Shiftr: Swipe Left For Love (Nash) BBW Wolf Shifter Romance (Hope Valley BBW Dating App Romance Book 10) Read online

  Shiftr: Swipe Left For Love (Nash)

  Hope Valley Dating App Romances Book 10

  Ariana Hawkes

  Contents

  Note from the author

  Also by Ariana Hawkes

  Get your free book!

  Shiftr: Swipe Left For Love (Nash)

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  A Thank You from Ariana Hawkes

  Also by Ariana Hawkes

  Bonus story: Bear Christmas Magic

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Your free book is waiting!

  About the Author

  Copyright ©2017 by Ariana Hawkes

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events and businesses is purely coincidental.

  This is a standalone, 40,000-word HEA romance, perfect for a lunch break, bath time, or a little dose of me-time, wherever you are!

  Created with Vellum

  Note from the author

  Hi there! The tenth instalment of the series is here and I really hope you’ll enjoy Nash and Kenzie’s story!

  I’ve also included a free bonus book for you - Bear Christmas Magic, a standalone bear shifter story.

  Please note: The main story finishes at about 60% because the free bonus story follows. So don’t be confused - the main book is a novella of 40,000 words.

  Enjoy Nash and Kenzie’s story!

  Yours,

  Ariana

  ALSO BY ARIANA HAWKES

  Shiftr: Hope Valley Dating App Romances

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 1 (Dina)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 2 (Kristin)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 3 (Melissa)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 4 (Andrea)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 5 (Lori)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 6 (Adaira)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 7 (Timo)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 8 (Jessica)

  Shiftr: Swipe Left for Love – Book 9 (Ryzard)

  Broken Hill Bears

  Bear In The Rough (Broken Hill Bears Book 1)

  Bare Knuckle Bear (Broken Hill Bears Book 2)

  Bear Cuffs (Broken Hill Bears Book 3)

  Christmas Bear Shifter Romances

  Bear All I Want For Christmas Boxed Set

  Bear Magic Christmas

  Bear My Perfect Gift

  Polar Bears’ Christmas

  Lost To The Bear

  Ravished by the Ice Palace Pack

  Get your free book!

  A 4.5-star rated, comedy romance featuring one kickass roller derby chick, two scorching-hot Alphas, and the naughty nip that changed their lives forever.

  The only thing missing from Aspen Richardson’s life is a man who will love her just the way she is. In the small town she calls home, bullies from the past remain, making her wonder if it's ever going to happen. But, things are about to change in a major way, as the secret Aspen’s parents have been keeping from her comes out…

  “This book definitely needs to be added to your MUST read list – you will quickly fall in love with this steamy and fast paced story.”

  Get your free book now!

  (If your device doesn’t support links, go to www.arianahawkes.com/freebook)

  Part I

  Shiftr: Swipe Left For Love (Nash)

  1

  “You don’t need to perform a mating dance with it, Kenzie. Just go stand it up outside, like Jackson told us.”

  “Get lost, Nash!” Kenzie replied, continuing to struggle with the enormous potted conifer. Nash lifted his hands and flashed her his winning, movie-star smile. The one that made her want to swipe him, right across the face.

  “Or you could just leave it to the experts. It’s more of a guy’s job anyway.” The hairs on the back of Kenzie’s neck stood up, and she fought an overwhelming desire to stride over to him and unleash the barrage of slaps that he so richly deserved.

  “Why don’t you take yourself and your sexist crap out of my sight, before I do something both of us will regret?” she snapped.

  “Only trying to help you out, Kenzie.” He swaggered off, affecting the pimp roll he’d adopted from his recent obsession with ’90s rap videos.

  Fucktard. Seething with anger, Kenzie managed to get her arms around the base of the tree and lift the whole thing onto her shoulder. This would’ve been way easier if the tree company had wrapped them in plastic mesh. But no. They’d left them au natural, so there was no way of carrying them without getting your face jammed into the branches, and pine needles stuck all over you. Nash is possibly the most irritating guy in the entire universe, she thought, as she carried the tree across the yard and deposited it in a corner of the garden center. And it’s my good luck to have to work with him all day, every day. He was like a kid, never missing an opportunity to make a stupid comment. She sighed. And she could never resist responding. Even though she knew it only made him worse. He’s not a bad guy. He just needs to grow up a little, she told herself. Yeah, right. Keep believing that. Nash, the 28-year old boy. Who thinks he’s irresistible to women. He was kind of good looking. At least, he had handsome features – dark, almost black hair, cut short at the sides and kind of messy on top; bright blue eyes, a straight nose, nice lips and teeth, and a firm, masculine jaw – but his personality kind of ruined it. And who the hell had told him that he looked winning with that ridiculous grin stretched across his face? It must’ve been his mother.

  Kenzie pointedly ignored him as they carried the rest of the trees in, but he still managed to annoy her with his incessant, tuneless whistling.

  When all of the trees were unloaded from the tree company’s truck, the driver raised his hand in a lazy wave and drove off.

  “Thanks for the help unloading, guys!” Nash called sarcastically after the truck.

  “Those lazy asses. You’d think that after not bothering to wrap the trees, they’d at least help us unload them.”

  “Right?”

  “Rednecks,” she muttered.

  “Hey!” He scowled at her. “They’re my distant relations!”

  “Are you serious?”


  “Uh huh.” She glanced at him. His eyes were wide open, as if she’d genuinely offended him. “I’m sorry, Nash. I didn’t mean to be insulting.” He curved an arm around her neck, and scrubbed his knuckles on her head.

  “S’okay Miss Prissy. They call themselves rednecks. They take pride in it.” She fought him off, trying to straighten her hair out at the same time.

  “Nash, I swear – if you touch me again –!”

  “I’m off to the nursery to pick up a new order of winter bloomers,” her boss’s booming voice came from somewhere behind them, startling them both. “I need one of you to come with me.”

  “I’ll come, boss,” Nash said immediately.

  “Flowering quince and witch hazel – my favorites,” Kenzie said.

  “Okay, Nash, you stay here, sorting and pricing all the trees, and, Kenzie, you come with me.” Nash let off an exaggerated groan and stalked off to the rear of the store, while Kenzie skipped alongside Jackson to his truck.

  “How’s everything going?” Jackson asked in his deep, rumbling voice when they were on the road. He was a handsome man in his early fifties, his gray, ex-military crop matched by eyes the color of the sea on a winter’s day. He was always clean-shaven and smartly dressed in button-down shirts, which did little to conceal his huge bulk. Kenzie often thought he looked like he should be wrestling tigers or something.

  She exhaled and stared out of the windshield at the light snowfall.

  “Things are going great. You know I love working for you. Nash is driving me crazy, but what’s new?” Jackson’s lips twitched with the ghost of a smile.

  “Sometimes I feel like I need to referee the two of you.”

  “He always starts it,” she said, then cringed at the whininess in her voice. She cleared her throat. “Jackson, I’m an adult. I don’t need refereeing.” He gave a dry chuckle, which was as close as Jackson ever got to laughing.

  “I do know that, Kenzie. It’s often hard to believe that you’re several years younger than him.” She shook her head wearily.

  “I know he doesn’t even believe half the stuff he says.”

  “Exactly. He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.”

  “I know, I know.” She was always resolving not to react to Nash’s stupid jokes and insults. But it never lasted long. She was too feisty to sit back and take it.

  “How’s business?” she asked. It was his turn to sigh.

  “I sure hope this year’s gonna be better than the last one. Sales were lower than I hoped over the holiday season. If we don’t manage to make it up by spring, this year could be our last.” Kenzie’s head snapped toward him.

  “No way?” He shrugged.

  “All the big chains are undercutting us. Even Supermart is opening a garden center concession. We can’t compete on price.” Kenzie’s stomach tightened. She’d been so lucky to get the job in the store. When she’d arrived in Hope Valley a little over three months ago, running from trouble back home, there was no work at all. She’d been on the point of leaving, moving on to a bigger town, when she saw Jackson’s ad for a sales assistant. At first he’d been wary of employing a woman to do the sometimes heavy, physical work, but she convinced him that she was used to it since she’d grown up on a smallholding. Ever since then, she’d worked like crazy to prove herself. And she found that she truly loved working in the store. She loved the physicality of it, getting to be outdoors most of the time, interacting with customers. She also loved working for Jackson. He was a great boss. He expected them to work hard, but he was fair and generous with bonuses. And she knew he loved the store. It had been in the family for a couple of generations. If it closed, she’d be devastated, both for herself and for him.

  “No. It’s not going to happen. We’ll make it work. Nash and I will brainstorm some ideas for increasing sales.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” he replied. He flashed her a smile, but she registered a lack of conviction in his voice.

  They pulled up at the plant supplier, and Jackson chatted with the owner while the two of them loaded their order into the truck.

  “Is that all?” she said frowning at the meager number.

  “I don’t want to be stuck with a load that I can’t sell.”

  “I know. But they’re so great for winter. We’ll sell them. I promise. I’ll set up a real nice display at the front of the store. And if we can’t, I’ll buy them all.” She was being over-eager, but she couldn’t help herself. Jackson stared at her for a long moment, his gray eyes narrower than ever. Then he patted her on the shoulder.

  “Okay. We’ll get another 50. But I’ll hold you to your promise, young lady.” He threw her a mock-severe glance.

  They negotiated the price of the additional plants, and then they were back on the road again.

  “You know what we should sell?” she said, as a brainwave hit her.

  “An entire forest of winter bloomers. One for every home in the county?” Jackson quipped.

  “Outdoor lighting solutions. Like those light-up deer, that people put on their lawns.” His face was a mask of incomprehension. “It’s a thing. Trust me.”

  “Where I come from, deer are strictly for eating.”

  “But they’re also real pretty when they’re made of wire and illuminated.” She laughed inwardly. She’d been to Jackson’s house once before, and she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t understand such ‘fripperies’, as he referred to them. His place was the epitome of masculine styling – all unfinished wood and extremely basic and limited furniture.

  The snow became heavier, and while Jackson jumped out and pulled a tarp over the truck bed, she researched on her phone. He climbed back in and slammed the door shut, his hair and shoulders coated in white.

  “Looks like there’s a wholesaler about ten miles from here.” He gave a snort. “Come on. Let’s get a couple of deer, a few lights. I guarantee they’ll sell. And then we can get some more.”

  “If you’re wrong, it’s coming out of your wages, Kenzie.”

  “Yes!” She leaned forward and entered the address of the place into the satnav.

  Forty-five minutes later, they’d purchased four deer and an array of outdoor lights, accompanied by Jackson’s relentless grumbling, and they were on their way back to the store.

  “We’re kind of out in the sticks here,” Kenzie commented, gazing out of the window as the unfamiliar back roads flew by.

  “Yup,” Jackson replied.

  “I can’t believe that there are towns in the county that I haven’t even heard of. Like Hunters’ Gap.”

  “That’s probably because we’re in the next county.”

  “What is this place?” There was something dark, almost sinister about the town that they were passing through. The homes were more like shacks than houses, made from dark, unpainted clapboard, and a lot of them were very run down, with rotten-looking doors and window frames. Several were boarded up, but still seemed to be occupied. “It kind of gives me the creeps.”

  “It’s an isolated community. They’re known for being self-sufficient and not very welcoming to outsiders.”

  “Shame they don’t make more effort with their surroundings.”

  “Ah, they’ve always been that way.” He gave a shrug. At the final house on the street, there was a pale, mean-looking face pressed up to one of the windows, staring out blankly. “People have tried to help them, but they’re just not interested.”

  “It’s a shame,” she said, and the image of the sad, beat-up town stayed with her for the rest of the journey.

  “Okay, let’s find out if Nash’s trashed the place in our absence,” Jackson said, pulling into the store’s parking lot.

  Kenzie caught Nash by the elbow the second their boss was out of earshot.

  “I need to speak to you, Nash. We’ve got to help Jackson save the store!” His electric blue eyes widened.

  “Why? What’s happening?”

  “He told me that it’s not doing well, and that if he
can’t make it up in the next few months, then he might be closing this year.” Nash stopped dead and stared at her.

  “He said this seriously? He wasn’t just grumbling like he always does?”

  “Yup. He was dead set.” Nash’s mouth opened and closed like a beached fish.

  “He can’t close the store. He loves this damned place. It’d kill him.”

  “I know.”

  “No. It can’t happen. His great-granddaddy opened it, and it’s been passed down through the generations.” Kenzie blinked, surprised that he knew so much about it.

  “He says the corporations are on his back, and he can’t beat them on price.”

  “Those bastards.”

  “Nash, you shop in Smartmart every day.” Nash spun around so he was facing her and jabbed a finger toward her chest.

  “Well, not any more, Kenzie-meister. My Smartmart days are over. From now on, I’m going to be a farmer’s market, free-range kind of guy. And we’re going to rescue this store.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Yeah!” He lifted his hand for a high five. Long used to his games, her hand shot out at lightning speed and slapped his palm before he had time to withdraw it. He shook his hand as if it was on fire.

  “Not bad, Kenzie-meister. Not bad. So, we’ve got to help him create something better than Smartmart.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Back to work, guys!” Jackson yelled, catching sight of them from an unknown vantage point in the store.

  “Let’s think about it,” Nash said, fixing her with a meaningful glance as he grabbed an armful of plants.

  The end of the day came. Kenzie stretched and got to her feet from where she’d been arranging a collection of small cacti. Time usually flew by when she was at work, but today, she’d been watching the clock for the past hour, and she couldn’t wait to get home.