“That’s right, you’re a teacher. At the same school I went to as a kid.” Zane smiled again to hide a wince. That had been a dumb thing to say.
It’s fine,his wolf said with lazy patience.She’s your mate. She thinks you’re wonderful.
Zane actually grimaced. Those words,fated mate, were the first ones that had leapt to his mind when he’d seen Ms. Hawthorne, it was true. That was shifter legend, after all, the kind of thing shifter kids heard about the way true humans heard stories of true love. But like true love, Zane didn’t much believe in, or even like, the whole idea of fated mates. He wasn’t at all sure he thought anybodycouldknow instantly that another person was the right one for them.
Which didn’t mean he wasn’t incredibly, deeply attracted to Victoria Hawthorne, because he’d never seen a woman who made his heart leap like she did.
Or one who’d taken his knees out like she had, either, although he imagined almost anybody falling out of a window on top of him would have donethat, at least.
He had the sense of the wolf opening one eye to give him a half-hearted but exasperated glare before drifting back to sleep. Zane knew at least some other shifters had extremely opinionated animal selves, and could never decide if he was envious of them or not. It would behelpfulif his wolf would take notice of people, remember their scent or sound or anything that would allow Zane to identify individuals more easily. Instead, the rangy beast inside him mostly wanted to nap unless they’d shifted to wolf form and it couldrun.
Victoria was saying, “I assume it’s both changed a lot and not at all since you were there. Look, you’ve got to be freezing and your suit is going to be soaked through at any minute. Do you want to come back to my apartment and—well, at least hang it up to dry? I assume it can’t go in a dryer.”
Zane winced again, visibly this time. “You assume correctly. My entire wardrobe is line-dry only.” He cast a glance toward the front of the school, then back toward the B&B that might well have media hanging out around it all night. “Honestly, I would be grateful. I’ll ask Dion to text me if the vultures fly away.”
“I cannot imag—well, no, that’s not true, I can because I know people who do, but—I can’timagineliving a life that involved having to hide from the media. I’d lose my mind.”
“And I’m not even a celebrity.” Zane smiled briefly at Victoria as they picked their way out of the half-frozen mud and hurried away from the school building.
She made a disbelieving sound. “There’s an awful lot of media presence here that says otherwise.”
“They’re here for you,” Zane said with confidence. “The girl from my home town?—”
“I’m notfromVirtue.”
“No, I would have remembered you if you were.” Zane was confident of that, too. He might not haverecognizedher, but he would haverememberedher. He wondered if he would have felt this kind of attraction back in high school, if she’d been from Virtue.
No,his wolf said with a vague note of impatience.You only recognize your mate when it’s time.
If you say so,Zane replied uncertainly. There had been no fated mates or even much love in the house he’d grown up in; his parents had met and married like any true humans did, and divorced again like many other people did, too.
“Nah, I was tall and skinny and awkward in high school. You wouldn’t have remembered me.”
“I’ve wanted to be a fashion designer since I was nine,” Zane said with a smile. “I definitely would have remembered a tall skinny girl, especially if she let me make clothes for her. Tall and slim are great for catwalk style modeling and clothes. I had a friend here, Sarah Ekstrom, who even in high school had a really retro vibe and I used to make her clothes. She wasn’t catwalk-shaped, but I learned so much about the structure of clothing making all these forties and fifties styles for her.”
“The librarian?” Victoria’s voice rose in surprise, and so did Zane’s eyebrows.
“Really? She’s back in—really? That’s great!” A grin split his face. “She always wanted to be a librarian and used to say she was going to come back to Virtue and whip the library into shape. She did it?”
“There can’t be two retro-vintage-loving Sarah Ekstroms from Virtue, can there? Yeah, she’s great. She runs a daycare out of the library. Unofficially, but I think probably eighty percent of the kids in my class spent at least one day a week in the library daycare from age two onward. It’s amazing. All these little readers, and most of them are insanely creative, too. Sarah goes all out for every holiday and the kids come into kindergarten and first grade knowing how to use scissors and glue and—” Victoria burst out laughing. “And reading. You know how there are usually pictures of shapes and animals and things around classroom walls for little kids?”
Zane, so delighted with the news that Sarah still lived in Virtue that he’d almost forgotten he was cold, nodded his enthusiasm. “Yeah, of course? I mean, I’d forgotten until you just said so, but yes?”
“Right, so I got here—I’m a long-term temp, I arrived about ten hours before school started and won’t be in Virtue next year?—”
Zane’s stomach fell through the bottom of his shoes. Not that he had any intention of staying in Virtue a single minute longer than he had to, but the idea that he might lose track of Victoria was actually blood-curdling.
You won’t lose her, his wolf said with the same lazy impatience.Youcan’tlose your fated mate.
What if ‘fate’ isn’t as sure about things as you are?Zane didn’t expect, and didn’t get, an answer, but that was okay,because he was listening to Victoria’s voice brighten as she told her story, and it was wonderful.
“—so I got here and I introduced myself to the kids, and I was seeing whether they knew shapes and stuff, and I said, ‘Does anyone know what that shape is?’ about one of the rectangles on the wall. There’s a pause, and then one of the kids says, ‘…a rectangle?’ And that’s really good, right? Lots of kidsdon’tknow their shapes, which is fine, that’s what the early grades are for. So I said, ‘Great job! How did you know that?’” Victoria’s grin stretched across her whole face. “And the kid says, in a tone that suggested I might not be too bright, ‘…because I read the word underneath it?’”
A startled laugh burst from Zane’s chest, and Victoria’s bright pealing laughter joined it. “So that put me in my place, and kind of got me off on the right foot of what to expect from the kids here. And then I met Sarah and realized at least part of why the kids all had a leg up on reading. This is me.” She gestured toward a sidewalk off the main path, and Zane realized suddenly that they’d walked at least half a mile away from the school to an apartment complex he didn’t remember.
“This is new.” He followed her up the slick concrete, both of them skidding their feet along the black ice instead of stepping normally. “Or at least, new since I’ve been h…ere.”Homedidn’t seem appropriate. It never really had.
“Well, it’s definitely notnew-new. Probably fifteen years?” Victoria glanced over her shoulder at him, risking her balance. “The appliances in my apartment all have that ‘not really antiques but seem like it’ vibe. Thank God the mattress is newer than that.”
