Free Halloween In Paradise by Tianna Xander Page B

some lone wolf would come and sweep you off your feet.”

Chapter Three
     
     
    Gabby looked up into the face of a devil. The man was too perfect to be anything else. Dark hair brushed broad shoulders. A muscular chest tapered down to a narrow waist and hips. She turned her head, her face burning. He had a hard-on!
    “Never mind about the booth, ma’am,” he said to Sarah.
    “If that’s what you want, and the lady doesn’t mind.” She glanced at Gabby who was dumb struck by the too-handsome man staring down at her. “I’ll go get the three of you some water, then,” she said as she shook her head and walked toward the kitchen.
    “Do you mind if we join you?” He slid into the other side of the booth without waiting for her reply. “You didn’t answer my question.”
    “I wasn’t sure I should dignify it with one.”
    “Why not?” His eyes widened. “I was being sincere.”
    “I’m sure you were,” Gabby said with a smile. She couldn’t quite meet his gaze. He had to know she had seen his erection, seeing that it had been at eye level and all. “But all of you guys here in Paradise are always saying stuff like that.” She gave him a bigger smile to reduce the sting of her comment. “I’m sure you mean it, but when you’re all doing it, it kind of takes the novelty out of it.”
    “I think it just means that the men here are intelligent.” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “So, then, tell me why you’re here alone if all of the men are saying these pretty words to you that you don’t quite believe.”
    “Because they’re all mated.” She shrugged. “Well, most of them are married, and the ones who aren’t just don’t take a real interest in me.”
    He leaned further forward, his black eyes staring deep into hers. “What if I told you that I have a real interest in you?”
    “As do I,” said another deep voice as a man slid into the seat beside her, crowding her.
    Gabby slid toward the wall in an attempt to put distance between them, but it just wasn’t happening. The man was huge—body builder huge. He took up most of the seat. His hot thigh pressed against hers and his upper arm pressed against her left breast.
    Her nipples grew hard just thinking about the two men, about what they could do if only she were their mate. She knew the odds of that were slim, but it didn’t stop her from dreaming—from wishing.
    It wasn’t difficult to see that every woman here in Paradise was blissfully happy with her man or men. Lately, the town had seen an influx of shifters coming home after some horrible thing that most people didn’t want to talk about anymore.
    Their penchant for having two men for one woman was one of the reasons she had stayed here after the plane crash. That, and the fact that these people had welcomed her with open arms. They had found her a place to stay. They had provided for her when she couldn’t provide for herself and, she had been ashamed to admit, if only to herself, that she had sought this town out to expose it and their unorthodox practices to the world.
    Her headline would have read, REPORTING FROM PARADISE . However, she found that she couldn’t write the story. This was paradise in every sense of the word. They had virtually no crime and no domestic violence. The men treated the women here like goddesses and they cherished their children, as they should.
    Gabby wanted that. If that made her selfish, it was too damned bad. She’d spent most of her life alone writing her stories, losing her lovers because of deadlines and her constant need to write the next story.
    For once, she wanted someone to put her first. She wanted someone to tell her she didn’t have to work if she didn’t want to, or that she could sit staring in front of a blank page for as long as it took to come up with a killer opening line.
    She hated the fact that, in the real world, she had to work another job to make ends meet. Nothing would please her more than to sit at home