by Zoe Chant
Laura was impressed by the clerk’s sweet, even response. “I’m sorry, we’re booked solid for the next week.”
“Well, I suppose it will have to do, then.”
From her tone, Laura could already imagine the Yelp review that the American assistant was composing in her head. ‘Resort was not able to accommodate my many and ridiculous demands. Terrible service. Spotted several insects. Staff in foreign country had actual accents.’
She was smirking over the idea in her head when Mr. America caught her eye again and he seemed to think her smile was about him. He winked, and Laura could feel the smile on her face freeze and turn brittle.
She was done with men. Pretty faces and nice muscles and her own destructive attraction to self-centered jerks had gotten Laura into this mess in the first place.
She wasn’t going to make all those same mistakes again.
She scowled back, and Mr. America looked surprised. She stalked back to her modest pile of luggage and waited while his assistant fussed about having their bags delivered and kvetched about how far it was to walk and how steep it looked. She admired the courtyard instead, with its lovely planters full of exotic things. Green vines draped down in veils from the center of the open yard, and the indirect light was gorgeous and otherworldly.
The Americans finally left, and two sets of Asian contingencies checked in. These, too, were clearly Mr. Shifter contestants with their assistants and a bodyguard apiece. The one that Laura guessed was Mr. China did his own registration, an assistant and an older man who may have been a trainer or a bodyguard waiting behind him. The other let his cheerfully forward assistant handle everything while he smiled and nodded a lot.
The last one before Laura in line was an eastern European man with incredibly green eyes and thick dark hair. A tropical white shirt did nothing to hide his incredible physique. He waited haughtily across the room with their luggage reading his phone while his secretary tripped across the room to complete their registration. She was uselessly giggly, had lost the confirmation number, and it took several extra moments while she fumbled for the correct credit card.
“I’m sorry it’s taken so long,” the woman behind the counter said with her lilting Spanish accent when Laura was finally able to approach. Her nametag said “Lydia.”
“No worries,” Laura said warmly, giving a wry smile of understanding. “You’ve had your hands full. Jenny Smith.”
Lydia’s professional smile broadened. “Do you have your confirmation number?”
Laura had used her copious waiting time to find her numbers and get Jenny’s credit card, and she gave them both to Lydia.
“Perfect,” Lydia said gratefully. “We’ve got you in the hotel, room 320 on the top floor.” She said it neutrally, probably knowing how it sounded after the fancy cottage assignments she’d given to the Mr. Shifters before her.
“That sounds great,” Laura said genuinely.
Her pamphlet had a map of the resort with the narrow hotel building circled. “You’ll want to use the second door,” Lydia said, indicating it on the map with a little blue dot. “And go ahead and use the staff elevator, it’s directly on your left when you go in. Ignore the sign; there’s no keycard required for it.” She gave Laura a warm wink.
“Thanks,” Laura said, and they shared a companionable smile.
“I’ve got a sunrise yoga class in the event room if you’re up.” Lydia added shyly, pointing to the schedule on the back of the pamphlet.
Laura’s smile slipped; sunrise and Laura didn’t really get along, but she knew that Jenny was an early riser. And if she was going to maintain the charade… “I’ll... try to wake up in time.”
“Jetlag can be a bitch,” Lydia said kindly. “You’ll be welcome if you can make it.”
“Thanks,” Laura said weakly. Jenny had been dedicated if not enthusiastic about her yoga classes, even if her efforts hadn’t given her a shape any different than her lazier twin sister’s.
Laura took her keycard and turned back to her bags. At first, she thought it was another Mr. Shifter contestant who was stalking up; he certainly had that Mr. Shifter physique. Then he started to take her bags, and Laura recognized that he was wearing a staff polo shirt with a nametag: Graham.
“I’ve got these,” she said, before he could pick them up. “They stack, and have wheels, so I’m fine.”
He grunted and shrugged, and went to fetch another pile of luggage without so much as a sideways glance. He picked up half the pile without a hint of effort, and left as abruptly as he’d come in, festooned with bags.
Well, that one wouldn’t have gotten far through the personality competition, Laura thought wryly. She slung her purse over her shoulder and just as she was about take her bags and find her hotel room, she heard, “Jenny! Jenny!”
It was a heartbeat before Laura remembered that she was Jenny, and she turned with a resigned sigh to smile and wave weakly at Fred as he came in with the next surge of guests in the single courtesy van from the tiny airport.
It had just become a dozen times more difficult to maintain her cover.
Chapter 4
A scream broke the hot afternoon lull. Tex dropped the drink he was making and vaulted over his counter without a second thought, bringing the baseball bat he kept there automatically. It was a short sprint out the back door, and he spent those strides wondering what insane threat to expect this time.
For such a quiet little resort, Shifting Sands got some strange events, and in the months that Tex had been working there, there had been a hostage situation with South American mercenaries, someone had wired the resort generators to blow up, and a crazy rare-shifter collector had been kidnapping guests. Once, he’d had to break up a lion and bear fight. What would it be this time, the mob?
No, no, he told himself, this was Central America, probably it was the cartel here.
Graham materialized from a hedge with a machete just as Tex made the back entrance of the bar. There they found the new maid with the French accent standing on the sidewalk, clutching her armful of fresh folded towels and shrieking at the top of her lungs. A wide column of ants was making their merry way across her path and she was backing up from them in horror.
Graham lowered his machete, gave her a dirty look, and vanished back into his beloved greenery. The few guests who had followed him to discover the source of the commotion decided there was nothing to see and returned to the bar, grousing about dramatics.
Feeling as sorry for Graham’s disgusted look as he did for the ants, Tex leaned his baseball bat against the doorframe and crossed the ants with one extra long stride.
“Don’t worry, ma’am. They occasionally get it in their little ant heads to march from some place to some other place, but they’ll be done in no time at all. It’s the jungle, after all, you’ve got to expect some insect encroachers. Graham does his best to keep them off most of the paths, but there’s a limit to what even he can do.”
The maid — her nametag said Marie, which was just perfect - threw herself into Tex’s arms, towels and all.
“There’s so many of them!” she sobbed. Her French accent was strangely gone.
Tex looked at the ants in some bewilderment. He’d gotten used to them, and suspected that Marie would not last long at Shifting Sands if she wasn’t able to handle a simple ant migration. “You should see what happens to the cottages if people sneak food back to them,” he said, patting her on the shoulder and hoping that the humor was reassuring.
She continued to sob on him.
“Now there, it’s okay. You can just step right over them, they won’t even notice you.”
She made a noise of alarm and clung to him harder.
“Alright, then, ma’am, hold on.”
She was barely an armful, even heaped with towels, and Tex was able to swing her up and carry her over the offending column of ants. He set her down on her feet, but she continued to hold on, clutching the towels between them.
“You’re safe, m
a’am,” he said, slightly strangled. “You can let go now.”
It took a more obvious effort to pry her off before she released him. “Mon dieu,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “You are my hero.”
Tex wondered if he’d imagined her French accent vanishing, it was certainly thick enough now. He tipped his hat at her. “It’s the least I can do, ma’am.”
Marie gave a little moan. “Oh, mes serviettes!” she said, shaking her head at her rumpled armful.
“Your… oh, your towels? They haven’t suffered any,” Tex reassured her. “I’ll help you fold them and no one will know a thing about their brush with the army of formicidae.”
She furrowed her brow at Tex adorably, and he smiled at her. “Ants,” he explained. “Just ants.”
Her face brightened in understanding, and Tex helped her shake the towels back into presentable shape and fold them neatly into squares again.
“My hero,” she repeated, and the look she shot back over her shoulder as she trotted away down the clear trail to the cottages suggested that she was willing to reward Tex’s chivalry.
Tex wasn’t sure why the offer was so unappealing. She was a good-looking woman, with very definite charms. Dating within the housekeeping pool didn’t offend Tex’s good sense about not seeing coworkers; he would never had been tempted by someone who worked the bar with him. But although he appreciated the view as she walked away with a little extra swing in her hips, he didn’t find himself wanting to chase her down.
It wasn’t just that he felt the weight of his bad luck in love, he felt like he was… waiting for something.
With a shrug, he collected his baseball bat and returned to the bar. Dropping the drink had not broken the glass, but there was a mess of spilled syrup to clean up, and an impatient crowd of guests had gathered while he was away.
“Sorry folks,” he said, swiftly stepping up to give the mess a brief swab. “A lady screams, you’ve got to be ready to drop things and run to the rescue,” he said smoothly. He added a wink for one of the older ladies at the counter, and was repaid by watching her grouchy expression turn to a delighted blush.
“What can I get for you?” he asked the first person at the bar. He got all their requests while he remade the interrupted drink.
They were all duly impressed when he could remember what each of them had asked for without pausing to write anything down, serving even the most meticulously-ordered drink exactly as dictated. He spun a bottle on each hand as a finishing touch, and got a scattered round of applause from the ones who had remained at the counter to see the whole show.
“I’ll take a Shifter’s Mate,” a familiar voice said from the end of the counter as the others dispersed. A sunhat and a wave of dark hair obscured her face as she bent over the laminated drink menu, shoulders slumped. She lacked the manic energy that the rest of the resort seemed to have right now.
“Coming up, ma’am,” Tex said automatically, trying to place the voice and figure out why it was giving him such an unexpected electric thrill. He dropped the ingredients into the shaker with a few cubes of ice and shook it efficiently while he filled a glass with clean cubes in the other hand. An umbrella and a wedge of fruit at the rim finished his own invention.
“Pretty,” the woman said, finally looking up.
“P-p-pretty,” he echoed her, unable to come up with anything more. He remembered that face and those brown eyes, but that last time he had seen her had been nothing like this.
She is ours, his bear roared gleefully.
Jennavivianna had been gorgeous then, but now she was something infinitely more. Every curve of her body was an invitation, every wave of her dark hair was a promise. The planes of her lovely face were perfectly composed and the eyes — those limitless, bottomless, aching eyes! A man could drown in those places, if he let himself go.
And Tex was ready to jump.
Chapter 5
It would be a short and easy trip to become a drunk in the wake of her sister’s murder, Laura thought, but she knew she needed her wits about her. She thought that Shifting Sands would be a safe escape from anyone who knew Jenny, the perfect place to springboard a new life in a foreign country. The resort had people from all over the globe, she planned to make use of her time to get to know some of them, and get a lead for work that wasn’t too careful about looking at visas. It didn’t have to be in Costa Rica, she could get her return ticket changed to anywhere!
She hadn’t planned on Fred.
Fred had decided to join her at the last minute, and while he was fortunately not able to get all the same flights as Laura, he was staying at the hotel just a few doors down.
“I didn’t like the idea of you off in some foreign place so soon after the loss of your sister,” he said, so earnestly that it was impossible to hate him for fouling up her strategy so completely. “Isn’t it lucky they were able to open up a few new rooms?”
It was only lucky if you counted bad luck.
Now, instead of planning her escape in two weeks, Laura was agonizing over everything she said and did — did she say that like Jenny would have? Was she walking like Jenny did? She chose to wear the modest one-piece that Jenny would have, though she’d been surprised to find a sky blue bikini in her closet. She even kept a sensible hat on, though her dark skin wouldn’t burn. She had used jetlag and headaches as excuses for avoiding Fred at meals so far, but she knew that wouldn’t last long. She was dreading the time when he’d finally try to talk work with her, and she’d have to stare at him blankly.
He was such a nice guy, and he’d been such a good friend to Jenny and their parents over the years; Laura felt awful for brushing him off so coldly. She consoled herself by thinking that he would probably assume her chilly behavior was because she was grieving.
Her grief felt oddly far away. She couldn’t really believe that Jenny was gone. They still hadn’t found a body by the time she’d left Los Angeles, but there was no way she could have survived the crash or the ocean… was there? The police had given her no reason to hope. But it still wasn’t real that she’d died. Despite the silence of their psychic bond, Laura couldn’t help but expect her just to walk into the bar and scold her for slouching.
She felt restless, but she didn’t think that’s what grief ought to feel like.
She scanned the laminated drink menu, trying to decide which one Jenny would pick.
“I’ll take a Shifter’s Mate,” she called to the bartender who’d been showing off at the other end of the counter without looking. It called itself a ‘Shifting Sands original, a Mai Tai with a Costa Rican twist.’ It would be like Jenny to take a fruity house specialty and it would undoubtedly be mostly cheap juice and a plastic sword.
She only watched the bartender’s ridiculous drink-making out of the corner of one eye, not lifting her hat until he set the drink before her.
“Pretty,” she had to admit, and then she made the mistake of looking him in the face.
He was as handsome as any of the Mr. Shifters, with a tan and build that Mr. California himself would envy. His easy smile was not as fakely white, and his hands were both strong and gentle on the glass he hadn’t let go of. He was wearing a cowboy hat, of all the ridiculous things. Laura had no patience for the pretentiousness of cowboys, and hated their music.
She wanted to dislike him at once, and instead, she was utterly drawn to him. His brown eyes had crinkles of kindness and humor around them, and Laura had never wanted to touch a jaw as much as she wanted to touch his. The almost-scruffy stubble, the straight nose, and the stunned look — he was straight off a Western romance book cover.
“P-p-pretty,” he echoed her.
Laura wondered if he was as stunned as she felt, or if he was just an idiot. Being an idiot would simplify things, at least.
He’s not an idiot, he’s ours, her wolf told her firmly, canine voice singing in delight.
He blinked and shook his head, which gave her just enough space to do the same.
“Yo
u’re Jenny,” he said, to Laura’s shock. “Jennavivianna Rose.”
Laura had no words. She’d come halfway around the world to escape her life, just to meet a bartender who knew her sister?
“We met in Austin, half a dozen years ago. Over spring break.” He sounded baffled.
“Oh wait, yes!” Laura blurted. Jenny had told her about this, when she returned her borrowed boots. “You were very kind to her — to ME. You were really sweet. To me.”
Ours, not hers, her wolf said jealously.
“Can I get you something?”
Laura barely avoided asking him to take his pants off and make love to her right there in the crowded bar. “You, ah, already took my order,” she reminded him. “You’re still holding onto it.”
He gave a confused guffaw and let go of the glass. His fingers left bare spots in the gathering drops of condensation. Laura put her own fingers there and wondered if she imagined the little electric shock it gave her.
She knew what this was from the stories, and from her inner wolf’s animal glee. She’d never really believed she’d find her own mate, but she knew it was possible. Love at first sight, it was supposed to be. Like this, except not complicated by the fact that she was masquerading as someone else. Someone he’d already met.
She concentrated on his cowboy hat and worked at keeping her expression blank and casual. It was something she had a lot of practice with lately; act stupid, keep her head down, try not to put too much together.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, chilling her voice deliberately.
He actually blushed as he realized he was staring at her. It was one of the most adorable things she’d ever seen. He put his fingers to his hat in a gesture that could only be automatic. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said humbly. “It’s… ah… a surprise to see you again.”