“She likes dancing,” Tex said thoughtfully. “Breck still says he can teach anyone to salsa.”
“Nope.” Wrench stuffed another fancy egg bite in his mouth. “Not happening.”
Jenny looked at her watch. “I’m going to have to get going. The charter is coming in about an hour. Who’s driving the van?”
Travis offered his elbow. “I’ll be conducting your chariot, lady.”
Jenny took his arm. “Thank you kindly, sir.”
“Will you need assistance with your luggage?”
“You may carry my bag, James,” Jenny said with laughter.
“Is this the kind of crap Lydia wants?” Wrench asked Tex desperately.
“Afraid so,” Tex said with a laugh.
Wrench groaned. “I’m so fucked.”
Chapter 16
“He’s trying,” Jenny told Lydia when they met near the resort entrance. “He really is!”
Lydia didn’t have to ask who. She tried to help load the luggage into the van, but Travis waved her off and she stepped back with Jenny to watch him load the waiting luggage into the van. “I suppose everyone has heard about my charming marriage proposal.”
“You aren’t really angry about it, are you?”
Lydia sighed. “No, I’m not mad anymore. It’s just that I wish… I wish it had been from the heart, you know.”
“It was,” Jenny insisted. “It’s just that his poor heart is all shriveled up and starved for affection, so it came out stupid and backwards.”
Lydia had to laugh at the image of Wrench’s heart, prune-like, in that magnificent chest. “It’s not so small as all that, or he wouldn’t care what happened to his sister or his niece,” she pointed out.
“So there’s hope for him!”
“There’s hope,” Lydia sighed. “He’s my mate and of course we’ll make it work.”
“Travis probably felt just as frustrated with me,” Jenny reminded her. “It was days before I could even talk with him. I was so sure I was going to lose what was left of my human self if I let myself love him the way I wanted to.”
Lydia looked at her thoughtfully. The otter shifter certainly looked content now. “How’d you work things out, then?”
“I finally trusted that he’d love me, even with all my flaws and foibles. And he helped me realize that my otter was really a part of me, and it was safe to let go of my fears.”
“I’m not afraid,” Lydia said hesitantly, and then wondered if she really was. She was afraid of disappointment. She was afraid she was being judgmental. She was afraid she had missed her chance at perfect happiness.
She could feel her swan’s cluck of disapproval. We did not miss our chance, her swan said chidingly. This is our chance.
Maybe she was a little afraid, because the idea irrationally made Lydia want to turn and run. She’d spent so many years longing for this, hoping and dreaming, waiting for her mate bond to bloom from the faint direction sense to the beautiful, perfect calling as it had for her brothers and sisters. And now that it was here, and nothing was the way she’d imagined it would be, she was acting like a spoiled little brat.
Had Wrench ever imagined her?
She tried to picture growing up on the streets, protecting one of her younger sisters, never even knowing if she’d ever find her mate, not just wondering when.
Jenny was giving Travis a lingering embrace and kiss.
“I’m going to miss you, Whiskers,” he was teasing her lovingly.
Lydia abruptly remembered her original purpose in finding Jenny. “Your return flight numbers,” she said. “I need to get Ally’s ticket!”