Chapter 11
Two more women had arrived on the boardwalk in the minute it had taken Shanti to nerve herself into coming out.
They were both redheads who looked a bit like Hannah, although Shanti wasn't sure she'd ever seen three such different redheads together.
One was a real sun-streaked strawberry blonde, and the other's was dark enough to be almost brown, except the way winter sunlight hit the highlights made the deep red undertones clear.
And Hannah's hair was that vivid shade that would be called orange on a cat, but not on a person.
Shanti thought she could stare at the three of them for hours, except that would be weird and invasive, so she glanced down to make sure she didn't.
Luke, though, was saying, "This is Shanti, we went to school together. Shanti, you met Hannah, right? These are her sisters, Abby and Zim."
Peter's eyebrows quirked curiously and he glanced between the three sisters, not quite asking the question that Shanti herself wanted to, but the redhead called Zim, the one with dark red hair, gave a knowing shrug. "We're all Zimmers, yeah, but I'm Zim. I don't like my given name."
"I wasn't actually going to ask," Peter promised, and Zim flashed a smile.
"Maybe not, but you wanted to. Anyway, Sabrina lured us up here, so here we are."
"It didn't take much luring," Abby said.
She was the strawberry blonde and had eyes such a pale green they looked almost yellow.
"We've had this bookstore idea for years and have been looking for somewhere to set it up.
Virtue's perfect. There are so many—" Her gaze skittered to Peter, for some reason, and he shook his head slightly as Shanti's eyebrows drew down.
Abby went on with, "—opportunities, especially with the train line starting up again, and I, for one, like the idea of eventually retiring somewhere without the background noise of horns constantly beeping. "
Shanti was fairly sure she hadn't been going to say opportunities, but also had no idea at all what else she might have said. "I can't imagine living somewhere with traffic in the background all the time."
"But you're leaving Virtue?" Sabrina asked easily. She was cute: shorter than Shanti, very curvy, very blonde, with big dark eyes under heavy eyebrows. Next to Luke, who she leaned against, she looked tiny.
"I'd like to, yes. But not to stay in the city, I guess." Shanti smiled nervously and clutched the box of doughnuts Peter had handed to her and hadn't taken back. "I don't really know where I want to go."
"I get that," Zim said. She had unusual eyes, too, almost gold, except somehow the underlying color there was brown instead of green.
Shanti stole a look at Hannah's eyes, but they were just intensely green.
If the three of them were sisters, Shanti decided Hannah should be the middle sister, being a mix of the other two's colorations.
Zim, around a doughnut, went on. "I've never been really happy in the city but never had any idea where to go.
It was like, what's it called. Inertia? Where you're just kind of stuck.
Nothing's bad, in fact sometimes it's great, but it just doesn't feel right?
But also without these two I'd never have done anything about it and I'd never have found Virtue.
Well, these three, I guess, 'cause Sabs is the one who actually told us about this town. "
"I fell in love with it," Sabrina told Shanti.
"First time I came here a couple years ago to scope it out and decide what I'd do for a train station here.
I just loved it. And then I met Luke." She fluttered her eyelashes up at the big man.
"And now we're all soppy and happily ever after, so I told the Ginger Trio that they needed to come check this place out.
Totally not because I plan for us all to retire here when we're old and grey. "
"You can get old and grey if you want to," Abby said with a sniff. "I intend to remain a fantastic redhead until my dying day."
Sabrina tossed her very blonde hair. "I'll go white anyway and it'll maintain my bleach blonde vibe."
Luke gave a theatrical gasp. "Bleach blonde? My illusions are shattered!"
"Oh," Hannah said to Sabrina, mock-sadly as everyone else laughed, "I'm sorry. I didn't realize he was big but stupid."
"Hey!" Luke looked offended, and the easy banter continued to bounce around as the others ate doughnuts, their laughter steaming on the cold air.
Shanti listened, smiling often, but found herself glancing at Peter.
She'd smiled and laughed a lot since meeting him, more than she had for months.
Maybe years, given that the past couple of years had been very difficult.
It felt so good that she didn't want to ever let it go.
He felt her gaze on him, maybe, because he turned his attention from the little gossiping group to smile down at her, warm and gentle. "Are you cold? Can I gallantly offer you my coat?"
"Oh. That sounds nice, but no, I'm good, thank you."
"Oh God, we're keeping you standing around outside," Hannah said, catching that. "Honestly, if you want to go in, or bail, that's fine."
"If I go in I'll start alphabetizing books," Shanti explained.
All three redheads lit up and Abby, with amusing urgency, said, "It's time to go in right now," while Hannah howled a protest about sugary fingers. "Shanti doesn't have sugary fingers!" Abby said brightly. "I could just show her where the non-fiction is going…"
"Well, but do you really want that alphabetized, or categorized and then alphabetized?"
"I'm going to marry her," Abby announced. "Wait, are you available?"
To her own surprise, Shanti looked up at Peter as if he would have an answer to that question. His gaze softened deliciously, all warm comfort and pleasure, and Abby said, "Oh, it's like that, I see. Well, maybe I'll just hire you for the afternoon, then."
Shanti murmured, "No, I volunteer," without looking away from Peter.
She'd had crushes before, just like almost everybody she knew.
But while her heart beat with that same kind of new-love intensity, she had never, ever mistaken a crush for something she might throw her whole life over for.
She could tell the difference between reality and wishful thinking, for heaven's sake.
So it didn't make any sense that her impulse was to say No, when asked if she was available.
Part of her thought running very far away, very fast, was the only smart thing she could do.
Get away from Peter Baranov and whatever this impossible attraction was, because it was too big and too unfamiliar for her to deal with.
But at the same time, walking away from Peter seemed like such an awful idea she could barely even think about it.
He felt like a lifeline and like home, all at once, and nothing had felt like home at all since her grandparents had died.
Something very strange and maybe very wonderful was happening to her, and she had no idea how to cope with that. The impulse to actually run leaped up inside her, and she began to step back, though she still gazed into Peter's dark eyes like she couldn't stop.
He smiled, that gentle, quiet expression that made her feel so safe. "If you'd like me to get out of your hair for a while so you can shelve some books in peace and quiet, I can go volunteer to help with the booth-building again."
A dizzying combination of relief and dismay swam through Shanti, making her hesitate. Peter smiled again and winked. "Bet I can get a dozen booths set up before you get a dozen shelves organized. One two three go!"
To everyone's surprised laughter, he neatly vaulted over the boardwalk railing, dropping to the snowy ground like an athlete before charging off toward the bazaar-building-efforts with the enthusiasm of the kids at the distant playground.
Luke gave a startled, half-offended yell after him. "I feel like I should go help now!"
"Go on," Sabrina said with a laugh. "Boys can do the outdoors sweaty grunty work and us ladies will do the delicate indoor decorating work."
"You underestimate my ability to sweat," Hannah told her wryly, but Luke stole a kiss from Sabrina and followed Peter, although he went down the steps instead of over the rails.
The women turned bright, expectant gazes on Shanti, who was still torn between never wanting to leave Peter's side and a shivering gratitude that he'd given her a little bit of space to think in.
Hannah said, "You don't have to shelve books, obviously," and Shanti found herself shaking her head.
"No, I'd like to. I really do find it calming."
Sabrina tucked her arm into Shanti's like they'd known each other forever instead of half an hour, and guided her into the bookstore.
It was a wonderful little space, with the left-hand side and back wall entirely covered in shelves except for a door that probably led to storage at the back right of the room.
Then the right wall had shelves up to a checkout counter, which had cat-themed knickknacks and stickers and things on a half-shelf behind it, and then one more set of shelves on the counter's near side, between it and the big plate glass window that fronted the shop.
There were also boxes of books piled everywhere right now, and the shelves were untidy, itching to be alphabetized.
Sabrina squeezed Shanti's arm. "It's completely overwhelming, isn't it? "
"…shelving books?"
"That too, but I meant the whole fate thing!"
Shanti said, "The what?" as all three of the redheads hissed breath in between their teeth as they followed Shanti and Sabrina.
"The whole fated mates thing, you know, love at first sig…oh, no." Sabrina dropped Shanti's arm, not in an unfriendly way, but so she could press her hands over her mouth, eyes huge above her fingertips. "Oh no. He hasn't talked to you about it yet?"
Shanti's "About what?" was more or less lost beneath the other three women going, "Sabrina!" in various tones and volumes of dismay.
Sabrina moaned behind her hands and sank down to the floor, hiding her whole face behind her palms. "Ooooh nooo. I mean it's not bad! It's all good! I'm just…oops? You just look so stunned and I totally get it?"
The other three said, "Sabrina!" again, this time sort of hopelessly, like the cat was all the way out of the bag. Which would have been fine if Shanti had the foggiest idea what they were talking about at all.
"You get it? How can you get…" Her own hands lifted and waved in the air helplessly, like she was trying to encompass all the overwhelming feelings that had cropped up in her overnight.
No, even faster than overnight: literally from the moment she'd laid eyes on Peter Baranov.
"What do you mean, fated mates? How do you know that I just…
it's just a crush, right? It has to be? But how do you even know? What…?"
Hannah, with a note of genuine severity, said, "This is why we keep our mouths shut, Sabrina," and the petite, curvy woman on the floor groaned behind her hands again.
"I know. I know. I'm sorry, I just thought—I don't even know what I thought I was doing, except commiserating." She peeked up at Shanti through her fingers. "Oh my God, you didn't just meet today, did you? He hasn't had time to tell you? Not that Luke told me for…oh, man, I blew it."
"What are you talking about?" Shanti's voice rose and broke. She took a step back, and another, until she bumped into the bookshelves on the far wall, and then she wondered why she hadn't run for the door, which was much closer, instead.
Except part of her knew why: somehow, Sabrina Keep—and apparently the redheaded sisters—understood the enormous, wonderful, terrifying emotional storm that had risen in Shanti since she met Peter. "What's happening to me?"
"You're from here," Sabrina mumbled. "I figured you knew. Oh, man, I'm sorry. But look…it happened to me too. When I met Luke, he just knocked me off my feet. I was like, this guy's a total stranger and I think I want to marry him. Right?"
"I don't—what? Yes, but—what?"
Zim, the quietest of the three redheads, groaned. "You're from Virtue, right? Have you ever noticed anything a little strange about this town?"
Shanti stared at her a moment, honestly trying to think if there was anything weird about her home town.
"I don't know. There's the Easter Bunny, I guess…
?" Because she was pretty sure most places didn't have a forty pound fluffy bunny actually deliver baskets of eggs and chocolate to kids in their town squares during the Easter season.
Sabrina crowed, "Yes!" with obvious relief as the three redheads exchanged glances. Abby shook her head and left the bookstore as Sabrina said, "So the bunny is—"
"Sabrina," Hannah said firmly, and the blonde woman clamped her mouth closed, but then scowled defiantly at Hannah.
"What? She'll find out anyway!"
"Not if you're wrong," Hannah said, still firmly. "And even if you're not, it's not your place to tell her."
"I'm not wrong," Sabrina muttered. "You don't think I'm wrong, either. You're just—"
"Doing what keeps people safe," Zim said, much more shortly than Hannah had spoken.
Shanti flung her hands upward. "What's keeping people safe? What are you not telling me? What is Peter not telling me?"
Peter, from the doorway, with Abby a shadow behind him, said, "That I'm a shifter."