Fated to a Cougar: 4 (Cougar Surrender) Read Free Page A

that parking lot because I
lost it there.”
    Jase shook his head. “That’s too bad. It makes me wonder
what Caleb was up to. It couldn’t be anything legal if he had that meeting in a
dark parking lot in the middle of the night.”
    Katarina gave Grady a tap on the shoulder. “All done. I have
to agree with that, Jase. Who knows what he was up to, but it couldn’t have
been anything good.”
    “I was thinking he has to be running out of money,” Grady
said. “The amount he had stashed in that apartment that he took before he went
into deeper hiding won’t last him forever. And as far as Draven has been able
to find out, Caleb still owns his house. There’s a lot of capital tied up in
it. If it suddenly burns to the ground we’ll know what that meeting was about.”
    “Actually,” Jase said with a nod, “that makes a lot of
sense. That way Caleb won’t have to go through the hassle of having to sell it.
He’d only have to collect the insurance money from it. That’s a quick way to
turn it into cash.”
    The more Grady thought about it, the more likely a scenario
it could be. They’d have to watch Caleb’s house for anything suspicious taking
place around it. And if Caleb did decide to do away with it like that, there
was always a chance he’d risk returning there to take what he wanted from it
beforehand.
    Grady stood and walked over to the fridge, where he took out
a bottle of beer. “I think I should tell Uncle Nate. As the leader of our
family group, he could get others to watch Caleb’s house when we can’t.”
    “Good idea.” Jase stood, then walked over to his mate and
put his arm around her shoulders. “Now that your head is taken care of,
Katarina and I are heading upstairs.”
    He watched them walk out of the kitchen. He wouldn’t be
seeing those two for the rest of the night. And with his room directly across from
theirs, at times his damn sensitive cougar hearing allowed him to hear more
than he wanted to. That was the only part that sucked about living with his
family.
    Grady went upstairs to his room. As he neared Katarina and
Jase’s, the sound of feminine giggles came through the door. He continued into
his bedroom and closed himself inside. He put the bottle on his bedside table
and yanked his long-sleeved t-shirt over his head. The collar of it was stained
with blood. Katarina had already put his winter jacket in the washer since it’d
gotten the worst of it. Head wounds always bled like a bugger.
    After putting his shirt in the dirty laundry hamper, Grady
settled on the king-sized bed and turned on the large flat-screen LED
television that hung on the wall across from it. He sipped his beer and a small
smile played on his lips as he thought about Sage. He wondered if he asked
nicely if she’d cuff him, then have her way with him.
    * * * * *
    Since Sage had worked the night shift, she slept until early
afternoon the following day. Usually she would have slept longer, but having
two days off and then going back into work on day shift, she had to get her
sleeping times adjusted.
    After she showered, she returned to her bedroom to get
dressed. Seeing the almost overflowing dirty laundry basket, she could no
longer put off doing the washing. Luckily enough, she had something to wear.
She tugged on her last pair of clean jeans and a sweatshirt.
    She lugged her laundry downstairs and put the first load in
the washer in the main-floor laundry room. That’d been one of the big selling
points for her when she’d put in an offer for the two-story semi almost a year
ago.
    That task done, Sage went to the kitchen and put the kettle
on to make a pot of tea. She grabbed a muffin from the package she’d bought the
day before and sat at the table to eat it while she waited for the water to
boil.
    Before going to bed she’d come to the conclusion it wouldn’t
be a great idea to go out with Grady. She hadn’t been thinking when she’d
agreed to see him in the first place, and she wasn’t