A calabash tree towered above with huge, round fruit attached to the trunk—the shell of the fruit so hard that it could be hollowed out into bowls or cups. Thin corded branches drooped toward the ground, weighed down by heavy clusters of purplish and orange ripe mangoes, with others hidden by the thin green leaves.
She was so busy as she moved on to each specimen that she felt as though she was alone in a tropical jungle on an uninhabited island, seeing a world for the first time as explorers to the island might have. A stand of silver thatch palms caught her eye. The tree derived its name from the silver color underneath the fronds and was the only one in the islands with that feature. A blue iguana raced along a fallen tree trunk; a grass snake coiled on a slab of slate. No poisonous snakes lived on the island, thankfully.
Shelley looked up at the thirty-foot-tall palms, thinking how much fun it would be to see the silver reflected in the moonlight. She had read that the palms had been used to thatch roofs in years past, only needing to be replaced every five or six years. If the fronds were cut during the full moon, supposedly they would last for nine years. The full moon. It would be out tonight, and the urge to run as a wolf tugged at her senses. Made her want to strip out of her clothes and shift into the wolf to explore this world on four paws, nose to the ground and sniffing the air, running through the thick underbrush, not staying to the path.
She was pondering that bit of folklore about the viability of the fronds cut during the full moon, comparing it with werewolf lore and making plans to come back that night, when she heard the sound of shoes crunching on leaves and heading her way on the winding path.
A woman said in a gratingly syrupy voice, “Ah, come on, Sal. You know how much I love to get away from your house and spend the day taking walks along the beach or here in the forest. I mean, we can have sex there all the time, but I also like to get out and see the island while I’m here.”
Shelley did not want to hear about some strangers’ sex lives. Why couldn’t they have gone swimming at the beach or gone shopping or done anything but come to the forest?
The woman said, “No, before you say it, I wanted to be with you, not by myself while one of your goons followed along.”
“Not everyone loves me like you do,” Sal said candidly.
The mention of sex had caught Shelley’s attention first, but then the woman’s comments about goons made her ears perk up even more. Hearing that the couple sequestered themselves at his estate and that not everyone liked him or loved him, according to him, suddenly made her think of Duncan’s Sal—Salisbury Silverman. Neither Sal nor his girlfriend had mentioned his last name.
The couple was moving toward her at a leisurely pace. Shelley stood still, not knowing whether to move along the path in the same direction they were headed to try to get out of their way without them realizing she had overheard them, or to step off the path into the jungle so they wouldn’t see her. The problem was with the poisonous plants growing in the underbrush.
Maiden plum had sap that could cause serious skin rashes. The Manchineel tree’s leaves and fruit were poisonous to the touch, and even standing underneath the tree during a downpour could be hazardous to one’s health. The lady hair plant was also to be avoided because of the reaction of skin to the fiberglass-like stinging hairs, so she didn’t want to get into any of those. Of course, the last option would be to face Sal and his girlfriend as if they were insignificant in the scheme of things, unless…
Dread bunched in the pit of her stomach. What if it was Sal Silverman? The man Duncan was looking for. The one who had stolen the college funds. Could there be another Sal with goons residing on the island? Maybe. But probably not.
Then she took a sniff of the breeze and cursed herself for not noticing. The man was downwind of her so she couldn’t tell if he was a wolf or not, which would help her to further identify him as the one Duncan wanted.
But if this Sal was a wolf, he could smell her.
Chapter 6
Damn. Shelley wanted to call Duncan and tell him she thought she was soon going to be face to face with his quarry, but she knew how well her voice would travel in the forest. Just like Sal’s and the woman’s did as they sauntered closer to her.
She should have planned this better, made sure she and Duncan had some kind of code to use in the event something like this happened.
Who was she kidding? She never thought she would run into Duncan’s target out here. Or anywhere else, for that matter. She thought the guy would remain secluded at his island estate.
But she had to tell Duncan the man was most likely here and let the Scot decide how he wanted to deal with the news. Somehow. She pulled her phone out of her pouch and dialed his number.
The footfalls seemed to quicken in her direction. Great.
“Why are we in such a rush now?” the woman said to Sal.
“I thought you wanted to take a dip in the pool. If you wait too long, you’ll get burned.”
“Thanks for worrying about me but I never burn. Will you swim with me?”
“Not this time,” he said.
Shelley dropped back into a crouch with her phone still to her ear. She was pretending to look at a termite hill and wishing Duncan would answer the phone when she heard his voice mail.
Frustrated that she couldn’t reach him pronto, she quickly said, “It’s me.” She figured Duncan would recognize either her voice or her phone number, since she didn’t want to say her name out loud in the forest. She had to say something in some sort of code, but she wasn’t sure he’d figure it out. Still, she didn’t have any other choice. “I just found the plant specimen I know you wanted to locate. It’s really important. Call me!”
She hung up and was just taking another close-up picture of a mahogany tree when the man named Sal and the woman edged into view. Shelley turned slightly to acknowledge them, get a good look at both of them, and categorize them like she did her plants in the event she saw them again. She was dying to take a picture of them to give to Duncan to verify that this was the man he was after.
Instead, she gave them a half smile in greeting, said a perfunctory “Hello,” and began writing in her notebook again as if they didn’t interest her in the least.
Sal had light-brown hair with streaks of gray threaded through it and looked to be in his midfifties in human years. He was wearing a white polo shirt and black jeans and muddy, white boat shoes. His face was tanned as if he spent a lot of time in the islands. If this was Duncan’s thief, he was using Duncan’s family’s savings—as well as those of others and the college—to enjoy the island paradise. He was fairly nondescript beyond that, except for his eyes. They were a wolf’s eyes—amber, curious, intrigued.
The woman was closer to being in her early twenties. She quickly wrapped her arm around the man’s waist as if she was afraid he might stray as soon as he saw Shelley. Especially because of the way he was showing his interest in her. The woman was wearing hot pink shorts and a hot pink halter top with nothing to hold up her swaying breasts, which had to be enhanced, considering how big they were and how petite the rest of her was. The woman’s hair was long and blond, and either the wind had done a number on it, or she thought it looked sexy without being combed after she’d fallen out of bed that morning.
“Hello,” Sal said to Shelley, drawing close and obviously interested in or suspicious of her.
Probably interested. Because she was a female wolf. She figured he didn’t have a reason to be suspicious of her; her worry about who he might be had probably put her on edge.
She surreptitiously sniffed the air to ascertain if he was a wolf, and a slight smile touched his lips at seeing her check him out. Yeah, he was a wolf, and he liked that she knew he was. Bastard. The woman was strictly human and wearing too much cloying perfume. Shelley wondered how he could stand it, considering how sensitive a wolf’s sense of smell was. Natural, sweet-smelling soaps and shampoos were one thing, but heavy perfumes or colognes quite another.
“Are you here on vacation?” he asked Shelley, his voice dark and an attempt at sexy, but she found Duncan’s voice much more appealing and this guy even more of a lout. Duncan was sexy without trying. This guy was trying way too hard and falling far short of anything appealing.
She suspected the warrior in Duncan, the power to persuade people with a look and a word, made her take notice. This man was more like a parasite, using others’ money for power. He wouldn’t have been powerful among a pack of wolves and would never have lasted there.
He raised a brow when she hesitated to answer his question about whether she was on vacation, shaking her loose of her thoughts. Maybe he believed she was reluctant to speak with a stranger. A beta wolf who might meekly give in to his every desire. She lifted her chin, showing him she was no beta wolf.
She really didn’t want to answer his question, wanted to tell him it was none of his business, but what if she could help Duncan with his mission? Even if he didn’t want her help. She didn’t want to alienate this man. “I’m here to do some research on plants. I’m a professor of botany.”
A definite light shown in his eyes. He was impressed. She wasn’t sure if it was because of what she was doing or that she wasn’t about to be cowed. “Ah.”
From the earlier conversation she’d heard, Shelley could tell Sal wasn’t interested in plants, so she was surprised when he said, “I have quite a garden at my place. One in France as well.”
The girlfriend looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “You never told me you had a place in France. Switzerland, yes.”
Despite not wanting to show any interest, Shelley was intrigued. How she’d love to see gardens in France. Not his particularly, but the great gardens of Versailles immediately came to mind.
He shrugged and said to Shelley, “If you’d like to stop by for drinks later, you could see my gardens.”
And what else?
But her thoughts were spinning with the ramifications. Oh. My. God. Duncan, where are you when you should be right here, right now?