The Fox and her Bear (Mating Call Dating Agency, #2) Read online

  “Take your time,” Eve said. “I know this is difficult.”

  Dawson clenched his fists and relaxed them. “They killed him to convince my dad to get the hell out of the dealing business. He’d gotten too big, and was cutting into their profits big-time. I, uh, I didn’t know what to do. I went to the cops and told them what I knew. Knowing how furious I was, they got me to go undercover to try and bust up the gang.”

  “That explains the whole bridge issue a few years back?”

  Dawson arched an eyebrow. “The... how did you know about that?”

  “I take my job seriously, Mr. Lex,” Eve said. “I’m not known for setting people up with felons. Er, not that I’m saying you’re a felon, just that I do thorough background checks.”

  “The bridge thing was... yeah, that’s one reason I don’t go much of anywhere. I was trapped on a bridge, those guys that killed my brother had me cornered and knew who I was. I think they knew all along, but just played with me for fun. The four of them made a move to put me out, and instinct took over and... well, I made it out and they didn’t.”

  “The report I read said that you disappeared for a while afterwards, and the next place you showed was Tenner’s.”

  “I’m not sure what this has to do with,” Dawson trailed off as he noticed that Eve wasn’t going to stop without an answer. “Yeah, okay. Tenner is an old friend of my dad’s. He kinda raised me when my mom died and dad ended up falling down a bottle. Tenner moved out here when my dad got better, and Tenner was getting serious with a girl. They broke it off, but he took me in, and after my troubles, he let me crash in his place for a time. I needed work, he needed a piano player, so it just clicked.”

  Eve set down her pen. “That’s a lot more honesty than I was expecting,” she said. “You have no idea how many people have honesty as their first requirement. Lots of bad stories.”

  “Yeah, well,” Dawson said. “I doubt many of them have ‘seems normal, but goes on rampages,’ or ‘can generally keep his temper,’ on their list. I’d be willing to bet that ‘erupts into a fury when anxious’ is hardly a sought-after trait.”

  Eve was still scribbling. “You’d be surprised how much people are willing to forgive for the right person. And let’s be serious here for a second – you’re a bear. What the hell are you supposed to do when you’re cornered by a bunch of idiots with guns?”

  Dawson lifted his eyebrows in accession. “Okay, fair enough. But anyway, I’ve got to get to the bar. Tenner needs me cleaning up before opening time. Our cook and our busboy both quit about two hours ago, so it’ll be a busy night.”

  Eve stood up, pushing her chair out fast enough that she stumbled. Without a second’s thought, Dawson leapt up and caught her. He held her there for a second before setting her back on the ground.

  She had a look of astonishment on her face, and he had a slightly embarrassed expression. “I guess I’m pretty agile too,” he said. “If that counts for anything.”

  Eve laughed, trying to hide exactly how surprised and excited she was. “Uh, well thanks, I’m not normally this clumsy,” she said. “But don’t worry, I think I have just the fox for you. I mean that literally, not that she’s foxy. I mean, she’s a very pretty woman, it’s just—”

  Dawson immediately disarmed the slightly disheveled owl with a smile. “I get you. And I trust you. Whoever you think will be good for me, I’m sure you’re better at this than I am.”

  “Well, I like to pride myself in being capable at my job. Anyway, is there any problem with sending your possible mate directly into your arms? Er, your bar?”

  She giggled despite herself, and repeated the words a few times softly.

  “If she can handle Tenner’s, then she can probably handle me,” he said as he turned to leave. “Thanks. I know Tenner put you up to this, but I know he’ll also never admit it. I really appreciate all of this, but I’m not sure it’s going to work.”

  “You leave that part to me, Dawson,” Eve said. “You go work, and so will I.”

  4

  The phone buzzing jolted Angie Holton out of a deep, comfortable sleep. In her stupor, she was convinced that the man she was dreaming about had come to life. “Who are you?” she called, groping in the darkness that only existed because of her blackout curtains. “Where...?”

  With a grunt, she jammed her left foot into the corner of one of her many bookshelves and fell forward. She stuck out a hand, vaulted off it, swore loudly, and bounced back to her feet. Not a half-second later, Angie hit her head on her bedroom door, tottered backward and fell again. That time, she managed to get her balance by wheeling her feet, and had just caught herself when she clapped a knee against her mattress. She flopped forward, thankfully onto her bed, and had almost fallen back asleep when she remembered the phone was why she’d gotten up in the first place.

  It buzzed again. This time she had a slightly less violent reaction. Rolling lazily onto one side, she cursed her bad eyes, snatched her glasses and blinked until she could see clearly enough to answer.

  “Hope I didn’t interrupt anything.” The voice coming through the phone was familiar, but only vaguely. “You seem kind of outta breath.”

  “Oh, uh,” she giggled softly, “no, the phone just surprised me. I was having a hell of a dream though. This is Eve, right?”

  “Angie Holton,” Eve announced, “I think I’ve found someone for you to meet.”

  “I remember you being a lot chattier,” Angie said rubbing her eyes. Even though her vision was just this side of blindness, she was still a fox, and so her light sensitivity was through the roof. Even the bare strips of sunlight coming through the crack between her curtains was enough to send a hot streak of pain through her brain.

  “Sorry,” Eve said. “It’s been a real day. I’m sure you know how that goes.”

  And so she did. As a night shift dispatcher for the White Creek Police Department, “real days” were pretty much all Angie had. It suited her though. She had a preternatural ability to keep calm in the most stressful of situations, and then a bad habit of falling apart directly after the stress passed. She also had a habit of, apparently, bouncing around her room like an unhinged idiot when she was sleepy and collecting all sorts of bumps, bruises and scrapes she couldn’t remember getting.

  “I hear that, last night we had about seventy calls. At least half of them were actually emergencies that didn’t involve non-shifting cats and trees. So, you found someone? Really? Is it some sort of whiny rhino?”

  Eve repeated that phrase – whiny rhino – several times, laughing under her breath. “That really sounds funny, huh?” Eve asked. “Whiny rhino, whiny rhino, uh... sorry. My head is in about fourteen thousand different places today. I’ll tell you this though, he’s no whiny rhino. Not a rhino at all. A bear. A bar bear,” she giggled again and then sighed at herself.

  “Are you okay?” Angie asked. “You seem like you’ve got some gas leaking into the office.”

  “It’s a long story. A real long one,” Eve said. “You ever hear of Tenner’s Bar?”

  Angie nodded her head before remembering she was on the phone. “Sure, it’s one of four bars in town and I’m a dispatcher. Fights aren’t exactly rare. I can’t do the late nights anymore. Well I mean, I can but I don’t get out of work until most people are just showing up at their offices. I have to do my drinking at one of the places near the hospital where all the graveyard shift nurses and cops whet their whistles. But I like pancakes better anyway.”

  Falling silent for a moment, Angie thought of syrup, whipped cream, a short-stack of buttermilk pancakes and some kind of fruit topping. Strawberries, maybe? “God I love pancakes,” she said without realizing she was speaking out loud. “Er, sorry, so who is this guy?”

  Eve clicked her teeth together, and flipped audibly through papers. “Dawson Lex. He’s a bear, a very nice one, and he also sings like an angel. Just don’t ask him about Billy Joel. He’s the piano bear at Tenner’s Bar, and is slightly reclusive.”r />
  “Well he’s a bear,” Angie said, her voice getting a little bit higher and just a touch more excited. “They don’t tend to be the most social. I’ve never even thought of dating a bear. I’m kinda... well I won’t say small, because of the pancake thing partly, but I’m not anywhere near as big as a bear.”

  “Oh don’t worry, honey,” Eve said with a tinge of mischief in her voice. “We might all be different shapes and sizes, but that’s what makes life interesting. And I do mean interesting. If you catch—”

  “Uh yeah I think I get it,” Angie laughed under her breath. “But... I don’t know. I mean, is he sure he can handle my baggage?”

  “He’s got his own,” Eve said. “Look, I’ve got to get back to nursing this headache, but I promise this is going to be good. He’s got a smile that could kill a snail,” she paused, but decided not to pursue that train of thought. “Beautiful eyes, and a big, round laugh. And he’s got a hell of a good heart. But, like I said, he’s got his own baggage, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much.”

  For a moment, the two sat silently, wondering who was going to say something first. “Well,” Angie finally said, “I’m so tired of sitting around by myself that I’ll give it a shot, even if I’m not convinced he’s going to have any interest in me at all. He sounds like a dream, to be honest,” she trailed off, remembering the dream she’d been having before her ill-fated and plenty painful jaunt around her room. Her toes throbbed, but that didn’t stop her imagination from flying high and wide.

  The guy in her dream had been tall, slightly muscular, but not like a freak show bodybuilder. He had these burning green eyes and some shaggy, dark blond hair. He also had these ears that stuck out just a little more than they would to be perfect, but somehow that little imperfection made him even more beautiful to her. It was sort of like him having some trait that made him look more real than a calendar model made him... well, real. She could imagine him actually existing, actually having anything to do with her.

  “I’m still not sure though,” Angie said. “I mean, I’m not exactly the ideal prize.”

  “I know you better than you know yourself,” Eve said. “You remember the questionnaire? The interview? That thing where you admitted everything you’d ever done and all the good and bad things about you?”

  Angie nodded and then blinked. “Yeah?”

  “Then trust me,” Eve said. “Listen. I don’t take my job lightly. I know that what I’m doing can make people’s lives a hundred times better, but it can also send them crashing to the floor if things don’t work out. I know I have a responsibility to this town and these shifters to find mates for those who can’t do it themselves. Do you think I take you lightly?”

  She shook her head. “Er, no, I guess not.”

  “Listen to me,” Eve said, her voice growing very serious. “You’ve got this way about you, this easy humor that I’ve only ever found in nurses and cops and dispatchers. You people have this way of dealing with horrors that no one else sees except on voyeuristic documentaries and CSI. You need to quit selling yourself short and get out there and bag this bear.”

  “Oh, wow,” Angie said with a chuff of laughter. “I don’t think I’ve had a pep talk like that since I was on the boys’ team for sixth grade football. You should be a middle school coach.”

  “No thanks, I’m good. I don’t look good in those weird shorts, although I wouldn’t mind wearing a whistle all the time.”

  The two of them were silent for a time. “You really think this will work?” Angie finally asked. “I don’t think I can handle any more disappointment.”

  “Listen. When’s the last time you heard about me steering someone wrong?”

  “Well, never I guess.”

  “Right. And there’s a reason I have so few clients, and why it takes so damn long for me to find matches. I don’t do anything unless I’m sure. I’m not a gambler, Angie, I’m a matchmaker. If I were going fishing, I would call it catching. Not fishing. Because I’m not in it to sit around with my line in the water all day, I’m in it to gut a salmon. You know what? That went on way too long and I’m not sure it makes any sense anyway.”

  “No,” Angie said with a grin. “No, it really does. Somehow, it really does. All right,” she let out a breath. “Where am I meeting him?”

  *

  As she pulled to a stop in front of a dusky looking little building not too far from the outskirts of White Creek, Angie began having very serious second thoughts. Not because she was afraid of going inside the bar that looked hauntingly like Cheers, and not because she had any fear of the bear she was to meet, but rather it felt like she’d just stepped into a time skip.

  Looking at herself in the rearview, she poked at the gloss that had collected in the corner of her mouth. She scraped off a little ball of it, and flicked it with her tongue, feeling at once slightly embarrassed at her trait of tasting the weird grape flavor of the stuff, and also not particularly caring. After all, she was who she was, right? Eve told her just to do what she did, and not worry about a damn thing.

  There was a smell of something enticing, but she couldn’t tell if it was frying chicken, or hamburgers grilling. Could’ve been both. Either way, it did something to her stomach that was halfway between pleasant and horrifying. Regardless, she felt a rumble deep down and knew immediately that if she didn’t have one of whatever was making that smell, she’d go just about nuts.

  Vaguely she remembered Eve telling her that not only did this bear play the piano, he also cooked. Angie sighed. Memories of her mother and brother begrudgingly accompanying her on one of the many, many symphony trips they’d taken flashed through her mind. Okay, gotta calm down with that sort of thing. This guy plays piano in a bar. I can’t make myself believe he’s some kind of virtuoso genius. Piano in a bar full of old guys, Ange. Come on, make with the sanity.

  She swallowed hard, forcing both the lump in her throat and the rumble of her hunger down into a more submissive position. Still though, Angie couldn’t manage to keep from letting herself tingle up and down in anticipation of whatever she was about to see. Hell, she didn’t even know what she was about to see. She wished that she’d had a picture, or something past a description and a fantasy mind-picture of the guy.

  But, that’s not how Eve worked. She didn’t believe in building people up on looks. It was all very scientific, but it was more than that – it was a beautiful art that she couldn’t quite grasp, but she didn’t need to, she knew, she just needed to go along for the ride. With another deep breath, she steadied her shaking hands by gripping the wheel and squeezing her fingers in between the grip nubs.

  “Okay, all right, just calm down. You spend every night except Saturday sitting behind a bank of computer monitors and making life and death decisions. A blind date is a hell of a lot less frightening than that.”

  But then, through the small bank of windows all decorated with painted scenes of reverie, she caught a glimpse of the giant with the blazing green eyes and the massive shoulders who sat down at the piano and started to twiddle around. Immediately, the wall-muffled music hit her in the chest. This was no garden variety bar pianist. He was playing the adagio from Beethoven’s 8th Symphony. That’s not what she expected from a guy playing an old baby grand next to a bar manned by an ancient, and impressively mustached, walrus. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting the music swell around her. Sometimes, having fox ears wasn’t so good, like when she got a real clear picture of her neighbor’s sex life. Other times? Nothing was better.

  The big guy and the walrus were talking, and the bear took a slug of whiskey. He smiled and as soon as he did, the palpitations set in. He had these big, blazing green eyes, and cheekbones that looked like something out of a catalog. Immediately her thoughts turned to his underwear, and her cheeks turned to crimson. It can’t be, she thought. All that dream psychic stuff is a load of crap. Maybe he’s just... what I’ve always wanted? And my brain just made me see him somehow?

  “Embarr
assed, feeling dirty and loving it? What better time to waltz into a bar and get myself a bear?” Angie told her empty car. One more deep breath and then she was outside of her late model Camry with one mismatched door, and pedaling her feet toward the door. She glanced down at her phone and saw it was half past four. “Well, if this guy turns out to be a drooling idiot, at least I’ve got to work at seven.” She exhaled the rest of her breath and blinked hard.

  Pushing open the door of Tenner’s, she heard an old timey jingle and peered around the dark wood paneled bar. “It’s like this place fell out of 1920,” she said, surprised at the sound of her own voice.

  “Hiya little lady,” the walrus, who must be Tenner, announced. He was wearing suspenders, a garter on his arm, and his incredibly manicured mustache also was straight out of time. “What can I do for ya?”

  The big bear was still just tickling the keys. An almost sexually-charged sound filled her ears, filled her soul, but she saw he was absolutely lost in his own world. “I, uh,” she stammered. “I smelled some food. And...”

  “Damn!” The bear she knew was Dawson Lex, stood up, knocking the bench over backwards. “I forgot the chicken!”

  He dashed back to the kitchen, almost falling over himself as he half-leapt and half-fell, through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

  “I think I’m here for him,” she said with a completely abashed grin.

  “I figured,” Tenner said. “Nice to meet ya, Angie, I’m Tenner. And, uh, that’s Dawson. He hasn’t shut up for the last three hours. I’ve never seen him like this.”

  “I hope I’m not messing things up for you. I don’t want to be a prob—”

  “Oh, little lady,” Tenner said in his friendly, tired way, “if you can make him happy, there isn’t anything you could do that would bother me. But right now, I think he might need some help back there. He gets a little panicked when you’re dealing with grease fires.”