There was a long silence. She was breathing hard as if she’d been running a long distance. Just because she came from a line of shifters didn’t mean she had a leopard, or that she knew she was a shifter. Men had their leopards nearly from the time they were born, where as women often weren’t aware of their leopards until the leopard and the woman both had the same hormone cycle. Sometimes that never happened and the leopard never emerged. Still, most shifters were in good shape, and she shouldn’t be so out of breath.
He studied her deliberately, drawing out the silence. She had unusual eyes, green with golden flecks, and he recognized the eyes of a female leopard immediately. He also became aware of Shturm’s reaction to the woman. It was an easing of tension out of the big cat. The claws seemed to retract slowly and he simply went quiet, almost as if, like Sevastyan, he was observing the woman instead of reacting negatively toward her.
Shturm hated all humans and let his human counterpart know at every opportunity. It was rare for him to go quiet, and that alone kept Sevastyan from saying anything to dispel the rising tension between the woman and himself—not that he wanted to. She needed to take responsibility for his time away from Mitya. His job as his cousin’s bodyguard was important.
Looking down at her red-gold-tipped lashes that had swept down to veil the expression in her green eyes, a curious emotion gripped him, one he couldn’t recognize. She had a generous mouth, beautiful lips, very red, although there was a smudge of dirt near the corner on the left side he could barely keep from leaning down to wipe away with the pad of his thumb.
“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she started. Her tone was soft. Pleasing. There was no remorse, but her voice did tremble the least little bit.
He frowned, his eyes on that little smudge. He took a step toward her, caught her chin in a firm grip and angled her face toward the sun. “What the hell happened? Did someone hit you?”
There was barely controlled fury in him, although his voice sounded the way it always did—calm. He knew someone had struck her. Recently. Within the last half hour. That was the reason she was late. While he’d been pacing up and down in his front room, furious at her, some asshole had hit her. Struck a woman. When he turned her face toward the sun, he caught sight of a large lump on the side of her head, up high in the hairline. Hidden, but it was there. He forced himself to let go of her.
She glanced over her shoulder as if it was possible she was being pursued. She hesitated, as if she might not answer, or she might try to lie, but then she simply told him the truth. “Unfortunately, yes, I’m so sorry. I know we’re getting off to such a bad start, and it’s so unprofessional. Our company is really the best. We’ve just had bad timing with our scheduled meetings. I really tried to get here but . . .” She was babbling. The words stumbling over one another.
“Ms. Carver,” Sevastyan interrupted, his voice a whip. He was used to giving commands and having them obeyed. He’d been trained from the time he was a young boy and as he had taken over the duties of head of security for his cousin, his natural dominant character had come out more and more. “Tell me what happened.”
She stood blinking up at him. She was already more than a foot shorter than he was and with him standing a step above her, it only added to her diminutive stature. Once he realized what that smudge was and had seen that swelling on the side of her head, Sevastyan hadn’t brought her fully into the house, where she might feel vulnerable alone with him. Still, he intended to take advantage to get the information he needed to hunt down whoever had struck her.
Flambé shrugged in an attempt to be casual, but the movement hurt and she winced visibly. “There’s a man who is very angry with me for a lot of different reasons. I refused to take his calls and he’s been watching me. I called the police and reported him numerous times, but because he hasn’t actually done anything, well, until now, they said there wasn’t anything they could do.”
“He’s stalking you.”
She made a face. “I hate using that word because it sounds like something everyone uses now, but yes. He turns up everywhere I go. He stands across the street from places I go to eat with my friends. I made him angry. I should have just kept quiet, but I got so sick of him always pushing at me. I confronted him and told him to keep the hell away from me.”
Sevastyan detested that she thought she had to be the one to give in to her stalker’s demands in order for her to have peace. That was what the women in their lair felt; in the end, all of them knew they would be murdered and yet they quietly accepted their fate. There was no rising up. No fighting back. Again, that place inside of him that roared with rage turned red with anger, threatening to erupt like an angry volcano, but on the outside, he appeared completely calm. He had to. The last thing this woman needed was to fear him.
“Why do you think you should have to keep quiet? He’s the one doing something wrong, not you. You had every right to tell him to stay away from you, although you shouldn’t have been alone when you confronted him.”
“I wasn’t when I confronted him. But he waited until I was coming out here and he forced me off the road.” Her entire body was shaking, whether she was aware of it or not.
Sevastyan was unprepared for Shturm’s furious reaction. The leopard leapt at him, raking and clawing for freedom as if he would go hunting right then and find Flambé’s stalker. Sevastyan remained absolutely expressionless but he couldn’t stop himself from stepping in to her and circling her the way his leopard would, inhaling as he did so. The moment he did, his leopard went crazy. He felt a little insane himself. Her stalker was leopard. He wasn’t Amurov. He wasn’t from Russia, or from one of the lairs Sevastyan was familiar with, but none of that mattered, he was leopard and he was stalking Flambé for a reason.
“He struck you. Hit you. Did he do anything else to you?” Sevastyan forced himself to take a step back when he wanted—no—needed—to yank her closer, spin her around and see for himself.
Flambé frowned and touched the swelling on the side of her head, her hand trembling. She looked confused. “The moment he tried to throw me against the car, I fought him. He punched me and I went down to the pavement and hit my head very hard.”
Sevastyan wanted to pull her close to him, even on the pretense of just steadying her, but the attack had shaken her. Shturm was acting crazy, one minute rolling over and the next struggling to get out. He had to be careful with her.
“He straddled me, grabbing me by my hair, and I kneed him hard, managed to get to my feet and ran for your property. I’d been here a few times with my father so I knew approximately where the trees were the thickest. He’d planted them when I was really young.”
Sevastyan swore to himself. “Is this man someone you know? Someone you were promised to by your father?”
She tilted her head and studied his face for a long moment before answering him. “No. He didn’t know my father. Clearly, you’re aware of what we are or you wouldn’t have been so set on hiring our company.”
“Before we go any further, if I ask you inside, will you be uncomfortable alone with me? There is no one else here. I didn’t know how much you knew about shifters and I wanted a chance to tell you what I needed from you when it came to landscaping without anyone around, but I don’t want you to be in the least uncomfortable. We can discuss this and then business on the outside patio if that is easier for you, but you need to sit down.”