Page 37 of Trees Take the Long View

"Oh," I said. It was hard to think of anything else but food right now.

He led me to the kitchen, where a couple of people were busy cooking things and looking very competent and professional in the process. I was too hungry to wait; I could've torn off a raw chunk of the chicken that was marinating and eaten it right then and there.

Fortunately, Amos headed me off, and offered up some fresh figs, crackers and cheese and lemon squares instead, taking me into another room to sit and eat around a coffee table near a big TV that I'm sure was called the entertainment center, or something like that.

I chewed my way through every single piece of food on offer, while he watched with some fascination. "I'd heard that shifting activated intense metabolic activity, of course, but I've never seen it in action."

"Oh, you don't have a string of shifter exes?"

He laughed, looking down quickly. Again I sensed something shy and embarrassed about his smell. "No, no. I'm not what you think at all."

I eyed him. "You're rich, and you're into shifters. I don't see what's so odd about thinking you'd have dated lots of them."

"I'm...not into shifters. I'm, er, into you. That is—I find you very appealing, and I would like to get to know you better, if you were amenable."

Apparently he got posh when he was feeling awkward. I stared back at him, noticing that he smelled the way he sounded, that his cheeks were actually showing a faint blush, and that his heartbeat had sped up. "Uh, I'm surprised," I managed at last, and wished like hell there was more to eat. It was so hard to think when I was ravenous, and the nearby cooking-meat smells were so good I could hardly stand it.

For a moment, I really considered it. If Dean didn't want me, maybe this guy did. Sure, he wasn't my mate, but he seemed genuine and kind. And he wasn't faking his interest in me, that was pretty clear. He also wasn't blasé about it. He would be invested, probably more than I was—which sounded good right about now, a balm to the ego of not being wanted by the man I wanted most. The man who could walk away from me easily, and probably soon would.

I looked away and sighed. "I like someone already. If nothing comes of that, I'll look you up. But if that happened, it wouldn't be some kind of great love affair. You'd be a rebound and nothing more. Sorry."

"Being a rebound is plenty to work with," said Amos, his voice gracious. But I could smell his disappointment, and his smile was sad underneath.

"Sorry," I said again. "Are you sure you don't think the tiger's cuter?"

He laughed, eyes gentle. "A bit more larcenous, I think. And a bit young, to be honest."

I nodded glumly, hoping Dean thought that way.

"Let's see if things are ready to be consumed. You're practically radiating hunger."

"It's that activated metabolism of mine," I said, and he laughed again, like I was actually funny.

For a guy who'd just been turned down, he was awfully nice.

When we all finally got to eat, it was less of a sit-down meal and more of "shifters on the prowl at a buffet table, eating all the meat."

I hated Tyler at the start of that meal. He was monopolizing Dean, who probably wanted to be his mate, and anyway, he was a tiger and smelled of cat. But as we kept going up to get more food, more and more at the same time, at first we were avoiding and darting looks at each other warily, then apologizing, and making comments about our favorite things to eat, and eventually sharing and politely passing things as our hunger eased and our comfort levels around each other settled.

He might be a big, bad-ass cat shifter, but he was also a young, rather nervous boy, and he wasn't gay, had no interest at all in my Dean. He felt shy of me because I was so confident and experienced.

"My girlfriend said this would be a great way to make money," he confided towards the end of the meal. "But I felt so bad about the last time, and, well, I kind of started to think she really didn't like me at all, just the money. Your partner convinced me to call my parents." He nodded toward Dean, who was listening politely to something Amos was telling him. They'd barely touched the food, at least, barely compared to me and Tyler.

His parents were, apparently, on their way, ready to get their prodigal son, who was certainly old enough to be on his own, but maybe still young enough to have really bad judgment about certain things, and be secretly grateful when his parents rode to his rescue.

"They're normal tigers," he said, rather sadly, and I stared at him for several seconds in shock before I realized what he meant: not that his parents were non-shifters, but that they didn't have the pale coloring of a white tiger. They were "ordinary" tigers, orange with black stripes. He seemed a little bit sad that he'd turned out to be different.

"Maybe I can talk to her," said Tyler about his girlfriend, sounding as young as he looked. He piled more chicken on his plate, looking sad. "If she's still hanging around, that is."

She had to know something was up, when he didn't return as agreed from the last sale. He'd been so discouraged, he'd needed some time alone to think, and decided to take it in a tree in the thick forest adjoining Amos's land.

By the end of the meal, we were more or less fast friends: a wolf and a tiger, and no longer in the least at odds. He really, clearly wasn't interested in Dean. It made me like him as much as I would have if I'd never thought he was after my boyfriend.

Really, I shouldn't have assumed every cute young guy was gay. What was I thinking?

Well, I knew what I was thinking: jealous and sad thoughts over Dean. He just didn't want me, and that was hard to take—and easier to blame on someone else than myself and whatever I lacked.

Maybe if we'd met under other circumstances. Maybe if I'd been more impressive and less of a basket case. Or maybe there was nothing I could ever have done that would've been enough. The simple, bleak truth was that I could have that instant "this is the one" reaction to him, and not have it returned or perhaps even understood by him.