Jaguar Fever

Chapter 20

When Maya kissed Wade good-bye at the airport, she felt as if he was going off to war or something—or she was. Maya couldn’t help feeling awful, but she was annoyed with herself. What was wrong with her?

As soon as she entered the plane, she knew what was wrong. In her heart she was already falling for the hunky jaguar shifter. Afraid that she was going to be like her mother and her father with their doomed relationship, she was trying hard to keep her emotions intact and maintain some distance from the cat who made her hot with just a whisper of a kiss or a caress of his fingers across her bare skin. Distancing herself from him wasn’t working.

The problem was trying to figure out what made for the perfect couple. As she and her brother and Kat flew home, Maya stared out the window at the majestic cotton-white thunderheads hanging aloft in the clear blue sky.

Connor and Kat’s relationship was close to being perfect. Sure they’d argue sometimes, but making up seemed to be wonderful. She hadn’t seen Connor this happy in years, and Kat was so much like family that it was if she had always been with them. Being with Connor was home for Kat.

Maya couldn’t believe that Wade would be willing to move to Texas to live near her family. What was not to love about him? The notion that he’d want to return with her to Belize when Kat and Connor couldn’t was just as appealing.

She sighed and glanced over at Kat, who was sitting in the middle seat beside her, watching her. Connor had closed his eyes, head leaning against the reclined seat, his hand clasping Kat’s. He was in his shielding and territorial male jaguar persona—sitting in the aisle seat, claiming this row, protective of his wife and sister. As if anyone was going to bother them on the flight. Still, it was an instinctive part of his behavior.

“What?” Maya mouthed to her virtual sister, wondering what she wanted to discuss because Kat wouldn’t be staring at her if she didn’t want to talk about some issue—most likely one that Maya wasn’t interested in discussing. At least not on the plane while Connor listened in.

Kat smiled. “You love him. Don’t deny it.”

Maya frowned at her, really not wanting to bring the topic of Wade up right now. She was too unsettled about her thoughts concerning him. “He’s pretty nice.”

“But?”

Maya sighed. “What if it doesn’t last? What if after the babies came…”

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.”