Tropical Christmas Stag Read online

  “Can I take your glasses?” she remembered to say.

  She realized that she was standing too far away, several paces from the table still, but the woman in the group had a friendly smile and gestured her to come closer.

  “I’d like another mojito,” the friendly-smile woman said.

  Gizelle clutched her tray. She wasn’t supposed to take orders, just glasses. But really, what was the harm? She took another step closer, eyeing the empty glasses. “Alright,” she said slowly. “A mojito.” What did Tex usually say when someone asked for that? “Extra mint?”

  “Yes, please,” the woman said, and Gizelle felt like she’d just done something momentous.

  One of the men pushed a glass towards the edge of the table. That was an invitation, right? Gizelle swooped in to take the glass, and then bravely took the rest of the empty ones, stacking them carefully around the tray so they were balanced, with the bottle perfectly in the middle.

  “I’ll take another IPA,” the other man said agreeably. “And a shot of Jaeger.”

  “Whiskey on the rocks,” the last person added.

  Gizelle smiled bravely. “Mojito, extra mint, IPA, shot of... Jaeger. Whiskey on rocks.”

  Friendly-smile woman continued to smile and nodded approvingly, and the men returned to their conversation.

  Gizelle turned back to the bar, tray balanced on one hand like Laura did. She caught Tex’s nervous look and returned to holding it in both hands.

  “They want drinks,” she told Tex happily as she arrived at the bar. “Mojito... with... extra Jaeger. On rocks?”

  Her cheerfulness faded with her faulty memory.

  Tex took the glasses from the tray with a practiced sniff for each. “Mojito with extra leaf. Pale ale. Shot of Jaeger. Jack on rocks.”

  Gizelle might have pouted, but Tex swiftly told her, “You did a good job.” He didn’t call her a cub that time. “I’ll make these while you go collect glasses from the tables by the pool,” he suggested.

  Gizelle took the empty tray, enthusiasm slightly dented, and went to gather glasses.

  Chapter 4

  The first disappointment of the resort was the lack of private kitchen facilities. A note in the brochure explained it away as jungle bug control and played up the fine food available at the restaurant and buffet.

  Conall was skeptical of their claims, but hungry after the long plane ride. He left his luggage, still packed, to follow the signs and smells to the central buildings and the promise of food.

  The second disappointment was the string of Christmas lights being hung at the restaurant entrance. A rough-looking character covered in tattoos and scars stood on one ladder, while a smiling Native American man on a stepladder was handling the other end of the string and directing the placement. There was a box of tinsel and decoration overflowing by the foot of the ladder.

  Conall’s appetite vanished.

  The bar below sounded far more appealing.

  It was late afternoon, and a sign by the restaurant door claimed it was opening for dinner service in half an hour anyway. Conall had doubts about how strictly they followed schedules at a tropical resort such as this, but maybe a drink before dinner would be just what he needed.

  A strong drink.

  The bar was manned by a smiling cowboy, complete with ridiculous hat and over-sized belt buckle. At least Conall didn’t have to hear the Southern drawl.

  “What can I get you?” the man asked, mixing something in a shaker and straining it into a glass over mint leaves.

  There was a well-worn guitar leaning in the corner behind the bar, completing the man’s cowboy image and driving a spike of pain into Conall’s heart.

  Conall picked up a menu and scowled darkly at it.

  It was a seasonal menu, with inane holiday twists on traditional drinks. Holly and Santa hats decorated the margins.

  This vacation was starting to look like an expensive mistake, and no kind of escape at all.

  Chapter 5

  The tables on the pool deck were mostly empty; Gizelle could snag the bottles and glasses without having to talk to anyone. In two cases, guests were lounging on laid-back chairs with sunglasses. Gizelle crept up behind them and took their empty glasses without asking, darting away triumphantly without disturbing them.

  No one had a chance to ask her for another drink, though one of the women further down the deck gave her a long, skeptical look.

  Gizelle realized she was crouching behind a chair and made herself stand up and tilt her chin defiantly.

  Her tray was as full as Gizelle trusted herself to carry up stairs. Laura sometimes carried them heaped with glasses, but Tex had made her promise not to stack anything.

  She was watching her bare feet as she climbed the grand stairs from the pool deck to the bar above, when the gazelle who was never far from her stirred and gave an unexpected sigh of longing.

  Gizelle looked up as she moved off the last step and was struck with a jolt of something like fear, but much, much better.

  There was a man standing at the bar in front of Tex, wearing khaki shorts and a fancy silk shirt covered in green leaves. He had dark hair, and he was almost as tall as Tex. He was glowering at a menu as if it had offended him.

  Gizelle did not realize she had dropped the tray until everyone turned in shock to look at her.

  Almost everyone.

  The man at the bar did not turn. He was completely unaware of Gizelle as she stepped carefully through the shattered glass and over the upside-down tray and walked towards him, ignoring the chaos in her wake.

  He didn’t notice her at all until she was right beside him, trying to crane around to see into his fascinating face.

  He startled like she had, and then stared back at her with blue eyes like pools of sky.

  “I do have a mate,” Gizelle breathed.

  For a long, unmarked moment, they gazed at each other in surprise.

  Then the enormity of it all came crashing down on her and Gizelle was shifting and leaping away in her antelope form, scattering chairs and pieces of her sundress as she fled.

  Chapter 6

  Conall was not aware of the woman until she had not only crowded into his personal space, but had wedged herself at an awkward angle against the bar to look into his face.

  White-streaked dark hair was wild around her face and falling past her waist, half-obscuring her thin, pale face. Big, dark eyes threatened to swallow him whole.

  She said something, but Conall was too busy watching those amazing eyes to look at her mouth.

  Ours, his elk told him firmly. Ours forever.

  Then, before he could even reach out and brush back her tangled hair, she was leaping back, tipping over chairs as she shifted into a gazelle and sprang away in terror.

  He sat there, frozen, until a thump that rattled the bar prompted him to turn in a daze to the bartender, clearly at the end of a rant, with familiar words at his scowling lips.

  “Are you deaf, man?”

  “Yes,” he snarled back, silencing the man.

  The bartender adjusted his hat in consternation and blinked rapidly. “Sorry,” he said, undoubtedly a mumble. “Scarlet warned us.”

  “Who was that?” Conall demanded.

  “That was gazelle,” the bartender explained. Conall scowled at him. It had been obvious what her shift form was, of course. Conall wasn’t sure what the point of telling him that was.

  They stared at each other for a moment and the bartender sighed and ducked under the bar. He came up with a bottle of Tanqueray Ten. “You look like a gin and tonic man,” the cowboy guessed. “And you’re going to need this.”

  He was good at his job, Conall had to admit; gin and tonic was his drink of choice. He settled onto one of the stools while the bartender put ice into a glass. His legs still felt unsteady from the shock. “Thank you,” he said automatically. “I’d appreciate that.”

  His mate.

  Had she run because she realized he was deaf?

/>   What had she said that he’d missed?

  “I’m Tex,” the other man said as he slid the glass across the counter to him.

  “Tex,” Conall repeated numbly, confirming that it was a name. “I’m Conall.”

  “That was gazelle,” Tex repeated.

  Conall took a bracing sip of the drink and wondered if Tex would prove to be one of those people who assumed deaf meant idiot.

  “She’s... different. Special.” Tex was clearly struggling. When the native man who had been hanging lights brought a tray of broken glass to the bar, he exchanged a desperate look with him. “How would you explain gazelle, Travis?”

  Conall turned on the stool, watching carefully. Travis started to answer obliquely as he dumped the glass shards, and Tex stopped him. “He’s deaf, you have to face him.”

  Travis looked straight at him, with the startled, uncomfortable expression that Conall was so familiar with.

  “Gazelle is different,” Travis echoed Tex’s first descriptor reluctantly. “She’s... really different.”

  Conall took another drink as Travis sat down on one of the bar stools, raking a hand through his short, dark hair. “Look, to understand gazelle, you have to understand where she came from.”

  Conall glanced at Tex quickly enough to catch him saying, “... don’t really know.” They weren’t close enough to make watching both of them easy.

  “There was a collection, like a zoo,” Travis continued. “Shifters in cages, torture.”

  “... forced to stay in animal form,” Tex added.

  Conall stared from one to the other. Someone had tortured his mate? Rage was not the least of his complicated emotions.

  Travis continued, “She wouldn’t shift when we found her, or couldn’t. She stayed in gazelle form for months after her rescue, and as far as we can tell, she doesn’t remember anything before that. The other shifters we rescued all said she was there longer than they were.”

  “We don’t know how old she is, or when she was captured,” Tex added.

  “She might have been born there,” Travis said.

  “She’s come a long way,” Tex said firmly. “But she’s still really...”

  “Sheltered?” Travis grasped, clearly flailing.

  “You have to be careful about startling her,” Tex said.

  “She doesn’t like loud noises,” Travis agreed. “I try to warn her if I’ll be using power tools.”

  “She can seem simple,” Tex said uncomfortably.

  “But she’s quite smart,” Travis hastened to add. “She picks things up plenty quickly. She’s just... missing a lot of really basic education and socialization.”

  “... is teaching her to read.” Conall missed the name Tex gave, but didn’t want to ask.

  They lapsed into silence, one that Conall wasn’t gracious enough to break himself, chewing over everything they’d told him.

  His elk was having trouble moving past the part where someone had hurt his mate.

  “So,” Travis said finally, when Conall had downed the last of his gin and tonic. “You’re gazelle’s mate.”

  There was unexpected challenge in Travis’ face.

  “I am,” Conall gruffly agreed. That wild, wounded woman was his, and everything about him was hers.

  Travis put his hand forward. Conall stared at it reluctantly a moment, then shook it. “I’m Conall.”

  Before he let go, Travis said seriously, “If you hurt her, I will have to kill you.” His grip tightened.

  Conall glanced towards Tex, trying to gauge whether this was some sort of joke.

  Tex had a grim smile on his cowboy face. “Only if I don’t get there first.”

  Chapter 7

  “Gizelle? Honey?”

  Gizelle flicked big ears at the voice but didn’t turn.

  Wanting a lot of things at once made her legs tremble, and it was easiest just to lean against the fence here and let the noise in her head turn everything to nonsense.

  “Gizelle.”

  Gizelle reluctantly swiveled her head.

  Scarlet was carrying a new sundress. Maybe it was the same sundress and Travis had already repaired it. Gizelle didn’t remember what she had been wearing. Had she been wearing clothing? Probably. Tex was always making her put on a dress if she forgot. It was sometimes easier being a gazelle because she didn’t have to remember things like that.

  She could remember what he was wearing.

  A short-sleeved silk shirt, with tropical leaves and flowers all over. Khaki shorts, pressed crisp. A silver bracelet on one strong wrist.

  Blue eyes.

  Blue eyes like a cloudless sky, full of promise and freedom.

  “Gizelle.” More firmly this time.

  Gizelle gave a sigh of defeat and shrugged back into her human form.

  “I dropped the glasses,” she said regretfully. “They all broke.”

  “No one is angry,” Scarlet assured her as Gizelle slipped the dress on over her head.

  “I’m angry,” Gizelle said unhappily.

  “What are you angry about?” Scarlet asked so sweetly that it made it worse.

  “That,” Gizelle said sharply, knowing Scarlet wouldn’t understand. “Me. Everything.”

  Scarlet sat on the grass, her legs neatly together in her narrow skirt. Gizelle circled her twice, warily, then sat cross-legged to face her.

  “There are some things you should know,” Scarlet said evenly.

  Gizelle gave a noisy sigh. “Breck told me about that.”

  “About your mate.”

  Gizelle held her breath. She wanted to know everything about him.

  Scarlet had papers. Papers with words that made Gizelle wish she was already good at reading, not barely able to remember the alphabet sounds. But they had pictures, too, and Gizelle looked through them curiously. One of them was a picture of the man with blue eyes. He was sitting on a car holding a guitar and he was smiling. He hadn’t been smiling when Gizelle met him.

  She liked the smile.

  “His name is Conall Wright. He’s deaf.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He can’t hear anything.”

  That sounded wonderful.

  Scarlet continued. “He can speak, and he can read your lips. If you look at him when you speak, he’ll be able to understand what you’re saying.”

  “Even in the dark?”

  “No, probably not in the dark.” Scarlet sounded like she was trying not to laugh, but she kept going. “It’s important that he be able to see you, to see your mouth when you speak, so look up; you can’t hide in your hair.”

  Gizelle had been doing exactly that and made herself brush it back from her face and sit up straight.

  “What else?” she asked eagerly.

  “He’s from a city called Boston,” Scarlet explained, and she showed Gizelle a map with the city circled. “He owns a chain of high-end music supply stores and a clothing line, among other things.”

  Scarlet looked like she expected Gizelle to be impressed with that, but Gizelle didn’t like the sound that chains made, and the rest of the sentence made no sense to her.

  Scarlet continued, gravely relaying things she clearly thought were important.

  But only one thing really mattered to Gizelle.

  She leaned forward to interrupt Scarlet when the red-haired woman paused. “Will he like me?”

  Chapter 8

  We should pursue her, Conall’s elk insisted, pawing impatiently.

  We have to give her the space to come to us, Conall reminded his elk and himself equally.

  If the resort had seemed like a glittery disappointment before, it was a hundred times more so now that Conall had met his mate.

  The grand pool didn’t seem as impressive as the gazelle’s brief gaze had been, and the rich food was tasteless when he made himself eat.

  The woman’s recognition of him, and her subsequent flight, had escaped no one’s notice, and if Conall couldn’t hear the whispers, he could
see the appraising looks as he woodenly went through the motions of being just another guest at the resort.

  He skipped the special dinner menu to pick an unappetizing plate from the buffet, and successfully avoided meaningful contact with everyone simply by glancing away if they tried to talk to him.

  After dinner he prowled the resort from the salon, where he waved away the cheerful offer of service, through several gardens with too many shadowed places, all perfect for a vacation tryst. The empty event hall had an open box of Christmas decorations that Conall only barely held himself back from kicking. He stalked past the pool to look down over the dark beach and the ocean, picturesquely reflecting the nearly-full moon.

  He told himself he wasn’t really looking for her, just getting the lay of the land.

  But the disappointment when every shadowy figure or deer-shaped bush turned out not to be her suggested otherwise, and he finally returned to his opulent cottage.

  The following morning, having failed to find anything resembling rest, Conall went straight to the bar. He did not, technically, plan to ask where the gazelle would be. But he had to know more and hoped to get more of her story from the bartender.

  It was too early for the bar to be open, though Conall was briefly tempted by the self-service cooler.

  He didn’t think he could drink away this pain.

  A dark-haired woman and a man who looked like he had a hangover were staring at him from a table across the otherwise deserted bar. Conall scowled at them in challenge and they looked away first.

  He probably looked just as hungover, though the gin and tonic hadn’t really dented his faculties at all.

  Not like her eyes had.

  Eyes like escape.

  A fist connected with his shoulder and Conall turned with an automatic growl of challenge to find a staff gardener, obvious by the resort polo shirt and the machete he had casually over one shoulder. He smelled like earth.