Tropical Holiday Tails - Zoe Chant Page 0,2

a worn notebook. “Yes, sorry, here you go.”

The woman smiled. It was a cool, practiced smile. Lars recognized it as the one his press agent had been training him to adopt. “No problem. Ah! Julie and Tom Johnson. Congratulations on winning the sweepstake!”

Julie. Her name was Julie.

It was lyrical and utterly perfect for her. He turned it over in his mouth, mouthing it without sound as the woman checking them in began going over maps and procedures.

Lars frowned at the back of Tom’s head. Where did he fit in this picture? He had the same last name. Was he a husband? An estranged husband, he thought, from the chilly distance between them. Maybe this trip was a last attempt at rekindling their romance.

The idea made him want to check the man into the desk.

He was alarmed at his own vehemence and he looked with longing at the tiny bit of Julie’s face that he could see. What had she done to him? Who was she? Why was he so drawn to her?

Then they were walking away with their luggage and their maps, and Lars stared at them for some time before he realized that the red-haired woman was waiting for him to step forward.

“Your confirmation number?” she asked firmly. Lars recognized that she had already asked that, while he was staring after Julie.

He rattled it off for her, then heard himself speaking Swedish and started to repeat it in English.

The woman waved him off halfway through. “I’ve got it, thank you,” she said in badly accented Swedish.

Lars wasn’t quite able to keep from wincing, though he knew that his own English had been twice as terrible today.

“I apologize,” she said ruefully. “I only had a book to learn from, I hadn’t heard the language spoken.”

“No, I apologize,” Lars said swiftly. “It was a good try and I appreciate the effort.”

He could remember ‘appreciate,’ but ‘professional’ still eluded him.

“You failed to fill out the field for the type of shifter you are,” the woman said politely, and waited.

Lars froze. Älg, he wanted to say, but no, it was elk in English. And an American elk was something altogether different than the European elk. What did they call it? A moose.

Then he thought about Julie, and was suddenly frozen with indecision. Girls didn’t like prey animals. They wanted predators. Big, fierce predators.

“Björn,” he said impulsively. “Bear. I’m a bear.”

His moose gave a derisive snort, and would have facepalmed if it had possessed the correct appendages.

Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was the rich food. Maybe it was the droning insects at night.

Julie couldn’t sleep.

She couldn’t even read.

She turned off the light after an hour or more of reading the same chapter. It was light fantasy fiction. It should be easy to shut off her brain and escape to the book world, but every time she turned a page, she imagined his voice. It was so rich and wonderful to listen to, even though he appeared to be a self-centered braggart who always seemed to be explaining to someone else that he was an expert hockey player.

Not just a hockey player. An expert hockey player.

The way he trailed off sometimes, Julie wondered if he wasn’t a little slow-headed.

And she still couldn’t get his voice out of her head, or stop thinking about him.

Every so often, she caught a glimpse of him, of his broad shoulders or his shock of blond hair, and she had to flee, or pretend to find something engrossing in a book, because otherwise, she knew she was going to embarrass herself staring.

After a few moments tossing in the dark, listening to Tom’s even breathing from across the room, Julie got out of her bed and crept out of the hotel room in her pajamas.

The resort at night was enchanting. There were Christmas lights up all around, even though Christmas was still several weeks off.

Julie frowned to see them. She would be gone the week before Christmas, back to her ordinary life, her grinding, soul-killing retail job. This was just a temporary escape, a once in a lifetime lucky win. It was lovely living like the other half, but she knew her own dull life was waiting for her return.

There was a book exchange shelf in the back of the bar; maybe a new book would soothe her restless mind.

Like so many public rooms in the resort, there was no distinction from inside space and outside space at the bar deck; the weather here was so beautiful and mild