“Not forever, but I’ve got some time to kill.” He winked at her. “Now, what should we do to pass the time? I’ve got some ideas.”
With a growl of anger, she headbutted his nose, hard, causing him to let out a surprised howl of pain. She could feel blood trickling down her forehead, but it was worth it.
At the same time, she heard heels clattering through the room, and then Bridget appeared. She grabbed a stone statue off a nearby shelf and held it high, threateningly.
“Okay, what’s going on here?” she demanded. “Is he assaulting you? And are you objecting? I’m serious – I really can’t tell what’s happening. Should I leave you two in privacy or beat the hell out of him?”
Tonya managed not to laugh. Bridgit was the least threatening person on the planet.
“He is assaulting me, and he is going to let me go now before he really regrets it,” Tonya said, although she had no idea what she was going to follow that threat up with.
“So we’re beating him up? Oh, goody,” Bridgit said, raising the statue even higher over her head. Tonya could have told her that someone who says “Oh, goody” wasn’t likely to intimidate anyone, much less a bear shifter, but before she did, a big, brawny wolf shifter stalked up behind Bridgit, snatched the statue from her and pinned her arms to her sides by wrapping one muscular arm around her.
“Whoa there, sweetheart. I know Heath likes to play rough, but we wouldn’t want you to hurt his tender little head.” The shifter grinned and bared a mouthful of white teeth. He had a scar through his right eyebrow, which was unusual. Only silver would leave a permanent scar on a shifter.
“Let go!” Bridgit yelled furiously.
The wolf let go and stepped away. As he did, Heath rolled off Tonya and sat up. The minute his warmth vanished, her body cried out in protest; she wanted him on her again. Covering her. Pinning her down. Kissing her…
She shook herself and sat up, brushing dust off her clothing.
Blood trickled from Heath’s nose where Tonya had headbutted him, but he didn’t even seem to notice.
“How long have you been there?” Heath said to the wolf shifter, exasperated. “Were you just standing there watching?”
The shifter snorted and raked Heath with a contemptuous look as he set the statue back down on a nearby shelf. “Oh, I’m sorry. Were you scared here in the dark? Did you want me to hold your hand?”
“Fuck you,” Heath growled. He stood up, reached down and grabbed Tonya’s hand. He yanked her to her feet, his big hand closed around hers and holding it for a second longer than necessary before letting go. She could have sworn he squeezed her hand before releasing her. “Bridgit, meet my good friend Levi. We just call him the Beast. And when I say good friend, I mean the asshole that I work with.”
Levi shrugged. “You’re welcome for saving your life last week.”
“Yeah, yeah, you took a bullet for me. It wasn’t silver and it took you five minutes to heal, so wolf up and quit whining.”
Bridgit glared up at Levi, hands on her hips. “I guess I know why they call you the Beast.”
He gave her a slow, appraising once-over and a smile curled his lips. “Not yet, you don’t,” he said with a wink.
She spluttered with indignation. “You presumptuous bastard! Not if you were the last shifter on Earth!”
He shrugged. “Your loss,” he said, and turned and walked away.
“Dickhead!” she yelled, and threw her purse at him. It bounced off his back and he didn’t even break his stride. “You…jerk! You buttface!”
Bridgit really, really needed to work on her swearword vocabulary, Tonya thought, shaking her head.
She turned her attention to Heath as Bridgit ran over to retrieve her purse
“You are beneath contempt. Kittens and puppies will die because of you,” she said, frost dripping from every word. She was actually about to cry at the thought of it, but she wouldn’t let him see that. “I hope the bribe was worth it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You clearly took a bribe to let the thief escape. Even you aren’t this incompetent.”
“Why, thank you. I think.” He folded his arms across his broad chest.
“You drugged the drinks of the Hammersmith security too. Because they wouldn’t take a bribe. They are far too professional.” She glared at him with accusing eyes.
To her surprise, Heath threw back his head and laughed. “They’re far too professional. Right. If they were professional, Tom wouldn’t have told a reporter that a theft was going down tonight just because he wanted to get into that reporter’s panties.”
“Told you,” Bridgit said cheerfully.
“Traitor! Do not agree with anything he says!” Tonya cried out, shooting a wounded look at Bridgit. “If he says the sun is hot, you say it’s ice cold!”
Then she redirected her wrath back at Heath. “That shelter won’t be funded because of you! How can you live with yourself?”
Heath let out a lengthy sigh. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch. The real statue is still here, the auction will carry on. If you want to find out what happened, first shift and heal your hand and your forehead while I heal my possibly broken nose.” He started to strip off his clothes without even waiting to see if Tonya would follow suit.
Annoyed, Tonya stepped behind a row of shelves and shed her clothes. Shifting in clothing was generally destructive, especially for someone like Heath, who would grow even bigger.
She shifted into fox form, dropping down to all fours. Scents swirled through the air, and she sniffed appreciatively. The musky, masculine scent of Heath tickled her nostrils, and she inhaled it, drawing in several breaths before shifting back to human form. Her hand and forehead were healed. She quickly pulled her clothes back on and walked around to see Heath pulling on his jeans. Ouch. She looked away quickly, but not before she saw the size of his massive cock right before he slid his boxers over it and zipped up his pants.
Great. She’d never get that image out of her head. He’d be haunting her wet dreams.
“Let’s go,” he said, gesturing at her to follow him. She didn’t have much choice; the thief would be long gone by now.
She and Bridgit followed him through several hallways until they were led into an office. There were six shifters in there, as well as Diana and Jacques. They were all gathered around a big laptop, watching a grainy image of a team of armed men battering down the door of a building. The shifters all wore Bluetooth headsets, and several of them were talking at the same time.
Diana and Jacques applauded. “Brilliant!” Jacques cried out.
“The thief tonight was just an errand boy,” Heath said to Tonya. “We wanted the boss. The gallery owners created a fake statue here in their workshop, we put a transmitter in it and made sure he was able to steal it. Now we’ve tracked him down to his buyer,” Heath said with satisfaction.
“The real statue…” Tonya stared at the screen. The men were running down a hallway, tackling several people who were fleeing…
“Safe and under lock and key.”
“And Hammersmith…”
“We knew they’d be incredibly obvious and stupid. We told the gallery owners to hire them so the thief would see there was security here.” Heath shrugged. “If there hadn’t been any, the thief would have been suspicious. But with those guys bumbling around, he thought he knew what he was up against.”
“So when Hammersmith got a tip that the gallery was going to be hit tonight…that was your agency, wasn’t it? Since you wanted them here.”
Heath just gave her a big, wide-eyed smile.
“What did you do to them? How did you knock them out?” She demanded.
Heath looked innocent and wounded. “Me? I didn’t do anything. But I’d say it looked like someone slipped them all a Mickey so they wouldn’t screw things up for us. And by the way, don’t quote me on anything.”
Tonya tried to sound dignified as she said, “I wouldn’t quote you if yo
u were the last man on Earth.”
She turned and stalked out of the room, with Bridgit trailing after her.
* * *
The shifters who’d stayed behind at the gallery were gathered around the bar, and the liquor was flowing generously. The owner was delighted; the series of art thefts over the last year had every gallery owner, museum and private collector in Southern California on edge, and now the thieves had finally been taken down.
Bobbi, Heath’s adopted sister and one of Shifters, Inc.’s best operatives, was leaning on the bar and downing a margarita. It always made Heath laugh to see the tomboy dressed in an evening gown and heels. Bobbi was a coyote shifter who’d grown up in the ghetto with him, and he knew that designer clothes made her itch.
“Thank God she’s gone,” Heath growled. She was gone but not forgotten; her scent was on him, and he could still feel hot desire raging through his body. He was going to shower long and hard tonight to wash her away.
“Yeah, I like her too,” Bobbi said. “She’s a nice person. For a reporter. I approve.”
“What?” Heath spluttered. “You thought – me and her? I can’t stand her! I’m practically allergic to her!” It was true – every time she came near him, he swelled up. Unfortunately, he only swelled in one part of his body.
“Of course you can’t,” Bobbi said.
“I mean, she’s attractive, yeah, but a reporter? Never. She’s so annoying. I run into her all the time. Every damn time I turn around she’s there,” Heath grumbled.
“That must be terrible for you,” Bobbi said, and then she coughed words into her hand. Heath could have sworn she coughed the words “Fated Mate”.
“What did you just say?” he demanded, astonished.
“I beg your pardon? I didn’t say anything.” She flashed a maddening grin and tossed back the rest of her margarita.
“She is not my Fated Mate! She most definitely is not! I don’t even believe in that crap. It’s ridiculous. This is the twenty-first century. It’s an old wives’ tale. There’s no such thing.”
Bobbi was staring at him with an amused grin, and he scowled at her. The harder he glared, the wider she grinned.
Just because she and her wolf husband were ridiculously happy, it didn’t mean that Fated Mates were a thing. Even if they were, he was not the type to settle down, ever. He didn’t believe in happy endings; his childhood and teenage years had crushed that right out of him.
The fact that he kept running into Tonya was just a coincidence, he was sure of it. The fact that when she got near him his senses went crazy and all the blood rushed from his brain to his cock meant nothing. Nothing, damn it! Nothing more than that he liked larger women. Physically, sure, he found Tonya hot and he wouldn’t mind a quick fling, but his Fated Mate? Ha!
He realized he was so distracted that he was actually muttering his thoughts out loud, and Bobbi was looking at him strangely. He scowled and stomped off.
Outside the gallery, he watched Tonya climb behind the wheel of her Mercedes and drive off. He’d done some checking into her, strictly for professional reasons, of course. She’d gone to Harvard, and she drove a Mercedes that was a year old, and she lived in a huge mansion in a snooty subdivision.
He’d been abandoned as a cub, grown up on the streets with a gang of punks, watched his closest friend whom he’d loved like a brother die of an overdose, and barely dodged jail countless times before finally turning his life around.
If he was going to have a Fated Mate, it wouldn’t be some pampered rich girl.
“Fated Mates don’t exist,” he muttered under his breath.
His phone rang and he grabbed it, suddenly eager for a distraction.
Pete, one of the operations coordinators at Shifters Inc., was on the other end.
“Nice job tonight. As a reward, we’ve got a new assignment for you,” he said. “Starts tomorrow morning.”
“Please tell me it’ll take me out of town.” God, he needed to get away from that fox before he took his sister’s words to heart and started believing that he actually liked her.
“Out of town, out of the country. You’re going to love this one. It’ll be right up your alley.”
Chapter Three“Oh. My. God. He was such a dickhead.” They were back at the palatial mansion that Bridgit’s grandmother had left her as part of her trust fund, and Bridgit was pacing the floor of the living room. The room was massive, the oak walls adorned with hand-carved friezes. When Tonya stood at one end of the room and shouted, it echoed.
“Yes, he certainly was.” Tonya leaned back in her overstuffed reclining chair. This room smelled a lot like the gallery’s warehouse, she realized, with all its dust and antiques.
“I seriously hate his guts.” Bridgit stomped her foot on the nineteenth-century Persian carpet. Tonya winced. That carpet was probably worth more than the Porsche Bridgit drove.
“So you’ve said. Many times,” Tonya pointed out. “In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you had a crush on him.”
“What?” Bridgit looked appalled. “I do not! Of course I’m complaining about him. He’s an ass. You’re constantly complaining about Heath too.”
“Well, yeah, but… Oh, God.” Tonya sat bolt upright. “It’s true. I think about him all the time. I have X-rated dreams about him. Oh, God. I do have a crush on him. Kill me now!”
“Of course you have a crush on Heath. You’ve known him for a while. I couldn’t possibly have a crush on the Beast. I just met him.” Bridgit looked indignant. “What kind of a nickname is the Beast, anyway?”
Tonya wanted to say A sexy one, but that wouldn’t be very supportive.
“A terrible name,” she said. “The name of a horrible, horrible person who you would never want to associate with.”
“Damn straight,” Bridgit said firmly. “He was so not my type. I like them refined and respectful. And I am going to stop talking about him now, because he is not even worth talking about, at all. He’s not worth a single word. In fact—”
Before she could say anything else, her phone rang, and she looked at it and winced. That meant it was her stepmother calling.
She picked up the phone, and Tonya grimaced in sympathy as she listened to the stepmonster verbally light into Bridgit. From what she could overhear, Bridgit was entirely at fault for being at a gallery where a crime had taken place, and it was very embarrassing for the family, and why did she always end up right where trouble was?
With a sigh, Tonya got up from her chair and walked to the mahogany bar at the other end of the room to pour them each a shot of tequila. She was sure they’d need it after this conversation.
Bridgit’s family had barely tolerated the fact that Bridgit wanted to use her PR and marketing degree to get a job instead of finding some excruciatingly boring, proper jerkwad to marry. Tonya secretly suspected that her family was sabotaging her efforts to get a job so she’d be forced to give up and she’d go back to her life as a debutante. She had been expected to go to school to get her MRS degree – as in, hunt for an appropriately boring and respectable husband. Nobody had expected her to actually want to lead an independent life.
Tonya returned with two shotglasses of tequila on a tray, and set it down on a table next to Bridgit.
As Tonya reached for her shotglass, Bridgit hung up the phone, grabbed both of the shotglasses, and slammed them one after the other.
Her hands were shaking and she’d gone pale.
“They’re taking back my trust fund money unless I let them start fixing me up with more guys, and agree to be married to one of the guys from their list within the next six months.”
Tonya knew about the list. Bridgit’s parents had drawn up a list of appropriate wolf shifters from good families, of the right age and the right lineage to marry into their family. Bridgit knew and hated all of them. Rich, stuffy bastards who’d expect her to stay home and keep a perfect house while they were out keeping up appearances and having affairs.
Also, Bridgit
passionately believed in the whole “Fated Mate” concept and she was determined to wait for her Fated Mate to come along.
Tonya shrugged. “You can use your degree to get a job.” Bridgit had been planning on doing public relations for the Animal Haven shelter for free, but her family might be forcing a change of plans.
“No, you don’t get it. They’ll take away the money that I was pledging to the animal shelter. There will be no shelter.”
“Can they do that? Your grandmother left that money to you!”
“Yes, but the way the trust is written, it’s doled out to me by a board of trustees, and my family has a lot of influence over them. They can freeze that money indefinitely. They can’t spend it themselves, but they can prevent me from having it. My mother was still alive when the trust was written; my grandmother never anticipated the stepmonster situation.”
“They would do that? I know you and your grandmother had talked about founding a shelter. This would be going against her wishes.”
Bridgit shrugged miserably. “It would, but my stepmonster wouldn’t care about that, and my father bows to whatever she wants. Oh, and since this house is owned by the trust, and my car and your car were purchased with funds from the trust, we’d both be homeless and carless.”
Tonya looked around the room. “Okay, no offense to whichever of your gothically inclined ancestors built this heap, but it is damned creepy. All the gargoyles and weird carvings freak me the heck out. Wouldn’t you rather live in a place you decorated yourself, in a style that doesn’t remind you of a horror movie set?”
Bridgit managed a shaky laugh. “Yes, actually. I guess you and me could get a studio apartment together and take public transportation, or buy an old junker or something. What’s it like being really poor?”
“It’s great!” Tonya said with a big, forced smile. “Every day is an adventure!”
“Really?” Bridgit raked her with a skeptical look.
“Okay, it actually kind of sucks. It sucks big time. But, you know what? Not always. I didn’t enjoy worrying about how I was going to pay my bills, but I used to have fun going to thrift stores and dumpster diving and making my house look great on zero budget. I’ve got my bartending job, and the freelance work from the Telegraph, and you can get a PR job somewhere. We’ll be fine, I swear.”
Shifters, Inc. The Bear Who Loved Me (A BBW paranormal romance) Page 2
