"You think?" Irina beamed up at him, and they finally made their way back to shore, waving good-naturedly at the guy who'd whistled at them. "So you learned to shop for your size, is that what you were telling me?"
"In a way, yeah. I learned a lot about classic lines and what looks good from this menswear lad, anyway, and about the wonders of alteration." Mick's eyes widened. "Alteration's brilliant. Next time I'm home for a spell I'm finding a sewing class, it'd only be magic to alter my own clothes. I'm sure I'll get laughed at, a big auld lad like me in a sewing class?—"
"I willbiteanybody who laughs at you," Irina said with considerable ferocity. "I think it's amazing you want to learn to alter clothes. I'd sew myself to the machine, or something. But I'm tiny, and it's easier to find clothes that just fit me."
"Does that mean youdon'twant me to go shopping for you?"
"Oh no," Irina said hastily. "I don't like shopping at all. I absolutely want you to do it for me. With me. However that would work."
"Not to be stereotypical, but what about women liking to shop?"
"Not to be stereotypical, but what about men hating to shop?"
Mick laughed. "Fair. Fair. I do like it, especially for other people. C'mon then, will we go back into Cork and shop for you?"
"Only if it involves ice cream first."
Mick's eyes widened. "Oh, no, if it's ice cream you want, we'll start here. There's a brilliant shop down the town square. They've the best honeycomb ice cream I've ever had."
"I've never even heard of honeycomb ice cream but am willing to try anything once. Twice if I like it."
Twenty minutes later, finishing a scoop in the brightly-colored alley that hosted the ice cream shop, a bakery, and an art gallery, among other things, Irina looked sadly at the last bits of the cone. "Twice if I like it, but not twice in a row. I could barely finish this one."
"I volunteer to finish all the ice cream you can't eat," Mick said nobly.
Irina snickered. "I imagine so. Your body mass must be twice mine, even without turning into a gorilla. Do gorillas like ice cream?"
"Yes, but it's bad for them."
"It's bad for everybody!"
"There's that," Mick said with a grin. "Next time maybe you can share with him."
Irina blinked. "That sounds…I don't even know how that sounds. Unusual," she decided, and then, as they walked back along the seafront toward Mick's car, asked, "So that was really you at the wildlife park? What's that about? Are all the animals there shifters?"
Mick smiled out at the harbor, then down at Irina herself. "Not by half, no, but it's a brilliant place to go if you want a chance to be your other self for a while without drawing attention. And it's a cheap way to travel if you're a shifter on holiday. The wildlife park gets an exotic animal for a week or so, and the shifter doesn't have to pay for a hotel."
"But if they spend all their day times at the wildlife park they don't get to see anything!" Irina protested.
"Ah, they'll go in for the morning or an afternoon and then take the rest of the day off," Mick explained. "After all, how often have you been at a zoo and not seen several animals? Nobody thinks anything of it if the gorilla's gone for the afternoon. They just figure it's in the back sleeping."
"Oh. Oh, yeah, of course. That's smart." It took a few minutes to drive out of Kinsale, the harbor sparkling blue until they were enveloped in a canopy of trees casting green shadows on the twisty road. Irina sighed happily. "It's so pretty. I suppose you're used to it, but it's a little magical to me. My grandma was from Ireland, and she used to tell me about it all."
"Oh?" Mick glanced her way, though most of his attention was on the road. "Have you citizenship, then?"
"I do, yeah. I could come live here, technically, but I feel like I'm lucky to even be able to visit." She fell silent, watching the shadows change as they drove. Shecouldlive here. Much more easily than Mick could live in the US. Mick, her fated mate. "Do I get to say you're my fated mate, too?" she asked suddenly. "Or is that just the shifter side of things?"
Mick gave her another glance, this one startled, before he smiled. "I'd say you can, although only to shifters."
"Obviously." Irina grinned. "I guess it'd just be true love for us regular people."
"True humans," Mick said with another smile. "But yeah, I'd say so."
"I don't know what I'd do here," Irina said, following her own line of thought. "I work in a grocery store, and I still live at home, so I don't have a lot of expenses, but I get the idea Ireland's pretty expensive, and I'd need to figure out how I'dlivehere."
"It is expensive," Mick said with obvious reluctance. "Loads of us here still live at home. So do I, actually, when I'm here. There's no sense in keeping an apartment when I'm only here two or three months of the year, and not even all at once."
So they definitely weren't going to move in together immediately, fated mates or no. Irina couldn't decide if that was disappointing or a relief. A little of both, clearly. "How does it work?" she asked softly. "When your fated mate is from the other side of the world?"
