Terry Spear: Jaguar Fever

“Wildcat,” Maya said, casting David an annoyed look.

“Hell, yeah.” David grinned. “Candy had nothing on you, and she’s been stewing with her girlfriend ever since you hit the floor with Wade.” He glanced at Wade. “I don’t remember you ever having dance moves like that. Must have been Maya who inspired you.”

“She’s inspirational all right.” Wade tightened his hold a little on Maya, as though he wanted to make sure the other cats in the place knew she was with him, although she wasn’t. Not exactly.

“Maya’s cousins’ faces fell when they learned she was their relation,” David said smugly.

Amused, Maya smiled. As they returned to their table, Wade asked Maya, “What would you like to drink?”

“A Singapore sling.”

She hadn’t been out with a man in eons, and she was having fun. She thought all she’d be doing was getting the garden nursery ready before her flight to Belize tomorrow. She’d never expected to hear from cousins she didn’t know she had, or visit a shifter club she didn’t know

existed, or meet up with Wade and his brother there.

A well-built man a couple of inches shorter than Wade and his brother and her cousins, wearing denims and a black T-shirt, approached the table. His gaze took in the men seated there, but his light brown eyes quickly fastened on Candy. Maya assumed he knew her and was a bit bothered by the other men sitting with her.

Maya took in a deep breath, like every shifter at the table did, trying to smell his scent. Jaguar shifter. Not purely human.

They could differentiate a human from a jaguar shifter if they got a good whiff. The big-cat scent was enough to clue them in. The only other way to know was if they saw them actually shift.

“Candy,” he said, raking his hand through ash-blond hair and drawing close as every male shifter at the table fixated on him. He turned his broad back on them, looking a little as though it bothered him to see the attention he was gathering. “We got a date later?”

Candy smiled, cleared her throat, and said softly, though the cats could still hear what was being said, “Yeah, George, later.”

“Did you want to dance?”

“Um, we’re getting together later. All right?”

He squeezed her hand, then turned and gave the men at the table a hard look. Candy appeared to be hedging her bets, looking to add to her stable of boyfriends in case one of these guys appeared to be interested in her and she grew tired of poor George. “I’ll see you later, George,” Candy reiterated.

George leaned down and kissed her lips, taking his time about it.

“What was that for?” she asked, red faced.

Showing off, claiming her, Maya thought.

“Just to let you know how much I’ll be thinking about you.” Then George gave the other men at the table a growly look and headed for the bar.

Poor guy. Maya felt sorry for him and hoped he’d dump Candy for someone else.

Wade ordered beers for David, himself, and her cousins, and a sling for Maya, while Maya introduced herself to her cousins, Everett and Huntley. Candy and the other woman, Cherry, were still nursing margaritas.

Everett was taller than Huntley by a couple inches, with grass-green eyes and blond hair sweeping his shoulders like Lion Mane’s. He was dressed in black leather pants and a black muscle shirt. Huntley, dressed in blue jeans and a navy T-shirt, was staring hard at Wade, his eyes a bluer green than his brother’s.

“Have we met somewhere before?” Huntley asked Wade. There was a seriousness to the question that made Maya sit a little taller.

“The Service,” Wade answered.

Huntley’s mouth dropped for a fraction of a moment, then he snapped it shut and nodded.

Everett shook his head. “Small world. Thought you lived in Pensacola.”

Wade lifted his beer mug off the table. “I do. I’m just here with my brother, now visiting Maya.”

Her cousins knew Wade? Maya wanted to learn more, but the two human women were listening in, delighted more hunky guys chose to sit at their table.

“The service,” Candy said, grinning, looking from one to another, as if trying to decide which of the men was the yummiest. “How cool. Which branch of the service? My dad was a Marine.”

Huntley looked over at her as if he’d just realized she was sitting there. “Special unit. Classified.”

Her eyes grew big. “All of you?”

No one responded.

Maya had been about to ask her cousins what they did for a living, but now she didn’t need to. The idea that they were in some secret service unit intrigued her.

Everyone’s drinks arrived, and Wade paid for the first round.

“I wish you could meet Connor and his wife,” Maya said to her cousins. “I’m joining them in Belize tomorrow.”

“Belize,” Wade said, his eyes widening. “You didn’t say that’s where you were going.”

David choked on his beer. Everett and Huntley frowned at her.

“I didn’t realize you had a need to know.” When no one said anything, she asked, “ Okay, is there something wrong with going to Belize?”

“Yeah, it’s really not safe for you,” Wade said. “Can you cancel?”

“No. I’m flying out tomorrow afternoon. We’re staying all next week.” She waited for Wade to tell her what the trouble was.

“Where are you staying?” Wade asked, his cell in hand.

“The Treetop Cottage Jungle Resort.”

Wade punched it into his phone and shook his head.

She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Okay, so want to tell me what’s wrong?” She was starting to feel antsy. Her brother and Kat were down there.

Everett and Huntley exchanged looks, then Everett said to Candy, “Want to dance?”

“Sure. I thought you’d never ask.”

Huntley took the other lady to the dance floor and Wade moved Maya’s chair closer to his, then spoke in a low voice for her hearing only as David watched them. “We’re with a special unit, tracking exotic animal hunters down—jaguar hunters specifically.”

“You think they’re in Belize?”

“We’ve had word that the buyer meets with hunters here, then the men—or possibly women, though I’d lay odds they are men—head for the regions where jaguars live. To our knowledge, they plan to hunt in Belize this time.”

Belize was a big place. Tons of unexplored territory—places in the jungle where no man had ever set foot. She and her brother and Kat would be fine. She took a deep breath. “Okay, look, it’s illegal to hunt jaguars in Belize, but we both know hunters do kill them. It’s a risk we’re willing to take. We’ve always done so. Drug runners can be a danger, too. It’s the same with them. If we worried about this all the time, we’d never return to our native jungle habitat.”

He was wearing a worried frown.

She tilted her head to the side. “Are you going there?”

“Yeah. David and I.”

“You’re going after these guys.” She didn’t ask him. She knew from the feral look in his eyes that he wasn’t planning on just talking to the hunters who used the club as a rendezvous point. “Is… is this just a job?” She didn’t think so. He was so tense that he looked like he was ready to snap.

“Yeah, it’s a job.”

But it seemed personal. Or maybe she was just projecting.

The dance music ended, and Everett and Huntley hurried the women back to their chairs.

“Um,” Everett said, glancing at the human women, who were all ears. “Did you come to some decision?”

He seemed to be asking both Maya and Wade.

“They’ve got a job to do in Belize,” Maya said, waving her hand at David and Wade. “And I’ve got a vacation coming up.”

Everett turned his attention to Wade. “Can we have a word with you? In private ?”