CHAPTERNINE
The next afternoon, Sara forced herself to leave her bed after sleeping nearly twelve hours. She yawned as she waited for her pot of coffee to finish. One of these days, she swore that she was going to invest in one of those single-cup coffee makers … even if she did still end up making a whole pot of coffee a damn cup at a time. It had to be faster than waiting for the entire pot.
She yawned again, feeling like she could crawl back into bed and sleep away the rest of the day. She couldn’t remember a time in her life before this when she’d slept so much, but she’d also never had wild sex in the woods with multiple orgasms for hours before either.
As soon as the coffee finished brewing, Sara poured herself a cup and added her cream and sugar. Grabbing her tablet, she padded to her screened-in porch and relished the beautiful afternoon sunshine.
She was doing everything she could to not think about Rhett, but she couldn’t help but be surprised that she hadn’t heard from him. He hadn’t texted or shown up, pounding her door down, demanding to speak with her.
Sure, they hadn’t exchanged numbers or addresses, but she figured Rhett would try to get that info from Barbara. Maybe Barbara respected a woman’s right to turn a man down.
It still infuriated her that she bore a scar on her shoulder that she hadn’t asked for and that it somehow marked her as ‘off limits’ to other shifters. No, she wouldn’t accept that. She hadn’t ever let other people make decisions for her. Not in her younger years, and she surely would not start now.
Taking a few sips of her coffee, she let the caffeine kick in before opening up emails and then reading over the morning news. The news was too depressing to read, so she closed out of it.
A notification popped up. It was from Bryce, the man she’d been talking to on the dating app.
She hesitated. Her finger hovered over the notification.
Should she talk to him still? When she belonged to Rhett?
Screw that! She decided. Rhett might have marked her, but that doesn’t mean she can’t still live her life how she wanted to. She had known Rhett for one night. Sure, they’d had great sex, and maybe if he hadn’t ruined things by biting her, then maybe they would have developed a relationship.
But as it was, she had no desire to see him, so why not talk to Bryce?
Because Bryce has nothing on Rhett. After such a night of passion with Rhett, I’d be slumming it with anyone else.
Well, that’s exactly what rebounds were, right? A way to kiss a frog to forget the prince, because this one might not work out, but then at least the next one won’t seem so bad.
She looked at the message from Bryce:
So, dinner tonight?
That’s right. She’d forgotten that he’d asked, and she’d told him that it depended on how she felt after the event she had to go to the night before.
Again, she felt no desire to say yes, but she knew she had to get out of her house.
So, she agreed.
She didn’t want to go off on a date without letting anyone know where she was, and she didn’t want to put that kind of stress on her apprentice, so she called the one person she thought would be okay with it.
“Sara, how are you?” Barbara asked when she answered the phone.
“Fine,” Sara sighed.
“Rhett didn’t tell me what went so badly between you two, but he was pretty insistent when trying to get me to give over your number.”
“But you said no.” A statement, not a question. No way she wouldn’t have heard from Rhett if he’d been successful in his efforts.
“I did,” Barbara confirmed. “But I told him that if you called and said it was okay, I’d hand it over. Is that why you’re calling.”
“No,” Sara said, holding her ground. “I actually wondered if you could do me a favor.”
She explained the date with Bryce and her desire for someone to know where she was.
There was a momentary silence, and Sara was sure Barbara wanted to ask her about Rhett, but instead, the woman simply said, “Of course. And if you want to text me an SOS to get you out of there, feel free. I’ll call you and tell you there’s an emergency thing I need your help with.”
Sara chuckled. “I knew I could count on you.”