Felicity waited for a reply—anyreply—and tried to squash her impulse to hurry him along or fill up the silence he left with her usual babble. Why was he so sad? How could she cheer him up? Had she done something wrong?
“I can give you some time,” she said hesitantly, because surely throwing herself down in the chair opposite and begging him to tell her everything so she could make it better was not appropriate.
“I’ll take the chicken,” he said morosely.
“An excellent choice!” Felicity said. “I’ll get that started for you.”
“Who isthat?” she asked Breck as she brought the order in and gave it to Chef. No one here wrote anything down. It had made her very nervous her first few days, but she swiftly figured out the cadence of how information was shared. Breck had an amazing memory and if she told him the orders for all of her tables, he could rattle them back to her with personal details about each person who was sitting at them. Her own memory had improved drastically, and she liked the personal touch of memorizing an order rather than writing it down. It helped to have a limited menu, but it was also challenging having a new one for every meal.
“Pretty, isn’t he?” Breck agreed, making a show of fanning himself.
Felicity had already figured out that Breck wasn’t at all serious about his flirtation or flattery. He would dance seductively around the kitchen with anyone who was willing, make wildly funny innuendo about everything, and tell dubious stories about his sexual exploits with both genders, but there was a strawberry-blonde baker who had all of his heart. They were like Morticia and Gomez from the Addams family, absolutely devoted to each other, and he had eyes for no one else when she was near.
“He’sgorgeous,” Felicity agreed. “But a little weird. He seems really sad.” She didn’t mention his first smile. It had been so fleeting and faded so fast that she’d almost convinced herself she had imagined it.
Breck sobered. “You got that, too?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Felicity asked, turning to gaze out at the subject of their conversation. He didn’t look particularly miserable from here, only a little cold and distant. He was looking out over the bar, and the pool, and the beach beyond, like he was trying to find see somewhere just out of sight. For one brief moment, he had seemed to light up from within as he met her eyes. Had she said the wrong thing? Sometimes words just tumbled out of her mouth like thoughts and they weren’t as kind as she wanted them to be.
She yearned to go comfort him, but another table was trying to flag her attention, so she scampered to refill their water and replace a dwindling bowl of bread, making cheerful conversation and admiring their sunhats.
After that, she had to take another order, make a shrimp cocktail, and then serve two dinners, slipping easily under Theodora’s upraised arm at one point with a giggle. When the mysterious pale man’s plate was ready…his table was empty.
Felicity stood with his meal in her hands for a while, looking around in confusion in case he’d changed tables. He was no longer in the restaurant, and she had to sadly return the chicken to Chef, who abhorred waste and was heartbroken if people didn’t love his food.
CHAPTER6
Robert lay, staring up at the lazy ceiling fan. There was no air conditioning here, but the cottages were well designed and shaded by perfectly placed trees, so they never got too hot.
Robert admired the design.
He’d been a landscape architect in his previous incarnation as Robert, but his license had lapsed and getting it back would have required retaking tests. It seemed simpler to take a job as a drafter that didn’t require licensure. His old position had been long since filled and he still didn’t know what happened to the things that had been left in his office: a favorite stapler, a stainless steel fidget toy, his photos, the mousepad with the image of a biting pear.
Bob New Hartought to be funny,he thought furiously.
I don’t get it,his buck said.
Robert didn’t have the energy to explain it.
It ought to be hysterical, but sometimes Robert felt like he would never laugh again, and maybe it was for the best that the beautiful, laughing ray of sunlight in the restaurant wasn’t his mate.
Mate?his stag said sadly.Ourhome?His voice was faint and Robert didn’t try to reassure him.
She didn’t know him, and that wasn’t how mates were supposed to work.
That must just be another part of him that was broken, frozen and wrong, and Robert got up, frustrated with himself. He wasn’t going back down those dark paths of self pity, and he wasn’t going to lie here wishing he had someone to blame. He had come here to prove that he’d purged his demons, or to put them to rest at last, and he wasn’t going to give up on that now, even if this cursed island seemed hellbent on taunting him with all the things he’d never have.
It was dark out, and Robert only paused a moment before shucking off all of his clothing. It would take several hours to walk across the island, whether he crashed through the jungle or took the road down to the airport and back up where Beehag’s zoo had been. He assumed that the road was still there, even if its quality was questionable. There were still scars in the steep hillsides where slides had been, great swaths of broken jungle. This end of the island had clearly been cleaned up, and there were no traces of damage at the resort itself, but Robert also didn’t recognize a single structure or landmark. Even the beach was a different shape. Whatever mysterious natural disaster had happened, it had leveled the resort.
His deer could cover the distance in a fraction of the time, even picking through dense underbrush, so he shifted, and let his vision swim and his hearing sharpen.
This was the first time back on the island that he’d been in this form, and Robert thought that ought to mean something. But that meaning was like humor, just beyond his grasp. He put his nose in the air to set his path and bounded fleetly down the gravel trail and off into the wild forest beyond the last cottage.
It was rough going, and he was glad to be in nimble deer form as he navigated ridges and leaped across ravines. His antlers tangled in underbrush, so that he was soon dragging ribbons of leaves and vines with him like a bizarre swamp creature.
He was a ghost.
A rare white hart in a dark forest of secrets, facing his own past.
