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I shift in my seat to face him, my curiosity brimming. “Does it require a physical presence?”
“No, I can hear you from great distances. It’s how I know to come when you need me.”
“When I need you?” I try to think of a time I might have needed him and maybe inadvertently called to him using wolfy telepathy. “When did I call to you?”
“You wouldn’t have known you were doing it. Mates send out emergency signals when they’re in distress. The recipient’s brain lights up with warning and the compulsion to run to our mates is next to impossible to ignore.” He glances at me with a serious look before returning his gaze to the road. “It doesn’t happen often with you.”
“Oh.” I don’t know how to feel about that. Good, I guess, that I wasn’t distressed enough to send out an invisible bat signal. “Can you give me an example of a time you came running?”
He doesn’t answer right away, then his brow wrinkles. “Last time it happened was two years ago. I was in a dead sleep when my brain lit up like New Year’s Eve. When I arrived, you were walking out of a building. You were uninjured but angry. I followed you. Tried to find out what happened, but your thoughts were a jumble of anger, frustration, and sadness. I couldn’t figure out why. I stayed close for two weeks, but you went back to your usual routine. Acted as if nothing had happened.”
A myriad of feelings rushes through me. The same fear, anger, and sadness I’d felt that night, if it’s the same night I’m thinking of. But I also feel a sense of calm knowing Keenan was close by, even if I didn’t know it at the time.
“Do you remember if the building had a sign saying Jeffries Casting Solutions?”
“It did.”
It was the same night.
Keenan pulls into the guest parking space out front of my building and turns the car off before facing me. “What happened?”
I shove the car door open, my voice taking on an unnatural tone as I say, “Come on upstairs. You don’t need to spend your day in the Jeep staring up at my window.”
He follows me as I pull open the front door and head up the stairs to my apartment. I open the door and lead him inside. “Home sweet home.”
He glances around, then turns his attention back to me, his gorgeous golden eyes sorrowful. “I can feel your turmoil, Vanessa. Please talk to me. Tell me why you feel this way.”
He presses his hand to his chest and I realize it’s where he’s feeling my pain. My emotions are balling up inside me. Everything feels tight, like I can’t breathe. And he feels it too.
I suck air into my lungs and let it out slowly, doing it several times until I can breathe normally. Keenan does the same, his muscles relaxing as mine do.
“Better,” he says.
“Yes, better,” I repeat, sinking onto the couch, a plush purple monstrosity I purchased for cheap at a second-hand store. I look at Keenan, knowing he’ll see the vulnerability written all over my face. I really hope I’m not misjudging a man I barely know, but my entire being is telling me I’m safe with him, which means I can trust him with my secrets.
He sits next to me. “You can tell me anything.”
I nod, unsmiling. “I’ve never told anyone this.” I stare across the room. “It’s cliche, really, but it was horrible all the same. Laz thought an appointment with Jeffries Casting Solutions would help get my name out there. I thought it was weird that they wanted me to come in on short notice and at night, but I thought maybe they had a specific part in mind. They… he didn’t.”
“Who is he?” Keenan asks gently, his shoulders tensing.
“His name is Bam Jeffries, the son of the man who owns Jeffries Casting Solutions.”
I can’t help the shudder that goes through me as I’m taken back to that night. His sweaty hands, his lips shiny from saliva, his wrinkled shirt, the overpowering scent of his cologne. I will never forget that smell. It’s burned into my brain for eternity.
A growl erupts from Keenan, but he cuts it off when I jump. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Go on.”
I take a breath. “I went in for my appointment, but he didn’t want an audition or to talk about what parts I’d like to play. My headshot had come across his desk and he liked what he saw. He tried using that age-old Hollywood line on me.”
Keenan frowns. “What line?”
Right. What would a wolf-shifter prince know of sexism in Hollywood?
“The one where they tell you they know people.” His frown deepens so I clarify. “They lure no-name actors into their offices, hotel rooms, wherever, and tell us if we have sex with them, they’ll whisper our names in the right ears. Usually, those ears belong to other powerful men who have the same expectations.”
Keenan startles me as he explodes off the couch, then starts pacing like a caged animal. “He propositioned you?”
“Sure, if you want to call sweaty pawing a proposition.”
