Her Tiger To Take Read Online Free PDF Page B

her see that.
    He looked through the order window and
spotted her sitting at the counter. She smiled and waved, then went
back to talking to the man sitting next to her. Charlie Sanchez was
a town fixture; a man in his nineties, he’d actually been born in
Eirene and always had plenty of stories to tell. When Charlie
grinned at Nick, Nick narrowed his eyes in warning. There were some
stories and rumors Nick didn’t want Tatiana hearing second
hand.
    Charlie grinned around his dentures and faced
Tatiana again, giving her a little wink.
    Nick growled quietly and went back to
cooking.
    It was well past nine o’clock when he could
finally leave the kitchen. He stepped into the dining room to see
Tatiana sitting in a booth talking with two of his regular
customers, with Jane standing over them laughing at whatever they
were discussing. The two women in the booth spotted him before
Tatiana and they scrambled up.
    “So nice to meet you, Tiana,” Rachel Maxwell
said. She glanced at Nick and grinned before saying to Tatiana,
“We’ll talk more soon.”
    “Hi, Nick,” the second woman, Betty Alonso,
said as he reached the table. “Don’t worry, we’ll settle the bill
with Jane.”
    They practically dragged Jane to the
register, leaving Nick alone with Tatiana.
    “What did they tell you?” he asked, standing
over her, trying to ignore the way her scent invaded his head and
made him dizzy.
    “We were just telling stories. No big deal.”
She gestured to the bench opposite her. “You’ve been working hard
all night. Sit.”
    Reluctantly, he settled into the booth. “Did
they manage to scare you off?”
    “Opposite, actually.” She chuckled at his
scowl. “Don’t worry, they only revealed the most embarrassing
stories they know.”
    “What?” He started ticking through the
options and his scowl deepened. They wouldn’t actually tell her
about that time Margery Bingham draped herself naked across his
prep-table, would they?
    She laughed and the sound sent a sharp shock
of excitement down his spine. He clenched his hands under the table
to keep from reaching for her. Damn the chemistry between them. He
should not have this much trouble resisting a woman.
    “Worried?” she said.
    “No.”
    She stared at him, that half-smile hovering
on her full lips. Finally, she said, “If I were you, I’d be more
worried about what Charlie told me.”
    He raised his brows and waved a hand for her
to continue.
    Instead, she said, “You’ve picked a really
lovely place to live, Nick. The people here are great. I’ve never
been part of a small town before. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d
like having so many…people able to follow my life the way they can
in a town this size.” She hesitated over the word “people” and he
knew she had been about to say humans. “But this place is
unique.”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Jane cornered me earlier today.”
    “Fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair and
glared at his head waitress. She raised her brows and stared back
without flinching. “Fuck,” he muttered again as he faced Tiana.
“What did she say?”
    “She wanted to know my intentions. It was
pretty sweet, actually. Like a protective mother. Except you’re
older than she is. Does she know that?”
    “No. What did you tell her?”
    “That I wanted to marry you.”
    He blinked at her bluntness. This wasn’t
anything he didn’t know. She wouldn’t be here trying to force him
back to the Run if she didn’t want to keep him around. At least,
he’d assumed as much, based on all her letters and emails.
    But a part of him had thought this was just
sex, just chemistry. She wanted kids and hadn’t found another
worthy tiger yet. She had gotten it into her head that he was
worthy—a serious mistake on her part—but that didn’t mean she
wanted more than babies from him. To hear her say it aloud, that
she’d declared to another person that she wanted to marry him
was…
    Tempting.
    To cover his wavering emotions, he