“About time,” Tony said gruffly, recognizing his own lack of graciousness. He opened the file folder to flip briefly through a stack of xeroxed forms, one for each of the missing shifters. He suspiciously wondered if Scarlet had purposefully delayed long enough to falsify the information she was giving him; there was something secretive about the woman that he couldn't quite put his finger on.
“You're welcome,” Scarlet said coldly, and she turned on her heel and stalked away.
Tony shut the door behind her a little harder than he meant to, and crossed the room to the desk. He tapped a finger on the file folder, then looked through the open door to the bedroom with a furrow in his brow.
It bothered him that Amber was gone. It was deeply unsettling that she had been able to leave without waking him, and it gave him pangs of worry that she had wanted to.
Maybe she had just gotten hungry, and hadn't wanted to wake him? It was mid-morning, maybe she was generally an early riser. Tony tried to find some peace in the idea, and failed to.
As much as he wanted to immediately go find her, he decided instead to get dressed, and get back to the job at hand.
He had work to do.
Chapter Thirteen
The sunrise, peeking in through the gaps in the curtains, had pried Amber's eyes open, and she crept out of Tony's cottage using all the cat-silent skills she'd honed as a teenager. Tony barely stirred as she dressed herself, and she carefully latched the front door behind her, smiling to remember how it had gaped open while they made enthusiastic love their first night.
She had certainly taken her intention to have fun seriously. Her smile felt brittle, as she remembered that her time here would end altogether too soon, and she'd be saying goodbye to the big, charming man who had captured her heart.
The walk to her cottage felt impossibly steep and lonely.
She put on a clean pair of shorts and a plain babydoll t-shirt that flattered her curves but wasn't as revealing as the shirt of the previous night, and finished the look with a pair of low wedge sandals. She paused to look at her reflection, and grimaced at herself. Her long dark hair and slightly dusky skin could have been anything–Hispanic, perhaps, or Middle Eastern. Someone had once told her she looked Native American, and another had suggested east Indian. Her brown eyes were strangely light, and her cheekbones not quite right for any specific nationality. Her diminutive height suggested Asian, but the shape of her eyes did not.
Maybe South American, like her animal form? Amber pushed the idea away. She certainly wasn't going to figure out her origins here, as she had half-hoped she might. She didn't look like any of the Costa Ricans she had met, and no one had ever heard of an Andean mountain cat shifter.
Her stomach reminded her that dinner had been very early the previous night, before a great deal of activity.
A sign at the dining hall door reminded visitors that clothing was required for establishments serving hot food, and there was a rack of bathrobes, in case someone was caught by surprise.
“Oh, you must be new! Welcome, Honey! We are so happy to have you here! I'm Breck, and I'm here to make sure you have a lovely breakfast.”
The server who greeted her as she walked in was as gregarious as the gardener had been chilly, but was every bit as gorgeous, leaving Amber to wonder if one of Scarlet's employment requirements was time spent modeling for GQ. He was tall and well-muscled, with a graceful slink as he walked her to a table on the porch. “Chef has something special on deck for breakfast this morning,” Breck promised suggestively, winking at Amber as he pulled out the chair for her, and then unexpectedly spread a napkin in her lap.
“Chef,” it turned out, was a distinguished older man who cared enough about his clientele to come out and check with her halfway through the exquisite meal.
“I've never had souffle before,” Amber confessed to him. “And until today, I would have not guessed that I like artichokes.”
Chef looked ridiculously pleased. “The secret is fresh eggs and good cream,” he said proudly. “The bacon crumbles don't hurt anything,” he added conspiratorially.
A
mber indulged in a second plate, with a side of fresh fruit pieces and another cup of strong, dark coffee.
Her table gave her a wonderful view of the dining area, and she people-watched shamelessly, enjoying the way that Breck doted on his customers, and how friendly and cheerful the other guests were.
One woman in particular Amber had to keep herself from staring at–she had clearly been there some time and knew all of the staff by name. She held herself like a queen, confident and assured as she directed her breakfast. She was gorgeous, with loose, waist-long, brunette hair and flawless makeup, and she was also the largest woman that Amber had ever seen. She honestly wasn't sure how the woman's chair held her up, and half-expected it to crumple beneath her at one dramatic gesture of her hand.
“That's Magnolia,” Breck told her, refilling her coffee. “Isn't she just a dish? She's one of our long-term residents and we all just adore her.”
Shamed to be caught staring, Amber quickly finished off her plate and drank the last of her coffee.
She had a moment of hesitation as she left the dining hall–an odd expectation that she ought to be somewhere, doing something, and she wasn't sure what that was.
“You're on vacation,” she reminded herself. Most of her wanted to scamper straight back to Tony's cottage and see if he was as much fun to wake up as he'd been to go to sleep with. But she didn't want to appear too desperate or clingy. Just a vacation fling, she told herself firmly. She turned her sandaled feet past the pool towards the beach.
The winding stone paths led her to one edge of a long crescent beach, bright sand edged with emerald green shrubbery on one side and sapphire blue ocean on the other. She passed a cottage being renovated by two shirtless men who lent support to her theory about Scarlet's employment practices. She smirked to compare them in her mind to Tony's gorgeous physique, then scolded herself for thinking about him again.
The beach had a collection of comfortable chairs, and a small open structure that held a tiny bar (with no bartender in sight), piles of fluffy towels, and an array of sunscreen bottles. There were even a few pairs of sunglasses in miscellaneous sizes, in plastic bags to imply sterility. There were sturdy umbrellas, spaced along the beach. At the far end of the beach was a dock, where a single sailboat was moored.