Tropical Holiday Tails - Zoe Chant Page 0,29
a level of unprofessional beyond even that, which left…no one. She was on an island she couldn’t leave with people who were off limits and if she wanted—if she desperately craved—anything more, she was at least practiced at ignoring her own desires.
She glanced at the kitten in her lap. She wasn’t even going to be able to pleasure herself without disturbing her newest unpaying guests.
She smiled despite herself. It wasn’t worth doing that.
She reached carefully to put Gizelle’s paperwork back on the desk without jostling the kitten on her shoulder, then reached up to scratch her gently, just enough to start her purring faintly near her ear.
Then she settled back in her chair more comfortably and closed her eyes.
She would give all the information to Gizelle, but mention the mental hospital privately to only Conall, without endorsement. Shifting Sands was the best place for the shy gazelle shifter, even if Scarlet was no longer who she needed most.
And if Scarlet had unanswered hungers of her own, it was nothing she hadn’t already spent decades avoiding.
Such desires were simply part of who she was…part of what she was.
She drifted to sleep with a muted purr near her ear, and dreamed of cooling rains and scorching sun and somedays.
All in the Timing
I introduced Liam in Tropical Leopard’s Longing as a jilted groom and promptly knew I would have to write him his own happy ending. A longing for connection is not always sexual, and doesn’t always have to follow the usual established conventions. Asexual (ace) doesn’t have to mean alone…
This story takes place several months after the end of the series and contains very minor spoilers for the finale. It stands alone, but I do recommend reading the Shifting Sands Resort series in entirety first if you plan to.
Caroline knew she had terrible timing, but this was ridiculous.
She was at the job interview of her life, a chance to be exactly the kind of small town doctor she’d always dreamed of being. They even already knew she was a shifter, so there were no awkward secrets to keep.
What’s more, it was in paradise.
The interview was supposed to be in New York City, and that was where she’d arrived, gulping over the cost of the taxi from the airport. But after the gleaming elevator took her to a lush penthouse office, the lawyer who met her there witnessed her non-disclosure contract and ripped a doorway into thin air with a few spoken words and a brief gesture.
“Regular means of travel are inconvenient to our schedule and of considerable unwarranted cost,” the lawyer told her casually, as if he had not just revealed that he was a wizard and upended Caroline’s entire life view. “Scarlet cannot conduct interviews here, so we shall go there.”
There, it turned out, was a tropical island off the coast of Costa Rica, a place that smelled intoxicatingly of spices and green growing things, warm and humid after the biting wind and slushy snow of New York City in December. There was a tiny town being built on a jeweled bay, buildings of stone and warm wood being actively constructed as the lawyer led Caroline down a winding street to a small, quaint building.
It was obvious that the community was just being started—there were more blank spaces along the streets than buildings, and it was clear that many of the buildings were little more than basic shells. There were makeshift kitchens out back of some of the houses, and trenches where plumbing hadn’t been laid yet.
She tried not to stare at the massive green dragon who was lowering great ceiling beams onto walls with ease while a man gave him directions and scrambled along the walls to tack down the huge timbers.
The lawyer left her at the doorway of one of the only finished-looking little buildings. “I’ll return in an hour and a half to take you back,” he said. He didn’t offer her luck, and Caroline wondered—not for the first time—how many applicants had made it to this stage of consideration. She was determined to nail this interview, to give it everything she had, to convince them of her competency. It wasn’t just that she needed this job, she needed the life it could give her son.
She stared at the Christmas garland, which seemed glaringly out of place in the heat and humidity. It could be the greatest Christmas present in the world, to get them out of their dank, poorly insulated apartment. When the advertisement had said ‘must