She became aware that Tim—or possibly Jim—had paused, looking at her expectantly. She jerked herself back to the present, trying to remember what he’d been talking about. Something about hiking in the Lake District?
“That sounds…nice?” she ventured.
His nice mouth curved in a nice smile, showing nice teeth. She could sense the shy hope kindling in his heart. “It’s so good to finally meet a woman who shares the same interests. I wasn’t sure about coming to this event tonight, but now I’m glad that I did.”
Rose’s polite smile was so fixed, she feared she might never change expression again. She desperately wanted to look at her watch.
To her intense relief, the shrill blast of a whistle broke the awkward pause. “Time’s up!” announced the organizer in a bright, cheery voice. “Gentlemen, please find your final lady!”
Tim-maybe-Jim gave her another of those shy, sweet smiles as he rose. “I’ll definitely be marking your name down on my form, Rose. I hope you’ll mark mine?”
Rose forced out a strained laugh. “Oh, you know it’s against the rules to talk about that now. And you still have one date left. You might like her even more than you like me, Tim.”
His face fell a little. “Jim.”
She winced. “Yes, sorry. Too much chatter in here.” She fiddled with her pen, pretending to write on her form. “Anyway, it was nice to meet you.”
She gusted out a long sigh, slumping in her chair as Jim-not-Tim headed for his next date. Morosely, she followed his retreating back. It was a perfectly nice back. He was a perfectly nice man.
Not our mate, said her swan.
“Oh, be quiet,” she muttered under her breath. “We’re not looking for a mate, remember? Just a nice, normal man.”
She stared down at her list of names. All of them had been nice, normal men. Mostly a little nervous and awkward—as was to be expected at a speed dating event for the over forties—but perfectly pleasant. None of them had had tattoos, or even the slightest hint of danger.
None of them had had dark eyes filled with leashed fire.
With a grimace, she banished Ash’s still, intent face from her mind. If she was going to insist that her swan stop pining after their long-lost mate, she could hardly cling onto a silly crush of her own.
Squaring her shoulders, she forced herself to think positively. She still had one more date to go this evening. There was still a chance she might feel a spark of attraction.
The chair opposite her scraped against the floor. Fixing a welcoming smile on her face, Rose looked up at the man who’d just sat down.
“Wayne?” she said incredulously.
The graying wolf shifter flashed his teeth in what she assumed was meant to be a smile, but looked more like a rictus snarl of pain. “Hello, Rose,” he mumbled, not meeting her eyes.
She blinked at him, completely taken aback. She’d deliberately picked this speed dating event because it was human-run. Shifters tended to organize their own versions of such things, with much larger numbers. When you could recognize your true mate on sight, there was no need for five minutes of getting-to-know-you chit-chat.
“I wasn’t expecting to see any other shifters tonight,” she said, lowering her voice. “What are you doing here?”
Wayne shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “He told me to come.”
“He?”
Wayne jerked his head in a strange, convulsive motion. A sharp, bitten-off whine escaped through his teeth. “Can’t. Can’t talk about that.”
Is he drunk? Rose wondered. Her sense of him was oddly foggy. He was such a dense, swirling soup of contradictory emotion, she couldn’t get a fix on him.
“Wayne, are you all right?” she asked in concern.
“No.” He twitched again, and she sensed a jagged lightning-bolt of pain shoot through the roiling turmoil of his aura. “Yes. Yes. I said yes!”
“You’re hurt,” she said, noticing a bandage wrapped around his right wrist. Fresh red spots were spreading across the dirty gauze.
“New tattoo,” Wayne said, his aura darkening with a
peculiar sharp, stabbing splatter of black humor. His left hand closed over the bandage, hiding it from view. “Still getting used to it. Don’t ask me questions.”