Target: BillionBear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance

by Chant, Zoe

  He felt a pulse of guilt at knowing exactly where she lived. “Here’s my suggestion, how about breakfast at Ralph’s? The food there is really good.”

  She brightened. “Sure. How about eight?”

  “Sounds excellent.”

  Going down was considerably faster than going up. They reached the side street, and a minute later the corner of Main Street, a few yards from where the biker had tried to run him down. He looked around, and listened, but caught no revving motorcycle engines among all the other noises. But he felt restless, an itch at the back of his neck, as if he were being watched—and he caught sight of Marlo, almost invisible in the gloom. But she wasn’t looking his way, she was scurrying after some guy who’d just walked out of the hardware store.

  He turned down Main toward the Primrose five hundred yards away, then glanced back at the same moment Kesley flipped up her hand in a wave. As he raised his hand to her, she gave him another wistful smile, her eyes full of question, and then turned away and walked up the street.

  He paused to watch her. Oh, how he wished she didn’t shroud herself in those floppy clothes—he wanted to watch her walk, and enjoy every delightful curve in motion, his body pulsing with remembered pleasure.

  But he was also aware of that that sense of near danger, and he did not want any of it threatening her. So he retreated to the Primrose. As he slid his key in the door to his room, he remembered Marlo still chasing people on the street. Good. He wasn’t ready for her questions. He needed to think about what had nearly happened.

  He didn’t feel like he had a girlfriend, but when he’d first woke in the hospital, he hadn’t felt like he had a family. He had vague memories of Charlie in boyhood, but he didn’t remember Beth at all. His dad was a vague blur, his mother clearer. But nothing recent.

  Surely if he’d had a girlfriend, wouldn’t she have shown up at the hospital?

  What if I’m married?

  The thought shocked him cold. He stared at his left hand—no band, of course, and not even the smooth skin where a band might have been. He breathed slowly in relief. Right now his memories might be in pieces, but he felt certain that if he married, he would wear a ring because it would be forever. Like his dad and mom . . .

  Some memory cluster—freighted with emotion—nudged just under the surface of his thoughts. He tried searching his mind for it, but all he got was heat—fire—pain, and over all a nearly overwhelming sense of betrayal. Due to Charlie? His head panged, and he stumbled into the bathroom and leaned on the sink, his hands clenching the edges, as he stared into the mirror.

  When his heart rate had slowed, he went out and looked around the room. The impulse to grab for his phone made him reach, then remember: no phone. He’d even agreed that he didn’t need one. One more effect of those meds, he thought as he dropped into the chair by the desk and picked up the old-fashioned telephone receiver connected by a spiral cord.

  He dug out his wallet and retrieved the number Beth had given him. She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  Interesting. He felt no assurance at the sound of her voice—instead a slight tightening at the back of his neck, and the weird internal sense of that . . . thing inside . . . alert and listening.

  “Yes? Who is this?” she asked, her voice sharpening.

  Jameson realized he’d let a silence build. “Beth, it’s me. Jameson.”

  “My dear! Is anything wrong?” Her voice returned to that sweet lisp, but he sensed sharpness beneath.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. Right now I have a question: am I married?”

  She trilled a laugh. “No, darling boy. You are not married. You don’t even have a girlfriend. You’ve been so busy playing the field—an excellent strategy for avoiding those tramps trying to weasel into your family’s wealth. Did you really call to ask me that?” Her voice hitched a note higher.

  That inner voice spoke again: Ask the questions, give no answers. “Trying to recover something, is all.”

  “Don’t fret about recovery,” she breathed. “It will happen, and you’ll find out that your life isn’t all that much different now. The doctor said to rest. Relax. It will come, remember? And do take your meds. You are taking them, aren’t you?”

  “Doing everything I can,” he said evasively. He knew he hated outright lies. “Gotta go.”

  “Bye, dear. Do call any time. I am always here for you. You know that, don’t you?”

  He thanked her and hung up, then sat down to consider what he’d heard. ‘Tramps.’ That kind of language belonged to the older generation, he thought. Beth had at most ten years on him. He grimaced, hoping she wasn’t hinting that he’d been some kind of sleazy cheater. He began breathing slow and even, knowing that this type of breathing was an old lesson learned somewhere earlier, because the rhythm was so familiar.

  The churning in his stomach diminished, reminding him of his reaction to his meds the day he left Tranquil Breezes. Since he’d chucked the pills back into the bottle instead of taking them, the mental fog was definitely clearing. What did those meds actually do? That just raised more questions, more of a sense of unreality. As if the world was skewed. Who was telling him the truth?

  Kesley.

  That much he was sure of.

  So start with her, he told the Jameson in the mirror. A step at a time, don’t rush things. He might once have been a player, but one thing he believed: he wasn’t playing now.

  * * *

  Full dark had fallen by the time Kesley got home.

  McKenzi was in her place, in the process of taking Apfelstrudel out of the oven. “There you are! Granny gave me her recipe.” She grinned, then her eyes narrowed. “Where have you been all this time?”

  “Walking around.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Sorry I lost track of time.”

  McKenzi ignored the apology. “Walking around. So you’re really gonna go with that?”

  “What?” Kesley demanded.

  “‘What?’” McKenzi mimicked, then grinned as she said bluntly, “You look like a girl who’s just had king-hell, brain-rattling sex.”

  The heat of memory flared through Kesley, then she caught herself up. Everything was going way, way too fast. She coughed, and cleared her throat as McKenzi gave her the hairy eyeball. “Uh, when will that strudel be done?”

  McKenzi stepped closer. “Don’t huh me, little sister. I invented the sidestep-with-a-question before you were out of kindergarten. You’ve totally and completely got that pants-on-fire look, and I don’t mean the liar, liar kind, I shoulda said panties-on-fire. And may I just add, hallelujah! It’s about time!”

  Kesley bit her lips. They felt tender, and she knew it wasn’t from the cold air outside. She caught a lingering taste of Jameson, and there it was again, that heat sheeting through her.

  “Day-am,” McKenzi whispered, eyes round. “I’ve never seen you like this before. Nick the Prick certainly didn’t ever make you look like that!”

  “I don’t want to know what I look like,” Kesley interrupted. “We’re supposed to be eating with our parents. I’m going to take a shower. A cold one.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. Not until you spill. Or I’m going to tease the crap out of you all night long . . .”

  “I think I’ve met my mate,” somebody said through Kesley’s mouth.

  McKenzi stilled, her eyes wide and shocked. “Really?” Her tone had completely changed. “Who?”

  “I don’t even know his last name, I just realized. Oh, God, I am in so much trouble. Jameson—the cameraman who came with that nosy Marlo woman, though he says he’s not interested in her project.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Why would he lie about that?”

  “I dunno. Maybe to trick us into talking about shifters?”

  Kesley shook her head slowly. “I know it sounds crazy, but I believe him.”

  “If he’s your mate . . . Oh, I really don’t know how that works. But listen, Bandit. Dad wanted us to talk abou
t this situation. Marlo, and the guy. Dad said there’s something fishy about him. Not evil, more like some mystery. Besides someone trying to run him down.”

  “What? Oh, never mind. Knowing Dad, I’ll have to hear it whether I want to or not. But McKenzi, that’s not all that’s mystery.”

  “Oh?”

  “He got hit hard. I mean nearly run down. He would have been—he tried to step between me and the danger, but the guy rode right at him, and I pulled him, and the guy hit really hard. If I hadn’t, he might have been killed. As it was, he blacked out a couple moments there, right in front of me.”

  “Yeah, I did hear that you saved his life. Is that it?”

  “No, here’s what’s weird. I was, well, I was giving him a shoulder rub, up at Sunset Point, and we, um, well his shoulder was bare—and then you called.”

  “How many clothes came off?” Now there were two hairy eyeballs glued to Kesley, who backed away a step.

  “Pretty much everything,” she admitted, and couldn’t prevent a little grin.

  “Damn!” McKenzi exclaimed, stalking around the room, her invisible tail practically twitching. “And then I called. Argh! My timing sucks. Or is that a good thing?”

  “It’s an I’m-totally-confused thing.” Kesley waved her hand, not quite ready to go into how blazingly, amazingly hot that sex had been. “Anyway. Your call didn’t come until after we . . . After. I was reaching for my phone, looked at his bare shoulder, and the giant bruise was, like, half-healed.”

  McKenzi gave her a puzzled look.

  “Kenz, I’m beginning to wonder if . . . well, is it possible he might be a shifter?”

  Kenzi’s eyes rounded. “No. Freaking. Way.”

  “Who else heals that fast?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So . . . what should I do? Ask?”

  “No.” Kenzi shook her head. “That much I’m sure about. Not with everybody clamming up around that woman he’s with, for whatever definition of ‘with’ is correct.”

  “I don’t think he’s with her in any romantic sense. I get the feeling she might be some kind of . . . well, I don’t know how a journalist could be therapeutic, but he mentioned that a couple times. And I didn’t get the feeling he was lying.”

  “Whether he is or not, he’s with her. If either of them come clean and tell us they’re shifters, or part of the shifter world, well, that’s different. But until then? They came here, asking questions. Let them admit to it first.”

  Kesley let out her breath. “Okay. That makes sense.”

  The timer rang then. While Kenzi got the strudel out and brushed on the cinnamon topping, Kesley took a quick shower, running the water as cold as she could stand it on her face before she got out.

  Ten minutes later they were up at the main house, and as the food was being set on the table, Ed said to Kesley, “I was delivering down at Primrose today, when that fellow came limping in, looking like hell. From what everyone was saying, you saved him from being run down? What was he, drunk, standing in the middle of the street?”

  Kesley gave a quick report.

  Ed frowned. “Tried to run him down? On the sidewalk?” He shook his head. “Something is off about that guy.”

  “What do you mean?” Kesley asked, her heartbeat loud in her ears.

  “He says he’s a cameraman?” Ed asked with one of his eyebrow lifts that Kesley privately thought of as Typical Aloof Cat. “I’ve never heard of a cameraman wearing a Cartier Calibre watch.”

  “Never heard of it.” Kesley shook her head. “Except the Cartier part. I take it his watch is expensive?”

  Her dad snorted. “If you call more than a hundred grand expensive.”

  Uncle Lee choked on his drink. Kesley’s fork clattered to her plate. “A . . . hundred . . .”

  “Grand?” McKenzi squeaked.

  “For a watch?” Grandma Enkel said, eyes round. “Gott im Himmel, it is made of diamonds and rubies, this watch?”

  “Did he steal it?” Kesley’s cousin Rolf asked, interested for the first time.

  “A watch like that belongs in a safety deposit box,” Doris stated. “That’s twice the worth of this house!”

  “More like ten times the worth of this house, in the shape it’s in,” Ed said, patting his wife’s hand. “Not that that means anything, because we’ll never sell it.”

  “Anyway, what’s the use of a watch in a bank vault?” McKenzi declared. “Good on him! If I had something that hot, I’d wear it 24/7.”

  “I just hope it’s not hot in the stolen sense,” Doris said. “I don’t like those people, that woman prying and snooping up and down Main . . .”

  Kesley sighed, knowing her family was going to go on about Marlo and her meddlesome questions for the rest of the meal. But that was better than the grilling she’d expected about him.

  She had no idea what was going to happen, but she began to count the hours until that breakfast.

  Chapter Seven

  “They all say pretty much the same thing,” Marlo said to Jameson early the next morning. “College kids and pranks.”

  “Then you’re done?” Jameson asked.

  It was seven a.m. and he’d just come out of the shower when she knocked at his door.

  “Not at all. I set my phone to record, and left it in my pocket yesterday, though what people saw was me standing there with my clipboard,” Marlo said, looking crisp and professional as they sat on the balcony outside the rooms. “Last night after you retired I listened to the entire recording all the way through, twice.”

  He sneaked a glance at his watch as she went on talking.

  “At first I assumed that the rumor mill had been churning out the usual distortions, but as I listened, I kept hearing the same phrases over and over. So either there really isn’t anything, and these small town people have little range of expression or imagination—or else they are all repeating a script.”

  Jameson gazed at her, for the first time feeling a spark of interest. “Why would they do that? Do you think they really are all part of some cult?” He grimaced. “I don’t even want to imagine some of these little old folks prancing around in the buff doing animal sacrifice, or whatever it is you think is going on.”

  “I explained it to you,” Marlo said. “This is about meta humans.”

  “I remember those words, but not what they are supposed to mean. I hadn’t realized until recently—like yesterday—exactly how much of a brain fog I’ve been in,” he responded.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “I did think that new doctor Beth brought to Tranquil Breezes prescribed rather strong doses on two of those meds, but Beth seemed satisfied that he is the best. Still, when we get back, perhaps we’d better do another blood workup, maybe even get a second opinion. You might require a dosage adjustment.”

  She went right back to her pet project. “If meta humans exist in this specific locale, I will find them. I thought we’d widen the pool of interviews, at least for one more day. I heard of another motel up the Pacific Coast Highway a bit farther, but still within my area of interest.”

  “Hotel,” he said automatically.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know about the other one, but this is a hotel. It’s small, but Mrs. Bashir has signs all over saying ‘hotel’ and there are all these little touches like the fresh flowers they change every day, and the good coffee in the little room off the lobby, and the fresh scones and butter. And so . . .” He shrugged. “It doesn’t cost any extra to use their preferred word.”

  Marlo shrugged. “Point taken. After I satisfy myself I’ve been all over this town this morning, what I’d like to do is visit this motel—or hotel—called Dottie’s, up the highway, then we can drive over the mountain into Overton and interview there.”

  He shook his head. “I’d rather take it easy,” he said, and rubbed his shoulder.

  “Of course,” she agreed instantly. “I’m sorry—I’ve been so distracted I forgot to ask how you slept? Perhaps we need to cal
l a local doctor?”

  “No, I’m fine. I just want an easy day.”

  She glanced around uncertainly, then said, “I’m responsible for you. I was very upset yesterday to discover you’d nearly been run down while crossing the street. I hated to have to admit it when I made my nightly report to Beth. She was quite concerned about that, and about making certain you took your meds. I told her as far as I knew you were being scrupulous about that.”

  She looked an inquiry and he shrugged.

  She seemed to take that as assent, and said, “Beth strongly encouraged me to take you with me when I visit the place up the road, but in my professional opinion you appear to be recovered enough to choose for yourself. Especially if you rest within the safety of this room. I hope you won’t go out unless you have to.”

  “I’ll look both ways from now on,” he promised.

  “Better, I’ll talk to Mrs. Bashir about the possibility of your ordering in, since the ‘hotel’ doesn’t seem to include room service.” Marlo’s tone shifted to genial sarcasm.

  “Whatever you say, doc.”

  She nodded, and departed a short time later.

  He sighed in relief. If he’d had to, he’d have admitted he had a breakfast date, but he didn’t want to talk to Marlo about Kesley yet. He wasn’t certain why, but he had been going on instinct here ever since . . .

  He turned to stare at the pill bottles. Ever since he’d stopped taking them, when he’d listened to that inner voice after that dose had made him vilely sick. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how much of a mental fog he’d been in.

  Fallout from the accident, or . . . something else? He shook a couple of pills from each bottle into a tissue, wadded it up, and thrust it into his pocket.

  Then he grabbed a jacket, tucked his wallet and the hotel key in with the pills, and set out to walk up Main Street in the chilly morning air. The time was still early enough for the morning light to be golden, highlighting the distinctive shrubs and trees of mid-coast California. He really liked this little town by the sea.