He needed to find the right way to tell her that there was no way she could scare him away. There was no way anything between them could happen too fast or too soon, not as far as he was concerned.
But did he want to do that in a gift-wrapping booth, even an after-hours one? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it was wrong to hold out for the perfect moment, but then, this was the kind of conversation you could only ever have once.
“I think according to these kids, we alreadyareold together,” he said softly. “I don’t mind it either.”
The self-assured sparkle came back into her eyes, and he thought the blush was now more pleasure than embarrassment.
“Well, good,” she said. “Anyway, all I was saying was that you’re ... incredible. I feel like you don’t know that.”
“I think I’m okay,” Wade protested. “Just not necessarily that interesting.”
Mira framed his face with her hands. “Listen to me. You’re unbelievably interesting.”
“You just mean because I’m the only—”
“I do not,” she said fiercely. “I don’t mean just because you’re the only ... person like you I’ve ever met.” She had already absorbed the importance of being cautious about talking openly about shifters. “I don’t mean that at all. I think thatsomewhere along the line, you convinced yourself that just because you’re ‘the responsible one,’ you’re less interesting than Petey, and that’s just not true. Yes, you’re responsible—and Ilikeresponsible.”
That was probably true. Mira’s steady, consistent podcast release schedule went back years at this point, and she couldn’t juggle all that work if she wasn’t on top of things herself.
“—but being responsible doesn’t mean you’re not fun. You can’t have funwithoutsome kind of responsibility, not forever. You need a beat or a rhythm if you want to dance, right? You’re the beat.”
He was the beat. He liked that.
“And you’re the dance, too. Most importantly, you’re Wade, not just somebody’s older brother. You’re funny and sweet and artistic, and you dance with sugar-high little kids, troll Marsh, befriend cats, and blow my mind in bed. My family is going toloveyou. The last thing I would ever need to do islowertheir expectations before they meet you. You’ll be lucky if they don’t try to adopt you on the spot. Okay?”
It would probably be best not to argue with our mate, his polar bear suggested.Especially not when she’s speaking in our favor.
You know what?Wade thought back.I agree. Besides, if Mira’s our mate, we can’t be allthatboring. She’s right. Besides, she’s responsible too, and she’s the furthest thing from stodgy.
Maybe together, they had a rhythm they could dance to for the rest of their lives.
“Okay,” he said, feeling a slow smile spread across his face.
“Okay,” Mira repeated. She let go of him. “Sorry for all the intensity. I get kind of heated when I’m on a subject I really care about. I’ve gotten bad reviews for it before.”
“Not from me.”
His polar bear seconded that with a growl.We would never give our mate bad reviews! She is a five-star mate!
Wade was about to lean in for a kiss, and only his keen shifter senses stopped him. This wasn’t the first time he’d heard distant footsteps during their conversation, but before now, they had always been ambling past.
These steps were slower but far more purposeful, and they were getting closer by the second.
“Something’s up,” Wade murmured.
He breathed in through his nose and caught a whiff of something that didn’t seem to belong with all the fake snow, Christmas trees, peppermint, and gingerbread. It was ... animal. That wouldn’t have been all that weird at an outdoor mall like Honey Brook, where people often brought their dogs along on their shopping trips, but this didn’t smell like a dog. It was wilder than that. Besides, most of the stores had closed by now.
Mira was listening now too. Her brow furrowed. “What’s that noise?”
Footsteps, Wade started to say, but then his mouth snapped closed.
Because that wasn’t entirely accurate, was it? If he listened more closely, he could tell that the footsteps were accompanied by a much stranger noise, one that was as out-of-place here as that gamy wild animal smell.
Suddenly, he understood more than he’d like to.
“Hoofbeats,” he said.
Chapter Fourteen
