Page 10 of The Claiming of the Shrew (Fated Mountain Lodge #4)

Leah squeaked a thank you and wriggled forward.

Her back legs worked, just not as well as she’d like, so she could wriggle around on all fours; it just wasn’t nearly as fast as when she was riding the shrewmobile.

She scooted among the individual strands of a jungle-like hotel carpet, wrinkling her snout at the overwhelming chemical smells.

As she’d hoped, there was a gap beneath the door. Leah flattened her body and squirmed through. On the other side, she shifted and stood up with a hand on the wall. After a hasty look around to be certain she was alone in the room, she opened the door.

Fawkes was crouched on the floor, gathering up her clothes. He looked up and found himself on her crotch level. A fresh sunrise blush spread across his face, and he dropped everything he was holding, with a loud clatter of crutches.

“You knew I’d be naked,” Leah pointed out, though her entire body was suffused with pleasure at his reaction. “Quick, get in here.”

Fawkes shoved her clothes inside, snatched her crutches, and closed the door behind them.

Leah regarded her heap of clothing and wondered why she hadn’t had the sense to bring something easier to put on. She settled for grabbing her T-shirt and panties. Thus more-or-less decent, she looked around.

Sally, like many actors in Leah’s experience, was an absolute slob.

Fawkes’s room had been a bit messy. Sally’s looked as if the wardrobe trailer had exploded all over the inside of it.

There was clothing draped on every piece of furniture, a chaotic jumble of lotions and makeup on all flat surfaces, and an open box of tampons in the middle of the bed.

“I think maybe we should have started with someone more organized,” Fawkes said, regarding the mess with dismay.

“Good luck finding anyone with a single ounce of organization in their body, other than Alana. You should see the dressing room before a show.” Using one crutch to leave a hand free, Leah hopped over to the dresser.

She discovered that the drawers were empty except for a single teddy in the top one.

Why put your clothes away when you could simply unpack into the room at large?

“Have you ever done a room search before?” Fawkes asked.

“Sure. I lose my keys all the time.”

He rolled his eyes. “I mean looking for contraband. We should each take a quadrant, so we’re not repeating effort, and check hiding places.

If she’s a professional, we aren’t going to find anything laying around loose.

” He said this as Leah lifted a pair of underwear on top of the dresser.

She hastily dropped them. “Although in this case, who knows. But the thing that makes the most sense is to do a quick sweep for easy hiding places.”

“What kind of places are we talking about?”

Fawkes ticked off on his fingers. “Anything that has drawers—inside, under, and behind the drawer itself. Behind pictures on the wall. Under the mattress. Inside air vents. Shake and check any containers you find. Er ...” He swept a look around at the dozens or possibly hundreds of salves, lotions, shampoos, and perfumes.

“Let’s say the bigger ones or anything that isn’t obviously full of a liquid.

Basically, if you’ve seen a spot used as a hiding place on a TV show, someone would probably think of hiding actual contraband there.

” He drew a line in the air with his finger down the middle of the room.

“You take that side, I’ll take this one.

Start at one end. Don’t spend much time on any one location; we could search in here for hours. For now we’re just doing a survey.”

Leah checked the undersides of the dresser drawers, while Fawkes began a swift, professional-looking sweep through his side of the room, bending to look at the bottom of the chair and desk, lifting the edge of the mattress. He opened the nightstand drawer and winced. “Found her sex toys.”

“Please do not give me details. I have to work with the woman.” Leah leaned around to look at the back of the dresser, then checked the radiators.

She felt that she was a quick study, but Fawkes was still faster, as he’d done this many times before.

He did a sweep of the bathroom and came out shaking his head.

Leah sighed and left the mess as they had found it. “Guess we move on.”

They found nothing in Maggie’s room (almost meticulously tidy, with a stack of scripts on the bedside table) or Gloria’s (an absolute shambles).

By the fourth room, Leah was starting to feel weary and heartsick.

Part of it was just hypoglycemia from shifting so often into her shrew’s hyper metabolism, and she nibbled a chocolate bar from her purse.

But she also was starting to feel intensely guilty about invading her castmates’—her friends’—privacy.

The cloak-and-dagger adventure had been fun at first, but now she jumped every time a door slammed in the hall, and felt achey with regret.

She’d found some porn magazines and a hidden bottle of booze, both of which she left in place, but she wished she didn’t even know that much about her associates’ private lives.

Some of it must have shown on her face, because Fawkes said, “They’ll be coming back soon, so what if we just ditch this and go have some fun?”

“Fun?”

“You know, the thing that makes life worth living? We’re at a beautiful mountain lodge, and the sun’s still up. Let’s enjoy ourselves and get back to work later.”