Wanted By The Billionaire Wolf (Heroes of Shifter Creek 4) by Clara Moore Page A

by the look in my eye. His gaze drifted briefly down to my leg, before he seemed to shake himself and direct his attention at my face. “None that I can think of. Unless you’d be keen on any of my authors?”
    “You know that I don’t date anyone who works in the creative industries, Pat. I’m far too much of a corporate drone for that, according to every musician I slept with in college,” I rolled my eyes. “Couldn’t you join me? There’s free champagne, and we get a taxi there and back from the office. Could be fun.”
    His eyes dropped down to his lap. “I actually have a…thing on that night.”
    “What are you up to?”
    “I have an engagement party,” he mumbled. “Me and Rita…we kind of got engaged over the weekend.”
    “What?” I’d known that Patrick had been dating some girl named Rita on and off for the last year or so, but I also knew that she’d cheated on him repeatedly, and got insanely jealous over any of his contact with other women-including me. “How will she deal with the fact you’re sitting in here, discussing this with me? If she’s able to get a break from sleeping with all your friends, that is.”
    He winced. Damn. Maybe that had been too harsh. But I was annoyed. I wanted this guy, and I couldn’t, in good faith, try and get with him while he was engaged to someone else.
    “You know, she just really wanted to settle down, so she thought-“
    “She thought?” I raised my eyebrows. “Did you actually have any input in this, Pat?”
    “Sort of.”
    “How much?”
    “I paid for the ring.” He looked up at me, and I could see the fear of someone who knows they’ve made a great big mistake jumping through his eyes.
    “Patrick, sweetie, if you don’t want to marry her, you’ve got to break it off before the engagement party. Because after that, people are gonna know you guys are together, and you’ll have to break up with all of them too.” I shook my head, remembering the hoops I had to jump through to get people to remember that no, Mike and I weren’t together any more. “Trust me, as someone who’s been there, don’t do it unless you’re one hundred percent sure.”
    He didn’t take his eyes off mine, a resigned look crossing his face. “Yeah. Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
    “Make sure you do,” I nodded. “After all, who else will take me to the ball?”
    He rolled his eyes at me, managing a short laugh. “Oh, Kelly, I’m sure you’ll find somebody. Nice young woman like you shouldn’t be short on Prince Charmings.”
    “I’ll keep you updated,” I grinned back, trying to disguise my disappointment at his announcement. Damn it all if I didn’t have kind of a crush on one of my underlings. I wriggled in my seat, re-adjusting myself, and trying to ignore the needy pressure that had begun to build between my legs. God, only a whole day left at work before I could go home and spend the afternoon with my vibrator.
    But I had to get through that whole day first. So I set about placing calls, organizing caterers and invitations, and focused on making the most kick-ass launch party ever. I really liked working with Grace Vickers; she wrote sci-fi novels with a subversive feminist edge, and she’d rocketed us up high in the national consciousness with her first release. I still remembered flicking through the first draft of Opalfruit, knowing in my bones that we had struck on to a winner and that we needed to snap her up now if we were going to get her at all. Hanging out with her at the party would be reason enough to organize it, so I wanted to make sure every single detail would be perfect. After all, part of my job was to guide clueless authors through the real-world process of publishing, promoting, and selling a book.
    But I had other things to do. My day was structured around a long meeting with Harry Bale, one of our biggest investors in the company, a billionaire a few years older than me who had taken a liking to our release list and