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“Conall says Gizelle’s been in her animal form for nearly the whole day, the poor dear,” Laura said, sidling up beside Graham Long at the open door of the refrigerator. The wolf shifter wasn’t talking to him, but to her identical twin sister Jenny, the otter shifter sitting at the kitchen bar.
“She’s a little shaken by the idea of Neal coming back to Shifting Sands,” Jenny explained. “He’s the one who coaxed her back to human form, and she was pretty broken up when he left with Mary.”
“Was she in love with him?” Laura asked, slipping under Graham’s arm to take a plate of leftover Alaska salmon filet and a bottle of orange juice.
“Nothing like that,” Tex, Laura’s bear shifter mate, was quick to assure her. “But he was the first one she really trusted. I think she’s worried that Neal won’t like who she is now. She’s changed so much since they last saw each other.”
Laura, having poured them all glasses of orange juice, ducked back under Graham’s arm to return the bottle.
Graham was still standing in front of the open fridge, eyeing the contents without interest. Nothing looked appealing, but he still felt oddly hungry, and his lion was pacing restlessly in his head. Finally, he snagged two cold breakfast sausages and a croissant and took a cluster of apple bananas from the fruit bowl.
The others nodded at him as Graham took the stool at the end of the bar where Laura had left him a glass of cold juice, and he nodded back. That was as much conversation as they generally expected from him.
“I’m sure Gizelle will be fine once he’s here and they’ve had a chance to reconnect,” Tex said. “I’m more worried about how Conall is going to react to Neal.”
Conall, Gizelle’s mate, was a deaf Irish elk shifter. Losing his hearing had been devastating to his soaring music career, and he had been unfriendly and prickly when he first arrived at Shifting Sands.
Gizelle’s love had mellowed him considerably, and her touch allowed him to hear, but he was still cool and grim around strangers, and he was intensely protective of his mate.
Maned red wolf shifter Neal, once a prisoner in the same shifter zoo that Gizelle had grown up in, had been a hardened Marine before his capture. He had been key in helping Gizelle find her way back to her human form when they were freed, but he was not overly friendly or easy to get to know.
Now, after more than a year, he was returning to wed his mate, Mary, and would see the young woman that Gizelle had blossomed into for the first time.
“Even if Conall and Neal can’t stand each other, this wedding should still go much more smoothly than our last one,” Laura laughed. They were still picking up the pieces of the last wedding that Shifting Sands had hosted, one that had ended in a bloody duel, a happily jilted groom, and the establishment of a small shifter retirement home on the island.
“Well, Neal probably won’t sue the resort, at least,” Tex agreed. “And Mary isn’t going to leave him at the altar to marry a waiter like Darla did. Probably.”
They all laughed, except Graham, who caught his face before it could smile.
Jenny, who worked as Scarlet’s lawyer, grimaced as the laughter faded.
Her mate Travis, the resort handyman, caught her expression and asked, “Any word from Darla’s dreadful mother on that lawsuit she threatened?”
“Not yet,” Jenny said. “But we’re expecting the worst.”
“Horray,” Laura said humorlessly.
Jenny frowned. “What I really don’t understand is why Scarlet isn’t trying harder to find Aaric Lyons’ heir. My firm found some really promising leads, but she’s actually told me to stop pursuing them.”
Graham hunched over his food, feeling his ears heat.
Benedict Beehag, the heir to the shifter zoo that Gizelle and Neal had been trapped in, owned the entire island, and had been trying to sell it out from underneath Scarlet and dissolve their contract since he had inherited. The unfortunate part was that he seemed to be going out of his way to market it to the very worst kind of underworld characters, and he had even tried to hire away Scarlet’s most trusted staff in a hostile takeover.
Scarlet, with the help of Jenny, had been able to thwart his efforts at every turn, but Beehag had proved unpleasant as a landlord, and had not given up trying to sell the property, though each prospective buyer seemed more unsavory than the last.
Jenny had recently discovered an obscure clause in the lengthy contract that required Beehag to give the heir of the original owner, Rupert Beehag’s partner Aaric Lyons, first right of refusal on any subsequent sales of the property. Everyone had assumed the line had died out, but Jenny uncovered records for a grandson, Grant Lyons, who had moved to America and presumably changed his name.
“Money?” Laura suggested. “Even if Darla’s mother doesn’t sue, there’s no way she’s paying off the remainder of her bill for that wedding, and Scarlet went all out on the expenses for it. The resort can’t be doing well, financially. Maybe she figures she doesn’t have the funds to buy the resort, so why bother? Maybe she doesn’t want to risk the funds on hiring detectives?”
Jenny shook her head. “This would be calling in favors from people I’ve worked for; it wouldn’t even cost her. And there’s a possibility—even if it’s slim—that when we find him, we’ll find that Lyons’ got the money for the sale. He can’t be a more unappealing landlord than our current one.”
“Do you have any idea why she’s balking?” Tex asked Travis. “You’ve been here longer than anyone but Graham.”
Travis shook his head.
Graham had been studiously peeling his apple bananas, keeping his head down and hoping he didn’t look guilty, and he was startled into looking up at the sound of his name.
His fake name.
“Do you have any ideas?” Laura had been looking his way, and Graham scowled to cover his confusion.
He only grunted and shrugged one shoulder in answer, and was relieved when no one seemed to expect anything else. They turned the conversation to happier plans for the upcoming wedding.
He finished his breakfast as quickly as he could, cursing the tiny, challenging peels of the miniature bananas and his own instinct to crush them rather than disrobe them.
Then he escaped, dumping his peels in the trash and leaving his plate in the sink.
He scowled to himself as he stalked to the kitchen to get Chef’s request for produce from the garden.
He’d gotten used to being Graham. He felt like Graham.
Graham was hard working and quiet. He was dependable and steady. He was solid.
Graham was someone who had friends, however reluctantly. Friends who trusted him, and included him in their jokes, and asked him for favors. Friends he actually wanted to do favors for.
Graham was a good guy.
But he wasn’t really Graham.
And Grant Lyons wasn’t any of those things.