Tropical Bartender Bear (Shifting Sands Resort 3)

It took a more obvious effort to pry her off before she released him. “Mon dieu,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “You are my hero.”

Tex wondered if he’d imagined her French accent vanishing, it was certainly thick enough now. He tipped his hat at her. “It’s the least I can do, ma’am.”

Marie gave a little moan. “Oh, mes serviettes!” she said, shaking her head at her rumpled armful.

“Your… oh, your towels? They haven’t suffered any,” Tex reassured her. “I’ll help you fold them and no one will know a thing about their brush with the army of formicidae.”

She furrowed her brow at Tex adorably, and he smiled at her. “Ants,” he explained. “Just ants.”

Her face brightened in understanding, and Tex helped her shake the towels back into presentable shape and fold them neatly into squares again.

“My hero,” she repeated, and the look she shot back over her shoulder as she trotted away down the clear trail to the cottages suggested that she was willing to reward Tex’s chivalry.

Tex wasn’t sure why the offer was so unappealing. She was a good-looking woman, with very definite charms. Dating within the housekeeping pool didn’t offend Tex’s good sense about not seeing coworkers; he would never had been tempted by someone who worked the bar with him. But although he appreciated the view as she walked away with a little extra swing in her hips, he didn’t find himself wanting to chase her down.

It wasn’t just that he felt the weight of his bad luck in love, he felt like he was… waiting for something.

With a shrug, he collected his baseball bat and returned to the bar. Dropping the drink had not broken the glass, but there was a mess of spilled syrup to clean up, and an impatient crowd of guests had gathered while he was away.

“Sorry folks,” he said, swiftly stepping up to give the mess a brief swab. “A lady screams, you’ve got to be ready to drop things and run to the rescue,” he said smoothly. He added a wink for one of the older ladies at the counter, and was repaid by watching her grouchy expression turn to a delighted blush.

“What can I get for you?” he asked the first person at the bar. He got all their requests while he remade the interrupted drink.

They were all duly impressed when he could remember what each of them had asked for without pausing to write anything down, serving even the most meticulously-ordered drink exactly as dictated. He spun a bottle on each hand as a finishing touch, and got a scattered round of applause from the ones who had remained at the counter to see the whole show.

“I’ll take a Shifter’s Mate,” a familiar voice said from the end of the counter as the others dispersed. A sunhat and a wave of dark hair obscured her face as she bent over the laminated drink menu, shoulders slumped. She lacked the manic energy that the rest of the resort seemed to have right now.

“Coming up, ma’am,” Tex said automatically, trying to place the voice and figure out why it was giving him such an unexpected electric thrill. He dropped the ingredients into the shaker with a few cubes of ice and shook it efficiently while he filled a glass with clean cubes in the other hand. An umbrella and a wedge of fruit at the rim finished his own invention.

“Pretty,” the woman said, finally looking up.

“P-p-pretty,” he echoed her, unable to come up with anything more. He remembered that face and those brown eyes, but that last time he had seen her had been nothing like this.

She is ours, his bear roared gleefully.

Jennavivianna had been gorgeous then, but now she was something infinitely more. Every curve of her body was an invitation, every wave of her dark hair was a promise. The planes of her lovely face were perfectly composed and the eyes — those limitless, bottomless, aching eyes! A man could drown in those places, if he let himself go.

And Tex was ready to jump.

Chapter 5

It would be a short and easy trip to become a drunk in the wake of her sister’s murder, Laura thought, but she knew she needed her wits about her. She thought that Shifting Sands would be a safe escape from anyone who knew Jenny, the perfect place to springboard a new life in a foreign country. The resort had people from all over the globe, she planned to make use of her time to get to know some of them, and get a lead for work that wasn’t too careful about looking at visas. It didn’t have to be in Costa Rica, she could get her return ticket changed to anywhere!

She hadn’t planned on Fred.

Fred had decided to join her at the last minute, and while he was fortunately not able to get all the same flights as Laura, he was staying at the hotel just a few doors down.

“I didn’t like the idea of you off in some foreign place so soon after the loss of your sister,” he said, so earnestly that it was impossible to hate him for fouling up her strategy so completely. “Isn’t it lucky they were able to open up a few new rooms?”

It was only lucky if you counted bad luck.

Now, instead of planning her escape in two weeks, Laura was agonizing over everything she said and did — did she say that like Jenny would have? Was she walking like Jenny did? She chose to wear the modest one-piece that Jenny would have, though she’d been surprised to find a sky blue bikini in her closet. She even kept a sensible hat on, though her dark skin wouldn’t burn. She had used jetlag and headaches as excuses for avoiding Fred at meals so far, but she knew that wouldn’t last long. She was dreading the time when he’d finally try to talk work with her, and she’d have to stare at him blankly.

He was such a nice guy, and he’d been such a good friend to Jenny and their parents over the years; Laura felt awful for brushing him off so coldly. She consoled herself by thinking that he would probably assume her chilly behavior was because she was grieving.

Her grief felt oddly far away. She couldn’t really believe that Jenny was gone. They still hadn’t found a body by the time she’d left Los Angeles, but there was no way she could have survived the crash or the ocean… was there? The police had given her no reason to hope. But it still wasn’t real that she’d died. Despite the silence of their psychic bond, Laura couldn’t help but expect her just to walk into the bar and scold her for slouching.

She felt restless, but she didn’t think that’s what grief ought to feel like.