Page 38 of Loan Wolf
“Don’t swear,” Clara scolded automatically. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be goody-two-shoes…”
“Sure you do. That’s what you do best.”
“Maybe that’s not what I want to be!” Clara snapped.
Vicky stared at her. “What do you want to be?”
“I don’t know!” Clara yelled. “I don’t…know.” All the wind went out of her sails and she lay back on the double bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Vicky was quiet for a moment. “I was always really jealous of you, you know.”
“For being famous?” Clara could hear the bitterness in her own voice.
“It seemed like you always knew what you wanted,” Vicky said, coming to sit beside her. The bed dipped under her weight as she lay down at Clara’s side. “I never had a passion like you did.”
“It’s not awesome when you find yourself wondering if it’s really what you wanted after all,” Clara said softly. “Anyway, I was always jealous of you because you got to do whatever you wanted.”
“You could have too,” Vicky pointed out. “You were just too much of a people-pleaser and let everyone run right over you. Is this about that boy?”
“Not all about him,” Clara could admit, still gazing at the ceiling. “But sort of.”
“Is he asking you to stay here?” Vicky guessed.
“No,” Clara said, too quickly. He wasn’t asking anything of her. Even when Clara confessed that she wasn’t sure about her career, he hadn’t offered himself as an alternative. Maybe he wasn’t an alternative. Maybe she was just a stupid girl and he didn’t feel the same way she did. If she was a shifter… “Do you think you’ll ever meet your mate?”
Vicky went very still beside her. “I mean, I guess so?”
“Would you date anyone who wasn’t your mate?”
Vicky snorted in a very unladylike way. “Well, yeah. I don’t know when or even if I’ll meet that one person in the whole world and it seems like a waste not to have a little fun in the meantime. It’s not like people are saving themselves for marriage these days or anyone really cares about purity.” She drove an elbow into Clara’s side. “Except you, maybe. Pure as driven snow here. So boring.”
“I’m not boring!” Clara had to laugh. “And I’m definitely not pure.” Her face heated as she remembered the back of Gabe’s truck their first night.
“Oh my god, when you said you hooked up, you mean you hooked up?” Vicky gave a noise like a whistle as she propped herself up on one elbow. “Tell me everything or I’ll tickle you until you pee yourself.”
“You’re still not strong enough to do that,” Clara teased her.
They wrestled good-naturedly, Vicky with natural shifter strength and Clara with trained athleticism, and finally settled on a long hug. “I’m glad you came,” Clara confessed. “Even if you are really annoying.”
“I’ll get the juicy details out of you eventually,” Vicky declared, returning to Clara’s bed to pick up her phone. “Don’t underestimate me.”
“I wouldn’t dare,” Clara said, but she was glad when the hotel door rattled and Patricia spilled in to take them both to dinner with Twiller and the Powells.
Clara dutifully ate a light meal, ignored her sister’s jabs, and let the conversation swirl around her, dipping in and out as politeness required while her brain fixated on figuring out what to do next.
She slept fitfully that night and slipped out of bed without waking Vicky or their mother. There was only one place she might get the answers she was looking for.
32
GABE
Gabe was not wearing the frilly apron he’d teased Clara about doing housework in, but he was scrubbing the shower when someone knocked at the door the next morning. The night had been restless and his bed still smelled too much like Clara, so he’d started an early load of laundry and wanted to scrub the memory of her silhouette out of the shower door.
He shoved aside his grief and irritation and then felt a stab of concern when he opened it to the anxious face of Clara’s stepmother.
“Miss Patricia?”
“Is Clara here?” she asked without preamble. She stared at his rubber gloves like she thought he might be cleaning up evidence.
