by Anya Nowlan
There went his focus again. He reluctantly let go of her hand and tried to think on his feet. What does a bear say to a sweet as candy looking beautiful belle in the middle of the woods? Wanna go and see my cave? Probably not.
“Are you sure you’re okay? It wasn’t the gentlest collision.”
She nodded her head, smiling, and some locks of hair fell on her forehead. He wanted badly to reach out and brush them aside, if for no other reason than to touch her again.
“I’m okay, I swear. God, I’m such a klutz! I’m not sure how I managed to run into you in the middle of a deserted forest!”
“I was the one doing all the running, mind you,” he said, laughing.
She looked a bit lost for words, and Rush knew he was moments from losing her. It was now or never – dazzle her with his charm or just ask her if he could see her again. Either would probably work. But being all sweaty from the run and heaving for breath – both from the run as well as from being so close to her without being able to let his hands do all the things his body was telling him to do to her – the whole dazzling option seemed somewhat out of reach. So, the classics were going to have to be enough this time.
“I think I better be going. Let you continue with your run,” she said, angling past him.
Rush reached for her hand and his fingers locked around her wrist gently. She gave an almost inaudible gasp as he spun her back to face him.
“I’m sorry if I’m being forward, but could I see you again? Maybe for dinner? Maybe run into you again?”
He winked and her blush deepened. Good. He’d know what to expect when he got her where he wanted her – on her back, screaming his name as he fucked her straight into the peaks of ecstasy.
She looked like she was thinking about it and it seemed to be taking a bit too long. Rush Dean was used to women literally throwing themselves at him, so meeting one who wasn’t entirely keen on falling right into his lap was a change. A pleasant challenge, if he did say so himself.
Maybe these small town girls are exactly what I’ve been missing…
“Okay. Um… You can find me in Shifter Grove. I have a hair salon there – Danni’s. You can’t miss it. It’s the only one. But I really have to be going now. It was nice… running into you,” she said with a smile and he let go of her.
“I’ll find you, DannI!” he called after her, watching her hurriedly retreat behind the bend of the curve.
Damn. I hate to see her leave but I love to watch her go. That ass…
Shaking his head and grinning, Rush turned around and broke into a run. It was as if he’d been reinvigorated, the life breathed back into his limbs. So what if he and Rhett didn’t have a lot of time – with women like Danni around, they weren’t going to need that much of it anyway. If Rush had any say in it, he was going to nominate Danni as a main contender.
If she’d have it, of course... But two sexy as all hell werebears could be awfully persuasive if they wanted to be, right?
Beneath all that bravado was his bear, and though Rush could put on a show and claim that he was a real tail-chaser, both he and the bear knew that when he found the right woman, he’d never let go of her. His bear had the peculiar feeling that they’d just met that exact girl.
CHAPTER FIVE
Danni
Daniela Weaver, or Danni as everybody in Shifter Grove knew her, was having one hell of a weird day. First of all, she’d woken up early in the morning and her rich head of hair was exactly the way she wanted it to be – like, Farrah Fawcett level of super effing fabulous, blowing-in-the-wind, took-three-hair-stylists-to-maintain-that level of flawlessness kind of awesome. She honestly had to stare at herself in the mirror for far too long to even be convinced that it was still her, plain ol’ Danni, eyeing her back.
Must be something about the Idaho air, she thought with a grin, grabbing her morning coffee and setting off towards town.
Then, of course, her day had got only better. Though Cerise had managed to make her groan, cringe and wail with embarrassment the night before, Danni had to admit that the shifter diner owner knew what she was talking about. It felt oddly liberating to give herself the permission to flirt again, starting off by answering a text on SassyDate. It was a small step towards having a bit of fun, even if it might not have meant much in the long run.
And all those feel-good sensations got verified when she got a reply from a very special werebear shifter who’d taken a central role in her dreams the previous night – all good ones, too! None of that nightmare crap about dying sad and possibly alone with 25 cats! No, sir, not for her! Now it was all SassyDate flirting, all the time!
She still giggled a little when she thought back to their impromptu chat in the morning:
HoneysuckleStyle: Are you the kind of guy who would save me from the marching enemy troops or would I have to get my own horse and carriage with you?
GoneWithTheBear: Oh, I’d save you, alright. But only if you promise not to pine after your best friend’s man. I can’t abide by sharing your affections.
HoneysuckleStyle: Well, it depends. Are you man enough to keep my attention? I love a man in uniform!
GoneWithTheBear: I can wear any uniform you like. I won’t promise I’ll make it historically accurate, though. Those Civil War era uniforms aren’t really made for a werebear’s shoulder width.
She’d been deep in thought, happily imagining the way his shoulders would bulge out under a tee, when someone ran right into her. Just her luck, he was just as damn cute as the guy on SassyDate! The heavens were really smiling down on Danni all of a sudden! The way he looked at her made her all tingly inside – the right kind of tingly, the I-wonder-where-this-is-going kind of tingly. Against better judgment, she was really hoping that the cute man would come and find her in town. And if he asked her out, there was no way she was saying no!
So, by the time Danni made it to her salon, she thought nothing could ruin her day. Not the fact that the electricity sometimes went out. Then she’d find Warren grumbling about bears up power lines, which she never understood. Not that she’d just packed up and left all her life behind, and not even the fact that her ex was a giant asshole and completely not worthy of her time.
But of course, things couldn’t be so good.
Danni had just taken a seat in the one and only chair meant for clients waiting for their turn. It was a slow morning, but she’d come to expect those in a town as small as Shifter Grove. She began texting GoneWithTheBear, when another text popped up.
Her face twisted in anguish when she recognized the sender – Taylor, her good for nothing fiancée, or TheREALLionKing on SassyDate.
Danni glanced around herself for a moment, as if expecting someone to walk in and smack that phone from her hands, and then opened the message.
TheREALLionKing: Hey, baby. How are you? Miss me?
Danni stared in abject disbelief. Did this guy really just do what she thought he had? Text her like nothing had happened at all? Like they were still together, happy as could be? Danni bristled, half at the fact that Taylor was being such a twit, and half at the fact that a tiny, miniscule part of her was actually glad to see him acknowledge the fact that she existed.
They had met over SassyDate all those years ago, and for the duration of their time together, Danni had forgotten the app had even existed. Now, she realized that she had been the only one who had set the app aside – she was sure Taylor had been hitting on other curvy women that caught his eye if not for the whole entire time, then at least for big chunks of it.
The little green light saying that he was online was blinking, and Danni fought with the urge to just throw her phone down the toilet and never look at it again. But if she did that, she couldn’t chat with GoneWithTheBear either.
Should I just ignore him? I should just ignore him, right? Oh my god, why now… I was having such a nice day!
Worrying her bottom lip, Danni shifted in the chair. Finally, with a sigh that could have shaken the whole salon, she hit t
he reply button and typed a few words, deleting them far too many times for her own liking. She wanted to be secure, confident and happy in her decision, and here she was, worrying like a teenager about what this jerk of a man would think about her.
HoneysuckleStyle: I’m not your baby, Taylor. What do you want?
TheREALLionKing: I just wanna know how you’re doing. Where are you? I miss you.
HoneysuckleStyle: I don’t miss you. I’m in Idaho. And don’t go lying to me. If you missed me so much, you would never have cheated on me!
TheREALLionKing: C’mon, baby, you know how we big cats are. We need more than one woman to keep us happy and sated. You were always the most special, I swear!
Danni snorted at that. Sure, special. Special in the way that she was home, waiting for him with dinner, while he was probably out screwing some girl. And sated? Sheesh. Danni had never been the kind of woman to be shy about her body, and she loved sex – she was sure there was nothing she wasn’t giving him in that field.
He was just a player. And Danni had loved him so much that talking to him still hurt.
TheREALLionKing: Where in Idaho? I wanna come see you… For old times sake.
HoneysuckleStyle: I don’t want to see you, Taylor.
Danni was just about to launch into a long tirade about how he was an impossible jackass (something that she had never had a chance to get off her chest when she packed up and left after finding out), when the little bell on the front door rang. Danni whipped around in the chair and almost dropped the phone from the surprise of seeing him there.
Rush.
It was both his name and what she felt when she saw him. For a moment, her legs trembled like she had just run ten miles uphill, and her breath caught in her throat. Danni tucked the phone on a table next to the chair and ignored the beeps it made as Taylor was undoubtedly sending her more placating words of bullshit.
Rush smiled, kicking his sunglasses up on his forehead. If he hadn’t been damn tasty before, he certainly was now. He cleaned up good.
“Hey, Danni. I need a haircut. Can you help a brother out?” he asked, throwing her a devilish wink.
Danni opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, and then nodded quickly, painfully aware of how awkward she was being.
“Sure! Take a seat!” she said, trying not to ogle too much.
He was built as hell and the casual clothes he wore showed it off so well. A grey tee and blue jeans made him look like every cowgirl’s dream, and even though Danni was no cowgirl yet, she would gladly wrangle that hunk of a man for herself.
Rush plopped down on the seat and Danni draped a sheet around his neck. He even smelled delicious – all pine and peppermint. He really wasn’t helping Danni’s desperate attempt at getting her head out of the clouds. Damn him. Rush took his sunglasses off and set them on the table before him. She pulled a brush through his hair and gave it a quick look, channeling the professional instead of the giddy girl inside.
“So, what should we do?” she asked, cocking a brow at him in the mirror.
Rush smirked, and she just about swooned. His copper hair was perfectly lush, somewhat on the longer side and with a bit of a wave to it. She could easily imagine him being a surfer somewhere, just enjoying the day by the beach. And she could just as quickly see herself sitting right next to him, loving the surf and the wind.
“Just a bit shorter,” he said, shrugging mildly.
Danni nodded and grabbed for her scissors. All the while, her phone still bleeped and vibrated on the table, demanding the attention that she was none too willing to give. Her nose crinkled slightly as she heard it go off three times in quick succession, but no force on earth would have made her go and see what Taylor was telling her.
“Do you need to get that?”
Danni shook her head a bit too hard, a bit too eagerly, “Nope, not at all. All yours.”
The moment she said that, she realized what she’d just uttered. A blush immediately sparked on her cheeks and Rush chuckled, his blue eyes twinkling with mischief. Danni couldn’t help but laugh along with him. It was good to laugh, even if it was a little bit at herself. She hadn’t done it anywhere near as often recently as she should have.
“I’m sorry. I meant… I don’t know what I meant.”
“No worries. I don’t really need a haircut either. I just came to see you,” Rush said, tilting his head back and flashing her a brilliant smile.
Her blush got deeper again. Damn him all the way to hell.
“Um… thank you,” she muttered, clipping his hair back just a little.
It was so perfect she didn’t want to ruin it anyway and wouldn’t have cut much to begin with.
“Don’t be thankful. I felt bad about disrupting your morning like that. And I wanted to see if I could talk you into that dinner we already agreed upon.”
Oh, such a bad boy. Danni’s teeth grazed over her lower lip and she crept a look at him from under her lashes, meeting his gaze in the mirror. Butterflies fluttered in the pit of her stomach, and just as she was about to reply, the damnable phone beeped again. Danni groaned audibly, tossing a glare at it. Taylor couldn’t stop screwing with her life even when they were in different states!
Rush stood up and took the sheet off of him. Standing so close, he seemed impossibly large and impossibly… present. She looked up at him and her throat went dry. That playful smile he tended to wear was there again, soothing her frazzled nerves.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Give me a chance to get your mind off of whoever that jerk was. Forget about him completely, hmm? For me? I’ll come pick you up here tomorrow, seven sharp.”
He leant into Danni before she could utter a word of disagreement (or agreement) and pecked her on the cheek. The warmth she’d felt tingling at the edges of her being now came crashing down and the foul mood that had been falling upon her lifted again.
“Okay,” she said to Rush’s already retreating back.
Somehow, he’d been there to brighten her day twice in a matter of less than eight hours, and she couldn’t have been more thankful if she’d tried.
You’re not going to say a word to that asshole Taylor. Don’t let him ruin your mood!
And why would she? She had a date to look forward to.
Danni walked over to her phone to get rid of the irritating flashing notifications and was about to turn it off when the last message caught her eye.
TheREALLionKing: Shifter Grove, huh? Guess I know where I can find you.
Danni’s stomach dropped.
This can’t be good.
CHAPTER SIX
Rhett
If there was one thing Rhett Dean wasn’t good at, it was waiting.
He leant back on his mother’s wide porch swing, trying to find a comfortable position. As predicted, Mama Dean had done her best to stuff her boys full of food, and Rhett was still feeling last night’s dinner. While Rush had decided to work it off with a run and then a mysterious disappearance into town, citing a cookie craving, Rhett had decided on the more boring option of getting some work done.
Of course, what it actually meant was that he’d been hanging on the edge of the swing, waiting for HoneysuckleStyle to reply to him. It was getting a bit ridiculous, really.
You’re not the kind of guy to pine after some girl you haven’t even met in person. So what’s so different about her?
Rhett silently pondered over this most important question, scrolling through her pictures on SassyDate. No matter how hard he tried, he always ended up back on her profile soon after opening his work email or trying to check the online task boards to understand whether his companies were faring well without him.
He wished he could adopt Rush’s laid back take on this whole mate business, and also forget about his work while he was all the way up in Idaho. But it didn’t come quite as easily to him. He had got everything in life thanks to his iron work ethic and he wasn’t about to put himself to shame now that he might just need it the most.
>
Not that being in Idaho, getting both pampered and yelled at by his mother, wasn’t fine and all… It was good to see Mama Dean again, as well as spend more time with Rush, but still, there was something forcing Rhett forward, telling him to grab the moment by the horns, take control, all that good stuff.
So, this time on purpose, he opened up HoneysuckleStyle’s chat window and stared at his last message. They’d been discussing the pros and cons of 50s U.S. cinematography when the conversation came to a lull, and it was damn near killing him to not hear back from her in several hours. He hadn’t thought himself the clingy kind, but this woman made his head spin in all sorts of ways that no other woman had before.
Pondering it over for a moment, he typed a few words into the chat.
GoneWithTheBear: I want to meet you in person. Do you think that could happen?
To his great surprise, she responded immediately this time.
HoneysuckleStyle: New York and Idaho aren’t very close together.
That got his attention. Idaho? He checked her profile again and saw a status update that included her location – Shifter Grove, Idaho.
Damn. That’s some luck, he thought, grinning to himself.
If that wasn’t a sign, he didn’t know what was.
GoneWithTheBear: But imagine if they were. Would you be game?
The wait was excruciating, but he felt more at ease the moment he saw the screen prompt him that she’d started typing. He was sure he could talk her into meeting. They’d had such great chemistry over chat, how could he not?
HoneysuckleStyle: I don’t know. Maybe? I sort of have a date with someone tomorrow… I don’t know if it will work out.
Rhett stared at her words for a minute, his eyes narrowing. His bear growled deep within him, bringing a rumbling hiss to his lips. His bear didn’t like the idea of this scrumptious, intelligent, special woman getting involved with anyone but a Dean, and the immediate response he got to that idea surprised even Rhett himself. He hadn’t expected to be quite so possessive of someone he barely knew. But there it was.
