His beastly thoughts were getting the better of him. There was sweet Pen, who knew him perhaps better than anyone. He chewed and swallowed. “It’s good. I don’t want any more, though.”
Bobby’s eyes fell to Pen’s mouth, where he caught a glimpse of her tongue sliding out to catch a smudge of frosting, licking her lips from one corner to the other. Maybe she hadn’t meant to appear salacious, but that was the effect. She tortured him without trying. There was too much romance in the air at this riverboat soirée, and the vibe was affecting Bobby’s judgment.
She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to say what he needed to say. She could see that he wanted something, was internally struggling with what words to use.
“Bobby, what is it?”
He gritted his teeth, going back and forth in his mind. In that moment of hesitation, Pen looked away from him, beaming at someone else. “GiGi!” She turned back to him and hurriedly said, “I gotta go compliment GiGi on the cake before she disappears with Vann, and I don’t get a chance. Save me a dance, hot stuff.” With a wink, she disappeared, floating away from him. The moment was gone.
The answer finally came to him. Bobby needed to let her go. She was so different from him. Pen was a happy, thriving, outgoing, warm and fun human being—probably the most human of all the shifters. Bobby barely had his wolf contained on any given day. When he was working from behind his bar at Wolfpack Tavern, he was in his element. Strangers saw him as fun. But Bobby was a sullen introvert whenever he came out from behind the bar. He functioned convincingly enough as a human outside of the pack and outside of the bar. But just enough. Not nearly enough for Pen. What kind of relationship would that be? She was fiery sunlight, and he was a smoldering pit of doom.
Well, that is it, then, isn’t it? he thought. Tonight was going to be the night he finally put an end to his misery.
Bobby would make a plan to leave town. He would sell the bar on the down low, then leave the pack unnoticed. Start a new life somewhere else. Leave Pen’s protection to the pack—whom he knew he could trust—and live in exile elsewhere. Living with the shame of abandoning his true mate would be easier than making her life miserable.
As if the universe were hitting him on the head, the band struck up Pen’s all-time favorite song, “No Woman, No Cry.” Bobby swallowed the hard knot in his throat and wandered toward the bar to drown his sorrows in another beer.
“Young man,” said a stern, authoritative man’s voice from behind him as he tipped the bartender.
Bobby spun around, almost spilling his aged Kentucky bourbon, and saw that the voice came from the bride's father, Lionel DuChamp. “I’ve seen you staring like a lost puppy at that girl all day long. I just thought you should know, I’m going to see her engaged before this party ends.”
Bobby glared at the imposing, silver-haired patriarch. “Oh really?”
Lionel continued and plastered a smile on his face while he spoke. “You got a lot of nerve kidnapping an old man. But the difference between you and me is I got something called grit.”
Bobby scoffed. “You know nothing about me. With all due respect, I think it took a little bit of determination and grit to get your stubborn ass to this wedding. And by the way, it’s awfully hard to take a man seriously when they stand up and quote sappy 90s songs in front of his guests. Nobody was expecting that, so good on you for giving everyone something to talk about.”
Lionel crossed his arms in front of him, amused at young Bobby. Ignoring Bobby’s remark about Lionel’s dazed, emotional outburst during the ceremony, he blustered, “One of my guests, a powerful Texas oil baron, owns a lot of land along the Gulf Coast, and some of that land sits adjacent to my shipping interests. His son has a promising future, but like you, he is a bit of a loser…adrift…doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. If I give that punk’s father something he wants—say, a daughter-in-law—that would be worth more to him than continuing to cockblock me from expanding my business into the state of Texas.”
Bobby sipped his drink and smirked. “Have you lost your mind, Mr. DuChamp? You don’t own people, ’least not anymore. Seems to me the Civil War settled that matter. You remember that, right?”
Lionel chuckled. “Son, I don’t have to own people to manipulate things to go my way.”
Bobby stared incredulously at the old man and laughed. He was genuinely amused. Is DuChamp going senile? “Let me set you straight on one thing. You may be a mighty powerful man. But nobody here is your subject, least of all any member of the wolf clan. And Pen ain’t your daughter, and this ain’t no dowry society anymore. At least not since the last time I checked. But then what the hell do we wolves know about how you inbred, old-money folks live?”
Lionel’s face turned red, and he pointed at Bobby’s glass. “It’s not a dowry society, huh? I paid more for this wedding—and all this free-flowing liquor—than I have ever paid to build an oil rig, so think again about who owns what.”
Bobby shrugged. “I appreciate the hyperbole; I really do. But your daughter’s married now; she’s happy you were here to walk her down the aisle. You made your wife happy, too. You should be kissing my ass and thanking me for preventing you from causing a rift within your own clan. Say what you want about us wolves, but we don’t turn our backs on family. Now, if you want to try to marry off my friend
