Bear Me Away (Alpha Werebear Paranormal Romance) (A Jamesburg Shifter Romance) Read online

  “Are you seriously wanting to fist bump?” he asked, with a half-smile that accentuated his jowls.

  Elena shrugged. “It worked for Crockett and Tubbs, didn’t it?”

  *

  “Holy shit,” Elena said, jumping deftly to the top of a modest picket fence, and then down to the brutalized garden on the other side.

  Paul had gone to find the owner. Elena, for her part, decided to try and calm the completely unreasonable feeling of excitement she had over meeting said owner. She poked a lettuce head with her toe, and crouched down, slipping on a latex glove and picking up a fragment.

  The leafy vegetable lay on the ground, mashed so viciously there was somehow a slight green stain underneath. To her left, three cabbages had been ripped up by the roots, bludgeoned until they were dented inward on the top, and then impaled on stolen fence posts. It appeared to be a medieval-style warning to... other cabbages?

  Elena shook her head at the carnage. Looking to the right, toward a corner of the field, an entire patch of radishes had been yanked from the ground and ripped to shreds. The red, paper-like peels lay like freshly slaughtered corpses. The whole scene, really, was shocking. Considering the subject matter of the murder, that was more than a little ridiculous, but still, someone went after these hapless veggies with rage that Elena had never seen, even in the case of the angriest spurned mate.

  The pea plants, watermelons, squash, and green beans were in a similar state of disarray. Okra had been erupted all over the ground, gooey insides spilled out onto the carefully tilled soil. Someone cared for these plants. Someone nurtured them, raised them from seeds.

  Elena carefully tiptoed around a combination raspberry and strawberry area. She stared down at the red, seedy plant gore that soaked the dirt in horror.

  Someone had loved these plants, and then someone else had come in and taken it all away.

  “Oh my God,” Elena whispered as she finished her circuit and came to the pumpkin patch. Cut down in the prime of their lives, the half-grown, green globes were cracked, some were smashed, but they were all a mess of seeds, stems, and whatever that gooey crap inside a pumpkin is called.

  Taking a step back, Elena took her sunglasses off and wiped the back of her arm across her forehead. It was a hot day, sticky and humid, and the field of carnage at her feet didn’t help one damn bit. Completely absorbed in cataloging the mess, she took out a notepad, grabbed one of the pens she had stuck in her hair, and began jotting notes.

  She chewed her lip, as she always did when she was deep in thought. “Pumpkins there,” she said to herself. “Radishes, corn... oh yuck what a mess. Lettuce, Vlad the Impaler’s cabbage patch,” she trailed off, sketching the perfectly sectioned field. As she did, she backed up slowly, making sure not to miss any details on the map.

  Taking another step back, Elena felt her heel sink into something, gasped, and stumbled back.

  The mushed-up rutabaga rolled away as she fell backwards. She stuck her hands out behind her, trying to somehow balance out, but sometimes, even a fox takes a fall.

  Except the impact wasn’t her tailbone hitting the ground, it was a firm, but gentle pressure under her arms. Elena blinked a couple of times and looked to the sides, then down. A pair of cowboy boots with leather so aged she could see the steel in the toe-tips, protruded from between her splayed out legs.

  Effortlessly, the massive arms underneath Elena’s lifted her back to her feet. She turned as he set her on the ground, not noticing the blush that had somehow crept back onto her cheeks.

  “Uh, hi,” Elena said, “I’m Elena.” She stuck out a hand and didn’t even notice when the massive, jeans-and-tight-shirt-wearing man in front of her took her hand and shook.

  “Ma’am,” he tipped his hat toward her, and smiled in a way that embarrassed her a little even to think about. “I’m West,” he said. Dark blue eyes sparkled underneath his thick, shaggy, black hair. “My name is actually Thomas James Westing, Jr., but... right, West.”

  Elena gulped. “Hi, West,” she mouthed, more than said. Her breath hitched in her throat. “I’m, uh, Elena.”

  The smile that spread across the huge bear’s face took her a little by surprise. Underneath the tanned, dirty-from-honest-work face, perfectly white teeth sparkled. A dimple on his left cheek peeked out from under the growing stubble. She was still shaking his hand as her eyes unconsciously slid down from his face to his neck to his huge shoulders, and the arms that made his shirt strain.

  “You’re still shaking my hand,” he observed, with just a little bit of a drawl. “Not that I mind, but—”

  Elena snapped her hand back, grinning again. You’re West, and I’m in trouble.

  Her heart thudded, her breath came hot and quick. “I’m Elena.”

  “You already said that,” he said, smiling again. “But in case I missed something, I’m West.”

  When he said his name, she swallowed hard. Yep, Elena thought, I am absolutely, definitely, positively in trouble.

  “So,” West said, interrupting her being lost in thought. “What do you think of all this?”

  “I think you’re huge,” Elena said, before she realized what was coming out of her mouth. She snapped her lips shut, but West just laughed.

  “That,” he said, “is true. And you are very small.”

  His voice boomed, resonating in Elena’s chest. “Uh-huh,” she said, open mouthed and nodding.

  “Oh my God, get a look at this,” Paul said, sucking wind and approaching the unlikely couple. “I thought we were here for a case, not to make googly-eyes at each other.”

  West kept smiling at Elena as he turned away, finally ripping his gaze from her eyes at the last possible moment. “I guess we should get down to business, huh?”

  Elena nodded, Paul curled the right corner of his mouth up, and rolled his eyes.

  “Sure,” West said, “come this way, I think I found something that might help you two.”

  He walked past. Elena turned her head, following him. She just stared, watched, and breathed. She and Paul were both shaking their heads, but for vastly different reasons.

  “You,” Paul said, when West was out of earshot, “are in trouble.”

  For a second, Elena shook her head in protest. Paul shot her a raised eyebrow, and chuckled. “Really? You’re going to act like what I just saw didn’t happen?”

  Elena took a deep breath. “I know,” she said. “I am in big trouble.”

  -2-

  “Wait, a cowboy? Uh, yes please!”

  -Elena

  “A carrot?” she asked. “In a garden? What a horrific mystery!”

  At least if her sarcasm was intact, Elena knew she wasn’t a complete mess. Outwardly, things might be a different story, what with all the hair tugging and lip biting. She wasn’t the only one though. West kept stealing glances in her direction, and she kept catching his eyes and then looking away.

  Sometimes though, he would be talking, and looking back and forth between the two investigators, but then just settle on Elena, eyes devouring her curves. She might be five-foot-nothing, and might be just over a buck-ten when she was sopping wet, but at her height, there were gonna be curves no matter how many sit-ups Elena did, or miles she ran.

  Of course, generally she did neither. Not enough hours in the day

  One of the times she caught him shamelessly watching her, she managed to summon the courage to shamelessly stare back. The two of them, locked in a battle of wills, completely forgot that Paul was still standing around. Elena watched his face, studying the tattoos around his eyes. West watched hers, entranced by her fiery green, amber-flecked, eyes.

  Paul cleared his throat. “So, the carrot?”

  “Oh,” West said, half-heartedly. “Yeah, the carrot.” He trailed off, still watching Elena.

  “Well, what about it? What’s the big deal about a carrot in a garden?” she asked. Her voice was slightly breathy. “Why should we care about a carrot?”

  Finally, West blinked a
nd looked away. “The carrot matters because it’s the only one.”

  “You mean whoever did this stole the rest?”

  West shook his huge head. “No. If you look, there are two things not growing here. Onions, and—”

  “Carrots,” Elena finished for him, then flashed him a quick smile. The game between them, apparently, was on in force. “There’s no carrots, or any,” she scanned the garden again. “Onions. Bears hate onions.”

  “How’d you know?” West asked in his slow, deep voice. “I thought that us hating onions was a species secret.”

  She quirked a quick grin, avoiding a look at him because she’d rather not get caught staring. If she caught him that was one thing. But if he caught her? It didn’t make much sense, but it was a different ballgame entirely.

  “I know bears,” she said.

  “I’ll bet you do,” Paul said, under his breath. “About as well as I know about chasing poodles.”

  Elena shot him a judgmental glance.

  West, apparently not having heard that, continued. “Anyway, yeah, that’s about the short of it. I’ve never kept carrots, and here, look at this, it’s almost as strange.” He walked past the two investigators, letting his hand brush gently against Elena’s arm as he did. Whether or not it was a conscious motion, a wash of goosebumps slid up her arm and disappeared underneath her button-down. She felt sweet in places, and salty in others. None of those places had felt very much for a very long time.

  “Tomatoes,” he said. “Picked clean. Only thing taken. The rest, just,” his voice faded out, absorbed by the din of chirping birds. There was an emotional thickness to his tone that was a little surprising, but all things considered, made sense.

  Absent mindedly, still letting her fantasies about this huge cowboy-esque bear take a little more control of her mind than she should have, Elena jotted down ‘tomatoes, stolen’ on her notepad.

  “So, is this how you make your living?” Elena asked. She realized she was maybe interviewing him like she would a date, more than a client, but that seemed only to occur to her, since no one else – not even Paul – said anything.

  “A living, and an eating,” West said. “Everything I eat, I grow. Or, most of it. Sometimes I get a veggie pizza delivered.”

  “How does that work?” she followed up. “I’ve never heard of a strictly vegetarian bear before.”

  Paul had a very serious look on his already very serious-looking face.

  “I grow what I eat,” West said again. “Grain for bread, which survived the onslaught. But all my vegetables, except the mushrooms that I keep in the barn with the chickens, just destroyed.”

  “So you eat the chickens too?”

  West furrowed his brow. “I sell the eggs, I don’t eat the chickens.”

  “But you raise them, so—”

  “Chickens don’t come out of the ground.”

  Elena cocked her head to the side. Something about the insistence in the big, muscled-up bear’s voice made her feel funny in the same places that watching him walk got her going. For a quick second, she had a flash of a fantasy where his voice was inches from her ear, and his kisses were trailing down her neck. He pushed the collar of her shirt open, kissing further as he swelled against her belly with his...

  “Hello? Elena?”

  She snapped back to reality when she heard West’s voice. “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I was coming up with hunches. That’s what we do in this business, you know, we come up with hunches.”

  Paul shot her a glance. He had his tongue between his teeth, trying really hard not to start up with his half-snorting laugh. She hated that laugh, especially when it came at her expense. Especially when she walked right into it.

  Distracting herself by looking very busy, Elena knelt down and plucked the half-buried carrot from the dirt. It was a stumpy, pitiful looking root, with a big, ugly knot on one side. “Looks like you, Paul,” she said as she dropped the carrot into a Ziploc bag onto which Elena had written “EVIDENCE” on the label section.

  A string of slow days meant she had hundreds of the things, although she’d never actually used one before.

  “Shouldn’t you leave that for the police?” Paul asked.

  West turned, but Elena answered. “He didn’t call them, did he?”

  “Nope,” Paul admitted.

  “Then here we are, and here’s a carrot.” She handed it, inside the bag, to her partner. “That looks just like you.”

  Paul winced, feigning injury at her words. “You kill me with your cruel, biting wit, El,” he said. West chuckled, and Elena smiled broadly, despite her best efforts. Paul folded the bag over, rolled the carrot up, and dropped it into one of the front pockets of his gray blazer. “Anything else we need to know?” he asked West, who was digging at something with the toe of his boot.

  Elena immediately took over, completely ignoring her partner. “There are things we need to know. Your enemies – or possible enemies. People who might be angry at you, or jealous, or anything else. Are you married?” She’d already checked out his hand, but knew well enough not to trust that the presence or absence of a ring never told the whole story. “Engaged? Dating anyone?”

  A skeptical look spread across West’s face. “I’m not sure if—”

  “It is,” Paul cut in. “Necessary I mean. There’s a lot of things we have to check, and the first option we usually look after is an angry mate, spurned girlfriend, that kind of thing.” He gave Elena a look that said he knew exactly what she was doing.

  Inwardly, she smiled, at least as much at his use of phrases like ‘we usually’ and ‘a lot of things we check’ because, after four years in business, this was probably the first case they’d ever had that was more complicated than following someone from bar to bar, and then taking a couple smooching pictures and getting a check.

  “No,” West said, simply. He was staring pointedly at Elena. “Not married, not dating. Who has the time?” A smile crept across his lips, and a second later, that dimple popped back out. The dent in his cheek made her fingers tremble a little, until she balled up her fist. “And as far as anyone being jealous or angry,” he paused in the way people do when they’re about to avoid telling the truth.

  “We need to know,” Elena said, picking up for her partner. “If we’re going to work for you, you have to be straight with us. Otherwise, this is pointless.”

  West grunted, and shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m just a simple farmer outside town. This is how I’ve been for a while.”

  Those words – a while – made the tiny, white hairs on the back of Elena’s neck stand at attention, but she knew better than say anything just then. She jotted a couple more notes and then watched him again. She let her eyes settle on him for a second too long to be believable as a conversational move.

  “I think that’s all we need,” she said. Except for you, she wanted to say. Oh my God I am in big, big, big trouble, she thought, somehow managing to not voice her feelings.

  “There is one more thing, Princess Hurried,” Paul said – thankfully. “We need to talk about money.”

  West shook his head and raised a hand. “Money doesn’t matter. I just want to know what happened to my... my plants.”

  If he’s that possessive and protective about some cucumbers, imagine how he’d be about a mate? Imagine how he’d be about me. Elena caught herself drifting into another ridiculous fantasy. Although when she looked back at him, and saw those dark blue eyes burning into her soul, maybe it wasn’t such a ridiculous, far-fetched fantasy after all.

  She cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah okay so now I think this is all we need.”

  West’s eyes lingered, just like hers, a little too long to have been completely business-like. He stuck his hand out. “Thanks,” he said. “Good to meet you.” Elena grabbed his hand, squeezed, and let the heat from his palm radiate up her arm.

  She stared into his eyes, he gazed into hers. “You too,” she said.

  Paul gr
abbed the back of her collar, tugging like a kid trying to get his parents’ attention. “That’s all we need,” he said, repeating her words. “Thanks for calling us, Mr. Westing, we’ll—”

  “Just call me West,” the big bear said, shaking Paul’s hand, and once again letting his free arm brush against Elena. “And thanks.”

  As soon as the fox and the bulldog turned away, Elena felt West’s eyes, imagined his hands, dreamed about how kissing those stubble-ringed lips would feel.

  Big trouble? That didn’t even start to describe what kind of a mess Elena had dug herself. Catastrophe? That was a little closer.

  But really, it was worse than any of that.

  The sweet, wet heat creeping out of Elena’s core wasn’t simple lust, or regular old, run-of-the-mill horny fox-girl yearning. What she felt was far deeper, far more dangerous. What she was almost sure was clouding her mind was something she convinced herself a long time ago to give up on.

  What was clouding Elena’s mind?

  She shook her head, opened the Buick door, and crawled in. She couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t think about it. Not while there was work to do.

  “You sick?” Paul asked.

  “No,” she said, “why?”

  He shrugged, grinning. “No reason.” The grin on his face got wider and, as Elena stared at him, more irritating.

  “What?” She asked again, insistently, before punching her partner in the arm. “Quit this high school shit. What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking two things,” he said. “First of all, that’s the only time you’ve opened the car door in about nine months. Last time was when you had the flu.”

  Elena huffed. “So what? I don’t feel good,” she lied in the most obvious way possible. “So what’s the other thing?”

  Paul looked at her through his narrowed eyes. “Oh nothing,” he said. “It’s just that in the ten years we’ve been friends, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you get more excited about the client than you were about the case.”

  “That,” Elena started, and then turned her head. She stared out the window, watching the Jamesburg firs whiz past. A horse stared at the car as it went by, and for a second, she wondered if she knew him. She shook her head. “That, I guess, is probably fair. I’m in trouble, aren’t I, Bulldog?”