by Zoe Chant
Amber stepped into the bedroom and gave the king-sized bed an experimental bounce. It was an exceptionally good mattress, and a tall dresser with a matching vanity promised room for an entire closet of clothing. Amber dumped the contents of her carry-ons into two of the drawers, where they looked tiny and insignificant and untidy.
Amber thought about heading down to the beach or the dining hall, but the peace and quiet let all of her travel exhaustion catch up with her. After the endless drone of the flight from San Jose, and the bumpy road with Jimmy-who-wouldn't-shut-up, it was so lovely to be alone and still for a while.
She thought about how warm and muggy it was, about purring contentedly, and then she was stepping out of loose clothing in her mountain cat form and leaping up onto the big bed for a delicious nap.
Chapter Four
The manager, Scarlet, was not in her office when Tony got there.
Jimmy, the sharp-faced man who apparently did all manner of odd jobs, was hauling an impressive collection of matched luggage out of the shuttle.
“Scarlet is probably down at the pool lounge,” Jimmy said with a shrug. “We lost our bartender last week, and she's had to stand in.”
“Lost your bartender?” Tony asked– too intensely, he realized.
“Moved back to Minnesota to take care of a sick mother or something,” Jimmy said, dropping a gigantic suitcase on its side and wrestled it back upright.
Tony used a foot to stop the suitcase from rolling down the slight incline, and let Jimmy grab its handle.
“I could use a drink,” he tried to say casually. He was supposed to be just another rich slob on vacation, he reminded himself.
“You and me both,” Jimmy said jovially. “That's my first stop after I deliver these. There's this hot new cat shifter that's just arrived, and I'm hoping she'll be the ... social type.”
Tony had no interest in chasing tail, no matter how literal that phrase was here, and left Jimmy with a grunt to stomp down the trail to the bar at the pool. By this point, the sun had set over the ocean, and twilight was making its brief stay before full night took hold.
Scarlet was indeed at the bar, pouring and delivering drinks for a few tables of groups and couples who were laughing together.
“What can I get you?” she asked stiffly, with a scowl that Tony recognized from the mirror. She was no more suited to the social aspects of bartending than Tony was to relaxing on vacation.
Voice down, with a glance at the nearest table of revelers, Tony suggested, “You can get me the information I requested days ago. I'm sure you've had time to check my credentials by now.”
Tony had not suspected that Scarlet's face could get colder, but it did.
“I haven't had time to spit in a pot,” she said sharply. “If you haven't noticed, I am not exactly sitting at my desk playing solitaire all day.”
“I need that information,” Tony growled at her.
“And I need to protect my residents' privacy,” Scarlet answered just as fiercely. “You'll get your answers when I have proper assurance that you are who you say you are.”
Keeping his temper had never been a strong point, and everything about Scarlet rubbed Tony wrong. “I've been very nice about asking,” he said through bared teeth. “I could get the records myself.”
Scarlet did not appear to be in the slightest bit intimidated. “I doubt you could,” she said scathingly. Tony couldn't decided from her tone if she was dubious about his ability to force her to turn them over, or his ability to manage the most basic of alphabetic filing systems.
Tony might have answered more heatedly, but Magnolia's voice from a far table called, “Scarlet, darling! Another margarita for me!”
Scarlet waved back, and asked Tony through gritted teeth. “Can I get you a drink? Or would you like to continue monopolizing my time for something I won't give you?”
“A beer,” Tony conceded. “And a shot of whiskey.”
If he wasn't going to be able to conduct any business, there was no point in acting business-like. Besides, it kept up his cover of being on vacation.
He turned on his stool and let her get to work behind the bar while he analyzed the other occupants of the bar. Magnolia sat with a trio of well-dressed men and they were laughing together like old friends. The next table looked like an escaped troupe of actors from the set of a bad Hollywood western, complete with spurs and Texan hats. They were playing cards, very enthusiastically.
A boy who looked far too young to even be in the bar was hitting on a table of middle-aged women wearing terrible jewelry who were giggling at him indulgently. An elderly couple was sitting further out onto the pool deck, looking out over the beach and nursing glasses of wine. Tony guessed from their body language that they were conversing in the unspoken way that some shifters could.
Jimmy had apparently delivered the recalcitrant luggage, and was lingering near the self-serve snacks that were opposite the upper entrance.
“Your drinks,” Scarlet said, putting them in front of him with a little more force than necessary before swishing off to take orders from the table of card-players.
Tony turned to take the shot of whiskey just as a new figure appeared in the doorway and paused to look around.
She was petite and curvy, with a curtain of black hair and medium-dark skin. There was a certain exotic look to her, a sultry elegance that belied her simple khaki shorts and collared shirt. The shirt was unbuttoned a tantalizing way, showing more than a hint of the curves of her breasts. Somehow, that was even sexier than the fully nude women who pranced around the resort in their heels. Her short, straight nose was the perfect center of a round face, and her big eyes looked golden from this distance.
Pretty girls didn't usually turn Tony's head, and he certainly hadn't come to Shifting Sands looking for companionship, but something about the figure woke his tiger, and if he had been in that form, his ears would be perked in her direction.
He realized he was staring just as her gaze swept the room and caught his. He downed the shot of whiskey in a moment of wild confusion, and the next several seconds were a heated haze of pain as the fiery liquid went down the wrong pipe and he had to cough himself back to breathing. When his eyes had stopped watering enough to look around again, the woman was right next to him, smiling invitingly. “Buy you a drink?” she offered.
“You do know that this is an all-inclusive resort?” Tony had to ask, looking around as if to make sure that it was, because between the burning whiskey and her proximity, nothing made sense.
'That's her,' his tiger and all of his instincts were telling him, but after years of waiting to meet his one mate, Tony couldn't believe either his amazing luck or his awful sense of timing.
It didn't matter that he was at the resort on business, and potentially unfortunate business at that. It didn't matter that he hadn't given much thought to settling down. One look at this woman's light brown eyes, and he was hopelessly, entirely lost in her.
All of his vague ideas about what a mate was went out the window. This wasn't about lust, or at least, not only lust. He knew this woman to bottom of his soul, and she was everything he'd ever wanted in another person, all wrapped up in what was easily the sexiest package he'd ever seen.
Chapter Five
Amber lingered outside the entrance to the pool bar, agonizing over how many buttons to leave open on her shirt, and finally went in.
She had just decided she liked how much cleavage was showing when she caught sight of Jimmy, that odious chatterbox from the shuttle, and it was everything she could do not to button her shirt up to her chin. A quick assessment of the room showed that everyone else there was with someone, except for a big chunk of manflesh who was leaning on the bar itself.
Perfect!
He turned away from her approach to take a shot of alcohol from the counter, and then coughed and sputtered ungracefully at it as Amber shimmied herself over to his elbow with the transparent excuse of getting a drink from the bar.
> “Can I buy you a drink?” she blurted, hoping she looked sexy and not just desperate.
The man was even dreamier up close. He had broad shoulders under his t-shirt, and a square jaw straight out of a superhero comic. He had brown eyes and dark brown hair, barely long enough to show some wave, and this smoldering look that unsettled Amber to her toes. It was like he had been lifted, word for word, out of her teenage dream diary. She was attracted to him like she'd never been drawn to anyone, and felt oddly as if he was meant entirely for her.
But that was idiotic. Much like she was.
“You do know that this is an all-inclusive resort?” he asked her, glancing around.
He was probably looking for an escape route.
Amber felt her face heat, and blessed her unknown progenitors for giving her skin that would mostly hide it. “Oh, ah, yes,” she stammered, then chose honesty as her best path from there. “I'm sorry, I just didn't want to get caught alone with him.”
She tried to subtly raise her eyebrows in Jimmy's direction, and probably only looked like she was having some kind of seizure.
“Who, Jimmy?” He looked around to the far side of the bar, and made no effort to keep his voice down. Fortunately, a rowdy group of shifters playing cards had a timely moment of noisy celebration and woe.
Failing to actually sink into her barstool and die, Amber said between clenched teeth, “Very subtle. Do you work undercover often?”
That made him nearly fall off his own barstool with a start. “I beg your pardon?”
Surprised by his reaction, Amber put up innocent hands. “It's just ... that wasn't very slick. Okay, you know what, let's try this again.” She put out a hand. “I'm Amber. I'll just order a drink and go if you'd like.”
“Tony,” he said, taking her hand and clinging to it like a drowning man. “Please don't go.”
Gratified by that reaction, and surprised by it, Amber gave a squeeze that was a little more lingering than polite. “Okay,” she said with a little laugh.
Scarlet had the beautiful timing to return from handing out drinks and ask brusquely, “What do you want?”
“Something fruity,” Amber said. “With an umbrella. I'm not picky.”
She caught a glimpse of Jimmy out of the corner of one eye trying to catch her gaze and made a point of pretending not to see him. It wasn't a hardship to gaze at Tony as if he had all of her attention. He was probably the most masculine thing that Amber had ever had an excuse to talk to, all rippling muscles and jaw, and he had an amazingly expressive mouth.
Scarlet gave an unappreciative growl and left them in peace.
“Have you been here long?” Amber asked. “At the resort, I mean? Not the bar. Of course.”
“A week,” Tony said.
The way he said it made it sound like a finals week, or a week of torture, not a vacation at an upscale beach resort with all the gourmet food and good booze you could want.
“I've got a week here, too,” Amber volunteered. “It would have been nice to stay longer, especially after such a long plane ride to get here, but it's hard to get time off of work.”
“Oh? Where do you work?” Tony asked.
“Just a little local garden store in Lakefield,” Amber said with a shrug. “But I'm the only employee other than the owner and his wife, and they lean on me to do a lot of the day-to-day work.”
“I don't have a green thumb,” Tony said, as if it were a great confession. “I killed a jade plant once.”
“They're surprisingly easy to over-water if you don't give them good drainage,” Amber said understandingly. “How about you? Where do you work?”
“I work for an ... er ... in construction. Management. In, uh, construction.”
Amber wondered where he really worked, but didn't press the issue. If he wanted to elevate himself to management to impress someone at a resort bar, she could understand why. After all, she was the one wearing her shirt one button lower than usual, and she was loving the way his eyes couldn't entirely keep from straying from her face as they spoke. Did that make her a floozy?
The idea alarmed her until she reminded herself that she was on vacation, and had come determined to live outside of her comfortable little box of wholesomeness for the week. She would probably never see this guy again. That idea gave her an unexpected pang of bone-deep regret, which she squashed as quickly as she could.
Scarlet arrived with a brilliantly colored drink sporting not only an umbrella, but several pieces of fruit on a plastic cocktail sword. Amber gave a delighted “Ooo!” as she picked it up, but Scarlet didn't linger to appreciate her reaction.
“I wonder what her animal is,” Amber said wryly, taking a long sip of her technicolor drink. It definitely met her requirements for being fruity, and it had a delightful kick that promised plenty of alcohol and went straight to her head. “It's funny that she knows that about every one of us, and we don't know a thing about her.”
“She's probably a wolverine,” Tony ground out between clenched teeth. Scarlet clearly failed to amuse him.
Were they lovers at odds? Amber caught herself wondering. There was certainly some kind of tension between them. She took another long drink. “What about you?”
Tony looked like she'd caught him in headlights. “What about me?”
“Your, er ... animal?”
“Tiger!” he said, as if relieved. “Siberian tiger, to be exact.” And as an afterthought, “You?”
“Cat,” Amber said cautiously, and the heady drink made her continue when otherwise she might not have. “An Andean mountain cat, actually.”
Tony's eyebrows raised. “I've never even heard of that.”
“It's like a snow leopard,” Amber explained. “But smaller, like the size of a big housecat.”
“It sounds pretty.” The way he said it, gazing straight at her, made Amber warm to her toes.
She took another sip of her drink, and between the buzz of alcohol and the delight in Tony's attentive company, felt deliciously not herself at all.
The moment was doused by an unwelcome intrusion. “Are you finding your way around all right, Amber?”
Jimmy sidled up to her far side, and Amber felt obliged to turn politely, after casting a desperate look at Tony. “Ah, yes. Everything is quite well marked.”
Her neutral tone was meant to be discouraging, but Jimmy sat on the stool beside her in chummy oblivion.
“You be sure to let me know if you need anything, then. I could arrange a fishing trip in the boat, if you're interested. Or a tour of the arboretum at Mr. Big's estate ...”
Amber knew immediately that she hadn't hid her transparent interest in the last quickly enough, and took another desperate slurp at the bottom of her drink with a non-committal noise before she could ask any encouraging questions about what kind of plants Mr. Big grew.
“We were just leaving,” Tony said unexpectedly from her other side.
Amber looked at him in surprise and not a little delight. He sounded ... jealous. Protective. It helped that when he stood up, he towered over them, and Jimmy actually shrunk back a little in instinctive alarm.
She gladly played along, pushing back her empty glass, then impulsively grabbing the drink umbrella as she stood up. “Thanks,” she said, officially at Jimmy, but more meaningfully at Tony.
If Tony rushed her towards to the door a little with his long legs, she couldn't say that she scampered anything less than eagerly with him.
Chapter Six
The air outside the bar felt cooler and fresher, and it was abruptly quieter as the door closed behind them. The colorful lights of the bar gave way to a thickly dark night, barely made navigable by a series of path lights.
Tony felt the angry prickle that Jimmy had inspired immediately soothe as they paused to let their eyes adjust.
“I'm sorry,” he said at once, looking down at the top of Amber's head. Her hair was sleek and touchable, and it was everything he could do not to stroke her in a too-familiar way. “I s
houldn't have presumed to tell Jimmy that we were leaving. If you wanted another drink, or to stay at the bar ...”
Amber tilted her head to look up at him, her eyes bright in the darkness. “You were my white knight,” she said, with no hint of sarcasm. “That man will not take a hint. Seriously, maybe his animal is a leech.”
“I'd put money on a rodent,” Tony said, smiling.
For an oddly long moment, they stood and just stared at each other. Tony suspected that neither of them was thinking about Jimmy.
His mate. He couldn't believe how gorgeous and curvy she was, or how comfortable he felt, just being near her. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his memory.
When he bent to kiss her, unable to resist, she didn't even hesitate, but flung eager arms around his neck and kissed him back, standing on tiptoe to reach him. She tasted like alcohol and fruit, and her mouth managed to be both pliable and firm.
“My cottage,” he offered, between kisses. He barely had the self-control not to wrestle her willingly into the fragrant tropical bushes.
“Mmm, yes!” she said, but she didn't stop kissing him, or raking fingers through his hair.
Even with her agreement, Tony found that he couldn't stop touching her or move his feet. Finally, he picked her up, and she gave a squeal of delighted laughter and wrapped her legs around his waist.
He could move then, though he recognized that he was staggering and weaving in his path. She didn't hamper him with weight, but the way she squirmed against him with her mostly naked legs drove him absolutely mad and her kisses left him dizzy. He had never realized how much having someone touch his shoulders could turn him on.
“Wait, wait!” Amber laughed against his lips, just as they turned on the path to his cottage.
“What? What is it?” His voice sounded like begging to his own ears.
“I lost my sandal!”