The BBW and the Beast: A Shifter Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 1) Read Free Page A

who had wanted to murder wolves. One marauding wolf in particular. His brother. In fact, all of this—her compliments and her strange interest in the photo of his parents—was probably nothing but a ploy to get him to drop the lawsuit.
    Worst of all, her apology, which he had thought was for running away years earlier, wasn’t an apology for that at all. Of course it wasn’t. She had said she wanted to “get it taken care of quickly”. That wasn’t something you said about true love. Did she even recognize him at all?
    Samson’s human side understood the logic of the situation and tried to formulate a response, but it was too late. His wolf was too enraged by the sudden shift in reality. It snarled and spat and demanded to burst free of his skin.
    Samson slammed his hand down on the table. The mason jar jumped, splattering droplets of water. Samson watched as it hung in the air, almost in slow motion. At the apex of its flight, he swiped it with one hand, sending it careening toward the floor. It shattered into too many pieces to ever be put back together again.

4
    U ntil the man had swatted away the rose like it was a malaria-carrying mosquito, Bel had been certain she knew what was going on. But as she stared at the flower lying askew on the hardwood floor, framed by a mosaic of shards and a shallow moat of rose water, she realized that while she might have found the right clues, she had come to the wrong conclusion.
    Despite the family portrait in the hallway, this man was not the son of the retired zucchini plant growers. And he would not be happy with a simple apology. She wasn’t sure why she had ever thought he would.
    Maybe it had been the way he looked when he opened the door. Like he had been waiting for her. Or maybe it was the way he was dressed.
    Bel had never been into the whole sexy-hipster-lumberjack thing that had taken hold of most of the men in Tribeca, but this man made a compelling case. He wore his flannel shirt, ripped jeans, and half-beard unironically, and the muscles in his arms promised he could actually chop wood. His beautiful mess of black hair and piercing green eyes helped, too.
    All in all, he had seemed like the kind of guy to let bygones be bygones. Or at least not the kind of guy who would own a million-dollar rose. It had all seemed like some kind of misunderstanding.
    Seemed being the key word.
    Bel stared, too shocked to be angry at his bipolar reaction. “So I guess this won’t be solved just by returning the rose, will it?”
    No, I don’t think it will, Isabella,” he said coldly.
    There was no denying it. Beneath the man’s sexiness was a wild animal. And the animal, while calm now, was still loose. The fear numbing her mouth felt familiar to Bel, and she was taken back to her last time near this house, when another man, with just as compelling a voice, had made her feel so…confused.
    But he couldn’t be the same guy. Why sell a house only to buy it back? No, he probably just knew her name as part of his lawyer’s research.
    Bel gripped her mug tightly, vowing to stop being afraid. “Tell me what will make this go away.”
    The man’s eyes narrowed to emerald slits. “Go away?”
    “My father,” Bel said, ”can be foolish sometimes, but to be honest, he probably took this rose for me. He knows they’re my favorite flower, and I was coming home. If he had known how much they were worth, I’m sure he never would’ve touched it. I completely understand that you should be compensated for your loss, Mr.…”
    “West,” he said in a gravelly tone that was suspiciously close to a growl.
    “Mr. West,” Bel continued. “But we really don’t have that kind of money lying around. So I hope that there’s some kind of compromise we can reach without driving us into bankruptcy.”
    The man looked unconvinced. In fact, his green eyes were analyzing her with such intensity that Bel was sure he could flip through her entire life history like a two-dollar