CHAPTER TWO
∞∞∞
Something happened.
Okay, that was silly. Of course something happened.
Ilona had just been trying to do a good deed.
A call from her old friend Macy had sent her down County Road L with groceries for someone named Turner Cole who was stuck on the farm for the holiday.
Sure, she’d been going shopping anyway to get ingredients for her big day of baking.
She would get the items in question, run them out to whoever it was.
Maybe she’d get back to Aunt Freddie’s early, maybe have a little private cry in her room.
She had it all planned out, and then out of nowhere she had been attacked by a unicorn, which was the first impossible thing that had happened that day.
Honestly, it was a good thing that she had grown up in Clearwater, where the existence of shifters like the Madsen family and assorted others was more or less an open secret.
She knew that sometimes people turned into wolves—it was a non-issue after you got over the initial shock.
Hell, Macy had married a shifter and was expecting a kid with him.
Luca Reyes was a hell of a nice guy once you got him talking.
He was dedicated to his conservation work, he was going to be a great dad, and, when the need arose, he turned into an inky black panther.
Ilona was still trying to figure out if the kitten-themed baby blanket she picked out was in poor taste.
So yes, people turned into animals, but she decided she had every right to be shocked when a unicorn appeared out of nowhere.
Her first thought was oh my god, it’s a unicorn! followed by wow, unicorns are fatter than I thought they would be, followed by OH, THAT HORN LOOKS SHARP!
She sincerely had no idea what she would have done if the wolf hadn’t appeared from nowhere, driving the unicorn back from the porch with a ferocious snapping of his enormous jaws.
Despite his fierce appearance, however, his teeth never touched the unicorn’s white flank, and it was clear that he was trying to keep everyone safe.
The unicorn had no such restraints, and when that horn looked like it was going to skewer the wolf through, Ilona had acted on instinct.
It was a shame to lose the expensive sausage but that was the biggest problem she had to reckon with before she locked eyes with Turner Cole.
Of course he was good-looking. The Madsens turned out lookers, boys and girls, and he reminded her a bit of Cassidy Madsen, who’d come through last year with his wife Pearl and their adorable nephew.
They were both tall men with a kind of easy grace to them, and both had light hair, though Turner had more of a honey-blond cast to his.
Where Cassidy was sturdy from his work on the ranch, Turner was thinner, whipcord rather than bulk, and she appreciated the eye-candy in a distant way as they watched to see if the unicorn would charge again.
Then he turned, eyes like a sky about to storm, and something reached into her heart and squeezed.
She had been in love before. She was thirty-four years old, of course she had been in love before.
She’d gotten the butterflies, the lighter than air flutters, the almost panicked need to see someone, the broken feeling when it was over.
This was something different. This was something physical, something that grounded her in the earth even as it sent her spiraling into the sky.
She covered her mouth, and, under her bare fingers, she was startled to find a smile spreading across her face.
Her eyes stung with tears, and the feeling that flooded through her, rising like a tide with the beat of her heart, was an intense feeling of relief and pleasure.
“Oh, hi,” she managed, and then, God above help her, he smiled.
Tuner Cole was already good-looking—when he smiled, it was just unfair.
Without thinking, she reached for his face, because it occurred to her how wonderful it would be to touch his mouth, how his lips would feel under her fingertips.
She pulled back at the last minute, because that was insane— but, whatever she had, he had it too, because he looked momentarily disappointed.
She started to say something, shook her head, tried again, and finally gave up. When she stumbled coming down the porch steps toward him, he was there in a heartbeat, catching her as easy as could be, and settling her on her feet.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m here.”
It nearly made her break down into tears of relief, and that reaction startled her, shocked her so much that she pulled back out of his arms.
“You are! You are, and... and. Oh, God. I’m just. I can’t, that is—”
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said urgently, stepping back so he wasn’t on top of her. “Look, you know all about shifters, right? Macy was the one who sent you, and you know she’s married to Luca, right? And there’s this thing—”
“Fated mates!”
Ilona meant to say it at a normal volume like a normal person, but it came out as a desperate cry. Over Turner’s shoulder, the unicorn lifted her head up momentarily, and then went back to licking the paper that had contained the sausage.
“Fated mates,” she said more rationally as Turner stared at her. “I know. That’s Macy and Luca, it’s a shifter thing. Eyes meet, and, bam, it’s love.”
Turner chewed his lip, giving her a worried look. She stifled the urge to smooth the wrinkle between his eyes, his distress a needle dragging along her skin. Oh, it was already starting, and she fought down another surge of panic.
“It’s what we make of it,” he started, and, when she laughed a little incredulously, he continued, voice firmer.
“It really is. Yeah, it means that if we’re lucky, we have some damn good odds of having one hell of a time together, but it’s not gonna make either of us do anything we don’t one hundred percent want to do, okay? I promise.”
“Really?” It came out smaller than she thought it would. What Macy had described as a deliriously happy fall, Ilona had seen as something more than a little frightening. Ilona realized that that had probably been fueling at least a little of her panic.
“Yeah. I promise. You are not going to do one damn thing with me that you don’t want to do, okay?” He hesitated. “Do you believe me? Take a sec. Think about it.”
She did as he asked, and, somewhat to her surprise, she found that she believed him.
“I do. That helps. Um. So we don’t have to do anything right now?”
“Not unless you want to. But. Can I ask something?”
“Sure.”
“Are you married?”
It startled a laugh out of her, a real one.
“No!”
“Or engaged, boyfriend, girlfriend, anything like that?”
“No, not at all. How about you?”
“Nope. Well, that’s a relief. That look on your face, I was wondering if things were fixing to get real complicated.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. I just don’t—” Ilona cut herself off because standing on a cold porch while watching a unicorn snort angrily at a piece of greasy paper was no way to start talking about exes and commitment issues. “Look, you said I could do what I liked, right?”
“Always,” he said. She would have suspected that he was making fun of her if he hadn’t looked so sincere.
“I just. I need to.”
She choked a little, because when it came to what she needed to do, it involved touching Turner’s face, kissing his mouth, touching those shoulders that seemed impossibly broad despite his slenderness, pulling him inside the farmhouse, maybe not even pulling him inside the farmhouse—
“It’s okay. Take your time.”
“I’m fine, it’s just. I think I just need to go.”
“Go?” The frayed edges of his voice sounded like her own will slowly unraveling, and she stood up straighter.
“Not forever! Definitely not forever, but this is a lot, and I need space, and I need to think…”
No, she didn’t, a part of her insisted. Thinking was the last thing she needed to do. Thinking might get in the way of touching Turner. Didn’t she want to touch Turner?
Turner nodded reluctantly, offering her half a grin.
“Okay. Okay. I get it. You take all the time you need, and then—whoa!”
It shouldn’t have been possible for a unicorn, especially one as fat as this one, to sneak up on them, but somehow this one had. Ilona had one horrified moment where that enormous sharp horn wavered far too close to her face and then—
The unicorn leaned in and nuzzled her hand.
“What?”