Tropical Leopard's Longing (Shifting Sands Resort Book 8) Read online

  He’d given the model a cup of coffee and a kind, private decline that left them both smiling. If Breck’s smile was more relieved than anything, he would never have admitted it.

  “Don’t wait up!” he called as he left The Den a quarter of an hour later.

  “Wasn’t planning to,” Travis retorted cheerfully.

  “I don’t want to know about it later, either!” Tex added.

  Chapter 3

  Darla stared at the laptop that was open on the tiny airplane tray in front of her.

  Two words started the page: I vow…

  The rest was blank.

  This shouldn’t be any harder than writing a thank you letter, or a polite invitation response. Finishing school had given her plenty of the applicable skills to use; there were standards to follow, and patterns that should make this simple and straightforward. All she had to do was pick a few flowery phrases and put them in a pleasing order, something she did regularly.

  It wasn’t even like she was lying about what she was trying to write; she really did want to marry Liam. She glanced ahead down the aisle of the little jet to where Eugene was sitting next to her mother, sipping a glass of wine and exchanging small talk with her.

  Darla shuddered. Yes, she really did want to marry Liam.

  She turned the silver bracelet on her left wrist and fingered the dragon lettering that translated to ‘Unbroken Line.’

  It was hot against her skin.

  If she could have pulled it off, she would have, but it was heavy and seamless, as if it had been forged there. A shackle, she thought bitterly. A magical shackle that only reinforced that she was no better than a broodmare, to be married off and docilely provide children for the honor of the family.

  How was she supposed to put that in her vows?

  Beside her, Liam looked up from his book and Darla realized that she had sighed out loud.

  “Having trouble?” he asked kindly, slipping off his headphones.

  “So much trouble,” Darla confessed. “Have you written yours?”

  “I looked up the vows they use at the Elvis chapel in Vegas and changed a few words,” Liam said carelessly.

  Darla gave him a sideways smile. “You’re going to marry me with cribbed Vegas vows?”

  “Well, your mother probably wouldn’t let me fly Elvis in to perform the ceremony,” Liam teased with a dramatic sigh.

  Darla giggled despite herself. “It would have been so much easier just to elope to Las Vegas,” she said with regret.

  “Your mother…”

  “My mother would have had a fit of vapors and then she would have figured out how to have it annulled so she could do this whole circus her way anyway,” Darla agreed. “I know.”

  Liam took her hand, and the matching bracelet on his wrist was cool against her arm, like it always was. “We’ll make this work,” he said gently. “It’s going to be okay.”

  He didn’t say that they had to make it work, though he could have. He had as much to gain from their marriage as she did… and arguably more to lose if it fell through.

  It was a sensible match, Darla reminded herself, twining her fingers into his for comfort as much as for show. She liked Liam, and marrying him solved so many of her problems. If it wasn’t the love match she’d always dreamed of, it was certainly better than any of the other options before them.

  She rubbed her bracelet against her opposite arm thoughtfully, pondering the inscription, and the bizarre source.

  Several days after their engagement announcement, the bracelets had arrived in the mail. The note enclosed had been a polite decline of the invitation to the wedding by one of the prestigious New York dragon families that Jubilee aspired to be friendly with.

  Jubilee had been delighted in the gift. “These dragonrunes mean ‘Unbroken Line,’” she explained with the authority vested in her from several weeks of research. “They must be fertility charms.”

  She had insisted that Liam and Darla put them on immediately, and to Darla’s horror, they had sealed onto their arms with a permanence that gave Darla cold chills, the seam vanishing.

  “Who sent these?” she asked, struggling to mask her horror.

  Liam had smiled the same very polite smile that he had practiced for Jubilee, but Darla recognized the same distrust that was plaguing her.

  “He’s a lawyer in New York,” Jubilee had said, comparing the note to her ever-increasing guest list. “A very important figure in dragon social circles there. He would have been quite a catch to have at the wedding, but a gift like this is nearly as good.”

  She didn’t seem bothered at all by the fact that they were now affixed to Darla and Liam with no obvious possibility of removal. If anything, she was delighted by the show of magic.

  Darla was not delighted.

  They seemed to represent everything inescapable about the impending wedding.

  Chapter 4

  Breck raised his hand and knocked on the cottage door.

  He didn’t have a key for this door, and would never have asked for one. He was, however, carrying a bouquet of flowers.

  “Come in!” called a thin voice from within.

  He opened the unlocked door. “Mrs. Shandy, you are looking more lovely than ever.”

  Mrs. Shandy was a hundred years old if she was a week, and she was sitting at a little table by the bed. It was one of the smaller cottages, laid out as a simple one-room efficiency. The remains of a meal beside her showed that the rule against food outside of the restaurant had been relaxed for her.

  “Breck, my dear,” she cackled, waving her hand imperiously across from her. “You’re risking Graham’s wrath by bringing me those.”

  Graham, a lion shifter, was in charge of landscaping for the entire resort, and he was notoriously protective of his gardens.

  “It is a risk worth taking for the smile it brings you,” Breck said, laying a gentle kiss on her forehead. “How’s the ankle?”

  He busied himself, finding a vase for the flowers and arranging them artfully.

  “The ankle is healing up fine,” Mrs. Shandy said with a smile. “It’s the shoulders complaining today. At my age, it’s always something.”

  “I’ll have Lydia come give you a rub tomorrow,” Breck promised. The swan shifter was in charge of the spa, and was a talented masseuse for both animal and human forms.

  “Oh, she’s too busy,” Mrs. Shandy protested. “I couldn’t ask her to do that.”

  “She’ll insist,” Breck warned her. “And tomorrow shouldn’t be too bad. The first wave of the big wedding party came in just tonight, but it won’t be very busy for a few more days. Do you feel like a game tonight?”

  “I could beat you a few times,” Mrs. Shandy said slyly.

  Breck opened the backgammon game between them.

  After one lively game, Breck thought that she seemed to be flagging, and he closed up the board.

  “When are you going to find yourself a nice girl or boy and get married yourself?” she asked, as Breck helped her up from her chair.

  “You know me,” Breck said breezily. “I could never settle for one person.”

  “I know you,” Mrs. Shandy rebuked. “You would like people to believe that you are shallow and hedonistic so you never have to get hurt.”

  Breck held her bathrobe as she shrugged out of it. Naked, she turned and took his face in her wrinkled hands. “When are you going to open yourself up?”

  “I love everyone I’ve ever been with,” Breck protested.

  “But you never let them love you,” Mrs. Shandy reminded him. “Not really.” She sighed and patted his face. “Someday,” she warned him. “Someday, you will understand what it can be.”

  Then, she let go of him and shifted. A tall, elegant old greyhound stood in her place, tail waving very slowly. Breck put a respectful hand on her head and the tail waved more vigorously. Then, ignoring the bed, she went to a cushion laid out on the floor by the French doors to the deck. She turned around twice and settl
ed down with a sigh.

  “Good night, Mrs. Shandy,” Breck said gently. He quietly gathered the dishes and slipped out.

  After he returned the tray to the kitchen, he stood on the restaurant deck, looking out over the bar deck, and the pool deck below that. Beyond, the ocean looked smooth and inviting.

  Breck slipped a hand into his uniform jacket pocket, and fingered the key he found there thoughtfully. He was… restless. Like he was waiting for something. Like there was something missing.

  He watched the moon move halfway across the sky before he sighed, and returned the key to the staff lost and found.

  Chapter 5

  Seventeen necklaces glittered on the crisp bedspread. “Which of these did you want me to wear?” Darla asked skeptically. She would have liked a nice single strand of pearls, or maybe a silver chain with a simple pendant, but the choices laid out were crowded webs of cut jewels, torcs of gold, and twists of lustrous dragonmetal inlaid with precious stones.

  “It’s a dragon wedding,” her mother sniffed. “All of them. I’ve done the research, and dragon weddings are about showing off wealth.”

  Darla picked up one of the heavier pieces. “I couldn’t even walk down the aisle in all of these.” She more quietly added, “And I’m not a dragon.”

  Unbroken line. She was careful not to touch the bracelet weighing on her wrist.

  “You’re marrying a dragon,” came the unnecessary reminder. “And you come from dragon blood. You have to show that you’re worth marrying.” Her tone indicated that she doubted that Darla would be able to do that even wearing a small fortune in jewelry.

  “Anyway, it’s a wedding in strict dragon tradition,” Jubilee continued. “Now, let’s try on the dresses and see how these layer with them. It’s possible you can wear some of them for the rehearsal dinner and the vigil or the dance, instead. And we’ll need to pick a headdress for each of them, too.”

  Darla wished she were the sort of person who could put her foot down. “No,” she imagined saying. “I’m not trying on those ridiculous dresses again, and I’m only wearing one necklace, and I’m canceling the vigil, and we’re doing a simple, short wedding, or else I’ll throw a fit and you won’t get any wedding at all.”

  But that was not her. That was someone braver than her, someone more clever and self-assured.

  Instead, she timidly said, “I’m very tired from traveling, Mother, and I haven’t caught up to this timezone. Do you think we could do that this afternoon instead? I thought I might lie out by the pool before the sun got too hot.”

  “Lie out in the sun?!”

  She might as well have suggested yodeling or dancing naked in the restaurant.

  “Lie out in the sun?” Jubilee repeated incredulously. “Darla, sweetheart, think of your skin! You know how you freckle. You don’t want to look common for the most important days of your life!”

  The bolder her might have pointed out that no one would be able to see through the glitter of the ugly jewels to even notice a few freckles. The real her knew that she’d look common no matter how un-freckled her cheeks were kept.

  “I was thinking I’d do it as a leopard,” she said swiftly, knowing that a sunhat or skin protectant would not reassure her mother. “It’s a resort for shifters, after all, so it’s completely normal here.”

  Jubilee looked unconvinced and Darla would have conceded defeat if the earth hadn’t given a rattling little hiccup under their feet just then.

  The earthquake was brief, doing no more than rattling the paintings on the walls. They fled the bedroom, but by the time they came out into the living area, the earth was quiet again.

  Jubilee’s eyes were wide. “It’s a sign!” she gasped. “An earthquake before a wedding, it must mean something.”

  “It’s a sign that we’re in the ring of fire where earthquakes happen all the time,” Darla said smartly before she could stop herself. Adrenaline made her feel brave.

  Jubilee ignored her, pressing a hand to her chest. “Oh, my heart is hammering. This is dreadful. Maybe this resort was a mistake. We could have done this in the English countryside, or in Italy, perhaps. There might still be time for the rest of the guests to get their tickets changed.”

  Darla patted her arm awkwardly. “Come and sit down, Mother. It’s just a little earthquake, it’s not a portent of doom.”

  Jubilee was shaking her head as she reluctantly took the plush wicker chair that Darla offered. “I should consult with my psychic,” she said. “Maybe we’re doing the wrong thing.” She dug into her designer purse for her phone. “I wish I’d insisted that she come with me. But she doesn’t like to travel. Oh, maybe she knew something!”

  Darla left her mother dialing her phone and muttering about foreshadows and bad signs and returned to her own bedroom. The jewelry on the bedspread hadn’t even gotten tangled in the quake. Darla frowned at it, then perked up. Her mother would be occupied for a long while with her psychic, and she hadn’t explicitly told Darla she couldn’t go sun herself in leopard form.

  That was a close as Darla was going to get to actual permission, and she wasn’t going to squander the chance. As quickly as she could, Darla stripped out of her clothing, leaving it folded neatly on the bedside table. The engagement bracelet could not come off, but it was dragon-magic, and would shift with her.

  Quick as a thought, she was a snow leopard, plush and graceful in ways she never was as a human. The silver bracelet shone on one wrist. Darla shook that paw, not liking the weight of it, then scampered out the private back door of her bedroom to visit the quiet pool and enjoy the sun and fleeting peace.

  Chapter 6

  The bar deck was quiet when Breck came down following the breakfast service.

  Though it didn’t tend to get truly rowdy until evening, there was usually a steady stream of shifters through the space. Even if the guests weren’t drinking alcohol, the fruit drinks and snacks were popular, and there were games and books, and the fitness center was nearby. There were more shaded tables than were available on the pool deck below, and it was rare that there weren’t a few people sitting at them.

  “It feels weird, doesn’t it?” Tex, bear shifter and bartender, was restocking a cooler with bottles. He passed Breck a ginger ale.

  “Reminds me of a couple of years ago, before business picked up,” Breck agreed, unscrewing the lid and taking a long swallow. “We used to get lulls like this a lot.”

  “I suppose it’s good that business is brisker now,” Tex said. “Job security, and all.”

  “Not to mention bonuses,” Breck chuckled. “Though it would help if you didn’t get resort property blown up this year.”

  “I had nothing to do with the boat blowing up!” Tex protested. He considered. “Well, very little, anyway. How’d it go with your hot date last night? You were certainly back late.”

  Breck shrugged. “I don’t kiss and tell,” he said with a wink.

  “Oh?” Tex said skeptically. “When did that start?”

  “I am the epitome of discretion,” Breck protested with mock innocence. Another time, he might have simply fabricated something. He had an active imagination and a wealth of experience to draw on, and it was always entertaining to make Tex flush and regret asking questions.

  But he still felt the restless displacement of the night before, and needling Tex held no distraction.

  His leopard was agitated, and he had the nagging feeling he had forgotten something terribly important.

  He took his bottle of ginger ale to the edge of the shade and looked out over the deck. Bright sunlight gave the white tile a luminous character, and the pool below glimmered blue. The water features at the near edge of the pool provided a wash of restful sound, and the thrum of the ocean beyond was a deep, constant beat.

  A movement caught his eye. A snow leopard was coming in the side entrance, padding silently across the tile around the pool. After a moment, it hopped gracefully up onto one of the wide, low benches that were designed for large
animals to lounge on. It circled twice and lay down, looking away over the beach below. Something glinted on one of its paws.

  Tex, coming to stand beside him and squint out into the bright light, spotted it too. “Well, we’ve got one guest out and about. Do you mind offering them a water? Laura’s up at the spa helping Lydia, and I want to finish up here.” Newcomers to the resort often underestimated the heat of the sun and their own need for hydration — especially in animal form.

  But Breck was already moving, heading down the grand stairs as if he was being drawn by a string.

  As he closed the distance between them, the snow leopard’s head swiveled towards him. It shifted its weight and rolled to its feet.

  Blue eyes met his, blue eyes more beautiful than any sky he’d ever seen. It was a gorgeous snow leopard, with thick, patterned fur. The glint he’d seen was a heavy-looking silver bracelet encircling one of its legs above the paw.

  His own leopard rose to his feet. Ours, he said firmly. This one is ours.

  Breck was struck dumb.

  This was not the usual state for Breck. He prided himself on thinking fast on his feet, of being smooth and he was always ready with a clever compliment or a quick comeback.

  But looking into these blue eyes, no words came to his mind.

  He wasn’t sure he still had mastery of language.

  All he knew was that this, this was the part of his life that had been missing. This was the answer to every question, the fulfillment of every desire. This was peace and harmony and hope.

  This was home.

  He ought to kneel, he thought achingly, or offer his hands, or say something. But all he could do with stare, until suddenly the bracelet the leopard was wearing flared to life, glowing warmly and then fading slowly back… not to silver, but to gold.