AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I shook my head, but she just grinned wider.
She knew me too well.
There was no use denying it, but I could minimize the damage, at least. “It was just a customer who I talked to for like, one minute. He was kinda hot. That’s all. I’ll probably never see him again, so long as I live.”
“Girl, you are gonna tell me all the details. Don’t you eventhinkabout skimping out on them.”
“I’m not kidding. There’s pretty much nothing to say. Except… I think he was a hellhound or something. I don’t know.”
Annabelle’s eyes widened in excitement. “Oh my God! You met a hellhound?”
“Maybe? He had fangs and stuff.”
She squealed and bounced on her toes, saying, “That’s so cool! Ooh, I’ve never met one before.”
“Yeah, well, he was also a fire captain, so he’s probably super busy and doesn’t have time for—”
“A fire captain?!” she practically shrieked.
I should have known that’d whip her up into a tizzy. She was a huge romantic. She loved love. She wanted everyone around her to be in love. And while I appreciated that about her most of the time, at that moment I wished she’d calm down a little.
The last thing I needed was encouragement. With the way my ex practically ruined my life, I was pretty okay with the thought of being alone forever.
“Annabelle,” I said sternly. “It’s not like it’s going to go anywhere.”
“But what if it does?” she insisted, her eyes sparkling with hope. “What if you guys hit it off and get married and have a bunch of cute hellpups? Ooh, you’re gonna let me help you dog-proof your apartment, right? I’m an expert.”
“Okay, first off? I’m pretty sure they would just be normal human babies, at least until they learned how to shift. And secondly? I talked to this guy for literally one minute! I’m not marrying him!”
“Well, not with that attitude, you’re not,” Annabelle said with a wink.
I suddenly froze, looking over Annabelle’s shoulder to see a very familiar face.
Speak of the devil.
It was Lucian himself, walking down the sidewalk toward my truck. He wore a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt that hugged his muscular frame, along with a pair of aviator sunglasses. He looked like he could’ve been a model straight out of a hot fireman calendar.
Annabelle glanced behind herself to see what I was staring at, then whipped her head back around and whispered loudly, “Wait, is that him?”
I nodded, unable to find my voice.
He pushed his sunglasses up into his hair and smiled when he saw me, waving as if we were old friends.
Annabelle quickly rallied the dogs and started herding them away from my truck, saying, “Well, it was nice catching up, Zoe! I’ll call you later!”
I shot her a look of betrayal as she abandoned me, but she just grinned and gave me a thumbs-up before disappearing around the corner.
Lucian stopped in front of me and said in that deep rumble of his, “Hello, Zoe.”
“Hi,” I squeaked out. “Uh… Are you stopping by for another bowl of gumbo, or…?”
“I wanted to see you again,” Lucian said simply. “To apologize for the other day.”
I frowned, not sure what he was talking about. “Apologize? Why?”
“I’m afraid my beast was acting up,” he admitted with a guilty, almost puppylike lowering of his head. “It’s hard to control sometimes.”
“Your beast?”
