Free Bought by the Billionbear: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance by Zoe Chant

All Rights Reserved
     
    Raina Williams couldn’t think of anything more horrifying than being in a bachelorette auction. Standing onstage in front of an audience of men, conscious of every extra pound, with bright lights illuminating all her flaws, while the seconds ticked away and nobody bid on her. As far as she was concerned, it was ten tons of Do Not Want.
    But Raina’s best friend Madison wasn’t self-conscious at all. Madison was curvy too, but men always flocked to her. She’d have no problem at all sashaying onstage, turning around to display her curves, and enjoying the wolf whistles. Raina wished she had even one-tenth of Madison’s belief that she was beautiful and desirable.
    So naturally, Raina was the person Madison called when she had to drop out of the charity date auction due to chicken pox.
    “You can wear my dress,” Madison said over the phone.
    “Sorry,” said Raina. “But no. No way. I can’t do it.”
    “I promise, it doesn’t have germs on it. I dropped it off at the dry-cleaners before I got sick. All you have to do is pick it up and put it on.”
    “No!” Raina repeated. “It’s not the dress. It’s the whole thing.”
    “It’s for charity,” Madison said coaxingly. “The auction is to raise money for homeless shelters and food pantries.”
    “Well…” Raina still hated the entire idea of the bachelorette auction, but it was for a good cause. She’d never been homeless, thank God, but she’d grown up poor and she knew what it was like to go to bed hungry.
    “There’ll be at least one billionaire in the audience,” Madison went on. “Just think how many families will get fed if he bids.”
    “He’s hardly going to bid on me,” Raina pointed out.
    Madison sighed so loudly that Raina could almost feel the breeze coming out of the phone. “When are you ever going to believe that you’re beautiful? Women are supposed to have curves, Raina! I have curves. Don’t you think I’m pretty?”
    “Of course I do,” Raina said, then smiled to herself at how neatly Madison had boxed her into a corner. That was Madison: always quick-thinking.
    Before Raina could come up with another reason to refuse, Madison said, “Think of the hungry little kiddies, and go get my dress!”
    Madison hung up before Raina could argue. It looked like she was stuck with the auction.
    Raina reluctantly picked up the dress and brought it to her tiny apartment. It was made of slithery red satin— exactly Madison’s style. Raina’s job as a supermarket cashier brought in enough money that she never went hungry, but the little she had that didn’t go to necessities went into a savings account. She didn’t spend it on fancy dresses like live-for-the-moment Madison.
    She half-hoped that she’d gained enough weight in the last week to be able to honestly tell Madison that she couldn’t fit into the dress and didn’t have anything nice enough to wear to the auction, so she couldn’t go.
    She held her breath as she zipped up the dress, then exhaled. It wasn’t too tight. It wasn’t even uncomfortable. Madison’s dress fit Raina like it had been made for her.
    Raina looked at herself in the mirror, trying to see herself as the beautiful woman her best friend had always insisted she was. She supposed that her warm brown eyes were pretty. And her brown hair was glossy and fell in loose curls over her shoulders. But the satin clung to the rolls on her sides, and made her hips and butt look much bigger and softer than they did in the loose jeans she normally wore.
    She wanted to rip off the dress. But she couldn’t let down her best friend. Not to mention the hungry and homeless people the whole thing was for. She’d just cross her fingers that even if no one bid on her— which they probably wouldn’t— they’d at least be too polite to laugh. Raina would stand onstage for thirty seconds of crushing embarrassment, and then she could walk offstage, go home, and forget the whole