Blind Wolf (A Werewolf BBW Shifter Romance #1)(5)

"No, no, you just sit right down," Dee said. She pulled a pitcher from the fridge and poured two glasses, adding plenty of ice. "Here's something to take the heat off."

"Thanks," Julia said as her grandmother handed her the drink. She sipped it. "Mmm, is this lemonade? What makes it red?"

"It's a watermelon and raspberry lemonade," her grandmother said proudly. "Went out and got a melon for lunch but didn't know what to do with the rest of it. So, lemonade!"

"It's delicious," Julia said. She gulped down the drink quickly.

"Oh, and one of the men from the bank stopped by," Dee said, too casually.

"From the bank?"

"He said that the proceedings are going forward in two months," Dee said. "I didn't want to worry you about it, but—"

"But I sent them the money for last month's mortgage!"

"It's something about the property tax also being late," Dee said. "Julia, I don't know if we can keep this up."

"We can handle it," Julia said. "I'll try to get more shifts at the library."

"I don't want you working yourself to the bone just to keep this house," Dee said softly.

"But it's your house! It's the house you grew up in! And I grew up here, too..." Julia said.

"I can always find a smaller place. It might be better at my age." Dee shrugged as she washed and dried her hands, but there was a sadness in her eyes that Julia could not bear to see.

"How much do they want?" she asked.

"Nine thousand dollars."

"Nine thousand!"

"I'm sorry, Julia. You've done everything you can for me," Dee said. "I don't want you to worry about the house. It's just a house."

"It's our house," Julia said, tears threatening to spill over her eyes for the second time that day. Granny Dee came around the table and cupped her hands around Julia's face. Her skin felt soft and wrinkled, and she smelled like a comfortable mix of lavender and baking.

"It's the people in a house who make it home," Dee said, looking straight into Julia's eyes. "Wherever we end up, we'll still be family."

"Okay," Julia said softly.

"Go relax," Dee said. "You deserve it."

"Okay," Julia said. "Goodnight. I love you."

"I love you too, sweet child," Dee said.

Julia walked up the stairs to her small room. She looked out of her window, but the foreclosure sign in the front yard made her sick to her stomach. Nine thousand dollars. That would take months of paychecks from the library. There was no way that they could get the money in time, no matter how many guests came to stay at the bed and breakfast.

Closing the blinds, she lit a candle next to her bed. She'd always liked to read by candlelight, no matter how many times Dee told her that it would make her nearsighted. Julia sighed, rolling over on her bed to look for a book on her shelves. She needed to escape from life. And books always made the bad things disappear, if only for a little while.

Skimming through the spines on the shelf, she found her finger resting on a book she hadn't read in a while. It was a fairy tale book that her mother had bought her because the princess looked like Julia in the illustrations. She pulled it out and plopped down on the bed, opening the book to the first page.

"Once upon a time," the story started, "there lived a very smart young princess named Felicity."

Julia let her fingertips move over the princess's face on the page. The same bright red curls of hair, the nose covered in freckles, the plump cheeks. It looked like her, alright. Even though her hair had calmed down a bit over the years, she still woke up to a fuzzy mess on top of her head more days than not. Her mom said that anybody could be a princess.

Julia choked up and closed the book, blinking through her tears. Her parents had been dead for over ten years now, and there wasn't a single day that passed that she didn't miss them. While Granny Dee was kind and loving, Julia still longed for someone else to share her life with.

"There's nobody out there for me," she whispered. The face of the blind man, Damien, rose up immediately, unbidden, in her mind. His lips, his cheek—she felt like she could almost reach out and touch him. She remembered the almost electrical shock that he had given her when he touched her elbow, the warmth that had spread through her body when he talked to her.

"Not for me," she said, but the memory felt so comforting that she let her thoughts spin off into dreams of Damien. Soon she was dancing in a gown as he led her around a ballroom in a stately waltz.

"For me." Her lips formed the words, but no sound came from them. Outside in the night sky, the full moon rose soft and white, shrinking as it fell upwards among the stars.

CHAPTER FOUR

Damien

Back at the hotel, Damien found Kyle and Jordan talking animatedly over a map about the possibility of buying a house outside of the city. Kyle had brought back a bunch of real estate brochures which were scattered across the map in different regions. Damien walked over to the table and stood behind a chair. His hand bumped the table slightly, but as soon as he felt the slightest touch, he had already reacted and adapted to the obstacle. In public he often pretended to rely on his cane more than he needed too, for his deftness and intuition sometimes made people doubt that he was blind.