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“Girls’ night,” I informed him, smirking at the questions in his eyes. “Margo and I are planning a girls’ night.” I leaned against his desk while he reclined in his office chair. “Don’t be surprised if you find us looking like aliens with face masks and cucumbers on our eyes later tonight.”
“Girls’ night, huh?” Ridge chuckled. “I won’t dare interrupt, but no promises about not taking pictures if you all pass out wearing those masks and cucumbers.”
“Really?” I feigned shock. “And here I thought you were a gentleman.”
“Sometimes, there are opportunities one just can’t pass up.” Ridge stood and pulled me into a breathtaking kiss. “Have fun, little wolf,” he said against my lips before releasing me. “Let your hair down.” He leaned down again, giving me a quick peck on the lips.
I jokingly fanned myself, making Ridge laugh. “Go on, git, before I ban this girls’ night and throw you over my shoulder and have my way with you.”
I snorted and headed for the door. “I’m going to take you up on that offer later, kind sir.” Giggling at the growl he gave me, I left.
A girls’ night was exactly what I needed. It had been so long since I’d enjoyed quality time with friends, and this distraction was more than welcome.
“Ridge is on board,” I told Margo when I found her.
She gave me a high five. “I feel like a high schooler.” She flipped her hair back. “Like, we’re totally gonna have, like, such a totally great time.”
With a snort, I plopped down and pulled out my phone to call Audrey and Lola.
I called Lola first. “Sorry, Tori, I’m up to my eyeballs in research,” she said when I told her our plans. “I need to work on this.”
“C’mon, Lola,” I pleaded. “It won’t be the same if you’re not here. Besides, all work and no play makes Jill—or Lola, in this case—a dull girl.”
She let out an exasperated sigh, and it didn’t take too much arm-twisting for her to say, “All right. I guess it won’t hurt to take one night off. But after that, I’ll be as dull as the dullest thing you can think of.”
One down, one to go.
I dialed Audrey. “I know it’s last minute, but do you have anything planned tonight?”
“Well, actually, you caught me between dates,” Audrey teased. “All these new shifters in town. I’m helping them discover the delights of Blackwood Creek.”
“Liar.”
“Yeah, you’re right, unfortunately. I’m just leaving The Tipsy Tavern to go home and paint my nails ‘Stormy Gray’ so I can watch them dry and do them again with ‘Peachy Pink.’ Why? Whatcha doin’?”
“Sounds like you really know how to have a good time.” I laughed sarcastically. “Margo’s here, and we’re planning a girls’ night. Lola’s coming, so I’m hoping you’ll be up for it, too?”
“You’re on. Give me thirty minutes to go home and grab supplies. We’ll have a girls’ night to remember,” she said, then ended the call abruptly.
I looked from the phone to Margo and back again. “Well. That was easy. She’ll be here in thirty minutes.”
Margo, Lola, and I headed to the grocery store for snacks, and we pulled up at the manor just as Audrey arrived. With our arms full of treats and supplies, we claimed a room with amplespace to act as our headquarters for our inaugural Blackwood Manor girls’ night in.
Margo took her place at the table we had decided would be our bar for the night. She stood with bottles of tequila, orange liqueur, and margarita mix, and in a terrible French accent, announced, “Bon soir, mesdames! Welcome to ze Blackwood Bar! What eez your poison zis evening? So long as it eez margaritas, it eez all good!”
Audrey blushed until she caught Lola and me looking across at her, and we burst out laughing. Once we’d caught our breath, we put on a classic rom-com, and Margo mixed the margaritas. Audrey announced that her extensive use of spas meant she was the closest thing to a professional esthetician among us, so she helped apply masks to our faces.
I’d worried that Lola would feel excluded since she was the only non-shifter in the group, and while she was initially shy, she seemed to warm up quickly as Audrey and Margo included her in their lively chatter. The margaritas helped, too.
As the night went on, our laughter echoed off the walls, creating a joyful atmosphere. We shared stories, reminiscing about the times before we’d all met.
Audrey openly shared her difficult childhood, recounting how she’d rebelled against her overbearing parents. Some of her stories made me laugh. “I had a party one weekend when my parents went out of town with friends. Just kids from school, mostly, but we managed to get some beers, and inevitably, the boys started acting the fool, showing off for the girls. No, wait…me. Obviously, they were showing off just for me.”
We all laughed, as I’m sure she’d intended.
“Well, at some point during the party, I heard glass breaking in the parlor. Someone had broken the door to my mother’s china cabinet. I had to pay a glazier from the next town over triple their going rate to have it fixed the next day before theyreturned. Mom still doesn’t know about that.” She giggled. “Oh! And when I was a teenager, I’d steal vodka from the bottle my mother kept in her cocktail cabinet. She’d mark a line on the bottle—but she isn’t exactly a genius, I could see where she’d drawn it—so I’d replace the alcohol with water. I’d been drinking from it for months and couldn’t believe it when my mother proceeded to get ‘tipsy’—Christie Greenthorne would do nothing as vulgar as get rip-roaring drunk—on what at that point had to be seventy-five percent water.”
But not all of Audrey’s stories were funny. Christie had her own brand of cruelty, telling Audrey she was never good enough, constantly pushing her onto Ridge—which, to my astonishment, made my wolf jealous, prompting me to remind her Audrey was my friend and these were old stories—or any available shifter Christie felt was worthy. Whenever Audrey was rejected, Christie had told her it must be because she was too fat to attract a “good man.”
