“We’ve got someone asking about a deep tissue massage, any chance you’re free?” Her look at Wrench was curious and puzzled, and Wrench scowled back at her.
“I’ll be right there,” Lydia said.
Laura-or-Jenny scampered away, and Lydia turned back to Wrench. “How about after dinner?” she suggested.
“Coffee?” Wrench repeated helplessly.
“Maybe something not caffeinated,” Lydia suggested. “We could meet at the bar.”
He knew he was making her do all of the heavy lifting here, but Wrench was desperately out of his depth and adrift. He couldn’t stop imagining what she must taste like, what her skin would feel like, what she’d sound like when he… “Yes,” he choked. “Bar. After dinner. Not caffeinated.”
She reached out like she might touch him, and Wrench couldn’t quite keep himself from flinching away.
Her look was puzzled, and a little hurt, Wrench thought, but she gave him a little smile before turning away.
It wasn’t until after she had glided away that he realized she was going to want to talk to him at the bar that night.
Chapter 6
Lydia’s heart was pounding in her chest as she left the tiny courtyard behind the spa.
Her mate.
She’d met her mate.
And he was nothing like she’d expected.
She’d followed the tug of her mate sense with nervous excitement, eager to meet the man she would spend the rest of her life with… and been surprised to find a great wall of a man who could only be Wrench.
He was far more handsome than she’d expected when Laura had described him; the tattoos and scars had been part of a much greater package, and not nearly as jarring as she’d expected. The ill-fitting staff polo shirt could not mask the fact that he was built like a tank, every muscle rippling under his adorned skin.
He undeniably raised all the feelings of desire and lust that she had anticipated, but Lydia had never thought it would come in such a confusing package. He barely had a dozen words to string together, though to be fair, if he was feeling as gobsmacked by the meeting as Lydia was, it wasn’t really a wonder that conversation was a distant secondary concern in his head.
Maybe meeting for drinks was an error. Many confusions could be sorted with a simple roll in the hay, and as much as Lydia had secretly hoped for a little courtship, a slow burn, even a friendship first… maybe that wasn’t going to work.
She banished her thoughts as she entered the massage room, a private little alcove with a few high windows to let a cooling breeze in.
“Good afternoon!” she greeted the client, the slight little woman with a mane of white hair from the plane who was already undressed and face down on the table. “Dot, right? You requested a deep tissue massage?”
She always confirmed, never trusting the schedule or secondhand requests when it came to client preference.
“Really get in there,” the woman said firmly with no hint of recognition. “Don’t hold back because you think I’m old. It was a long flight!”
“Yes, senora,” Lydia agreed with a laugh. She could not help adding, “I have worked a long while at a resort for only shifters. I know that appearances can often be deceiving.”
She considered her own words for the length of the massage, wondering how it applied to her own situation.
Chapter 7
Wrench wasn’t used to being nervous.
He was the decisive sort. He got job offers and he accepted them, or he didn’t, if the money wasn’t worth the risk or regret. He didn’t spend a lot of time tying himself up in knots over maybes or might-have-beens, and he sure as spit didn’t waste his energy worrying about things before they happened.
But there was no contingency plan in place for Lydia, or her impossible brown eyes, or the way she moved.
The idea of facing her over a table, of ‘getting to know her,’ or worse, letting her know him, was more nerve-wracking than entering a bar already knowing that it was going to explode into a gunfight.
He pulverized a broken roof tile before he recognized that he was in no state to try to continue the mosaic. It had been enough pressure before, but knowing whose wall he was working on now made it seem like an impossible task.