Binds that Burn: A Werepanther Romance Suspense (Urban Dwellers Book 3) Page 12

  “I understand you feel guilty about all of this, Eric. I get it. But you don’t need to go overboard. If you insist on sending me with a bodyguard somewhere so I don’t hurt anyone if a transition accidentally happened, fine. But why does it have to be you?”

  That was an interesting question, and Eric wondered how much he really wanted to tell her. How much he needed to tell her. He was tempted to lie. But he was well aware that every minute that flew by was another minute that potentially took Nina away from him. He didn’t know what he would do with the rest of his life if she disappeared from it. Shifters mated for life, and it was exceedingly rare for fate to produce another mate if the first one died. It was why fated mates usually died so close together. The idea that Nina would be taken away from him was far scarier to Eric than the idea that his own life might soon end afterward.

  “Obviously, I feel like it should be me because I am the one who caused this situation.”

  Nina shook her head. “I’m not buying it, Eric. You guys do things all the time that have negative consequences for people all across the city. I don’t see you getting involved in all of those.”

  That was something that he wanted to dig into a little bit more, but he didn’t have the patience for that now.

  “I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about, but the fact of the matter remains that it has to be me because I care about you.” There. He’d said it. He had shown her a side of him that was vulnerable. He wasn’t quite willing yet, though, to go any deeper than that.

  “You care about me? Why didn’t you care about me three years ago that? You said then that we had something special. I know that was in one of your moments when you stopped playing the part of some larger than life caricature. It’s the part of you that you won’t allow people to see, but I did, and I believed you. I had started to change everything in my life because of it.”

  Eric was starting to see that what had transpired between them before was the crux of their problem, and, once again, it was all his fault. He had been scared. What Nina represented in his life then was something that he didn’t quite understand or perhaps had even thought could be part of his future. Plus, she was human. The chip on her shoulder that she had about shifters while well understood, was something that he wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to get over. But still she had stayed with him. The idea that she would grow to hate him had scared him more than anything else. He had let her go so that could never happen.

  “That was three years ago. This is now,” he said, trying to keep them focused on the task at hand.

  “No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to control the situation. It’s messy, and it’s emotional, and it’s my life.” He could see the sheen of tears in Nina’s eyes. Her wildly fluctuating emotions had taken her off on another tangent. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and protect her.

  In fact, he couldn’t keep his hands from reaching across the space between them. She scooted away from him, though. She was like a caged animal when it came to him. But yet he sensed that deep down inside, she wanted him to comfort her. Eric wasn’t the nurturer. He wasn’t the one who displayed his emotions like that. He had always been raised to believe it was a sign of weakness to show those kinds of emotions. But here, with Nina, he was starting to understand that it was not only needed but perhaps necessary.

  “I’m not trying to control you. I don’t need to control everything in my life,” he said.

  Nina started to laugh. It was the opposite of the emotion that he knew she was feeling. He wondered if there was anything else he could do to help control that. It was likely going to start becoming more obvious as they went on throughout the day. “You are the biggest control freak I’ve ever met in my life,” she said. “The fact that you would say you don’t try to control everything with a straight face is hilarious. You don’t know what to do yourself with yourself when you can’t control the situation.”

  “I lied.” He didn’t know where the admission had come from. That absolutely wasn’t what he was expecting to say. Nina looked at him in surprise.

  “Lied about what?”

  To keep her safe, he needed her to trust him. He needed her to understand that he did care about her. It was time to come clean. “I lied about seeing someone else back then.”

  The look of shock and then outrage on Nina’s face almost caused him to ricochet back in his seat. He could see the gears turning in her head as she processed this information. “Why would you lie? And why are you telling me now?”

  “Well, I would think the answer to the second question is obvious. If you’re hung up on what happened between us in the past, then it’s time you knew the truth. I lied. I lied because I was afraid.”

  “So the woman? The blonde that I saw you in all the papers with? That wasn’t a thing?”

  It was a secret that even Tony and Kyle didn’t know. They both thought that he and Sophie had dated a couple of times right at the end of his relationship with Nina. They thought that there had been a romantic link between them. Sophie had started out as an employee of the Urban Dwellers from day one. He had hired her to make a couple of appearances with him right after his big blowout with Nina.

  When Sophie had realized the full extent of what he was doing and why, she quit. To keep her quiet, he offered her the job as the bar manager at the Urban Dwellers club. It was a secret she had never let him forget.

  “You lied to me about having an affair while we were together because you were afraid.” Nina was trying to put the puzzle pieces together in her mind; he could see that. When she said it out loud, it sounded thin and incredibly immature. But Eric knew that was who he was. He was all surface and no depth. He was immature. Seeing himself reflected in the mirror of the expression on Nina’s face made him realize that that was not who he wanted to be anymore.

  Eric was ready for something new. He was ready to take the next step.

  This idea stunned him to his core, and the fact that it had come on the heels of potentially losing his mate forever was unacceptable.

  “I’m not proud of it. You wanted to know what happened between us. That was what happened. But it’s different now.”

  “Different how? The only reason we’re talking now is because of your case. The fact that you were accused of killing a woman who is currently running around the city not dead. Or something. If this hadn’t happened, I would never know the truth.”

  “Fate works in mysterious ways,” Eric said slowly. He was starting to understand the whole fate thing. It was true that he did not like losing control, but it did seem as if the universe was converging to give him a big, swift kick in the ass.

  “Fate? Fate,” Nina repeated the word, and he could tell that she wasn’t buying it.

  He pushed forward with what he was staying. ““I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m not asking you to forget what happened. I am asking you to trust me when I say that I care about you, and I want to make this right by you. Give me the opportunity to do that. I deserve that much.”

  “What do you mean you deserve it? You deserve for me to smack you across the face and call you an asshole.”

  He could see her point. “You haven’t done that yet,” he reminded her.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Nina said. “This is the most fucked up way to tell somebody that they care about them, Eric. I hope you see that.”

  He did. It was kind of expected, though, in Eric’s world. He never did anything the right way. He usually didn’t do it the wrong way either; he just did it his way. “I care about you, Nina, and I want to talk to you more about that when the time is right. Right now, though, I understand that we need to focus on the task at hand. That is saving you from whatever it is that Jillian has planned.”

  “On that, at least, we agree,” Nina said. She looked out the window and seemed to ignore him then. “The other stuff, I don’t know what to think other than I don’t want to talk to you about it either, Eric.”

  Eric could only hope
that once she spent more time with him and saw the earnestness of his emotions and behaviors toward her, that she would change her mind.

  They rode in silence the rest of the way. It wasn’t far. The limo pulled up to the curb, and there was a knock on the divider between them and Cal. Eric hit the button to roll the divider down, and he saw Cal watching him in the mirror. “You sure you want to do this here, boss? This isn’t exactly a neighborhood that is welcoming to our kind,” Cal said.

  Eric hadn’t even thought about the fact that the address for Madame Rivaldi put it in Foster Heights. Foster Heights was a neighborhood within Copper City that was notorious for its non-shifter leanings. He, Kyle, and Tony innately understood that there were going to be humans in the world that were vehemently opposed to the idea of an integration between their two species. It was something that they were working on to build trust and temperance. They had been successful in, at a minimum, opening up conversation and dialogue in most communities. Foster Heights was the exception within Copper City.

  Eric and the rest of the Urban Dwellers gave it a wide berth, and every shifter that landed on their doorstep was advised to stay away from that particular neighborhood. Yet there he was, right in the middle of it.

  He saw Nina’s cautious glance toward him, and he didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what she was thinking. She had already told him that she needed to find out information, and she needed to go places where he would not be able to go or be welcome. It appeared he had stepped right into one of them.

  “Just stay with the car, Cal. Don’t get out.”

  Nina shook her head at him even as they both got out of the car. “Could you at least wear a trenchcoat or something?”

  Eric wanted to chuckle. Her request went back to her concept of him being too obvious. He did, however, duck his head a bit as they approached the building in front of them. It was one of the newer townhouses that had been renovated since Copper City was built. It looked clean, and the doorstep was welcoming, with several plants sitting on either side of the door. He saw a small sign for Madame Rivaldi sitting in the corner of the window. It appeared that Madame Rivaldi also lived where she worked.

  As he hit the doorbell, Nina gave him a jab in the ribs. “Why would Jillian come here? Don’t you think it’s odd that a shifter would decide to go calling in a non-shifter zone?”

  “You mean like what we’re doing right now?” Eric said sarcastically.

  “There are so many things here that don’t add up about this girl,” Nina said. She started to chew on the corner of her lip, which made Eric want to reach over and kiss her. He understood what she was saying now. It did seem like an odd choice for Jillian to pursue someone who was so clearly anti-shifter.

  There was a tinny voice that came out of the speaker next to the door. “Who is it?”

  Eric gave a gesture to Nina to answer. She rolled her eyes. She stepped up to the speaker. “Hello? My name is Nina Rodriguez. I’m here to see Madame Rivaldi?”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “I don’t, but I’ll just take a few minutes of her time. I’m a private investigator. I have some questions for her.”

  “I don’t think we like the look of your friend,” the voice said.

  Eric realized that they were being watched from somewhere on camera. He ducked his head even further.

  “It’ll just take a moment,” Nina repeated.

  “The shifter stays outside,” the voice said. It had hardened into a demanding type of tone, and Eric realized that likely, they were talking to the one and only Madame Rivaldi.

  “No way in hell,” Eric said under his breath. Nina shot him a warning look.

  “That’s fine,” she replied.

  “Back up to the car, buddy,” the voice said.

  Eric did not want to leave Nina alone. But he also knew that they needed whatever information she had. He reluctantly touched Nina’s shoulder. This time, she did not move away from him. He tried to tell her with his thoughts to be careful. Then he realized he could just say it out loud. As the buzzer sounded, he looked her deep in the eyes. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I’ve been doing this a long time, Eric. I know what I’m doing.” Then she gently pushed him away and walked inside the door.

  Eric stalked back to the car. He wanted to stay on the doorstep and wait for her, but he knew that there were eyes all around him, staring at him. Even if they didn’t know that he was a shifter, they knew who he was. He got in the car with a growl.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Once inside the doors, Nina’s nostrils were assaulted with the heavy smell of incense. She found herself in a small parlor area. There was a small desk off to one side and a pair of plush, red velvet armchairs flanking the window on the other side. An older woman sat at the desk, staring at her. The woman had a slightly dated look about her, with her cat-eye glasses and white-haired bun sitting atop her head. This wasn’t the woman that Nina had spoken to outside, though. She felt pretty confident about that.

  “Madame Rivaldi does not usually take walk-ins,” the woman said.

  Nina pulled her wallet out and showed the woman her private investigator’s license. “I appreciate her making time for me. It’ll just be a few moments.”

  “You can go in. She’s waiting for you.”

  Nina thought that was odd. She had just gotten there, and she didn’t expect that Madame Rivaldi would see her right away. Maybe the woman wasn’t as popular as she made herself out to be. Nina parted the beaded curtain next to the desk and stepped into the small hallway that the woman had indicated. She walked about six feet before it opened into a room with a heavy, wooden oval table in the middle of it. There were six chairs around it. The room itself was unusual because it wasn’t square, but circular in structure. There were bookshelves built into the walls all around her, packed to the ceiling with books, baubles and other things that she couldn’t identify.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” a voice said behind her. Nina whirled around. She had no idea where the woman had come from because there were no other doors in the hallway, but that wasn’t what drew the gasp from her lips.

  Madame Rivaldi looked nothing like how she had appeared in her television appearances. Where the woman on TV had been boisterous and vibrant and alive, the crippled woman in front of her was vastly different. She had a stooped back, and her arms bent tightly at her sides. Her hands appeared to be more like claws. Her sparse tufts of hair were white as new fallen snow, not the ember tresses that Nina remembered from TV. Madame Rivaldi had been in her mid-fifties, but this woman appeared far older. Yet she was certain they were one and the same. If ever there was a woman who looked like a witch, it was Madame Rivaldi.

  “Should I be flattered?” Nina said, quickly covering her reaction.

  “I know there are many who thought I was a charlatan. I can assure you that I am not.” Madame Rivaldi walked around Nina, almost seeming to ignore her for a moment. Then she motioned for Nina to sit down at one of the seats at the table. Nina was suddenly aware that she was completely alone with this strange, imposing woman. She started to think there might have been wisdom in bringing Eric in with her after all.

  “Why did you bring a shifter here?” Madame Rivaldi asked.

  “I didn’t bring him anywhere. He goes where he wants to go,” Nina said truthfully. She wanted to try and distance herself from Eric and the rest of the Urban Dwellers, especially if Madame Rivaldi had recognized him.

  The woman gave her a considering look, and then she sniffed the air. A look of understanding crossed her face. “I did not realize you were one of them too.”

  “I’m not a shifter.” At least, not yet, she added in her mind.

  Madame Rivaldi chuckled. “Oh, child. You don’t even know what’s going on, do you? You have fallen into a pit of a form of hell, and you are going to drown in its dark depths.”

  Nina was used to this kind of evasiveness from her sources, although most of them weren
’t quite this scary. But she wasn’t in the mood to put up with any of this today. “Let’s just cut the mystic bullshit, okay? I want to know if you have seen or spoken to this woman.” She took out Jillian’s picture and put it on the table. “The sooner you tell me know what you know, the sooner I can get out of your hair. I know she came to see you, so don’t bother trying to lie about it.”

  The woman did not look at the photo for more than a moment before she glanced back at Nina. “To ask me about this woman is to imply that you understand the magnitude of the situation you find yourself in, and I fear you do not.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to her? Have you heard from her recently?”

  “It depends on your definition of speaking and hearing,” Madame Rivaldi said.

  Nina felt a pulse of pain shoot through her forehead. She was starting to feel agitated, and that was exactly the opposite of what she needed to be in this particular instance. She needed to be calm, cool, and collected. “It’s important to me that I find this woman.”

  “Oh, yes. I understand. You are in search of your creator.”

  Creator? Jesus Christ. Nina wanted to flip the table over and reach across to strangle the woman to get the answers she wanted. “Can you tell me where I can find her?”

  Madame Rivaldi laughed. It was an ugly, cackling sound. “You do not find the one who walks the underground. She finds you. But you already know that, don’t you?”

  “The one who walks the underground? What are you talking about? Have you seen her? Where can I find her? That’s all I want to know. If you want money, I can get you as much as you want. I just need to know.” Nina could feel the desperate tendrils of fear taking over. She was getting closer to the time when things would be irrevocably different for her forever.

  “Let me read your fortune,” Madame Rivaldi said.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Nina said.