Page 62 of An Unexpected Claim

I nodded in acknowledgement, then I did something I rarely ever did—I acted without thought. Moving around the island, I walked up to Peyton and brought her close with a hand on her shoulder. Then I pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“I’ll probably be late.” I was about to tell her to let me know if she needed anything when I suddenly felt like a complete jackass. “If you need me, you can hit 2# on the phone in the kitchen. It will connect you directly to my office. I’m sorry I didn’t think to tell you before.” She nodded and her head bumped my chin. I placed another kiss on her crown before walking to the kitchen counter closest to the back door. I’d thrown my keys there when I’d stormed into the house earlier.

“Nathan.”

I turned my head to see her sitting on a stool, watching me with wariness and…regret?

“I’ve been this way since I was a kid. Restless, for lack of a better way to describe it. My uncle always told me I inherited it from my dad since I’d turned out to be a panther. It didn’t help that I was cooped up and alone so often. When I left for boarding school, it was the first time I felt like myself, because it was an adventure. So many new places to explore and things to try. Then I managed to get through college, with several study-abroad programs and internships. But when I graduated, I started wandering and never stopped. I love my life.”

She was trying to tell me that her desire to leave had nothing to do with me, and maybe it was true. But I had every intention of being the reason she stayed.

I lifted my chin in farewell and she gave me a little wave.

As I drove to KBO, I went over what she’d said several times. I’d been collecting bits and pieces from her, but this was the first time she’d shared something substantial enough to begin sorting everything.

When I’d had time to really look through her dossier, there had been a fuckton of red flags. Her childhood information was almost non-existent before she’d arrived at boarding school at thirteen. Other than her birth certificate—which confirmed the date and the place as New York City but somehow didn’t have names for her birth parents—and her passports—I’d been surprised to see that she had dual citizenship in France and the US—there was no other documentation. And no evidence of family.

Even information about payments to her boarding school had been purged from the system. Although, right around the same time that she’d arrived in France, she’d started making withdrawals from an untraceable account with more than three million dollars in it. She’d used it to pay for college, but since then, she’d only added to it—and yet there was no record of any jobs other than small things here and there, like waitressing at The Spot. Her deposits were always in cash and never big enough to require any kind of paperwork, which meant I had no way to trace it unless I could get my hands on the serial numbers for the bills. And even that would very likely be a dead end.

Now I had a few more facts to add to her story and dig into. The key to convincing her to stay might be in the details of her old life.

I eventually learned it was the key to everything.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Peyton

After Nathan left, I felt drained.Not tired, just…drained.

I hadn’t hidden the fact that I planned to leave eventually, so he’d really shocked me with his assumptions. And damn, I rarely became that angry. I would have bet money that he’d made me angry more in the week that I’d been in Silver Lake than I had been in the last five years.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nathan analyzed things with the mind of a man who’d seen enough lifetimes to predict the most sensible and successful outcomes. Except no one could predict human behavior and I had a feeling he forgot that sometimes.

My panther was off sulking, because she didn’t like it when I pushed Nathan away, but I pretended that if she knew why we’d been fighting she would have been on my side. It was sad that I didn’t know if that were true. The girl seemed to be buying into this whole mate thing, no matter how many times I reminded her that she was not a wolf.

I was too tired to pick my conversation with Nathan to pieces or deal with my pouting cat, so I trudged back to my room and decided to relax and read a book. I’d grabbed a mystery novel that looked good from Nathan’s library earlier, so I stretched out on the bed and cracked it open, careful not to crease the spine too much. I was immediately sucked into the story and couldn’t stop turning the pages.

It was dark in my room when I opened my eyes, and I glanced down at the book lying open on my chest.Oops. I guess I’d been more tired than I thought because when I peeked at the clock on the bedside table, it turned out I’d been asleep for a couple of hours.

My stomach rumbled and I wandered out to the kitchen to make myself a sandwich. I polished off two while I dove into the book again.

A knock on the front door startled me and I hesitated, then rolled my eyes at myself. Nathan’s overprotective paranoia must have worn off on me a little. Besides, I had babysitters.

I opened the front door and screamed.

Then I jumped into Sam’s arms and he laughed as he nearly fell over. Next, I spun to his side and hugged Linette, though I was much gentler considering she had a little bundle in her arms.

“I can’t believe you’re here,” I exclaimed, “Come in, come in!”

I led them into the open space and over to the couches. Sam plopped down in one while I stuck out my hands to his mate and said, “Gimme!”

Linette laughed and carefully transferred the little person wrapped in a blue blanket into my arms.

“You guys,” I breathed. “He’s so perfect.” Tears filled my eyes, and I examined the sweet face that seemed like a perfect mixture of my friends’.

“Isn’t he?” Linette agreed, her voice choked up.

Sam laughed and grabbed Linette’s hand to pull her down beside him. “He’s a stud all right. A chip off the old block.”

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