Mate of Her Heart Read Online Free PDF

get back, can we talk?”
    “We can talk now, sweetheart.”
    “I don’t have time,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion.  “I’m such an idiot.”
    “Never,” he promised, running his hands up and down her back.  Something was changing between them right now.  They’d hugged before.  Kissed, even.  Comforted each other in many different ways.  But this – holding her in his arms while she struggled with her emotions – seemed intimate in an entirely different way.
    He settled his cheek on the top of her head and held her.  “I’m here, Ev.  I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me otherwise.”
    A shiver wracked her body and she took in a shaky breath.  Looking up at him with tears pooling in her eyes, she said, “You’re my best friend, Luke.  I don’t want you to go anywhere.”
    “Then I won’t,” he promised.  And he’d keep that promise.  Until she told him to take a hike, he’d stand by her side through anything.
    “I’ll be gone a week,” she said, hugging him a little tighter and then stepping away.  Wiping under her eyes with shaking fingers, she gave him a watery smile.  “I’ll come find you and we’ll talk.  Okay?  I’ll tell you everything, I swear.”
    “If you need me, you can call me anytime and I’ll come up to the cabin.”
    “I know you will.”  She paused with her hand on the front door.  “I love you, Luke.  You know that, right?”
    His heart pounded with joy.  He kissed her on the lips.  “I know you do, Ev.  I love you, too.”
    He helped her carry her things to her car and when she was packed up, they said goodbye and he followed her in his truck as they pulled away from her dad’s house.  He followed her through town and then turned towards the bar as she headed north.  As he drew closer to the bar, he considered turning around and following her up to the cabin, but if she wanted him there, then she would have asked him.  Right?
    The truth was he didn’t have any idea what she was going to go through with her heat.  Maybe just getting out of town was all she needed.  He climbed the stairs to his apartment two at a time and decided to call his grandma.  He made it a point to check in with her at least once a week.  The spry old girl was always out with her friends, playing Mah Jong or doing yoga.  She even brought her friends in to the bar once a month to have drinks.
    “Are you making me any grandbabies yet?” she asked when he said hello.
    He chuckled.  She had been asking him that question at least once a week for the last several years.  If things were actually changing between him and Eveny, then maybe it wasn’t all that far off.  The thought of Eveny’s belly stretched out with his child made him feel practically giddy.  A little girl with her brown hair, gray eyes, and tender heart.
    “I’m working on it, Grams.”
    “Oh?  Anyone I know?”
    His grandma liked to gossip, but she would keep anything he said between them because, as she liked to say, ‘you don’t gossip about family’.  “I think Eveny and I might be starting something.”
    There was a significant pause and he felt unhappiness settle into his gut.  “What’s wrong?”
    She hummed in her throat.  “My friend Vera is a wolf and she’s friends with Eveny’s father.  She told me last night while we were playing Mah Jong that Eveny was disappearing for her heat-cycle so she didn’t have to take a mate.  Dade’s not too happy about it, but he’d walk on hot coals for his daughter.”
    “Ev told me as much.”
    “Do you know what the heat-cycle is?”
    “No.”
    “Well, from what Vera told me, every she-wolf goes into heat during the fall of her twenty-fifth year and every fall after unless she’s pregnant or nursing.  The heat makes the she-wolves crazy for relations , and if a she-wolf is with a male wolf during her heat, she’ll most likely become pregnant and they’ll become mates.”
    His brain stalled out.  “I