That took her to the end of the railing. She looked back. Second coat now? She realized she did not want this day to end. However, her bucket of primer was not in agreement. There was barely a half inch left. When she straightened up, she felt Alejo’s attention, and turned to catch the tail end of a searching look. He smiled ruefully, then said, “I hope I’m not boring you. I probably ought to have asked before.”
“Not at all,” she exclaimed. “I love stories like yours, all with happy endings. I always wanted a pet, if I couldn’t have a brother or sister. As a kid, I thought this would be the best place in the world for a dog, or maybe even a cat, though it might not like the beach the way a dog would. But Mom was allergic to dogs, and Dad to cats, so… But Sam adores animals. All kinds.”
“Does he,” Alejo said, his smile wide. Then he added, “I did, too, at his age.”
Wendy became aware of the lengthening shadows. The sea breeze was rising, blowing papers and bits around, and in the shadows, a chill fingered its way between her cotton top and her flesh.
She forced a smile. “We won’t be able to see before too long. And I should start dinner, even if there’s nobody but two people to eat it.”
“Cleanup it is,” Alejo said. “However, I have a suggestion. You’ve been a champion all week, cooking for the crowd. How about going out somewhere, and letting someone else do KP?”
Going out? Like—
She clamped down hard on the words A DATE. That was getting ahead of herself in a big way. And what if she ran into Bill? It would make things so awkward, and he would never stop making snide references—and dropping hints like falling pianos that if she hooked up with some yahoo, he would sue for custody. Though he was already shorting her every month, with horrible passive-aggressive lists of things he insisted he was doing for Sam, to the penny. Fighting him was a losing battle.
“Hey, you all right?”
Alejo was right next to her, his voice mild, soft. Concerned.
The sheer kindness made her throat tighten, but she drew a deep breath and banished the pity party. “I think I’m too pooped to go out,” she said with her best sparkly smile.You’d be proud of me, Mom.
“I know, let’s order in. Do you have a favorite restaurant that does takeout? We could kick back and watch a flick. What kind of films do you like? I’m partial to comedies, but I’ll watch anything.”
A question Bill had not asked once in all the years of their marriage. And it hadn’t even occurred to her until the end to wonder about that.
But that part of her life was over, over, over. She was a coward about facing him somewhere in town, but one thing for sure, he wouldn’t set foot in Godiva’s house. “Comedy is great,” she said. “And I love any kind of food. Thank you!”
He ordered Southwestern cuisine, which they both liked, and then they debated several choices of comedy.
“New York Nihilism and Cocktailsis supposed to be very witty,” she said conscientiously. “The critics pannedHippie Road Trip, saying its laughs are high school humor.”
“Which do you prefer?” Alejo asked. “I have to be honest here. While I’m okay with the occasional New York tuxedo party film, if there’s something with a pie fight in it, I’m going to choose the pie fight every time. Sometimes I think my sense of humor froze at twelve years old.”
Bill sneered in memory, but she mentally flipped him off.
“Pie fights it is,” she said. “Ineverget tired of them.”
NINE
ALEJO
They laughed until they got hiccoughs. And every time their eyes met, they whooped some more. Wendy held her arms against her middle, her face crimson, her eyes bright with laughter tears, and Alejo thought, I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful.
He wanted to propose right then and there, amid the empty take-out boxes, with the weird collection of unlikely characters in the old hippie bus cavorting merrily through the wreckage of the comic-book billionaire villain’s plans.
But as soon as the film ended, she seemed to catch herself, and closed in again, making herself busy cleaning up as she avoided his gaze.
A step at a time. He kept having to repeat it to himself—and to his lion especially. He was absolutely sure she was the one: the entire world had changed, colors deeper, scents richer, intensified by the hum of anticipation. He firmly kept himself shielded from hearing her thoughts, though the mate bond felt like it was strengthening by the hour. And yet, in real-time, Wendy was so wary. And he knew she had reason to be.
He helped as much as he could, but her flickering smile before she went to her solitary bed caused him to lean against the wall and pound his fist lightly against the doorframe in frustration. He wanted so badly to take her sweet face between his hands and kiss away that anxious tightness in her forehead. He wanted to taste her lips, and to lose himself in her warm, lush body.
A groan escaped him. Thinking about her body was not helping. He cast a glance of loathing at the perfectly innocent guest bed, knowing he would never be able to sleep.
So he opened the French doors to the cool night. Two steps and he shifted, arrowing up over the trees. Wind flowed through his mane as he worked his wings, then he decided to change modes, and his leonine body smoothed into his golden serpent with the long, spiked tail. His speed as the serpent was that much faster. He streamed through the night, but he could not outrace his thoughts.
At least she likes animals, he reminded himself. Though how long was it going to take before he could ever get near the subject of shifters? He had yet to win a real date with her as a man!
As a chimera, his sense of the mythic world overlying the everyday sharpened and blended. He became aware of another shifter in the sky, and extended his awareness. Ah, it was the same benign mythic signature he’d sensed on his arrival. He knew his dad had spoken to the local mythic shifters, one of whom was a Guardian.
