, more annoyed with herself than with him. So I psych myself up to tell you my story, and now you don’t want to hear it? Fine with me.

So why this odd and completely contrary sense of disappointment?

Maybe because…I really do want to tell him. Maybe because I want so desperately for someone to believe me, and I thought maybe, just maybe, this man who isn’t from around here and doesn’t know Duncan or have any reason to be wary of the local law would listen and believe I’m telling the truth.

But he didn’t seem to want to hear the story from her point of view, which was probably just as well. Her lawyer would have had a fit, anyway.

“Don’t you want to get your camera or something?” she asked as they passed his sleek gray sedan, parked alongside her dusty pickup.

“Animals tend to be suspicious of cameras aimed at them,” Tony explained, aiming that smile across at her as they walked. “I imagine they must look something like guns-a threat, anyway. I like to let animals-people, too, actually-get used to having me around before I start shooting, photographically speaking.”

“I don’t think Lady’s ever seen a gun,” Brooke said, then thought, Not until a couple of days ago,