Tropical Leopard's Longing (Shifting Sands Resort 8)

Anything of value he could give her, she’d be able to buy something twice as good for herself. He wanted to give her something… permanent. Something she’d always have. A tattoo, he thought wildly, though he had only the foggiest idea how those worked and had no desire to go ask Wrench for advice on the topic.

Something she couldn’t buy… something she couldn’t do…

Breck almost fell down the rest of the ladder as the perfect idea hit him.

Chapter 33

“Where are we going?” Darla asked in a whisper, giggling, as Breck, after a lingering kiss, did not draw her inside his room, but led her by the hand up past the hotel to the very top of the resort in the darkness. Her bracelet glowed faintly in the darkness.

“I’ve got a surprise for you!” Breck said mysteriously.

“Is it something from your drawer of goodies?” Darla asked eagerly, already feeling naughty for lurking through the velvet midnight.

“Better,” Breck promised. Then he hushed her as they tiptoed past the entrance to the resort. Scarlet’s rooms were dark. A small shape disconnected from one of the shadows in the courtyard, startling Darla.

“That’s Tyrant,” Breck said reassuringly near her ear. “Just a cat, not a shifter.”

Tyrant followed them curiously to the door of the courtyard and decided against pursuing them out into the dark drizzle.

Past the low stone wall that marked the top edge of the resort, Breck led Darla to the parking lot, where the resort van seemed to be the only thing waiting for them.

Darla expected to get in and drive somewhere, but to her surprise, Breck took her around to the back of the van. “I’m going to show you how to change a flat tire,” he said gleefully.

“In the dark?” Darla exclaimed. “In the rain?”

“Do you think flat tires only happen on sunny days?” Breck scoffed. “Of course not!”

He opened the back doors of the van. “Usually you’ll find the tools in the back near the tire wells, or in a compartment under the floor here.” He showed her where they were cleverly tucked and told her what each of them was.

Then he showed her how to remove the spare tire from underneath the van.

“I’m not really dressed for this,” Darla said cautiously, as she meticulously brushed the dirt off of her pants after manhandling the spare to the side of the van. It had at least stopped raining.

“I suppose you will plan your flat tires for days you are wearing coordinating work overalls,” Breck teased her.

Darla pinched him, which resulted in being kissed breathless. “Alright, I’ll stop complaining,” she laughed, drawing away reluctantly. “What do we do now? Do we lift up the van first? On that jack thing?” The contraption looked far too small and insignificant for the task.

“A good guess,” Breck said. “But no — first you have to loosen the lug nuts. If you try to do that after you’ve jacked it up, you’ll only rotate the tire.”

He gave her the tire iron and turned on a flashlight.

“Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” Darla said with determination, and she set to work.

The nuts gave her no trouble, between the tire iron and her own shifter strength. Breck stopped her before she removed them completely. “You don’t want the tire falling off on you when you jack it up,” he reminded her.

“I never would have thought of that,” Darla confessed. “I’m so stupid.”

“You are not stupid,” Breck growled. “Don’t ever think that just because you don’t know something.”

Darla looked up at him. It had stopped raining, but they were both completely soaked. In the faint, indirect light of the flashlight he was holding, he looked like big and dangerous crouching beside her. Then he grinned at her, and her heart did a little flip-flop in her chest.

“Isn’t this fun?” he asked.

“You have a weird idea of fun,” Darla told him, but she was grinning back.

It was fun, she realized, as Breck started talking about how the van was put together, and why you always had to use a piece of the frame structure to jack it up. “Try jacking it up on the body out here somewhere, and it will just crumble when the weight of the van is on it,” Breck explained. “That’s just plastic. Your user manual will have advice about the best place to put a jack, or you can just look for a good solid piece of frame.”

They crawled around in the mud and dirt once the jack was up and the tire was off, shining the flashlight on all the bits and parts of the underside of the van as Breck pointed out what they all were.