Keeper of the Shadows - By Alexandra Sokoloff Page 0,51

demanded.

“Where did you?” he countered. “Look, Barbara Stanwyck.” He pointed down at a star as they passed.

“Are you sure you’re not an actor?” she asked, suspiciously.

“I swear.” He put his hand on his heart. “I just learned to dance to get girls.”

“Huh,” she said. “Most men aren’t that smart.”

“Most men aren’t that ambitious. Rita Hayworth,” he said, and pointed at a star. And then he added, “You’re not all that fond of actors, are you?” It was more a statement than a question.

She looked away uncomfortably. “I’ve lived here all my life,” she said defensively.

“That would do it,” he agreed. He pointed down again. “Jimmy Durante.” Then he looked back up at her. “Is there something else, though?” He paused. “An actor broke your heart, maybe?”

“Not an actor. An actress,” she confessed impulsively.

Mick looked startled.

“My mother,” she told him. “She had the dream. But it didn’t happen for her. Just bit parts, a lot of—”

“‘Sound and fury, signifying nothing,’” he finished for her.

She looked at him wryly. “Exactly.”

“That’s rough.”

She shook her head. “Rough is not the word. I can’t feel sorry for myself. I had absolutely everything growing up. My father loved me, and my mother—she loved me, too, in her way. I had a great education, a wonderful home. I have my cousins, I have Merlin, I have my job....”

“But you had a mother who was never there for you. Don’t make light of it, sweetheart, it hurts.” He stopped on the sidewalk and brushed a hand through her hair, looking into her eyes with that penetrating green gaze. “You don’t have to play tough with me.” His fingers were moving on her face, and it was all she could do not to melt into him and be lost.

She pulled away with effort. “You sound like you know something about actors.”

He smiled faintly. “I’ve lived here all my life.”

And then it suddenly hit her what was bothering her about her conversation with Harvey Hodge. He’d been so impressed that she’d walked in with “George Clooney.” But Harvey was a shifter himself; he should have been able to see that the “Clooney” she’d been with was a fake.

But he hadn’t.

Why?

She didn’t for a moment think that Mick was George Clooney, nothing like that. And she knew he was a highly skilled shifter. It was just that another highly skilled shifter—and professional gossip—like Harvey should have been able to spot the deception.

Mick was watching her closely. “All right, what are you brooding about?”

“I’m not brooding,” she began.

“Oh yes, you are. When you go silent for more than a half minute, you’re concocting plots and conspiracies. So, I want to know what I’m being suspected of.” He looked at her directly, that gaze she couldn’t hide from.

“All right,” she said defensively. “All right. It was Harvey Hodge.”

He looked truly disgusted. “Oh, my God, what did that self-important, self-serving little shi— shifter have to say about me?”

“Nothing. That’s the problem.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

And she decided, I’m just going to say it. Why not?

“He came up to me and wondered what I was doing with George Clooney,” she said. There. It was out. Straight-up.

Mick stared at her, bemused. “That’s it?”

She was pointedly silent.

“And what does that translate to, in that devious little mind of yours?”

“He couldn’t tell it was you in shift,” she burst out. “Not only is he a shifter, it’s his whole job to expose people, and he couldn’t tell what was going on.” It took her a moment of mental scrambling to even be able to voice the implications. “If you can do that, you really are good.”

He held her eyes. “Oh, I am. Very good.” And then he laughed. “Barrie, I did it to please you. Does everything have to be a conspiracy?”

“What makes you think George Clooney does anything for me?” she said without thinking.

“Oh, really?” he said with a spike of interest. “Not Clooney?” He looked her over speculatively, so intimately she felt herself blush from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. “Who, then?”

“Well...”

“Oh, come on, tell. Is it a pirate you’d be wanting, me love?”

Suddenly she was looking at Johnny Depp, pirate accent and all.

“Or maybe you prefer someone a little more classic?”

It was Cary Grant in front of her now, that sculpted face, the quirky, bemused arch of his eyebrows...

As they walked, he continued to shift.

“Nope, nope, nope, doggone it, I’ve got it....” And there was Jimmy Stewart, with his unforgettable stammer.

“A little younger?” Leo DiCaprio looked out at her