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"So there's someone you left behind," Austin mused. He had similar little little brothers and sisters during his years in the service, when he'd shared his army rations with local orphans. "If you want, I can arrange for someone to drop off food for him."

"You know, Nixie doesn't expect you to leave your old life," he advised her. He liked it when she smiled like that. "She's just very focused on her goal--finding this thing of hers that Sovenn stole. So she might seem pushy, but just speak up if you need to."

They reached the car before he could say much else. He opened the door for the ladies and then drove to a little cafe where they could pick up sandwiches for lunch.

"Watercress for me," Nixie told Austin as she continued to work on her phone.

Austin nodded. "And you, Kaori?"

"I haven't had one of those in years!" Austin cried, delighted. "Let me see if they serve it."

He left the girls in the car and came back 20 minutes later with a bag of sandwiches.

"They didn't know what a 'rottie' was, but I gave them the basic ingredients and they got as close as they could," he explained as he passed out the food.

"You Americans and your taste-buds," Nixie commented, smiling slightly. Austin just nodded and got back in the drivers seat to take them back to the chalet.

"Nothing is wrong," Nixie replied as she opened her simple and bland watercress sandwich. "Your culture just has a unique way of combining flavors that no one else would ever think of. I suppose that's what comes of being a nation founded on the overflow of the rest of the world."

Soon, they arrived at the chalet and a nervous looking skinny man in glasses and a suit was standing outside the front door with a clipboard.

"Looks like our realtor is a tad early," Nixie commented. "I'll handle this. You two can stay in the car and finish eating." She got out and approached the man, who was obviously stunned by her oddly exotic beauty. He almost fell over himself to open the front door for her.

"She has that effect on a lot of men," Austin growled. "It's why Sovenn kept her around even though they were miserable together."

"Then I hide it well," Austin confessed with a laugh. "When I first started working for her, I made an absolute fool of myself." He shook his head recalling the way he had tried everything to make her happy.

The only one who seemed immune to her was Sovenn. He also remembered her cold, calculating look when she heard the news of his death, and the way the air in the board room had almost rippled with fear and awe. It was like watching a storm form, but not knowing when or where it would hit. Then she had excused herself and the scare was over.

"We all have things in our past we'd wish were different, but if they were, we wouldn't be who we are today," he replied with a smile. Kaori was so damned sexy when she smiled. Was it a fox thing? or just as Kaori thing?

"It helps when I have something to smile about," he called after here.

Inside the house, Nixie gave the realtor the grand tour. She could tell by the gleam in his eye that he was excited about the commission he would earn when he finally sold the chalet. That was fine with her; Nixie didn't care very much about the money. If he was motivated by the pay day, that only meant it would be off her hands sooner. The details of business settled, they returned to the front and shook hands before saying goodbye.

Nixie came back to the car just after Kaori had stepped out.

"Good, you're ready to go. Come inside and I'll discuss what it is you'll be doing for me," she said. "Austin, stay with the car please. We won't be long."

Inside, Nixie closed the door.

"Now, this is where you come in," Nixie sighed. "Let me just get this all out. I'm...a selkie. A seal woman. I met my late husband on the beach in Scotland and like the gullible idiot I let him near my seal coat. He took it and hid it, and just like that I was beholden to him. I couldn't leave him if I wanted to. I couldn't even cheat on him. That's why I endured 10 years of marriage. I had no choice. Now, I need to find where he hid my seal coat so I can finally go home." She looked out one of the windows wistfully. "Anyway, I need you to use your street savvy skills to find every nook and cranny he could have hidden it. And I need you to find it. If Austin or another man touches it...it'll be Sovenn all over again."