The Pretend Marriage: A Werewolf Romance Read Free

relationship entailed. She had to be tolerant and patient and penitent and all the good things her mother taught her that shifter women should be. This was a test of the greatest magnitude. This was the prelude to marriage. All women had to go through this! It would be abnormal if she didn’t!
    Exce pt that one day, she came home after work to find his coffee mug on the glass table with a large coffee ring around it.
    She suppressed a click of exasperation and walked to the kitchen table, where they ate their meals. The butter was out again and softly melting in the sun rays streaming from the window. Trust him to put it out in a patch of sunlight so that the whole slab was almost a puddle by now.
    Then she noticed something weird.
    His clothes were not strewn around on the floor. He had a habit of taking off his clothes and dropping them on the floor or flinging them onto the nearest surface, like the couch or a chair or the bed. But this time, there were none of his clothes lying around.
    She had a suspicion.
    She strode to the bedroom and opened the closet. He had cleaned out his things, and there were empty spaces where his underwear – the underwear she had painstakingly laundered and ironed – had been.
    She headed for the bathroom. His toothbrush and shaving kit were absent.
    He was gone without a word. Not a text message, not a note, nothing.
    She felt the blood drain from her head to her legs, and she suddenly felt woozy. She had to clutch one of her bedposts to steady herself. Why did he leave her like this? Was it something she said? Something she did? Or something she should have said or done?
    She grabbed her cellphone and speed dialed his number. Her call did not connect. He had probably blocked her number as well.
    She was in a daze. This was the worst breakup she ever had been in. And she didn’t even have a clue why.
    But I did all the right things. I thought things were going great!
    What would her mother say about her ability to retain men? She could attract the best of them, no problem. It was getting them to stay – that was the problem!
    Her self-confidence was once again shaken badly.
    What’s wrong with me?
    Her eyes lighted on the top drawer of her bedroom cabinet. It was slightly opened. Funny. She always made sure that drawer was tightly shut because her bank cards were inside.
    Her bank cards!
    She rushed to the drawer and pulled it open. The entire cabinet shook. Sure enough, her bank cards were missing. She had never told him her personal identification number, but he had loitered around her many times when she had withdrawn money from the machine and he could have picked it up easily enough.
    Oh fuck, fuck, fuck! She shouldn’t have left it in there, but she had mislaid it once in her purse and she was afraid of losing it again.
    She quickly dialed her bank.
    “Hello? I need to check something. Yes.” She gave her account number. “My mother’s maiden name? Nancy. Nancy Contralto. That’s right. And my favorite color is blue.”
    So much for personal data verification.
    “What’s that you said?” The blood drained from her cheeks once again. She didn’t think there would be any left. “The account is emptied? Oh, there’s ten dollars left in it. Thank you.”
    Generous of him.
    She clicked off. OK, this time she really had to sit down.
    She had debts. Commitments. Her younger brother’s college fund to contribute to. Her own college loans to pay off.
    Damn humans!
    How the hell was she going to make ends meet now?

3
     
    Jake breezes through the doors of Barton, Schaffer and Co. in a hurry. The receptionist, Peggy, looks up.
    “You’re late,” she accuses. “Old Man Barton has been on the rampage. I’ve called your cellphone fifteen times and it keeps going to voicemail.”
    “I know, I know,” Jake groans. He hadn’t had time to switch his cellphone on.
    “You better go in there.” She jerks her thumb to the left.
    Not good.
    As Jake approaches Old Man Barton’s