Romance: Undercover Panther: BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance (BBW, Paranormal, Werebear Romance) (Shapeshifter Romance Series by Ashley Hunter) by Ashley Hunter Page B

here a few years ago but then stopped.”
    “Why?”
    “What do I know? Maybe life got in the way, maybe kids.”
    “Maybe…”
    Angie again got lost in her thoughts. All she wanted was in front of her: someone who loved her from the bottom of his heart, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, and all that jazz. Day by day, she felt little chips of her will power breaking away.
    She imagined time exactly like what most writers elude it to: like grains of sand slipping through the fingers, your grasp unable to contain the moments no matter how tight it might be.
    These grains that constitute eternity, yet so miniscule in their individuality, made her think about how she was spending the best years of her life. Her feelings must have shown on her face because Bob was looking at her funny.
    “What’s up?” he said.
    “You phased out or something?”
    Angie came back to the real world with a snap.
    “Nothing,” she said.
    “It’s nothing.”
    Instinctively, her gaze moved in the direction of the mysterious, hat-wearing stranger, but he was no longer on the table. His black cowboy hat was still there, covering the ashtray from which smoke still emanated.
    These were the only signs that this chair was occupied just a few moments ago, other than that the owner of the said chair had been able to disappear into thin air, like a figment of Angie’s imagination.
    Maybe she did conjure him out of thin air.
    Bob was still looking at her. Angie scampered to find a topic to distract Bob.
    “What are they doing here?” she asked and couldn’t keep the derision out of the word ‘here’.
    Bob noticed.
    “Be thankful for the place that keeps the fire in your house burning,” he said dramatically.
    “I didn’t say anything.”
    Bob squinted at her and then continued telling her about the Grays. Bob loved stories.
    “Michael has been away for a few weeks and only just came a couple of days ago. It is their anniversary. They are in a celebratory mood.”
    “You know an awful lot about the specifics of their lives,” Angie said.
    “I am a bartender. I’ve got trusting eyes. People talk to me.”
    “I bet.”
    Angie got occupied in day dreaming again, but at that exact moment, an unpleasant voice from the other end of the bar caught her attention.
    “Hey, baby doll, look here. Look at me.”
    She closed her eyes in a mixture of anger, frustration and exasperation. She tried to ignore the loud voice.
    It was Patrick, the one drunk at every bar that had too many drinks and couldn’t hold his liquor. Most nights, he would just fall off his seat and someone would drag him in one corner until he woke up and was sober enough to walk (or strut) home.
    But there were some nights, some bad nights, when he would wolf whistle at the few women in the bar. More than often, the lack of women in the bar meant that Angie was the unfortunate victim of his catcalling.
    On days when she was suitably angry, she would give him a good old punch if he crossed the line, but mostly he just spewed random sentences from the end of the bar and nobody paid him any attention.
    “Come on, don’t be like that,” he said when Angie ignored him.
    The people around the bar had seen him do this enough times not to be too worried. Angie had talked several times to Bob about banning Patrick but Bob was too much of a softy to do anything.
    Angie was pointedly trying to look in any direction other than Patrick. The trick with him was not to give him any attention. He was a pathetic man clinging to the bottle as a means of going through his life and in the meantime harassing bartenders.
    Angie got busy with other customers and filtered the sporadic comments from Patrick when there was a loud thud and every neck in the bar, or at least those sober enough to move their necks with agility and register sudden changes or sounds in their surroundings, turned to look at the source of the noise, which was the door.
    Out of the corner of the eye, Angie