Page 20 of Arctic Panda's Secret Mate
“Guilty,” Haisley said. “My car wouldn’t start, and I had nowhere to go, and I knew I wasn’t supposed to stay, but I wasn’t sure what else todo.”
“Did you disable the wifi?” he asked. “And change the password?”
Haisley saw no reason to lie. “Yes. I was hoping you’d all leave if everything wasn’t absolutely perfect.”
“Oh thank goodness. I was starting to doubt my own sanity.”
That made two of them.
“Did you turn down the temperature on the water?”
“It was petty,” Haisley said. “And my own shower this morning was punishment enough.”
“And you moved the cheese, and the dish towels, and hid the binder.”
“It sort of defeated the point if I left you a manual onhow to fix everything that I was trying to so carefully break. ”
“Were you about to escalate to cutting off the power?”
“Oh no,” Haisley said at once. “I mean, I thought about it, but what if one of you had a medical condition and needed the power for…I don’t know, dialysis or oxygen or something? What if you froze to death? I wanted you to be uncomfortable and leave, I didn’t want tohurtanyone.”
“Of course not,” Tristan said firmly. “I know you wouldn’t.”
“How would you know that?” Haisley asked, suddenly suspicious. He seemed awfully convinced.
“Because…ah…I mean, you’re not…I…you don’t seem like the type?”
Haisley had a habit of raising her voice at the end of a sentence to make herself less of a threat and hearing it made her automatically empathize with Tristan. He was probably no happier to find her lurking in the kitchen than she was to be caught.
“My name is Haisley,” she said as a peace offering.
“I’m Tristan.”
Haisley nodded too soon.
“You already knew?”
“I haven’t been trying to eavesdrop,” Haisley said, feeling the heat of a blush rise in her cheeks, “but it’s sort of inevitable. You guys are really…loud.”
She hadn’t realized it was possible for Tristan to stare even harder at her, but somehow he did. “Have you…seenanything?”
They were allnudists,Haisley suddenly realized, like a lightning bolt. That would explain the weird woman who had been naked in the kitchen (if she wasn’t Haisley’s isolation-crazed imagination), and…well, Haisley couldn’t quite figure out how it explained some of their weirder conversations, but it solved theonemystery at least.
“Not much,” she assured Tristan. “Barely anything. Almost nothing. Ah…”Barelyandnothingmade her think about what Tristan would look like naked. She’d been to a nude beach, in Hawaii, but it had been mostly very regular people looking like any random selection of people, in a range of weights and fitness. Tristan was the kind of person she wouldwantto find at a nude beach.
Haisley’s blush threatened to combust her hair. These were definitely not things she should be thinking about a guest.
17
TRISTAN
Tristan’s bear wasn’t usually that pushy—there was a reason that pandas were known as the teddy bears of shifters—but apparently, meeting his mate sent him into a frenzy of joy.Our mate! Our mate! Snuggle her and feed her bamboo!
She probably won’t enjoy having reeds shoved in her face,Tristan said, trying to keep from tackling her outright the way that every instinct suggested he do.
“I suppose you’ll have to tell the others,” Haisley was saying with a sigh. Her face was bright red. “I’d appreciate it if you could avoid ratting me out to my boss, but I’d understand if you felt like you had to. Don’t leave a bad review on my behalf, though, that wouldn’t be fair to the chalet. Oh, and could you give me a ride into town? Like I said, my car wouldn’t start, which is why I stayed here in the first place.”
She was hismate.
