The conference room behind the restaurant was stuffed to the seams. Tex wryly thought that if they were going to keep adding staff members, they would have to start meeting in the grand event room where they held exercise classes and weekly formal dances.

Tex chivalrously stood when a strange woman in the Shifting Sands housekeeping uniform edged into the room and glanced around for a chair.

“Merci!” she said sweetly, with a grateful smile. She sank gracefully into the offered chair.

“Too bad we don’t have new French maid uniforms to go with the new French maids,” Breck, the headwaiter, hissed near his ear appreciatively as Tex backed up to the wall with folded arms.

“I think she’s French Canadian,” Tex whispered back. She smelled like too much perfume.

Not that Breck would care where she was from. Breck appreciated all women, and all men, for that matter.

When Scarlet entered, the chatter died to a murmur and then turned into an attentive silence at her frown.

“As you know, we’ve got a lot of new staff to welcome,” she said briskly. “We aren’t in preschool, so we aren’t going to go around the room and introduce ourselves, but do take a moment to look around and see who’s new and make a point of saying hello to those you don’t know. On your own time.” Her green eyes traveled appraisingly across the room, and Tex met them briefly.

“The World Mr. Shifter finals will officially begin one week from today, but we’ll be getting new guests every day between now and then, and they’ll be doing a lot of the early interviews and photoshoots starting in two days. Travis?”

Travis, a lynx shifter from Alaska who was in charge of repairs and maintenance, looked like he hadn’t gotten sleep in several days. The impression was probably accurate; he had been pulling all-nighters since the resort had gotten the news about the event’s last-minute change of venue, desperate to get enough of the housing into shape to house the influx.

“All of the primary cottages are ready for occupancy, and the hotel has been brought back up to code. The hot water in the west wing isn’t working yet, but should be by tonight. The toilets...”

Tex let Travis’ technobabble flow over him as he assessed the new staff. There were at least half a dozen new housekeeping staff, two new kitchen assistants, two new waitstaff who would split time between the dining hall and Tex’s pooltop bar, a green-looking carpenter to work with Travis, and a second lifeguard to relieve Bastian. Even Graham, the stand-off-ish lion shifter in charge of landscaping, had been assigned a new helper, though Graham had already made it clear the young man would be do nothing but the most basic tasks, like lawn-mowing and hauling clippings. Tex suspected that he found the whole idea of an assistant deeply offensive, and the gardens had gone from immaculate to some new state of perfection, even while the gardener cleared vast new swathes of jungle encroachment back from the cottages that were being put back into use and tamed it into hedges of flowers and thick leaves.

“You want us to move?” Bastian said unexpectedly, in response to something Travis said.

Tex turned his wandering attention back to Travis, who squirmed and looked guilty, glancing at Scarlet for support.

“It’s not that we’d have to,” he said defensively. “It’s just that the houses on the south cliffs are set up as a large private family manors, never made for individual rentals. It would take a lot of work to convert them into private rooms, and they’d be a hard sell the way they’re configured now, with shared bathrooms and living space. But they’re in fine working condition, and if the staff moved to those three houses, we’d free up twenty more rooms in the hotel.”

Scarlet was nodding, paying no mind to Bastian’s disgruntled muttering about sharing a bathroom. “Let’s make this happen. I understand that it’s not ideal,” the withering look she gave Bastian was as much sympathy as he could expect out of her, “but our waiting list has never been this long, and this is a chance we can’t let escape us.”

She glanced around the room. “Chef?”

“Travis has the new freezer working,” the distinguished older man reported, “and it’s fully stocked. Our supplier on the mainland says there should be no problem filling the orders we’ve put in for the next few weeks, and I’ve got everything that can be made ahead ready to go.” He nodded at his new assistants. “I’m confident my team and I can get you meals that will do the resort proud.”

He earned the tiniest hint of smile from Scarlet. “I’m glad to hear that. We’ll need to coordinate an extra trip to the mainland mid-week, from the looks of the order forms, but that shouldn’t be problematic. Tex?”

Tex sat up straighter. “We’re well-stocked in everything hard, but the white wine shipment came in four cases short.”

Scarlet frowned. “Four cases?”

“I counted twice,” Tex assured her.

“I’ll call and have words with the distributor,” Scarlet said, and Tex was glad that he wouldn’t be on the receiving end of that call. “We may need to pick some up on the mainland if they can’t get the replacement here by next week.”

“We’ll have a better idea of how well stock is holding up pretty quickly,” Tex agreed. “Maybe they’ll all be red wine drinkers. Incidentals are in good order, plenty of napkins and tiny umbrellas, and the fruit shipment exceeded my expectations this week.”

Scarlet continued through housekeeping, and then got a thumbs up from Lydia, the black swan shifter who managed the spa. Other than a few minor supply concerns, and Travis’ warning about overtaxing the septic system, they seemed ready for the oncoming crowd, and Scarlet seemed cautiously optimistic.

“I’m really pleased with how well you’ve all stepped up and gotten everything together,” she told them candidly, and Tex was as surprised as he was proud; Scarlet was notoriously stingy with her praise.

“We’ve got a busy few weeks ahead of us, and I know you’ll be asked to do more than usually do. It’s going to be crowded and we’re all going to be under a lot of scrutiny. I trust you can handle it, and that we will make this a pleasantly memorable event. Go make it happen.”

The meeting broke up with high energy and cheer. Breck immediately introduced himself to the new French-speaking housekeeper.

As Tex slipped out past Scarlet, she took him aside. “Gizelle wasn’t here.” It wasn’t quite an accusation.

“She’s still not good with crowds, ma’am,” Tex said apologetically.

Scarlet nodded thoughtfully. “She’s going to have a rough few weeks,” she said pityingly.

“I think we all may,” Tex said candidly, earning a dry laugh from Scarlet.

Except for the extra staff, Shifting Sands didn’t look any different. It still had that peculiar poised energy that Tex thought was due to the way the sun glittered off the tiles decks and mosaic-covered retaining walls. Photographers were already on site, taking light readings and doing test shots of the dramatic pool steps.

Gizelle was sitting behind the bar, waiting for him and polishing silverware that was already clean, her salt-and-pepper hair obscuring her face. She scrubbed at each fork with a corner of her sundress, then held it up to the light critically. “Not much of a hoard,” she said critically, when Tex found her.

“I’m not a dragon,” he reminded her gently. “I’m a bear. Bastian is the dragon.”

“Bastian doesn’t think he is a good dragon,” Gizelle said airily.

“Scarlet noticed that you weren’t at the staff meeting,” Tex told her, crouching down and taking the basket of forks that she handed him.

“Scarlet notices things,” Gizelle agreed, unconcerned. “She notices the sky with no sun.”

“There’s going to be a lot of people coming here in the next few days,” Tex warned her. They’d talked about the upcoming Mr. Shifter event several times, but he wasn’t really sure how much of it made sense to her.

As far as anyone could tell, Gizelle had spent her entire childhood as a gazelle, a captive in the zoo of a sadistic shifter collector. She didn’t know her own name, or have any memory of parents or human shape before coming to Shifting Sands. She could have been twenty-five, or fifty; the white streaking her dark hair made her look ancient, but her face was unlined and innocent. She had a tendency to flee at the slightest hint of conflict, shifting into her gazelle shape and leaping high into the air. There had been several times Tex wasn’t sure how she avoided breaking one of her fragile-looking legs as she landed.

Gizelle looked up at him, big eyes behind her wild, loose hair. “I know,” she said reluctantly. “Too many people are coming, so full of themselves, and there’s going to be photographers to avoid. But I’ll still help. Graham lets me rake sometimes, and Chef lets me wash the dishes. I broke a glass, to see how it would sound, but he told me I could still do the silverware.”

Tex ruffled her hair gently, a privilege she didn’t allow everyone. “You’ll be fine. You want to go help Graham with that raking?”

She nodded with a slow grin and stood up, padding silently away on dirty, bare feet.

As Tex was giving the basket of forks a quick sift for anything unexpected, she popped back into the bar and warned him, “Some of the people are going to be bad. Listen through your nose!”

Then she vanished again.