Read Bearly Hanging On (A Werebear Shifter BBW Romance) (Laid Bear Book 3) for Free Online Page B

charm he possessed, he dropped his goofy grin down to a lazy smile and pushed all of his inner power to his gaze. The moment Crystal popped around the open passenger door, she went rigid with surprise.
    “Hey, babe,” he murmured seductively. He saw himself through her eyes and could practically see the sun glinting off his toothsome smile. He was irresistible!
    Or not.
    Narrowing her saucer-like eyes to mere slits, she lunged for her grandfather’s lunch pail, slammed the door in his face and stormed across the lawn to the house.  
    She slammed that door, too.

CHAPTER SIX

    Crystal was still fuming about Chet at six the next morning when she reported for work at the Whale’s Tail. The forecast was for an unusual eighty degrees, so she wore shorts and a Psychedelic Furs concert tee. The hoodie she wore to keep the morning chill at bay was totally unnecessary because she had her anger to keep her warm.
    Her boss, Andy, was starting her out cleaning the company’s two whale-watching boats and organizing the associated gear, such as the million orange life vests surrounding her. Her job that morning was to unknot every safety tie on the damp, mildewy vests and organize by size. It promised to be more fun than one girl should have so early in the morning, but it was about as mindless as it got and gave her plenty of time to think. As if she needed to do more of that.
    She couldn’t deny that her heart started pounding pretty hard when she realized Chet had driven her Pop-Pop home, but then he had to go act all cocky and conceited. Like there was no doubt in his mind she would swoon all over him after not hearing from him for nearly a week. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be totally hacked at him. The dude had gone off the deep-end and told her he loved her about six seconds after they met, and then simply fell off the face of the planet.  
    He left her standing at the swings dumbfounded, wondering what the hell had just happened. But on her short walk home, an intense warmth had replaced her confusion and fear. Her brain insisted that the dude was a fruit loop but somewhere deep inside her, in a dark void that she hadn’t even known existed, a spark of hope glowed.  
    Was there really such a thing as love at first sight? Pop-Pop loved to tell the story of how he knew he was going to marry Nana the moment he laid eyes on her at a sock hop, which was apparently the blue-hair version of a dance. They’d been happily married for about a hundred years, so there was proof positive that love at first sight could work out in the end.
    But this wasn’t love at first sight, was it? It was love at second sight. Chet had totally blown her off when she was punked out. It was only when she was dressed like all the other yuppie scumbags around here that he sat up and paid attention. Anyone who claimed to love her would have to love her no matter what, whether she was a punk, yuppie, headbanger or whatever.
    Chet was probably just horny and saw her as a challenge, since his mojo didn’t work on her…as far as he knew, anyway. Secretly, she’d been as giddy and gaga over him as much as those girls she’d gone to the pizza parlor with, she simply refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. It didn’t matter, though. She suspected that as soon as he got home and whacked off, he’d think better of this infatuation.
    Her suspicions were confirmed when he pulled a disappearing act afterward. There was no plausible reason why he wouldn’t seek her out the next day, or the next, or even the four days after that. Port Numas was a small town so all it would take to find her was to ask a few locals about a new girl in town named Crystal. That didn’t seem like too much effort to make in order to find your true love. By Day Three, she resigned herself that he was no longer interested and filed their brief tryst away as a learning experience.  
    “Shit,” she muttered as she snapped a nail down to the quick