Bearly Loving: Foxhollow Den #2 (Alaskan Den Men Book 10) (3 page)

Samantha slapped a hand across her cleavage. Why didn’t people realize she hadn’t asked to be blessed in the boob department? Too embarrassed to argue further, she turned and pushed through the door.

On her way back to her room to hide until the mediation meeting, she noticed Carter sitting on the couch in the small entertainment room. On each side of him was a plastic bag filled with what looked like chips and candy bars. Good reason told her to ignore him, but Carter met her questioning gaze with one full of mirth. He lifted a candy bar to his lips and took a healthy bite.

A low growl rose from her diaphragm.

The jerk had taken all of the snacks out of the vending machine anticipating her bear hunger. He probably bribed the cook to shut down her attempts at scrounging up a pre-meal morsel. Both thoughts sounded ridiculous unless you lived in a town with the Wright brothers. She flipped him off and bounded up the stairs.

In order to get ahead of him she needed to shore up her game.

∞∞∞

The idea to raid the vending machine came to Carter after he’d hit the bottom of the stairs and overheard the front desk girl brag on the phone about her donut payment from Samantha. He’d also overheard the cook turn away a couple hoping for an early dinner. A cook who took the house rules seriously played right into his scheme. Enhanced hearing made the game he and Samantha played twice the fun. And it was definitely a game. One he intended to win. He could stand sleeping in the truck on the mattress made of worn foam—hell, he spent most of his time sleeping there anyway—but he knew werebears needed to eat every couple hours without fail. Their super-fast metabolisms depended on constant nourishment. He’d give Samantha another thirty minutes before she’d come begging him for a bag of greasy chips. Then he’d begin negotiations before they even made it to the mediator’s table.

His spot on the couch gave him a perfect view of the top of the stairs and the open hallway leading to the vending machine. He peeled back the wrapper on his candy bar and enjoyed the melty mixture of chocolate and caramel. Samantha’s door creaked open. It’d only been a few minutes, and disappointment that she’d given in a little too fast followed his last bite. He’d expected a little more of a fight from her.

Instead of coming down the stairs, she walked the length of the hallway to the vending machine and taped a piece of paper to the front. Without even giving him a glance, she stomped back to her room and slammed the door.

A couple passed by the entertainment room wearing expressions of long-suffering marital discord. He watched them ascend the stairs and walk to the end of the hallway. They stopped in front of the vending machine. Their expressions changed from exasperated to irritable as two pair of eyes landed on him.

The woman leaned over the railing and called down to Lisa who’d returned to her post at the front desk. The woman waved her up, and Lisa joined them in the hallway. She too read the note and turned a glare in his direction.

Uh oh
. Carter shoved his wrapper inside one of the plastic bags full of his paid-for yet still ill-gotten gains. He tied both bags and planned to retreat to his truck, but Lisa bounded back down the stairs with the speed of a rabid marten chasing a rabbit and caught him in the entryway.

The top of the petite woman’s head barely made it to his shoulders. The piece of paper in her hand had the words
the jerk on the couch has all the food
. “Did you empty the vending machine?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Hunger?” He took a defensive position.

Her eyes narrowed to angry slits. “Give me those bags right now.”

“I paid for all of this.”

“I will open the machine and refund your money, but this is unacceptable.” She placed her hands on her hips and leaned forward. “And selfish.”

He heard the creak of Samantha’s door. He willed himself not to look, but her giggling at his scolding forced his eyes upward. Nothing more than her head peeked around the corner of the stairs. Once he made eye contact, she winked at him. His hands tightened on the bags of food.
Damn that woman
.

There wasn’t a single argument that wouldn’t make him look like a complete asshole, so he handed one bag to Lisa. “I’m keeping this other bag for any late night snacking I have to do from my truck bed.”

He stormed out the front double doors and tossed the bag of snacks inside his truck. The muscles in the back of his neck and shoulders knotted. A native run would work off his frustration and help him to regroup. The deep forest surrounding the lodge probably wasn’t safe, but the need to shift and roar outweighed the concern of catching a bullet. The heady scent of wild roses and spruce trees filled the air.

He cracked his knuckles and followed a worn path not far from the parking lot. After making a sharp turn off the path he counted out one hundred paces. All he needed was a quick shift and roll in the dirt. Maybe he’d sharpen his claws and leave his mark on a couple of trees. He lifted his head high and sniffed again, using his bear senses to check for any humans in the area. Certain he was alone, he shucked his clothes and tossed them behind a nearby tree.

He shifted to bear form and stretched every muscle in his body. With a little over an hour left before the mediation meeting, he trotted farther into the forest, careful to count his steps. As a young bear, his brothers had delighted in the fact his internal GPS system failed on more than one occasion. He broke into a small clearing and decided he’d gone far enough. After he dropped to the ground and rolled on his back for a good ten minutes, he counted his way back to the tree with his clothes.

Except there were no clothes.

He sniffed hard to his left and right to be sure he’d come back to the same spot where he’d started. A silver wrapper lying near a tree caught his attention, and he shifted back to human. He picked it up and twisted it between his fingers. Samantha’s familiar sweet scent stuck to the wrapper. Sloping handwriting formed one word:
Gotcha
.

He lifted his head and barked a laugh that echoed off the tops of the trees. Her pranks could give his younger twin brothers a run for their money. From what he’d heard, the boys had needled her and Bobbie mercilessly before Grant stepped in and put an end to their pranks. He couldn’t muster an ounce of anger at her payback.

The walk of shame back to the parking lot would give him time to think up a new strategy. He stayed along the tree line just on the other side of the trail. One or two people walked by for an afternoon hike, but luck stayed on his side, and nobody noticed him. The last thing he needed was to be arrested for indecent exposure. As he came to the edge of the parking lot, he noticed his truck had been moved up to sit in front of the main entrance. Samantha lay on the hood in cut off shorts and the button-up shirt she’d stolen from his clothes pile in the woods. He had no choice but to walk to the front of the building with all his best parts dangling in the warm summer breeze.

Samantha glanced in his direction and gave him a finger wave.

He wasn’t gaining any traction in this prank-for-prank game. He needed to come up with something new and fast. With no other option available, he walked naked through the parking lot and refused to cover himself in the process. He stood in front of his truck with feet spread apart and arms crossed.

Samantha’s broad smile faded as her gaze drifted the length of his body. Splotches of red creeped up her pale neck and settled on her cheeks. She averted her eyes and stumbled off the hood of the truck, hitting the ground with a
whompf
. He strutted over to stand in front of her, and she scrambled from her knees to standing. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a Wright naked.”

She referred to the situation a few weeks ago when she and Bobbie helped his brothers out of a jam. Still, he’d heard the account from both his brothers, and neither mentioned a sudden nervousness on her part when they’d been left baring their attributes. Shifters didn’t do modesty much.

Samantha stood and looked everywhere but directly at him. “Not that I make a habit of that. I mean, seeing your brothers naked. Seriously, you can get your clothes now.”

He stepped closer and watched her breathing speed up and her fidgeting increase.

Samantha tossed him the keys to his truck. She turned and half-jogged through the front doors of the lodge. He’d seen it. A spark of something had darkened her eyes. And here he’d thought she didn’t harbor any of the attraction from their younger years. He crawled into the cab of his truck and dialed the hardware store on his cell.

His brother Ray answered on the fourth ring. “Wright’s Hardware.”

“Bro.”

“How’s it going?”

“Samantha is giving the twins a ridiculous amount of competition in the prank department.” He relayed the day’s events to his brother who in turn laughed.

“That’s more spunk than you bargained for, huh? I think you need to change tactics.”

“I’ll take any advice you have.”

“A honey trap. Use your Wright charm on her.”

“That’s not a tactic, and I’m a little disappointed you can’t come up with something that doesn’t include hooking up.” Carter rifled through his center console in search of a toothpick.

“Grant sexed up a Taylor, and now he’s got Bobbie under his thumb.”

“That’s not true. Bobbie owns Grant, and we all know that. And I’m not talking about sexing her up, either. No need to make my life complicated. But maybe I could take the edge off with a little charm. I just need something to give me the upper hand. I’m itching to get out of here already.” He couldn’t take it too far with Samantha, it wouldn’t be fair to hook up with the opposing side of a feud. But he trusted his instincts to know how far would be enough.

“Didn’t you date her years ago?”

“Yeah, but she’s changed since then. This isn’t the same girl from high school.” He’d really liked the girl he’d known from high school, but he’d be stupid not to admit this version of Samantha turned him on as well as kept his instincts in constant bear mode. Challenging.

“Well, good luck. Keep me posted.”

“Yeah, thanks for nothing.” Carter grabbed his shorts from the passenger seat and pulled out a T-shirt he found behind the seat. The alarm on his phone chimed. The mediation meeting started in five minutes. He rolled to the side to shove his legs into his shorts. The room key Lisa had given him earlier fell out of his pocket and onto the floorboard.

Carter scooped it up. No more childish pranks.

Samantha spread out two surveys, a couple of land descriptions, and the deeds in question on her side of the table. Dr. Holland cleared his throat and tapped his pen. Carter had three minutes to get his butt into a chair, or their meeting would be postponed. House rule number four required every mediation participant to be on time with zero room for excuses.

The medical tape across the bridge of Dr. Holland’s nose reminded her that they were already treading on shaky ground. She smiled, and he didn’t reciprocate, so she busied her hands with rearranging the order of the legal descriptions. Her dad wanted the entire five acres, yet he would allow the Wrights to keep an easement from the main road to their adjoining land. But he wanted them to pay for it. Hopefully, Carter’s agitation over the past few hours would make him want to head back to whatever rig he’d been hiding on before getting wrangled into the land feud. She had the documents prepared, and all he had to do was agree.

Samantha wanted the conflict between their families to be over so she could get back to focusing on the café. Donuts were so much more enjoyable than men.

Her mind wandered back to Carter emerging from the woods naked. The inner she-bear whose opinions she usually trusted had pushed forth a growl of approval.
Traitor
. Regular humans could never understand the dualities of a shifter. Two forces of nature trapped in one shape-shifting body. The past few months, she’d begun to wonder if her bear was off
-
center because all her other shifter friends were settled down and having cubs. The urge to mate and reproduce was a quality that the bear and human side of her definitely shared. And both were urges she planned to ignore. Being near a man she’d obsessed over as a teen didn’t help matters much.

With thirty seconds remaining, Carter sauntered into the room. Instead of taking a chair across the table from her, he sat beside her and scooted closer. Right before their elbows touched, he stopped.

“Shouldn’t you be on the other side?” she asked. The table had been set up with two chairs on her side, two chairs on the other, and Dr. Holland at the head. The placement of chairs couldn’t be more obvious. The opposing side sat on the
opposite
side.

“I figured it’d be easier if we shared the paperwork instead of passing it back and forth.” He reached for one of the pens sitting in a coffee cup, and his forearm brushed against hers. “Just like sharing the room.”

“But we aren’t sharing the room. You are going to sleep in the truck-house.”

“Ms. Lisa said you were fine with giving me a key, so I figured why not enjoy the comfort. Has something changed?” His raised eyebrow challenged her to disagree.

Dr. Holland cleared his throat. “What’s this about you two sharing a room?”

Samantha chewed the inside of her cheek. She didn’t want to out herself or Lisa for lying about the rooms. Carter’s demeanor suggested he was unruffled from the earlier prank, and it appeared he’d changed tactics. He wanted to make sure he looked like the good guy in front of Dr. Holland. Fine. She would out-nice him.

“Of course I don’t mind sharing with you. After all, our families are soon to be connected with Bobbie marrying Grant. You’re practically a cousin-in-law.” She sweetened her smile and turned it on Dr. Holland. “There was a little mix-up about the rooms, but it appears we’ve just settled it. That’s how easy this entire process is going to be, I promise. By tomorrow morning we’ll be signing the mediation agreement.”