Primal Call (4 page)

What was odd about this texting conversation wasn’t so much that she was having it with a celebrity—unless she was being punked for some reason—but that it was so—sort of—getting to know someone normal. Not that she expected some cheesy come with me to the casbah sort of thing from the man, but—

###

Gennie looked up from reading the saved conversation on James’s phone. He’d handed it to her when he came into his trailer on a break.

“You want her to knit you a sweater?” she asked. “That’s not very romantic.”

“It seemed like it at the time,” James said. He got up from perching on a chair arm and started pacing. Not that there was that much room to move in the narrow space. “To me it was romantic. Hopefully to her. Any conversation with Thena’s romantic. Did that sound trite?” he asked as her eyebrows rose almost off her forehead.

Gennie shook her head. “You only met the woman yesterday—but you are so sincere, so smitten. It’s cute.”

“Your mother is bonded to our sire. Ask her what it felt like the first time she met her Prime bondmate.”

“Hell, no! She’ll go on for hours with the story about how this handsome man rushed out of the shadows to save her from a rapist then carried her to the emergency room in his brawny, bronzed arms and kissed her gently on the forehead promising that he would make her want to love again and how she— No, I don’t want to go through that story again.”

Gennie gagged at his besotted attitude. He didn’t blame her. But she was sympathetic as well. “You did good, bro. Keep up the good work. Keep up the courtship.”

His soul screamed that he go to Thena Blaise. His body ached for him to be with her. When they were together he could gently work his way through the shields she’d built against him.

He took his phone back and called Athena’s cellphone. He growled when it immediately rolled to her voicemail. It was going to be a long couple of weeks.

###

“Sorry about your having to wait so long,” Thena told Ed Cole as they met by the baggage claim carousel.

He took her bag from her. “No problem.”

Ed and his wife Carol lived in the second house on Thena’s six-hundred-acre property. Between them and a couple of teenagers who helped out part time, the farm ran quite well, the livestock were happy, and she got to spend most of her time writing.

“You okay?” Ed asked as they walked out the sliding exit doors.

Hot, humid air blanketed Thena. It felt good after the desert air of Los Angeles. “Good to be home,” she said. “Of course I’m okay.”

“You look....” he shrugged. “Sad? Lonely?”

How did one look
lonely?
“I may be a bit—distracted,” she said. “How’s everything at home?”

“The Sheep Mother chased off a coyote.”

Sheep Mother was a llama that made a crusade of guarding the two dozen ewes and lambs she shared a pasture with. No one messed with her idiot wool factories. Llamas had quite a nasty kick.

“Good for her.”

“Angie Finn’s dad’s being an asshole again. I told her she could stable her horse in our barn.”

Angie was one of the high school kids who helped out around the place. Her father was—well, he wasn’t dealing well with a bad divorce was the kindest thing Thena could think about him. He’d started making trouble for everybody in the county, especially his own kids. Thena had had to go to civic meetings and even to court after his claims that she was an animal hoarder and that her farm wasn’t zoned for the
exotic
animals she kept.

“Why are we keeping Angie’s horse?”

“Cause he’s trying to sell it to pay child support. It’s not his horse to sell.”

Thoughts of Hollywood and movie stars—a movie star—had faded to the back of Thena’s mind by the time they reached the car. Her life might not be glamorous—except for the occasional publisher’s party during a book launch—but it was interesting.

She took the passenger seat in the front of her Cadillac Escalade and got out her iPhone as Ed handled driving through rush-hour traffic. It was a weekday, she told herself. There might be a message from her agent, or someone else she needed to communicate with.

Sure enough, there was a voice mail from James Wilde.

James Wilde’s lilting yet deep Irish-accented voice said,
“Got to go to a movie premiere. If you see me snuggling up with a girl on a red carpet tonight, it doesn’t mean anything.”

Thena held the phone out in front of her, looking at it as thought it were possessed. “What the f—?”

She switched to texting and sent, Why wld I see U on red carpet?

And why would she care about him snuggling some beautiful girl? And why would he care that she cared? Which she did, didn’t she? The man made her head hurt. Literally. With a spike of jealousy that brought on a headache. For a nasty second her head actually felt like it was trying to crack open.

“I’m between appointments right now,” Dr. Chloe Blaise, psychiatrist and older sister, said. “Who is he and what do you want me to do about it?”

“I don’t want to say who. You wouldn’t believe me. A younger man. I will not become a cougar for a younger man!”

Chloe chuckled. “Women who pursue younger men are called cougars. Men who pursue younger women are called men. Don’t label yourself with such a silly term. If you like a younger man and he likes you—he has excellent taste. And as long as you don’t have to change his diapers, go for it.”

Thena explained about the lunch meeting, the texting, the email, more texting. “He’s messing with me,” she concluded. “And modern technology lets him. I can’t escape him.”

Thena’s turn to snort. She sighed. “I’d think his interest was sweet, if I wasn’t the suspicious type. Maybe he thinks I’m motherly. Whatever it is he’s up to—well, what if the media finds out? People like him can’t fart without it being broadcast around the universe. And people taking pictures of whoever he was with when it happened. I can see it now, helicopters circling over my house because I’m knitting the guy a sweater.”

Thena liked her sister’s advice. She laughed. “He’ll have forgotten me by tonight. Or already,” she decided. “He’ll be snuggling a starlet—do they still call them starlets?—this evening, and all will be right in both our worlds.”

“Why don’t you just have a fling with him?” Chloe asked. “If he calls back, I mean.”

“I’ve never had a fling with anyone in my life.”

It was like she’d spent her life holding her breath, holding her heart, waiting for
The One
. Learning to be content and productive when no One Great Love showed up.

“And I’m not having a fling now,” she said. “Thanks, Chloe. See you soon.”

The minute she walked in the door at home the phone rang. It was her brother Phil, the Chicago police detective. “Who is this Irish guy you’re dating?”

She was thankful that at least Chloe hadn’t named names when she informed the family of Thena’s news. She reassured her worried brother, and tried not to think of the irony of James Wilde being a stranger to be
checked out
when everyone knew who he was.

Well, he had told her his bio was fake. Maybe she should let Phil dig a lit—

No. She would not intrude on the man’s privacy.

After she got Phil off the phone, her mother called. “What’s this about your seeing a younger man? What is the matter with you, Athena Sophia? What will your grandfather say?”

Nosy. Her family was just too darn nosy. And it was all her own fault for reaching out to her family in the first place. She always told Chloe everything. Chloe was a psychiatrist. She was good at keeping everyone but her relatives’ doings private.

Thena decided it was her own fault for not having asked her sister to keep their conversation quiet. She did ask her mother to do so, after assuring her there was nothing going on between her and a younger man.

She unplugged the landline, turned off her cell, and didn’t go anywhere near her computer for the rest of the evening. She worked in the barn. She watched a DVD and ate ice cream with the Coles.

She did dream about James Wilde when she went to sleep, but was pretty sure her world was back to normal when she got out of bed the next morning. Just to make sure, Thena checked the sky over her house.

###