She squinted toward the palms edging the cottage and spotted her prime suspect. A lime-green iguana viewed the sunrise from a smooth rock next to the deck. “You,” she muttered, voice rough with sleep and disbelief. “Don’t play innocent. I bet your little reptile condo looks real cute with my conch shell in the foyer.”
The iguana, like any decent criminal, didn’t flinch. Didn’t move. Probably smug about his interior decor choices.
Still bent over, Lena ran a hand through her sleep-tousled hair and exhaled, long and slow. Had she brought them inside? No, she distinctly remembered lining them up yesterday afternoon before heading to the front office. She’d adjusted them three times for color and size coordination. Her OCD comfort ritual. A little control in a job where “guest satisfaction” hinged on the availability of fluffy towels and whether Brian put too much salt in the pool again.
“Could be the wind,” she told no one but her empty porch.
The wind didn’t unlatch the old screen door and remove seashells from their sunbathing spots. The wind didn’t have opposable thumbs. Or an agenda.
Unease slithered in—a whisper against her spine—but she batted it away. Not today. Not before breakfast, and definitely not before she dealt with Night Audit always running late.
Still barefoot and convinced she must be losing her ever-loving mind, Lena turned back toward the door and mumbled, “I’m not saying it was ghosts, but if they touch my sand dollars, we’re holding a seance.”
Three hours,fourteen towel shortages, and one mysteriously weaponized room service tray later, Lena was wishing she’d called out sick.
The front desk lobby buzzed with a rhythm she knew well—guests swirled in like a polite (mostly) hurricane of pastellinen and oversized sunglasses, beach-chic chaos that smelled of coconut sunscreen and entitlement.
Lena tapped a few keys on the check-in terminal, trying to override a glitch that insisted Cottage Eight had booked three separate yoga gurus, all named Karen. She didn’t have time for metaphysical ghost bookings. She had bigger things to think about.
Like vanishing seashells. Which she’d definitely moved. Probably. She must have.
So why didn’t she remember that?
She sighed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear as Megan approached, cheeks pink from a recent battle.
“Mrs. Hargrove says her minibar didn’t have any of the organic rosehip water she requested,” Megan reported. “She would like—and I quote—‘compensation from the soul of whoever failed her.’”
Lena snorted. “Tell her we sacrificed an intern to the spa gods and hope that suffices.”
Megan grinned, biting back laughter. “Already done. I told her Mateo’s chanting in a salt grotto.”
Lena’s screen flickered once. Then again. Not frozen, but twitchy, like it was debating whether it should work or just spiral. Or she could be projecting.
She didn’t get long to dwell on it, because a familiar voice dropped in her ear like warm honey and circuit boards.
“You’re overloading the terminal again,” David murmured, strolling up beside her, his eyes on her flickering and flashing monitor.
Speak of the devil, and he shall tech support.
“I like pushing it to its limits,” she said without looking up. “I should be allowed to live on the edge.”
“Hmm. Living recklessly through software menus. You’re the true wild child of Ivory Sands, Firecracker.” His eyes twinkledbehind his glasses, magnetic in a way she refused to spend too much brainpower on before lunch. Or after lunch, for that matter.
“Stop calling me that.”
“Also,” he glanced pointedly over the desktop, ignoring her comment, “someone labeled a file folder ‘Seashell Ledger’? That you?”
Busted.
“What? I’m a woman of order,” Lena said. “Cataloging my finds brings me joy. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Oh, I respect obsession. But you are aware they aren’t technically assets, right?”
“Until I start a maritime museum—and don’t think I can’t—that folder is staying where it is.”
David chuckled, brushing an errant lock of hair from his forehead even as Lena’s fingers itched to do it for him. The scent of rain-damp cotton and citrus clung to him, all freshly showered and—dammit—alarmingly attractive in a ‘hacker goes to a TED Talk’ kind of way.
His tablet vibrated against his hip, and he checked it briefly before glancing back at her.
