by Zoe Chant
Graham didn’t ask what they were now, and he never called her his girlfriend—not that he would waste any syllables for extraneous things like titles anyway—but she was visiting his room every night. And each afternoon that he could be coaxed away from the gardens. And every morning when she caught him on break, and when they passed on the paths...
Her bear, apparently, was insatiable, and fortunately, his lion was, too; however he protested that he wasn’t going to be able to keep up this pace, every time she kissed him, he was more than capable of laying her down and making her bones turn to jelly.
They never talked about love, or the future. But Alice thought about a lot.
Love...
...and secrets.
There were also moments when Alice knew keenly that it was all temporary, that soon enough, she would be returning to her grubby real life, helpless to help her parents or her brother, unable to do anything to save either of them.
And Scarlet’s shift form hung between them like a giant white elephant.
Alice was sure that Graham would tell her what it was if she asked, but she knew just as certainly that she couldn’t ask. Forcing him to betray someone else’s trust in him seemed like the cruelest thing she could do to him.
So Alice never mentioned how much help even a portion of fifty million dollars would be in their slow fundraising efforts, and she never brought up Scarlet if he didn’t first, and she tried hard not to think about her life back home and the solution-less problems that she would return to.
Graham made it easy.
He told her stories about growing up in England, and she told him about growing up in the rural Midwest with her brother. He talked about his father, and learning how to garden on their estate when he was young. Alice told him about learning sports with her father, and fishing and boating in the rivers and lakes. He even told her, hesitantly, a little about his fighting days, and showed her a many-times-folded flier.
“King of the Jungle!” Alice chortled. “Look how short your hair is!”
“I could cut it again,” he offered at once.
“Don’t you dare,” Alice said. “I think a guy with longer hair than mine is the sexiest thing ever.”
He even let her work with him in the gardens at the top of the resort, showing her how to twist ripe strawberries off the plants without bruising them, and how to harvest herbs and which weeds to pull. He told her what all the jungle plants were, and how they grew.
Evenings were often spent in The Den, sitting cozily with the rest of the staff in the living room, and over the course of the week no fewer than seven people later commented to her that they’d never seen Graham talk so much. Two of them had marveled over the fact that they’d never realized he was British before.
The glorious tropical days spilled one into another, and Alice trembled, thinking how short their time left was.
“What’s wrong?” Graham asked, taking a bite of his sandwich and giving her a sidelong look.
“I’m not ready for this to be over,” she confessed quietly.
Graham was quiet. “Does it have to be?”
It was as close as he’d come to asking what they were going to do with the future.
“I don’t know,” Alice said miserably. “I wish I did.”
Before them, the ocean wrinkled away to the horizon, dotted with a dozen small boats.
“I haven’t seen boats out there before,” Alice observed.
Graham squinted out at them curiously. “We don’t often see a lot like that,” he said, letting her change the subject without argument. “Must be some kind of fishing competition or something.”
Alice might have tried taking the conversation to the topic of fish, but Graham’s pocket abruptly buzzed and he withdrew his phone curiously.
The screen made him frown and stand. “I have to go,” he said apologetically. “Scarlet said immediately, and she never says that.”
He paused only long enough to kiss Alice—one of those kisses that left no sense of thought to worry with.
The worry came rushing back as Graham disappeared in the direction of Scarlet’s office and Alice gazed out at boats with her chest aching.
Chapter 28
There were five guests waiting in the courtyard outside of Scarlet’s office next to a pile of gigantic suitcases. They looked sweaty and winded, and Scarlet was giving them a smile that Graham knew entirely too well: she was furious and frustrated and fighting very hard to give absolutely no impression of it.
“Please wait here a moment,” she said with a polite nod of her head, and she clicked her way across the courtyard to meet Graham and draw him out of earshot.
“There a problem?” Graham asked with a growl. “You said you needed me immediately.” He eyed the guests; they didn’t look like the kind of threat that he had anticipated when he got Scarlet’s text.
Two of the women were fanning themselves and one of the men, slightly overweight, was sitting on a suitcase like his legs had given out in the heat. The second man was the only one who was slightly menacing, and he was frowning thoughtfully at labels on the potted plants.
“I wish there was only one problem,” Scarlet hissed. “But this is the most urgent. They aren’t shifters.”
Graham scowled across the courtyard. “Friends of shifters?” Scarlet had talked about relaxing the shifter restriction for friends of guests, especially for events like weddings.
“No,” Scarlet said with a humorless laugh. “They don’t even know about shifters. They are furries.”
“Furries?” Graham repeated, confused.
“Humans that dress up like anthropomorphic animals. Those suitcases are entirely costumes. Fursuits.”
Graham almost laughed.
“It was a last-minute reservation,” Scarlet said defensively. “The charter has already left, and I can’t send them back to the mainland on the boat until morning. We’re going to have to put them up for the night. I need you to get the word out to the entire staff, and every guest, that we cannot have anyone shifting in public, or talking about shifting, or doing anything only shifters can do, until we get rid of them. No magic.”
She groaned then, though her posture remained perfect and to the guests she undoubtedly looked like she was simply having a nice, casual conversation. “And oh, Gizelle... will you find Conall, see if he can keep her out of the way. She’s already on edge, the last thing I need is her getting scared. Make sure that Liam keeps the elders off the common grounds. We need to avoid a scene.”
“What’s our story?” Graham asked.
“That we’re fumigating the hotel for an infestation of cloth-eating bugs and have no other openings. We’re moving the existing hotel guests to cottages, and I’m having Travis quarantine the building. The humans will be put up on the beach for the night in a tent. In the morning, we’ll have Travis take them in the boat to that new all-inclusive hotel on the mainland. On my dime, of course.”
Graham winced. This was not a good thing for a resort already in dire financial straits.
But if there was one thing Scarlet was good at, it was guarding secrets, and Graham knew that she would bend over backwards to protect the trust of her clients.
Chapter 29
Not knowing how long Graham’s summons would keep him busy, Alice took the empty sandwich plate back to the buffet and wandered around the center of the resort.
Amber and Mary were laughing and sunning at the pool while Neal and Tony were racing laps. Alice watched them a moment from the bar deck, considered joining them, and decided that she couldn’t muster up the appropriate feeling of vacation for the moment.
“Get you a drink?” Tex invited, as Alice took a seat at the bar. He was sitting behind the bar tuning a battered guitar.
“It’s probably a little early,” Alice decided. “I’ll take a ginger ale.” Bubbles, she thought, but less regret. She had enough regrets.
Tex poured her a ginger ale from the tap into a glass of ice and resumed t
uning his guitar. “Got a request?” he asked.
“Something happy,” Alice suggested, eyeing his cowboy hat skeptically.
Tex laughed, touching the brim of his hat with a nod, and launched into a ridiculous song about faithful dogs and faithless women that had a fast, upbeat tempo, even if the topic wasn’t entirely happy.
As he finished with a flourish, Alice’s phone rang. She gave the bartender a thumbs-up and fished her phone from her pocket.
A glance at the number had her blood running cold.
“Are you okay?” she blurted, answering.
Tex busily turned away to do something at the far end of the bar to give her privacy.
“Jeez, Alice, you sound just like Mom.” Andy’s voice was reassuringly strong.
Alice gripped the edge of the bar. “You don’t call unless something is wrong,” she reminded her brother crossly. “What’s going on?”
“You sound like you’re a million miles away,” Andy observed.
“I’m in Costa Rica,” Alice reminded him.
“Oh, crap, I forgot. Is this costing too much? I wasn’t calling for anything that important.” Andy’s voice was thick with guilt.
“No, it’s fine,” Alice said swiftly. “I have an international plan for the month. What’s up?”
“I... I just got off the phone with Mom and Dad, and it’s really hard to talk to them without really talking, you know. I can’t tell them what’s really going on with me, and it’s all weird silences and waiting for the other person to talk.”
Because they were keeping secrets from each other, Alice thought achingly. “Have you thought more about just telling them?” she prodded. If she could get one of them to break down, maybe the other side would cave, too.
They had one of the weird silences that Andy had described. “I don’t know,” he said miserably. “What if they freak out? What if they...”
“Spit it out,” Alice told him.
“What if they think I... I don’t know... deserved this?”
“Give them some credit,” Alice said in exasperation. “They aren’t jerks and they would never blame you for getting sick.”
“They might not say it,” Andy sulked. “But I’d always wonder.”
Alice made a rude noise of exasperation that was probably lost in the long distance connection.
“Alice,” Andy said hesitantly. “Alice, I know you’ve already done so much. You missed your last trip to Costa Rica because of me.”
“My choice, Pipsqueak,” Alice reminded him. “You don’t get to make me a martyr, thank you.”
“You said before you left that you might have a chance to get some money... there’s a treatment I could qualify for, but I can’t get the tests I need to see if I’m eligible without a down payment.” Alice could hear the desperation in Andy’s voice. “It’s... about a grand.”
Alice’s heart dropped in her chest. “I don’t have it,” she said quietly. She wouldn’t get it, either, she reminded herself. Scarlet’s shift form, and the fifty million dollars it could bring her, was tantalizingly close—and impossibly out of reach. Her bank account was tapped. Her credit card was maxed. She wouldn’t even have been able to come on this trip if her friends hadn’t helped pay for it.
“Yeah, I knew that was probably the case,” Andy said, trying to sound brave. Alice had a sudden image of him as a kid, chin quivering. She’d have done anything to protect him. She still would.
“So, what have you been up to?” Andy asked, in that determinedly cheerful voice he was so good at. “Meet any cute guys on your tropical vacation?”
Alice smiled despite herself, thinking about how far beyond ‘cute guy’ Graham was. “Oh, yeah,” she said lightly. “I met my mate.”
This silence was more shocked than weird. “What?!” Andy demanded. “Mates are a real thing? Who is this guy? What do you mean?”
Alice turned to see Mary and Amber walking up the stairs from the pool deck, waving as they approached.
“Mates are real,” she told Andy. “He’s a great guy, you’d love him, sorry, got to go! Losing the signal, whoops!”
She hung up on him, thinking with amusement that she’d just given him a great deal to fill the weird silences with next time he called their parents.
“You ready for your big moment tomorrow evening?” she asked Mary as they came up to the bar with her and asked for water from Tex.
“It still feels utterly unreal,” Mary confessed to her. “I can’t even keep track of the days here, and suddenly, it’s going to be tomorrow.”
“The last guests are coming in on the morning flight,” Amber said. “So, we’ll do the spa tomorrow after lunch and everything else is already in place. Tony swears he has not lost the rings and checks on them every hour on the dot,” she promised.
“It’s weird not having anything else to do,” Mary said. “I don’t know what to do with myself. My last day being unmarried!”
Alice yawned. “I was thinking about a nap, myself,” she offered.
“Were you busy last night?” Mary teased.
Alice grinned sheepishly.
“I could use a siesta before dinner,” Amber agreed, rubbing her belly.
Mary threw up her hands. “Fine! Naps it is.”
They finished their drinks and wandered through the cultivated greenery back to their cottages, Alice careful not to think of anything but how pleasant things were now.
She didn’t need to borrow trouble from the future.
Chapter 30
“Oh, Graham, those are gorgeous. Even better than last week’s! You’ve outdone yourself.”
Graham grunted, knowing it was the truth as Chef picked up one of the tomatoes he’d just brought to the kitchens and admired its perfect, unblemished skin and bright color.
“These will be the crown of the meal,” the cook said in delight. “Scarlet said there was an extremely important guest arriving in time for dinner tonight.”
Breck, laying out the ingredients to stuff them with, gave Graham a suspicious look. “You wouldn’t happen to know who, would you? She was very mysterious about it.”
“Scarlet is good at mysterious,” Graham said with a shrug.
Chef gave a booming laugh. “There’s an understatement.”
“Chet.”
Magnolia was standing in the back of the kitchen, her violet silk dress swirling around her.
Graham might have thought he had simply misheard the cook’s name, but Chef’s face sobered instantly. Magnolia always had his attention in some measure, but now she had it completely.
“He’s here,” she said simply.
If Graham had not been looking directly at Chef, he would not have believed the number of emotions that could cross a single person’s face in such a short time. It settled into something determined and apprehensive—a perfect match to Magnolia’s.
The precious box of tomatoes was set down on the counter without a single second thought, and Chef, in an unprecedented move, stripped his apron off and left it on the counter as he abandoned his work and went to Magnolia.
“You... spoke to him?” Chef asked quietly.
“I wrote,” Magnolia said gravely. “When we were first trying to raise the money for the resort.”
Chef bowed his head, slowly, as if he was fighting a great weight.
Graham was wild with curiosity by now, but trying to hide it. Breck had no such self-restraint. “Who are you talking about?” he demanded. “He, who?”
Chef and Magnolia ignored him. “Now?”
“He’s out in the restaurant,” Magnolia said softly.
“Have you seen him?”
Magnolia shook her head.
Chef rarely touched Magnolia in public, though his adoration was never exactly hidden and nearly everyone knew that they were mates. Now, however, he gathered her into his big arms and held her close. Graham could not have said if it was for his comfort or hers.
Graham could barely hear her fierce whispered words in r
eply, “He can’t separate us now. He can’t.”
Then Chef was marching down the kitchen aisle, Magnolia gliding behind him. He left the kitchen, holding the door for Magnolia’s regal exit, and the two together went out into the restaurant, hands laced together.
“I am mad with curiosity!” Breck admitted, and he dashed after them.
Graham considered staying behind out of respect for their privacy... for about three seconds before following Breck.
By the time they got to the restaurant, there was a small crowd gathered. Magnolia and Chef stood together, facing a strange man in a sharp suit who was flanked by a pair of uniformed bodyguards.
“Your Majesty,” Magnolia said coolly.
“It’s Your Highness again, Cousin,” he replied, his voice equally chilly. “I stepped down from the throne.” He paused, then said, “You look... well fed.”
“I can still put you in a headlock, Einar,” Magnolia said crossly.
“I don’t doubt that you could,” Einar replied, and Graham thought that the corner of his mouth twitched a little in humor.
Breck squeezed Graham’s elbow. “Royalty!” he hissed in delight. “I knew Magnolia wasn’t just anyone...”
“Royalty?” Graham hissed back in amazement.
“Valtyra,” Darla said, appearing beside Breck. “That’s Einar, he was the king of Valtyra. He recently abdicated in favor of his granddaughter and her new husband.”
Einar’s gaze turned to Chef, who was standing ramrod straight at Magnolia’s side, looking grim and determined.
“Guard Chet,” he said mildly.
“Your Highness,” Chef replied, bowing his head stiffly.
“Oh!” Darla exclaimed quietly. “Oh! Chef is Royal Guard! This explains so much.”
“What?” Breck demanded in a whisper. “What does it explain?”
“Royal Guard can’t marry or have relationships. They forsake even their families and renounce their own happiness to serve the royal family.” Darla’s voice was pitched to carry no further than the three of them, and was full of compassion. She slipped her hand into Breck’s.
