Tropical Holiday Tails - Zoe Chant Page 0,8

he put his arms around her anyway. “Wear them to the ball, princess,” he told her.

“You’re coming with me,” Julie said, leaving no room for refusal. “I won’t go unless you do.”

“Dammit,” Tom said, but it was warmly.

Lars wondered why he bothered coming to the dance, hating the music, hating the food. He should just go back to his cottage, or go hit the gym and see if he could work off some of his frustration with the free weights. Maybe he should risk the wrath of the gardener again and go browse in his animal form somewhere no one could see him and realize that he wasn’t any of the things he claimed to be.

Then Julie arrived, and it seemed like there was no other place to possibly be.

She paused in the doorway at the other end of the hall. There was a modest crowd of people at the formal dance—not enough that the hall felt crowded, but just enough that he had to move to get a good view of her, and he wondered helplessly as he did so if that made him the creeper her brother had accused him of being.

She was wearing what he recognized was a “little black dress,” a garment that managed to mix sexy and sweet in perfect harmony, showing off tantalizing cleavage and shapely legs. There were three strands of dark pearls glimmering at her neck, and her hair was up in a swirl, with little ringlets at her neck. There was something unfamiliar about her, and it took Lars a moment to recognize that she wasn’t wearing glasses.

She was, however, carrying a book, and something lifted in Lars’s heart when he recognized that it was the thick paperback that he’d given her several nights before.

Then he caught sight of her brother skulking behind her, and he remembered Tom’s emphatic declaration that Julie wanted nothing to do with him and realized he was still staring.

While he was casting around the room for anything else to look at, the cowboy bartender, Tex, kissed the woman serving drinks and went to intercept the siblings.

As Lars jealously watched, Tex tipped his hat to both of them, then spoke a moment to Tom, who looked surprised and rather pleased as he shrugged. Julie handed her book to Tom, then Tex was giving his hand to Julie and leading her out onto the dance floor.

Lars had to wrestle down his instinct to fly out onto the floor after them and pull her away for himself. Tex’s hand was at her waist like he owned her, and he was saying something that made her blush shyly and laugh as he led her into the steps of a dance.

He looked back to find that Tom was scowling at him across the floor, and he scowled automatically back as he thought back through Tex asking Julie to dance. First, he had asked Tom for permission.

Had Lars bypassed some simple courtesy?

Sudden resolve set his feet into motion, and he closed the distance to Tom in a few determined strides.

Tom bristled at Lars’s approach, and greeted him with a glare that did nothing to help Lars.

“I am not good with your language,” Lars said, point-blank. “I am not good at knowing what to say, or what to do, and I probably have been creeping, but I had no meaning to, and I need you to tell me how to make it right because I am for her in a way I have never imagined and I cannot be happy without her.”

Tom stared at him, his glare lost to astonishment, and said nothing.

After a moment of silence, Lars fidgeted. “I know I have not been entirely honest,” he said desperately. “But I will be, I promise.”

Tom’s eyes narrowed with new suspicion. “What else haven’t you been honest about?” he demanded. “Are you even a hockey player?”

“Yes,” Lars assured him. “Everyone says I am very good. I just signed a big contract, but I am very afraid that I will not be good enough to deserve it.” If he was going to come clean, he was going to come clean about everything, and he was going to do it with his head high. This man was Julie’s brother, and if he wanted to win Julie, he was going to get through him first.

“I need a cigarette,” Tom said earnestly.

“I don’t have one,” Lars said regretfully. It would have been a good gesture to politely offer Tom something he desired, he thought.

Tom put the book