Page 14 of Her Big Bad Wolf

“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“I’m not. Kelsey texted everyone to let us know you were coming.”

“Everyone?”

“Yup. So come on. You weren’t going to bail on us, were you?”

“I was considering it,” I admitted.

“No. Why?”

“It feels like I’m party crashing or something. I don’t want to intrude on your night.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Everyone’s excited to have you here. The more the merrier.”

More cars pulled up and others started walking towards the house.

“How many more are we talking?”

Shelby laughed, but this time she opened my door and dragged me out even though the engine was still purring.

“Let me at least turn the car off,” I grumbled.

She loosened her grip long enough for me to do that, but I was already halfway to the house before I remembered the window was still down.

I looked up into the night’s sky. I could see thousands of stars in the sky. The air was chilled, but it was a clear night with no threat of rain. At least the pizza I’d gotten for dinner wouldn’t go bad. I hadn’t yet eaten it due to the nervous butterflies in my stomach.

“Relax Vanessa. It’s not like you don’t know everyone here.”

She was right about that. Once we were inside, there was only familiar faces filling the room.

Kelsey was talking to her sister-in-law, Elise.

I ignored everyone else and made only vague hellos in passing as I made a beeline for her.

“Elise? How are you? I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Hi Vanessa. It’s great to see you here.”

“We were making bets on whether you’d actually come or not,” Emma yelled from across the room.

I shook my head but smiled.

“I’m out twenty dollars,” she confessed.

“Emma! You bet against me coming?”

“I do know you well, but I’m also happy to see I was wrong.”

It was then that I realized the rest of the room had gone quiet and were all staring at me.

There had been a time in my life when I had thrived on having everyone’s attention, but that had come to a crashing halt when Kyle had not chosen me as his mate. It had been a big piece of humble pie back then.

Once I was the center of Pack gossip for all the wrong reasons, and having everyone pity me, well, let’s just say I didn’t enjoy all that attention anymore. Things like that were hard to just let go of and forget.

Turning back to Elise, I tried to ignore the stares in my direction before I got inside my head and began to question my sanity in agreeing to come here.

“So, Elise, how are you?”