GiGi put up her hand and pasted on a concrete smile. “No, no, it’s fine. I mean when you have Vann West at your disposal, how could you not accept his offer to cater your wedding? You’d be insane not to.”
Yikes. He had hurt her pride and taken away a gig. He felt like a total piece of shit. Rosemary broke in then. “Look. How about this? GiGi, we’ll have the rehearsal dinner at your café, and then of course you’ll do the cake.”
Ash nodded. “Sounds like a fair compromise to me,” he said.
Vann felt like such an ass. He could tell GiGi was still not happy, but she was evidently going to roll with it.
“I’ll let GiGi call it.”
“It’s fine,” she said, her face unreadable.
“Perfect,” Vann said. “I’m not a dessert man, by any stretch.”
GiGi looked up at him and smirked. “You perhaps haven’t tasted my desserts yet.”
Not yet.
Something then passed between them. It was subtle, like the slight crackle of electricity that makes one’s hair stand on end. He felt something like recognition in her eyes, yet she was trying to place him. The feeling only lasted a second, but he could smell her fear, apprehension, and curiosity about him. Pure physical awareness of him. It was heavier than the chip on her shoulder. And then it vanished. She looked away, but he was not finished looking. He didn’t know that he would ever be finished looking at her, chasing her scent, tracking her every move.
Rosemary got distracted by some cousins of hers who’d shown up to the party, and Ash had wandered off to speak to their pack mates Gavin and Bobby. GiGi slow blinked at Vann with feline energy that both excited and pleased the wolf, and then she went back to work: smiling at other people, serving other people.
The primal streak—whether it was human or beast, he didn’t know—ached when she walked away. The need to keep his eyes on her at all times was overwhelming.
Something had shifted inside Vann, and he fell into it, relinquishing control. Wolf shifters don’t track humans, he thought. Except when…oh shit. There it is. There she is. His mate.
Mine.
He followed her as she worked, never allowing more than two people to fill the distance between himself and GiGi. Always keeping her scent in his nostrils, for the pleasure and the necessity of it.
He’d worked all his life to create his own destiny, to take the world by storm. And he had. And now here he was, imprinting on a woman he hadn’t even touched.
Something else got stirred up and was scrambling his brain. Memories. He knew her from somewhere.
On some level, Vann knew what this meant. Wolves rarely retained full memories of what they did and what they saw when they shifted. But sometimes those memories could show up out of nowhere, like the frayed edges of a vivid dream that disappears the moment you wake up, but then some word or picture triggers it again the next day.
That was the feeling he was having when looking at GiGi. Watching her walk around and talk to other people in that infernal white jacket. Like something mixed with déjà vu and muscle memory.
He had the feeling that they’d shared some physical touch before. He needed to get closer to enhance the memory. Touch her hair. Touch the cute butt that moved under all those layers, her cheeks round like two ripe peaches ready to be plucked.
Vann knew his behavior at this party was at best impolite. He was here for Ash, to celebrate his pack mate’s engagement—to a panther shifter, no less. Not to find someone to bed. Rosemary’s family was already a handful, or so Vann gathered from the stories Ash told him. No need for the wolf pack to double down on the drama by mating with another one of the DuChamp clan.
But then again, a little fun never hurt anybody. His most recent hunt on the night of the full moon had been a good night. The wolf was sated. Three days since that night, and he was feeling more human than beast. Damn her, she’s making the animal hungry again.
And overprotective. She needed to sit down for a minute; she should be enjoying herself, letting someone else manage the show. He could pick up the phone right now and summon a hoard of his wait staff to relieve her. And then he would swoop in and make her sit down, enjoy a foot massage. He would cook for her, feed her, and then feed himself on her. All fucking night. In the morning he would make her breakfast in bed and start all over again. It would be the best vacation he’d ever taken.
Vann watched how she easily spoke to a soon-to-be drunk Betsy. Accepted compliments from friends of the wolf clan with grace. However, whenever the people turned their attention away from her—or she had assumed they had—her face changed. Her gregariousness changed to anxiety. He could smell the social anxiety on her from ten feet away. She was a million miles away in her mind.
Where is it you want to go, Peaches?
Vann sipped his drink as he watched her move back and forth through the crowd. He hated that the crowd parted for him wherever he went. With her, they acted as if she were just anybody, and not a goddess that glowed from the inside out.
How he wanted to take her a million miles away, wherever she wanted to go. He wanted to take her shopping at the most exclusive dress shops in the world and let her pick anything she wanted. He wanted to show her how to have more fun at parties. And he wanted to tear off that oversized, slightly frayed, obviously hand-me-down chef jacket and make her wear something that hugged her curves. He wanted to see her ass, her belly, her breasts, all the wonderful curves that belonged to a woman. His woman.
The wolf was barely
