Alice was done pretending. “What do you want?” she asked outright, sitting forward and planting her feet.
The stranger smiled slowly. “I have a matter of interest at the resort, a problem that has recently escalated, and one that has proved unexpectedly challenging.”
Alice immediately distrusted his tone. “What kind of interest?” she demanded. “And what does this have to do with me?”
“I have an offer for you,” the man said smoothly, not answering any of her questions. “One that will more than cover your time and any inconvenience. One that will more than cover the medical costs your brother needs.”
Alice felt her heart drop out of her chest. “What do you know about that?” she asked fiercely, not even trying to pretend ignorance.
“I know that a million dollars will go a long way towards his care and comfort. With plenty left over to buy your parents a lovely retirement home.”
Alice forced herself to act like she wasn’t intimidated, though her stomach and her heart seemed to be having a wrestling match in her belly. “Oh, a million dollars,” she said mockingly. “Is that all?”
“Very well,” the shifter across the desk said, his mouth curving up in a smile that indicated he knew she was bluffing. “Fifty million. Money is no object to me.”
Alice had always thought that breaking into a sweat from anything bu
t exertion was just literary nonsense, but she did now. “Fifty million?” she murmured, in a very un-Alice way. “What exactly do you want me to do?”
He laughed, and it was a surprisingly warm laugh. “Don’t look so shocked, Alice. I’m not going to have you murder anyone.”
That had been the only thing Alice could imagine for that kind of money, but she somehow didn’t feel relieved. “What is it you want me to do?” she repeated.
“The owner of the resort is a woman named Scarlet Stanson.”
You don’t have to murder her, Alice had to remind herself.
The man slid a business card across the desk. “All you have to do is find out what kind of shifter she is.”
Chapter 2
“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.”