Page 4 of Midnight Serenade
As we moved past the lounge and down the hall, I could see her trying to take everything in while Kazi prowled alongside her.
One of my staff had already taped her keycards to her suite door in a little envelope with her name on it.
She pulled out the keycard and swiped it through the mechanism, which immediately turned green, letting her enter. I could feel her stunned amazement at the lavishness of the suite. It had three bedrooms, a large living room, a fully stocked kitchen, a study, a spacious bathroom, and a balcony that wrapped nearly around the entire side of the ship. My balcony wrapped around the other side, and they met in the middle. The decor had been done in coppers and sunset colors. The shower was white and rose marble, and the floors were sand-colored Italian tiles with a glass mosaic of a beach, ocean, and sunset in the center.
I placed her luggage on her bed. “Please let me know if you need anything else, Miss Liora.” I handed her my business card, which had my international cell number on it. “You can call this number, or you can just ask any employee to buzz my room or office.”
She looked over my card and then smiled tentatively at me. “Thank you, Mr. Solace.”
I nodded and headed for her door. “Come, Kazi.” I was waiting for him at the door to say his goodbyes, not paying attention, when Grace’s laughter punched me in the throat again. I drew in an unsteady breath and looked over to see that Kazi had made himself comfortable on her bed, fully stretched out like the king he thought he was.
“Kazi,” I growled. My left eyebrow twitched in annoyance. “Let’sgo.”
Kazi closed his eyes and let out a little snore, which didn’t sound much different from his lower-decibel growls. He sounded like a congested hyena.
Grace sat next to him on the bed and rubbed his back. She looked over at me, naked hope in her eyes. “He can stay...if that’s okay?”
I paced to the bed and looked down at the big faker. “Do you want to stay with Miss Liora?”
“Grace, please,” she murmured, correcting me.
I nodded, thanking her for allowing me to use her first name. I was raised in a time when manners were abigpart of everyday society. It had been a thin veneer, nevertheless, there were manners and civility. “Thank you for the use of your name, Grace,” I said politely.
She blinked at me, and then a slow smile spread across her lips. “You’re welcome.”
I looked back down at my furry anchor. “Do you want to hang out with Grace for a while?”
He opened one huge blue eye and purred. Mountain lions are not big cats, per se. But they’re the largest of the small cats. And, fun fact, they’re the biggest cats with the ability to purr. Kazi’s purr sounded like a small engine was vibrating and about to take off.
I smiled, resigned, and scratched his furry head. “Behave like a gentleman,” I warned him. He chuffed at me and went back to fake snoring with his eyes closed. I turned back to Grace. “I’ve never seen him do this before, but I think it’s entirely possible my lion is in love with you.” I was trying to warn her politely. Kazi in love was a thing never before seen. I had no idea what he would do or how he would act with her. The only thing I was sure of was that he wouldn’t hurt her.
She blushed and then chuckled when Kazi nuzzled her leg with his nose, licking her for good measure. “Well, he’s very handsome, and he’s been great company so far, so he’s fine to stay with me for however long he’d like.”
“Thanks for putting up with him. You don’t have to worry about feeding him or cleaning up after him. I have a few members of staff who take care of him exclusively. He has a big sandbox on his deck that he knows how to access, and his handlers track him down when it’s feeding time. What youwillneed is a walkie-talkie. Let me grab one from my room.”
I quickly went to my room, grabbed one of the devices, and returned to her. I then showed her the walkie-talkie and explained the channel she needed to use to talk to me specifically, and the channel to use to talk to his handlers if she needed to get a hold of them for any reason. I waited while she wrote the channels down on a little Solace sticky tablet by her bed. And then I gave her a brief crash course on the use of our walkies, which were mostly like normal walkies except with a few high-tech perks.
As I left, with Kazi still snoring on Grace’s bed, I turned back to her. The saltwater sting of her scent in my nostrils had lessened, and my fangs had long since retracted, but my fascination with the woman had only increased since I’d met her. I really wanted to spend more time with her. There was something about Grace that drew me in, and I thought it hadlittle to do with her siren blood. “Would you like to have dinner tonight in the Starlight Lounge? It’s up on deck twenty, on the aft side.”
“I’d like that,” she said quietly.
“Six-thirty sound okay?”
She nodded.
I walked over and gently kissed her hand. Her hand was warm and smooth, with glittery gold paint on her fingernails. “I’m looking forward to it. See you tonight.”
As I left her to settle in and get ready for dinner, I mentally ran over my to-do list and groaned. I needed help, or I would never be able to meet Grace for dinner. I depressed the button on my walkie. “Rafe, my favorite Cruise Director, do you have some time to split my task list with me?”
My walkie hissed and Rafe’s British squawk of outrage had me grinning. “Of course, Sire. Anything for you, Sire. Would you like a tummy rub? Would you like me to spit-shine your shoes? Perhaps you’d like me to cut your dinner into tiny, bite-sized pieces for you?”
I laughed. “A simple no would have sufficed.”
Rafe was a firecracker. He was also the face of theKamaria, and I could objectively, in a straight-guy kind of way, say that it was a pretty face. He always had a million and one things to do, a thousand fires to put out, and a hundred girls available at the touch of a button. He was a White-Tailed Sea Eagle shifter, with razor-sharp wits, eyesight, and hearing, even in his human form.
Rafe’s sigh on the walkie was legendary. “Anything for you, boss. What do you need?”
Chapter 2
