Read Romance: Stranded With The Alpha Bear: BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance (Werebear, BBW, Bear Shifter Romance) (Sweet Shifters Book 1) for Free Online

rain, sweetheart,” she answered. “You’re going to catch a cold.”
    I woke up earlier than I usually do. I didn’t hear Christian moving around yet. I grabbed the tablet and started looking at the Missing Persons, hoping it would lull me back to sleep. The faces started to get more familiar, but still were older than Beth. Some of them I vaguely remembered from old posters hung on the bulletin board in the local market.
    I came upon a girl with deep dark eyes and dark hair with a bright smile. I recognized her face. Sometimes after closing the bar, I’d see her sitting outside the old post office alone. She’d usually have a big drink with her. Once I even approached her.
    “Hey, are you okay?” I asked as I walked up. “I wouldn’t sit out here alone if I were you.”
    “I wouldn’t walk out here alone if I were you ,” she answered. “They’re coming back for me. They always do. I don’t run anymore.”
    “Do you need help?”
    She laughed spitefully, “Like you could.”
    “Okay, nice talking to you.”
    She’d creep me out every time. The last time I saw her was a little bit after Dad died. She called me over and told me she was sorry about his death. I told her it wasn’t any of her business and hurried home. She looked thinner, but that woman was the same as the girl on the Missing Persons.
    Christian’s door opened and his footsteps padded toward the stairs. I got up to get ready quickly. My hair looked wavy from the shower I took before bed, so I braided it into a Dutch bun and slipped on a red sundress to be comfortable but still presentable. Butterflies burst in my stomach as I prepared to go downstairs. I had to make it quick or he’d disappear again into his room as he did when we came back in from the rain.
    Maybe I should start the conversation with, “My mom warned I’d get a cold from the rain. Also, she’s dead.”
    I chuckled, grabbed the tablet, and hurried downstairs. Christian stood in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and waiting for his coffee to finish brewing with a stack of papers in his hand. He looked up from the reading material with a raised eyebrow.
    “Where are you hurrying to?” he asked, looking into my eyes, sizing me up, and then back to my eyes. He kept his reserved coldness, but I noticed a slight pink tinge come to his cheeks.
    “I was hoping I could teach you how to make coffee before you started it,” I answered. “It looks like I was too late.”
    He gave his slight smile and readjusted his lean. “Well, if you want to pour it out and try again, go ahead. I will admit I don’t do a great job of coffee brewing. My dad was better at it.”
    “Let me help you then,” I said, moving forward to the coffee machine and pouring out what had brewed. “Your first problem is it looks like you haven’t cleaned this thing in a long time. Do you happen to have a French press somewhere?”
    “Yeah, up in that cupboard at the top.”
    I went to the cupboard and tried to reach for the thing. He came up behind me, pressing his body against mine to make his arm an extension of my own, and grabbed it down. I felt his breath on my neck, which sent a tingling of desire down my spine. I quickly shook out of it and took the thing from him.
    “All right, let’s boil some water now.” I filled up a pot and put it on the stove. “We’ll put about two to three tablespoons of coffee in there after we rinse it out with the hot water.”
    “Why rinse it if it’s clean?”
    “It’s what my brother used to do. He wanted to own a coffee shop, and he was a really good barista, actually.”
    “He was ?”
    “Yeah, he was.” The water finished boiling so I poured a little in the press and swished the plunger around, then poured it out. I then put in the coffee and poured in half of the water I wanted in. “You pour in about half of what you want at first and let it bloom. It will form a crust of coffee grounds, see that?”
    He leaned next to me to look into the