Page 7 of Sunshine

No one ever seemed worth the risk of ruining our pack dynamic.

Until Sunshine. She helped me take Mom to chemo, she researched ways to combat nausea, never made me feel weird for having an unusual career, and was the only thing missing in my life.

“What’s wrong?” Luca murmured as he pulled me against him. We were sitting in the back seat while Logan drove. Even though he grumbled about being a chauffeur, he knew I preferred being cuddled.

Too many replies hit my brain at once, and they were all to do with Sunshine. I wanted her to come home with us, permanently. I wanted to steal some of her clothes so I could finally line my nest with her scent. I sighed, then settled for the most recent.

“Sunshine ran into that hose beast, Becca.”

Logan’s face was blank as he turned off to head out of the city. With the window down, the air smelled of the ocean. While I missed Hawaii, California’s coast came a close second-best.

I told Logan what had happened at the gala. By the end, Logan was growling, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

“I should have kissed her right in front of that entire pack,” I grumbled. “That would have wiped the smirk off Becca’s face.”

Sunshine’s crumpled expression still haunted me. I would do anything to fix it.

Luca nuzzled his face into my neck, then rubbed his chin on my shoulder. “You know she wouldn’t have appreciated that. Besides, your first kiss shouldn’t be about one-upping someone else.”

Luca was right. I chafed at my inability to comfort the beautiful beta. Even if she had been nothing to me, I would have been upset. My desire for her only made it worse.

“You’re right,” I said, my voice hoarse with emotion.

“She needs more time,” Logan said. “They broke her heart. Let her show us she’s ready for more before we make a move. We don’t want to make her uncomfortable.”

Luca kissed my cheek. “You’ll know when the time is right.”

I grumbled some more, grumpy that my alphas were so reasonable. I wasn’t a patient person. Flirting with Sunshine as much as I could, without coming across as creepy, was taking all my willpower, but the thought of putting her through a fraction of the pain her last pack had caused her stopped me from going any further.

I would just have to spend more time with her, and keep showing her that we were safe. That we wouldn’t break her heart like Pack Beneventi.

I could be patient. Hopefully. Maybe.

Chapter 4

Sunshine

The next day I was dragging. I sat in my office at the Cosmic Bonds Welcome Center, considering packing it all in and moving to Fiji. Or maybe some armpit town in the Midwest where no one knew my name.

I had a billion small tasks to do, and I didn’t want to do a single one of them.

I loved my job. It gave me the challenge of being creative and figuring out a compromise between the budget the clients set and what was actually possible. But some of the day-to-day tasks were so tedious it made me wish I had an assistant, even though our budget couldn’t afford it. And I didn’t actually need one.

When I got really behind, I asked one of my sisters or cousins to help, but it was a massive pain in the butt to bring them up to sped.

Despite each of us being particularly good at one area, we all helped out with the rest of the business.

I was really great with bursts of inspiration and handling the vendors. But the small tasks would catch up with me. I couldn’t force myself to just sit and do them, so I would put it off until the absolute last minute and then, in a flash of cold sweat and panic, I’d get through my to-do list at once.

My cousin Raina, who was the oldest of the family, called this my Last-Minute Meltdown and kept telling me to do small boring tasks daily so I didn’t build up so much stress at the end.

I’d tried. I bought planners and made a schedule. I put reminders into my phone. I downloaded an app to help me remember tasks. None of it worked for long.

Every workaround that my family came up with, from reminders to Excel spreadsheets, would work great until something had to be adjusted, and I would go back to manually changing information. No two invoices looked the same, and neither did the orders to venders because everything was done differently for each event.

Anxiety hit me, making my stomach roll. I had forgotten to send two invoices yesterday. When Raina asked me if I’d sent all my invoices yet, I’d have to tell her no. Like I had the last three times she’d asked.

She’d even reminded me, by email and verbally, to finish up those invoices. But at the end of an event, I was so busy I could barely remember to eat. Sitting down to add more lines to an invoice while I was trying to make three phone calls, visit four different locations, and coordinate between the client and service providers just made me feel like death.

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