Stripe for Love: Paranormal Surprise Pregnancy Tiger Shifter Romance (Shifter Grove Brides Book 6) Read Online Free Page A

flight, Slate had been doing his best to keep her mind at ease. That was his name, Slate, which he said was a short form of a convoluted name from the depths of Siberia that no one needed to twist their tongue around. That it was a relic from another time.
    Layla could understand that. She’d run from Seattle once looking for something better, and maybe she’d still be running if she hadn’t ended up missing her family so much. But for a time, the desire to leave everything behind and take on something entirely new had been pretty damn strong in her. Now however, her family was a lot easier to bring along.
    She looked down at Adrian, sleeping in the seat next to her, and put a hand on his back, feeling his warmth. As much as she loved her parents and her sister and her family, this was now Layla’s. Just Adrian. Wherever he was, she’d be at home too.
    “So are you from Idaho?” Slate asked, twisting his head to look over his shoulder with a friendly smile.
    “Me? No. I’ve been to Idaho a few times, though. You?”
    “You’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone really from Idaho where we’re going,” Slate said with a chuckle, pulling a hand through his hair for a moment.
    He had the same wide, strong build that Atlas had, although perhaps a bit more wiry. But that probably came with the job. There wasn’t so much room in the plane to move around to begin with, it being little more than a puddle jumper, and having magnificently wide shoulders would have probably made it harder.
    “Yeah? A town of immigrant shifters?” she asked with a smile.
    “A town of shifters looking for a new start. There’s a difference. At least these days there is, I think. Not a lot of people go anywhere because they want a new start, just a better one. The people in Shifter Grove don’t care so much for ‘more’ as they do for ‘happier,’ you know?” Slate mused, giving her a thoughtful look over his shoulder before looking back at the controls.
    Layla nodded quietly. She did. But why was he telling her this?
    She bit the inside of her cheek, wondering how much this man knew about Atlas, or her. If anything at all! Layla knew that Atlas was a tiger shifter, because she’d known when Adrian was born that he was. But she still didn’t know much about the man she’d gone to see, because they’d messaged one another on Lily’s account and Layla had purposefully kept her own account inactive.
    She didn’t want to tell him too much before she could explain in person. Atlas? He just seemed tight-lipped, which wasn’t a big surprise.
    “Do you know Atlas?” she asked after a measure of silence, her curiosity getting the best of her.
    “A little,” Slate answered noncommittally, though Layla could hear the smile he must have been wearing on his lips.
    “What do you think of him?” she asked after another pause, her heart beating wildly as she made the words come over her lips.
    “I think you’re a smart woman for choosing a guy like that,” Slate said solemnly, sharing a look with her. “And that he’ll beat your expectations by leaps and bounds.”
    Slate winked and Layla could fall into her seat with a smile, her muscles willing to relax a tiny bit at that. She wasn’t sure why she’d needed to hear that, but she did—that the man she was going off to see in the wilderness of Idaho wasn’t some crazy axe murderer, or that she hadn’t just been wearing beer goggles the night they’d met and thought he was a nice guy while in all actuality, he wasn’t.
    The rest of the flight passed in relative calm, with Slate sometimes expounding on some crucial bit of Shifter Grove trivia, keeping her entertained with tales of the people living there and antics that had taken place in the town. Layla had to admit, by the time the plane landed, she was sort of antsy to go see this wonderful place where even the most horrific happenings eventually turned into something worth smiling about.
    But when the runway came into view,