He didn’t respond. Nor did he smile. She sighed and looked down at her lap. She shouldn’t want his attention. He’d just killed a man. She couldn’t be certain, but if he had, he’d done so casually and without emotion. She would be insane to be attracted to him and yet . . . she was. Attracted wasn’t even a word she would use for what she was around him.

“Why are you here? You never come on Thursday, that’s why he chose today.”

“His bad luck. I wanted to get a few dozen of your cinnamon-apple cookies for my boss. I came in early so you would have plenty.”

She started to put the ice pack down but he pushed her hand back, covering it with his own. He always wore those butter-soft gloves. Under them she could see the bulges of several rings. Big square, thick ones. She noticed them every single time he reached for his coffee mug. They intrigued her, just as the tattoos she could see drifting up his neck from under that perfect suit. For some reason those tattoos made him all the hotter to her. She’d awakened twice now from a dream of peeling that suit from him to uncover all the treasures underneath.

She felt the color rising, and there was no way to stop it. “I have to open the store.”

“You have to sit for a full fifteen minutes with that ice pack on. Then you open the store. Your customers will wait.”

Even his voice affected her body, bringing all her nerve endings alive as if he had created an electrical charge between them. Again, the female inside her moved toward the surface, toward him. Lazily, really. As if she couldn’t quite be bothered. She subsided quickly as she’d done before, leaving behind an unsettling itch that settled between her legs. Deep. She was going to kill her leopard.

Stop, you little hussy. You don’ want him takin’ an interest in us.

Again there was that impression of amusement before Bebe settled completely.

Evangeline had been born into a family of shifters. Her brothers had leopards. Her father and uncle did. It stood to reason she might as well. Saria had talked to her about the feeling when a leopard began to surface. She knew she was one. She’d always known. Her female, Bebe, was as much a part of her as her own skin. As breathing. She had hidden the fact that she had a leopard from her friends, from her family. They would insist she return to the lair and she was never going back there.

“Evangeline?”

Her name rolled off Alonzo’s tongue with that accent that sent another shiver of awareness down her spine. Heat curled but Bebe stayed still. Hidden. She breathed a sigh of relief and looked up at him.

“Did he get you anywhere else?”