Hungry Like a Wolf (Claws Clause 1)

He was willing to bet he knew what caused that expression. An annoying buzz had been going off almost non-stop for the last ten minutes. It wasn’t his phone—Colt was the only one with the number and he knew better than to bother him—which meant it had to be hers.

And she’d finally caught on to the fact that it was ringing.

“Something wrong?” he asked, keeping his tone light.

“What? Oh. No. I just—” She picked her purse up from its place on the floor and propped it on the edge of the tabletop. After fishing around inside of it for a few seconds, she pulled out a cellphone. It was vibrating loudly. “I thought I heard something,” she murmured, more to herself than to Maddox. She glanced up at him. “I’m sorry. I… I should really take this call.”

Evangeline kept the screen angled toward her. He didn’t know if that was on purpose or not, but it didn’t matter. Maddox couldn’t see who was calling her and, while he didn’t want to share, he had to remind himself that he didn’t have a real claim to Evangeline.

Not yet, anyway.

“I understand,” he lied. He choked down a sip of his cold coffee, acting as if it didn’t bother him one way or another that she was choosing to talk to someone else.

And then she answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Eva.”

Maddox’s hand shook so hard that he spilled half of the mostly untouched coffee onto the tabletop.

A man’s voice. That was a man’s voice.

Evangeline looked up at him again, her eyebrows raised as she caught sight of his mess. “Hey. What’s up?”

“Where are you, babe?”

And there went the other half of his coffee. Babe. That faceless bastard just called his mate ‘babe’.

Evangeline leaned over and grabbed a handful of napkins from the dispenser. Covering the mouthpiece of her phone with one hand, she murmured, “Clumsy,” and handed Maddox the napkins before getting up and taking a few brisk steps away from their table. As he made a half-assed attempt to mop up the spilled coffee, he was focusing on every word she exchanged with the mysterious man on her phone.

Thank fucking Alpha for shifter hearing.

“I told you what my plans were for the day,” she said softly. “I’m getting coffee right now. Then I’m going right back to work. Remember?”

She might have been keeping her voice down. Maddox thought her words were clipped. She was clearly annoyed. Evangeline had always hated it when she felt she was answering to someone else which made for quite a few arguments early on in their courtship. Possessive shifter versus headstrong human, it had taken Maddox some time to learn how to care for Evangeline without smothering her.

This dumbass certainly hadn’t.

“I tried calling you a couple of times while I was taking lunch. Then just now. You didn’t answer.”

“The coffee shop is loud. I must not have heard it. Is anything wrong?”

Maddox thought of the way Evangeline’s eyes had strayed toward the floor a few times during their conversation. He had heard the vibrations before and ignored them, so intent on listening to what she was saying. It made him a little bit happier to know that she might have done the same.

His happiness deflated like a balloon when the man started to speak again.

“No, nothing’s wrong. I just called because I wanted to remind you that it was Friday. You seemed a little iffy about the days yesterday. Didn’t want you to forget about date night.”

“Yes, Adam. I remember. I’ll be ready by eight, like usual.”

“And maybe we can head back to your place after for some coffee.”

“We’ll see, okay?”

“Okay.” There was a pause. “You sure you’re feeling okay, Eva? You sound a little… off.”

“I’m fine. I was just getting ready to leave. I’ve got a couple of pages to proof before I get ready for tonight. Then I’ll be free.”