by Zoe Chant
Breck finally said, “Do you do anything for fun?”
Darla clung to the conversational lifeline. “Mother finds it acceptable for me to volunteer for charities, so I spend a few days a week at a retirement home for shifters. She has no idea what the home entails, or I’m sure she wouldn’t let me. I think she figures I arrange flowers and maybe fluff pillows and read to people in comas. But it can be really dirty, hard, heart-breaking work, and I love it. All of them are so sweet. Mrs. Asher is like a grandmother to me. And Mr. Danby — he’s non-verbal, but you can tell that he’s still in there, and we play chess. That’s... where I met Liam. He runs the home.”
She had managed to stop looking at Breck at some point, so she only heard the slight hitch to his breath at the reminder of Liam.
“Do you love him?” he asked, as if he couldn’t help himself.
Darla shrugged miserably. “Yes. Not… like love love, but he’s my best friend. He’s my only friend. I don’t want to leave him in a lurch.”
Breck was quiet a long moment. “You’ll be happy with him,” he said, as if he desperately needed to believe it.
Just a day ago, she would have said that she would have been perfectly happy with Liam. Then she’d met Breck and gotten a glimpse at what happiness could be.
“I have to marry him,” Darla said, and she didn’t realize that she was crying until the first tear fell on the counter below her. It made an imperfect little wet circle on the shiny stainless steel. “I’m sorry, Breck,” she said, as boldly and honestly as she could. “I wish things were different. I wish we could be together.”
“I’d do anything,” he said simply. “I’d wait. I’d fight. I’d change. Tell me what to do, and I’d do it.”
At the word fight, Darla’s head rose. “There’s a challenge…” she said, barely daring to hope. Maybe she’d been wrong about Breck’s animal.
“I’ll challenge,” Breck said swiftly. “How do I challenge?”
“It’s a battle in shifted form,” Darla said, heart in her throat. “Your animal…”
Breck looked crestfallen. “I’m a leopard,” he said doubtfully. “I don’t think I could take on a dragon.”
Darla sighed, her brief hope draining away. “It’s not Liam you’d have to worry about. He would stand down… but if he did, then Eugene would challenge you.”
“Eugene? That weaselly-looking man hanging on your mother? What’s he?”
“A cave bear,” Darla said with despair.
“Oh, a cave bear,” Breck said archly. “Is that all.” He didn’t have to say out loud that he stood no more chance as a leopard against a giant extinct bear than he did a dragon. “Well, is there another challenge, possibly a challenge of wits? I could manage that pretty handily. How about a swimsuit competition? You should see me in a Speedo. Even your mother would swoon.”
Darla giggled despite herself. “I’m afraid those aren’t part of the ancient dragon tradition,” she said regretfully.
“Then forget ancient dragon tradition,” Breck suggested. “Run away with me. You don’t need your mother’s blessing to live a life of delicious sin in some little town on the mainland.” Darla thought he was trying to make it a joke. A joke too heavy for humor, too intense for levity.
For one short, blissful moment, gazing into his longing golden eyes, Darla wondered if she could… then she remembered. “The retirement home. Without my inheritance, it will go under. Mrs. Asher… Mr. Danby… they’ll all have nowhere to go. My mother will be so angry, and she has so much power. I’m afraid of what she’d do to Liam, to his family, to the home, just to punish me for humiliating her.”
Breck made a noise that Darla couldn’t identify. Anger, maybe, or frustration.
Everything about the situation was frustrating.
He was so beautiful, so graceful.
And she wanted him so badly.
Suddenly, there was the sound of singing, something operatic in a male voice from the restaurant.
Panic filled Darla’s chest. They couldn’t be seen. Surely the attraction that was sizzling between them would be obvious to any observer.
“Chef,” whispered Breck, clearly thinking the same thing. “Out the back!”
Darla scampered after him to the back door, and there was one beautiful moment when his hand was at her waist as he hurried her outside.
It was quiet behind the kitchen, with the just the promise of dawn in the sky. Breck followed her out, and for a moment, they stood close together, not touching. “If I kiss you, I’ll never be able to stop,” he said regretfully.
“I know,” Darla murmured. She wanted him to anyway, but her head knew that the smartest thing to do was simply not to start.
“Good luck,” Breck said. “I…” He started to offer his hand to shake and reconsidered, drawing it back reluctantly. He knew as well as she did that any touch would take them down a road they couldn’t go.
“Good luck,” Darla echoed quickly, then she turned and fled, as the singing came closer and there was the creak of a door at the other end of the kitchen.
Chapter 14
Breck swept the rest of the Darla’s leftover breakfast into the trash and dunked the dishes under the foaming surface of the dishwater just as Chef swept in the door with a deep resounding line of music.
The kitchen was wrong without Darla. Even knowing that she couldn’t be his, it had been better with her near, being able to talk to her, being able to feed her.
Chef broke off his song with alarm as he strolled down the aisle of the kitchen. “Did you set the timer for the bread?”
Too late, Breck recognized that part of the wrongness of the moment was the slight tinge of burning bread in the air. “Oh, hell,” he said in dismay.
The bread was not badly burned, but Breck felt wretched. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I’m... just tired. Not used to this pre-dawn nonsense.” He couldn’t very well give the real reason for his distraction.
Chef waved him off. “This party is a crusts-cut-off sort of bunch anyway,” he said expansively, tapping the tops of the darkened loaves. “The bread inside is fine.” But he gave Breck a searching look that suggested he wasn’t buying ‘I’m tired’ as a believable excuse.
Breck returned to the dishes, and then chopped fruit, unable to stop thinking about Darla, sitting across the counter with her tousled hair and sweet blue eyes. The way she licked her lips so daintily as she ate, her perfect manners, her gentle voice, the longing in her heart-shaped face...
“Hmmm,” Chef said, eyeing the irregular pieces of pineapple he was trimming. “Who is she?”
Breck looked up in alarm.
“Who is who?” he asked as innocently as he could manage.
“Or he,” Chef suggested. “I suppose I shouldn’t presume.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Breck said firmly, mutilating the chunk of pineapple and nearly taking his fingers with it.
Chef’s booming laugh filled the kitchen. “I always knew that when you fell, you’d fall hard. One of the bridesmaids? A groomsman? Not one of the grandmothers!”
“Not a grandmother,” Breck said regretfully. A grandmother would have been so much simpler.
“I’m guessing they’re quite a firecracker, to damage your calm this badly,” Chef chuckled.
No one would call Darla a firecracker, Breck thought miserably. She was a moment of stillness, the reflection of the moon on quiet water, a single perfect note of music.
“You don’t have to say,” Chef said, voice rich with amusement. “Whoever it is, I wish you luck. And I wish them even more; they’ll need it.”
Breck nicked one of his fingertips and sucked the stinging pineapple juice from it. “Thanks,” he said dryly.
“That pineapple is irrecoverable for fruit bowls,” Chef observed, accurately. “Even before you bled in it. Go ahead and finish destroying it and I’ll cook it down for a pineapple cheesecake sauce tonight.”
&
nbsp; Breck sighed and went to wash his hands. The cut had already started to heal over by the time he returned, determined to make presentable fruit pieces.
If Breck had been confident that Darla could be happy, that she’d be better off without him, he could have let her go.
Probably.
His nights would have been an agony of wanting and missing, but he could gone on with his life like nothing was wrong, pretending to flirt, keeping up appearances.
But what else could he do? Ask her to call off her wedding? She certainly seemed to be well trapped in the arrangement.
“You’re not doing much better with those,” Chef observed over his shoulder.
The second pineapple had not fared any better than the previous fruit. Breck put the knife down in defeat.
“This isn’t just some girl,” Chef guessed.
Breck exhaled. “No,” he confessed. “Not even close. She’s…” He couldn’t finish.
Our mate, his leopard insisted. It’s simple!
“Maybe you should just wash some dishes and let me handle the sharp items while your brain is figuring out whatever it is you need to figure out,” Chef suggested.
“I don’t think there’s anything to figure out,” Breck admitted. “It’s… not something that can happen.”
“Ah,” Chef said with a smile. “One of those situations. Well, you’d be surprised what your brain can come up with if you give it a chance.”
Breck shrugged at him, not convinced, and went to wash dishes.
“Your brain!” Chef reminded him in a sing-song. “Not the other parts!”
Chapter 15
The spreading lawn was almost flat, in a resort that was unexpectedly steep and built in many levels, and it was large enough for the hundreds of people who would be seated to watch the ceremony that Darla was dreading.
Already, there was a white archway and a small platform half assembled, and two of the resort staff were busily finishing the rest.
“I want this threaded with flowers,” her mother was saying imperiously. “This whole arch! And we should have pots all along the aisle. Oh, do you think this is the right angle? I don’t want the sun to be in anyone’s eyes.”
Scarlet, the resort owner, looked absolutely serene in that way that Darla recognized from the mirror as a polite, trained mask. “The sun will be setting in that direction,” she indicated. “But the final part of the ceremony should be just before it is low enough to cause any discomfort. By the time it is on the horizon, everyone will be back in the event hall for the evening reception and dancing.”
“Hmm,” Jubilee said, standing in various positions experimentally. “But is the view better this way? Maybe we should move the platform.”
“No one will be looking at the view, mother,” Darla said shortly. That earned her a surprised look from everyone there, except the guitar player. She had been dutifully, politely quiet while her mother steamrolled everything, up until now. She gave a tiny, apologetic smile.
“Oh, you’re right,” Jubilee said quickly. “We wouldn’t want the view to be better than the view of you, of course! This will do. Come, I want to see the event hall. Are you sure it’s big enough?”
The two men assembling the archway exchanged amused looks behind Jubilee’s back as she and Scarlet left across the lawn, her assistant and the bridesmaids straggling behind.
Darla remained at the half-built platform, staring at the contraption that was going to seal her in a cage.
It could be worse, she reminded herself. She could be marrying Eugene.
It could be better, her snow leopard reminded her. Darla had given up trying to explain why she wasn’t marrying her mate, why they weren’t together now, like her animal insisted they should be.
“Your mother is not very nice,” the woman standing with the musician said frankly, with a shake of her head. She had long, untidy braids on either side of her face. Darla had at first thought she had black and white ribbons woven into her hair, but it was actually locks of dark hair mixed with pure white strands.
“She’s under a lot of stress,” Darla tried to apologize for her. “With the wedding and everything.”
“You’re under more,” the woman said critically, giving her a piercing look. She was oddly forward, and strangely shy at the same time. “I’m Gizelle. You’ve already met Conall.” She hung back behind Conall slightly, not offering to shake hands.
“Thank you for agreeing to play at the wedding,” Darla told him politely. Her mother had been delighted when she realized that the famous classical guitar player Conall Grant was living at the resort, and had been relentless in her attempts to get him to play at the wedding.
He was glancing after the rest of the wedding party and didn’t respond.
Gizelle smiled. “He can’t hear you,” she said in explanation, just as Conall looked back and said, “I’m sorry, did you say something?”
Darla furrowed her brow. “I… thought you could hear now,” she said slowly, wondering if it was rude. “I understood that the island had fixed your hearing.”
“He’s not something to fix,” Gizelle said with unexpected defensiveness that gentled into amusement with dizzying quickness. “But he can hear with my ears if he’s touching me!” She took his hand and gleefully announced, “He’s my mate!”
Conall’s tender glance down at Gizelle cut Darla to the heart.
That was what a mate should be.
That was what she would never have.
Her chest feeling very tight, Darla politely repeated what she’d said earlier when Conall couldn’t see her. “Thank you for agreeing to play at the wedding.” The wedding. Not her wedding.
But Gizelle was giving Conall a quizzical look. “Are you going to play at our wedding?” Then her eyes got big and she clung to his arm earnestly. “Can we have a wedding? With cake and a white lacy dress like Jenny’s and flowers that Graham doesn’t roar about?”
Conall smiled at her slowly. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
Gizelle was still for a moment, then began capering around like a child wound up on Christmas candy. “I am! I am! I am! I will marry you! I will!”
She launched herself at Conall, who caught her effortlessly and lifted her into the air with a laugh of delight. “You will be the most beautiful bride in the world,” he said. “And I will be the luckiest groom.”
“Wait, wait!” Gizelle cried. “Do I have to wear shoes?”
“You do not,” Conall assured her.
“Do I have to wear…?” she suddenly looked around, and whispered the rest into Conall’s closest ear.
“You do not,” Conall repeated, grinning ear-to-ear.
Darla tried to resolve the musician with the grim, dramatic portraits on the covers of his discs, and entirely failed.
“That’s a pretty bracelet,” Gizelle said out of the blue, wriggling out of Conall’s arms and circling Darla curiously. “It’s in your skin.”
Darla self-consciously turned it on her wrist, not liking the idea of the bracelet in her skin. It seemed more gold than ever in the bright daylight. “It was an engagement gift,” she explained. She remembered too well how it had felt, clamping irreversibly around her wrist.
“What does it do?” Gizelle asked suspiciously, returning to take Conall’s hand.
Darla showed her the writing. “That means ‘unbroken line.’ It’s supposed to promote fertility, I guess.”
“I don’t think you’re using it right,” Gizelle said with great authority. “That’s not how babies work.”
Darla flushed, but before she could respond, Conall said merrily, “She probably already knows how babies work, Gizelle. And I’m very happy to play at your wedding.”
The last part was to Darla, who smiled wanly.
“Did you have a particular song you wanted to request?” Conall seemed all business again.
“I’m sure my mother has already given you a detailed playlist,” Darla said more bitterly than she intended.
He stilled and gave Darla a solemn look. “Isn’t there something you want? It’s your wedding.”
Darla wrestled with her impulse to insist that it wasn’t. “Whatever she has selected will be fine,” she said instead, keeping her voice mild and her face a polite, neutral mask.
Conall gave her a knowing look. “If you change your mind, just let me know,” he said kindly.
“Thank you,” Darla said faintly. “I appreciate that. I’ll let you know if I think of anything.”
Chapter 16
Breck slapped the last of the pans from lunch down into the drainer and pulled up the stopper. Watching the soapy water spin down the drain was a moment of distraction; it looked like Breck’s heart felt.
“Restaurant is empty,” Chef observed. “Why don’t you go wipe down tables and get your grumpy self out of my kitchen.”
Breck, feeling epically grumpy indeed, took the advice and a clean rag.
To his surprise, Liam was sitting at one of the tables, looking over the drink menu. None of the other servers were in sight.
“Well, sir,” Breck said cautiously, with just the barest trace of his usual charm. “I’m not supposed to be serving today, and the kitchen is closed, but I can’t let someone languish without service. May I get you something from the bar? Make you up a sandwich?”
Liam looked at him appraisingly. “You’re Breck,” he guessed sympathetically.
Breck gave him a wary smile. “The very one,” he said, giving a little bow. He had no idea how much Liam knew. Was he just a server who’d rubbed the mother of the bride the wrong way? Or did Liam know more?
Liam glanced around the empty restaurant and then gestured at the seat opposite. “You’re Darla’s mate,” he said quietly.
All of his breath left Breck in a rush and he sank down into the indicated chair. He hadn’t said it out loud, and neither had Darla, even if they had both acknowledged it; hearing it made it feel real.
Bitterly real.
“I’m Darla’s mate,” Breck agreed. “And you’re her fiance.”
“Saying I’m sorry seems insufficient,” Liam said regretfully. “Have you two had a chance to talk? Did she explain?”