“There’s a good boy! Now, don’t worry, I won’t be long.”

  She bustled off, and at the sound of the door closing, Tip poked his head out again, instantly alert. His chances of escape, presuming he remained in this form, depended on the chambermaid coming in while Mrs. Helpful was at breakfast. It was a narrow enough window of opportunity as it was, so he couldn’t afford to miss it. He’d have to keep his eyes peeled for the first signs of their arrival, ready to spring into action. Insofar as a tortoise could spring, of course, which admittedly wasn’t very far at all.

  Tip lumbered to the hanging edge of the bedspread and peered through the tassels. No matter how long it took, he’d be ready. He yawned—last night was definitely catching up with him. But he couldn’t give in to it: he had to stay awake. Just a little…bit…longer…

  Tip awoke with a jolt. A noise like a Boeing 747 assaulted his eardrums, and a reek of overheated dust led a parallel attack on his nose. Drawing back and blinking rapidly, Tip realized it was the chambermaid with the vacuum cleaner. Fortunately for him, she stopped just short of the fringe of the bedspread, presumably working on the principle that out of sight was out of mind. It was a principle that Tip heartily approved of at that moment.

  When she moved round the bed, Tip risked a peek out into the room. Yes—he was in luck. The door was propped open. Did he dare…? This could be his only chance of escape. What would be worse—blowing it by acting too soon, or missing it entirely by acting too late? Tip was in an agony of indecision, but fortunately for him, the chambermaid gave one last half-hearted go over the carpet by the door and then disappeared into the bathroom.

  Hoping Mrs. Helpful would be proved wrong as to the amount of time she’d spend in there, Tip took his chance. Adrenaline coursing sluggishly through his veins, he lumbered through the door and down the corridor. What if the chambermaid saw him? The best that could happen was that she’d put him back in the room. What if she called the RSPCA, and he ended up in a cage somewhere? How the hell would he explain that when he got back to his usual form? Tip needed to find cover. Somewhere he could wait out the change. And, hopefully, somewhere he could find some clothes to borrow before he got arrested for indecent exposure.

  He thought fast—at least, a damn sight faster than his stubby little legs could carry him. His best bet would be to hide in another room, he realized. Rolling his eyes at himself, metaphorically speaking as it wasn’t very easy to do physically in tortoise form, he retraced his steps and, daringly, clambered with some difficulty onto the trolley the chambermaid had left outside the room, hiding himself amongst the clean linens.

  There was a mind-numbing wait while the woman did an unnecessarily thorough job on Tip’s kidnapper’s bathroom—well, all right, maybe the bath did need a particularly good scrub this morning, but it wasn’t Tip’s fault; it wasn’t like he could have got out of it to go to the toilet—but apart from that, the plan went swimmingly. Tip was able to ride on the trolley to the next room and hop off while the chambermaid was occupied in the bathroom. He swiftly hid under the bed with the dust bunnies, hoping the zeal she’d shown in the previous room wouldn’t extend to vacuuming properly under there for a change.

  Once again his luck held. Tip was left in peace, and the dust bunnies lived to dance and shag another day under the badly-sprung mattress. When he was sure the woman had gone for good, Tip poked his head out cautiously from under the candlewick bedspread. He was in a single room, barely less cramped than his shell. The shirt on the sole, hard-backed chair and the socks left carelessly on the square inch of nondescript carpet indicated it was a man’s room. Excellent—Tip would be able to steal some clothes when he finally changed back. He lumbered forth, eager to see what else he could deduce about the man in whose shoes he would shortly be standing.

  There was a paperback on the bedside table, placed so that the end of it protruded a couple of inches over the edge. Studying what he could see of the cover for a moment, Tip was almost certain he was looking at the naked man adorning the latest James Lear novel. If so, that said rather interesting things about his unwitting, absent host. Frustratingly, the paperback’s spine was turned at an angle from him.

  Tip had only got halfway through his copy of the book before Janey had confiscated it, telling him that even if it was his tea break, that sort of stuff was far too racy to read in front of the customers. Maybe if he could get it down somehow, perhaps by clawing his way up the bedspread, Tip could find some way of turning the pages? He was desperate to find out who Mitch would shag next. Still, better make sure it was the right book before he made all the effort.

  Tip was craning his neck and had almost made out the first word of the blurb when the door opened and a man walked in. Which might not have been a disaster—except that at that moment Tip’s chelonian curse ran out of juice, and he changed back to human.

  The book went flying as Tip shot up to what, in his case, passed for man size. Wobbling slightly as he remembered how to balance on two feet, Tip stood, hands cupped in front of his bits in the traditional oh-my-god-I’m-naked pose, staring at the best-looking man he’d ever seen. At least if he was going to die here, he thought fatalistically, he’d have something nice to look at as he went.

  The tall, dark and (in the circumstances) rather worryingly well-muscled stranger goggled. Tip cringed, past experience having been harrowing enough to lead him to expect nothing good.

  “Um,” the man said. “Would you like to borrow some clothes?”

  * * * *

  Clothed, for want of a better word, in a pair of trousers several sizes too big for him and a T-shirt with pretensions to become a dress, Tip sat on the bed, both hands wrapped around a cup of tea, into which his host had thoughtfully put several sugars.

  “Er, sorry about invading your room like that,” Tip said, feeling an apology was probably in order. “I was trying to escape from an old lady who tortoise-napped me. I’m Tip, by the way.”

  The stranger laughed. “Your name’s Tip? Tip the tortoise? Isn’t that just encouraging cruelty to animals?” He appeared utterly relaxed as he sprawled on the bed next to Tip, propped up on one elbow in a way that made his shoulder muscles bulge distractingly. His short, dark hair was immaculately in place and, as far as Tip could tell, without benefit of product. In fact he looked so bloody wholesome Janey wouldn’t hesitate to put him on the Tiptree’s Treats menu.

  Tip narrowed his eyes. “It’s short for Tiptree. My surname.”

  “So what’s your first name?”

  Tip glared all the more fiercely for knowing the effect was entirely ruined by the reddening of his cheeks. “Tarquin,” he ground out from between clenched teeth.

  His host grimaced in sympathy, but his deep blue eyes twinkled. “Tip it is, then. I’m Steve.”

  Bloody typical. Not only was Steve unbelievably good-looking, he had a perfectly sensible name to boot. He’d probably turn out to be rich and intelligent, with a fantastic career in brain surgery or fashion photography or both. Although probably not in beekeeping, which had been the number one of Tip’s three dream careers as a kid. For some reason, everyone always laughed when Tip told them that.

  “Meet a lot of tortoise shape-shifters, do you?” Tip asked, unable to keep a sullen tone out of his voice and to be honest, not really trying. “You seem to be taking this awfully well.”

  Steve smiled and sat up, one broad shoulder brushing Tip’s in disconcerting fashion. “Well, my family’s from the island originally—one of my ancestors was the first landlord of the Hare and Hounds pub up on Arreton down. I spent a lot of time here as a kid—you kind of get used to unusual things happening.”

  “You do?” Tip wondered aloud. He’d lived on the Isle of Wight most of his life, and he’d still been woefully unprepared for sudden shape-shifting. Perhaps he should have got out more.

  “So, how did you develop this, ah, interesting ability?” Steve continued.

  “It’s not an ability, it’s a curse.” Tip’s shoulders slumped, and the neck of the over-large T-shirt slipped right off one of them. He hitched it up hurriedly. “All I wanted was to do a bit of shopping. I found these beautiful tie-dyed skirts in a little shop down at Arreton Barns Craft Village, lovely shades of pink and purple they were, but I just couldn’t decide which one to go for.”

  Steve’s eyes widened, and he drew back almost imperceptibly to stare at Tip.

  “It was going to be a birthday present for my sister,” Tip added hurriedly. Could he look any more like a girl? “Anyway, it was closing time, and I knew the woman just wanted to make the sale, pack up the shop, and go home, but she was really getting on my nerves, tapping her feet and looking at her watch, and it just made it harder to choose. So in the end I said I’d leave it for now, and she got really mad at me! Said if I enjoyed going slow and wasting people’s time, she’d make it easy for me, and then she started muttering strange words at me, and all of a sudden poof! I was a tortoise.” Tip stopped to draw breath. “It was awful. I didn’t even know what had happened at first—I felt all funny, and everything went dark, but that was because I was buried in my clothes. I didn’t realise I was, well, tortoise-shaped until she picked me up and put me out the door like a strange cat that had walked in and sicked up on the carpet. I thought it was going to be forever,” he added, shuddering in memory.

  Steve nodded sympathetically. “How did you change back?”

  Tip shrugged and had to hitch his T-shirt up again. “It just seemed to wear off, several hours later. It was dark by then, thank God. I hadn’t gone far from the shop, obviously, and so once I was human again I climbed in through an open window and grabbed my clothes back. Then I drove home, had a stiff drink, and tried to forget all about it.”

  “And then it happened again?” Steve’s shoulders once more nudged companionably against Tip’s.

  Tip tried to ignore the effect the contact was having on his groin. “Yeah, only without the mad old witch mumbling at me. Since then it’s been two or three times a week, with never more than about five minutes’ warning. You’ve no idea how much of a pain it is. I can’t travel by plane in case it happens, swimming’s out, too—I’m not an aquatic species, I’d probably sink like a stone—and as for my social life…” Tip trailed off, reluctant to go through his sorry history of foreshortened dates. “I’m not normally this pathetic and whiney,” he added in the face of all the evidence.

  “Of course you’re not!” Steve said bracingly. “You know what? You need to stop letting this get you down. Come out—”

  “Do NOT say come out of your shell,” Tip ground out, tight-lipped.

  “—for lunch with me,” Steve finished smoothly, as if he’d never been interrupted.

  Tip blinked. “Really? I’ll warn you now, I may not make it to dessert.”

  “I guess dating’s a bit of a problem, huh?”

  “Just a bit. Last bloke I had to run out on still isn’t speaking to me. Um. That is the latest James Lear over there, isn’t it?” Realizing a little late he’d just outed himself, Tip crossed his fingers. He’d learned from experience a lot of men were all right with the naked bit unless he let slip he was gay, at which point things would tend to go quickly and appallingly pear-shaped. And okay, Steve had just asked him out for lunch, but Tip had found to his chagrin that wanting lunch with a bloke and wanting rampant mansex with him were two very different things. The fact he was wearing this guy’s clothes would probably make it worse…

  Steve was frowning. Tip braced himself for flight or flattening. “To be honest, I think he’s got a new one out now.” The frown broke into a sunny smile. “Still, I like the ones with Mitch in the best—how about you?”

  “Thank God!” Tip grinned somewhat moronically in relief. “I mean, yes. I think. Um, what was the question?”

  “You know, you’re really very cute,” Steve said, brushing his fingers along Tip’s jaw line.

  Tip swallowed, wondering if it was a good thing or bad that the bagginess of the clothes he was currently swamped in would completely hide the effect the contact was having on him. He leaned toward Steve, and those warm, soft fingers continued to caress his skin, the aroma of cheap hotel soap and expensive aftershave teasing Tip’s nose and bringing the promise of earthier scents to come.

  Just as he was wondering if Steve was going to kiss him, there was a frantic knocking on the door. Tip jumped, then remembered he was (a) human and (b) decent, and relaxed. He cursed under his breath at the interruption.

  “Come in,” Steve called.

  The door burst open in a bustle of floral prints and sensible shoes. “Oh, Stephen! There you are! Something dreadful’s happened!”

  Tip blinked.

  It was Mrs. Bloody Helpful.

  “Calm down, Aunty May,” Steve said in soothing tones. “I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

  Aunty May? Mrs. Helpful was Steve’s aunt? Tip hurriedly reviewed what he’d said about her to Steve. He didn’t think he’d made any mortal insults.

  She wrung her hands in time-honoured amateur dramatics tradition. “We haven’t got time for tea! We have to find him!”

  Realizing just which “him” she must be talking about, Tip tried to make himself look as un-tortoise-like as possible. He comforted himself with the memory of Janey telling him he looked more ferrety than reptilian, although oddly enough he hadn’t really appreciated the comment at the time.

  “Oh—I’m so sorry, Stephen, I didn’t realize you had company…” She peered through her varifocals at Tip, and her watery eyes narrowed. “Don’t I know you, young man?”

  Tip swallowed.

  “This is Tip,” Steve said quickly. “And I really don’t think we need to worry about the tortoise.”

  Tip looked from one to the other of them as if they were on centre court at Wimbledon and he had a front-row seat. He frowned. “Did you just wink at her? And did you tap your nose at him?” Tip scrambled to his feet, holding up the too-large trousers with one hand. “Is this some kind of deranged conspiracy?”

  “No—” said Mrs. Helpful.

  “Yes, it is,” said Steve at exactly the same moment. “But not a bad one, honestly.”

  “Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?” Tip asked suspiciously, trying to edge toward the door without tripping over his too-long trouser legs. “Stay away from me!” he yelped as Steve got to his feet.

  “Just give me five minutes to explain. Please, Tip,” Steve said, playing the wholly unfair card of gazing at Tip winningly out of stunningly clear blue eyes whilst saying his name in rich, mellow tones. “I promise you’ll be free to go, afterward.”

  “I’m listening,” Tip said reluctantly, the memory of Steve’s touch obviously interfering with his capacity for rational thought.

  “Right. Well.” Steve hesitated, running his hand through his thick, dark hair. “It’s about that curse you mentioned. The fact is…Well, the witch who cursed you is my aunty.”

  “No, she’s not,” Tip objected. “I’m not a total idiot—I think I’d have recognized the woman who turned me into a tortoise!”

  “I’ve got it!” Mrs. Helpful said triumphantly. “You’re the young man from the café!” Her eyes widened, and her mouth made an O shape.

  “Yes, Aunty May.” Steve turned back to Tip. “And no, not Aunty May—her sister, my Aunty June. She’s the one with the shop in Arreton Barns. I’m afraid she can get a bit irritable—”

  “Irritable? Irritable?” Tip exploded. “I’d hate to see what she does when she’s really annoyed!”

  Steve grinned unexpectedly. “Believe me, you don’t want to know. Anyway, she felt terrible about what she’d done to you afterward, so she’s been trying to find you and put it right.”

  Tip couldn’t help feeling she mustn’t have been trying all that hard. “So where do you and Mrs. Helpful come in?”

  “Mrs.—oh! You mean Aunty May?” Steve’s eyebrows rose in amusement, and next to him, his aunt preened, clearly taking it for a compliment. “Well,” Steve continued, “poor old Aunty June’s getting on a bit—her location charms aren’t what they used to be. So in the end she asked Aunty May to come over and help out. Aunty May’s a dab hand at all kinds of dowsing, aren’t you, Aunty?” He paused. “Actually, we were expecting you to be permanently tortoise-shaped. And tortoise-brained, come to that. Aunty June’s hexes clearly aren’t what they used to be, either. And she must have forgotten all about your clothes. It gave me a bit of a shock to see you change back in front of me, I can tell you!”

  “I’d certainly have thought twice about sharing a hotel room with you last night if I’d known, young man!” Aunty May put in, folding her hands primly in her lap.

  Tip stared at her for a moment in frank disbelief that she could ever have thought for one moment her virtue was in danger, even if he hadn’t been gay. “So if she’s here to find me, what about you?” he asked, turning to Steve.

  “Well,” Steve said again, lounging back on the bed and smiling up at Tip. He got dimples when he smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled up in a way that did curious things to Tip’s insides. “Aunty June was worried you might get a bit, ah, vengeful once the curse had been removed. So she asked me to come over for the de-cursing, and Aunty May got me the hotel room.”

  “She got you to come over—to defend her against me?” Tip actually felt quite flattered. He didn’t think anyone had ever been frightened of him before.

  “Poor dear,” Aunty May put in, “her memory’s obviously worse than we thought.”

  Tip’s ego, never very robust to start with, deflated rapidly. “So, let’s just see if I’ve got this straight. You did some kind of spell to find me, then went along to the café and tortoise-napped me so you could take me back to your sister, and you—” he turned to look at Steve “—came along to make sure I didn’t beat up a defenceless little old lady, despite the fact that said defenceless little old lady is actually a witch who can turn people into reptiles?”

  “Well, she does mammals, too, and I think in her youth she once turned someone into a garden gnome, but essentially, yes.” Steve nodded, smiling as if this were the most natural thing in the world.