Tropical Holiday Tails - Zoe Chant Page 0,4

him to do more.

Ours, he insisted. Our mate.

“Your animal...” Julie started to say cautiously.

“A bear,” Lars remembered. He’d told the resort that he was a bear. He wanted to tell Julie the truth, but the words were out of his mouth before he could catch them. And once said, he couldn’t take it back. Besides, a bear was impressive.

And he desperately wanted to impress her.

“A bear,” she said with wide eyes. “Wow. Grizzly? Black?”

Lars had only the faintest idea what the species of bears were called, but grizzly certainly sounded like the sort of tough he was going for. “Grizzly,” he said, hoping it sounded appropriately manly.

“And you?” he asked swiftly. “Your animal?”

“Caribou,” she said.

It took Lars a moment to resolve the sounds into a word. “Caribou.” He should pretend he knew what that was.

“It’s basically an undomesticated reindeer,” Julie supplied, to his relief.

“Ren,” Lars agreed. “They are the Christmas deer in America.”

To his complete delight, she laughed again. “Yeah! Every year I pull the sleigh at the local children’s center on Christmas eve.”

“Julie!”

They both looked around in surprise.

Tom was bearing down on them. “Is this jerk bothering you?”

The smile on Julie’s face froze. “No,” she said faintly.

“Come on, leave my sister alone,” Tom said, as if she hadn’t said anything. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you creeping on her this whole week.”

Relief flooded through Lars. Sister. They were siblings. Wait…creeping? Lars tried to figure out the translation for that, and could only guess from his tone that Tom thought Lars was being impolite. Guilt replaced the relief. Had he been unwittingly rude?

“Let’s go, Julie,” Tom said firmly. “You don’t need to worry about this prick.”

Julie looked between them in consternation, her discomfort at being caught between them clear in the roll of her shoulders and the shy duck of her head. After a moment, she turned away and Tom shot Lars a triumphant look over his shoulder.

“Wait!” Lars cried.

They paused, turning back. Tom’s eyes burned with anger. Julie trembled. Did Lars only imagine that she looked as hungry as he felt?

“A book,” he said desperately, holding his out impulsively. “Didn’t you come looking for a book?”

As if drawn back on a cord, Julie returned to take the book from him. “Thank you,” she said weakly. “I…”

“She’s not interested in conceited hockey stars who can only talk about themselves,” Tom interjected, muscling up beside her. “Learn to take a hint. She can do a lot better than you.”

Lars was overwhelmed by his urge to hit him in the face, but wrestled back his moose’s instinct. Giving her brother a black eye would probably not endear him to the woman who had upended his world.

“Tom,” Julie hissed, turning away. “Let’s just go.”

Lars knew that his best bet was also to leave, before he was tempted to trample Tom into a pulp.

And wasn’t Tom right? Julie probably did deserve better than him. She deserved someone smooth and sophisticated. He was only here because he was lucky, and luck was just a thing, not a quality.

His mind was in such a turmoil that the first thing he did when he returned to his cottage was shift into his moose form and browse all the nearby bushes down to ankle-high.

“How could you be so horrible to him?” Julie demanded, once they were out of earshot.

“How could you not have noticed him?” Tom retorted. “He’s been absolutely leering at you since we got here. He’s clearly some entitled rich sex maniac, and I thought you were too smart to fall for that kind of charm.”

Julie tried to tamp down the thrill of excitement at the idea. Lars had been watching her? She’d been so busy trying not to stare at him! Her caribou wanted to turn on her heel and chase after, but long experience told her that she would not get rid of Tom so easily.

“Tom,” she tried to explain. “There’s…something…here. With us. Lars…Lars is my…”

Mate, her caribou supplied with a caper. Our mate.

“Your what?”

“My mate,” Julie breathed, wrapping her arms around herself. The pajamas that had been so warm earlier felt insufficient against the cool night.

“Your…what?” Tom stopped and Julie walked several steps without him before she realized.

“My mate,” she repeated, smiling despite herself.

“He’s a moron,” Tom said incredulously.

“He’s not,” Julie defended him instantly. “He knows four languages, Tom. English isn’t even his second language.”

“He’s a hockey player, Julie. An expert hockey player.” He mocked the accent perfectly. “You deserve better than some rock-headed, over-paid athlete. Worse, he’s a bear. Predator and prey,