“Oh, no rush. You know where I live.”
“Well, I leave for Los Angeles again on Saturday morning, so it’d better be tomorrow.”
“Oh. Sure, right, tomorrow it is, then.”
Vicki rose to walk him to the door, and Zane didn’t think he imagined the note of disappointment in her voice. But fatedmate or not—if it was even real—he had no intention of staying in Virtue a minute longer than he had to, and hedidhave obligations back in Los Angeles. “Great. You’ve got my email. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
She tucked a strand of long golden hair behind her ear as she smiled up at him. “Tomorrow.”
Zane, captivated, gazed down at her a few heartbeats longer than he should, trying to decide if she would punch him if he was audacious enough to kiss her.
His wolf said,No. Zane said,But maybe yes,and hurried out the door before he got up the nerve to find out which one of them was right.
CHAPTER 7
Vicki told herself she was an adult woman, not a teenager with a crush, and that she was absolutely not going to rush to the front windows of her apartment and peek through the curtains to watch Zane Bellamy walk down the sidewalk.
Shemeanderedto the front windows. Shesauntered. Shewalked at a casual pace. She did not, by anybody’s definition of the word,rush.
He was gone by the time she got there.
An absolutely ridiculous flash of disappointment crashed over her, although she recognized it as silly and managed a laugh at herself. Also, she had to be kind of impressed by the speed at which he’d slid down the sidewalk in those dress shoes. If she’d been wearing them, it would have taken her ten minutes to get from the door to the main sidewalk. Or maybe men’s dress shoes had better traction than women’s did, in which case she might start wearing them.
For a moment she envisioned wearing shiny black patent leather men’s shoes with whatever dress Zane was going to make her, and laughed. Maybe she’d stick with heels after all.
Her phone buzzed with a text as she headed for bed, and she picked it up to read a note from her brother:didja meet him, huh, huh, what’d you think???
I think it’s 2:30am, you big nerd, what are you doing texting me!It was only 11:30pm in California, where he was, but he knew what time zone she was in! Vicki put the phone on silent, like that would stop her from checking to see if Chris had texted again, and went to bed. To her complete surprise, exhaustion trumped excitement, and she slept like a log for the four hours until her alarm went off.
There were three more texts from her brother, two defending his time zone versus hers, and a third asking what kind of dress she was going to have made. It was now 3:30 in the morninghistime, so she didn’t answer for fear of waking him up, “Because,” she told herself tiredly, “you’re a better person than he is.”
The idea of being morally superior to her brother made her giggle enough to get through the morning routine, although to her dismay, she’d forgotten to clean her big boxy wool coat and had to wear a pink puffy jacket out of the house. At least she made it out early enough to get a cup of coffee at the Winter Doughnut Shop, which was the silliest name she’d ever heard for a doughnut shop, but apparently the woman who owned it only ran it in the winter, and so: Winter Doughnut Shop. The caffeine had more or less kicked in by the time she entered the classroom, where roughly thirty bright-eyed six year olds had exactly the same questions her big brother had.
Noah, her secret favorite, had the air of a child both profoundly delighted for her while simultaneously being deeply depressed about the whole situation. “I really would have made you a dress, Ms. Hawthorne. It would have beenbeautiful.”
Vicki laughed and ruffled his hair before she remembered that annoyed him. “I know you would have, Noah, and it would have been.” For a heartbeat she wondered if she could get Zane to come in and do some kind of sewing crafts project with the kids, but remembered with a disappointed shock that he was leaving the following morning.
Besides, world famous fashion designers probably didn’t volunteer their time to come put pieces of pre-cut felt together with embroidery thread and bulbous-nosed plastic sewing needles with a bunch of small children, even though the little stuffed bear and mouse and alien patterns were really cute. “We’ll do a sewing project of our own next week,” she promised Noah, and the class at large.
Enthusiastic chaos immediately erupted, and the rest of the day went as usual, getting a little learning done amidst the work of socializing small wild animals in the general direction of civilized adulthood. A surprising amount of the afternoon involved standing on the playground yelling as an investigation into how sound carried. Vicki’s throat hurt and her voice sounded like she’d been on a three-day bender by the time they were done, but it was great fun.
There was paperwork to do after the kids left, and she didn’t get out of the school until well after five. To her horror, there was still a media presence hanging out, apparently hoping to interview her. “We haven’t talked about the dress yet,” she said to the eager faces and cameras, but the questions that followed her as she hurried away from the school were more about her personal life, whether her personal life had room for Zane Bellamy in it, and whether his presence was a disruption to her personal life.
It would do no good to tell themtheywere the disruption. Vicki flipped the poofy collar of her jacket up like she could hide behind it, and fled to the gastropub around the block from theschool. The owner, a genuinely enormous guy named Steven, looked at the swarm of media on her heels, and shuffled her to the back of the restaurant while somehow keeping his huge, broad-shouldered bulk between her and the reporters. He said, “No cameras,” pleasantly enough, but there was a dangerous growl in his big voice, and most of the media crew people suddenly decided they had somewhere else to be. Vicki collapsed into a two-person booth and put her head on the table. “I don’t know how he does it.”
God, her voice sounded like she’d swallowed a frog. A sympathetic voice said, “How who does it?” as someone slid a menu onto the table in front of her. Vicki lifted her head to see a young woman, name tagRobin, smiling at her. “Not excited about the dress? I would be. Want some water while you think about what you want to eat.”
“Water would be great.” Her voice was so hoarse Vicki winced. “Iamexcited about the dress. Does everybody know about it?”
“It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened to Virtue since…” Robin, who looked about nineteen, made a thoughtful face. “Ever.”
Vicki laughed, although it wasn’t very loud, and sort of hurt. She really needed to take some voice lessons so she wouldn’t do this to herself next time there was a shouting contest at school. “You might be right. It’s a pretty ordinary little town.”
“It has its charms.” Robin waved and went to get water while Vicki studied the menu. Literally everything on it looked unspeakably delicious. The pub had only opened a couple of months before, and from the time or two Vicki had been in, ‘unspeakably delicious’ pretty much covered it in terms of food quality. The chef specialized in what Vicki could only call ‘upscale comfort food,’ and after being chased around the block by reporters, she thought she could use some comfort.
She ordered, and gradually started to relax as it appeared the owner really wasn’t going to let any media harass her. The pub’s layout helped with that: a big front room with a bar counter and a number of booths around the walls, plus a few tables on the floor, and then a double-door-width opening leading into the back half of the restaurant. She was tucked into the back half, against its front wall, so somebody looking for her would actually have to peer directly around the corner to find her at all. It felt surprisingly secure, as well as warm and cozy.
Possibly too warm and cozy for someone who had only had about for hours of sleep. Her eyes drifted shut. She took her phone out to look at it in hopes of keeping herself awake, and found herself ‘studying’ the screen through closed eyes again. Fortunately, Robin came by with water and to take her order before she fell completely asleep. Vicki alternated between drinking water and scrolling through Zane Bellamy designs on the phone, wondering what on earth she should ask for as a gown. Her imagination didn’t seem to be nearly as good as his, when she compared her ideas to his actual creations.
