“So,” Wade said tentatively, “I know I’m supposed to be doing most of the talking, but when you said you were glad you were an only child, you looked ....”
“Like maybe I was rethinking that?”
He nodded.
Mira took a deep breath. “It’s kind of heavy stuff for a first date. Are you sure you’re okay with that?”
He didn’t even have to think about it. “If you don’t mind telling me.”
“No,” she said softly. “I don’t mind. Like I said, I trust you. You’re a heroic last-minute Santa who does carol-oke to save hapless elves in white nightgowns. I feel like I could tell you anything. I’m just rusty when it comes to confiding in people.”
Wade could understand that. Mira’s podcast showed that she had put a lot of effort over the years into developing a polished, professional persona. Silver Screen Romance’s Mira was friendly, even bubbly, but she shared her opinions and insights, not her soul. In the episodes he had listened to, she had never given away anything deeply personal. And running a successful podcast meant doing a lot of networking and self-marketing. She had to spend a lot of time as Silver ScreenRomance Mira, and he could see how that would instill habits that would be hard to break.
But she was breaking them now, for him. The mate-bond might help with that, but it still had to take a lot of courage on Mira’s part.
“My parents need to move into a retirement community,” Mira said. “Especially my stepdad, since he’s the one having health problems—he needs professional care—but I can’t imagine him getting separated from my mom. It would break their hearts. She has to go with him. And nice places with good medical care for the residents cost money.”
Money that one podcaster working on her own didn’t necessarily have.
“So it would be nice to have a sibling to pitch in,” Wade said. “That’s what you were thinking.”
And that was why she needed that bonus she had told him about, the one for staying through the end of the holiday season. That was why she couldn’t fight back when Marsh stuck her in carol-oke hell.
His polar bear had already wanted to gnaw on Marsh’s head for taking advantage of her, and now that he knew just how bad a fix Mira was in—how much she needed the money andwhy—it wanted to even more. And Wade agreed with it.
“A sibling would be a big help right now,” Mira said. “Especially a billionaire sibling. But I can make it if I can just squeak through the next couple of days. I need to get enough for the entrance fee. That’s the tricky part, since it’s a big lump sum that’s due all at once. But the bonus should put me over.”
Wade itched to tell her that he would be happy to cover her parents’ entrance fee for her. He wasn’t a billionaire—not even close—but he made a good living, and he saved a lot. He had no problem breaking into his rainy day fund to help out his mate’s parents.
But he knew that wasn’t the kind of offer Mira would accept, not on a first date. He would have to settle for helping her succeed with the plan she already had ... even if it meant putting up with Marsh.
“That’s a lot to deal with,” Wade said. “I’m guessing it take some of the fun out of Christmas.”
Mira’s laugh quickly turned into a cough. “Does it ever.” She took a gulp of water to wet her throat and chased it with some wine. “But enough about me, honestly. My voice is going out anyway. I’d love a distraction from all this.”
I’m a distraction!Wade’s polar bear said, bursting into his mind like the Kool-Aid Man.
You certainly are, Wade said.
No one could argue with that.
If this wasn’t the perfect time, it was good a time as any.
Besides, no matter how weird his confession made him seem, she wasn’t going to storm out of Nonna’s before she got her pasta. Not after she’d seen how good the garlic bread was.
Here goes nothing.
“Okay,” Wade said, double-checking that no one else was close enough to listen in. “Have you ever heard of shifters?”
Chapter Ten
“Shifters,” Mira said, repeating the word to see if it jogged anything in her memory. “I don’t think so.”
She eyed the remaining piece of garlic bread. It was cruel for Nonna’s to give them an uneven number of slices.
“Want to split this?” she said, before any kind of self-restraint could rear its ugly head. Her voice almost gave out completely on the last word, and she could only hope it would come back soon. In the meantime, filling her mouth with garlic bread would help her remember to give all the talking a rest for a while.
Wade agreed to the split, and Mira prompted him to go on with a little roll of her hand:Okay—shifters. Go.
