Hollywood Tiger: BBW Tiger Shifter Paranormal Romance (Hollywood Shifters Book 3) (16 page)

The pork simmered in paprika and garlic, wrapped in grape leaves, tender buttered potatoes, and spicy purple cabbage—a dish familiar since childhood—helped steady him. Mick got up to pour out a crisp white wine as he explained that the wine came from a winery run by a local’s cousin—without, of course, mentioning that that cousin was a wolfhound shifter, whose success with wine was due to his super-powered nose.

“This pork dish is just as good as I remembered,” Dennis said in his genial, loud voice. “I’ll eat anything at least once, but it’s funny how much I miss home cooking while in the field.”

“You boys always liked the simple foods,” Mrs. Volkov said. “Hot, and plenty of it.”

“Guilty as charged,” Dennis replied, laughing heartily, and JP sensed tension underlying the apparent hilarity. It was the tension of the hunt. “While trying to eat tawi with a banana-leaf spoon in West Papua, I could not help thinking of that beef and dumpling dish you used to serve us. What pigs we were! I distinctly remember putting away three platefuls one time.”

“Ah, but you were growing boys,” Baba Marisia exclaimed.

JP loved her as if she had been his own grandmother. This house had been his safe haven when things were strained at home, and it had been part of the comfort that the house and the Volkovs had never changed so much as a chair. They themselves had seemed changeless, until Ivan had began suffering mini-strokes. Now he could see how much they had aged.

His heightened awareness included Mick and Dennis, who he knew were  waiting for the signal to leave for a briefing. He would not ruin the dinner by look or word, even if an outsider had not been there, for that would disrespect all the effort Baba Marisia had put into preparing the meal.

His eyes promptly moved to the soft curls falling on Jan’s shoulders, the entrancing curve of her neck before it vanished into the collar of her shirt. But then his imagination arrowed promptly to the delectable curves beneath that shirt, and heat shivered through him.

With the iron discipline instilled in him since boyhood, he shuttered that thought away and concentrated on the chatter. Dennis had launched into a description of his journey to West Papua to live with the Dani and Walak tribes.

When Mrs. Volkov brought out the well-remembered dessert she called chak-chak—deep-fried sticks of eggy dough covered with a hardened honey sauce, and served with strong tea—Dennis stopped in the middle of a sentence, and said, “But I’ve been gabbing non-stop. Come on. Everybody else take a turn. What’s the strangest food ever put before you?”

“That must be said what we found at home, during German war,” said Mick’s grandfather, Dyed Ivan.

“Oh, yes.” Baba Marisia nodded slowly. “During bad Stalin days, we were so very poor, and food so scarce. We ate some very strange things. Very strange.”

Mick said, “I have to say the biggest surprise for me was French food. I’d been expecting frog legs and snails. I guess I could’ve had them, but what I got were the best wine sauces I’ve ever tasted. Pastry, too.” He kissed his fingertips and opened his hand. “Shelley?”

“I’m going to have to pass,” Shelley said. “I’ve never been outside of Los Angeles, and I pretty much stick to foods I like. But the weirdest foods I ever
saw
were some of the combinations students came up with at the cafeteria my first year at UCLA. French fries in ice cream, anybody?”

That got a general expression of disgust, and Mick turned to Jan, smiling. “How about you, Jan?”

“I also have to pass,” she said. Her voice really was pure gold, a molten, glowing river. JP shut his eyes, fighting another surge of fiery heat as she uttered a soft laugh. “The only traveling I’ve done is choir tours, on which they took us to chain franchises. Oh, and there was the short-lived opera company that was supposed to perform across the country, but they ran out of money. Cut us loose in Chicago to get home any way we could. I lived on peanut butter and crackers for the duration of the billion-hour bus trip home.”

Shelley turned around in her chair. “I’d forgotten that! No wonder we never had any peanut butter in the apartment.”

“Can’t stand the sight of it.” Jan shook her head, her curls falling like corn silk around her face, and JP’s fingers tingled with the desire to touch.

The others laughed easily, then Dennis said, “JP?”

He had curled his fists under the table, and forcibly relaxed them as he said, “Pass. You know I like everything.”

“Whereas I eat everything,” Dennis said, and went off retailing another of his adventures.

JP didn’t hear a word. Jan’s beautiful voice kept ringing in his head. And under cover of the general chatter, he bent toward her. “Opera?” he asked.

How could she be more amazing?

* * *

How can I be more boring?
Jan thought, groaning inwardly, and braced for the snarky comment about opera.

But when she dared a peek at him, his expression was anything but snarky. No way. No possible way this incredibly handsome, smoking hot man
liked opera?
His amazing black eyes had widened, his lips—she tried not to stare at the sexy curve of his lips—parted.

Though everybody else was now talking about sports, JP’s attention was solely on Jan. And he was waiting for an answer.

“Yes.” She swallowed a boulder the size of Texas. “Opera. I can sing anything, of course, and have for short soundtrack gigs. But I’m a trained soprano.”

First rule of dating
, the senior resident had told Jan and Shelley their first year in college dorms—neither of them having been very successful at dating.
When you meet a hot guy, don’t drool.

“What type of soprano roles do you sing?”

He knew subcategories of opera vocals?
I can’t remember Rule Two
, her inner voice wailed as she stuttered, “Lyric, certain
spinto
roles.”

The others at the table laughed at something Mick said, but JP leaned toward her, lowering his voice.
No drooling
, she thought in panic as her entire body lit up from within. He asked, “Which operas have you sung?”

Her mind blanked so hard she couldn’t remember the tune to “Three Blind Mice.”
Get a grip
, she told herself as he waited for an answer. Of course he would be married, or have a harem of girlfriends, or was gay, or any and all combinations of the three.

But then she caught herself up.
I’m the chubby sidekick, the comedy relief
, she reminded herself sternly.
He’s being polite. As soon as these good-looking guys leave the room, out will come the jokes about the fat lady singing
.

Because there was no possible way that JP LaFleur could have any interest in
her
.

The thought steadied her enough to gulp a breath and speak. She told him the names of operas, and to her amazement saw recognition in the tiny nods he made now and then.

“Probably everyone has seen, or been dragged to,
La Bohème
,” he said, “but my favorite Puccini is
Madama Butterly
, seconded closely by
Turandot
.”

He liked her favorite opera? “’Un Bel Di’ is in my repertoire,” she said, not adding that though she sang it well, no one in weight-conscious LA wanted a roly-poly Butterfly on stage. So she’d never performed it outside of college.

“One of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written,” he said, his soft voice sheeting through her with toe-curling heat. “I think the best performance I ever saw was in Prague—”

“JP?” Dennis called down the table. “What year was it your dad took us to see the World Cup soccer tournament?”

Jan could have sworn it was impatience that tightened JP’s expression before he answered in his calm, polite voice. The look was gone so fast she wasn’t sure she’d really seen it, but as he turned back to her, the thought occurred that he not only had perfect manners, he had perfect self control.

Definitely being nice to the fat girl
, she scolded herself.
So keep it cool.

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