Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

T here were two very confused wildlife park employees at the gates when Elliott, somewhat relieved to have the whole adventure over with, jumped off the bison's back and climbed the fence to safety. That was not how lions dealt with giant herbivores, generally speaking. In fact, most of the time, they didn't deal with them at all.

But they were occasionally known to accidentally hitch a ride when an attempt at hunting went bad, and that was what Elliott had been trying to channel. It had worked well enough to have his lion roaring at him inside his skull: No, no, this is bad, we don't want to do this, what are you doing, stop, no!

Now, however, the big golden galoot was smug, as if had of course intended everything to work out this way and had always been entirely confident in its bison-surfing abilities. Elliott said, "Circus acrobat," to the park employees by way of explanation, then hurried past them to escape all the obvious questions that would follow.

To his huge relief, Aoife was hurrying up the pathway toward him. Kanvas the bohemian girl and both the business-suited men were with her. A red-faced, sobbing Molly and her set-jawed mother followed a considerable distance behind, but Elliott's heart and gaze were for Aoife alone. He was about to sweep down upon her and scoop her into a relieved hug when he remembered they'd only met an hour ago, and that she had no idea he had strong feelings for her. "Aoife! You're okay!"

"Elliott!" She ran forward and threw herself into his arms, hugging him hard. " You're okay! Jaysus, me heart, you had me in bits you did! That was the bravest, stupidest thing I've ever seen anyone do!"

"You went over the fence too," he said with a laugh.

"But I didn't go all Dances With Bison!"

"I was thinking Spy X Family, " Elliott admitted, which did make her burst out with brief laughter before falling back into an almost-angry, scolding tone that was clearly more about her worry for him than actual anger.

"And neither Molly nor I were ever in any danger. It was only you. And you wouldn't have been if you hadn't gone so far into the enclosure!"

"I shouldn't have, you're right. But I knew I could outrun them, if I had to."

"But you didn't! You jumped on them! You scared the life out of me! Ah, I'm sorry," she said, finally letting go of Elliott and turning to the tour group. "I was only scared for him. I didn't mean to ignore you." Her voice hardened as she noticed the mother and daughter trailing along behind them. "I thought I told them to leave."

"You did," Kanvas murmured. "It was really hot. I mean, you were hot too, but wow."

Elliott's eyebrows rose. He could hardly blame Kanvas for thinking Aoife was attractive, but he sort of felt vaguely offended that she'd changed the focus of her interest so easily. Not that he wanted her to pursue him at all, which made his offense all the more ridiculous.

Humans, his lion said with a shake of his thick mane, complicate everything .

That was true. Elliot chuckled. "I guess I missed some good stuff."

"Oh, you have no idea," Kanvas breathed. "She tore into that woman like nobody's business. Are you like with her with her or just with her?"

"…working on the details of that, honestly."

Kanvas's eyes lit up. "So you're saying I've got a chance."

His lion, placidly, said, No.

Elliott was trying to figure out how to convey that to Kanvas without sounding like a lunatic or a jerk when General Ross, the mustache guy, said, "Give them another chance," to Aoife. "Molly's a nice kid, just spoiled rotten."

"And her mother?" Aoife asked dryly.

"Has a lot of money."

"I'm not going to stand here and be told it's my own fault her child was in places and doing things she shouldn't," Aoife warned.

The other man, who was tall, thin, and balding, shook his head. "You shouldn't. But she is worth a lot of money."

Aoife folded her arms, eyeing the two men. Elliott's lion gave a butt-wiggle of delight. Our fierce lioness. Look how she disdains the weak! They should not make her apologize! We shall defend her!

I think she's doing a pretty good job defending herself, Elliott replied. The lion was right about how ferocious and magnificent Aoife was, though. He felt a bit starry-eyed, and wondered whether he could tell her about the whole mates thing before dinner or if it was something he was going to have to draw out.

You don't draw mates, the lion said, baffled. You have sex and kittens with them.

Elliott coughed, drawing a briefly warning look from Aoife before she began interrogating the businessmen suspiciously. "So what's in it for you two? Because five minutes ago you wouldn't even look at me for support and now you're telling me to back down. What's the story?"

"ColCor does all of its annual allocation of business and charity funds at once," Tall and Bald said in a suddenly desperate hiss. "Cindy Collins controls and allocates every penny herself. Doug and I both work for ColCor subsidiaries and whether we get axed or funded this year depends on what she decides today."

"Graham swore this was the best way to get funded," General Ross (who was apparently actually named Doug) explained. "Ms. Collins likes putting faces to names for the smaller companies it's absorbed. But she's notorious for cutting everything associated with a bad meeting or a bad day. It's not just your little animal farm that's on the line here, miss. It's nine hundred jobs at my subsidiary, and eleven thousand at Graham's."

"Eleven thousand ?" Aoife squeaked. "What is it that you do ?"

"Research and development on prevention and treatment of infectious diseases," tall thin Graham said.

"Plastics cleanup in the oceans," mustachioed Doug said.

Aoife stared at them both furiously. "Could you not have been involved in something terrible like weapons development or…" Her imagination failed her and she snapped, " Fine , they can stay if they ask nicely!"

Doug and Graham exchanged a grimace that suggested Cindy Collins wasn't a woman prone to asking nicely for anything. Well, Elliott thought, neither was her daughter, and look where that had gotten all of them. He murmured, "I can roar at them if you think it'll help," to Aoife, whose fury faded into a bright-eyed grin at him.

"I'll keep it in me pocket," she whispered back.

The Collins caught up to them about then, Molly's face still red and tear-streaked. "We can't go yet. Mom promised me I could see the tigers."

Aoife, sourly, said, "Did she promise you could pet those too?"

Molly burst into tears again. A little to Elliott's surprise, because he could practically feel her anger radiating off her, Aoife sighed and crouched in front of the girl. "Listen to me, Molly. Has anybody ever told you about boundaries?"

The girl snuffled and shook her head. Aoife, without looking at Molly's mother, said, "Then your education is being neglected. Boundaries are the line where one thing ends and another one begins. When it comes to the animals at this park, safe boundaries mean that you don't get to pet them or pick them up whenever you want."

"But I want to!"

"Yeah, and I want a five million euro grant and a house in Ibiza, but we don't always get what we want."

Molly stared at her in clear confusion. " I do."

There was an opinion-filled silence from Aoife before she said, "Not here, you don't," and stood to meet Cindy Collins's eyes squarely. "Ma'am, I'm going to need you to be responsible for your daughter's actions if you want to continue with this tour. If you'll check your briefing, I'm confident you'll find that this was not intended to be a tour for children in the first place, and that my employers will back me on my decision to eject you from the park if there's another incident."

She's the queen of the pride, Elliott's lion said with admiration. This other one smells like she wants to be queen, but our lioness challenges her and will emerge victorious!

"Who do you think you are?" Cindy Collins asked Aoife incredulously. Elliott had to stop himself from stepping forward and proclaiming that she was Aoife Gallagher , a wise, generous, competent woman that he was lucky enough to call his fated mate.

And then we can swipe her with a paw and knock her into the wildebeests, his lion said with satisfaction. Then our lioness will know that we fight for her!

Um, Elliot said. Maybe not. And those are bison, not wildebeests.

The lion gave a quite magnificent shrug that shook its mane and made its golden fur ripple. Apparently the difference between a bison and a wildebeest was a matter of unimportant detail to it, which Elliott guessed was fair. Both were large herbivores with horns, and he supposed from a lion's point of view, that was all that really mattered.

"Ma'am," Aoife was saying with far more patience than Elliott had for Cindy Collins's tone, "I think I'm the person leading your tour and trying to give you an overview of a location your corporate foundation expressed investing in as a bridge to our future and the health and safety of dozens of endangered species. You do want there to be tigers and bison in the world your daughter grows up in, don't you?"

Molly gave a horrified gasp. "Of course she does. Don't you, Mom? Don't you?"

"Of course I do, Molly." Collins gave Aoife a look that suggested she was less concerned with whether there was an Aoife in the world Molly would grow up in. Elliott's lion growled, and Elliott took a protective step forward. It wasn't that he was concerned Aoife couldn't handle herself. She obviously could. But a little backup never hurt.

We are a large backup.

Damn straight we are.

"Grand." Aoife smiled with all her teeth. Inside his head, Elliott's lion practiced smiling that way too. It was somewhat more threatening than Aoife's teeth-baring grin, but her bright perky voice managed to be sharp enough to slice like teeth, too. "Shall we move on, then? I know Molly is eager to see the tigers, and they're coming up next. Let me tell you about them on the way."

She was actually incredibly good at this, Elliott realized as they moved on to the next enclosure. She spoke with knowledge and passion, making everyone but Collins laugh with little asides and stories, and showing astonishing patience as Molly peppered her with questions. The tigers were out lazing, although the larger male rolled to his feet and stared at Elliott when they paused outside the enclosure. He walked a little farther away, and the tiger paced him.

We could defeat it in battle, his lion said with airy confidence. Since it was a Sumatran tiger, the smallest tiger species, and Elliott was a very large lion, as shifter animals tended to be, he was quite certain the lion was correct.

We could, but we're not going to. It's unfair, anyway. Tigers are pretty smart, but they're not as smart as shifter lions.

Hmph. Then we'll make it expend its energy walking back and forth, so that it is weak when another lion comes to challenge it. Elliott did walk back and forth, although when a squealingly delighted Molly joined him because the tiger was following him, the big orange cat turned its attention from Elliott to the girl. She clapped and bounced with delight, although both Elliott and his lion were fairly confident that the tiger's attention was because Molly was snack-sized.

She was, however, also very safely on the other side of safety glass that she couldn't climb the way she'd done the bison fence. "Have you ever been to a zoo before, Molly?"

The girl shook her head eagerly. "Have you?"

Elliott thought about how he was actually staying there, and chuckled. "I have, yes. So all the animals you've ever met have been pets? Cats and dogs?"

"And fish, and hamsters, and guinea pigs, and cheetahs, and frogs, and birds, and?—"

"I'm sorry," Elliott interrupted. "Did you say cheetahs ?"

"My aunt Carol has one. She lives in Dubai. We visited her last summer and I got to sleep with Chiquita. Isn't that a good name for a cheetah?"

Aoife had said Cindy Collins was an investor, so he'd known she must be rich. Elliott upgraded his mental idea of what 'rich' meant to ' rich rich, like, really rich,' and tried to adjust to that thought. "Josephine Baker named her cheetah Chiquita, too."

"Who's Josephine Baker?"

"She was a singer and a spy in the 1920s and 30s. A long time ago," Elliott said with a grin at Molly's wide eyes. "But she was incredible. And she had a pet cheetah named Chiquita. So you…" He rubbed his forehead and looked back at where Aoife was talking to the other adults. "You really didn't know you shouldn't go into the enclosure to pet the animals? There are signs," he added.

Molly tossed her hair in a kind of shrug. "Mom says to never let other peoples' rules stop you."

Elliott said, "Oh, dear God," out loud, which got him a startled look from the tweenager. "Sometimes that's a good idea, Molly. When you're trying to break through social or gender barriers, maybe. When there are wild animals on the other side of those rules, though, it's a really bad idea."

She sniffed in the dismissive manner that only kids her age could achieve. "How'm I supposed to know the difference if I don't try?"

"By reading the signs that say don't disturb the wild animals," Elliott said somewhat strenuously.

We could turn into a lion and teach her a lesson, his lion offered.

Honestly, I'm not sure she'd learn anything from it.

Aoife caught his eye as he spoke to the lion and lifted her chin a little, gaze darting to Molly and then back to Elliott, hopefully.

Right. So he was on babysitting duty. That was fine, if it helped Aoife make it through this tour and maybe get the grant her wildlife park needed. He gave her a thumbs up, and a smile blossomed over her face. He would have done anything for that smile. Babysitting an entitled tweenager wasn't the worst thing he could do for it by a long shot.

"C'mon, Molly. Let's go storm the castle."