After the first glimpse of him, she hadn't been able to erase him from her mind.
She couldn't quite stop herself from fantasizing climbing out of the pool and into the arms of the mysterious man she'd seen cleaning the pool. As she did her lazy laps, she lost herself in the idea of those strong arms wrapped around her, her mouth finding his as they slipped under the salty ripples of the water.
She continued to spot him nearly every day, always hurrying away from her with a loping stride that she wouldn't have been able to catch if she’d tried. She was beginning to think that he was avoiding her. She suspected that he felt the same pull she did, but sensed it made him uncomfortable, rather than intrigued. She still couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it, but more than once she’d caught herself wondering, Could mates be a real thing after all?
It grieved her to think she was causing him discomfort, and she wanted to catch him, to say that she would never make him sad or unhappy, and that she was sorry she seemed to be causing him distress. She wondered if there was something she could do to help him, even – she could still feel the pain that crackled off of him.
She felt like one of her own students, enslaved to her own crazy adolescent hormones, and she could not stop fantasizing about him: about what it would feel like to kiss him, to slide her hands over his shoulders, to feel the weight of him on her when she lay in her wide bed.
Finally, three days into her vacation, she spotted him across the pool deck.
“Oh!” she said out loud, stopping in her tracks.
There he was, close as life, bending over a bucket of supplies by one of the lounge chairs; Mary would know his silhouette and the burst of his red hair anywhere, and she had a moment of near-terror.
She knew that he would find an excuse to leave at any moment, and it would have been easy to let him go. At any other time in her life, she would simply have lingered in the doorway a little longer, and watched him escape from her again.
But she was here, being brave and courageous, in a foreign country by herself. She wasn’t sure if it was the hot weather or the glamour of Shifting Sands itself, but she even felt like a more powerful shifter here; all of her senses were sharper than they'd ever been, and they were all focused entirely on him.
She gathered all of her resolve and walked decisively across the tiled deck, weaving around the chairs and tables on the deck without removing her eyes from him.
“I'm sorry,” she said automatically, when she was finally at his side, and abruptly, the bravery that had carried her across the deck vanished. She was left feeling like a stammering fool, awkward and unappealing in her plain blue swimsuit and cheap flip-flops. She was keenly aware of the few other guests enjoying the late afternoon sunshine on the deck, including a sleek, manicured woman wearing almost nothing, and the bartender who was strumming a guitar at the bar behind her.
“I'm sorry,” she repeated. “I don't mean to interrupt you, it's just that... I... ah...”
He was looking at her with hazel eyes like saucers, as unable to look away as Mary was. He was more gorgeous up close than he was fleeing from her across a pool deck or down a path, built like an athlete, with wide shoulders under his resort uniform shirt, and narrow hips in khaki shorts. Agile hands were clenched, white-knuckled, around the bucket handle.
All of the hurt she had sensed from him was there, intense and bone-deep.
“Oh!” she said in wonder. “You feel it too!”
Because, laid over the hurt was something else – the heat and lust and a depth of connection that Mary had never even dared to hope for.
This is our mate, her deer told her with no hesitation, pleased and excited.
Mary had always wondered if a destined mate could be real, and hadn't dared to hope that her odd attraction to this stranger could be such a thing.
Meeting his eyes dissolved any doubt she might have had. She could feel a resonance between them that defied description. Magic seemed to crackle around them, and she reached out an automatic hand to touch him in wonder.
He flinched away, and the spell shattered.
His face shuttered, settling into an off-putting scowl, and he stood, towering over her. “I don't know what you're talking about,” he snarled at her.
Then he turned on his heel and walked away, leaving Mary feeling utterly lost.
Chapter Six
Rejecting her was the hardest thing that Neal had ever done – watching her heart break into little pieces while he denied the pull of their mating bond was like being shot. He was worthless, terrible, the worst kind of jerk... and the biggest coward that had ever had the misfortune to walk the face of the earth on two legs and on four.
He sank down onto a picnic table seat, steepling his hands on the back of his head. He wanted to tear something into pieces, or burn something to the ground. His mate was hurting, and he couldn't do anything to protect her, because he was the one who had caused it.
What had happened to him?
At one point, he'd been part of one of the most elite teams in the military, a sharpshooter and explosives expert with a reputation for being fearless and unstoppable. He'd been confident with women and complicated missions alike.
Now he was reduced to doing odd jobs at a fancy tropical resort and failing even at that: fearful, prickly and unfit for any friendship, let alone the company of his own destined mate.
Why did she have to come here, of all places? Couldn't they just have been another unlucky couple who never had the grace to meet?