Free Wolf Seeks Wife (BBW/Shifter Mail-Order Bride Romance) (Mail-Order Mates Book 2) by Lola Kidd

One
    Molly Pitt opened the app on her phone to update her status on social media. She was lying in her bed procrastinating. She needed to get up and get ready for work but it was so hard. It was the last day for the preschool that she worked at. The last day for her, anyway. They couldn’t afford to keep her on anymore and she was being laid off. She hadn’t been able to find a new job and was dreading what the next week would bring. Her mom had assured her that it wouldn’t be a problem for Molly to take her time searching for a job.
    That was very sweet of her mom, but Molly wanted to work. It felt like she was backsliding. Still living at home and now without a job—it felt very much like she was back in high school. She cringed thinking about the list of goals she’d made for herself last year. She’d found it when she was cleaning out her college boxes over the weekend. Her goals at the time had seemed fairly easy. Lose the Senior 60, get a job in education, and get married before she was twenty-five. A year ago she had been working out three days a week, had interviews lined up with two school districts, and had been dating a wonderful fellow education major. Fast-forward four months after graduation and it had all gone to hell.
    Her wonderful boyfriend had taken a job four states away. Instead of asking Molly to come with him, he’d broken up with her, saying he wanted to have “a clean start.” She’d felt so bad about the breakup and her inability to find a job, she’d stopped working out. Once she’d moved back in with her mom, her life was even more depressing. At least she’d been able to find the job at the preschool. That was the best thing she had going for her. The kids were so great and Molly felt like she was really making a difference. Plus, it was great training for when she had kids of her own. And Molly couldn’t wait for that. She was young but she knew what she wanted. She just had no idea how to get it.
    She wanted to be married and have a family, but it wasn’t working out. Everyone told her to be patient, but dang it, she didn’t want to be patient. She wanted to be married! She went on dates all the time. None of them ever worked out. The men were perfectly nice but none of them was the one for her. They didn’t give her butterflies. And they certainly weren’t anything to write home about in the sack. Molly sighed. She was scrolling through her feed of happy couples and drama queens when an ad caught her eye.
    It was a picture of a happy couple at the altar and had a catchy tagline. “Happily Ever After…with a little more fur.” It was an ad for Lovely and Kind Brides. Molly had only heard of the company in passing but now she was curious. She did a little internet research and furiously filled out an application before she left for work.
    “Molly, you’re going to be late.” Her mom knocked on her bedroom door again.
    “It’s my last day, Mom. It doesn’t matter if I’m a few minutes late.” Molly went over her application one more time before pressing Send. It was a wild idea. The agency was a mailorder bride company and they specialized in hooking shifter men up with single women. She had dated a squirrel shifter in high school and had gone on a date with a whale shifter in college. Shifters were HOT, and from everything she had heard, they were animals in the sack. Marrying one had never crossed her mind, but neither had being a mailorder bride.
    Besides, she reasoned as she ran out the door pulling on her coat, it wasn’t like she was agreeing to marry anyone by filling out the application. She just wanted to see what they had to offer. She’d always loved books about mailorder brides in the old west. They were so romantic and sweet. She could use a little more romance in her life. She couldn’t wait to check her application when she got home that night. At least she had something more than the bottom of a carton of ice cream to look forward to.
    ***
    Kellan