his nostrils. His inner wolf howled. He gulped hard and looked around the café.
A high school girl stood at the counter, and she smiled at him, waiting for him to give her his order. A couple sat in the far corner laughing and chatting. A student poured over her books on the other side of the room, and a middle-aged woman wrote intently on a laptop.
Then he saw her. Their eyes locked. She smiled and waved, standing up from the table by the window. He approached her, striding across the room with a confidence he didn't quite feel. He reached out and shook her hand. A spark radiated between them as soon as their hands touched.
“Hi,” he said. “I'm Gunner Wilde. It's so good to meet you. I brought these for you. I hope it's not too cheesy.”
“It's not cheesy at all,” she said, inhaling the scent of the flowers.
He slipped into the seat across from her, forgetting to make his order, but the barista walked over and asked him if she could get him anything.
“I'll have an iced coffee and a blueberry muffin,” he said.
She nodded and smiled as she walked back to the counter, giving Cassidy a wink.
He looked back at his mate. The sunlight glinted in her fiery hair. He wanted to leap across the table and take her into his arms. He had to blink hard several times to push away the impulse. His inner wolf was digging and grunting. “Mate, mate, mate.”
“I'm Cassidy Hansen,” she said. “It's crazy that we were matched. I don't know how long I'm going to be home. It's kind of random that I'm here at all.”
“Well, whatever happens, I'm grateful that I got a chance to meet you,” he said.
The waitress returned with his coffee and blueberry muffin and slipped them onto the table.
“Can I get you two anything else?” she asked.
“We're good,” Cassidy said with a sly smile. “So, you're studying art at Fate Rock Community College?” she asked Gunner, sipping her own chai latte.
“Yes. I hadn't expected to enjoy it so much, but it's really added a lot to my life. My family's been ranching in Fate Rock for generations, and I never really felt like I had anything of my own until I started drawing.”
“That's crazy. We're both artists.”
“Do you think you'll go back to New York soon?” He gulped.
“I don't know. I didn't get the internship I was expecting, and I don't have the money to continue with my master's degree. So here I am.”
“You know, it's weird. You look so familiar. Are you sure we haven't met? If you grew up in Fate Rock, then we must have bumped into each other at high school football games or something.”
“I don't think so,” she said with a nervous laugh.
“I swear I feel like I've known you all my life. Like you've been just at the edge of my awareness all this time, and now we're finally meeting.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “I signed up for mate.com kind of by accident. My mom was talking about grandchildren and me settling down in Fate Rock so I wouldn't go back to New York. I hadn't expected to be matched with someone so quickly, but I guess my mom knew better than I did.”
She laughed nervously again, and Gunner wondered what was wrong.
“Do you not want to stay?” he asked, sipping from his iced coffee.
“I don't know. There is some drama with my family, stuff that I never wanted to be involved with, and I'm afraid that I won't have a choice if I come back home. It's one of those things that you can't run away from no matter how hard you try.”
“I know what you mean,” Gunner said, thinking about the confrontation with the McCoys on the road the other day.
Threatening Montana like that was unforgivable, and he was afraid that the generations-long feud between the families would break out in violence at any moment. He looked over at Cassidy, not wanting to involve her in the sordid affairs of his family and their longtime rivals.
They finished their coffee, and she offered to pay, but he told her he would take care of it. He saw the slightest hint of relief in her eyes, and he was glad that he got to be gallant for once. He'd been on some dates with some of the human girls around town. Nothing too serious, just kids messing around, but this was different. This was his mate. He