Werewolf Wedding by Lynn Red Page A

from the house. There were spotlights about the grounds, and then the ones in the trees, but otherwise, there was no way to see anything between the splotches of light.
    “Dark out there,” I said just to have some noise fill the air that wasn’t the whistling from Barney’s nose. “Although I guess it is night time, so that makes sense. Dark, you know, when the sun is down.”
    “It isn’t dark to us,” Jake said. “We can see in the...”
    Barney cleared his throat. “If Miss Coltrane’s suggestion is going to be followed, I’ll be back to the kitchen. The tiramisu needs to, uh, be fluffed.”
    As he exited with a decent amount of grace, Jake smiled. “Now maybe we can do this right.”
    “You’re being really cryptic,” I said, dipping my spoon in the pumpkin and licking the seductive, savory liquid off the back. “Oh God that was some kind of Emily Post faux-pas wasn’t it?”
    “Hell if I know. This wasn’t ever the life I imagined, if that isn’t abundantly clear already.”
    “What is?” I asked, having another lick. “I’m sorry, but this is really good.”
    A snicker. “You’re apologizing for complimenting my soup? That’s a little weird.”
    “No, apologizing for interrupting whatever it is you want to tell me, or ask me, or whichever it is. I’m terrible at taking social cues.”
    Jake loosened the collar of his shirt, revealing a thin cord around his neck that I’d never noticed before. The cords in his neck were taut, which is when I realized he was gritting his teeth. “You okay?” I asked. “Seem nervous about something.”
    He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth. “Nah, nothing anybody else wouldn’t be nervous about. In fact, I’m pretty impressed with how I’m handling it. After all, I’m just going to ask you to marry me and be the vita of a werewolf pack.” He shrugged. “No big.”
    “Oh,” I said.
    Before I knew what I had said ‘oh’ to, my hands started shaking, which I tried to remedy by swallowing the rest of the glass of wine. And then a pumpkin full of soup, and then a roasted duck.
    “B-b-but why?” I asked. “Wait did you say vita ? And you are a werewolf. That’s not possible, those don’t exist outside of movies and romance novels.”
    “And creepy Carpathian myths involving thousand year old vampires? Ever heard that old axiom that behind every fiction is a kernel of truth?”
    “And you want me to marry you?”
    My heart started beating reasonably faster. “I hardly... you barely... I mean we’ve been together once ! That’s not logical!”
    “But you haven’t said no,” he growled. “I’ll take care of you. Your studio? The bills? The constant need to go to birthday parties and carve dolphins? Gone.”
    “I don’t... wait, how did you know about that? About any of it? And it was weddings that I did the dolphin statues at – and by the way I was really good at them. Wait!” I said, “wait, no, you’re trying to trick me. Somehow... you wooing me with fantastic wine and incredible food, and you spending all this energy and effort to make me feel special is some kind of trick. It has to be.”
    Jake narrowed his eyes. “That’s right, damn!” He shook his head. “My careful plan to let you know how I’ve fallen completely in love with you in the last week and a half, I can’t stop thinking about you, and I knew from the second we met that you... that I wasn’t going to let you get away. It’s true, you caught me.”
    “But it makes no sense!” I continued protesting for basically no reason at all, except that I wanted to protest. “Why?”
    “I just said why.” His eyes were getting dark again, but not in the scary, unhinged way. No, they were stormy and sexy and ridiculously hot and I was doing everything I possibly could to keep from jumping across the corner of the table and into his arms. “I need you. There’s nothing I can do. Every moment, every second, my heart reminds me that without you, I’m empty.