Free The BBW and the Beast: A Shifter Retelling of Beauty and the Beast (A BBW Shifter Fairy Tale Retelling Book 1) by Sylvia Frost Page B

turned into weeks, it only got worse. But how could she go back to Samson after everything that had happened?
    All that considered, it was no surprise that she hadn’t noticed Christmas had arrived until her father was putting up the tree. She watched him work from her position on the couch, staring at the grilled cheese sandwich he had made her.
    “You going to come help?” he asked as he threaded a string of popcorn through the branches.
    “No,” Bel said listlessly.
    “No?” her father asked. “You’ve been sitting there for an awful long time.”
    Bel ignored him.
    “Bel?” Her father stepped down from the footstool – he was too short to reach the top branches without it – and faced her.
    “Mm?”
    “I’m worried about you,” he said, holding up the string of popcorn like a peace offering.
    “I’m fine.” Bel took a bite of the grilled cheese. It tasted papery in her mouth. She swallowed without smiling. “Delicious.”
    His bushy eyebrows furrowed, and he waddled over to sit on the arm of the couch. “You haven’t talked much about your publishing contract, and I haven’t seen you do any writing. Is everything okay with that?”
    Bel scowled. “Just as okay as your lawsuit issues, Dad.”
    His pockmarked face went suddenly white. “Oh, no.”
    Bel put down her grilled cheese. “Yeah, I know about that.”
    “You don’t have to—”
    “I’ve already taken care of it.” Bel held up a hand.
    His face contorted with nervousness. “You didn’t pay him?”
    Bel barked a laugh. “God, no. There’s no way that rose was really worth a million and a half dollars, anyway.”
    Her dad frowned. “So he was scamming me?”
    His mentioning scamming and Samson in the same sentence made Bel’s heart twist. Had it been a scam? Her feelings? Was it all just some sick magic trick? But no it was real. Maybe that was worse. She shook her head. “I don’t know, Dad.”
    “Well, I suppose I should say thank you, honey.” Her father moved to kiss the top of her head, but Bel withdrew.
    “Just tell me one thing. Why did you go there in the first place?”
    Her dad blushed, a trademark of the Booksmore family. “Well, it was silly.”
    Bel sat up, her pain fading in the face of her curiosity. “What?”
    “I was looking for signatures for a wolf hunting petition.”
    Bel’s eyes widened. That was why Samson had pressed the lawsuit. Her father had come to his door, asking him to a sign a piece of paper that would allow humans to attack his brother, Luther. But something still didn’t add up.
    “But you’re an accountant, Dad, not a farmer,” Bel said.
    He smothered his face with his fingers, embarrassed. “There’s this farmer in town, Anabella Gaston. I was having trouble getting up the courage to ask her out. I thought if I did something nice for her, she’d be more likely to say yes.”
    “Was she?”
    Her father glanced at her ruefully, his big lips pursed. “No. Not a bit. When I told her what I’d done, she told me that she could handle her own animals, thank you very much, and that the hunters would probably accidentally kill even more of her livestock.”
    Bel laughed for real this time, glad for the emotion piercing the numbness that had swallowed her heart.
    Her dad joined in. “Thankfully, she came around a few weeks later and told me she’d forgive me if I took her out for dinner at Lin’s Wok Grill. She said it’s silly to punish people for the images they have you not matching the way you really are.” His smile split his whole face open, revealing a tender happiness Bel hadn’t seen on him since her mother had died. Since they had first moved to Crystal Creek. He deserved that happiness more than anyone else she could think of, even if he was an idiot.
    He looked how she had felt when she’d put on the yellow dress and made dinner for Samson. When she still trusted him.
    She wanted that back, she realized. She wanted it to be real. And she knew what she had to