Page 5 of My Blind Date is a Werewolf

His expression was priceless. Too many emotions played across his face to place them all, and the glaring handprint marring his cheek stood out against his pale complexion.

“Uh…” I gulped, curling my fingers into the palm of my throbbing hand. Should I apologize? My gaze flickered to Adrian’s, but he gave a subtle shake of his head as if he could read the question dancing around my brain.

I expected Dustin to blow up and throw another tantrum, but he turned on his heel, shoulder checking Adrian on the way out in a huff. You could have heard a pin drop from across the street with the shocked silence that filled the cafe after he’d slammed the door shut behind him.

“That was intense!” Wendy squeaked from the counter. All the strength in my legs deserted me, turning them into wet noodles. Collapsing against the wall, I held a hand over my chest to keep my heart from pounding right through my ribcage.

“Hey, are you okay? Should I call the chief to go after that guy?” Adrian reached out for me before I crumpled all the way to the floor. He smelled like pine and cinnamon, making me nostalgic for Christmas even though it was still two months away. I raised my head to tell him there was no need and every thought I had disintegrated into dust at the sight of those whisky-colored eyes. This was not an observation that was new to me, but I couldn’t help but get a little weak-kneed and tongue-tied at the sheer masculinity of Adrian Cooper.

There was no way not to notice the man. He was just so…there and so tall, one of the largest men in the town, standing at six-foot-five and built like a dang lumberjack, or maybe a Viking warrior. As if his hulking body size was not enough to draw attention wherever he went, his copper-toned red curls and bushy beard stood out amongst the many blonds and brunettes in any room. He was more grizzly bear than wolf, but I supposed he also had the whole animal magnetism thing going for him. Any straight, red-blooded woman could not not notice him, and I was no exception, especially when his amber eyes were laser-focused on me and me alone. Which side of him was peering out at me, I wondered—the man, or the beast within?

With other shifters in our community, it was easy to tell when the wolf took over. Their normal eye color turned amber or arctic blue. With Adrian, they were always this dark, red-tinged amber color in both forms. He had a smattering of freckles down the bridge of his prominent nose and beautifully curved eyelashes many women would kill for. Adrian was not magazine perfect or model handsome in the way of Dustin and my ex-husband. He was a barbarian compared to their delicately chiseled aristocratic features, but no less handsome.

“Olivia, did you hear what I said?” The deep rumble of his voice dragged me out of my one-sided admiration. A calloused hand cupped my cheek, his ginger eyebrows knitted in concern, and I assumed his lips were pressed in a thin line under all that beard. One brush of his thumb across the slash of my cheekbone was all it took for me to want to explode out of my skin.

A slight tremor moved through my body. Adrian misread the situation as me still being shaken up over the whole Dustin issue and ushered me to one of the free tables, muttering curses under his breath.

“I should have pummeled his face into the wall. Who does he think he is?” He pulled out a chair for me and waited until I was sitting down. “Should I ask Wendy to bring you something? You don’t keep whiskey or any other stiff drinks in the back, do you?” Adrian squeezed into the chair next to mine, looking like he’d just settled down at a doll’s table with the way he dwarfed the furniture.

I smiled at his adorably infuriated expressions—two words that normally didn’t go together, but that was the only way to describe how he looked at that moment.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have a liquor license, so the only thing back there is all kinds of teas and coffee. I’m okay, Adrian. A little shaken up, but it’s nothing I won’t get over.” I smiled and covered his hand with mine, noting with appreciation just how much bigger his hand was than mine. It was tanned from all his time spent working in the sun because of his construction company. His hand also had a light smattering of freckles and a fine layer of hair covering the ropey muscles of his forearm.

“I still think you should report him. What if he comes back?” he insisted, flipping my hand over and engulfing it in his. He was hot, and I don’t mean his looks. His temperature was way too warm for the mild fall weather. If he were a normal person, I’d jump to rush him to the hospital to get treated for a fever, but this was the way shifters were built.

Having been born and raised in Mystic Cove, I’d picked up a lot about the other beings who lived amongst us. Shifters—primarily the MC wolf pack—had hot tempers and the body heat to match, while the undead vampires were cold and sometimes as pale as corpses. Witches and warlocks were pretty much humans with magic, but the lot of them were capricious, if not a little eccentric and flighty.

“I can deal with Dustin. I don’t think he’ll be around for longer than a couple of weeks. After embarrassing himself like that, this is the last place he’ll come back to.” I wished I believed my own words, but I needed to talk Adrian down before this turned into a bigger deal than it was. “At least I learned a lesson.” I smiled brightly at him, wanting to add some levity to this situation.

His eyebrows arched up to his hairline, a loose copper curl falling over his left eye that he flicked back with the impatience of a man who did not spend hours fretting over his looks. “Oh yeah, and what’s that?” he rumbled.

“Never swipe right just because you see a pretty face on a dating app. You won’t believe the number of creeps I’ve been out on dates with over the last few months,” I groaned, chatting with him as if we were old pals.

Adrian was a contemporary of my sister Angie. The two of them were former high school classmates, and he was also a good friend of Angie’s husband, Paul, the two of them usually grabbing a drink or two at The Drinking Hole every week.

His mustache twitched. I got the feeling he wanted to say more about what had just happened, but he leaned back in his chair and scrubbed a hand over his beard. “Call me old-fashioned, but I never got the appeal of the whole internet dating thing. I prefer meeting women in a more…natural manner. Get to know her as a friend first before making the jump into romantic territory.”

A snort escaped me without meaning to. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh at you.” I slapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter. “It’s just that, you could snap a finger and have any woman in this room.”

“Maybe that was true when I was just a simple lieutenant, but now that I’m Alpha—” A weary sigh escaped him. “There are no rules that say an Alpha can’t fool around before settling down with a mate, but I don’t know… I guess now that I have all this added responsibility on top of running the family’s construction firm, I guess I feel like I should be dating for keeps, not just to scratch an itch.” He shrugged helplessly, the gesture fluid and drawing the eye to the way his shirt stretched tautly across the broad expanse of his chest.

“Congratulations on being recognized as Alpha. The pack couldn’t be in better hands.” I bumped my shoulder into his. His mustache twitched again as he gave me a small smile.

“So I’ve been told, but between you and me, the imposter syndrome won’t let me sleep at night. Rod Holland left some really big shoes for me to fill when he retired. Every single wolf in the pack respected him even if they didn’t like him, likewise with the members of the council. Compared to the likes of Catherine Hawthorne and Landon Grayson, I am but a pup barely weaned off its mother’s teats. They’re going to eat me alive at the next council meeting.”

“The only reason you feel like that is because you’ve officially been Alpha for a little over three weeks while Rod had been Alpha for over twenty years. The respect you all had for him and the experience of leading such a large pack was built over all those years. And he had the support of his family and friends just like you do. You’re one of the finest men in this town, Adrian. I have a feeling you’ll do just fine.”

The shells of his ears were red, and it was hard to tell under his beard, but I think he was blushing. His eyes flickered toward mine, sucking me into their golden depths while everything around us fell away. A loud crash came from the kitchen, causing us to jolt apart, and it was only then I realized just how close to each other we’d been seated.

Jumping up from my chair like something bit my butt, I smoothed my hands down my apron and jabbed a thumb in the direction of the kitchen. “I better go sort that out.”

Yeah, my voice came out all breathy, so what? It didn’t mean anything because as fine as Adrian Cooper was, I was on a dating hiatus.

“I should get going too. The crew must be wondering where I am with their lunch,” he mumbled. I thanked him once again for helping me and rushed into the kitchen, ignoring Wendy’s knowing smile.

***

“That’s it! You’re getting blocked, mister, and then maybe a girl can get some work done around here,” I hissed under my breath, jabbing angrily at my phone as I blacklisted Dustin Rathinger’s phone number and tossed it to the other side of the couch.

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