An engagement trip? What the fuck was an engagement trip? I never knew there was such a thing until I was informed that I had to clear time in my schedule for an engagement trip to a strange little town out in the middle of nowhere. A place called Helen’s Corner. We’d just pulled up outside the B&B on Main Street. The sign out front read Muddy’s Corner Bed and Breakfast.

I admit, I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d signed up for when I’d agreed to marry Chelsie, but I certainly had no idea it would include a trip to one of the most remote towns in the American Southwest.

I had important work to do, and all I wanted was to be back at the office in New York to tackle it. I was juggling a huge merger with Dames, Inc., and I wanted to be in the office to handle it myself. If anything went wrong, we could lose the chance at getting Patterson Furniture into a major market in North America. The merger meant the opportunity to turn my million-dollar company into a billion-dollar company. The whole engagement trip was an annoyance.

But, being engaged to the daughter of the man who called the shots at Dames, Inc., Arthur Dames himself, meant that I did what I had to do to make sure she was happy. If she wanted to visit Helen’s Corner, then Helen’s Corner it was.

Chelsie peered at me over the roof of the car and snapped a picture with her phone. She looked at it and then made a face. “Bay-bee, would you smile? You look so cranky. I don’t want to post this to my Instagram with your miserable sour-puss face.”

I tried to look like I wasn’t ready to slam my head in the car door, but judging by her frown, I wasn’t succeeding. I opened the trunk and removed our bags. “I’m not miserable. I just have a lot of work to get done before dinner tonight.”

She looked up from her phone and sighed. “Work, work, work. It’s all you do, Alec.”

“I know. I tried to warn you of that before we started this trip. With the merger, there’s a lot that needs to be taken care of. Things are stressful right now.”

“Well, planning a wedding is stressful, too. You don’t see me ignoring you, though, do you?” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked back down at her phone. I found myself wishing she’d ignore me a little more.

I supposed that stemmed from the fact that I wasn’t used to having someone else in my life. Something I’d have to work on. Relationships were hard work, or so I’d heard. I’d never been in a real relationship before. Nothing that lasted more than a few months, anyway. Until Chelsie.

I’d have to make a concerted effort on this trip to act interested in the things that were important to her like… I wasn’t quite sure what was important to her other than shopping, parties, and social media.

Well, there it was. Something to work on over the next few days. Finding out her interests.

“Come on, Alec. I’ve got to figure out where the girls took their pictures. We’re going to need to up our game to outdo Madison and Edward. Theirs were stunning.” Her demands always irked me a little bit, but Chelsie was Chelsie. She was headstrong, a quality I generally admired. People said the same about me.

As I followed her through the front door of the quaint bed and breakfast, she was still talking, something about her sorority sisters and their photos, but there was a scent in the air that was incredible. My mouth watered. I tipped my head back and inhaled deeply. Delicious. Even with my shifter senses, I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from. It seemed to just float in the air.

“What’s that smell?” Even my wolf stirred, agitated we couldn’t figure in which direction to go to chase it. Huh. He never stirred.

“Jeez, Alec, subtle much? It’s just an old house.” Chelsie stopped at the front desk, her hand already slapping the bell to announce our presence.

“Not that. It smells sweet. Like cupcakes and… I don’t know, something else.” It was like sweet vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing. My wolf loved it. He was practically tail-wagging like a pup.

A tall woman with bright red hair walked in, all smiles. “I couldn’t help overhearing you. It is cupcakes. My friend Carter does all the baking for us, and she’s uh-may-zing. I don’t know what she made earlier, but lucky for us, the smell always lingers. I can’t say the same for the cupcakes, though. Those are gone like that.” She snapped her fingers.

Chelsie flashed her best fake smile and moved in closer to the woman, looking like she was ready to make a new best friend. Chelsie was slick. In fact, I could probably learn a thing or two from her to aid in my business dealings. It was barely detectable that her smile wasn’t genuine. I’d posed for enough ridiculous Instagram photos with her lately to know, but it was unlikely others could tell.

“Do you work here?” Chelsie cooed. “We’re on our engagement trip and need to check in.”

“I’m Muddy, owner of Muddy’s Corner Bed and Breakfast. You’re the future Mr. and Mrs. Patterson, I presume?”

I almost winced. Why did the sound of that make me squirm? I guess it was because I’d been a bachelor for so long. I never thought I’d hear a Mrs. attached to my name. One more thing I needed to get used to.

Long-term commitments had never been my thing. My life revolved around business 24/7. There’d never been a shortage of women around to satisfy my sexual needs, but I went for the “no hassles, no headaches” types. I was a busy man. My idea of long term was having breakfast together in the morning. Until Chelsie, of course.

“Alec Patterson. Nice to meet you.” She shook my hand with a firm grip and went around behind the desk, where she produced a set of keys. “Nice to meet the both of you. I hope you’ll enjoy your stay with us. I prepared your room myself this morning.”

Chelsie kept up her fake smile and took the keys. Muddy gestured to the stairs and held out a welcoming arm. “I’ll show you to your room now, if you’d like.”

I nodded and stepped forward with our bags. “That’d be great.”

The smell grew weaker the higher in the house we ascended, and I found myself being pulled to go back downstairs instead of heading up to our room. “That smell really gets to you, doesn’t it?”

Muddy glanced back at me with a commiserating look. “I know, it really does. I sometimes find myself sneaking off to see if there are any left when I should be working. Carter is magic in the kitchen. I was lucky enough to scoop her up the minute she moved to Helen’s Corner. She’ll be here, making more sweets in the morning for breakfast.”

Shivers snaked down my spine and I clenched my hands around the handles of the bags I was holding to keep from shifting. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. What the hell? I hadn’t lost control of a shift since I was a pup.

“Everything okay?”

Chelsie looked back at me and frowned. When her eyes went to the handle of her luggage, she shrieked. “Alec! You crushed the handle! That was my favorite piece!”

She’s lucky I hadn’t crushed the whole damned bag. My wolf was crazed. Up and pacing, clawing, ready to throw his head back and howl to the heavens. At what, I didn’t know. Since moving to the city and working nonstop on the tenth floor of a high-rise, he’d been relatively silent. I scheduled regular times at a wildlife preserve to let him out to run, but even then, he’d not been overly excited for a long time. All of a sudden, he was freaking out about something, and I had no idea what or why.

“Mr. Patterson? Are you okay?” Muddy looked at my hands and then back up to my face like she knew exactly what I was going through. And she might, since she was a shifter, too.

I shook my head and tried to ignore my wolf. “Sorry. I just had a moment there. I’m fine.”

“You’re fine, but look at my bag. I can’t believe you damaged it, Bay-bee.”

I again found myself wondering what the fuck an engagement trip was and why it was necessary. Instead of saying it aloud, I dutifully acted like I thought a husband-to-be was supposed to act. “I’ll buy you another one, dear.”

Muddy interrupted whatever demands Chelsie was about to make when she directed us to a hallway on the right and motioned to Chelsie to unlock the door of our room. “Why don’t you two go ahead and get sorted. You can look around if you’d like, too. There are three more couples staying here right now, but they’re out and about at the moment. You’ll find several great places to eat in town. You can’t go wrong picking any one of them.”

My body didn’t want to move forward into the room. My wolf fought, scratched, and clawed to get back downstairs. “Is there someplace I can use as an office? I just need a desk or a table. I’ve got some work to do.”

Chelsie sighed dramatically, but Muddy just smiled and held her game face. “There’s a common area downstairs. The dining room would probably work since there are a few different tables in there. It’s free until seven in the morning when we start serving breakfast, and even then, we’ll just serve you around your work, if need be.”

Downstairs, with that maddeningly overpowering scent. I glanced at Chelsie, who was already aiming her phone at the room as she pushed through the door, taking a video of her reaction to it. Downstairs, it was.

I hope you liked this Sneak Peek. You can find now on Amazon as well as the entire series,