Tropical Holiday Tails - Zoe Chant Page 0,1
not look up at him, utterly engrossed in her open book.
“A half an hour!” the blonde beyond her groused. “That’s ridiculous. There’s nothing here to do.” She waved her phone around in the air. “I can’t even get a phone signal!”
Lars checked his own phone and confirmed. “Nor can I.”
The blonde gave him a look over her sunglasses. “Swedish?” she asked without seeming particularly interested.
“Soon to be American,” Lars said firmly, realizing that he had answered her in the wrong language the first time. “I have…” his English failed him. “I am hockey player,” he tried to explain. He was keenly aware of the young woman between them, and wondered if she was hearing him at all. It made him irrationally nervous to think that she might be, and it occurred to him that it sounded like he was a hockey player for fun.
Professional, he wanted to add, but he could not remember the English word for it. The Russian word, and the German, but English was suddenly a cipher. “I play it for team,” he tried to explain. “Expert.”
The blonde failed to look at all impressed.
The brunette turned another page in her book.
Julie stared at her book, and occasionally remembered to turn a page, even though she couldn’t make sense of the words on them.
The blond man with the delicious accent was sitting right next to her, so close that she could feel the heat of him, even with the sultry, humid warmth of the jungle all around.
He smelled like new clothing, and below that, a heady mix of sweat and musk.
In her head, her caribou was all attention, absolutely riveted on the man sitting next to them.
He’s a hockey player, Julie tried to tell her dismissively, but her caribou found the promise of athleticism exciting. He’s not our type, Julie insisted, continuing to pretend she wasn’t a basket case of irrational nerves.
She also didn’t want to admit that it was far more likely that she wasn’t his type.
She wanted to look up at him, desperately wanted to, but she didn’t want to watch his gaze slide right over her. Already, he was talking over her head to the very well-to-do blonde on her other side. Clearly, he was interested in her, not Julie.
And who could blame him? Shifters were supposed to be fit and perfect, and here she was, with her poor eyesight and her extra curves and her mousy in-between hair. In the tropical humidity, it was nothing less than frizzy. She wondered enviously how much product the blonde had used to keep her locks so tamed and lovely.
Probably none, Julie realized sourly. She was probably naturally that perfect.
She remembered to turn another page.
The hockey player, who had finally introduced himself to no one in particular as Lars, was continuing to babble in his broken English, and Julie didn’t want to admit that she was hanging on every word.
Lars seemed like the most beautiful name she had ever heard.
When the resort van returned, rattling down the winding road to the tiny airstrip, Julie sighed in regret.
This was probably as close as she was going to get to an actual conversation with Lars. She tucked her book into her luggage and lifted her head to meet Tom’s eyes.
He took a long drag of his cigarette and held her gaze a thoughtful moment before dropping his butt to stub it out beneath his heel.
The jolting ride to the resort was more of the same kind of torture that the plane ride had been. Lars could see the back of the young woman’s head and little else, as she bent over a book that he couldn’t imagine she was able to focus on between the jaw-rattling potholes.
She was out of the van first, and Lars fidgeted to have to wait until the few people in front of him slowly — soooo slowly — unloaded from the vehicle.
The entrance to the resort should have been enchanting, but the object of all of his attention was already disappearing into the shadowed courtyard beyond, and Lars scrambled to follow.
He was right about her traveling with the surly smoking man — they were standing together at the check-in desk, and he had to remind himself not to crowd too close behind them to be obvious about eavesdropping.
“Welcome to Shifting Sands.” The woman behind the desk had improbable red hair, neatly pulled back in a fancy updo. “Do you have your confirmation number?”
Cigarette man looked expectantly at the bookworm, who dug into her luggage for