It was slow going to get back up the bank. The ground was muddy and even with the bear’s wide paws and sharp claws to dig into the earth, there were numerous slips and slides. Finally, they reached the more level area up next to the road. The bear shrugged and Lacy climbed off, sinking onto the ground on her bottom as she trembled with the shock of it all.
Then the bear’s fur began to ripple and shimmer, then recede, and in what seemed like nothing more than a second, Jack was crouched in front of her completely naked.
“I guess his is where you say we need to talk, isn’t it?” he joked.
“That’s definitely one of the things that I feel compelled to express… the first one mine be that you should put your pants back on,” Lacey commented. “We’ll talk when we get back to my apartment. I can’t think just yet.”
He hesitated for a moment, then nodded. “Fine. Why don’t you hand me my pants? I don’t think either one of us wants me getting up like this. And then you need to call the Sheriff. We can’t leave the scene until a cop gets here.”
Yeah, that was a definite no. Lacey reached for the clothes and then handed them over. She turned her head and did her best to ignore the rustling sounds as he put them back on. With every passing second, she became aware of all the different aches and pains that were starting to show up. She could feel burning pain in her shoulder from the seatbelt and a dozen or so small cuts from the glass were beginning to sting.
Jack, fully clothed, rose to his full height beside her and gently helped her up. “We need to get you to hospital. You may not have any serious injuries, but you're going to feel like you lost a fight with Mike Tyson by tomorrow morning.”
Lacey didn’t argue the point. “You know it’s bad because I’m not disagreeing with you.”
Jack climbed up to the roadway and reached back to help her. “You do know this wasn’t an accident, right?”
“I know the car was lying in wait for me,” she admitted.
“Lacey, this guardrail was cut with either an acetylene or plasma torch. Someone sabotaged the guardrail and then laid a trap for you here… And right now, I don’t know if it has to do with Brandon and his shady business or if it has to do with his psycho girlfriend.”
“You think Brittany could have done this?” She asked.
“Personally? No. But does that mean someone in her crazy ass family didn’t do it? Again, no. And she might have hired someone. We can’t rule that out yet.”
Lacey was limping across the road with Jack’s help. He lifted her and placed her in the front seat of the truck and then walked back around to the driver’s side. He climbed in and placed the call to report the accident.
“We shouldn’t tell them about the Nissan,” Lacey said. “We can’t afford to have them poking around in this. Brandon knows everyone in the Sheriff’s office. If he’s involved or implicated in any way, they won’t pursue it.”
“Then you swerved to hit a deer and there are some vandals who damaged the guardrail,” he agreed. “Don’t worry, Lacey. I might have failed you today, but I’m not going to let you get hurt on my watch again.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “You didn’t fail me. I wasn’t taking this seriously enough… I just thought it was a nuisance. But this—well, it’s clearly more than that.”
He didn’t say anything. There was nothing he could say to that. Instead, he just took her hand and held it as they waited for the authorities to arrive.
* * *
It had been hours at the local emergency room. With x-rays done and no breaks visible, Lacey had finally been discharged home with a prescription of painkillers and more than her fair share of bumps and bruises. Jack had bundled her into his truck and driven back to her home. Courtesy of the painkillers, she’d fallen asleep en route. Rather than wake her, he simply lifted her out of the vehicle and carried her up the stairs. Using the spare key that she’d had hidden in the flower pot by the door, he shook his head. It was no wonder that someone had been able to break in.
Jack carried her through to the bedroom and laid her down gently, pulling the covers over her. When she was settled, he walked out to the living room and pulled his phone from his pocket to call Grey.
Grey answered the phone with a wolf whistle. “So how was the not quite date?”
“More complicated that initially expected,” Jack answered. “I need you to get some info on an attorney by the name of Brandon Hartman. And then I need a full criminal background check on a Brittany Davis… look for anyone in her family with a criminal background or who might have experience with welding or construction.”
“What am I looking for on Hartman?”
“Financials,” Jack said. “Look for any cash infusions from questionable sources.”
He could hear Grey tapping at the keyboard, making his notes as he always did.
“So what the hell did Zoe get you into?” Grey demanded. “Cause this does not sound like a vacation.”
“I’m not one hundred percent sure on that yet,” Jack admitted. “Whatever it is, it’s worth it.”
“That good, huh?” Grey asked.
“One and only kind of good,” Jack admitted. “And I’m pretty sure someone tried to kill her today, so… this is kind of a rush of job on that intel.”
“Understood. Do you need me there?”
“Not yet,” Jack replied. “But your friend who does the security install, send him down here as soon as you can. We need an upgrade.”
“Done… and if you need back up call. I mean it.”
Jack laughed. “I think that’s my line.”
“I can’t turn into a bear, but I can damn well shoot better than you… speaking of bears and one and only women and all that, are you gonna tell her?”
“She knows.”
Grey whistled again. “You have been busy! It’s only been twenty-four hours!”
“It was a have to case,” Jack replied.
“And she’s cool with it?”
That was the million-dollar question. “We’ve not really had a chance to talk about that yet what with her car almost going over a cliff and then spending hours in the ER surrounded by doctors and nurses. Now, she’s out of it on painkillers so it’s up in the air.”
Grey had known him for years. They’d grown up together. When Grey’s parents had died, Jack’s own parents had taken the other boy in despite the fact that he wasn’t a shifter. They were more like brothers than friends. Perhaps it was that long history that alerted Grey to just how worried Jack was about the outcome of Lacey having that knowledge.
“It’ll work out, Jack. Don’t go borrowing tomorrow’s problems.”
Jack smiled at that. It was an expression his mother had muttered often and his grandmother before her. “When the hell did you get so smart?”
“I’ve always been smart,” Grey insisted. “You were just too much of a dumbass to know it.”
They ended the call and Jack reached for his bag. In his line of work, it paid to keep a spare set of clothes in the car and, with everything that had happened, that habit had served him well. But it wasn’t the change of clothes he was after. It was his laptop. Starting it up, he plugged the flash drive into it and waited for the files to populate.
He heard a sound and glanced up to see Lacey standing in the doorway to the bedroom. “Did I wake you?” he asked.
“My growling stomach woke me,” she admitted. “It’s been a while since breakfast.”
“How well stocked is your kitchen?” Jack asked. From the expression that crossed her face, he could assume that her answer was not very. “Does Poppy’s Pizza and Burgers deliver?”
“They do… I want their chicken sandwich with cheese fries.”
Jack keyed =the name into the browser window on his phone and then placed an order for their dinner.
“What were you working on?” Lacey asked, moving toward the sofa where she sat down beside him.
“I was going to take a look at the files on that flash drive. Are y
ou up to that?”
Her lips firmed into a thin line and then she nodded. “I am. It just feels weird though… like I’m intruding on things I shouldn’t. Do you feel that way with your work?”
Jack considered his answer carefully. In the end, he decided to just be honest. “I do. But we try not to take on any clients that we don’t believe in and trust and we make sure that everything we report is the absolute truth. We don’t set honeytraps or create situations where people might behave out of character… and a lot of our clients are women who have been battered or abused in less direct ways. We try, as much as we can, to be the good guys.”
“Let’s see what’s on it, then… Until we figure out what Brandon’s been up to, we won’t know what we’re really dealing with.”
Jack opened the first folder. The pictures started out innocently enough. An older man at a restaurant with a group of people. But they went through photo by photo, other things began to appear. A stuffed envelope that bore all the hallmarks of a cash pay off was passed between two of them.
“That’s Judge Ledford and the man with him is Brent Farmington. His family owns a small chain of banks. There’s one here, another one in the next county over, one in Pigeon Forge and one in Asheville. They’re not big, but they have a lot of very wealthy clients,” Lacey pointed out.
“And why would he be paying off a judge?”
“He had a nasty divorce a couple of years ago. He’d been caught cheating in a very public way. Very public. But the divorce settlement was ridiculously in his favor. Mary Ann, his ex wife, was left with nothing,” Lacey commented. “You don’t think— well, that’s stupid. What else could it be?”
Each folder became significantly more incriminating. And it wasn’t just the judge, though everything the man had done had been well documented. Anyone in the county who had any power or wealth was incriminated in one photo or another.
“There’s definitely something on here that someone felt inclined to kill for,” Jack said. “These are the kind off photos that could ruin lives, destroy marriages and careers.”
Lacey nodded. “But the question is who?”
“For that, we need to have a conversation with Brandon,” Jack stated grimly. “He, more than anyone else, will know who is most likely amongst his marks to rebel.”
The buzzer at the gate rang indicating their food had arrived. Lacey opened the gate remotely and once the delivery man had dropped off their dinner and left again, Jack took the items from her and carried them to the small table. As he unpacked them, she retrieved some drinks from the fridge and returned. When she’d seated herself at the table, she looked up at him and said, “Now, I think we’ve talked about Brandon enough. What I want to talk about now is what happened this morning… about you and what you did after my accident. I need an explanation, Jack.”
She did. The real question was whether or not she could accept it.
8
It had taken all of Lacey’s courage to ask the question. A part of her didn’t want to have it answered. It would be easier to convince herself that the whole thing had been a bad dream or perhaps some sort of hallucination from hitting her head. But she knew that wasn’t true. And denying it wouldn’t change anything. She needed to know.
Jack looked arg her for a moment, his expression blank. “What would you like to know?”
“What was that? How did you do it? Have you always been able to do it?”
“It’s part of who I am… my father was like this. My brother is like this. And all the generations before us. But I couldn’t always do it. As children, it’s a power we don’t possess. It usually comes on at puberty.”
“And there are others besides your family? Did Zoe know about this?” Lacey asked.
“There are others,” he answered. “And yes, Zoe knows. Zoe’s husband is a shifter, as well.”
Lacey let that sink in for a moment. One of her best friends, a woman she trusted more than anyone in the world, had set her up on a blind date with a man who could turn into a bear. “Do you know, when you’re like that—.”
“I’m me, Lacey. Whether I’m sitting here like this or whether I’m in bear form… I’m still me. I still know who you are and what’s happening around me. You don’t have any reason to fear me.”
She blushed, embarrassed that she’d been so transparent. “You have to understand how strange all this is to me?”
“I do… but the thing is, Lacey, there are things that you don’t know. Being a shifter is more than just having the ability to turn into a bear. We don’t... when we meet the woman we are meant to be with, we’re incapable of being unfaithful to her. We mate for life. There is only one woman for is and when we meet that woman, we know. Instantly.”
A feeling of disappointment swept through her. Was that his way of letting her down? Of telling her that, no matter the seeming kisses they’d shared, it was all just fun and games and he’d never really commit to her? It was like every other man she’d ever known. She was pretty, but not beautiful. She was never quite enough for anyone.
“I see,” she finally managed. “Well, you’ve made yourself clear.”
“I don’t think that I have… because from the minute you walked into that bar, I knew it was you.”
Lacey’s breath caught. “What?”
“You are the only woman for me. And I know this is a lot for you to take in, and a lot to think about it. I won’t rush you.”
She wasn’t quite sure how it happened. But Lacey was up, out of her chair, and around the table. His hands came up and rested on her hips as she leaned into him, cupping his beard roughened cheeks. “I thought you were going to tell me that it wasn’t… that I wasn’t what you wanted.”
“Oh, I want you, Lacey. That’s one thing you can always count on,” he said.
“You know we could always on dinner,” she said. “There are things I think I’d rather indulge in first.”
“You’re hurt,” he reminded her.
“I’m colorful,” she said with a grin. “I’ve got a few bumps and bruises. But I think I can manage if you can?”
Lacey let out a squeal of surprise when he rose, sweeping her up into his arms.
“You’re sure? Because, Lacey, there’s no going back.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest, but it wasn’t fear. It was hope and excitement and a healthy dose of lust. “I really am.”
He kissed her then, his mouth closing over hers. It was gentle but incredibly thorough. The way his lips moved over hers, the way his tongue stroked so tenderly against her own, it was hypnotic and drugging. It made her tremble and made her heart race. She was so consumed by the kiss that she hadn’t even realized he’d carried her into the bedroom until he placed her on the bed.
Looking up at him, Lacey watched as he stripped off his shirt and kicked off his shoes before coming down on top of her. Every touch was careful, gentle. He treated her like she was fragile, and as much as she loved that he was so worried for her, she didn’t want him to be careful. She wanted to finally know what it meant to have real passion in her life.
“I’m not fragile. I’m not going to break if you touch me the way you really want to,” she said.
He looked at her. “You might. I don’t think you know how much I want you.”
“I don’t,” she agreed. “So show me. Show me how much you want me.”
Within seconds, Lacey found her clothes simply gone. She wasn’t even sure how he’d done it, but the yoga pants and ancient t-shirt she’d been wearing seemed to have just vanished. In only a pair of painfully practical underwear and a very unsexy sports bra, she should have felt self-conscious or at least mildly embarrassed about being woefully underdressed for the occasion. But the way he looked at her, the way his heated gaze traveled over her, none of that seemed to matter. Even all the hideous bruises from the seatbelt were forgotten, at least until he reached out and gently touched the large mark at her shoulder.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” he
said. “I should have been more careful.”
“It doesn’t matter. Besides, I don’t want to think about that now… I just want to think about this. About us.”
He kissed her again and it was nothing short of incendiary. Carnal and seductive, it brought something to life in her that she’d never experienced before. She needed him like she needed air. She craved his touch, his scent, his taste. It was terrifying and exciting all at once.
And then his hands were everywhere. Skating over her curves and leaving no room for thought. It was all heat and an aching need building inside her. When the last layers that covered her were peeled away and she could feel the softness of his lips as he teased her nipples, Lacey cried out. That gentle touch was followed by the slight sting of his teeth scoring tender flesh. She’d never known that her body could be so sensitive, that she could respond so intensely to a man’s touch. And then he was moving lower, his lips burning a path over her ribs, along the soft skin of her belly and then lower still. When he parted her thighs, his fingers tracing the seam of her sex, Lacey gasped. Then he dipped his head and kissed her there, his lips and tongue moving over her in a way that she’d never experienced.
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even breath. All she could do was feel as her body shuddered beneath his questing mouth. Every stroke of his tongue over her tender flesh, every scrape of his teeth and then the maddening pull when he closed his lips over the tight nub of her clit, had her gasping for breath and trembling. Every muscle went taut, her belly and her thighs trembling as the pleasure built inside her.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his voice thick and slightly rough. “You’re perfect.”
The Bear’s Blind Date: A Howl’s Romance Page 5
