Desire: Ten sizzling, romantic tales for Valentine’s Day!

by Opal Carew

  It was a social experiment the likes of which had never really been attempted in the modern age. At least not on this scale. But if anyone could do it, John knew his men could. Bears were both strong and patient.

  It took some doing, but eventually, he talked them all around, and they started planning in earnest for the settlement they were going to build. The community of Grizzly Cove would soon be a reality.

  Chapter 1

  Brody walked along Main Street, marveling at the way the men had risen to the challenge when John set out the parameters for this new mission. They had drafted in a bit of help from the Clan of shifters that had their own construction company in Nevada, to plan and build the small town square. Other than that, everyone had built their own little den in the woodlands that surrounded the cove.

  A few also had houses and cover businesses in town. Brody had chosen to build his home on the outskirts of town, closer than most of the outliers. His job as sheriff of the newly incorporated town of Grizzly Cove, Washington, demanded his full attention. Now that humans were coming into town with more regularity, he needed to stay on his toes so his brothers and their secret would be safe.

  The town square had a plethora of art galleries that were filled with all kinds of stuff the bears had thrown together. Most of it was garbage, as far as Brody was concerned, but there were a few standouts. Drew’s figurines had always been nice, and they were bringing in big bucks, mostly by accident.

  Drew had put the first triple-digit prices on them as a joke, probably also hoping nobody would buy them. Much to his surprise, the rich humans who had bought the carvings on their way through town hadn’t even blinked at the high prices.

  That set the tone. After seeing the kind of money Drew was bringing into their community, it became a point of pride among the bears to try to do better. Even Brody had gotten caught up in the competition, learning how to use his chainsaw to carve logs into—what else—bears. He liked the irony, and the humans seemed to like the bears. They didn’t bring in the same prices as Drew’s miniatures, but Brody was working on improving his technique and learning to carve other things besides his self portrait.

  When he wasn’t busy being sheriff, that is. Not that there was much crime in their small town, but Brody’s unofficial job was to keep an eye on the humans. In particular, he was watching over a trio of new arrivals who had gotten permission to open a business. Though humans had passed through, none but this group of three sisters had been brave enough to go before the town council—made up of the Alpha and his top lieutenants—to seek permits to open a business here.

  There had been long, high-level discussions about the newcomers’ bid to open a bake shop. Over a case or two of beer, the town council had decided to expand their social experiment to include the occasional human female in the town, under strictly controlled conditions.

  Those conditions included discreet surveillance by the sheriff and strict limitations on where the females in question could live. In town. That was the only option open to them. Luckily, the sisters didn’t seem to mind.

  And so, Nell Baker—with the suitably ironic surname—and her two younger sisters, opened the Grizzly Cove Bake Shop and lived in the tiny apartment above the small store. Business was booming, because bears liked sweet things and because Nell and her sisters were easy on the eyes.

  Nell, Ashley and Tina were also some of the only females for miles, though they didn’t seem aware of it, at first. Only after they had set up shop and fallen into the routine of daily life, a few months after moving in, did they seem to realize there weren’t a lot of other women in the area.

  Oh, a few female bears had answered the Alpha’s open invitation to settle in the cove, but times were tough in the realms of magic and those whose lives were touched by it. Most shifters seemed to want to stay put where they were until things settled down. Apparently, John hadn’t really thought about that when he put his plan in motion, but it couldn’t be helped now.

  The shifter world was still in a holding pattern and would be until the enemy started up their old tricks again. Until that time, the bears were going to live…and live well.

  “Afternoon, Nell,” Brody said, walking into the bakery and finding the eldest of the Baker sisters manning the shop.

  Brody liked to come by a few times a week to check on things and pick up a pie. Nell made the most delicious strawberry rhubarb pies Brody had ever tasted.

  “Now how did you know I just finished a batch of pies, Sheriff?” Nell laughed as she teased him.

  Brody tapped his nose. “It smelled like lunchtime.”

  Nell rolled her eyes at him. “Pie isn’t lunch, Sheriff.” She motioned him to take a seat and brought over a cup of black coffee.

  Because there weren’t a lot of businesses in town where a person could get a meal, the bake shop had started serving coffee and sandwiches. The sisters baked artisanal breads in addition to the sweet stuff.

  There were a few small tables inside, as well as a few wooden patio-style tables with umbrellas out front along the wide sidewalk. A lot of the men who found themselves in town during the day got their lunch from the sisters, and the ladies did a brisk business. The few tourists and hikers who came through loved the bakery too.

  In fact, one walked in as Nell set Brody’s usual turkey on whole grain sandwich down in front of him. She’d serve him the pie later, but she insisted he eat a proper lunch first, before he devoured the strawberry-honey-rhubarb confection.

  Brody watched the tourist covertly as he ate his sandwich. There was something off about the guy, but Brody couldn’t catch much of his scent from across the room and with the air conditioning unit blasting in his face. All he caught was the pungent scent of eucalyptus.

  Maybe the guy had a sore throat and was sucking on a cough drop. Brody shrugged as he downed his sandwich, continuing to watch the tourist, his instincts telling him there was more wrong with the guy than just a summer cold.

  Then the newcomer started speaking in a heavily accented voice, and his words told Brody all he needed to know. The man definitely had a one-way ticket on the bus to Crazytown.

  “I heard there’s supposed to be a lot of bears around here,” the stranger said in a voice that carried to Brody, even as he stood to intervene. “But so far, all I’ve seen is a whole lot o’ nothin’.” The man leaned over the counter that separated them and took a very obvious sniff around Nell. Brody felt the growl reverberating in his throat as the man turned. “Finally!” he said, looking with challenge at Brody as he prowled across the floor of the bakery.

  “You’d better leave the lady alone, son,” Brody growled, moving closer.

  “Why? I thought Grizzly Cove was the place where bears could be bears. Or is that just a PR slogan?” The man—scratch that, the shifter—was breaking all sorts of rules, including the most important. Don’t let the humans find out.

  “Let’s take this outside, friend.” Brody tried to intimidate the man out of the place, but apparently, a dominance contest was about to take place, whether he wanted it or not, and Nell was going to witness it. Goddess help them all.

  He tried one more time, pitching his voice so only the newcomer would hear his words. “She’s human, man. Don’t be a fool.”

  “A fool! Who’s calling Seamus O’Leary a fool?” the stranger demanded, reaching up to unbutton his shirt.

  Only then, did Brody catch the underlying scent of alcohol.

  “You’re drunk,” Brody snapped out, hoping Nell would accept that excuse for the man’s bizarre behavior.

  “I am not,” Seamus objected, continuing to unbutton his shirt.

  If the moron was going to get naked right here in the bakery and shift, Brody was going to have to do the same and show him who the bigger bear was in the most graphic terms. But Nell didn’t know about shifters. And Brody didn’t want to be the one to break it to her.

  Better to arrest the drunken Aussie and handle all of this down at the station. When the foreign shif
ter sobered up a bit, then maybe Brody could make some sense out of his bizarre appearance.

  Brody put one hand on the foreigner’s shoulder. “Don’t do this here,” Brody coaxed. “Come with me, and we can do it properly.”

  Seamus shook his head. “Don’t want to meet me in public, eh, mate? Why? What are you? A pansy-assed panda?”

  Brody personally knew at least one resident of the cove who would take marked exception to that comment, but he was more worried about Nell, at the moment. The Aussie’s shirt was off, and he just unbuttoned and unzipped, kicking off his sandals.

  And then, he shifted. And got a lot smaller.

  He wasn’t a big man to begin with. Built more on the wiry side than the massive scale of most of the residents of Grizzly Cove. And he was gray. With tufted ears. And he wasn’t chewing cough drops.

  He was a fucking koala bear.

  Chapter 2

  Brody learned, at that point, that koala bears—cute as they seem—have big fucking teeth. The furry little gray monster swiped at him with sharp claws and bared his chompers menacingly. The little bastard wanted to fight?

  Brody looked at Nell’s pale face. She was in shock, and Brody knew there was no putting this genie back in the bottle. Shit.

  The crazed koala came after him again, and Brody had had enough. He tugged his embroidered golf shirt over his head and dropped trou, shifting seamlessly into his beast.

  As a five-hundred-pound grizzly bear facing a comparatively tiny koala, the match was completely uneven. The koala seemed to realize it about the same time the alcohol he’d consumed when in human form caught up with him. He shuddered once, then collapsed into what Brody belatedly understood was a drunken stupor. The dude just passed out, right there on the bakery floor.

  Brody sat back on his haunches, contemplating the hugeness of the mess the Australian had just created. Nell hadn’t quite fainted, but she was visibly shaken. Brody didn’t know how he was going to fix this.

  And then, the Alpha walked in.

  Big John took one look at the koala bear passed out on the linoleum and started to laugh.

  Brody snagged his pants in his teeth and ducked behind a display case to shift. He struggled into them while the Alpha chuckled. When he emerged, dressed only in his uniform trousers, he looked at Nell but knew he had to square things with his Alpha first. It would be up to John, what happened next.

  Although, if John had any thought about running Nell and her sisters out of town or trying to silence them permanently, he was going to have to go through Brody. He would protect the brown-eyed baker with every fiber of his being.

  Whoa. That sounded serious.

  Brody realized, in that moment, that all of the lunch hours spent here in the bakery were merely excuses to be close to Nell. He’d made up errands near the bakery, just so he could catch a glimpse of her through the window. And he’d come in more often than he probably should have.

  All because of her. Nell. The sweet lady who baked the sweet pies he liked so much.

  But he liked her even more.

  Probably more than was good for him.

  “I’m sorry, John. This guy just came in here and shifted before I could stop him,” Brody said to his Alpha, leaving the more troubling thoughts about the pretty baker for later.

  “I saw most of it, though I couldn’t believe my eyes when he turned into a koala. Never seen a koala shifter in my entire life. Cute little fuckers, aren’t they?” John bent down to get a closer look at the snoring marsupial. At that point, he seemed to get a good whiff of the stranger and backed off quick, shielding his nose. “Whew! Eucalyptus and alcohol. Not sure which one is stronger. I’m amazed he was sober enough to walk in here.”

  “He passed out. I can put him in a cell to sleep it off. Then, he’s going to have to answer for his actions.” Brody frowned. “And one of us is going to have to deal with the fallout.” He glanced significantly at Nell, still standing with her mouth open, behind the counter.

  John looked at her too, then frowned. “She saw you shift. You’d better talk her down. I’ll take sleeping beauty to the jail.” He held out his hand for the keys. “You give me a call if you need help with Nell.”

  John threw the small bear over one shoulder while Brody bundled the man’s clothing into a ball that John tucked under one arm. Without a backward look, the Alpha was out the door and down the street a moment later.

  Brody realized he was still shirtless, so he found his golf shirt and spent a few stalling seconds turning it right-side out. He pulled it over his head before turning to Nell, once again. She still hadn’t moved.

  “Are you okay?” Brody asked quietly, not wanting to startle her.

  Nell blinked at him. “Was that…” She paused, then tried again. “Was that real?” She gestured widely to the floor of the bakery and back to Brody. “You were a bear.”

  Knowing the time for lies was over, he nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  That got her full attention. She stared hard at him.

  “You can turn into a bear?” Shock. She was definitely in some form of shock. “How is that possible?”

  Brody shrugged. “I was born this way. It’s what I am.”

  Nell just shook her head, clearly unable to deal with the revelation. Brody sighed.

  “Look Nell, I’m the same guy you see every day. Now you just know a little secret about me.” He tried to be casual. “And it is a secret. You understand? You can’t tell anyone about us. The world isn’t ready to know about shapeshifters.”

  “There are more?” She looked slightly appalled by the idea.

  Brody wasn’t certain if that boded well for getting her cooperation on this matter. And without her cooperation… He feared what the group might decide if Nell couldn’t be counted on to keep their secret.

  “Honey, this entire town is made up of shapeshifters. That’s why it was so difficult for you and your sisters to get permission to open your store here. We weren’t sure about letting humans in.”

  “Humans?” she repeated as if it was just sinking in, despite what she had seen. “You mean everybody is a…a…bear?” She looked outside at the people walking down the street, fear in her eyes. “Don’t bears eat people?” she whispered, working up to a full-fledged freak out, if Brody was any judge.

  He decided to tease her. Now that she knew the secret, she was fair game. And he’d seen her first.

  “Only if they ask very nicely,” he said in a husky drawl that made her gaze shoot back to his.

  “Are you flirting with me? Now?” Outrage wasn’t quite what he’d been aiming for, but it was better than panic.

  At that moment, the little bell on the door jingled, and two of the town’s most recent arrivals entered. Lyn Ling and her daughter, Daisy, had moved in last month. They were Chinese by birth, but the loss of her mate had sent Lyn running from her homeland, looking for a safe place to heal and raise her baby. Daisy was about four years old and cute as a button. She had just about every man in the settlement wrapped around her little finger, Brody included.

  Daisy skipped up to the counter, looking with wide eyes into the glass display case as her mother said hello to Brody and Nell. As Nell looked from Brody to Lyn and back again, her eyes widened.

  “You said everyone,” Nell repeated. “Oh, God. Lyn too? And Daisy? They’re…bears?”

  Lyn scowled, looking at Brody. “What have you been telling her?”

  “I didn’t tell her. Some dumb drunk koala came in here and challenged my dominance right here in the middle of the bakery. Nell couldn’t help but see. John left me to deal with it.”

  Lyn huffed at him. “Well, it’s clear you’re not dealing well.” She then lapsed into Chinese muttering, probably saying unkind things about men in general, and Brody in particular, as she lifted her daughter into her arms. Pasting a smile on her face, she turned to Nell. “Yes, we are bears,” she said firmly. “No, we do not hurt people. Not unless they hurt us first. We just want to live in peace. In harm
ony with nature. Free to be who we are. Is that too much to ask?”

  Nell was left gaping at the outburst from the normally quiet woman. Slowly, Nell seemed to calm down. Eventually, she nodded.

  “No, Lyn. It’s not too much to ask. I guess, when you put it that way, it’s kind of what everybody wants. Freedom to do what we wanted is why me and my sisters came here too. As long as you guys…bears…are okay with that, I think we can get used to the idea of people turning into grizzly bears.”

  “Not grizzly,” Daisy decided to interject in her high voice. “Panda!”

  Chapter 3

  “Oh, dear Lord,” Nell whispered, completely overwhelmed by the craziness that had invaded her bakery today.

  Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe somebody had spiked the flour with PCP or something. That would explain why she was seeing koalas and grizzly bears in her store, and the cutest little four year old on the planet just claimed she was a panda.

  “She better sit down,” Lyn said in that no-nonsense way she had of talking.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” the sheriff agreed, taking Nell’s arm across the counter and guiding her out from behind. He escorted her to the nearest chair, and she let him.

  She sat, only then realizing she was trembling from head to toe.

  “You gonna faint on me, honey?” Brody asked, squatting down in front of her chair.

  He had that boyish smile on his face that usually made her knees weak. But they were already weak. They’d turned to rubber when the men had turned into bears, and only her death grip on the display case had kept her upright.

  Nell had had a thing for the sexy sheriff since she first moved into her new shop. He’d come by to welcome her to town and had been by most days since, usually eating lunch here, while she covered the store. Her sister, Ashley, got up with the roosters and stayed until after the breakfast rush. Then, Nell took the afternoons, and little sister Tina covered the evening shift, which wasn’t nearly as busy.