Bear Arms (Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 4) Page 2

  Lexie watched the steam waft off the falling coffee as she poured it from high up into her Superman mug. She got that thing from her last boyfriend, along with an unhealthy dose of body image issues. The mug, though, she liked. When she finally kicked him to the curb, he’d forgotten to take the mug, and she just never bothered to mention it.

  Something about claiming that mug from him gave her a shot of confidence, like she’d really conquered the demon in her guts that told her over and over how she wasn’t good enough, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

  At thirty, she was one of the premiere arts and crafts bloggers in the Wild West world of the internet. That was even more unbelievable, because she was both terrible at, and hated, arts and crafts.

  Sitting down at her desk, she blew a cloud of steam off her cup and took a drink. How I Turned My Thumb Into a Potholder, she typed out. After staring at the words for a second, she sort of winced. “Way too long,” she said with a frown. “Needs more punch.”

  Fuck Knitting, she wrote. That one got her laughing hard enough to get a trickle of coffee going down the side of her chin. She deleted that one too, knowing full well she’d offend at least ten percent of her audience. She might be a proud artist, but she also needed to pay the bills.

  The Potholder That Made Me Hate Myself, she typed. “Is the sarcasm obvious enough?” she asked her old, square, fat computer monitor. Both the screen and the tower on the desk beside it were remnants of a long-gone age. The cream-colored eggshell plastic on the case and screen hadn’t been available since, she figured, about 1997. But then, the two-hundred dollar keyboard she typed on was a sort of funny counterpoint to the ancient PC.

  About ten minutes of pure channeled hatred and rage later, she had banged out the rough draft of a thousand-word short post. They didn’t always come that easily, but when they did, those tended to be the articles that made her the most cash. She was just about to start editing when she decided against it.

  “Sometimes, editing just ruins the feeling of frothing hatred,” she said to her empty sunroom. “Sometimes you just have to run with it, and be prepared for any embarrassing Freudian slips you might have stuck in there.”

  Instead of a full edit she made herself just scan the article to make sure she hadn’t accidentally inserted an angry diatribe about her ex in there. When she got into those zen-like Writing Zones, she hardly remembered what she produced. It was like she channeled some kind of universal consciousness and just acted as the vessel of record. Satisfied she hadn’t named any names she didn’t mean to name, she added a few links to knitting videos that might actually help the knitting-disabled. She always made sure to keep things positive, to end everything she did on a high note with a happy tone.

  After all, the last thing the world needed, Lexie figured, was another pissed off internet troll trying to make a quick buck by ruining someone else’s good name. Her mouse pointer hovered over the POST button on the screen, and she was just about to publish, when she decided to change a few words in the center. “I don’t think ‘ass bazooka of hell’ is the right way to describe something. Just a little bit too aggressive,” she mumbled. ‘Disappointing’ was what she chose instead. It wasn’t quite as honest, but then again, too much honesty isn’t always the best thing in the world.

  “Ass hell doom!” she shouted, almost falling backward over her chair, as the phone she’d forgotten was on her desk started loudly chiming with the default ring tone. She clutched her chest and got herself right before picking up the receiver. “Eve?” she asked the screen. “Could it really be?”

  “Hello?” she asked after whipping open her flip phone. “Eve?”

  “None other,” a voice announced from the other end. “Listen, Lexie, I think I’ve found someone for you. But—”

  “You... did?” Lexie was almost beside herself. “I mean, that sounded a lot more pathetic than it is. I’m just surprised, is all.”

  There was a hint of cockiness in the voice that replied. “Yeah well, I’m pretty good at what I do, I like to think,” Eve replied. “Anyway, he’s a former soldier, about to open a mechanic garage with his friend... and let me tell you, his friend isn’t anything to shy away from looking at either.”

  For a moment, Lexie wasn’t quite sure how to take that. “Wait, are you telling me we’re double dating? I’ve known you long enough to know you don’t say things unless they have a real purpose.”

  “Yes,” Eve said haltingly, “I mean no. Well yes, you’re right that I don’t mince words but no, we’re not double dating. That’d be a pretty awful conflict of interest.” In the background, Lexie could swear she heard soft laughter from the other end of the phone. “And anyway, I don’t need a wing woman. But listen, I wanted to get your phone number updated for him. The last one I have was no good. When I called it, someone named Mike Truckler answered and asked if I was calling from Walgreen’s with his blood pressure meds. I figured you hadn’t shacked up with a geriatric, so I doubted you still had that number.”

  Lexie laughed. “Yeah, well, may as well have been calling about my blood pressure meds. I’m getting higher-strung with every day that passes. But yeah, this is the new one. Wait a second, how did you get this number if—”

  “Like I said,” Eve pronounced, “good at my job.” She sounded distant, almost distracted. There was a long pause. “Right,” Eve finally said, “so, I’ll be going now. I’ve got to, uh, get ready for something.”

  Lexie cocked her head to the side. One of the perks of being a rabbit-shifter was that she could hear like a rabbit. She easily picked up on vocal cues most people, hell most shifters, never would. “Are you okay?” she asked. “You sound kind of... uh... I don’t know exactly, but something sounds off.”

  “Oh no, it’s nothing,” Eve said. “I’m trying to force the memory of an old boyfriend out of my head so I can finally get up and move on with my life. So, I might just have a date and I fell in love with a guy I met at a bar last night who may or may not be the friend of the man I’m matching you with. Although I assure you one has nothing to do with the other. It just so happens that he’s perfect for me – I mean really perfect... er, I mean for you. I’m babbling, aren’t I?”

  “I’m happy for you, Eve,” Lexie said without any further judgment or comment. “And thanks. I’m looking forward to the call.”

  The two hung up, and as Lexie stared at the post she’d just made, it suddenly seemed like it was way, way angrier than she meant to be.

  She left it though, because what the hell – the owner of the I Hate Arts and Crafts blog couldn’t exactly go all soft and mushy, could she? Gotta pay the bills, gotta pay them bills.

  *

  Lexie just sat down with a steaming mug of Earl Grey and turned on the fourth season of X-Files on Netflix when the phone rang again. Again might be a slight exaggeration, as it was about ten hours since the last time it caught her attention. She reached over to the end table beside her couch and groped around as Mulder made a funny quip about aliens and the government.

  After briefly skirting her hand around the entire table, and knocking a forgotten cup of water onto the floor, she pulled her attention from the TV and registered that the phone was, in fact, in the kitchen about forty feet from where she was sitting. Heaving a sigh, Lexie pushed herself up off the couch.

  What if it’s him? She thought which lit a fire under her ass. As she stumbled toward the phone and kept turning back to look at the screen, her feet got tangled up with each other. Like a lizard who had somehow got his own tail stuck in his mouth when eating a cricket, she was nothing but a ball of clumsily falling momentum. Just when she thought she’d hit the deck, she caught one of her fake trees with an outstretched hand and righted herself for about a half second before her feet looped around again.

  She tumbled forward, one leg somehow going around behind the other, and she found herself falling almost straight onto her face.

  With a desperate turn that would have made a falling house cat
proud, she turned a shoulder, hit the floor and rolled forward, springing back to her feet right in front of the breakfast bar where the phone was sitting and ringing.

  Lexie snatched it up, flipped open the cover and announced how awesome she was to whoever it was on the other end. She hadn’t even considered it was someone other than her best friend Ariana, who she was expecting to hear from, since they had a standing late-night movie date every Thursday.

  “I’m seriously Spider-Man,” Lexie said. “If I’d managed to video this, I would get more views than that stupid video of the surprised cat. I mean, this was awesome. I fell over, grabbed a tree, fell again and rolled to my feet right in front of the bar. I’m the coolest—”

  “Sounds like it,” a voice, a very growly, deep voice, said. “And from what you just said, and from how Eve described you, I’m pretty sure I found Alexis Headly?”

  Just imagining the face and the body that must’ve gone with a voice like that, Lexie was having a little trouble calming herself down. Her brain flooded itself with a series of images as she tried to decide on the spur of the moment, what sort of creature she’d been attached to.

  “Hello?” he asked again. The rumble, the deep-throated growl in his voice sent a trill of excitement squirming up Lexie’s back. A trail of goose bumps followed the charge, and when it got to the back of her neck, she felt the hairs stand up as her ears pricked. The man let out a long, low whistle.

  “Oh hell, sorry,” Lexie said, laughing at herself at the same time as she blushed. “I was just, er, well...”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’m nervous too,” the smoothly growly voice said. “It’s been a while since I talked to a woman I hadn’t paid.”

  Immediately, Lexie burst into a roll of laughter that could have been mistaken for thunder. And it wasn’t even that she was laughing at something she didn’t think was funny just to get a guy to like her – she wasn’t anywhere near that sort. No, she was laughing honestly, and laughing hard enough to get her sides aching. “Sorry,” she said, in between snorting peals, “no, no, sorry, I’m—”

  “I’m just glad you took it like that,” he said. “When I said the same thing to my roommate he thought I was being serious.”

  “Are you?” Lexie asked as the laughs began to subside. “I mean, what the hell, it’s not like I care. Your business is your business and all.” She paused for a second, and when there was no response, she continued. “You aren’t serious are you?”

  “No,” was the reply.

  “Oh good,” she said. “I mean not that I’m judging, just that... oh my God I sound like a yammering kid asking too many questions about what the Sun is, don’t I?”

  “It’s cute,” he said after a moment’s pause. “And trust me, it took me this long to call you for a reason. I’m not exactly the world’s smoothest operator.”

  Coulda fooled me, Lexie thought. Somehow she kept from announcing that to the world, which for her was a minor miracle. Filtering wasn’t her strong suit, to say the very least. “So, I guess I should know your name?”

  “Blake Rogan and...” he grumbled something that sounded like a curse, but it was so quietly uttered she couldn’t make sure. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight. Sound good?”

  Lexie shook her head, not entirely sure what was going on, but absolutely certain of one thing. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds like the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.”

  It wasn’t until he hung up that she realized he hadn’t asked if she wanted to go out. Somehow, that was even more exciting than all the rest of it rolled into one. Of course, it didn’t occur to her until some minutes later that he had no idea where she was, and she hadn’t a clue what he was picking her up for. But somehow, the maven of I Hate Arts and Crafts just couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but excitement, hopeful anticipation, and just the slightest bit of nervous caution.

  That was definitely, definitely a first.

  3

  “What is with you?” Dora, the second-in-command of the Mating Call Dating Agency, almost trumpeted as Yvette Lorraine, her boss and best friend on the planet, sailed through the front door. “You’re late!”

  Eve looked down at her watch. “I’m two and a half minutes late. And wait the hell up, I own this place. How can I be late to a business I own?”

  “The last time you were late at all, forget more than a minute,” Dora was having to work very hard to keep up the overly serious act, although in her defense, Eve hadn’t been late, ever, “you had the flu and were going to just ‘ride it out’. Remember that?”

  “It would’ve worked if you hadn’t dragged me to the doctor.”

  “They put you on IV fluids for three days!” Dora said. “Anyway, Monte and I were watching TV last night and I coulda swore he said something about seeing you at Tenner’s the other night with... dun-dun-dun... a man?”

  Eve scrunched one of her eyes almost shut. For an owl, with very owl-like eyes, that was no small feat. “So what if I did? You keep on me about how I have to find someone or I’m going to go crazy, don’t you? I mean besides Rake. I can’t do that. I just can’t. Too much baggage.”

  Dora pushed herself to her feet. She plucked the gum out of her mouth and tossed it in the trash as she did. “I get you. I mean, I’m disappointed, but I’ll hold out hope for someday. If nothing else, because Rake sounds as hard up as you are. Anyway, are you saying you met someone?”

  “It was business,” Eve grumbled. “Although I may have met someone. I think I like him a lot, but that might just be me forcing myself to not think about Rake.”

  The two of them were both having a hell of a time not smiling. This was their game – one acted irritated, the other egged her on, and then they eventually dropped the whole thing just before it got really unbelievable. “Tell me about him,” Dora hoisted herself up on top of her desk and sat down, staring at Eve. “Let me guess, he’s a mongoose who teaches English at the White Creek Community College?”

  “Guess again,” Eve said.

  “Ah-ha! That’s an admission of guilt. Okay... cowboy yak who spends his free time making scarves to sell on Etsy?”

  “Close,” Eve said with a smile. “Or not really. How about ex-soldier bear with dark blue eyes, dimples, and biceps about the size of my head.”

  “Yeah, right,” Dora said. “Semi-homeless ferret who plays guitar at Mom’s Burgers on Wednesday night and has a weird addiction to chewing on paper towel rolls?”

  When Eve’s response was just a grin, Dora got the hint. “Oh my god, you’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked. “For you or the client?”

  “Client,” Eve said. “But mine is... well...” Eve just nodded, then smiled, and about a half-second later, the two of them were embracing and giggling like neither had giggled since they were high school sophomores and Bill Hutchinson, the captain of the wrestling team, made an inappropriate comment about Eve’s ass.

  “So,” Dora finally said, when the two of them calmed down enough to actually talk again, “you’re going to tell me everything about him, right? Every last detail?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Eve said, still smiling. “I’ll tell you as soon as I know. I have a date with him tonight at eight. It might be a double with his roommate, who I hooked up with Lexie Headly, the rabbit with the blog about how much she hates making potholders.”

  “Wait,” Dora said. “You’re going on a double date? I thought that was strictly against the—”

  “Yeah, the rules,” Eve said with a long trailing exhalation. “It is, but I figured this one time, it would be okay since the guy was really nervous about his roommate being awkward. At least, that’s what he said. He might be afraid of me, come to think of it.”

  Dora puckered her lips in thought, and rubbed her finger across her chin, back and forth over the cleft. “You are pretty scary,” she finally said. “But scary enough to intimidate a soldier? What’s the real story?”

  Eve sighed heavily. “Well... the real story is tha
t,” she trailed off, very obviously trying to come up with something other than the truth. Dora called her out.

  “You realize it’s perfectly okay to be nervous about something you haven’t done in over a decade, right?” Dora asked. She put her hands on Eve’s shoulders and squeezed gently. “And also, you realize you don’t have to be embarrassed about things like that with me. Remember when I started dating Monte... what, two months ago? Remember how much of a goddam basket case I was before our first date? And remember how that turned out?”

  “I recall sitting on your bed and talking you out of dressing like a candy cane,” Eve said. A smile spread across her lips. “Look, it’s just that I don’t... I’m not used to admitting that I’m anything but perfectly calm and cool and collected.”

  “I know, hon,” Dora hopped off the desk again and hugged her friend tight. “I know you are. But you know something else?”

  Eve blinked and stared. “Don’t tell me the only way I’d be this nervous is if I’m in love. Just resist. Just—”

  “Whoever this guy is, you better bring him to meet me before you propose a mating. Because if you don’t bring him to meet your sister, I’m never gonna bless thing mating that’s obviously in the cards.”

  “Oh my god, shut up!” Eve laughed. “And wait, why am I the one who is going to ask him?”

  “While we’re on the subject though, what about Rake?” She was going a mile a minute, but Dora felt like if she didn’t release every word in her brain that she might back up and pop. “I thought you two were going to get together? You said he was coming to town sometime soon.”

  “I lied,” Eve said with a shrug. “I wasn’t sure I could go through with it and to be honest with you I felt kind of shitty about you putting yourself out like that, hunting him down and calling my old flame, and all... I didn’t want you to know how scared I was. I feel kinda stupid for doing it but, you know, I can’t much go back in time.”

  “No, you can’t, but you also don’t need to lie to me. If you’ll recall,” Dora scratched at one of her ears in an uncontrollable tic, “that’s the one constant with us—no need to lie. But no I totally get you. Sometimes the past just needs to stay that way. You and Rake did have a pretty rough patch.”