Tropical Lion's Legacy (Shifting Sands Resort 9)

“Did you at least tell her your name?” Neal demanded.

That earned them a grunt that might have been a laugh. He’d told her a name.

Graham still wondered if it had been the wrong name. He put the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and swallowed.

“Look,” he said gruffly. “I appreciate that you’re trying to help, but she’s got a job. At the end of her vacation, she’s going back to it. I’ve got a job, too, and I’m going back to it now.”

He rose from the bench and stalked off, wondering dismally exactly how long his own job was going to last... and what he would do after that.

Chapter 15

Alice lay in her bed, listening to the night sounds around her little cottage, wishing she could sleep.

A sheet wasn’t warm enough. A blanket was too warm. The pillow was too flat, but two were too much. No position was comfortable.

And she couldn’t stop thinking of Graham.

It wasn’t just the sex, as mind-blowing as that had been. It was the hurt and longing in his eyes that he couldn’t quite hide, it was the way he’d smiled at her when they first met, slow and full of depth. It was all the questions she wanted to ask him, all the stories she wanted to tell him.

By the time dawn’s light started to creep around the curtains, she was gritty-eyed and grouchy, and tired of trying.

Alice got up and yanked her clothing on, then wandered quietly out of her cottage, up the white gravel paths towards the restaurant. Singing voices, light, and laughter spilled out of the closed doors of the kitchen, but the restaurant was as empty as she had expected for the hour of the day.

She wandered along the buffet for a moment because she felt restlessly hungry, but the food offered was no more satisfying than her bed had been. She took a piece of rolled lunch meat out of a sense of obligation and munched it as she left the restaurant.

At the door, she turned right, up the steep resort, towards the spa and the office. If she was canny, could she surprise Scarlet shifting? Maybe she was some kind of alien and Alice could catch her coming out of a cocoon...

/> She tripped over the corner of a potted plant at the corner of the courtyard; it didn’t fall, but it rattled in the plant stand, and Alice turned and fled, cursing her uselessness as an investigator.

“You’re up early,” a gentle voice greeted her, and she turned to find a beautiful Latina woman holding a yoga mat coming from the spa.

“Jet lag!” Alice said with false brightness. “My internal clock is all out of whack! Traveling would be so much easier without the traveling part, you know.”

“I’m about to go start a sunrise yoga class,” the woman said kindly. “Would you care to join me?”

“I... er...” Alice couldn’t think of a good reason not to. “I don’t have a mat?”

The other woman laughed. “Most guests don’t. We can stop by the activity center and get one there. I’m Lydia.” She offered a slight, gentle hand and Alice tried not to crush it.

“I’m Alice.”

That earned her a second, thoughtful look, and Alice could only imagine what she’d heard.

But Lydia didn’t bring Graham up, only asked how Alice was liking her stay so far, and chatted sweetly about the resort and the weather as they picked out a mat for her to use and walked past the pool to a wide lawn overlooking cliffs past the beach.

Apparently, Alice was the only one to show up for the class, and she was keenly aware of her clumsy, oversized body as Lydia, lithe and impossibly bendy, took her through a challenging series of poses.

They talked casually as they stretched and Lydia mildly corrected her posture.

“About Graham...” she finally said, exactly as Alice had been dreading.

Alice groaned, letting her head fall limp. Lydia had picked a moment when it would be challenging and graceless to storm off; she was leaning on her hands, with her butt in the air.

“Graham is a bighearted man. He doesn’t have a lot to say, but he’s clever and he’s kind. You should give him a chance.”

It was eerily similar to what Scarlet had said. Alice gave up her pose and sat down with a thump. “I’m sure he’s a great guy,” she said, and she was alarmed at the longing she heard in her own voice. She cleared her throat. “But I have a job back home, and he has a job here, and I just don’t see a life where either one of us is willing to throw what we already have away.”

Lydia looked at her thoughtfully. “Do you know a lot of mated couples?”