A scream broke the hot afternoon lull. Tex dropped the drink he was making and vaulted over his counter without a second thought, bringing the baseball bat he kept there automatically. It was a short sprint out the back door, and he spent those strides wondering what insane threat to expect this time.

For such a quiet little resort, Shifting Sands got some strange events, and in the months that Tex had been working there, there had been a hostage situation with South American mercenaries, someone had wired the resort generators to blow up, and a crazy rare-shifter collector had been kidnapping guests. Once, he’d had to break up a lion and bear fight. What would it be this time, the mob?

No, no, he told himself, this was Central America, probably it was the cartel here.

Graham materialized from a hedge with a machete just as Tex made the back entrance of the bar. There they found the new maid with the French accent standing on the sidewalk, clutching her armful of fresh folded towels and shrieking at the top of her lungs. A wide column of ants was making their merry way across her path and she was backing up from them in horror.

Graham lowered his machete, gave her a dirty look, and vanished back into his beloved greenery. The few guests who had followed him to discover the source of the commotion decided there was nothing to see and returned to the bar, grousing about dramatics.

Feeling as sorry for Graham’s disgusted look as he did for the ants, Tex leaned his baseball bat against the doorframe and crossed the ants with one extra long stride.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. They occasionally get it in their little ant heads to march from some place to some other place, but they’ll be done in no time at all. It’s the jungle, after all, you’ve got to expect some insect encroachers. Graham does his best to keep them off most of the paths, but there’s a limit to what even he can do.”

The maid — her nametag said Marie, which was just perfect - threw herself into Tex’s arms, towels and all.

“There’s so many of them!” she sobbed. Her French accent was strangely gone.

Tex looked at the ants in some bewilderment. He’d gotten used to them, and suspected that Marie would not last long at Shifting Sands if she wasn’t able to handle a simple ant migration. “You should see what happens to the cottages if people sneak food back to them,” he said, patting her on the shoulder and hoping that the humor was reassuring.

She continued to sob on him.

“Now there, it’s okay. You can just step right over them, they won’t even notice you.”

She made a noise of alarm and clung to him harder.

“Alright, then, ma’am, hold on.”

She was barely an armful, even heaped with towels, and Tex was able to swing her up and carry her over the offending column of ants. He set her down on her feet, but she continued to hold on, clutching the towels between them.

“You’re safe, ma’am,” he said, slightly strangled. “You can let go now.”

It took a more obvious effort to pry her off before she released him. “Mon dieu,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “You are my hero.”

Tex wondered if he’d imagined her French accent vanishing, it was certainly thick enough now. He tipped his hat at her. “It’s the least I can do, ma’am.”

Marie gave a little moan. “Oh, mes serviettes!” she said, shaking her head at her rumpled armful.

“Your… oh, your towels? They haven’t suffered any,” Tex reassured her. “I’ll help you fold them and no one will know a thing about their brush with the army of formicidae.”

She furrowed her brow at Tex adorably, and he smiled at her. “Ants,” he explained. “Just ants.”

Her face brightened in understanding, and Tex helped her shake the towels back into presentable shape and fold them neatly into squares again.

“My hero,” she repeated, and the look she shot back over her shoulder as she trotted away down the clear trail to the cottages suggested that she was willing to reward Tex’s chivalry.

Tex wasn’t sure why the offer was so unappealing. She was a good-looking woman, with very definite charms. Dating within the housekeeping pool didn’t offend Tex’s good sense about not seeing coworkers; he would never had been tempted by someone who worked the bar with him. But although he appreciated the view as she walked away with a little extra swing in her hips, he didn’t find himself wanting to chase her down.

It wasn’t just that he felt the weight of his bad luck in love, he felt like he was… waiting for something.

With a shrug, he collected his baseball bat and returned to the bar. Dropping the drink had not broken the glass, but there was a mess of spilled syrup to clean up, and an impatient crowd of guests had gathered while he was away.

“Sorry folks,” he said, swiftly stepping up to give the mess a brief swab. “A lady screams, you’ve got to be ready to drop things and run to the rescue,” he said smoothly. He added a wink for one of the older ladies at the counter, and was repaid by watching her grouchy expression turn to a delighted blush.

“What can I get for you?” he asked the first person at the bar. He got all their requests while he remade the interrupted drink.

They were all duly impressed when he could remember what each of them had asked for without pausing to write anything down, serving even the most meticulously-ordered drink exactly as dictated. He spun a bottle on each hand as a finishing touch, and got a scattered round of applause from the ones who had remained at the counter to see the whole show.

“I’ll take a Shifter’s Mate,” a familiar voice said from the end of the counter as the others dispersed. A sunhat and a wave of dark hair obscured her face as she bent over the laminated drink menu, shoulders slumped. She lacked the manic energy that the rest of the resort seemed to have right now.

“Coming up, ma’am,” Tex said automatically, trying to place the voice and figure out why it was giving him such an unexpected electric thrill. He dropped the ingredients into the shaker with a few cubes of ice and shook it efficiently while he filled a glass with clean cubes in the other hand. An umbrella and a wedge of fruit at the rim finished his own invention.

“Pretty,” the woman said, finally looking up.

“P-p-pretty,” he echoed her, unable to come up with anything more. He remembered that face and those brown eyes, but that last time he had seen her had been nothing like this.

She is ours, his bear roared gleefully.

Jennavivianna had been gorgeous then, but now she was something infinitely more. Every curve of her body was an invitation, every wave of her dark hair was a promise. The planes of her lovely face were perfectly composed and the eyes — those limitless, bottomless, aching eyes! A man could drown in those places, if he let himself go.

And Tex was ready to jump.