Hollywood Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (Hollywood Shifters Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

worsened when he stepped out of his car into the dry heat, his tie and jacket strangling him. God, how he hated suits. They should be outlawed in summer. And there should be a Constitutional Amendment forbidding men to wear these useless strangulation devices called ties—one of the many reasons he loved being a photojournalist was never having to wear a suit.
    He walked up the long path to the gigantic Beverly Hills mansion. The door was opened by an honest-to-Downton-Abbey butler. At least it was cool inside. He breathed in gratefully, resisting the urge to yank the damn tie loose as he was conducted into a fancy room with glass walls overlooking a garden. Oh, hell. The room was filled with eighteenth century furnishings that looked like they’d break if he breathed on them. Growing up, he’d tried to avoid visiting the mansion his boyhood buddy had grown up in, as his parents gave you the stink-eye if you so much as touched any of their museum quality furniture.
    “Please sit down . . . what was it, Mr. O’Keefe? Or did I get it wrong?”
    “Dennis O’Keefe,” he said. “But your husband thinks my name is Daniel Moore.” He eased himself down carefully onto a fragile-looking chair. May as well get it all out there. “You seen, there’s an investigation . . .”
    The lady raised a hand. “If you will pardon my interrupting, I would rather wait until my consultant gets here.”
    Dennis remembered the mysterious M. Maurek, unlicensed—but very effective—P.I. “He’s coming, then?”
    “She. Would it not be easier to wait and tell us both, if you would be so kind? Coffee?”
    “Sure,” he said gratefully—before he saw the tiny, delicate china cups. Another danger.
    Mrs. Haskell poured coffee out of a gleaming silver pitcher that probably cost as much as the entire house Dennis had grown up in. He sipped carefully, and even more carefully set down the cup. It felt as flimsy as an eggshell. Same color, too.
    Mrs. Haskell smiled his way, a smile that did not reach her large, veined blue eyes. “She investigates adulterous husbands, not to put too fine a point on it. She had just finished concluding a successful investigation for me, which seems to have occasioned your call. I’m delighted you requested her presence, if there are more problems with Jerome. Very discreet, she is, and scrupulously honest as well. Like her great-grandmother, who I was honored to count a friend, in spite of the whispers.”
    Dennis stared at her, fascinated in spite of himself. “Whispers?” he repeated, thinking, crook? Player?
    Mrs. Haskell looked away, then back, her lips pursing as if someone had cussed in church. “There were some who maintain that she said she was a Shetland pony.”
    Dennis’s cup clattered on the saucer. “Sorry.”
    “Needless to say, I never heard such a thing from her, and I knew her upwards of forty years. I’ve always believed it was nothing more than a private joke. She and her husband, an excellent man, did have quite the sense of humor.”
    Dennis stared in dismay at the cup and saucer. Nothing broken. Resolving not to touch the china no matter how delicious that coffee tasted, Dennis was racking his brain for something polite to say about an old lady who may or may not have been a taco short on her combination plate, when a faint bonging resounded through the house, and Mrs. Haskell said with satisfaction, “Ah, Mindy has arrived. Elliott will bring her straight to us.”
    Dennis rose politely as the butler opened the door to—
    Her.
     
    * * *
     
    Mindy stopped short right inside the doorway.
    It was him. Looking fantastic in light gray slacks and jacket that brought out the reddish undertones in his gold-streaked, shaggy hair. His tie was steel blue, leading the eye straight down to those narrow hips.
    She wrenched her gaze back up to his pale gold eyes, vaguely aware of Mrs. Haskell somewhere a couple hundred miles away saying something-something-something Dennis O’Keefe , “and