by Zoe Chant
And she had her own life, her own troubles. She wasn’t going to drag him back to that, and she wasn’t going to run away from what she had—her family, a job she loved—to pursue a relationship. She couldn’t see a way that would end in anything but resentment.
“This was... great,” she said. “And I know that Amber and Mary found something amazing with their mates, and that’s awesome for them, but this is just sex, and animal instinct, it’s not destiny or nonsense like that. There’s this romantic notion about mates, but it’s just leftover evolutionary crap or something, it’s not... fate.”
He was sitting up on one elbow now, his whole face scrunched up in a glower.
Alice found his chest incredibly distracting, and had to look somewhere else in order to continue forming complete sentences.
His thick arms were just as bad, and his hard jaw, and his tousled mane of hair.
He was a minefield of places she didn’t dare look.
And he wasn’t helping the conversation much, scowling at her like she was babbling nonsense.
Which she might have been doing, since she caught herself staring at his word-gobbling chest again.
“You don’t love me,” she insisted, wrenching her eyes away again. “I’m a gym teacher from the Midwest and I love my job, and you work at a fancy island resort in the tropics, and you’ve said three whole words to me, and none of them were your name.”
“I’m Gra—Graham,” he said, reluctantly.
His rumbling growl of a voice did nothing to still Alice’s jangling nerves.
“Alice,” she repeated, and she thrust out a hand as if a formal handshake could possibly undo the sweaty, desperate sex they’d just had. “I’m glad to meet you. I am. But that’s out of the way now, so don’t expect a wedding date or anything, okay? We should be honest about this.”
He continued to gaze at her, a piercing look that Alice was sure saw right through her attempt to keep him at arm’s length. Whatever she said out loud, her sated body still hummed for him, and her bear was still insisting that this was theirs, forever.
But her body was wrong, her bear was just an animal at the end of the day, and Alice was where she belonged, back in control of things.
When Graham reluctantly shook her hand, she feared she’d made another mistake, because the feel of his fingers against her palm sent shudders down her spine and made her bear... purr.
Bears don’t purr, she told her animal crossly.
Neither do lions, her bear said smugly.
But clearly, until she’d shattered the moment with her declaration of nope, Graham, and the lion who obviously shared his body, had been deep in purr territory.
He wasn’t now, of course, still scowling at her darkly like he was trying to figure out a puzzle.
Alice hastily reclaimed her hand.
“Oh look, there’s my jeans. I’ll just... ah... get dressed, and go see if I can catch up with Mary and Amber.” Alice crawled un-gracefully off the bed, wondering how he had ever made her feel like her cumbersome body was something to be worshiped. She tugged her pants up with effort, nearly unbalanced, and finally managed to wrench them on.
“Alice,” he started, and it made the hairs at the back of her neck lift.
“Thank you,” she said brightly. “This was great fun. Maybe we’ll hook up again later, if I’ve got time. Wedding stuff, you know. Not mine. Mary’s. Mary’s wedding.”
Her shirt was in a heap on the floor, and her bra was nowhere in sight. Well, she wasn’t so amply endowed that it mattered much.
She pulled the shirt over her head, discovered it was backwards, and stuffed her arms through anyway. “Ciao!” she called, as merrily as she could, then she was fleeing in a random direction out of the door.
Chapter 8
Graham felt like the sun had gone out with Alice’s flight, though the room was still infused with golden light through the filmy curtains. Part of him wanted to roll on the rumpled bedcovers and inhale her scent on the pillows.
The rest of him wanted to hit something.
This is not fate.
His lion wanted to pursue her, of course, but Graham tamped down that with a growl of his own. Ciao indeed. If she wanted to keep this casual, fine.
He was glad he hadn’t told her his real name, even while he felt like he was a bottle under unbearable pressure, desperate to tell someone, anyone, especially her, who he really was, and beg for forgiveness.
One of the pillows tore apart under his hands before he could stop himself and Graham rose with a snarl to take a shower and wash her from his skin.
Her key found the bottom of his foot, and he growled in pain before he picked it up and was sorry he looked at the cottage number because now he’d know where she was staying. Dammit. He put the key on the bedside table, vowing to return it to the lost and found, and stomped to the shower.
He left the cottage in utter disarray, knowing that he’d hear about it later and not caring.
Still damp, still stung, he threw himself at his garden until afternoon, tying up the bean vines that were unfurling wildly across the beds, gently thinning the new lettuce, turning fresh dirt to plant a new batch of cucumbers.
By the time the staff meeting came around, he had buried everything again and felt the familiar layer of indifference settle around him. As long as he didn’t think about her, he wasn’t angry.
And Graham was good at not thinking about things.
He was still carefully not thinking about anything when he arrived early at the staff meeting, and he was sorry that he wasn’t in a better mood, because Neal and Tony were there, grinning and catching up on all the gossip and adventure that had happened at Shifting Sands since they’d been there.
“... Which is when the boat blew sky-high and Laura and I were left adrift in the middle of the ocean,” Tex was explaining.
“The fireworks were nice,” Laura said, laughing. “And he sang to me!”
“Sounds romantic,” Neal said with a grin.
Neal hadn’t done much grinning before Mary, Graham observed, and he scowled harder than ever. Wasn’t that how mates were supposed to work? His own experience was proving vastly different.
Tex went on to talk about the otter who saved them.
“That was me,” Jenny explained. “Not dead after all!”
That was when Neal realized that Graham was there, and he interrupted the story to rise and shake hands with a smile.
Graham shook the offered hand, but gave no reply to Neal’s cheerful greeting, wondering if there were layers of meaning in his knowing grin. Would Mary have already had a chance to tell him about his unorthodox introduction to her bridesmaid?
Fortunately, Breck arrived just then, and Neal turned his greeting to him, letting Graham edge into the room and find an out of the way chair to sit on. “I hear you got married? Can this be? Is it possible? Did she drag you kicking and screaming?”
“There was screaming and a lot of clawing,” Breck conceded. “But not so much of the dragging.” He was grinning broadly, his eyes soft the way they always were when he spoke of Darla. “Wait until you meet her,” he added adoringly. “She’s so amazing.”
Graham caught himself before he could growl out loud.
Lydia came in then, and gave Neal and Tony each a warm, affectionate hug, Wrench glaring over her shoulder at the strangers protectively. “You’ve done so much for us,” she told Tony appreciatively.
“Oh, it’s not so much,” Tony said, abashed. “Just doing my job.”
Lydia wasn’t the only one who made a skeptical noise. As an agent in the Shifter Affairs department, Tony had been instrumental in getting all the shifters who had been rescued from the zoo the paperwork and legal documents to return to their lives after a period of long absence and, in many cases, presumed death. Following that, he had been extremely useful in stopping a mob boss that had been hounding Jenny, Laura, and Wrench.
Congratulations were still being exchanged, for Neal’s upcomin
g nuptials and Tony’s impending fatherhood, when Scarlet arrived to start the meeting at one o’clock on the dot.
Graham stared fixedly at the floor, refusing to look at her.
The meeting was lighthearted, centering around the details of the upcoming wedding and the day-to-day considerations of the resort. The lawsuit from Darla’s mother had not materialized, and if money was tight, it appeared that they were at least fairly well set to meet the coming weeks. Scarlet was glad to report that they were going to have a steady stream of guests; the debacle of Darla’s wedding had not only not hurt their guest list, the publicity seemed to have been largely in the resort’s favor.
As Scarlet concluded the meeting and left, nearly everyone else remained and the conversation dissolved into further gossip and talk about the wedding.
“How long are you staying?” Lydia asked.
“Three glorious weeks,” Amber said in delight. “The wedding is the end of next week, and we’ll have a week afterwards.”
“We’ll be leaving the same time,” Tony added. “This is our last chance for a vacation before the baby comes.”
That led to excited speculation about the baby, its gender, and what its shift form might be.
Laura shyly confessed her own pregnancy news to Tony and Neal. “We haven’t told Scarlet yet,” she said, her hand in a beaming Tex’s. “We’re... not really sure what our plans are next.”
Graham squirmed, and looked for a way to leave that wouldn’t be obvious; choosing a chair in the corner had kept him out of the conversation, but it had also trapped him in the back of the room with no polite way of slinking out.
Babies, weddings, mates, and secrets.
He was in hell.
Then Neal turned around in his chair to look directly at Graham and said pointedly, “Speaking of honeymoons...”
And everyone looked at him curiously.
“I hear you and Alice didn’t waste any time,” Neal ribbed.
Graham had liked Neal much better when he said much less.
“Alice?” Breck said, puzzled. “Mary’s friend? The maid of honor?”
“Honeymoon?” Laura said curiously.
There was a moment of silence, Graham wishing he could actually make someone burst into flames with a glare.
Then Neal, oblivious to his efforts at directed spontaneous combustion, laughed. “Mary says you looked like someone had slapped you with a fish. And apparently the kiss was enough to sizzle the plants in the courtyard.”
The staff erupted into congratulations and speculation.
“The last bachelor tumbles!” Travis crowed.
“I’m so happy for you,” Lydia said warmly.
Wrench was sitting close enough to Graham to give him an approving punch in the shoulder and Graham turned on him with a growl.
Now that the attention was on him anyway, there was no point in trying to get out quietly. He stood and shoved through Wrench and Lydia, then plowed through the room, chairs crashing aside to a chorus of surprise.
He slammed the door so hard behind him that it rattled the artwork on the walls outside, and stalked away to find something to drink.
Chapter 9
Alice reeked of sex to her own over-sensitive nose.
Sex and strength and sun-warmed dirt and some kind of plant she didn’t know.
Part of her wanted to savor it, simply revel in the heady flavor of it and enjoy the hum of satisfaction her body still clung to.
But it also made her remember his words, I love you, and the way her heart had responded to them.
She turned the wrong way out of the cottage when she fled, and ended up dead-ending at another cottage where a pair of mountain lions were sunning on a little porch.
“Sorry, wrong turn!” She waved apologetically and turned around to creep back past the cottage she and Graham had just defiled, crossing her fingers that he wouldn’t appear in the doorway.
Then she was wandering down white gravel paths at random, not sure what cottage she was in; the key that Scarlet had given her was apparently wherever her bra had gone.
Downhill took her to the beach, and Alice spent an hour or more walking the length of it back and forth with her shoes in her hands, trying to make sense of the thoughts tumbling through her head. Secrets. Her family. Fifty million dollars. Mates. Love.
It wasn’t love.
She turned her t-shirt around the right way, but it didn’t help her head.
She finally found her way back up to the bar deck overlooking the pool. The bar itself was unmanned, but there were tempting bottles of beers in a glass-doored cooler and Alice considered taking one. Probably something stronger was called for. Probably water was smarter.
Before she could decide, a voice from behind the bar startled her. “It looks like it would taste good, but it’s mostly bubbles and regret.”
A woman was sitting on a milk crate behind the bar, her head just below the level of the counter. Her knees were tucked up close in front of her and clutched in skinny arms. She had long, messy brown and white braids on either side of her head, and her brown eyes were big in her thin face.
“That sounds about right,” Alice said dryly. She opened the door and took one, pulling the cap off without a bottle opener and taking a large gulp. “You must be Gizelle.”
“We’ve met before,” Gizelle said dreamily. “You were there the day it rains blood.”
Alice raised an eyebrow at her, and Gizelle shook her head firmly and stood. She was taller than Alice would have guessed from her crouched form.
“I’m Gizelle,” the woman agreed, lifting her chin. “You came with Neal.” She didn’t offer to shake hands, and stayed an almost-uncomfortable distance away.
Alice nodded. “Have you run into him yet? He was eager to see you again.”
A dozen conflicted expressions passed over Gizelle’s face and she shook her head. “I’m trying not to run,” she explained cryptically.
“How’s that working for you?” Alice asked dryly, thinking of her own flight from Graham’s bed.
“Dubious results,” Gizelle admitted.
Something occurred to Alice. “They say you can hear other shifters’ animals, is that true?”
Gizelle blinked at her. “Yes, sometimes,” she said trustingly.
“What does Scarlet’s animal sound like?” Alice tried to sound casual.
Gizelle considered. “It’s a whisper, even when I touch her, like wind in leaves, like a far-off song I can’t understand.”
Alice frowned. That wasn’t much to work with. “Like... birdsong?”
“Rustling feathers...” Gizelle said in sudden alarm.
For a moment, Alice thought the beer was hitting her rather harder than she was accustomed to and she wondered if the bartender stocked shifter-strength alcohol. Then she realized that the earth beneath her feet was actually moving, shaking back and forth in a gentle rumble that subsided almost as soon as she recognized it.
An earthquake. Mary had warned her that the resort had been having little flurries of minor quakes. Cluster quakes, they were called, nothing to worry about at all.
Gizelle did not seem to share that opinion.
She dropped to the ground with a shriek of terror, curling into a tiny ball and weeping.
As Alice bent to try to comfort her, alarmed by the woman’s trembling, a large figure materialized from the far side of the bar and charged at her.
“Don’t you touch her!” the man roared, and Alice had only a moment to register the attack before he was driving into her.
Instinct and training drove her body, and without thinking, Alice was twisting and lifting and using all of his own forward momentum to throw him aside. Her beer bottle went flying across the floor, but didn’t break.
He was shifter strong and fast, if not a fighter, and it was only a heartbeat before he had rolled to his feet and was facing her, snarling.
Gizelle’s mate, Alice realized, from his protective defense of her. What was his
name? Connor?
Before Alice could explain that she wasn’t harming the gazelle shifter, another figure joined the fray, and she recognized Graham at once from his scent and his broad shoulders.
He went straight for Gizelle’s mate, an animal challenge rumbling from his chest as he inserted himself between Alice and her perceived threat.
Alice was moving before his fist could land, driving into him shoulder-first, so that his blow passed harmlessly through the air to one side of the other man’s face.
“Would you both stop being idiots?” she roared.
Graham lowered his fists and Gizelle’s mate paused, looking between the two of them, watching their mouths rather than looking at their eyes. Gizelle herself had shifted at some point, and was a tiny, trembling gazelle pressed up against the bar.
“Goddamn alpha morons,” Alice said between clenched teeth, planting her feet. “Take a moment to assess, will you? I’m not hurting Gizelle, and he’s not hurting me. Even if he wanted to, I am perfectly capable of defending myself. I don’t want your help.”
She didn’t want to admit how it felt, seeing Graham streak to her defense. Even as she protested it out loud, it had struck some unexpected nerve in her chest, knowing that someone would do that for her. It struck her that he could protect her, if she let him, and Alice wasn’t sure what to do with that idea.
She only knew that it frightened her, and made something uncomfortable happen beneath her breastbone.
Chapter 10
Graham let his hands fall to his side as Alice berated the two of them. Conall, frowning at her mouth as he lip read her tirade, relaxed. When Gizelle timidly put her muzzle into his hand, he gave a little shudder.
“I... apologize,” he said formally. “She was afraid and I reacted badly.” He knelt beside the gazelle, and she seamlessly shifted into her human form, arms around his neck as she sighed into the comfort of his embrace.
Graham realized he owed an apology as well, but scowling at Alice, he couldn’t find the words.
She didn’t want his protection.