Just One Taste Part 20

"I have done no such thing!" Sir Joseph bl.u.s.tered. "I loved her! It was never my intention to harm her in any way. Why, she hasn't changed one iota!"

"Exactly. She's had to go through a very long life on the move like a gypsy. Never staying in one place too long. Never letting herself fall in love. Never having children. You stole her youth from her, Joe, even though she hasn't aged a bit. I should fight you. I should knock you right off the deck."

"You propose a fist fight? Like some common brawler? Very well. I suppose you have no rapiers in this G.o.dforsaken hovel anyway." Sir Joseph tossed his ball of light into the air and made to remove his jacket.

"Only my rapier wit, Joe. And I'm not going to use it on you. You're just a sign, Joe. In a few minutes you're going to disappear in a puff of smoke and I'm going to get in bed with my girlfriend. My fiancee. We're going to make love until sunrise. Until we grow old together, G.o.d willing."

"How dare you!"

"I dare because I love her. I love her so much I would never try to change fate for selfish reasons like you did."

"You lie, sirrah! I saw you with my own eyes. You drank that potion and said that incantation."

Cade looked at the dark shadow in the moonlight. "I did it for her, not for me. She might disappear on me just like you're going to. I can barely see you now."

He had to believe his own words. Make them come true. Make his own magic.

"You Abram-cove! You duddering rake! You Tatter-De-mallion!"

"Whatever. I love Juliet. If you love her, you'll leave us alone. Wake her up, Joe. Do the right thing. It's time."

Cade heard a scuffling and creaking. Sir Joseph Barton still wore his corset, by G.o.d. Juliet had said every time her elderly husband moved, he made his own music. Then the hovering light over the deck rail splintered into tiny stars so bright Cade had to close his eyes. Inside both dogs woke up and started to bark frantically.

Juliet opened the French door and flew into his arms. "Are you all right?"

"I think so." The dogs came out too, tumbling around and snuffling. Disappointed, they headed down to the gra.s.s for a midnight call of nature.

"Where is he?" Juliet whispered.

"I think he's gone. I'm not sure he was ever here."

"What do you mean?" Juliet leaned against him. He was freezing out here, bare-chested and barefoot. He wanted her to open her robe and warm him in the best possible way.

"Let's go inside." Cade turned on the overhead light and the cottage blazed. Juliet sat on one of the recliners while he fed more wood into the stove. He found his sweatshirt under a dining chair and put it on.

"Come sit on my lap," he said.

She scrambled from her chair to his, completely obedient.

He cleared his throat. There was a lot about today he didn't understand, that made no empirical sense whatsoever to a guy who made a living writing technical stuff. But the guy who wrote fiction-now, there was some real magic. You wrote it and it came alive. People out of the air, made flesh. Simple plots made complex. Words spoken, made true.

The End.

"I'm cautiously optimistic, Julie. I think we did it."

Her brows furrowed. "How do you know?"

He winked at her. "Only time will tell."

Epilogue.

She was bathed in moonlight, her hair silvery in the dark. He kissed her bare white shoulder as she slept. Rufus the Twelfth snorted on the end of the bed and rolled over in his dog dream. Somewhere across the lake, a loon wailed and was answered.

Loons didn't mate for life; sometimes they even switched partners if the nesting didn't go quite right.

Well, he wasn't a loon in any sense of the word. Being with Juliet was the smartest thing he'd ever done. And their nesting had been more than satisfactory. Forty-two years ago they'd had to add onto the cottage so that it could accommodate the first of what became four chicks. Cade and Juliet had their own bedroom, now. What they'd done tonight would have horrified their children and grandchildren if they'd been around to hear them. Senior citizens weren't supposed to have s.e.x. h.e.l.l, parents of any age weren't supposed to have s.e.x. The thought of it grossed out their kids, who probably wished they'd been conceived through magic.

Cade smiled in the dark. Yeah, he admitted to a little better living through chemistry. Yay for those little pills. Why not take advantage of modern science? If he could make his wife happy, he'd try almost any crazy thing.

Except for magic. The first time was the charm.

The Catalyst

This was originally written on spec for a cat-shifter anthology, and it was the very first rejection I ever received-a "great" rejection which complimented my author voice and made me keep plugging away. It is the oldest and also the most edited novella in this collection. Headhopping R Us was apparently my mantra in 2007, and I hope I've straightened out most of the POV issues in 2015!

Ex-ballplayer Ben Cooper has learned everything he knows about being a shape-shifting panther from the books he's read. It's time to get some paws-on experience at Lyra Anders's exclusive Maine island resort. With one ferry ride, Ben leaves his old world behind and discovers exactly what he wants.

But the pretty innkeeper doesn't like to get up close and personal with just any guest, and Ben is not her type at all. One June afternoon is all it takes to change everything.

Chapter 1.

June

"Here, kitty, kitty."

Lyra Anders reached under the bed and grabbed the first weapon at hand. She lobbed a fuzzy tiger paw bedroom slipper at her brother. Missed him by a mile. Her gla.s.ses were still on the trunk she used as a bedside table, along with the romance novel she put herself to sleep with. She picked up the book. "Get out."

"You won't hit me with that either." Flynn plopped down on the bed. "It's time to wake up, sunshine. Rough night?"

"You know it wasn't." She scooted up against her pillows and put her gla.s.ses on. Tortoise sh.e.l.l to match her golden brown eyes and streaky golden brown hair, which currently looked like she'd ridden around the island in a convertible with the top down. Her skin was golden brown too, the result of spending much of the spring outdoors readying the inn for the first of their summer company that was arriving on the eleven o'clock ferry. She glanced at the clock radio. In five hours.

"Jeez, Flynn, it's 6 A.M.!"

"I've been up for hours. Gotta get in training, Lyra. Tomorrow our guests will be expecting a big breakfast in exactly one hour."

"Yeah, and you're doing all the prep work and cooking, remember? I'm just the hostess. And n.o.body will be down until after eight, anyway. Maybe even nine. That's always the way it is every summer."

Every summer was a bit of an exaggeration. Lyra and Flynn Anders had only been running the Perch for a year. They had quit their "real" jobs and now worked like slavering dogs, as Flynn had once complained. He'd turned handyman, cooked three meals a day and mixed a mean c.o.c.ktail, and Lyra did everything else from wash and change the sheets to flower arranging to soothing ruffled hackles.

By the end of last season they had both smiled so much against their will and stood so long on tired feet they wondered if they should just sell the inn and go back to real life, but the winter had afforded them the opportunity to streamline and subtract their duties so they wouldn't want to immolate themselves by the fourth of July.

Meals could be served buffet and family style. Sheets could be changed every other day. Guests could amuse themselves.

Lyra and Flynn offered two-week sessions from mid-June through Columbus Day at their inherited island retreat for a ridiculously astronomical amount. Their very special guests were ent.i.tled to gourmet dining, kayaking, hiking, swimming, fishing, bicycling, leaf-peeping and limitless discretion. Despite the rates, the inn was already fully booked for the season.

Their grandmother would be spinning in her grave if she had known what the twins had done to her rambling shingled "cottage" on its exclusive Maine island. The old girl had valued her privacy and possessions and twelve bedroom suites. The house had seen plenty of shifter parties in its day, but Lyra and Flynn meant to make some money on the privacy, possessions and bedrooms from shifters like themselves who were looking for someplace to be themselves.

They'd managed to make it through last winter with a little money to spare. It had helped that Lyra did some free-lance website design. Her art degree was finally being put to use after she had spent the five years since college in dead-end office jobs. Flynn had kept an eye on a couple of empty summer houses, plowed snow, tutored a couple of island kids and pulled in enough.

Enough for Lyra to replant the gardens with plenty of catmint and white perennials that reflected the moonlight. Enough to advertise on the Frisky Felines website, a cat shifter singles dating site. Tonight every bed would be slept in-that is, if sleep was desired. Lyra figured most of the guests would be rolling in the fresh-cut gra.s.s watching the moon's beam waver on the water. Engaging in a little tumble and personal grooming. She felt a little shiver as she imagined a nice warm rough tongue right where she wanted it.

A few weeks of the summer were dedicated to family-style vacations. Couples came with their kits and explored the fourteen-mile jumble of rocks and fields and sandy beaches that made up Jessie's Island. But Lyra and Flynn had decided to start their season off with a bang, so to speak. Single cats who'd been confined to city suits and sunless canyons would be able to let loose under the clear skies and ocean breezes of Maine.

The Perch was down a meandering peastone drive, obscured from the road by a thick pine forest. There was plenty of acreage to roam for her fellow shifters, and no worry that she and Flynn would be alarmed at any unusual midnight yowling. In fact, Lyra planned on welcoming her guests personally. She had a winter-long itch, and was hoping one of the male guests could be persuaded to scratch it.

The island pretty much shut down to visitors from October through May, and none of the local boys had any appeal for Lyra. Although there were a couple of burly lobsterman who talked a good game about hunting and local wildlife, she doubted they'd be able make it through her transition alive.

Good thing the island was too small for the discharge of firearms, or she and Flynn might have found themselves mounted over somebody's beachrock fireplace if they'd been spied running loose in their natural state. Cougars were rare enough in Maine. Only two had been sighted in the last decade and that was just how she and Flynn liked it.

But in five hours, well, four hours and forty-five minutes now, cars would be rolling off the ferry and down the island's single looping road to the Perch. Flynn would have a simple lunch of lobster salad sandwiches, chips, fruit, cookies, beer and wine for them. She'd distribute the info packets with maps and recommendations, do a little ice-breaking. There were new bicycles in the barn for day trips, and new kayaks in the boathouse. A family-style dinner was served at eight in the paneled dining room, and after that- Lyra grinned to herself. She was going to get lucky, or pretty much die trying.

There was something soothing about the gla.s.sy gray water and green hillocks as the old white ferry plowed across the bay. Ben Cooper sat in his car with the windows down. His dark hair was whipped by the same wind that propelled a few scattered sailboats. He could see a square lighthouse in the distance.

He thought he'd already figured who the shifters were as they'd waited in the twenty-car ferry line, and not just because most of them were driving late model SUVs and cars as opposed to the rusty trucks the islanders seemed to favor. He knew as well as anybody that while lobstermen and carpenters always downplayed how much they made, they did pretty well and could have afforded more than the gimme caps and plaid shirts they wore and the junkers they drove. But there was a tension in the air, practically a vibration, coming from certain quarters.

It was still a little too early in the season for the New York and Philadelphia summer people to invade the quiet of Jessie's Island, and that was fine by Ben. He'd spent enough time the past two years teaching and coaching in a private boarding school filled with their kids.

In fact, he'd first heard of Jessie's island from Trevor Angus Howard the Third, his star pitcher and a summer resident. Thank G.o.d the kid was with his parents and sisters in Tuscany, because Ben didn't want to have to stay prim and proper one more day. For longer than he cared to consider, he'd felt like a guy wearing a shirt collar that was two sizes too small. It was time to loosen the tie and let the b.u.t.tons fly.

He'd tapped into his savings for this vacation when he first read about the Perch on Frisky Felines. His salary was nothing to write home about now, if he'd still had a home. His current faculty apartment was nothing to brag about either. He'd seen the inside of more impersonal hotel rooms than any guy should. His major league career had turned out to be in the minors, and once he'd trashed his shoulder, his pitching days were done.

He had been twenty-four then and unemployed. But he'd always liked kids and had some student teaching under his belt, thanks to the nagging of his parents. They had taught middle school kids for a thousand years and were more than pleased with his choice. Cranford Academy needed a health teacher and baseball coach, and he guessed he needed Cranford Academy. After the headmaster explained part of his "benefits" included an apartment attached to a dormitory with a dozen kids and three meals in the school dining hall seated with his advisees every day, he'd almost turned the job down. But he was looking for some structure in his life now that he couldn't play ball anymore.

In fact, he'd thrown himself into structure for years-scaffolding, mummification practically, ever since the first night he'd gone from teenage boy to panther. The girl he'd been with fainted dead away as he'd retracted his claws and played dumb when she came to. Playing dumb was not hard, because his transformation had been as much of a shock to him as it had to poor Heather O'Reilly.

His family couldn't help him; he'd been adopted as an infant. A kitten, he thought wryly, and they didn't have a clue as they'd tucked him in at night and read him The Jungle Book. He hadn't even been able to talk them into extending his curfew past 11 P.M. in high school, they were that strict.

What was he supposed to do, go home and say, "Hey. guys, I wonder if you can help me. The other night when I was trying to screw this girl, I turned into a big black cat?"

They would have locked him up in a loony bin somewhere.

Thank G.o.d for the Internet. It had taken him a while, but he finally figured out what was going on, and it had scared the s.h.i.t out of him. He discovered that what had happened with Heather was an aberration, that his general all-around teenage horniness had inadvertently triggered the panther part of him. Usually shifting was an organized, planned process. There were actual words to say. It was true sometimes the change became involuntary, if you were physically threatened, overstimulated or exposed to violence.

He wondered if shifter soldiers through the ages had thrown down their guns, turned and just ate their enemies.

And Ben guessed he'd really lucked out. If he'd changed in the act of taking poor Heather to teenage boy's heaven, he would have killed her if she hadn't been a shifter too. And if she had been, he would have had to marry her and make her his life mate. Not exactly what he had in mind when he tried to get into her pants after the junior cla.s.s winter formal. The whole destined mate thing was something even now he didn't much want to experience, even though a decade had pa.s.sed.

He'd read every word about controlling his transformations and channeled all his powers away into sports. Soccer, wrestling, baseball. Lacrosse and rugby when he could find kids who knew the rules.

He was fast. He was strong. He was scared. He'd spent almost ten years surrounding himself with people who didn't give him time to get in touch with his animal side except in an organized sports way. But his animal side was banging on the door right now, and the sooner he got to the island to open that door, the happier he'd be.

He'd checked out the shifter girls already as they'd sauntered between the ferry terminal and their nice clean cars. He just knew. The animal instinct thing was no lie. Funny how shifters hadn't seemed to settle in his part of Connecticut when he was growing up, the raven-haired adopted son of blond school teachers. He'd never, ever sensed-no, smelled-anything like what was wafting across the parking lot here on the Maine coast.

The females were sleek. Self-confident. The Perch guaranteed each singles session was equally divided between males and females, so mating was an unstated but foregone conclusion. He wondered which one-or more-he'd wind up with tonight.