Dirty Little Secrets [Impulse 5] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read online

  Impulse 5

  Dirty Little Secrets

  When Nicole Fox’s beloved grandfather dies, she honors his dying wish and visits Impulse, Florida. Unaware that her grandfather had ever left British soil, she’s astonished to discover that he had a huge sum of money invested in Impulse’s hedge fund. Nicole sets out to discover where it came from and what his links to the small town were.

  Kai Sage and Pascal Channing, the two puma shifters running the fund, see through Nicole’s shapeless clothing, unflattering hairstyle, and glasses to the vibrant and passionate woman lurking beneath the disguise. They know she’s intended as their mate, and as they help her to uncover her grandfather’s secrets, they wrangle over the best way to persuade her to remain in Impulse. She seems to be able to breathe their thin air. Could she have shifter blood, thus making her an unsuitable mate?

  Genre: BDSM, Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Shape-shifter

  Length: 54,246 words

  DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS

  Impulse 5

  Zara Chase

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS

  Copyright © 2013 by Zara Chase

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-797-0

  First E-book Publication: April 2013

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS

  Impulse 5

  ZARA CHASE

  Copyright © 2013

  Chapter One

  “Impulse.” His voice was a shallow rasp. “You have to go there…things needs to be resolved…must tell—”

  Nicole gripped her grandfather’s hand, holding back the tears by the sheer force of her will, and leaned closer. “What is it, Gramps? What are you trying to say?”

  His wheezing gave way to a rattling cough that shook his frail body. Nicole tensed, sharing his pain, close to despair because there was nothing she could do to help the man who’d become her surrogate father, confidante, and best friend all rolled into one. She’d never felt more impotent in her life.

  It was so fucking unfair! Gramps was too young to die, but cancer was no respecter of age, nor did it spare the good guys. She’d spent hours praying to a God she didn’t believe in, promising to review her spiritual beliefs if he’d only spare her grandfather. But it seemed the Almighty had no more influence over Gramps’s condition than the physicians employed at this privately funded hospice.

  Nicole fought back yet more tears as she observed Gramps’s shrunken form beneath the thin bed covers. Where was the robust man who’d taught her to ride a bike, put her up on her first pony, brushed her down when she fell, and encouraged her to get right back up there again? The man whose booming laugh had seen her through good times and bad? The grandfather who’d helped her with her homework, fretted when she started dating, taught her to go after whatever she wanted out of life, failure not being an option. How was she supposed to carry on without the driving force behind everything she’d ever done or striven to be?

  Charlie Fox. Her failsafe, her champion, her rock, was reduced to a pain-ridden skeleton of his former self and it broke Nicole’s heart to watch his rapid deterioration. She blinked back the memories and turned back to the bed. Gramps was watching her through sapient, faded blue eyes that still reflected flashes of his former spirit.

  “Don’t cry, petal,” he said softly.

  “I’m not,” she lied, dashing at the tears streaming down her face. She gripped his hand tightly, easing up when she saw him wince. His bones were now so weak that they couldn’t withstand the slightest pressure. Even the bed covers pained him, hence the warm room and thin sheets. “I’m just mad at you for skipping out on the chores.”

  He tried to laugh but ended up coughing again. “Impulse,” he said urgently. “You have to—”

  “Your pulse is just fine, Gramps.”

  He became quite agitated and tried to sit up. He didn’t have the strength to support himself, fell back against his pillow again, and cursed. “Impulse,” he insisted. “Should have told you long ago. You have to…have to—”

  His eyes fluttered closed, exhaustion claiming him.

  “It’s okay, Gramps,” she said to his sleeping form. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  But of course, it wasn’t. Nothing would be the same ever again and she wept for the huge void that would occupy the center of her existence when her beloved grandfather left her. It was selfish of her to want him to cling to a life that was so demeaning and agonizing, but she simply wasn’t ready to let him go.

  The door opened and Gramps’s young doctor flashed a distracted smile her way.

  “He’s asleep,” she said, stating the obvious.

  “Not asleep…Impulse.”

  “He’s worried about his pulse,” Nicole explained. “He keeps talking about it.”

  The doctor checked his vital signs and wrote something on Gramps’s chart. “It’s t
he pain medication,” he said in an undertone. “It does that.”

  “Does what?” Nicole asked acerbically, standing up to pace out her agitation, furious by the man’s apparent unconcern. “Turns patients into driveling zombies?”

  “It affects the cerebral process,” he replied calmly, finally favoring her with his full attention. “Would you prefer your grandfather to be suffering?”

  “No, of course not.” Nicole fell back into the chair at her grandfather’s bedside and reclaimed his bony hand. “What are you doing?”

  “Giving him another shot. It will help him to sleep.”

  Gramps lifted his head, his eyes flashing through his drug-induced stupor. “Impulse,” he said, putting what was for him a huge squeeze on her hand. “Have to go to…”

  The doctor shot the pain medication into the valve taped to Gramps’s hand, adjusted a drip, and watched as his patient stopped raving and closed his eyes.

  “You need to say good-bye,” the doctor said to Nicole with more empathy than he’d so far managed to display. “I doubt whether he’ll last the night.”

  Nicole wanted to scream at the doctor, tell him he’d gotten it all wrong. Gramps was strong, he’d fight this thing, and they’d be together again. She knew it wasn’t true. No one beat bone cancer. Gramps had been fighting for over a year, surprising all the experts with his determination to cling to life. But now he had no fight left, and no dignity, either. Now that he’d been reduced to wearing a diaper, Nicole accepted that it would be better for her only living relation if he departed this world now.

  “Gramps.” She stroked the back of the hand she was still holding, aware that he could no longer hear her. “I don’t think I ever got round to telling you just how much I appreciate all you’ve done for me over the years. You made me the person I am today. I never would have gotten there without your encouragement. You made me believe in myself, made me fight for what I wanted when the going got tough and I was ready to give it all up. It can’t have been easy, taking on an angry twelve-year-old when you thought your parenting days were behind you. You were grieving for my mom and dad but never let me see you sad.”

  Nicole released his hand and walked to the window, staring down at the dreary parking lot, bleak and uninviting on a drab November day. It was only three in the afternoon, but the light was already fading. People scurried along the sidewalk, chins buried in turned-up collars, anxious to get out of the chill wind.

  She turned back to watch her grandfather’s chest barely moving, his breath a hollow rattle each time he exhaled. A death rattle, she thought, tears once again streaming down her face. It cut like a knife, but she forced herself to listen for the slightest alteration in its cadence—willing it to go on, yet hoping it would stop and that Gramps would finally be at peace.

  It was true what she’d told him just now. She owed him everything. Nicole had her own successful catering business based in London. It had been a tough journey, fighting for recognition, convincing people who mattered to let her cater their parties. Her grandfather had never once lost faith in her, refusing to let her think about quitting when the going got bumpy. He’d even insisted on adding his own limited savings to her start-up loan, which had made all the difference. She knew he couldn’t afford it and had never loved him more for having so much faith in her.

  And now she had to let him go. Why him? There was no justice in this miserable world. Nicole paced the small room, too emotionally charged to sit calmly by and allow this evil disease to claim her grandfather.

  When she got tired of pacing she sat down again and held his hand. Then stood up again. More pacing. Nurses came and went, offering her tea and sympathy. She wanted neither. All she wanted was for someone to return her grandfather to her, hale and hearty, always ready with a tall story to make her laugh and take her out of herself.

  He breathed his last just after midnight. Nicole, dozing in the chair at his bedside, awoke to a deafening silence. No wheezing, no rattling chest, just a total silence that was eerie and yet oddly calming. She glanced at her grandfather’s face. It was no longer etched with pain but looked peaceful, almost youthful. Perhaps there was something in the business of death being a happy release after all. She would have smacked anyone who’d tried to tell her that, but now she could almost believe it was true. Her own pain eased fractionally. Nicole felt alone, but not lonely. Gramps would always occupy a special place, bang smack center in the middle of her heart, but it was time to let him go.

  “Don’t you go getting into any mischief without me,” she said, smiling through her tears as she leaned over to kiss his cool brow for the final time.

  Nicole didn’t call anyone. There didn’t seem any point. She merely sat beside her grandfather’s bed until someone found her there and gently coaxed her back to reality.

  * * * *

  “Were we ever that young?” Kai laughed as he watched some of the young shifters having a rough-and-tumble in the national park at the dead of night. It was their first time out with the grownups and they sure seemed to be embracing the life. “Just watching them wears me out.”

  “They don’t seem to be having too much trouble adjusting to being shifters,” Pascal pheromoned back.

  “I can already see the ones who’re likely to step into our shoes.”

  Pascal itched his belly with a hind paw. “Natural leaders always emerge early in the game.”

  “I was hoping we’d be able to father our own replacements. But it seems like the right mate ain’t never gonna show up.”

  “Yeah, I hear you, buddy.” Pascal cuffed a young panther round the ear when he rolled right into them. “Still, let’s not think about that now.”

  “I always think about our mate, wondering what she’ll look like, what color her hair will be, stuff like that. It keeps me sane.”

  Pascal chuckled. “You think?”

  “Come on, guys,” Philo, one of the alpha tigers, pheromoned. “You’re supposed to be gathering herbs, not trying to kill each other. I need you all over here.”

  The youngsters loped right along behind Philo. Pascal and Kai followed more slowly, content to let the kids do all the work for a change, but their senses were on high alert. There were a larger number of them than usual out tonight and the youngsters were making too much noise. Although the park closed at dusk, night fishermen sometimes sneaked in. The last thing the colony needed was wild accounts of big cats on the loose reaching the press. Every weirdo with a conspiracy theory to prove would hightail it down to Florida—only this time they really would be on to something.

  Eventually Philo declared himself satisfied with the night’s haul of herbs and the felines ran back to Impulse in a pack, the cubs flanked by older colony members. Pascal and Kai veered off when they reached Second Avenue and the sanctity of their town house. They’d exited the premises via the second-floor window and reentered by the same method. It was an eighteen-foot leap which each puma made with ease, landing lightly on the window ledge without making a sound.

  Inside their spacious bedroom they shifted back to human form. Kai poured them both a nightcap while Pascal checked online for any movement on their hedge fund they managed on behalf of the colony. No matter what the hour, there was always a stock market open somewhere in the world that they needed to keep track of.

  “Anything interesting?” Kai asked, placing Pascal’s drink on the desk next to him and resting one hand on his shoulder.

  “I might offload that shipping stock we have in Tokyo. It looks like it’s peaked.”

  “Do it then. We’ve done well out of it.”

  Pascal sent the order to sell. “Shit, that Kansas wheat stock is moving the wrong way.”

  “How much are we down?”

  Pascal made a quick calculation. “Fifty grand.”

  “Cut our losses. Can’t win ’em all.”

  “It’s done. Fuck it, I hate guessing wrong.”

  “That’s why we don’t invest too much on high-risk stocks. We’re sti
ll ahead overall.”

  “Yeah, I know.” He paused, peering at his screen. “Yes! The Australian wine stock has moved up. We’ll cover our loss on the wheat if I sell now. I’m gonna do it.”

  Pascal tied up his buy and sell orders, found no other movements to concern him, and logged out of their trading account. He then scanned the worldwide headlines.

  “Damn!”

  “What is it?”

  “Charlie Fox has turned his paws up?”

  “Darn it, I didn’t know he was ill.”

  “He died in London, England, yesterday. Cancer, apparently.”

  Kai flexed his brows. “He had a lot invested with us. I never met him, but I kinda liked his style.”

  “I’ve spoken with him a few times. Felt like I knew him. He was a wily old gent who lived up to his name. A fox in all senses of the word. He liked plain speaking and wouldn’t let anyone pull the wool over his eyes.”

  “Wonder what his heirs’ll do with the millions he has invested with us.”

  “Yeah, let’s hope they decide to leave it where it is.” Pascal stood up, raised his glass, and downed his drink in one swallow. “To Charlie. Rest in peace, old man.”

  Chapter Two

  Nicole buried her emotions, doing what had to be done by rote. It was the only way she could get through the aftermath of her grandfather’s death without breaking down and making a complete fool of herself. The church was packed to capacity for the funeral. Nicole had no idea who half the people were or where they had fitted into her grandfather’s life.