A Werewolf's Valentine: BBW Wolf Shifter Paranormal Romance Read Free

hint of snobbery or ass-hat attitude in his face, or heard it in his voice. “No, you didn’t. Oh, yeah, we hear it a lot, especially from the hipsters driving between the Bay Area and L.A. who think they are just too cool to live, but you were totally not that guy. I’m a blurter. I blurt things. Like, um, now.”
    Aaaaand there was the radioactive blush again, as if she really were back in ninth grade, and Luke Morton had sneered down at her from the pinnacle of his senior privilege.
    Except Luke had never, ever been a hundredth this hot.
    “Mac-KENNN-zee,” a familiar voice yodeled from another table. “Melissa’s ready for her bread pudding!”
    McKenzi jolted. How long had she been standing there? “Coming, Pam,” McKenzi said as she scuttled to Table Six, where a local family celebrating their eldest daughter’s birthday sat with empty plates. “Bread pudding, Melissa?” McKenzi chirped and gave them her brightest smile. “How about the rest of you kids? Pam? Bill?”
    She got the birthday girl her bread pudding with a candle, sang with the rest of the family, fetched the food for Table Three, then did a fast coffee round, all while feeling the heat of Twelve’s gaze. Or maybe it was her own heat pulling her back there.
    When the tables were all content she turned his way, wondering if she were wearing roller skates, his ten-on-the-Richter-scale sexiness would zoom her straight over there without her moving a muscle. Because that was some powerful magnetism.
    “McKenzi,” he said slowly—her name had never sounded so hot. “I knew one once.”
    “I’m not surprised,” she said. “At least I didn’t get stuck with Ashley. Which is a great name, but there were nine in my class alone. And when you consider fewer than five hundred kids in the entire school . . .” She shrugged, aware she was blurting—again. “What’s yours?”
    “West,” he said.
    “Okay, don’t know anyone with that as a first name.”
    “It’s my last name,” West said. “Weston. Got shortened when I was a kid.”
    The door opened to customers, busy shaking out their umbrellas and exclaiming about the rain pouring down. McKenzi went to get them settled, and afterward, seeing everyone was busy with their food, she made her way back to West. After all, he was a customer, too.
    “Can you sit down and join me?” he asked.
    McKenzi grinned. “My boss is pretty laid back, but I’m the only wait staff on the floor.”
    He was turning his coffee mug around and around in his fingers. He had fine hands, she noticed. Though one was scarred across the top, a slash that disappeared up his wrist into the leather sleeve. “I have to admit, I’m still back at strip poker,” he said in that low growl of a voice.
    McKenzi gulped to hide the surge of heat Down South, and smothered a laugh. “Gotta have something to do out here in the sticks.”
    “Did you grow up here?”
    “Yep.”
    “Must have been  . . .” He left the sentence open, as if he’d said too much, and lifted one leather-covered shoulder.
    “Boring? Predictable?” she said.
    He grinned as he shook his head, and deep dimples appeared on either side of that kissable mouth. “Not if you play strip poker for fun.” He laughed softly, and her toes curled inside her shoes. He went on, “Of course I guess it would depend on who you played with.”
    “So for instance, if three guys showed up right now, poked their heads through that door, and said, hey, we need a fourth . . .?”
    This time both shoulders twitched in a faint shrug. “Don’t happen to swing that way. But if you had a couple of sisters—no. Sorry. That sounded way better in my head.”
    He winced, and she laughed with him. She liked how easy he was. Hot, well-spoken . . . could he possibly be lonely? No guy this amazing could possibly be lonely. He was just waiting out the latest band of rain before driving on to his no-doubt glamorous life. Maybe her intense reaction to him was due to the fact