"Well, she was an idiot, but also…" Kayla squinted at him. "Don't take this wrong, but I thought you said most players didn't make the big time after they hit thirty?"
"It turns out she was an idiot inmanyways," Jordan agreed dryly. "And I guess I was too, because I stuck with the relationship even when it was pretty clear she was waiting for me to hit the big time. What about you?"
"I'm not waiting to hit the big time," Kayla promised, and Jordan gave a startled laugh.
"I meant relationships, but no? You're not aiming for the A-list?"
She wrinkled her nose. "I knew what you meant. And no, not that either, I just had a breakup and decided I was done with men forever or until fate struck, but also, no, I don't think I am. I was when I was seventeen," she said with a fond, rueful smile at her teenage self. "But now? I've been working steadily for almost twenty years, leading films for six or seven of those. I'm making decent money, and I can walk down most streets without getting mobbed. I've even come back to my hometown without being recognized, which is what I wanted, so yeah, I'm not sure I'd trade up, honestly."
"There is alotto unpack in that," Jordan said, eyes rounding. "I take it the breakup wasn't with…Cyril? And how do you know if it's fate? Andwhydon't you want to be recognized as from Virtue? It's not that bad a town!"
"It's a pretty good little town," Kayla agreed with a brief smile. "Better now than when we were growing up, maybe. But…boy." She fell silent a moment, studying Jordan's long jaw and dark, curious eyes. "No, Cyril and I broke up years ago. This was…his name is Boone, and?—"
Jordan snickered. "Daniel?"
Kayla opened her mouth and, unexpectedly, let out a giggle. "No, sorry, Boone is his first name. He's a good guy, actually, it's just he wanted things I didn't. Or—" She shook her head. "Not even things I didn't want. I just don't have time right now. Marriage, kids, that kind of thing, you know? We could have worked it out, except he got a bee in his bonnet about wanting those rightnow, and I'm like…I have a movie to film, man. I've got another one lined up in four months. If I'm going to have a baby, I either need a script that works with that or some time off!"
"It's a lot harder for women, isn't it?" Jordan asked sympathetically. "In any career, probably, but acting, when your look is a big part of the package…men don't have to think about their bodies changing dramatically during filming."
"Exactly! Boone was having a hard time with that. And now…" Now she had Jordan, though she still had to explain that. And part of her didn't exactly want to, not yet. Not aboutfate, at least. Right now they were just reconnecting like two totally normal people, and it was going really well. Adding in a 'by the way, we're meant to be together forever'just seemed like a lot of unnecessary pressure.
On the other hand, she didn't have to tell him everything all at once, and he was clearly bewildered by Kayla's desire to keepVirtue off the map. Explaining that to him without dropping the whole 'fated mates' thing in his lap was probably enough for one evening. "Anyway, the thing about not wanting people to know where I'm from…there's actually a really good reason for that, J, but you're going to think I'm completely crazy if I just tell you in words."
He leaned forward, gaze solemn. "I'm willing to hear it through interpretive dance."
Kayla burst out laughing, surprising Barney, who leaped down from the chair and gave her an injured look. Still laughing, she reached down to pet him, then grinned at Jordan. "I could probably do that, but it might make everything even weirder. Okay, look, can Barney go out of the room for a few minutes? Behind a door he can't get through," she specified.
"Er, yeah? Sure?" Jordan got up to lead the dog down the hall, where he closed him in the bathroom, then returned to lean in the living room door, eyebrows quirked curiously. "Why did I do that?"
"Because I don't know how he'll react," Kayla admitted. She stood up, shaking Jordan's big loose clothes down around her like she was settling her feathers. "I'm going to tell you why Virtue needs to stay off the radar, and you're not going to believe me, so then I'm going to show you, okay?"
"This is the strangest and most interesting conversation I've ever had. Okay, I'm all ears." Jordan cupped a hand behind one ear demonstratively, then folded it down across his chest again, watching Kayla with bewildered interest.
"You know it's a pretty old town, right? It was chartered in the 1680s or something?" At Jordan's nod, Kayla went on. "Right, so it was a really unusual group of people who lobbied for the charter. A group of shifters, which…have you ever heard of shifters?"
Jordan, eyebrows still up, unfolded his arm again to make a gear box shifting movement like he was driving a manual transmission car. Kayla smiled and shook her head. "Not that kind of shifting. More like werewolves. People who have a human form and an animal form and can shift back and forth between them. Except they can do it at will, not tied to the moon the way werewolves are."
"You're telling me Virtue is full of werewolves? Thatwouldbe a good reason to keep it off the map!"
"Not werewolves. But shifters. Like this." Taking a deep breath, Kayla shifted into her owl form, and waited.
Chapter 12
Kayla Walsh, former high school goth girl cutie, now the most beautiful woman Jordan Rhodes had ever seen, disappeared right there in the middle of his living room, and an owl took her place.
In deference to his masculine dignity, Jordan decided the sound he'd made was a hoarse yelp, not the high-pitched, pre-puberty squeal that he actually emitted. Unfortunately for his masculine dignity, there was no rephrasing that could make the way he jolted backward and fell over on his ass anything except a total physical collapse. He didn't quite fall all the way onto his back in the moment, but after half a frozen second, he let himself drop the rest of the way to the floor, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.
He was pretty sure his mind wasn't playing tricks on him. He was pretty sure Kayla had actually just vanished and an owl had replaced her. There was no movie magic going on in his living room, not even the chemistry they shared, which Jordan was certain was absolutely real. He still lay there, staring at the ceiling and trying to wrap his mind around what he'd just seen.
His heart was beating like a jackhammer, slamming inside his chest and making breathing difficult. His eyes were drying out from the stare, but he was a little afraid to blink. The world had changed between one blink and the next, a minute ago. He wasn't sure he could take another reality shift like that.
There was a very soft, unfamiliar sound in the room, and then the owl walked up beside Jordan to gaze down at him worriedly.The wings, he thought: he'd heard the owl's wings brushing against something, or against itself. That was the strange, soft sound.
It was…it was a verylargeowl. Jordan wasn't enormously familiar with owls in general, but he was pretty confident they didn't usually stand four feet tall. Or maybe not quite four feet, but he was lying on his back and it was peering down at him, and it looked pretty tall from down here on the floor. It was mostly white, with small dark brown wing-like markings across its wings and belly. A crown of the little markings framed the white face and the huge, bright gold eyes. It tilted its head sideways, gazing intently at Jordan, and said, "Hoo?"
Jordan said, "I'm…" and couldn't think of what else to say. He wasn't quite sure he was fine. "…Kayla?"
She shifted back to her human form all at once, head still tilted, eyes still large (although blue now), expression still quizzically concerned. "Are you all right?"
