Page 9 of Secret Pucking Unicorn

“As a couple?”

“We were auditioning together, but we would have been competing separately.”

Our other three roommates come in the main door, their animated conversation about the upcoming game interrupting whatever else Carter was going to say. Sean Waller, we call him Stone, is carrying a grocery bag and his sister, Brick, has a loaf of bread. Our team captain, Burke—we don’t have a nickname for him yet—is the last in and he’s carrying a bakery box from the Half-Cocked Bake Shop, the local bakery we all love. Its name is because the owner and head baker is a rooster shifter.

Stone looks around. “Where’s our new roomie?”

“In bed,” Carter says. “She hadn’t slept in about forty-eight hours. Mac made her grilled cheese?—”

“A cheese toastie,” I interject.

Carter rolls his eyes. “He made her a sandwich, and she went to bed.”

Stone starts unpacking his grocery bag and Brick and Bedard add their parcels to the counter.

“I’m making spaghetti,” Stone says. “Should we wake her when it’s ready?”

“No, let her sleep,” Carter says. “She sleeps like the dead and is grumpy if you wake her up before she’s ready to be conscious.”

He turns to me with a furrowed brow. “Dude, what’s up with all the growling?”

“Knock, knock. Hello.” The door opens and more people wander in. Coach and Mallory, Daphne and Logan, who is her husband and our team photographer, and Kendall. Mallory has a few bottles of wine and Coach has a couple of six packs of a local IPA.

“Where’s Randi?” Kendall asks, looking around before kissing her boyfriend, Burke. “Ooh, you got the cookies from Half-Cocked. Thank you, honey.”

“She’s asleep,” Carter says, rising from his recliner and putting the clip on the bag of chips.

Coach is putting the beer in the fridge. “Who’s growling? Mac? I thought he was going to shift and rip my arm off in the locker room when I touched Randi’s arm.”

A hot flush rushes to my cheeks. Crap.

Rising from the sofa, I rub the back of my neck and turn to face everyone. “I’m sorry. My wolf has opinions and isn’t subtle in expressing them lately.”

With a heavy slap to my shoulder, Coach laughs. “Been there, done that. But man, you gotta get it under control.” Even through the laughter I see the message in his eyes. I have to control myself and not let Miranda’s presence distract me. He’s serious. I don’t know what he’d do first—fire Miranda or trade me, but I don’t want to make him have to choose. I’d quit the team before I put Miranda’s job in jeopardy.

“I will. It was the surprise of seeing her. I didn’t know she knew any of you and that she was coming to work for the team. Or living here.”

Carter cocks his head. “I talk about Randi all the time. Do you ignore me?”

“She’s always been Miranda to me. I thought Randy was male.”

A collective “Ohhh…” flows throughout the room.

“Does she know?” Daphne asks.

“Know what?”

“That you’re in love with her.”

My cheeks burn hotter. “No. She doesn’t think of me that way.”

I hope that’s enough to satisfy them. Everyone keeps looking at me. Damn.

“Ever since we were kids, we’ve had this connection. She gets me in ways no one else does. We both love horses, and we’d spend hours sitting together looking at my father’s horses, going over auction catalogs and daydreaming about being able to buy the horses, what she’d name the foals. She wanted to ride in the Olympics, and I was going to be her coach. She’d ride one of the horses I bred and trained. We’d be a team.”

Everyone is looking at me intently, like they know there is more to the story.

“She was sent to boarding school when she was ten and I had turned thirteen a few weeks prior. I suspect it’s because our connection was becoming obvious. We were kids, nothing was going to happen, but it was inevitable. And it did happen, I fell in love with her. By then she was here in the U.S., and I was finishing high school in Scotland. My plan was to declare my feelings on her eighteenth birthday and see how she felt. Our parents were not on board with that and made me promise to wait until she finished university to try to date her. I did and was there at Wickham on her graduation day ready to tell her my feelings and instead she told me she was accepting a job in New Zealand. I didn’t have a chance.”

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