Caleb's Mate - Becca Jameson Page 0,53

their jobs, move to Canyon Springs, and marry into a shifter community, they would have laughed their asses off. To think both those men were clamoring for kids already was beyond comical.

Fate dealt them a strange hand. Elena hadn’t seen it coming. But she had fully embraced it. Researching for her book filled her days. Multiple rounds of sex all over the house filled her evenings.

Eventually they would have kids. Several if Caleb had his way. But for right now, her life was rich and full. It didn’t get any better than this.

Please enjoy the first chapter from the next book in the series, Hunter’s Mate.

Layla glanced around her dingy apartment as she closed her suitcase and yanked it off her bed to land with a thud on the floor. It was a small, one-room, studio apartment in a not-so-great neighborhood in Los Angeles county. She’d been living there two years, ever since graduating from college.

When she’d arrived with her brand-new theater degree, she’d had high aspirations of auditions and casting calls. She’d visualized finding an agent and pimping herself out all over the city until she got her big break.

The idea of being on stage or in a studio dramatically pretending to be whatever the script called for had thrilled Layla from the time she was a young girl. The truth was, however, that she’d barely seen a glimpse of that action. The competition was stiff. It seemed like there were ten thousand people just like her in Los Angeles with the same degree and high hopes. All of them far more accomplished than she.

Sure, she’d been in a few commercials and had some minor roles in the background of a movie or two, but she’d worked her ass off for two years, barely making ends meet and too embarrassed to admit defeat, even to her sister.

Elena wasn’t just a sister. She was her identical twin. The two of them had been inseparable for their entire lives. They’d even gone to the same college. But their lives went in different directions, and though they’d promised to talk on the phone every day, their calls had gotten farther apart over the months.

Elena had run off to Chicago with her degree in journalism, equally eager to take on the world and become the next famous writer. Layla knew her sister had hustled herself all over that city. She’d published a few articles in several local papers, but Layla figured there was a good chance Elena was just as disillusioned about her aspirations as Layla. Neither one of them was willing to verbally admit defeat. Thus the dwindling phone calls.

The last time the two of them had seen each other was a year ago when Grandma Mabel died and they both went to their hometown to attend her funeral and settle her affairs. It had been a brief whirlwind visit, during which they realized, not shockingly, that Grandma Mabel hadn’t had any money to her name. Her estate came out close to even when all her bills were finally paid and everything was sold.

Not only had Layla not been surprised, but she’d been humbled and grateful because Grandma Mabel had paid every cent of Layla’s and Elena’s college education. She and Grandpa George had saved everything they could from the moment the twins were born.

Every time Layla thought about what her grandparents had sacrificed for the two of them, she felt overwhelming gratitude. Part of her felt sad that neither grandparent was living to see her sister and her succeed in life.

Layla reminded herself how unsuccessful she’d been and shuddered, thanking God that neither grandparent was alive wondering where all their hard-earned money had gone.

Layla glanced around at her silent, empty apartment as she grabbed her suitcase and purse and made her way toward the door. In six hours, Layla would once again be reunited with Elena. And once again, it would be for a funeral. This time, however, they wouldn’t be in serious mourning because this funeral was for their Great Aunt Marge whom neither of them had ever met.

The more Layla thought about the circumstances, the more ridiculous it seemed that neither she nor her sister had ever gone to visit Aunt Marge. Granted, there was a reason. Mabel held a grudge against her sister for over fifty years, never forgiving her, and making sure everyone around knew it.

Marge’s crime: meeting a man in a town four hours away in Canyon Springs, Colorado, and staying in that town to marry