Rebel Bear Read online

  “Nice,” he said, making her blush harder.

  Cynthia, the dragon shifter who ran the plantation house, was big on candles and fancy napkins and such, and he’d never seen the point. He was a practical, no-frills kind of guy, and if he’d been eating with one of his brothers — say, Chase, the world’s quietest wolf shifter — they would have plonked down, eaten their grub wordlessly, and been perfectly happy. Who needed a candle?

  But now, he got it. The candle gave the place a warm, familiar glow, hollowing out a space for two in the vastness of the surrounding forest. A nice, cozy, intimate space.

  Definitely not here with Chase, his bear chuckled.

  Hailey’s hair was shiny from her bath, and her skin practically glowed in the candlelight.

  “Garlic bread?” She held out the basket.

  Her nails were a mess by then, and she’d been working hard all day. But she seemed at peace, like him.

  He dug in, and within a few bites, he stopped and closed his eyes. He’d been on the go for so long, and the occasional glance at the sunset or a dunk in the water seemed like plenty of break time. But now he found something inside him unwinding. The peace that surrounded him seeped right into his soul.

  His bear loved it too. The space. The trees. The rushing creek.

  The company, the beast added, half drunk on her scent.

  “That was so good,” Hailey said, finishing off the tiny portion she’d allotted herself.

  “That’s all you’re having?”

  Her eyes strayed to the rest of the lasagna then darted away. “That’s plenty.”

  He’d been taking huge, gulping bites, but she’d only nibbled. He doubted it had to do with nervousness — not after the number of calories she had to have burned that day. So he pushed the casserole dish toward her and nodded. “Go for it.”

  She pursed her lips and closed her eyes, clearly fighting temptation.

  He laughed. “I’m not selling you drugs, you know. It’s just food. You know, food?”

  She laughed. “Not in my line of work, it isn’t.”

  His brow furrowed. What was it like to have to starve to secure a new contract? Did her manager — or worse, her mother — look over her shoulder and count every calorie?

  “Actually, it is.” He waved around the tidy yard and much-improved house. “Your new line of work, at least.”

  She laughed and finally gave in, letting him heap a second helping onto her plate. She chowed down immediately, and he had to hold back a smile.

  “Must be pretty different from modeling,” he mumbled between bites of garlic bread.

  She grimaced. “Yeah, it’s pretty different. But this is the Ritz compared to the house I grew up in.” Her eyes traveled over the worn floorboards and peeling paint. Then she covered her mouth with her hand. “Sorry — no offense. This cottage is great, and I love helping its character show.”

  His chest went all warm. He loved that too. Fixing up old places, making them come back to life. Maybe even making them better than they ever were.

  “Where did you grow up?”

  She smiled. “Montana. My mom worked in a diner in Fort Benton. My dad worked in forestry.” Her face lit up for a moment before dropping in a way he didn’t dare ask about. “As soon as I was old enough, I helped in the diner too. I started out bussing tables. You know, setting out the silverware, filling water glasses. My mom worked in the kitchen.” Her eyes were far away, and her voice had a wobble to it that he wasn’t sure how to read into.

  That lifestyle, he could picture her in. Supermodel, not so much. Jenna had given him a quick peek at a magazine ad, and he’d hardly recognized Hailey. The woman in the picture looked so…painted. So removed. They’d photoshopped out her freckles, which killed him, and teased her hair all over the place. She looked nothing like the vivacious — if pensive — woman in front of him now.

  Hailey took a deep breath and caught his gaze. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate—”

  He cut her off with a brisk wave. “Maybe I should find runaway brides more often. The place looks great.”

  She flashed a huge smile. “It feels great to do real work for a change. Getting my hands dirty. You know…”

  For a second, she looked worried that he wouldn’t understand, but he just grinned. That asshole she had run from might not know about hands-on work, but he sure did.

  “Oh, I know, all right. Believe me, I know.”

  They smiled at each other for a minute, and his grin only faded when the achy feeling started up in his chest again. Like a rusted-over gate to a secret compartment was slowly creaking open, ready to let her in. A door he wasn’t sure he wanted to open, because there were sure to be all kinds of forbidden feelings in there.

  “Oh, look!” Hailey pointed as a lightning bug blinked in the yard. Another joined it, and between that and the bird calls coming from the surrounding woods, the serene feeling intensified. Serenity even deeper than that at Koakea, a place he’d come to love.

  The place doesn’t matter, his bear said. It’s the person. It’s her.

  “So peaceful,” Hailey whispered.

  They didn’t exchange more than a few words in the next half hour, but it didn’t feel awkward. It just felt nice. Watching the jungle grow dim, letting the day wind down. Even washing the dishes didn’t seem like a chore, not when he got to do them with her. And finally, when the night was dark as ink and the crickets chirping at full blast, they headed to bed.

  “Good night,” Hailey called softly, pausing at her bedroom door to look back.

  “Good night,” he whispered.

  Did the crickets actually sing louder at that moment, or was that his imagination? Had the starlight somehow found a way inside to make her eyes shine so brightly? And that warm, happy feeling in his gut — that was just the lasagna filling him up, right?

  He cleared his throat and nodded quickly before stepping into the darkness of his room. “Good night.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next days followed in a similar way — hours of work divided by moments of sheer bliss whenever Hailey came close. Hailey brewed coffee with a different finishing touch each day, always beating Tim to the kitchen. He’d wake slowly, trying to place the aroma each time.

  “Coffee with a hint of cinnamon,” she said, handing him a mug on the second day.

  Other times, she used a splash of cream, a touch of maple syrup, and his favorite, a drop of honey. Every sip slid down his throat like an elixir, and he’d end up smacking his lips like a bear over a honey jar.

  “So, where do we start today?” Hailey would ask once they’d both had breakfast — which in her case had become toast with jam and butter, and that was progress, for sure.

  She loved to dig in and work, a lot like him. But he was doing penance for years as a military engineer — more demolition than construction. What was Hailey compensating for?

  The big job of day two was clearing out the cistern that collected water off the roof, and it was a doozy. He stood in the shoulder-high cement cistern, shoveling muck from the bottom into buckets he handed to Hailey, who emptied the slop into a wheelbarrow. Once the wheelbarrow was full, he would trundle it down to the compost heap in the woods. If he didn’t act fast enough, Hailey would take off with the wheelbarrow, insisting she could do it. When she came back, she’d be sweaty, and her face would be smeared with dirt, but her smile was wider, her face fresher than before.

  Which brought him back to the same question: what burning need did the work fulfill for her? Was there something missing from what she’d done before?

  “How did you go from a diner to modeling?” he asked as they worked.

  She frowned like it wasn’t the best memory. “After high school, I started waitressing full time, hoping to save up for college. I had a plan and everything,” she said with a little smile. “How much I needed to have saved by when to be able to do community college on the side. But one night, some out-of-towners came through, and one of t
he guys kept looking at me. Really looking at me. It creeped me out at the time. The woman he was with called me over and asked if I’d ever modeled. I nearly brushed them off, actually.” She laughed. “They stayed until closing time and talked to my mom. One thing led to another and…” She stirred the air with one hand. “Eventually, we quit the diner and left Montana.” Her voice grew sadder and sadder with each sentence. “We moved to LA, and…yeah. That’s how it went.”

  He looked at her over the edge of the cistern. Her tone wasn’t exactly enthusiastic.

  “What’s it like?”

  “Modeling?” She snorted. “Lots of waiting around for the light to be perfect or for props to arrive. Hundreds of shots, over and over until I couldn’t even remember what product I was representing. Thank goodness I had my mother to keep me away from – shall we say, all the bad influences?”

  For the first time, Tim found a reason to want to hug Hailey’s mother instead of strangling her.

  Then Hailey sighed and motioned toward his feet. “Better get moving, mister. We have a lot of work to do.”

  The cistern took a full day, and odd jobs around the property took another. And in no time, they fell into a nice routine. Each day started with a mug of Hailey’s amazing coffee, and Tim had even taken to staying in bed for a few minutes with his eyes closed, relishing the smell. He hadn’t lounged in bed for years, and God knew the guys would ridicule him if they found out.

  He and Hailey grew more and more comfortable around each other – almost too comfortable at times, making it all too easy to forget how temporary their arrangement was. Once, he’d come up behind Hailey as she was brewing coffee and put his arms on the counter on each side of her without thinking. She’d gone right on humming like having him there was part and parcel of a perfect morning for her. As for him, he’d gotten so drunk on her scent, he nearly planted a kiss on the side of her neck.

  Kiss, his bear had murmured at the time. Good idea.

  He’d snapped away just in time. Hailey turned in his arms, and she wasn’t surprised in the least to find him so close. In fact, her eyes dropped to his lips, and he wondered whether she was imagining a kiss too. His skin tingled the way it did when he shifted into bear form. His heart thumped harder, and he swore he sensed Hailey’s do the same.

  “Do you feel that?” she whispered.

  If she meant that feeling of two tectonic plates sliding into position beside each other, lining up for some huge stroke of fate, then hell yes.

  “I do.”

  Her eyes strayed up and down his body, warming him as they moved.

  “I’ve never felt that before,” she said as if she had just experienced her first live earthquake.

  But it was no earthquake, and he knew it. It was destiny. The question was, what the hell should he do? Was it best to leave destiny to unwind at its own pace, or did you grab your chance while you could?

  “Never felt that before either,” he said.

  But then the scent of something burning wafted through the air, and Hailey fluttered her hands.

  “Oops. Better not burn the toast this time,” she murmured, and that was the end of that.

  Except it wasn’t the end. The work, the heavenly coffee, and Hailey combined in some magical way to loosen up all kinds of hidden doors in his soul, and Tim found himself laughing, thinking, and dreaming more and more. Feeling more, too, because he’d turned off emotion for a long time. He’d turned off hope, too, but now, it was welling up in him.

  Maybe he and Hailey could spend longer together. Maybe they could fix up his place at Koakea. Maybe even make that their place instead of just his, because everything was better with Hailey around. The way she stared off into the distance wistfully sometimes made him drift off and think about someday kind of things. The way she savored every bite of her food made him slow down and relish it, too. And when she paused and looked back at the house, he’d do the same. The cottage was coming along in leaps and bounds, and he couldn’t help but imagine his place at Koakea improving the same way. He even imagined a vase of flowers on his patio and candles on his table, which really showed how far gone he was.

  That and the fact that he’d started to memorize a hundred little bits of Hailey trivia and couldn’t wait to stock up on more.

  Had she grown up with pets?

  “No chance.” She laughed. “My mother is allergic to animals. She can’t even be in the same room.”

  Siblings?

  “Only child.” She sighed.

  Favorite pastimes?

  She held her hands up in a fighting stance. “Watch out. I do kickboxing. You know what that means?”

  “What? Whoa!” He ducked as she demonstrated.

  “I can kick the air really well. And punch too.”

  She was joking, but she really was good. Still, he hated the idea of a tall, muscled private instructor guiding her through every move. That image, he didn’t need to entertain.

  “I’ll watch out not to make you mad, then,” he murmured and went back to work.

  Eventually, another nice day wound to a close, and they lingered on the porch a long time after dinner. He pulled his stool a little closer to her rocking chair that evening so that their feet touched. Hailey looked over, smiled, and—

  The owl hooted just then, and Tim scowled into the night. Having a couple extra sentries was always a good thing. But chaperones, he really didn’t need.

  On the other hand, there was no denying the fact that reality was out there, just beyond the tangled curtain of vegetation around the house. So when Hailey insisted on doing the dishes, he strode just far enough down the road to get reception on his phone. He’d been checking it less and less often, not really wanting that connection to the outside world. But Hunter and Connor had been quietly investigating Hailey’s case. And the more they discovered, the more Tim was vindicated in feeling that Hailey wasn’t nuts for what she had done.

  Jonathan Owen-Clarke, Connor’s text read. A real asshole, if you ask me.

  Tim had figured that much, and he couldn’t help wondering what a nice girl like Hailey was doing with a guy like that. But once he’d thought it over, it did make sense. A young woman thrust into an intense, isolating career with an overprotective mother. Then along came Jonathan, who had probably put on a good guy act at first. Good enough to try out for a date or two, he supposed.

  Jonathan Owen-Clarke comes from big money, Connor’s text continued. California oil money that goes back several generations. The father is Richard Owen-Clarke — the guy who ran for governor. The older brother is gearing up for a run at a Senate seat, and I’m guessing Jonathan isn’t far off. That ranch he bought in Montana establishes residency. So who knows what he has planned?

  Tim didn’t like that one bit, but it wasn’t exactly grounds for a criminal investigation. So Jonathan was an asshole. So Hailey had made a mistake. So what? Hailey had shown guts — and brains — for leaving the jerk.

  Meanwhile, Lamar Dennison, his head of security, is much harder to track, Connor reported. We know he’s been working for Owen-Clarke for two years, but he’s got virtually no record before that. It might be an assumed name. Still investigating, though. In the meantime, you two sit tight. The newspapers are full of the story, and everybody is talking about it. Hailey was right about lying low for a while.

  Tim was about to click the phone off when one last text came through.

  PS - Smart girl for dumping that shithead. Take good care of her.

  Tim glared at the phone. Oh, he’d take care of her, all right.

  “Any news?” Hailey asked when he walked back into the house.

  He turned off the phone, not wanting to lie, but not wanting to alarm her either.

  “Not really. The story is in the papers, so we ought to stay out here another three or four days.”

  She arched an eyebrow in a tease. “You don’t have it planned exactly?”

  He grinned. “Call it approximate.”

  She smiled back, th
en went serious. “I’m good with that, but are you?”

  He looked up. Of course, he was good with that. The last few days had been… Different. Special. Important, somehow.

  “I mean, you must have work you need to do,” she said. “Contracting, right?”

  He smiled. At a time when her life was in shambles, she’d remembered that detail about him.

  Funny how the urgency he’d felt about setting up his business had faded away despite the fact that he’d been planning it for months. Securing a loan, pricing equipment, investigating the best ways to advertise — all according to a detailed schedule he’d drawn up. He’d even traveled to Oahu to expedite his license. But in the past few days, that didn’t seem as important anymore. Nothing did.

  “Call this practice,” he said, waving around.

  She smiled. The ensuing silence stretched out, though not in an uncomfortable way. Both he and Hailey looked over the yard, watching the lightning bugs glow. There were so many fucked-up places in the world. So much struggle and conflict. He’d come to Pu’u Pu’eo to give Hailey a time-out, but it seemed he needed one too.

  So he relished every slow morning, drew satisfaction from every sweaty workday, and drank his fill of quiet evenings on the porch. The only part of the day he didn’t enjoy was bedtime, because it meant parting with Hailey. Like on the sixth night when they were both turning in to their respective rooms. Hailey paused beside him as he stood in the doorway to his room.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  “Hey,” he echoed, holding his breath while his heart pounded away.

  “I had a really nice day,” she said, flushing a little.

  “Me too,” was all he could manage.

  He thought that would be it, but Hailey looked down at his feet, then up at his eyes, and finally, with a what-the-hell shrug, she leaned in to give him a peck on the cheek. A tiny, barely there kiss that made his blood rush.

  She pulled back and paused.

  Please do that again, he wanted to beg. Please.

  And miracle of miracles, she did. She leaned in for another kiss, locking eyes with him the whole way. And that second kiss didn’t go for his cheek. It landed square on his lips.