Page 4 of Ravenous

“She’s adorable.” I pushed to my bare feet. It was in the high eighties, and to combat the warm-for-Montana temperatures, I had on a short sundress, and my fair hair was pulled up into a sloppy bun.

He grunted again.

I wasn’t sure what else to say to a mostly naked man in my backyard who seemed disgruntled that I befriended his daughter. There was no etiquette for this.

He stared. I stared back.

Then he turned on his bare feet and left.

I got a great view of his muscular ass in the tiny towel.

Maybe I shouldn’t have given his daughter a popsicle. Maybe he shouldn’t have flashed me his impressive dick.

And that dick belonged to my neighbor? Wow.

The man was grumpy. Growly. Gorgeous.

And I didn’t even know his name.

3

WES

I might have beena dick back there to my new neighbor, but I didn’t really care. Hell, I didn’t even want to think about flashing myself. What kind of man does that? She must think I’m a perv. And a dick.

I knew I came off as an asshole, not just to Joy, but to everyone. Even before Remy, I’d never been much for socializing. I wasn’t the kind of guy to make small talk or gab around with the neighbors. The last four years of single parenting had made me downright prickly.

If I had a daily allotment of words to say, I sure as shit used them all up with Remy. She was a chatterbox. It seemed the only time she stopped talking was when she was asleep. For the rest of the world, I didn’t have much left in me for chitchat or pleasantries or any of that shit. My well of patience was completely dried up.

Getting saddled—no, notsaddled, that was the wrong word—I fuckingadoredRemy, but I didn’t expect to raise a pup from infancy all by myself. I didn’t even know I had a pup until I returned to my home pack after a six-month rodeo circuit and saw her mom in town, pregnant.

Soraya hadn’t been my girlfriend. She hadn’t even been a friend. We’d hooked upone timeon a full moon run. ONE TIME! She was a couple years younger than I was and had always been a wild one. Since she was eighteen, she’d run off and pop back in town when she was in trouble or needed money from her rich father. She’d just returned once again when we hooked up.

Yeah, the pull-out method obviously hadn’t been enough. So Remy was an oopsie baby.

I’d found a place to live and moved Soraya in with me to do right by her and the pup. But as soon as she had Remy, Soraya left town. Popped out the baby, took one look at her, and was gone. While she may have returned to the pack again, I’d moved here to Cooper Valley to steer clear. I hadn’t seen her since.

I had no regrets. Remy was everything to me.

It was just that I’d known fuck-all about raising a newborn pup, and it had been a journey to say the least. Especially when I had to take her on the road with me from competition to competition to ride bulls because that was the only way I could save enough money to buy us this place and provide for her.

I was good at it, too. Prize money came in. Sponsorships. Now we were set with a good house in a good town with a good pack.

I went inside and found Remy back in her booster coloring, where she was supposed to have been while I was showering.

I stomped over and kissed the top of her messy redhead. “You scared me, baby.”

My daughter looked up at me with wide, surprised eyes. They were green, like Soraya’s. Like every time I peered into her miniature, innocent face, my chest squeezed up tight.

I loved her so much it physically hurt. The pain of fucking this up–parenting her the wrong way, or fate forbid, ever losing her–had a strangle-hold on my love.

“Youwere scared?” she asked in wonderment.

I set my hand on my bare chest. “You don’t think daddies can be scared?”

“I didn’t think you were scared of anything.”

I pulled back a chair beside her and plunked into it. I was still wearing nothing but Remy’s undersized towel. “I don’t get scared for me, Remy baby. But you know what scares me a lot?”

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