Daisy quickly perked up, her curiosity spiking to an all-time high. She had a million and one questions, but didn’t want to come off sounding stupid, nor was it her intent to offend him or Gerri with her silly curiosities. “Are you sure?”

Threads of uncertainty tugged at her mind, because she had no idea what was considered proper etiquette with shifters, but how was a girl to know if she didn’t ask?

Calder managed to quash her fears with a soft smile. “Absolutely. Why don’t we do this, so we can get to know one another? You ask me a question, then I’ll ask you a question in return. We’ll work on a quid pro quo kind of system.”

Daisy mulled over his offer. It seemed fair enough. Besides, it wasn’t like she had anything to hide; her life up to this point had been boring as hell. “Okay, that sounds fair. Why don’t we grab a bowl of stew first and ask questions over dinner?”

“Perfect!” Daisy bit her bottom lip, watching as Calder stood and stretched before crossing the room to the cabinets. Her eyes roamed greedily once again over the expanse of his backside. Her breath caught in her throat when he reached up to grab a couple of bowls from the shelf, his tight black T-shirt killing her with each stretch across the muscles that flexed and rippled with every move he made.

“You’re going to have some too, right?”

“Yep, sorry. I’m coming.” Ha! I wish! she thought. She had never been so turned on just by sitting next to a man, but there was something about the sexy shifter that called to her like no other ever had. One glance in his direction, one sexy smile was all it took for her hormones to kick in and demand they be given full attention.

She snapped out of her lust-induced haze long enough to give the stew one last stir, then fill their bowls to the top while Calder filled two glasses with ice and water from the fridge.

A few minutes later, and after they both settled at the table, Daisy wondered anew where she should start.

“This is really good, by the way,” Calder said after his first bite of the meaty stew. “Ask away.” He motioned for Daisy to start off the first round of questions.

Blurting out the first question that popped into her mind, she started with. “Can you really turn into an animal?”

Daisy gasped as Calder pushed his chair away from the table and stood. Shocked at her own impudence, she quickly apologized. “I’m sorry, of course you can. It’s just that with me being fully human, I’ve never seen a shifter—well, shift. All of this is so new to me and so fascinating, my human mind is having a hard time processing all the majik that must surround your life.”

The atmosphere in the room changed, and before she could say another word, a cool breeze whipped through the kitchen. The spot where Calder stood shimmered with majik that made the hair on her arms stand on end. One second the sexy man stood in front of her, and the next an enormous grey wolf stood, eyeing her up.

Her mouth flew open to say something, anything, as the wolf slowly stalked toward her. Her mind worked overtime absorbing the change that had just taken place right before her eyes. She snapped her mouth shut, determined not to scream in fear. God knows she wanted to leap up off of the damn chair and run as fast as she could and as far as her legs would carry her, but she kept her ass firmly planted, knowing he had simply answered the question she’d asked.

Her Gram’s voice popped into her head. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to, honey bun.”

Daisy had never understood that particular saying and what her Gram had meant until now. If she was going to ask questions, she had to be tough enough to accept the truthful answer.

The wolf whined, pulling Daisy from her train of thoughts. Shock twisted through her when he laid his head on her leg, his nose precariously close to her crotch.

“Watch it, buddy. Wolf or not, I’ll not think twice about smacking you in the nose if you deserve it.”

The wolf huffed, his ears twitching.

“How had I not noticed your eyes before now?” Tiny gold flecks highlighted deep amber eyes, which she imagined held a vast amount of knowledge in all things ancient and majikal. Without even thinking about it, she reached out to touch his fur, needing to see if it was as soft and as thick as it looked.

The wolf whined again, seeming to like her touch.

“You like your ears scratched, don’t you.” Daisy laughed.

The wolf stepped back as she laughed.

Fear raced through her and, thinking she’d offended the animal, she rushed to once again apologize. “I didn’t mean to insinuate that it was a bad thing. I thought it was cute.”

Daisy blinked as the odd majikal shimmer she’d seen moments ago reappeared and surrounded the animal. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Calder’s voice.

“Actually it does feel good. If you had kept it up, I would have been snoring in seconds flat.”

Daisy giggled, once again surprised by his answer.

“Now you owe me two answers.” Calder took his seat and another bite of his stew.

“That was incredible. Thank you for giving me that first experience.”

“You’re welcome. So how did you meet Gerri?”

“I literally ran into her.”

“What do you mean?” Calder looked at her quizzically, perhaps surprised by her answer.

“I was headed out for coffee one morning and rounded the corner, not paying attention to where I was going. Next thing I knew I plowed right into the poor woman.”

“Huh. That’s pretty odd.”

“Why is that?” Daisy tilted her head to the side, wondering what would be so odd about running into someone on a crowded sidewalk.

Calder challenged her. “Another question—you’ll owe me another answer.”

“Fine.” Damn it, she wanted to know what he’d meant by that statement.

“Wolves—well, all shifters really—have heightened senses. We know there is someone near well before we see them. For instance, I knew someone was on the property the second I got out of my truck to close the gate.”

His answer startled her, and her face must have shown it.

“We have heightened senses of hearing and smell. Trust me when I tell you Gerri would have sensed you or smelled you long before you got anywhere near her. So, yeah. I think it’s odd that she let you run into her.”

“I’m going to owe you a million answers, but I have to know—why would she let me bump into her, then?”

Calder shrugged, “I’m not certain. I’ve never met her in person, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was because she scented you and knew there was something different about you, something her majik told her not to ignore.”

“Interesting.”

“My turn.” Calder flashed her a sexy smile before asking his next question. “Why did you agree to come here? Especially if you had never been around shifters before?”

Well, that was a loaded question if she’d ever heard one. Daisy debated internally for a minute, struggling with how honest she should be before she finally spoke, “I guess you can blame it all on curiosity.” Going for flat-out honesty she braced herself, letting the words flow from her lips. “I’ve never had much luck in the dating arena, at all. The guys I’ve dated haven’t always been nice, but what I never understood was, if they weren’t happy with my size why did they even bother to date me to begin with? Why did they all try to change who I was? Why could they never be happy with me?”

And there it was: all the questions she’d walked away from every relationship with, laid out for a complete stranger to ponder.

All the improvements to her self-esteem that she’d worked so hard to make over the years were suddenly stripped away, leaving her feeling once more like the only fat girl in a sea of skinny models.

Daisy pushed the stew around in her bowl. She had no desire left to eat her dinner, though she’d barely eaten all day.