Hero Bear

by Candace Ayers

  3

  Kerrigan

  To say that I wasn’t qualified to work for P.O.L.A.R. would be a gross understatement. I was trained to work as an office assistant, but I’d never worked in an office where every call that came in could literally mean life or death. What if I screwed up? The stuff mattered. I had to take calls from the main office and send the guys out on location to wherever they were needed. Sounded easy, but when the office called, it was hectic. Messages were loud and rushed and I panicked.

  Knowing that I was responsible for fielding calls containing critical instructions left me wound tighter than a winch pulling a two ton truck. I was a wreck. People’s lives depended on my accuracy and I wasn’t reliable enough for that.

  Every workday, I bounced back and forth from one side of the office to the other, organizing everything I could and making myself as busy as possible. I wanted to be useful, but I also wanted to mask the fact that I’d scored the job because my mother was mated to a higher up in the organization.

  It didn’t help my nerves any that most of the guys in the unit hung out in the office when they weren’t out on a job. They sat around, talking or horsing around, or doing whatever else they did. They kept the air conditioning set so low that I had to wear a winter jacket and they were always in the way. Not that I had any right to complain. They were the heroes, the ones actually making a difference in this world. I felt honored to be in their presence.

  The enormous pressure, though! At any moment a life or death call could come in and they were all going to be there watching me, judging me. It tied my stomach in knots. I would’ve quit and let them find a more qualified dispatcher if I didn’t desperately need the job. Of course, there was a very real possibility I’d be fired.

  Dmitry was my biggest problem. He was always somewhere nearby. He stayed in a back office, but it didn’t make a difference. Knowing he was so close was giving me a perpetual tremor. It was only a matter of time before I was revealed as a bumbling buffoon and it would no doubt happen right in front of him. He’d never understand. Already I was a bundle of nerves compared to his calm stoicism. I could never tell what he was thinking, but when his attention turned to me, I had a strong feeling it wasn’t anything good. Whenever our eyes met, there was something strained about his expression, like I gave him heartburn.

  The guys were sitting around discussing M4 versus M4A1 carbine weapons, whatever those were, when the phone rang. All eyes turned to me. My heart rate skyrocketed and I took a deep breath before answering. “P.O.L.A.R.”

  “Police scanner 411. 560 at 348 Second Street.” The line clicked off in my ear.

  Scribbling on my notepad, I stared at the numbers I’d written down for a second and then up at the guys. Even Dmitry had stepped out of the office to look at me expectantly.

  “Um… Code 548 at 360 Second Street.” That was right. Wasn’t it? I looked at my notepad and nodded. “Yeah. 360 Second Street.”

  Serge appeared, slipping a handgun into his side holster. “548. Strap up. Let’s go.”

  I watched as they all slipped guns onto holsters, horror filling my gut. I wanted to shout at them to stop—wait—let me call back and double check to make sure I’d gotten it right, but it was too late. They were already out of the door.

  I ran my hands down my face and blew out a huge sigh. I didn’t have a good feeling about this. What was a code 548 anyway, and why did it require guns?

  “Shit.”

  The back door to the office opened a few seconds later, and Hannah appeared. She took one look at me and frowned. “What’s wrong, Kerrigan?”

  I must have looked like I felt. I’d already been fighting the urge to cry, but there was something about having someone ask you that question that made the tears inevitable. Still, I fought them. “Nothing. I’m okay.”

  She shook her head. “No you’re not. Spill.”

  “I suck at this job. I know it; the guys know it. I think I may have just sent them to the wrong address, but I can’t remember. It’s too stressful for me, but I can’t quit. I tried for weeks to find another job before this one and I only got hired here because my mom’s mate pulled strings.” The tears were flowing now. I reached for the box of tissues and blew my nose. “I spent so many years in school and I’m useless.”

  She came over to me and wrapped me in a hug. “Oh, sweetie. It’s okay. Let it out.”

  As if I had a choice. There was no keeping it in. “The guys hate me. I know it. I’m so bad at this. I’m going to get someone killed.”

  “No, you’re not. You’ll learn. You’re going to get better at it and things will be fine. It’s not an easy job, taking calls from the main office. I filled in a few times. It’s hard to keep up with them. You’ll be a pro in no time, Kerrigan.”

  I didn’t buy it. I was going to be fired before I ever got the chance to improve. Then, I’d hear about it from my mom—how embarrassing it was to have a daughter who was virtually incompetent and how her mate had gone through all the trouble of getting me the job in the first place. Talk about feeling like a complete failure at life.

  “Maybe you should take the day off. You know, a mental health day. I could come with you? We could do a girl’s day. We’ll get a couple frozen margaritas and get our ‘girl talk’ on.”

  “It’s ten in the morning.”

  She laughed. “It’s never too early for frozen margaritas and girl talk with a friend.”

  I slid a tissue under my glasses and wiped at my eyes. I hadn’t heard her call me a friend before, and at that moment, I really needed a friend. “Maybe we could go after work? I can’t afford to be docked any hours right now.”

  “Okay. Tonight. I’m buying. I’ll see if I can get Megan to come, too. If I can pry her away from Roman for a few hours. It’ll be so fun!”

  I pictured Dmitry rushing to possibly the wrong address with a gun drawn. “I hope I still have a job by then.” Or did I? I wasn’t so sure. Half of me would feel relieved to be fired.

  She laughed and gave me a knowing look. “Okay. Just don’t drive yourself crazy in here, Kerrigan. What you’re doing is important work, yes, but not as important as your sanity.”

  “That’s implying that I have any sanity.”

  She laughed. “Do you?”

  Fighting a grin, I shook my head. “Not really.”

  4

  Dmitry

  We entered the home, guns drawn. A 548 was code for an armed home invasion. 360 Second Street was a lovely little cottage owned by a sweet, elderly, retired couple. When we kicked in the front door and rushed the place dressed in full tactical gear, they had been seated at the breakfast table staring calmly at the morning waves while enjoying their Earl Grey and soft-boiled eggs.

  The couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fuller, were so shocked that Mrs. Fuller fainted dead away. Mr. Fuller tried to fight us off using his tea cup and cane. Serge suffered a minor burn and a good whack to the side of the head.

  In the end, we’d stayed to repair the door and apologize profusely. The real crime had been a simple B&E at 348 Second Street. Fortunately, the local police officers had handled the situation just fine without us.

  I was torn. Part of me wanted to strangle Kerrigan. We were highly trained specialists. A fuck up like that made us look like first rate idiots. Since she’d started working at the office, we looked like idiots more and more often. The other part of me was itching to get back to her to make sure she was safe and hadn’t burned down the office, with herself inside.

  The guys weren’t torn. They were one hundred percent pissed off at Kerrigan. Well, not Alexei. He thought the whole thing was hilarious.

  Serge was fuming. “This can’t happen again. The office said we had to have her, but if this keeps happening, I’m going to be forced to request a replacement. That girl’s a liability.”

  I balled my hands at my sides and took a deep breath. He wasn’t wrong. He had a job to do, too, and if a link in our chain wasn’t holding its weight, someone could get hurt—o
r killed. It was Serge’s job to make sure all links functioned. Still, I didn’t like him talking about Kerrigan like that.

  “How many times are we going to screw up because of her? What’s going to happen when someone get injured because she can’t take a simple phone message and dispatch us to the correct location?”

  I growled. “Enough. We’re all upset. We get it.”

  “I’m not. I just got to see Serge get his ass kicked by a geriatric.” Alexei laughed. “Today is the best day I’ve had since we arrived. I think we should give the woman a raise.”

  Maxim snorted a laugh through his nose, but his words rang true. “It’s not fucking funny, though. Mrs. Fuller could’ve had a heart attack and died.”

  I gritted my teeth and stared out the front window. “Yeah, well, she didn’t.”

  Serge pointed a finger at me. “Teach your girlfriend how to do her job or she’s gone, Dmitry.”

  I growled again at Serge and glared. “She is not my girlfriend, and last I checked, you’re the boss. Shouldn’t you have trained her better?”

  Gauntlets thrown down, we drove the rest of the way back to the office in a tense silence. When we parked the van outside of the building, everyone dispersed. Roman headed toward Megan’s, Serge headed towards the house, probably in search of his mate, Hannah. Konstantin, Alexei, Maxim and I went back into the office.

  The silence inside was painful. Kerrigan sat at her desk with her eyes down. She already knew she’d sent us to the wrong place. I could feel the tension and humiliation rolling off of her. I sat down at the desk next to hers and sighed. She had to do better at take down the calls from the main office. Someone had to show her.

  “When the main office calls, you need to be fast. They’re abrupt because they’re dispatching hundreds of calls every hour to all parts of the world. You can’t take your time.”

  Her shoulders were tense, her eyes still down. “I know.”

  “It’s not hard. Not once you get the hang of it.”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  Feeling frustrated, I growled. “They’re going to fire you if you keep sending us to the wrong place, Kerrigan.”

  She stood up abruptly and looked over my shoulder. She never made eye contact if she could help it. Not with me, anyway. “I need to take care of this filing.”

  I stood up, towering over her, and shrugged. I wasn’t sure what else to say to her. I locked myself in the back office, to get away from her. I didn’t know what it was, but she drove me fucking crazy in every way. I wanted to shake her and comfort her and argue with her and kiss her.

  Her feelings seemed to be so delicate and I was terrible at subtlety and tact. She probably needed some kindness and encouragement—two things I was unable to provide to anyone. I sensed that something else might be wrong with her. Something underlying that was eating away at her and keeping her mind preoccupied. I really wanted to ask her about it.

  That wasn’t my place, though. She was shy and sensitive and her cry reflex was near the surface. I wasn’t good with crying women. I was a cold-blooded killer, not a priest. I didn’t comfort people. The way I solved problems was by killing bad guys. My soul was too dark to pretend that I could make someone as gentle as Kerrigan feel better about whatever was troubling her.

  None of it mattered. I was only on Sunkissed Key to do my job. Once the main office decided we’d served our penance in this blazing inferno, we’d get to go back home and I’d put Florida behind me. I’d never have to think about it again and the only thing I’d leave behind in this hell hole is perspiration.

  Still, I found my mind straying to Kerrigan. It was impossible not to, her scent, her little sounds, they all permeated the walls that separated us and jumbled my senses. She kept sniffling. She was crying.

  I wasn’t capable of remedying a situation like that so, instead, I made myself remain in the back office. I wasn’t her hero. I was no one to her.

  5

  Kerrigan

  Sharing a bathroom with any man could be a challenge, but sharing a bathroom with a handful of men who regularly shifted into massive polar bears was truly an experience. I had to clean the place before I showered. The thought of Alexei using the shower before I did made me cringe. Like the rest of the guys in the unit, he was all male and I tried not to let my mind wander to the pastimes he might have indulged in while enjoying his bathroom time. And allowing myself to think about Dmitry and I sharing the same shower stall, albeit at different times, was a definite no-go.

  I went straight home as soon as my shift ended. No one else was home, so I was able to snag the bathroom for myself. After scrubbing it, I set my stuff up inside and then took a nice, long shower. I took my time washing my hair and shaving, using the shower as therapy to wash the day away. When I was finished, I moisturized and brushed my teeth before wrapping a towel around me tightly and opening the door.

  Dmitry stood in the hall just outside the bathroom, his mouth slightly ajar. He looked as though he was in a trance as his eyes traveled down my body and back up to my face.

  I felt myself blush from head to toe and wasted no time side stepping him to get away from him. Besides still feeling humiliated about the earlier work incident, I was in a towel in front of the man I couldn’t stop crushing on. I wanted to crawl in a hole and never come out. I hurried into my room, slamming the door behind me, then leaned against it and blew out a rough breath.

  Barely a second passed before someone knocked at my door. “Sorry. I, uh, just needed the bathroom.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and covered my face with my hands. “No problem.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  I groaned and pushed away from the door. Why was it impossible to get Dmitry off my mind? I tried as I looked through my clothes deciding what to wear, but the effort was futile. It wasn’t the gentle scolding he’d given me at the office that kept playing through my head, either. It was the sizzling look he’d given me just then as his eyes had devoured me in the hallway.

  Did he find me attractive? Maybe a little? As hot as he was, he could have any supermodel in the world. He probably had. There was no way he was attracted to a skinny four-eyed woman with no hips and itty bitty titties.

  I chose an emerald green maxi dress that fell to my ankles and sported a halter top with a lowcut back. I hadn’t worn it for a few years, but it was the sexiest dress I owned and it complimented my black hair and the slight yellowish undertones of my complexion.

  Once I had it on, I ran my hands over the lines of my panties. Eww, that wouldn’t do. Thinking of the heroines in my stories, and feeling a little wild and uninhibited, I slipped off my panties. I pretended Dmitry did find me attractive, that when his eyes had raked over me out in the hall, he’d been memorizing how I looked—fresh from the shower wearing nothing but a towel—to use as fodder for his spank bank. My thoughts easily escalated from there into erotica land, dreaming up and plotting out ten different scenarios.

  Not wanting to waste the creative juices, I sat down and my pen flew over the paper as started quickly jotting the ideas down. Before I knew it, the sun had set and someone was knocking on my door.

  I sat back. The notebook in front of me was filled with scenes that should’ve made me blush. Instead, I was all hot and bothered. Light beads of sweat had formed between my breasts and I felt almost dizzy with arousal. It was insane, but Dmitry was a helluva muse.

  When I opened the door, Hannah stood on the other side with a friendly grin. She took one look at me and whistled. “Well, look at you.”

  I fanned myself with my hands and smiled back at her, the stress from the early part of my day pretty much forgotten. “Ready?”

  She nodded. “What were you doing in there? You look dewy. Normally, as a non-shifter I’m practically frostbitten in this house. More blue than dew, you know?”

  I laughed. I did know. “I was just doing a little writing. So, where are we going tonight?”

  She gave me an inquisitive look, but let it go.
“Mimi’s Cabana. It’s a little tiki bar on the east side of the island. Mimi makes the best margaritas in Florida, I swear.”

  The door across the hall opened and Dmitry stepped out. When he gazed over at me, his eyes did that smoldery thing again. I looked away quickly, instantly aware of the fact that I was pantiless, and it was too late to run back into my room and change.

  “Hey, Dmitry. We’re heading over to Mimi’s Cabana for a girl’s night out. Doesn’t Kerrigan look stunning?”

  I didn’t wait to hear his answer, instead racing down the stairs to the first floor as fast as I could and stumbling down the last two. Before I fell flat on my face, I was caught by a rough grip on my upper arms. My head snapped around. Dmitry, quick as lightning, had slipped past Hannah to catch me.

  He was closer to me than he’d ever been—touching me for Christ’s sake—and my body responded in the extreme. His eyes were almost completely black, pupils dilated. His nostrils flared and his grip on my arms tightened.

  “Whoa! Way to be fast on your feet, D.” Hannah moved past us and blew out a sharp breath. “She almost snapped her neck there.”

  I was suddenly aware of the moisture pooling between my thighs, my heaving chest, and my tightening nipples. I was in a heightened state of arousal and wanted to climb Dmitry like he was a tree. My throat was dry so I licked my lips and raised my eyes to his.

  He just set me on my feet and stepped away, though. “Careful.”

  I deflated. I was a mess.

  Hannah rested her hand on my shoulder and grunted. “You’ve got it bad, sister.”

  Was I that obvious? I dropped my face into my hands and groaned. “I need a drink.”

  6

  Dmitry

  “Fucking hell.” I walked straight out of the house and down to the ocean, stripping out of my clothes along the way. I waded into the water and, once I was far enough out, shifted.