Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 30663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 153(@200wpm)___ 123(@250wpm)___ 102(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 30663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 153(@200wpm)___ 123(@250wpm)___ 102(@300wpm)
His friends didn’t know he was still a virgin, had never been with a woman.
Running a hand down his face, he glanced over at his father and wondered if he should ask him for advice, but decided against it.
The sun was slowly starting to set, and he had plans with Darcy. Anticipation rushed through his whole body, and he couldn’t help but feel excited at the prospect of seeing her once again.
****
Darcy’s home was clean, without a speck of dust to be seen. She loved living in a clean environment, and the truth was, it stopped her from feeling so lonely. She had a cleaning schedule and as she looked around her home, she couldn’t help but feel the nerves threatening to claim her.
Joe said he’d be arriving soon, and she had no idea what to do. She was forty years old, and had never been this worried about a guy coming around to her home.
For years, to keep the loneliness at bay, she had delved into many different forms of crafts. The pack had a shop completely dedicated to hobbies, including paper crafts, all the way to sewing, painting, knitting, and every other hobby in between. That was where she worked, and their web shop was booming. She packaged more orders to be shipped out than she did for serving walk-in customers, even though they had plenty of those as well.
The shop was stationed on a multitude of levels and she along with three other women ran it, including, Callie, Joe’s mother.
In fact, it was because of Callie that the building was transformed into a crafting shop. Callie was a keen crafter, and had set up days where they could gather around, chat, and enjoy whatever project they were working on.
Today, with Callie in the shop, Darcy had done everything she could to avoid the other woman. She hoped it didn’t look too obvious. She had been on the top floor, grabbing some fabric for an order, and when she caught sight of Callie, she dropped to her knees so she couldn’t be seen. Darcy loved her job. She adored Callie, but wondered what the other woman would think of Joe potentially being her mate.
There’s no potential about it.
He is your mate.
She rubbed at her temple and gasped as her doorbell rang.
Was it Joe? Her stomach felt like it was going to explode with butterflies.
She wasn’t used to feeling this way about a guy, and she’d been on plenty of dates, and yes, they hadn’t all ended great. Darcy had never been good at conversation, and the truth was, she tended to go to her safe place of talking about her hobbies. Hence the boring life. No guy on a date wanted to hear about the trouble she had when she started knitting, or that she couldn’t figure out what she was doing wrong with her stitches. To knit a stitch, you hold the yarn to the back, and to purl a stitch, you bring the yarn to the front. Simple, and yet she had to go on the Internet to figure that out.
That date had ended with him paying for the food and advising her to get a life. He’d been a wolf just passing through. Some of the other single women hadn’t been too happy that she had bored him enough to send him packing.
From time to time, they had wolf tourists, looking for a new pack, hoping to settle and find their roots. When that happened, Darcy had tried to steer clear of them.
Pushing those horrible memories to the back of her mind, she reached for the door and opened it. She hadn’t changed out of her jeans and blouse, both of which she had made herself. The jeans didn’t fit quite so well, but she was learning.
This is why she loved crafting, it helped to distract her from what was going on around her. When she found herself getting nervous or uncomfortable, she’d think of the pattern she was currently working on, or go through the stages of knitting, or even baking a cake. She’d come up with recipes she would just have to try. The women at the shop loved to taste her fresh-baked goodies. She had an entire folder of recipes dedicated to ideas she had come up with to try and escape the moment.
Again, she pushed those memories aside and opened the door. Joe stood there, looking so good in a pair of jeans and crisp white shirt.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi, can I come in?”
“Oh, yeah, come on in.” She stepped back and then stared at the floor, nibbling her lip. Get it together, Darcy.
He stepped over the threshold, into her home, and closed the door behind him.
Silence fell between them.
Clasping her hands together, she lifted her head to look at him. “Er, did you have a good day?”