Alpha Vampire Romance: Vampire’s Mate (Paranormal Shapeshifter Alpha Demon Vampire Romance) (Coming of Age Werewolf BBW Shifter Women’s Fiction Short Stories) by Rebecca Abbott Read Free Book Online

interrupt her day off. He sometimes did this, despite the fact that she always refused and had only worked a day off once, and only then for triple pay. She wasn’t overly happy with her job but the fact was she was a good waitress, one of the only ones who had stuck around, and was able to demand more than the average employee.
    She was preparing a firm refusal in her mind. Mr. Adams would just have to find somebody else. Mr. Adams would just have to wait the tables himself. Mr. Adams must be more organized than this. Yes, she would say all that and more. She felt a bit mean, like when she and Jack had pushed that big fat bully Ryan Grate into the ant’s nest. Then they had watched him squirm and scream as half the school looked on. He hadn’t been such a bully the next day.
    She shook her head. Why was the past so ghost-like lately? Then she pressed the apartment buzzer. Oh, how she would give it to Mr. Adams! He wouldn’t know what hit him! He would wish he had never left The Spatula to come here and try and ruin her small time of peace.
    “Yes?” she said, trying to keep her voice chirpy.
    “Samantha?”
    She knew the voice; her hand fell away from the buzzer.
    “Samantha? Are you there? It’s me. It’s Jack.”
    *****
    She tried to convince herself that she wasn’t dreaming, that Jack Plainview was really outside her apartment on an average Sunday morning, but it was hard. She hadn’t spoken to him in over half a decade. But what was she going to do, leave him standing down there? Maybe if she walked down there and saw the ghostly apparition she would wake up and things would go back to normal. She knew he was coming back today, but she hadn’t expected him to come to her apartment personally. They had drifted too far apart for that.
    She ran into her bedroom and threw on some sweat pants and a t-shirt. Then she pressed the buzzer and took a deep breath, lest she mumbled something incoherent and absurd. “Jack?” she said, hating the note of desperation in her voice.
    “Sammy,” Jack said, laughing.
    “I’m coming down now,” Samantha said.
    Her legs were like jelly as she descended the stairs. She gripped the railing and walked down with steady steps. She was slightly embarrassed by her reaction, but mostly she was shocked and thrilled and scared that Jack had come to her door, pushing himself into her normal, boring life. She opened the door with a smile.
    It was snowing outside, and the sky was clouded over in a shield of white. The weather seemed poignant to her, as though it was more important than the very real ghost standing in the weather. Come on, Samantha, just turn from the clouds and look at the ghost. How hard can it be? She forced herself to look down. She knew she probably seemed drunk and weird, but that was okay; Jack had known her long enough to know she was drunk and strange a lot of the time.
    She looked down. She gasped.
    Jack had been a tall, muscular, brown-haired teenager. Now he was an even taller, even more muscular brown-haired man. His face was square and strong, and his eyes were sky-blue, almost white. They were eyes that looked through you and into you at once. He wore a green shirt and khaki pants with cream-colored boots. He stood with a soldier’s stiff back, and a light beard grew on his face, silver and brown.
    And the man beside him—
    He was thinner, but taller, with thick black hair and a savage handsomeness. He wore a thick checkered shirt and faded blue jeans with dark boots. He regarded her coolly with forest-green eyes.
    Jack smiled at her. “Sammy,” he said. “Aren’t you happy to see me? This is Eli Smith, a fellow SEAL.”
    Samantha found herself nodding like a bobble-head. Words seemed things for experts in those moments. She couldn’t grasp them, let alone use them. She looked at the two men mutely for a couple more moments and then she saw herself: a silly, skinny, blonde girl standing there with her mouth open.
    She shook her head. “Of course