Tropical Christmas Stag Read online

  Tropical Christmas Stag

  By Zoe Chant

  Copyright Zoe Chant 2018

  All Rights Reserved

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Shifting Sands Resort

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Epilogue

  A Note from Zoe Chant

  Scarlet and the Christmas Kittens

  More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant

  Zoe on Audio

  Zoe Chant, writing under other names

  Sneak Preview: Dancing Bearfoot

  Shifting Sands Resort

  This is book 7 of the Shifting Sands Resort series. All of my books are stand-alones (No cliffhangers! Always a happy ending!) and can be read independently, but this book does include recurring characters and references previous events. This is the order the series may be most enjoyed:

  Tropical Tiger Spy (Book 1)

  Tropical Wounded Wolf (Book 2)

  Tropical Bartender Bear (Book 3)

  Tropical Lynx's Lover (Book 4)

  Tropical Dragon Diver (Book 5)

  Tropical Panther’s Penance (Book 6)

  Tropical Christmas Stag (Book 7)

  Tropical Leopard’s Longing (Book 8 – coming early 2019)

  The Master Shark's Mate (A Fire & Rescue Shifters/Shifting Sands Resort crossover, occurs in the timeline between Tropical Wounded Wolf and Tropical Bartender Bear)

  Firefighter Phoenix (A Fire & Rescue Shifters novel, has scenes set at Shifting Sands, and occurs in the timeline between Tropical Christmas Stag and Tropical Leopard’s Longing)

  Chapter 1

  Gizelle paused in the doorway, peering around the doorjamb.

  Scarlet was angry.

  Scarlet was often angry when she got the thick envelopes from the lawyer who didn’t live on the island, the one who wanted to sell the resort so Scarlet couldn’t have it anymore.

  Everyone else avoided Scarlet as much as they could when those envelopes came in the mail, going about their day-to-day jobs at the resort with their eyes averted.

  But Gizelle actually liked it when Scarlet was angry. The prickly feeling made her feel safe, like Scarlet’s energy was a shield that kept other bad things away.

  The red-haired woman looked up when Gizelle padded into her office, and she pushed the paperwork away to force a smile.

  “Gizelle,” Scarlet said, carefully gentle.

  Everyone was carefully gentle with Gizelle.

  Gizelle trailed around the room, touching the potted plants and the spines of the old books.

  “My head was quiet this morning,” she said, coming to stand beside Scarlet and look down at the paperwork spread out in front of her. “Can we read that?”

  “This isn’t very interesting,” Scarlet lied with a dry, humorless chuckle. She put it into a pile, tapping it briskly into order. “Let’s read another chapter of The Secret Garden and practice some of your letters.”

  Gizelle fidgeted as Scarlet put the papers back in their dread-steeped envelope and stood up. “Ally says she learned to read as a little kid,” she said dejectedly.

  “Most people do,” Scarlet said. She gave Gizelle a searching look. “You don’t have to feel bad, though. I didn’t learn to read until I was grown up, either.”

  Gizelle felt brighter. “You didn’t?”

  Scarlet shook her vivid head.

  “Who taught you?” Gizelle asked.

  “A dear friend,” Scarlet said softly. “A dear friend who knew that reading would give me what I needed to understand people.”

  “I’d like to understand people,” Gizelle said wistfully.

  They walked together out to the open lawn behind Scarlet’s office and settled into the grass to read. Other people seemed to prefer chairs, but Scarlet liked to sit on the ground like Gizelle did. Gizelle tucked her skirt neatly under her knees, imitating Scarlet’s pose.

  “Did you grow up in a zoo, too?”

  Gizelle didn’t remember the menagerie that she’d been rescued from, but she had heard enough stories to piece together where people thought she came from. A bad man had collected shifters in a prison where he did awful things to them.

  No one would tell her what the awful things were.

  Scarlet, opening the book in her lap, gave Gizelle an amused look under her eyelashes. Scarlet never talked about her life, not to anyone.

  Scarlet’s reading voice was low and calm, and there were pictures that Gizelle could look at over her shoulder periodically. When the chapter ended, too soon, the world came back. Then it was time for writing practice.

  “Can’t I learn to read without learning to write?” Gizelle asked, frowning over the disappointing mess she made copying Scarlet’s tidy handwriting.

  “It has to do with how you learn,” Scarlet assured her. “How everyone learns. When you make your hands do it, it gets into your brain better.”

  “Why doesn’t it look like it does in a book?” Gizelle chewed on her lip, trying to make herself finish out the page, but the letters slithered away from how she wanted them to look, and she couldn’t concentrate over the sounds crowding her head.

  “Scarlet?” She pushed away the noise.

  “Yes, dear?” Scarlet was thinking about the lawyer’s letter again. Gizelle could tell because of the prickles all around her.

  “Do you think I could ever have a mate?”

  That earned her all of Scarlet’s attention, prickles changing to little rays of surprise. “A mate?”

  Gizelle picked at the edge of her paper. “Jenny and Tex and Bastian and Lydia all have mates. And Neal.” She missed Neal. Her gazelle missed Neal.

  “Do you want a mate?” Scarlet asked pointedly.

  “Don’t you want a mate?” Gizelle countered.

  Scarlet was silent with surprise, as if no one had ever asked her that before.

  “They seem really happy,” Gizelle said wistfully. “Like something they didn’t know was missing was found. I’ve got a lot of missing parts, would a mate fix them?”

  “I don’t know if a mate could bring your memories back,” Scarlet said frankly, but slowly, like she was thinking carefully about her answer. “And I don’t know if you’d want them to. And there are... other parts to having a mate.”

  “Sex,�
�� Gizelle said impatiently. “I know about that.”

  “What do you know about it?” Scarlet asked suspiciously.

  “I’ve seen the pictures in the magazines at The Den,” Gizelle said defensively, referring to the staff house where most of the bachelors lived. A few of them had mates that lived there now, and the magazines had gotten more scarce. “I know how to pleasure myself. And Breck told me all about what people do with each other.”

  Scarlet made a funny face. “Breck?”

  “He’s an authority on the subject,” Gizelle said confidently, repeating what the leopard shifter waiter had told her. “And he wanted to make sure that I could make up my own mind about it when I was ready. So I wouldn’t be surprised or let someone take advantage of me.”

  “That’s... wise,” Scarlet conceded. She didn’t sound particularly happy about it, though.

  “I’m not a child,” Gizelle insisted.

  “I know,” Scarlet said, almost mournfully.

  That reminded Gizelle of something else. “Travis said he was decorating for Christmas today, but he didn’t have time to explain it to me. And Ally keeps talking about it, but she doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Christmas? Christmas doesn’t have to make sense,” Scarlet said warmly, following Gizelle’s change of topic without hesitation. “Christmas is a holiday we celebrate near the end of the year. People give each other presents, and there is singing, and Chef will make special food.”

  That sounded nice. “What kind of food?” Gizelle asked. “What are presents? Will Saina sing?”

  Scarlet grinned at her, all warm and fuzzy with memories. “I had forgotten that this would be your first Christmas. You’ll get to try figgy pudding and sugar cookies.”

  Figgy pudding sounded questionable, but Gizelle knew she liked cookies and sugar.

  Scarlet continued, “Presents are special gifts that friends and family give each other. Usually little things, like books or clothing or candy. They get wrapped in special paper and tied with bows and we all open them together on Christmas Day.”

  That sounded... baffling, but Scarlet was looking at her with an encouraging smile, clearly expecting some kind of reaction.

  “I don’t have anything to give as a present,” Gizelle said hesitantly. If it was a reciprocal thing, Christmas probably wasn’t for her.

  “I could help you make something,” Scarlet promised warmly. “It’s not really about what the present is as much as it is about the giving. It reminds people that we’re thinking about them.”

  “Alright,” Gizelle agreed. She thought about people a lot.

  They were interrupted by the beep of the resort van at the entrance, announcing that a new group of guests was arriving. Gizelle leaped to her feet, scattering her lesson papers.

  “I should go,” Gizelle said swiftly. New people were always unnerving, and Scarlet would be busy checking them in.

  She was concentrating so hard on remembering not to shift, not to be afraid, not to be weird that she got all the way down the path to the bar before she realized that she’d left her papers all over the lawn.

  Chapter 2

  Conall scowled at the entrance to the resort. The van ride from the airstrip had been absolutely jaw-rattling. He could guess from the other passengers that it was too loud for anything but shouted conversation and was just as happy to leave the ill-sprung vehicle behind for his own two feet.

  He let the other guests rush forward to check in. He moved to the side of the doorway as the driver hurried past with an overstacked armful of luggage, an apology undoubtedly at the lips Conall anti-socially refused to look at.

  At least the place didn’t have Christmas decorations up yet.

  Since Thanksgiving, Boston had been a gaudy sea of tinsel and obnoxiously blinking lights, reveling in its seasonal snow and silver bells. There were plastic Santas and wire reindeer on every other white-dusted lawn, and even the most understated business had wreaths and fake holly and the air smelled cloyingly like cinnamon and pine.

  “You’re so lucky you don’t have to listen to the music,” his secretary had said to him thoughtlessly. “They start playing the carols so early now, by the time we get to December, I’m ready to unplug sound systems in the stores. It’s even in the cabs!”

  He had pretended to laugh, gone straight to his office, and put his credit card into the Internet form for the last room at the most exotic tropical resort that he could find. Reservations at this place, Shifting Sands Resort, were by approval of the management or invitation only, but he had received his confirmation within a day. He had then filled out the lengthy forms confirming that he was indeed a shifter and agreed to abide by their specific terms, like no predation and no picking flowers. He had been grimly amused by the polite disclaimers that the resort was not ADA compatible, and that while they would certainly make accommodations, they might not be able to meet all special needs.

  Special needs.

  It had taken him several false starts to fill that part of the form out, wrestling with over-explaining, justifying. In the end, he’d put down only three words: Deaf. Fluent lip-reader.

  He realized he was starting to crumple the confirmation page his assistant had printed and made his hands relax.

  The last guest before him was leaving the little desk in the courtyard and he stalked forward with his matching leather luggage to check in.

  The woman behind the desk had improbably red hair, pulled back into a tidy bun, and a sharp, green-eyed gaze.

  “I’m Scarlet,” she said, looking him square in the face and enunciating with refreshing clarity. “I’m the owner of Shifting Sands.”

  Conall appreciated an owner who kept their hands actively on a business and handed his confirmation form and credit card across the desk with a nod and a noise he hoped sounded approving and not just unfriendly.

  She took both, efficiently running the card first so that a slow connection—which was to be expected on an isolated island in a foreign country—wouldn’t delay the check-in process.

  “You have cottage seven,” Scarlet told him, looking him clearly in the face again. She spread out a map on the desk between him and showed him where it was on the map, on the second tier of buildings from the beach near the edge of the jungle. She pointed out several other features, and Conall had to assume she was saying what they were, as he couldn’t watch her mouth and look at the map at the same time. He could read just fine, so he didn’t ask her to repeat anything.

  She turned the brochure over and pointed out the dining and event schedule.

  Weekly dances.

  Nightly concerts.

  Conall stopped reading and took the brochure abruptly. He looked at Scarlet as politely as he had to as they completed the payment. It was a ridiculous amount of money for more cottage than he needed, but at least it was all-inclusive.

  “If there is anything we can do for you, I hope you won’t hesitate to ask,” she added. “I have let the staff know about your special needs and I hope that your stay will go smoothly.”

  “I don’t need any special concessions,” Conall said firmly. And I don’t want them, he didn’t add, though he thought it bitterly.

  He gave his final signature on the paperwork and gathered his luggage, half an eye on Scarlet to see if she was going to be troublesome and chatty.

  But she only nodded briskly and returned to her own business, leaving Conall to descend down the jungle path to his escape from Christmas.

  Chapter 3

  “You sure about this?” Tex asked Gizelle. He was being carefully gentle, like Scarlet had been.

  “I can do this,” Gizelle insisted.

  Everyone at the resort did something. Tex, a bear shifter, was the bartender, and he made drinks and listened to people. His mate, the wolf shifter Laura, did a little of everything, helping out at the spa and making beds and cleaning and serving drinks in the bar.

  Bastian, who was also a dragon, was a lifeguard, and had saved two people from dro
wning since Gizelle had arrived almost a year ago. One of those people, Saina, had turned out to be a mermaid and Bastian’s mate, and as well as sometimes being a lifeguard, she sang every night in a fancy dress. Gizelle liked the way Saina’s voice made her forget how different she was.

  Travis, a lynx shifter, fixed things that were broken, if they weren’t people. His mate, Jenny, was the good lawyer, and Gizelle had taught her to be better at being an otter shifter.

  Jenny was good at shifting now, even better than Gizelle was, so that didn’t count as Gizelle doing anything anymore.

  They all did something, and Gizelle wanted to be that kind of person, the kind who did something.

  Tex gave her the tray reluctantly.

  “It’s almost Christmas,” Gizelle reminded him as the thought occurred to her. “Isn’t that exciting? I’m going to make presents.”

  She took the tray, holding it carefully flat even though it was empty, and took a deep breath. She was going to do this. She was going to be useful.

  The first table she picked had a woman sitting all by herself.

  “Can I take your glass?” Gizelle offered, like she had practiced with Tex, checking first to make sure it was empty except for ice cubes.

  The woman made a careless gesture of approval, not even really noticing her, and Gizelle swooped in to claim her prize.

  The glass was returned triumphantly to Tex at the bar, perched on the tray.

  “Nice work, cub,” Tex said encouragingly, taking the glass casually.

  “I’m not a child,” Gizelle reminded him, feeling a little let down.

  She took the tray back and surveyed the bar. There were three people sitting together by the edge of the deck that looked down over the big pool; they appeared to have extra glasses and possibly even a bottle. Gizelle padded over the tiles towards them, only remembering to keep her tray level at the last moment.

  These people looked at her when she approached, momentarily making Gizelle freeze. These were strangers, and it wasn’t so very long ago that just having them glance at her would have made her shift and flee in her gazelle form.

  This time, she reminded herself before her flight instinct kicked in that she was in a safe place. These people would not hurt her. She was supposed to be in human form.