Billionaire Wolf's MateDate - Serena Meadows
Chapter One
***Reggie***
Reggie took a deep breath of the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meat, his stomach rumbling with anticipation, then sighed, knowing it would still be a few hours until it was ready. There was plenty of other food piled on the tables set up around the yard: salads, and casseroles, cookies, and cakes, not to mention piles of locally grown vegetables, but he was waiting for the main event: a whole roasted pig.
Spotting Derek and Ryan standing on the porch, he abandoned the cooking pit and made his way across the farmyard and up the steps to join them. Only a few seconds later, Theo and Sam walked up and the five of them stood silently watching the milling crowd for a few minutes, each thinking about how much things had changed in only a short time.
Reggie looked around the farm, at the restored barn, the fields overflowing with crops, the trees flashing the brilliant colors of fall, and sighed. It wasn’t just the farm that had changed—it was all of them. Each of his friends had found their mates, formed the bond that was so sacred to shifters, and settled down. Jemma and Theo already had a beautiful baby girl, and he was sure the rest would follow before long with their own additions to the little town of Stoney Bridge, but that kind of happiness wasn’t in his future, could never be his.
Most of the time, it didn’t bother him, but occasionally on days like today, he let himself imagine what it would be like to have someone out in the crowd that belonged to him. At sixteen, when he’d promised himself that he’d never bring another person into his messed-up life, the decision had seemed so crystal clear, but at thirty-five, it was becoming more difficult to resist the urge to seek out the love that he’d been denying himself.
“You look awfully serious for someone at a party,” Ryan said, interrupting his thoughts.
Reggie shook himself out of his melancholy. “Sorry, I was just wondering where Samantha was,” he lied. “She said she’d be here, but I haven’t seen her.”
He scanned the crowd looking for her, but instead, he spotted Janice across the yard deep in conversation with Heather, Sam’s wife, and his heart skipped a beat. Wanting to curse his reaction to the dark-haired beauty, he turned away and looked out at the fields, hoping none of his friends noticed.
“I don’t know why you don’t give up on that dating agency thing,” Derek said. “It hasn’t done you much good so far.”
“That’s not true; the singles dating club is exactly what I wanted,” Reggie argued, not for the first time. “Besides, she helped all of you.”
Theo snorted. “If I recall, Jemma’s second date tried to attack her,” he said. “If I hadn’t been there, I don’t know what would have happened.”
“And she mixed up our profiles, remember?” Derek said.
“So, she made a few mistakes; no one is perfect,” Reggie said stubbornly.
“She sent Heather out on a date without even a picture of the guy she was supposed to meet,” Sam said. “It’s a good thing it was me she ran into instead of some creep.”
“It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?” Reggie asked, not sure why he was feeling so defensive. “Samantha’s had a lot more success stories than she has failures.”
There was a long silence, then the four men exchanged glances. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with our little queen of the dating scene lately,” Sam said, a grin on his face.
“Yeah, we all thought it would be Janice who finally brought you down, but maybe we were wrong; maybe it’s going to be Samantha,” Theo said.
Without out meaning to, he looked over at Janice again, feeling the sizzle of attraction he always felt, then quickly looked away. “Samantha and I are just friends, and I can promise you Janice will not be the woman who takes me down, as you put it, so you can just stop speculating. I’m perfectly happy being single. I always have been and always will be.”
“Well, there goes the pool. No one is going to win if you won’t even try to find a mate,” Derek said, then burst out laughing when he saw the look on Reggie’s face. “Sorry, I was just kidding, but seriously, what’s wrong with Janice? Any fool can see that you’re attracted to her; that’s why I set you up with her in the first place.”
Reggie couldn’t tell Derek that was exactly