Page 39 of Arctic Panda's Secret Mate
Alice shook her head. “The app says winter storm,rain, and ice, starting tomorrow. Hazardous driving conditions and high winds.”
Haisley groaned. “Oh, I hate it when it gets warm in the winter. The cold is much easier to handle. You should expect the power to go out. I’ll make sure the generator is ready.”
“I’m glad the chalet ghost is onourteam now,” Breck quipped. He glided into the dining room to finish setting the table.
“Do you get these storms often?” Tristan asked.
“Almost never,” Haisley said, taking the empty tray from the cinnamon rolls to the sink. “Usually, once we freeze up in the fall, that’s it, it doesn’t thaw until spring. These warm spells—we call themchinooks—can wreak havoc. The roads might not be passable for a few days.”
“Is there anything we should do to prepare?” Saina asked.
Everyone looked at Haisley. “Do laundry and take a hot shower now,” she suggested. “The generator will run the forced air heat and keep the freezers and fridges going, but it won’t have a lot of juice left over for hot water. Get out and enjoy the skiing today while you can because the trails will turn to slush. Take an extra blanket to bed tonight in case there’s a power gap. The key will be to get out and gravel the drive while it’s still soft, before it freezes into an unpassable ice rink. And we won’t be able to do anything about the road up here; we’ll be at the mercy of the road service, and we’re not a high priority way up here.”
They all nodded agreement and understanding, and Haisley marveled at their unexpected respect.
She thought they might treat her as less, because they were all rich, magical shifters and she was just the human help. But they didn’t act like rich people, and she wasstarting to realize that maybe they weren’t. They talked about their jobs at Shifting Sands joyfully, and with the kind of personal pride that Haisley recognized in herself. Haisley got the feeling that none of them needed their jobs for the pay, but that they loved their work and their resort. There was more of family about them than financial bonds.
Haisley could respect that, and it gave her some hope that she might actually fit in on their shifters-only island. They didn’t seem to look down on her for not having an animal partner in her head.
34
TRISTAN
Tristan had a dish towel and took the tray from Haisley when she had cleaned it.
It was very weird to have so many other people in the kitchen with them, jostling to get things out of drawers or cabinets, reaching over them for coffee or cups.
“Presents!” Alice called from the great room.
“I should stay and keep an eye on… uh…” Haisley looked uncomfortable as she wrung out the sponge and wiped her hands on her apron.
“Join us!” Chef insisted. “I know that Magnolia has a gift for you. You haven’t been quite as secret as you thought.”
“Oh, but I don’t have anything foryou!”
“You and Tristan made those boxes of cookies together!” Chef said firmly. “And Christmas is about thejoyof giving gifts to old friends and new ones, not a tally of tit for tat. Come and be a part of our celebration. We’d love to have you.”
Haisley nodded in agreement, and Tristan thought her eyes were suspiciously bright. He lingered in the kitchenwith her while the others left, slowly pouring himself a cup of coffee and stirring in the sugar. “Are you okay with this?” he asked.
“I like more sugar than that,” Haisley quipped, but she knew what he meant and stepped into the embrace he offered. “I like your coworkers,” she admitted. “They are very kind to include me.”
“You wouldn’t be excluded at Shifting Sands,” Tristan promised her. “You could work if you wanted to, but you wouldn’t have to. Room and board for family comes with my embarrassing salary.”
“We’d have to get married,” Haisley pointed out. “This gets into that forever stuff I wasn’t ready to promise.”
“We’re not going to wait forever!” Alice called from the great room, as if on cue. “Gizelle is going to explode if we don’t start opening presents!”
Tristan took Haisley’s hand and she came willingly with him. They took seats at the outskirts of the activity, and Alice was in the middle handing out gifts. When everyone had something in hand, she declared a free for all, and there was a flurry of ripping paper and exclamations of joy and appreciation. Gift boxes and bags and crinkling paper were passed everywhere.
Tristan received a carving set of his own, a set of panda bear cufflinks, a pair of gloves, an antique steel railroad nail, a bathroom book of dirty limericks (from Breck), a multitool engraved with his name, and six individually wrapped 10 mm sockets, one from each couple.
Haisley’s presents were thoughtful, if somewhat generic—a fancy bubble bath, a shell hair clip, an oven mitt with a moose on it, a Shifting Sands bar towel, a bookstore giftcard, and a teensy stuffed panda bear keychain that had probably been meant for Tristan.
“I don’t have anything for you!” she said to Tristan,squeezing the tiny panda bear. Everyone else was reveling in their presents, broken off into little conversations as they munched on the cookies from Tristan’s boxes.
“You heard Chef,” Tristan said. “It’s not tit for tat. But I do have something for you. I didn’t wrap it, though.”
He reached into his sweatshirt pocket and found the flower he’d made. It snagged on the key that was also there, and he pulled them out together. “Er, not that,” he said, trying to untangle them.
