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

you anything more, sir?”
    In other words, Pay up and take off .
    He took the twenty out of his pocket, left it on the table, and walked out. The cold hit him, making him shrug tighter into his jacket. At least he was warm, his belly full. He stood under the restaurant’s slanted awning as the passing storm dripped, and sniffed the wind.
    His blunted human senses only registered pure, rain-scrubbed air carrying the sharp scent of wood smoke, and a hint of brine from the sea half a mile away. His wolf had scented not just animals, but shifters, all over the hills. Maybe he had dreamed that, too. The second day without food he could get somewhat light-headed.
    He had several hours before midnight. Assuming McKenzi had meant what she said. Maybe she had a boyfriend who’d show up, or she’d just tell him to get lost. He should keep running. He’d planned to keep running, even though he’d given up trying to find his pack many years before. They were gone—either dead or just dispersed. His search had become a quest for something he couldn’t name, or maybe he ran because he’d always run, it was habit. It was easy.
    A skinny, one-eyed coyote shifter he’d saved from a boozed-up gang of rednecks outside of Morro Bay had bragged about how he’d heard that Marin County was full of rich people, who had rich people trash. If a guy couldn’t find work as a human, maybe he could survive as a wolf.
    That seemed as good a new destination as any, West had thought. So he’d hunted down a couple of fat rabbits and left them for the kid, who’d been too beat up by those rednecks to run.
    So here he was, a new town, another verse in the song of his life. Marin could wait another day.
    He gazed from the darkness inside the golden windows of the restaurant, to where McKenzi stood at the stainless steel divider between the restaurant and the cook. She was different from the women he’d met so far, though it was hard to pin down why, and he knew he’d be running words and notes through his head until he found the ones that captured her heart-shaped face, dominated by big brown eyes and a lot of glossy, curly brown hair, and her laughing voice that scorned Valentine’s Day.
    It had been her voice that first caught his ear, a note of pure gold in it—a bit of laughter, and earth and fire. From what he saw under that god-awful apron, there was a whole chorus waiting, a hymn to curves. During his long rambles he’d encountered all kinds of women, some predatory, some troubled, some young, some old. He sang to them if they wanted music. If they wanted to share some heat, he was ready for that, and then he’d move on.
    But this woman, he could feel powerful music all around her, just waiting to be gathered up and spun into song. Could be it wasn’t for him, but he had to stay—he had to find out.
    So he made his way around back. The town only seemed to have one main street, with a scattering of houses here and there on both sides, stretching up into the hills. With the speed of long practice he found an old bicycle shed and shucked his clothes. He’d devised a way to roll them up tight with his belt, which he carried in his jaws when he traveled as a wolf.
    Right now he wanted to explore—check the place out. Learn what he could, so nothing would take him by surprise.
    He found a dry spot to hide his clothes, shifted, and set out to do a roam. He didn’t get very far before the rain started up again, but not before he caught the scent of a variety of animals criss-crossing around and behind the restaurant and the nearby buildings. The rain began coming down in sheets, so he stayed near the main street, finding yet more animal trails—animals that usually did not run together, or even cross one another’s territory. Yet in spite of the wet, many of these tracks were quite fresh.
    He made his way back to his shed, where he shifted back to his human self. The bitter cold closed in. He dressed quickly, then waited with the