Tropical Panther's Penance (Shifting Sands Resort Book 6) Read online

  “What brought you here?” Lydia asked cheerfully, with her best empty-headed smile.

  “It’s… personal,” he said, biting off the end of his words.

  Lydia let him turn her, aware of Wrench’s gaze attempting to burn holes through her partner.

  “Like a contracted sort of personal?” she risked saying, hoping to surprise him into reacting.

  But that only puzzled him. “Look,” he said crossly. “I’m not sure what you’re looking for. I’m only here because my sister didn’t want to come alone.”

  It was Lydia’s turn to be surprised. “Your sister?”

  She caught his automatic glance towards the librarian dancing with Tex. She was laughing at something he was saying.

  “My sister,” maybe-Tim repeated.

  Lydia sighed. While it was possible one sibling was a cat and the other a cobra, it seemed ridiculously unlikely that the pair were assassins.

  Unfortunately, she had piqued the young man’s interest. “What do you mean contracted? Like… an assassin?”

  Lydia hastened to hush him, and the young man stumbled over his feet as he immediately looked towards his sister. “Are we in danger?” he asked in an anxious whisper.

  “You should be fine,” Lydia was swift to say, taking the lead automatically as his steps faltered. “It’s a personal matter, I promise.”

  “Who is he after? Has he already made an attempt on someone? Is it a guest?”

  Lydia sighed. “Listen, Tim… is it Tim?”

  “Tom,” he corrected.

  “Tom.” Lydia said firmly. “I promise that neither you nor your sister are any danger. It’s highly unlikely that anything will happen here at a public event like this, and like I said, it’s a personal thing. I’m sorry I alarmed you, I was only trying to eliminate suspects and I’m not very good at this.” She gave him a winning smile.

  Tom was already squinting around at the other guests suspiciously. “What about that brute you were dancing with before? He’s got kind of that look, doesn’t he?”

  Lydia turned them so she could smile across the dance floor at Wrench’s glare. “He does, doesn’t he?” She said fondly. “It’s a useful look, for certain lines of work.”

  Tom gave her a deeply skeptical look. “Okay then, how about that Russian guy who looks like he did time in Siberia? I saw him shift into something goddamn prehistoric, with fangs like scimitars.”

  Lydia tipped her head. “That was useful! But I’m afraid we’re specifically looking for a snake shifter. He’s already made one attempt.”

  Tom shuddered.

  “Who else have you seen shifting?” Lydia hastened to ask. “Anyone you’ve seen would be helpful!”

  “There’s that really, really big woman with auburn hair who shifted into a polar bear at the pool,” Tom offered. “And, let’s see…”

  Chapter 39

  Wrench glared across the dance floor as Lydia continued dancing a second song with the young man she’d selected.

  He used all of the steps Lydia had taught him, not just the one easy set, and even with a handful of other dancers between them, Wrench could tell he was doing a good job of it. They even turned sometimes, where Wrench had stuck to the one safe move, counting under his breath the entire time.

  They appeared to be deep in conversation, and Wrench had to ball his fists at his side to keep from stomping across the floor and shoving the man away from his mate.

  “Isn’t she gorgeous?” Bastian said from his side.

  “Yeah,” Wrench said before he realized the other man was talking about Saina, who was dancing with the Swedish not-a-bear. There was no graceful way to correct the statement, so he didn’t bother.

  He made himself stop staring at Lydia like a lovestruck puppy and sweep a glance around the room. Scarlet met his eyes briefly from behind the DJ’s table, clearly doing the same. Her expression was serene and unruffled but her eyes were sharp, even from here. She may not expect trouble at a public event, but she was clearly alert for it.

  But nothing happened.

  Lydia and Saina came back from their dances with more names to cross off of Scarlet’s list, but they felt no closer to a culprit by the time the night had grown old than when they had started.

  Most of the guests trickled away as the night grew deeper. The white-haired woman, looking two sheets to the wind, nursed a last glass of wine at the little bar, and the last dancers drifted away as the staff began folding up chairs and collecting forgotten glasses.

  “We usually split what’s left of open bubbly bottles after these things,” Lydia said, bringing Wrench a glass. “No use letting them go to waste.”

  Wrench eyed the fizzy drink skeptical but tossed it down as Lydia sipped hers. It tasted better than he expected, but it tickled distractingly, all the way down. He preferred the burn of whiskey.

  The flower in Lydia’s fancy updo had started to slip, and Wrench put his glass down so he could tuck it back in. Her hair smelled delicious, and Wrench had to concentrate very hard not to betray his sudden rising need for her. He lingered over tucking a lock of her dark hair back over her ear and loved the way her breath hitched when he brushed her neck.

  Just has he was wondering if cottage two was still available for their use, a movement beyond Lydia caught his attention.

  The white-haired woman was pushing a bottle away from her on the bar. Her motions were slow, which may have been a product of her inebriation, but it caught Wrench’s attention as simply slow, not drunk-slow. Careful-slow. Trying-not-to-get-attention-slow.

  “You got the list?” he asked suddenly, his hand on Lydia’s shoulder.

  “Laura has it behind the bar,” Lydia said, glancing in that direction.

  Wrench resisted the instinct to tell her not to look. “You remember what that woman’s animal shape is?”

  Lydia smirked. “Weasel. Ermine, I think? I remember thinking it suited her personality, she was so nosy.”

  Wrench frowned. “Told me she was a fox.” He thought back to the conversation and remembered with a sour stomach what else they had talked about. “I told her I had a sister... and a niece.” That had been just a day before Renna ended up in protective custody.

  Lydia’s smile froze. “She doesn’t look like an assassin!”

  “She’s messing with the bottles at the bar,” Wrench told her quietly. “Bottles that you and me and Laura and Jenny mighta been drinking out of later tonight.”

  Lydia’s eyes widened, and she stared at the glass she had been about to drink from in horror.

  “What do we do?” she asked quietly.

  Wrench’s panther had several ideas that centered around the theme of tearing out the woman’s throat before she could shift, but the idea of Lydia watching that held him back.

  He did a quick assessment of the room. Saina and Bastian had already left—while Wrench couldn’t see the dragon being of much use against a snake, Saina’s singing gift might have proven useful. Especially if someone got bit. Given the way they had danced the last dance together, he suspected he knew where they’d disappeared to. Or at least what they were doing.

  Scarlet was turning off the sound system, bending behind the console to unplug the cords.

  Tex was carrying a tray of empty glasses to the bar, where Laura was wiping down the counter and Travis was repairing a chair. They were both chatting cheerfully with the white-haired woman, who was continuing her convincing charade of tipsy harmlessness.

  And Jenny was pouring a round of drinks from a bottle that the old woman had been sitting right next to.

  Wrench would have given anything for a firearm at that moment and he cast around for something— anything—that he could throw.

  As he was considering the aerodynamics of one of the decorative vases, Lydia suddenly sashayed away from him to the bar, her laugh unnaturally bright in the emptying room. “Wait, Jenny, we’ll do a toast!”

  “Shit,” Wrench said under his breath, and he scrambled to follow.
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br />   The little woman turned at their approach, and Wrench saw the brief, entirely sober flicker of rage in her face that confirmed every suspicion he had.

  Travis was repairing the chair upside down and Wrench bowled it over as he made a straight path to the woman.

  “What the hell?” Travis demanded.

  Laura and Jenny echoed him in shock as Lydia made it to the bar and swept all of the drinks off in a pool of shattered glass and foaming champagne. The white-haired woman sprang out of her seat spryly, but was trapped by Wrench against the bar with one hand to her throat.

  “It’s poisoned!” Lydia declared.

  Tex sniffed at the bottle. “Sugar, honey, iced tea!” he said in alarm. “This does stink. It’s different than rattler poison, but it sure isn’t right. Did you drink any?” He looked anxiously to his mate first.

  Laura shook her head, eyes big. “This is getting to be a habit,” she said weakly. “Jenny?”

  Her twin shook her head as well.

  Panther panted to be released, to exact painful revenge with teeth and claws, but Wrench only closed his fist around the woman’s leathery throat and held on, just tight enough that she was gasping and clawing at him.

  “Can’t… do… this…!” she choked. “Wasn’t… me…!” Wrench tightened his fingers just a little.

  “Shift and prove it,” Lydia said firmly. “If you are who you say you are, you shouldn’t be afraid to shift.”

  The woman’s beady eyes glared back at her, lips turning slightly blue as she snarled wordlessly. Her fingernails dug into Wrench’s arms and she kicked at him desperately.

  “Wrench.” Scarlet’s voice was as calm and cool as ever. “If you would kindly give her a little air.” She didn’t ask him to release her.

  Wrench obligingly released the pressure, still holding her out at arm’s length.

  The woman gasped and spat towards Lydia, who managed to do some sort of dance flutter with her hands and catch the spittle on a napkin she snatched from the bar. She handed the napkin to Tex, who raised an eyebrow and nodded.

  “That’s the stuff,” he confirmed, not even needing to hold it close to his nose.

  “Did Blacksmith send you?” Laura demanded.

  “You think you can run from him?” The woman didn’t even try to deny it.

  Wrench tightened his fingers reflexively as Tex stepped forward with a black expression and she gagged until he made his hand relax again.

  “Listen good,” he told her. “I ain’t coming back to that work, and I ain’t gonna let him scare me off of doing the right thing. But don’t think for a second that I ain’t gonna protect what’s mine.”

  She hissed at him, but Wrench could see that she was less defiant than she had been.

  “I’ve got duct tape,” Travis offered.

  “She could shift out of it,” Lydia cautioned, as he started to bind the woman’s wrists.

  “She can come spend the night with me in my office while we wait for the Civil Guard,” Scarlet said mildly. “She attacked a member of my staff at my resort, and I’ve got a message for her to take back to Blacksmith.”

  Wrench gave her a sideways look, wondering if she intended violence.

  Dot, taking advantage of Wrench’s slight distraction, suddenly slipped from his fingers as she shifted, and struck out towards Lydia’s unprotected neck with needle-sharp fangs bared.

  Wrench roared and grabbed for the writhing snake, but he wasn’t as fast as Scarlet, who caught the snake by the throat with one hand and held her as she snapped her jaws, inches from Lydia’s skin.

  “I don’t care which form you’re in for our little talk,” Scarlet said coldly, as if holding the giant, thrashing snake with one slim hand was no effort. “If you wouldn’t mind cleaning up the hall,” she said generally to the staff, and then she was dragging the enormous reptile out behind her. Her heels clicked along the floor as she told it, “Naturally, there will be no refund issued for the remaining days of your stay.”

  In the silence that followed the sound of the door closing behind her, Wrench gathered Lydia into his arms.

  Chapter 40

  Lydia was trembling in shock and relief, and when Wrench kissed the vulnerable skin on her neck that had nearly been bitten, she gave a little moan and sagged into his embrace.

  “That was beautiful, what you said about doing the right thing,” Breck told him as he started sweeping up the broken glass.

  “I been meditatin’,” Wrench growled with a straight face.

  Lydia snorted and then started laughing hysterically, finally able to pull herself away from Wrench’s big, safe arms with tears of laughter streaming down her face.

  The twins caught the contagion of humor and laughed until they had to hold their sides and their mates.

  Even Wrench was smiling, when Lydia had wiped her eyes and could see him again. “It was beautiful,” she said quietly near his ear as the others bent back to their cleaning.

  “I guess you can say beautiful things when you got beautiful things in your life,” Wrench said, looking slightly abashed behind his usual scowl.

  “You are my beautiful thing,” Lydia told him, and was delighted to watch him blush faintly behind his tan.

  “I ain’t beautiful,” he protested.

  “You are in that suit,” Lydia purred suggestively. “If I didn’t want you out of it so badly, I’d never let you take it off.”

  Wrench cleared his throat.

  “You were wonderful tonight,” Lydia told him. “You figured everything out before Dot could hurt anyone else.”

  Wrench shrugged. “Didn’t take much thinkin’ fortunately.”

  Lydia stood up as tall as she could so she could put her hands on the sides of his face and put her forehead to his. “Wrench, you are so much smarter and better than you have ever given yourself credit for. I love you, you beautiful, sexy, brilliant man. You are everything I ever wanted, and I—”

  The phone in Wrench’s pocket chose that moment to ring, loud in the echoing room.

  He swore like a sailor, and dove a hand in after it as Lydia stepped back with a sigh. A glance at the screen sent conflict across his features.

  “Renna,” he said apologetically, and he thumbed it on and turned away as Lydia waved at him to.

  Lydia couldn’t hear the other end of the conversation, only the slight murmur of a voice, but Wrench’s shoulders tightened and then slumped. He turned to her and for a moment Lydia feared the worst.

  Then he mouthed, “It’s done,” and made a conversational noise into the phone.

  They talked for several moments while Lydia kept herself busy folding up the decorations and unplugging the lights. A few moments later, Jenny’s phone across the room rang.

  When he finally hung up, Wrench swept Lydia up into a desperate, crushing embrace. “It’s done. They did the sting. They got the bastard, and all the top cronies, and the guy that Renna thought was a mole in the witness protection program. The whole rotten lot of them are behind bars, all their assets frozen. Renna and Ally can go home.”

  Across the hall, Jenny was sharing the same news, and there were cheers of relief and triumph from the rest of the staff.

  “We gotta tell Ally,” Wrench said.

  “She’s probably already asleep,” Lydia reminded him. It was well past midnight.

  “Yeah,” Wrench agreed, finally releasing her. “It’ll wait til tomorrow.”

  “You know what won’t wait until tomorrow?” Lydia said suggestively.

  Wrench looked hopeful but didn’t venture a guess.

  “Travis said you’d be replacing the glass at cottage two tomorrow and getting it ready for guests,” Lydia told him, tracing a finger along the inside of the collar of his shirt. “That means it’s still empty, but not for long…”

  Wrench grinned, and before Lydia could stop him, had swept her up into his big arms.

  “Eek!” Lydia squeaked happily as he carried her out into the warm, starlit night.


  Epilogue

  A few weeks later...

  “Uncle WRENCH! LOOK what SCARLET got me!”

  Ally was standing by the ridiculously over-sized fake tree that took up a corner of the event hall. It had taken Wrench nearly an hour to assemble the thing with Travis, and even longer to decorate it with the white and gold decorations. The Christmas Eve formal had ended without incidents worse than a drunkenly dropped glass and the smallest of fires in a corner where a candle had gotten tipped over.

  Ally, drunk with the privilege of a party staying up late with grownups, and giddy with the rush of new presents, was dressed in a red velvet dress trimmed with embroidered holly leaves and glittery poinsettias. She was holding a plush golden teddy bear dressed in a tutu.

  “Ally, honey, you don’t need to shout,” her mother reminded her.

  “I just feel SO LOUD with happiness,” Ally protested, whispering as loudly as she’d spoken earlier. The ground around her was littered with shredded Christmas paper and open boxes. She was wearing one of the bows on her curly head.

  Wrench felt fingers slip into his as he watched her caper around, dancing with her new bear to give Scarlet a thank-you hug.

  “You’re going to miss them,” Lydia said near his ear as Scarlet knelt to embrace his niece, her red hair as brilliant as Ally’s dress and accented with a crown of glossy holly.

  “It was great of Scarlet to put them up for a few weeks,” Wrench said sincerely. “Renna needed a nice vacation.”

  “Scarlet never fails to surprise me,” Lydia agreed. “It was really sweet of her.”

  “Dance with me?” Wrench invited.

  Lydia’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “I thought I’d already gotten my Christmas present,” she said in delight, putting a hand to the earrings Wrench had ordered for her. They were small silver infinity symbols with black enamel wings.

  She put the hand into Wrench’s, and he pulled her into the closed position and stepped out.

  Wrench concentrated on counting, sticking to the simple, basic back and forth until it started to feel somewhat comfortable. Lydia gazed up at him, contentment and joy in her beautiful face. Dancing close, she was the most gorgeous, sexy thing he’d ever had the pleasure of holding in his arms.