Infinite Harmony

by Tammy Blackwell

  Since the entire resort was filled with wedding guests who had arrived days ago, there wasn’t a whole lot to be done. Ada ran a few daily reports and handled a phone call from a distraught woman with a strong Slavic accent who couldn’t figure out how to adjust the air conditioning in her room, but by 5:30 she was out of things to do. She had been watching clips of old Elton John concerts on YouTube for nearly four hours when her phone buzzed with an incoming message.

  Ada’s hand hovered an inch over her phone. Most of the gossipy texts had stopped, but the unknown number with a mouth like a sailor and a strong dislike of Ada had sent a handful of messages over the past few days. Most of them just called her a variety of unflattering names, but there was the occasional threat thrown in to keep things interesting. She tried not to let them bother her, but it was one of those tasks which sounded much easier than it was in practice.

  Curiosity finally got the best of her, and she flipped her phone over to see Joshua’s name. Her heart gave a little happy lurch as she read, “If you keep frowning like that you’re going to give yourself wrinkles.” She tried to pinpoint his location, but there wasn’t any place where someone could see her without her being able to see them.

  “Where are you?” she typed back.

  “My bed. Do you want to know what I’m wearing?” She had no more than read the message when an image file came through. It was a headless selfie of Joshua’s Dead Kennedys shirt and hibiscus-printed board shorts.

  “Sexy,” she sent before adding, “Do YOU want to know what I’M wearing?”

  She had to wait a few minutes for his reply, but when it came through it said, “No need. I’ve hacked into the surveillance videos. Save me one of those donuts. I’ll be over in 15.”

  Ada looked at the package of powdered donuts she’d salvaged from the vending machine and then up at the video camera pointing directly down at her. She knew he was some sort of tech god, but he couldn’t really hack into the security system, could he?

  She grabbed a piece of paper out of the copy machine, wrote “Good thing the desk is hiding the fact I’m naked from the waist down,” with a Sharpie, and flashed it at the camera. Five seconds later, she got a message saying, “Make that 5.”

  Six and a half minutes later, the front door swung open.

  “Miss Jessup, a pleasure,” Joshua said as he jumped up on the check-in counter.

  Ada tried to push him back down onto the floor. “Get down,” she admonished. “You’re going to get me fired.”

  Joshua leaned further over into the employees-only area, his gaze traveling down her body. “Khakis. You’re wearing khakis.” He slid off the counter with a pout. “You’re a tease, Ada Jessup. A lowdown, dirty, no good, rotten tease.”

  She knew it was just playful banter, but it was so strikingly close to what her father had said earlier his words stung instead of amused.

  “Serves you right,” she said a little too harshly. “What kind of weirdo stalker hacks into a security system to spy on someone? Not cool, Grandpa.”

  “Grandpa?” Joshua slapped his hands over his chest and staggered back a few steps. “Ouch. Right through the heart.”

  One corner of Ada’s mouth tugged upwards. She narrowed her eyes and tapped a finger against her chin as if in deep thought. “Grandpa Stalker,” she decided. “That’s your new sidekick name.”

  Joshua ambled back toward her and leaned over the counter, propping himself up on his elbows. The neckline of his t-shirt hung down, and Ada found herself unable to tear her eyes away from the hollow place at the base of his throat. She wasn’t sure she’d ever noticed that particular part of a guy’s anatomy before. It was ridiculously attractive. It practically begged someone to put their lips there.

  “First of all,” Joshua said, “I’m not old. I’ve merely been around for a while. And secondly, I wasn’t stalking.”

  Ada did something with her forehead that she hoped resembled a single raised eyebrow. “What exactly do you call it?”

  “Recon. I was simply looking to see if you were working tonight and got distracted by how darn cute you are.”

  Unable to meet his eyes after a comment like that, Ada focused on his hands, which were splayed just inches in front of her on the counter. It was weird how different his man-hands were from hers. They were longer and wider. The knuckles were bigger, and blue veins bulged from the surface. Man hands. They were really quite ugly, or at least, they should have been. Ada found she was quite fond of man-hands.

  “Unless you were distracted by how adorable the blurry mass on the screen you assumed was me based on size and hair color was, I’m not buying it,” she said. “I’ve seen security footage from this place before. Our cameras suck.”

  Joshua nodded his agreement. “True. Your cameras are wretched, but my software isn’t. It takes all those blurry, pixelated images and turns them into crisp, HD works of art.” He leaned in. “I’m kind of a genius,” he whispered as if it was some big secret.

  Ada knew she shouldn’t smile, it would only encourage his outrageous behavior and give him an even bigger head than he already had, but she couldn’t help it. There was something about him, something warm and full of energy, that filled her with joy, even when she thought there was nothing joyful left in the world.

  “So you keep telling me,” she said. Of course, he’d shown her, too. There was now an app on her phone that measured her lung capacity anytime she spoke into the microphone. He’d downloaded it the other day while they played miniature golf with Kinsey and Angel. It wasn’t until he made her test it a few times that she realized he’d invented the app himself, and seemingly overnight. He might have been a little cocky, but there was a reason. He really was that good.

  A large black SUV drove past the main lodge. Usually a car that big and expensive would have grabbed Ada’s attention and caused several minutes speculation on who it was and how they’d made that much money, but in the last week $80,000 vehicles had become commonplace at Serenity Shores. It seemed the Donovan-Cole wedding guests were keeping the Land Rover and Escalade dealerships afloat all by themselves. Joshua watched the vehicle drive by before pulling out his phone and tapping on the screen.

  “Running the plates?” Ada asked.

  The corners of Joshua’s mouth tugged up in a don’t-I-look-oh-so-innocent-grin. “Now, why on earth would I do something like that?”

  Ada could only smile and shake her head in return. In truth, she had no idea why Joshua would be running the plates of a car entering the resort, but she didn’t doubt it was exactly what he was doing. She still didn’t buy into his werewolf story, but something was definitely up. Everyone who worked at the resort talked about it. Kathy was full of theories, her favorite involving the Russian mafia and a Mexican drug ring.

  Of course, Ada wasn’t buying either of those theories either. How could she when Joshua was pointing out small proofs of God’s existence everywhere they went? He was completely serious about the whole being an angel thing, and she couldn’t imagine an angel committing horrible crimes.

  The buzz of a vibrating phone snagged Ada’s attention, and her stomach gave a familiar lurch. Not for the first time, she thought about showing the messages to Joshua and asking him to figure out who was behind them. It would probably be easy for him. A few pressed buttons and a swipe of the screen, and he would say, “Ah. Here it is. The culprit was old Mr. Magoo, the factory owner, in a mask. No monsters here.” A few minutes, and it would be over. She could confront the asshat who had been terrorizing her for the past few days and sleep easier at night. Yet she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t stomach the idea of Joshua knowing someone was sending her such nasty texts. What if he thought she was being a silly, overdramatic girl for letting them upset her? What if he thought she deserved them?

  No. He wouldn’t think that. Her father and the rest of Lake County might think of her as a horrible person, but not Joshua.

  Still, though, she couldn’t pick up her phone and hand it over.
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br />   Her hand was inching toward her phone - curiosity finally starting to overtake fear - when Joshua finally pocketed his own phone and once again sprawled over the check-in desk. “So, I was thinking,” he said as she snatched her hand back like a kid reaching for the cookie jar. “There is this thing on Friday night. Like a music thing. And I know you like music—”

  His thought was interrupted by the front door slamming open. It was like the sun had emerged from the middle of the night to prance into the lobby. Angel liked to play around with clothes and make-up, and from the looks of it, she’d spent hours carefully constructing her current look.

  Ada had seen the yellow sundress the younger girl was wearing before, but it had hung to a respectable right-below-the-knee length at the time. The hemline was now hanging somewhere just below her butt cheeks. Part of the missing material was now serving duty as a headband, and another section had been used to re-cover the thong part of a pair of flip-flops.

  Her make-up was so flawlessly applied the casual observer might think she wasn’t wearing much. They would probably also think she could legally order a beer. The slight tilt she’d given to her eyes, the chiseled illusion she’d given her cheekbones, and the berry-colored stain on her lips weren’t something you would normally associate with a middle school kid. Her eyes were the most spectacular of all. The way she’d blended the various shades of oranges and yellows looked like something out of a fashion magazine.

  There was no mistaking the sway she tried to put into her step as she sauntered over to stand by Joshua. If Ada was being perfectly honest about the situation, the kid was better at the whole sexily-twitching-hips thing than she was. She wanted to be annoyed with her for being so obvious about trying to sway the attention of the boy Ada was very much interested in, and she was a little, but mostly she was just happy to see she’d come out of the glum defeated depression she’d been in for the past few days. Angel Donovan was a lot of things, but morose wasn’t normally one of them. The world didn’t seem quite right if Angel wasn’t loudly and expertly commanding the attention of everyone around her.

  “Angela Sophia Donovan,” Joshua said, standing up so he could peer down his nose at her. It was a good thing she was leaning on the counter. Joshua was fairly tall, probably over six foot, but if Angel had been standing at her full height he wouldn’t have more than a couple of inches on her. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing here? You’re supposed to be in your parents’ cabin.”

  “Ummm… Hello. You’re not the boss of me.”

  Did younger siblings of the world pass that line down, one to the other, or was it an inherent part of their vernacular?

  Joshua’s wide mouth constricted to a tiny slash. “Actually, I am. Scout assigned me to you.”

  “Yeah. That really matters.” Angel executed a perfect eye roll, which finally made her look her real age. “Scout isn’t the boss of me either.”

  “Scout is the boss of everyone. Including you.”

  “I don’t turn furry, and I don’t have visions, so no, Scout is not the boss of me, thank you very much,” Angel said.

  While she was talking, Angel quit leaning against the counter and jumped up to sit on the edge of it instead. The new position made her practically nonexistent skirt ride up even further. Joshua quickly averted his eyes, horror etched on his face.

  “You need to go home and put on some pants,” he told her while looking at the ceiling.

  Angel snorted. “You don’t get to tell me what to wear either.”

  Joshua shot Ada a pleading look. “A little help here?”

  “Sorry,” Ada said, “but the feminist living inside my heart says you have no right to tell a woman what she can and cannot wear.” His face crumbled, and because couldn’t bear disappointing him, she added, “But you’re going to have to get your butt off my counter, Angel.”

  Angel made a whining noise, but slid down to the floor. It was a good thing Joshua decided to close his eyes for that part since Ada got a peek at a pair of Wonder Woman panties as Angel dismounted.

  Once she was firmly planted on the ground with her dress back to rights, Joshua wheeled on her, his eyes hard. “I don’t care who you think is or isn’t the boss of you,” he said, his voice firm and not holding any of its usual teasing tone, “you’re not to walk around by yourself. It’s dangerous.”

  “Dangerous. Riiiiight,” Angel said, flipping a strand of hair over her shoulder. “If anyone so much as looks at me wrong Scout is going rip their throat out.”

  Ada wasn’t going to start believing in this werewolf nonsense. Really, she wasn’t. But not believing in it was making this conversation really difficult.

  “You’re right. She will. But it won’t really matter if you’re already dead.” Joshua’s fists were balled at his sides. Veins bulged out from his arms. “There are bad guys in this world, munchkin, and some of them are walking around this resort with smiles on their faces while seeking out the Alphas’ weak spot.” His mouth turned up, the smile almost cruel. “Where exactly do you think they might find that weak spot?”

  Because it was the middle of summer and Angel was one of those girls whose body did everything it was supposed to in order to meet modern standards of beauty, her skin was perfectly tanned. The bronzed flesh could hide a host of sins (and blushes), but it couldn’t disguise the anger turning Angel’s face into the color of an eggplant.

  “I am not weak,” she ground out between clenched teeth. “And don’t ever call me munchkin again.”

  Joshua’s hand shot out the same time Angel’s body started plummeting to the ground. Ada instinctively leaned over the counter, her hand out to catch the falling girl. It was pointless, of course, but despite Ada’s inability to come to her aid, Angel’s head didn’t smack against the tiled floor. Belatedly, Ada realized Joshua had been reaching out to stop Angel’s descent… at the same moment he’d kicked her feet out from under her.

  “What are you two doing? Ballroom dancing?”

  Ada jumped and let out a little squeak. She hadn’t heard anyone come in. The guy standing just inside the door had the lean, muscular frame that seemed standard issue for every male currently staying at Serenity Shores. Something about his wide, almost feminine lips and green eyes were familiar.

  Joshua pulled Angel to her feet. “Just teaching Munchkin here a little lesson about how everyone else is faster and stronger than she is.”

  “I hate you,” Angel said, jerking away from Joshua’s hold.

  Joshua pretended like he hadn’t heard her, but the lines bracketing his mouth and etched across his forehead deepened at her words.

  “How did she get out on her own?” he asked the other guy.

  “She didn’t. I’ve been tracking her since she climbed out her bedroom window.” Angel made a strangled sound of annoyance in her throat, and the new guy shot her the world’s most patronizing look. “If you wanted to come up here, all you had to do is ask.” His gaze darted down to the mile-long expanse of leg bared to the world and added, “Although, I’m guessing someone would have insisted on a costume change beforehand. Please tell me Maggie didn’t help you with that. She has too much to deal with right now to have to listen to Jase and Scout lecture her on appropriate hem lengths for pubescent siblings.”

  “I don’t need anyone helping me alter my clothes or following me around like I’m a toddler.” Angel’s furious gaze swung around to fix on Joshua. “I don’t want or need anything from any of you.”

  Joshua sighed. It was a simple, unconscious reaction, but telling. Angel was breaking his heart. He might not have all the kissy, romantic feelings she craved, but Joshua loved Angel.

  “You might not want anything from us,” Joshua said, “but you do need us, so no matter what you say or do, we’re going to be there for you.”

  And with those words, Ada turned nearly green with jealousy. Not in the I-want-all-of-Joshua’s-love-like-emotions-for-myself way. Maybe if Angel was a few years older or Joshua’s affections w
eren’t so clearly of the sibling variety she may have gone there, but as it was, Ada didn’t worry about Joshua deciding he would rather make out with Angel than her.

  What made Ada’s heart clench with longing was the unconditionalness of his affections. Joshua wouldn’t stop talking to Angel just because she hadn’t met his expectations or look at her with eyes filled with judgment. When Joshua loved someone, it was with all his heart and without reserve, and Ada longed to be on the receiving end of that kind of love.

  Chapter 19

  Angel Donovan could be a hard person to love, Joshua decided as she disappeared out the door with Charlie. The femme fatale act was annoying, but it was the blatant disregard for her own wellbeing currently making him want to strangle her. What the hell was she thinking sneaking off like that?

  Of course, he knew exactly what Angel had been thinking. From the wary look on Ada’s face as she gnawed on her bottom lip, he worried Angel might have accomplished her goal.

  “Sorry about that,” he said, knowing he sounded like an idiot. “Kids these days. What are you going to do?”

  Ada seemed not to hear him. “Are there really bad people, like I-will-hurt-you-because-I-can bad people, staying here this week?” she asked, her fingers tapping out a rhythm on her phone case.

  Joshua took his time to think about how to answer. The truth was, the entire resort was filled with dangerous people. All Shifters had the potential to harm a human without even meaning to. It didn’t happen often, but when you’re naturally stronger and rely heavily on instinct, sometimes to the point of eschewing logic, there is an opportunity for accidents.

  On the other hand, none of the packs known for their less-than-careful behavior were issued an invitation to the wedding. If it hadn’t been for the attack against Maggie and the threat against Angel, he would have said he trusted all the packs who were staying on the property, but as things stood now, he didn’t know who to trust. He knew something bad was coming, too many Seers were walking around with worried expressions on their face, and that knowledge put him on edge.