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.My dad is an…interesting man.Unapproachable, like a lot of men who care more about money than people.Add to that the tiger inside him and you have someone who’s somewhat terrifying.Though I’d say lately that he’s forgotten his shifter roots.It’s been a long time since any evidence of the tiger’s shown up.”“Ah,” said Nash, who felt slightly uncomfortable with her candid talk.“I can’t imagine losing your animal.Unless something traumatic happened, I guess.”“Yeah, well, my mother died a long time ago.I don’t think that helped.He was a different man back when she was alive.”“I’m sorry,” said Nash quietly.“No, I’m sorry,” said Cecile, who let out a shallow laugh.“Sometimes I resent him for the way people perceive me.I forget that he’s human and then someone like you reminds me.”“It’s okay.”“Here, let me do that,” she said, taking the curry comb from Nash, who’d stopped grooming the mare.Cecile began to brush Daisy, carefully combing the small knots out of her tail as she went.Nash watched her, his eyes moving up and down her body as though he had no control over them whatsoever.What was going on with him? He couldn’t speak and his body was behaving like it had never come upon a woman before.I sure would like to come upon this one, he thought, chastising himself afterwards for his own dirty mind.Stop it, he told himself.Breathe.She’s just a girl.Her shape was a familiar one, common to most of the women in Wolf Rock.It was one that Nash had missed while away at school.College girls, since he was convinced that they weren’t yet women, were often stick-thin and wiry, the sorts who read fashion magazines and wondered why they didn’t look like the mass of airbrushed models they always saw despite their lack of meat.Cecile had curves, and it was her round backside that Nash noticed first, as she bent to deal with one particularly stubborn knot.Its ripe roundness caused a visceral reaction in him, to the extent that he let out a chuckle at his own expense.He felt himself salivate a little, as though she were a piece of fruit to bite into.“What’s going on?” asked Cecile, dropping the tail and looking up at him.“Nothing.Just…watching you.I suppose it’s not common to have clients do their own grooming.”“I like getting my hands dirty,” she said, and winked at him, smiling.“So you’re a shifter,” he asked.“A tiger, like your father.”“Yeah.And you,” she said as she grabbed a pick and lifted Daisy’s back left hoof to clean, “are a big strong lion, or so your parents tell me.”“I am.”“I don’t know a lot of lions.I come from a long line of tigers.Back in the day they used to refer to ours as something like ‘spirit animals,’ but of course my ancestors knew better.It was more that the animal was the essence of the soul.”“A white tiger.I’ve never met one.I guess this makes you my first.”“I’m pleased to be popping your white tiger cherry, Nash,” she said, the hoof between her thighs as she dug out a few tightly-packed stones and dried earth.Nash found himself envying that hoof.***As they groomed the horses, Nash and Cecile took their time in the stable, talking.Neither seemed in a rush to head out.“I spent a lot of my childhood around horses,” the tiger shifter told Nash.“Only when my father moved here, to the mountains, did it stop.Ironic, isn’t it?”“Why don’t you have horses? Don’t all rich people?”Cecile punched him lightly in the arm.“You really do have a lot of pre-conceived notions about the wealthy, don’t you? Anyhow, I suppose you’re right.My dad came out here and did the nouveau-riche thing.He bought a fancy chalet.I was hoping for a ranch.He hired designers to ‘class it up,’ which seems to mean that he spent a fortune on decorators to buy incredibly expensive ‘rustic’ furniture.”“That sounds sort of awful,” said Nash.“It sort of is.I mean, it’s undeniably beautiful, the chalet, but more like a mansion, really, and it’s sterile.Not homey; not warm.That’s one reason I found this place and…you.” She looked into his eyes now, and he thought that he perceived a change in tone with the word “you.”“I have a fantasy,” continued Cecile, “that involves a place that’s undisturbed by wealth.”“You’ve come to the right ranch then,” laughed Nash.“You won’t find any wealth here.”“Excellent.It seems to me that material possessions and wealth are very human things.When my mom died, my sister was ten, and I was in my early teens.That’s when my father seemed to, I don’t know, forsake the tiger inside him.He became more human each day.” Cecile was brushing Daisy gently again, absent-mindedly allowing the soft bristles to massage the mare, who seemed perfectly happy about it.“He became more materialistic and greedy as time went on.Not to mention thick-headed and stubborn as anything.”“Why do you think that is?” asked Nash.“I don’t know.Maybe the grief was too much for him
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