Free Sassy Ever After: Bonnie Sass (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Erika Masten Page B

blue jeans didn’t hurt either.
    “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever liked hearing what comes after a statement like that.”
    Calum winked at her. “You’re always annoyed with me anyway, aren’t you?”
    “Mildly,” she confirmed.
    More truthfully, Angie was beginning to feel startlingly vulnerable again to this man she’d fallen in love with as a wide-eyed college girl. These last three weeks with him back in the UK had eroded years of emotional defenses she’d build up against Calum. There was no distance between them now and no job back in Las Vegas to occupy her when she tried not to think about him. Which was constantly.
    God but he was adorable when he lowered his head and regarded her intensely from beneath his sandy brow. “I won’t pretend any longer. I could have gotten you your job back at the Shifter Access Unlimited Hotel had I spoken to the owner. The truth is, lass, I didn’t even try.”
    Angie squinted at Calum and slowed her peddling slightly to ease back even with him and look him in the face. “Well, for one, I think you’re underestimating how mad Monsieur Black was with me and how much he means to—and lives for—that hotel. Don’t underestimate the passion of a werepenguin. He’d never have tolerated having me back. But for the sake of argument, let’s just ask why you didn’t, mister.”
    Smiling and using those blue eyes on her, Calum said, “Because otherwise you wouldn’t have let yourself accept my offer of spending the rest of the summer with me in Scotland while I recuperated.”
    Angie laughed aloud and hard. “Your recuperation,” she scoffed. “Your wounds were nothing but bruises by the time we got on the airplane in Las Vegas. Jeez, but the way you shifters heal. I’m not going to feel so bad for you from now on knowing you can practically be torn apart and then fully recovered less than a week later. Mere mortals like me nurse paper cuts for that long, and they’re excruciating. Hey, where you going? Don’t be mad.”
    In the midst of Angie being unsympathetic, Calum and his bike had veered off to the right along the curve mounting a hill in the grassy landscape. Angie’s natural competitiveness kicked in, and she pedaled harder to keep up and then to pass the man. The downside was losing sight of that amazing ass of his in those jeans from behind.
    Then again, the view from the top of the hill was pretty damn amazing, too.
    Below them, in a cradle of grassy green fields between the striking Scottish hills, sat a two-story manor house out of a fairy tale. Large enough to be Cinderella’s house. Large enough to be a bed and breakfast.
    “Do you recognize it?” Calum asked.
    Angie nodded. “It’s even prettier than the photos. This is the manor one of the hotel guests had told me he had for sale, but how did you…?” Midway through the question, Angie knew the answer. “Letty. She told you about it.”
    “She did. She said you got all mopey about it but refused to even consider buying it with your savings because it was in Scotland. In my pack territory. You knew that, didn’t you, lass?”
    Chagrinned, Angie shrugged.
    “Well, you can’t keep dancing back and forth about it now that it’s yours.”
    “It’s what?”
    “A wedding gift,” Calum said before he started down the hill toward the house fast on that bicycle. “Let’s go see your hotel, Lady Ferguson.”
    Angie glared at the alpha before kicking down hard on her own bike pedals. “You haven’t even asked me to marry you, fur ball,” she called out to his back. “It’s rude to buy a wedding gift when you don’t even have a fiancé.”
    Inside her, Angie found her heart beating erratically, and not from the effort of their bicycle race. Mate. Marriage. Wedding gift. Lady Ferguson . It was too much to take in when she’d been spending the last three weeks wondering when this fling with Calum would come to an end.
    She chased the alpha—that fur ball could move even just on two