Chapter 31
Alice woke up from her nap thinking of Graham.
This was not unusual. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about Graham: his hands on her skin, his growl, that devastating accent when he spoke, the pain and guilt in his gorgeous blue eyes, those moments when he softened and let his guard down and she wanted to crawl into his lap and kiss him... It felt like she was never not thinking about him.
What was unusual this time was the anxiousness that was coursing through her. Something was wrong.
Her bear was as bothered as she was. He’s not here, she growled. He’s gone.
Alice realized that she’d gotten used to a sense of him in her head, a comfortable feeling of Graham like a familiar scent on a favorite sweater.
Rather than letting herself linger in bed a few moments, touching herself and thinking about his hands, Alice rolled out of bed and pulled her jeans on, swiftly stuffing her feet into her sneakers.
“Have you seen Graham?” she asked the first person she saw.
Tex, at the bar loading a tray full of champagne glasses, grinned at her, but kindly didn’t tease. “Last I saw, he was headed for the kitchen with a crate of tomatoes,” he offered.
“Gotcha.”
Alice took the stairs to the restaurant deck two at a time, the worry she’d woken to blooming in her chest.
The restaurant was in celebration mode; everyone was cheering and toasting and laughing.
At first, Alice thought it was just Mary and Neal’s upcoming wedding, but she realized that it was far more widespread than that; the entire restaurant deck was centering their attention on a cluster of tables in the middle, where Magnolia and Chef were sitting together with a stranger in a fine quality suit. Dinner seemed to be an afterthought to drinking and talking, and most of the staff were mingling with the guests and drinking rather than serving them.
It looked like fun, and Alice was usually up for a foot-loose, impromptu party... but Graham was still missing from her head.
She lifted her chin at Mary, across the room, and turned away.
Graham wasn’t here. Even if this had been his kind of gathering, which Alice doubted, she knew without hesitation that he was nowhere near.
She walked behind the restaurant, past the bizarrely-draped hotel; she had been warned about the fumigation deception to protect the shifters’ secrets and knew about the accidental human tourists who were being put up on the beach. Travis had even fabricated something foul-smelling to give the ploy extra depth, and Alice covered her nose uselessly as she passed it.
The Den was empty, quiet and dark on the cliffs; no one answered her knock, and when she went in anyway, Graham’s room gave the same answer.
If she thought he was in there, she might have opened the door and gone in without invitation. But her bear assured he wasn’t so Alice left The Den feeling more mystified and worried.
Her feet took her next to the upper gardens, and Graham’s close-guarded greenhouse.
She stood at the entrance of the garden a long moment, more hesitant to violate this space than she had The Den. This was Graham’s place, his sacred space.
Alice breathed deeply, inhaling the scent of green things, fruit, and freshly-turned dirt. It was evening, and somewhere nearby a frog was trying to tempt a mate as the chorus of night insects began to swell.
Graham was not here, either.
&nb
sp; She closed the garden door solemnly and stood for a moment.
The view from here was breathtaking. Alice could see down over the entire resort: The Den, the cliffs, the tented hotel, the festive restaurant, the cottages. The beach was a silver crescent in the falling twilight, and the waves wrinkled and flung themselves at the shore.
Alice squinted. There was movement at the dock, and it took her a moment to realize that two figures were walking towards the resort’s boat. No, one figure was walking, half-dragging the other. Someone had imbibed a little too much at Tex’s bar, Alice thought, but after watching them for only a moment she knew she was wrong: the second figure was clearly unconscious.
Graham, she thought in panic as the first man dumped him unceremoniously into the back of the boat.
If he was unconscious, did that explain why she couldn’t feel him in her head? She still knew he was there when he was sleeping.
Alice was already moving, running down the white gravel paths as fast as she could manage.