Joel (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 5)

by Becca Fanning

  End.

  Hook, Line And Sinker

  Fisherbears Book I

  by

  Becca Fanning

  Lila Ellis hunched over the bar top, scribbling notes on her napkin. Making inventory.

  When the bartender offered Lila her drink—whiskey, straight, firmly middle shelf—she downed it in one long gulp, set it on the counter, and muttered, “One more of the same, thanks.”

  On her napkin, she crossed out $50 and wrote $40. That was all the cash she found in her camera bag when she upended it in the dim airport bathroom, muttering curses, scattering empty SD card cases across the counter. Her emergency stash. She almost felt guilty dipping into it.

  But, Lila reasoned, this was certainly an emergency.

  Twelve hours earlier, she’d left her Toronto apartment with a single suitcase, her camera bag, and her parka. 2,500 miles and three connecting flights later, Lila landed at last in Sitka, Alaska, which the internet described as a salty little coastal town wedged between forest and sea, just a cartographic speck among a handful of islands. One of the last towns before you hit the razor edge of modern civilization. In the pictures online, it looked misty and magical. But they were nothing compared to the moment Lila stepped off that plane into a foreign dusky world, looked across sleek obsidian water at the mountain that rose up to meet her, its tree-lined peak curved like the ridged back of a creature from a lost age. And she stood there beaming stupidly, flushed with the joy of a last-second trip going even better than she could’ve imagined.

  Until she got inside. Until she spent forty minutes at the baggage claim waiting for a suitcase which, she soon learned, never even made it to Sitka. Everything vanished into airport limbo: her house keys, her clothes, her maps and notes and itinerary—and, of all things, her wallet.

  Even in a town this small, you couldn’t make it too far without any money.

  Lila scanned her list again with mute panic: a cellphone with no signal, house keys, camera, lenses, forty bucks, the clothes on her back, the parka squeezed between her knees, hat, gloves, passport.

  How could there be nothing else?

  “Here you go, sweetheart.”

  Lila jerked her head up, paused her furtive scribbling. The bartender stood before her. Her long black braid was threaded silver. She looked like somebody’s mother. “Uh.” Lila examined her list. Pen, she added. “Thanks.”

  “What’s a little thing like you doing visiting the likes of us?”

  Lila smiled, blankly. Words like little still snagged at her like fishhooks. She spent all of high school terrified she’d be stringy as a ten-year-old boy until the day she shriveled up and died. Even after she got tits, that old gut-deep instinct to be defensive of her stature remained.

  She swallowed and said, “I do freelance wildlife photography.”

  “You must be here to see the whales, then.”

  Lila nodded, numbly.

  The bartender slapped her hand towel on the bar. “You ask one of those boys when they get in here—they’ll start in the next fifteen minutes or so, you watch the clock; the men in this town all run on the same ol’ clockwork—you ask one of ’em to take you to the good spots.”

  “I’ll probably have to ask for more than that,” Lila muttered, but the front door hinged open, and the bartender’s attention shifted to the new customers who’d come in.

  Lila, feeling conspicuous and a more than a little stupid, threw the rest of her whiskey back and watched the clock. Consulted her list. Tried to look calm.

  True to the bartender’s word, as the clock tipped toward eight, the bar started to fill up.

  Lila quickly realized that Sitka men had a sameness to them. Once they shed their coats, those men were all hoodies and plaid shirts, worn ball caps and pale denim jeans that hung loose as a paper bag from hip to boot. All wind-sore cheeks and semi-permanent scowls. There were women, too, most of them young and dressed like they were desperate to meet somebody, anybody, new. The air swelled and buckled to accommodate the suddenly bustling bar. Conversations stacked one on top of the next, and soon most everyone was hollering and laughing, and the bartender whisked from one end of the bar to the other with all the confidence of an actor who’d done this scene a thousand times over.

  No one seemed to notice Lila at all.

  She tapped her empty glass loudly against the bar until the bartender glanced her way, and then she said, “You guys got Blue Moon?”

  She offered Lila a thumbs up.

  $37, Lila wrote, and then the beer appeared before her, and Lila guzzled it until she felt light and airy and untouchable. She wheeled around in her chair to survey the bar and its occupants. In the haze of cigarette smoke, her eyes at last lighted on an oldish guy slouching at a table behind her. Wild shock of greying hair. Gaze on his pint. Nice watch. Plus he was quiet and alone, just like her, so she pretended that was something they had in common.

  Lila pushed off her stool and made her way over. She eased into the chair across from the man and ventured, “Heya.”

  He looked up at her, snorted. “What d’you want?”

  “I’m, uh, I’m not from around here.”

  “No shit?”

  Lila frowned. People in small American towns were supposed to be nice, she thought. “Um. I flew in just now. Today. They lost my luggage, and my wallet was in there, so—”

  “You always put your wallet in your carry on, girlie.” The old man regarded her over the rim of his glass. “Pretty basic tenant of traveling.”

  “Well, I already didn’t, so.” Lila tried to smooth her hair back. She felt a little too drunk for this. “I just need a place to stay.”

  “I ain’t got it.”

  “Do you know somebody who does?”

  “Look, lady, you leave me alone.”

  The bar door swung open. The cold night beyond it pricked at the hot skin of Lila’s cheeks until the door slammed shut again and in walked a trio of young men who looked as out as place as she felt in this tin can of a bar perched at the edge of the world.

  And one of them was looking right at her.

  He, the stranger who now held her transfixed, seemed the same breed as the others. Just another Alaskan fisherman, another pair of broad shoulders toughened by the water and the wild, another regular joining the din. But he looked right at her and kept looking. When he peeled off his snow-damp beanie, his hair looked sleek, black, soft. For a single bizarre moment, she imagined running her fingers through it. He wore a knit sweater and work boots bigger than her forearm. His smile seemed to come easy as breathing.

  Lila couldn’t stop staring. Her thoughts were jumbled and incoherent, as if the stranger at the door had somehow popped her skull open, plucked out her brain, and given it a good shake.

  “Hey, lady, I said—”

  She jolted upright in surprise, smacked her knees into the table, and sent hers and her seat-mate’s beers crashing to the ground.

  The bar stilled around them. Lila saw the bartender sigh and reach for a broom.

  “Aw, goddammit!” the old man snarled. “Now look what you did.”

  Lila glanced at the stranger. He was watching her still, his smile turned bemused, or maybe even mocking. Her belly burned with embarrassment. Distantly, she heard the old man snapping that she owed him a new one, heard the bartender tell him to stop his barking and she’ll get him a new glass once she cleaned this up.

  Before she could think, Lila shrugged on her coat and shouldered her camera bag and blundered out the door.

  It had started snowing since Lila stormed from the local Super 8 to the bar. She jerked on her gloves and stamped blindly down the sidewalk. Only a few blocks away, there was a warm bed and a continental breakfast with her name on it, but without her credit cards, she couldn’t pay, couldn’t check in, couldn’t curl up in her rented bed and pretend this night had never happened.

  Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, and she swiped at them angrily.

  As she walked, Lila sta
red at the dancing constellations of snow above her, the blue-black clouds beyond them. She wondered how cold it really got on Sitka nights. She wondered if she was just a couple hours away from finding out.

  “Just what the hell are you doing?”

  “Oh my god.” Lila started, whirled around. She stared at the stranger at the bar, uncertainty gathering in her chest. “You followed me? You seriously followed me?”

  “I heard you talking to Mike.” He wandered closer to her, that relentless smile dimpling his cheeks. His skin was a warm, even tan. She wondered if it was wrong to ask where he was from.

  “He's earned a reputation for being the town asshole. So, don’t take it personally.” He clapped his gloved hands together mutely. His gloves were thick, waterproof, and enormous. Looked more like paws than palms. “So what's up?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what's up?’”

  “I mean, I’ve never seen you around here before. I figured you were from out of town.” He scrutinized the black dappled sky. “You seemed so turned around back there that I wanted to see if you needed any help or directions or something.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

  “No, no. I'm fine. I'm just walking back to my hotel.” Lila pointed vaguely over her shoulder. Her throat felt reedy and thin.

  “My name's Henry,” he offered.

  Lila flicked her stare from his boots up to his eyes. He didn’t look much older than her. Thirty, maybe. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” That smile again. Lila didn't know anyone who could smile so genuinely so often. Smiles like his were supposed to be those rare, tiny acts of real magic, as surprising and delightful as spotting a shooting star. “What's yours?”

  “Lila. Lila Ellis.”

  “Where’re you staying, Lila? I can give you a lift, if you want.”

  She bound her arms over her chest, too mortified to admit the truth all over again. “I don't need help,” she insisted, “I'll just walk.”

  “That’s alright. I respect that.” Henry leaned against the side of the building and sniffed. “But the hotel’s that way.” He pointed back over his shoulder, back the way she’d come.

  Lila bit hard at her lip.

  “Listen, I’m not here to tell you what to do with yourself. I just get the idea that you're drunker than you think, and this isn’t the best place to get lost in the night.” Henry held up his car keys and grinned. He had the most tremendous dimples. “So let me drive you—”

  “I don’t have a goddamn hotel, okay?” Lila held up her camera bag and shook it at him, like he should have somehow known what was inside. “The airport lost my luggage, so all I have is this stupid camera and my stupid passport and nothing—”

  “Hey hey hey,” Henry rushed, like he was calming a startled horse. He stepped toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Calm down. You don’t have to cry. You can crash with me for the night.”

  Lila laughed bitterly. “Yeah, okay.”

  “I’m serious. I think you should let me give you a place for the night. Don't worry. I live with the guys I work with. There's lotsa room, and there are no strings attached. It's just...” Henry gestured toward the mountain rising to meet the sky behind them, so close and so huge it seemed to curve inward, over their heads. Lila felt for a moment like she was staring out the top of a snow globe. “It’s not like you can sleep outside, you know?”

  Henry slung off his cap and scratched the back of his head. He looked at the snow, looked at Lila. Like he was trying to make up his mind.

  “Look,” he finally said. “If you let me help you, tomorrow morning I'll take you out on me and my crew's boat. I'll show you all Sitka's secret spots.” Henry offered her his hand. “I'm just doing what I'd do for anyone in a bad spot, Lila.”

  Lila eyed his outstretched hand. “Just tonight. I'll pay you back for your trouble. I’ll get my wallet tomorrow. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Nothing to pay for. No strings,” he reminded her. His hand didn’t move. “What d’you say?”

  She searched his eyes for another excuse, but instead something inside her softened, and her heart rose into her throat. For a moment she stood blinking and bewildered, her words delayed, like her thoughts got all twisted up. Like a cerebral traffic jam.

  Finally she broke her stare, muttered, “Yeah, okay,” and shook his hand. His gloves were warm despite the cold, like he'd just plucked them off a fireplace. “Are those heated gloves? You guys have those?” Lila rubbed at her numb fingers.

  Henry laughed, huge and delighted and real. “Nah. I run hot.” He smiled up at the sky and put his hat back on. “That's why winter's my favorite time of the year. This is my kind of a climate.”

  “This would be a shitty place to live if you didn't.”

  He laughed again, and then he nodded his head behind him. “Let's go get my buddies and my truck, and we'll get you set up.”

  Lila took a deep breath. The air, cold and wet as crystal, made her lungs feel huge and important and alive. Made every fragmented moment something precious, something to hold onto. She looked at Henry's hat and his big snowy boots, and she said, “Okay. Let's go.”

  Henry's house sat halfway up the base of Sitka's mountain, set back in the cusp of the forest, connected to the main road by a thin icy ribbon of gravel driveway. The porch slouched, and the bright green paint was fading, but the warm yellow light flooding its windows were the most comforting thing Lila had seen in a long time.

  Both Henry’s friends were half-drunk and louder than they realized. Lila only saw their faces, briefly, when they first heaved themselves the truck and Henry pointed at them and said, “That’s Matt, he’s Finn.”

  Matt whistled a low note, cast Henry a meaningful grin, and said, “Holy Moses.” He looked older and distinguished, could even pass for a professor if not for the ponytail and the tattoos on his knuckles.

  Finn, the younger of the two new faces, pushed back his white-blond hair, laughed, and asked her, “Where the hell did you even come from?” His accent surprised her. He sounded vaguely southern.

  “Toronto,” Lila said.

  “Toronto?”

  Matt punched Finn’s shoulder. “Hey, cut that out, you drunk asshole.” The younger man yelped, but he settled in his seat and quieted down without argument.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Matt said.

  Lila nodded. She tried to look neutral, stoic. Whatever the opposite of anxious was.

  She sent the whole ride up memorizing the backs of Matt’s and Finn’s heads, mouthing their names soundlessly, so she wouldn’t forget.

  She was just so unused to other people.

  Places like Sitka comforted her precisely for their solitude. Lila went for the trees and the silence and the subtle constant hum of activity in the vast but near unnoticeable world beyond cities and their crowds—not to meet strange burly men at bars and crash on their couch for the night.

  When the truck stopped, Finn whipped around in his seat to face her. His eyes were the glistening amber of raw honey. “You’re so quiet.”

  “Yeah,” Lila said.

  “Don’t be obnoxious.” Matt cast a look back at her. “Sorry for him.”

  Finn scowled at him. “Don’t you ever apologize for me, Matthias. I stand by everything I ever did.”