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of gums. He didn’t have a single tooth in his head.
    “As you can see,” Alex said quietly, having obviously just reached the pool, “Cal would have a hard time turning into a maneater.”
    Noah tore his gaze from the lion and looked at her. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he demanded softly.
    Caliban padded to the edge of the pool, crouched, and jumped into the water.
    Alex sat in a lounge chair beside Noah’s, tense with the worry that her landlord and employer might report her. She didn’t think he would, butshe wasn’t at all sure of that. And even though a part of her cursed her own forgetfulness in neglecting to fasten the screen on her patio door, another part knew that Noah would have found out soon anyway.
    “Why?” he repeated after an incredulous glance toward the swimming lion.
    “Because it’s illegal,” she said simply. “If the animal control people knew about Caliban, he’d be put in a zoo—or destroyed.”
    “How long have you had him?”
    “Six years.”
    “Since the circus?” Noah shook his head bemusedly. “But how—”
    “I stole him.” Alex sighed. “It’s a long story.”
    “I’ve got time.”
    After a moment Alex nodded. “All right. But I have to go back to the beginning. Caliban’s beginning. He was born in a private zoo and hand-reared because his mother died. The man who owned the zoo let Cal roam free in his house and treated him like a child.” She smiled faintly, gazing toward the still-swimming lion. “As far as Cal wasconcerned, he was people—he didn’t know he was … king of the beasts.
    “You see, mother nature made a slight genetic error when she created Cal. She put the soul of a kitten into a lion’s body. Even years later, when the zoo was closed after the owner’s death and Cal was bought by a circus, he never showed an affinity for other lions. He never even learned how to roar.
    “By the time I joined the circus, they’d given up on making him seem ferocious. He was too lazy to perform in the ring; they used him as a comedian, because he’d always roll over to have his belly scratched and make the crowd laugh.”
    “Why did you steal him?” Noah asked, watching her profile intently.
    For a moment Alex didn’t answer. She waited until Caliban caught the top step of the ladder and nimbly pulled himself out of the pool, then came to sprawl in a wet and lazy heap beside her lounge chair. Then she looked at Noah.
    “Just before I left the circus, Cal lost all his teeth. It was partly age and partly a gum disease.He was old even then. The owner decided he’d be too much trouble to feed, so he planned to have him destroyed.” Her hand dropped to rest on the broad head of her pet. “I couldn’t bear that. Except for the loss of his teeth, Cal was perfectly healthy. So, the night I left the circus, I took him with me.”
    “The circus didn’t report it?”
    “No. The owner was something of a shady character; he wouldn’t have dared report the loss of a big cat to the police. Besides, he knew. He knew I’d taken Cal.”
    She looked back down at the lion, then stared at Noah defiantly. “Lions rarely live to be twenty: Cal is thirty-one.
Thirty-one
. He has never in his life so much as scratched another living creature and when they put him in a cage with a lioness, all he wanted to do was wash her face as if she were a pet. He doesn’t know he’s a lion.”
    Noah realized that she was waiting for him to announce his intentions. Would he report the lion or join her in a quiet conspiracy? Instead of doingthat, Noah asked another question. “How’ve you managed to hide him for six years?”
    Alex took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Caution, planning—and a little help from a few friends. Cal’s own nature helped. Male lions tend to rest and sleep nearly twenty hours out of every twenty-four, and Cal is very obedient. He tends to stay where I put him. I take him out for exercise very early and very late. And I’ve been