Bear to the Rescue (Bear Claw Security Book 3) (8 page)

But she knew she wasn’t safe on her own.

“Thanks for working at the front desk with Carrie,” Bronson said. “I feel better knowing you two are with Herc.”

She shrugged. “As long as I have a computer, I can work anywhere.”

They got into the elevator and were silent as it went down. When it dinged and opened at the garage level, she took a step forward and then stopped. She could still remember the last time she’d come out here after work and how someone had been waiting.

What would she have done if Bronson hadn’t been there?

And what if this person kept hiding in shadows, not giving them any chance to make headway on catching them?

She couldn’t just stay with Bronson forever.

She felt a gentle hand on her shoulder, warming her and calming her pounding heartbeat.

“Hey, I’m here. It’s okay. I won’t let anything happen.” She looked up to see Bronson watching her with a gentle expression. He really was the handsomest man she’d ever seen.

All the more reason to be careful.

His blond hair was tousled, like he’d been running his hands through it, and she noticed little stress lines at the sides of his eyes. She reached up to brush his hair back, ignoring the elevator doors that kept trying to close on them.

“You okay?” she asked, thinking about him rather than herself for the first time. It was an uncomfortable feeling. “You seem stressed.”

“I am,” he said. “I’m used to fighting the worst men in the world. But that’s out in the field. I’m not used to the type of men that hide behind screens, that attack when no one’s around. I don’t know what to do against cowards.”

She sighed, pulling his arm to tug him forward. “It’s okay. Hopefully, at some point, they’ll come out.”

“Well, I don’t want them to threaten you,” he said. “I don’t know how else to make them go away.”

She threaded her arm through his, linking them at the elbow, and he looked down at her with a surprised look. He was wearing a blue dress shirt under a black jacket and had black slacks on. She liked the way he dressed for work every day but sort of looked forward to seeing him get into jeans and a tee shirt again.

“It’s not your job to make them go away,” she said. “And if they’re the kind of assholes I think they are, hopefully they’ll go away on their own. When they see they can’t scare me.”

He nodded but didn’t look convinced. “What do you want for dinner tonight? Want me to cook?”

“I’d rather get takeout,” she said. “I mean, I don’t want to cause you more work.”

“I love cooking,” he said. “Come on. Let me cook. As a thanks for last night.”

She flushed and pushed back to look at him. “Excuse me? A thank you?”

He blinked and bit his full lower lip, as if realizing he’d said something wrong. “I just meant… I had a wonderful time. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

She swallowed. This whole thing between them was so weird. “I guess so. I guess you can cook. But don’t get weird ideas.”

“Like sex?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows. “Is that a weird idea?”

She punched his arm lightly. “No, a weird idea would be thinking we’re going to play house forever. Sex is a totally normal idea. I already said that was fine.”

He shrugged. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.” He reached out and tucked one of her curls behind her ear, making her shudder. She almost wished she didn’t have such unruly curls so he wouldn’t always have an excuse to do that. “You’re the type a man wants to lock down.”

“Right,” she said. “A surly computer genius with stalkers. Sure.”

He laughed. “No. A sassy computer genius who stands up for what’s right, is great in the bedroom, and doesn’t take crap from anyone.”

She exhaled and finally smiled with him. “All right, big guy, you can cook.”

He reached out and grabbed her hand, keeping it in his and threading their fingers together. She thought about pulling back but just left it there.

He had a way of making even intimate things she usually would have shied away from feel comfortable, even casual.

“Okay,” he said, pulling her toward his black car. “I’m going to blow your mind.”

She sighed and let him drag her along, knowing what he said was probably going to be true in more ways than one.

The bear in her was already growling.

She was hungry but for more than just dinner.

And if Bronson cooked something amazing, it would probably be that much harder to keep her hands off him.

B
ronson got
to work cooking dinner as soon as they were home. Regan settled at the counter with a laptop while Bronson busied himself pulling pans out of the cupboards and setting up ingredients all around him.

“Whatcha making?” Regan asked, leaning forward to peek.

He kept his wide back between her and his mixing bowl. “Nope, no peeking. It’s a surprise.”

She had to admit he looked gorgeous in his apron, with his shirtsleeves rolled up to bare giant, muscled forearms. Bronson truly made a formidable bodyguard, one worth any amount of pay most likely.

But as he hummed to himself and cracked eggs, she loved that she was seeing this other side of him.

Here, in his home, being happily domestic, he was the opposite of the playboy she’d thought him when they met. When she’d first walked into Bear Claw Security, he’d given her his classic Hollywood grin that probably melted all other women to a puddle of lust.

But for her, it had just been blaring warning signals.
Warning: this man could make you lose your heart. Warning: he’s not the type to keep.

Not that she was the type to keep either. She was a workaholic with a small apartment and a penchant for taking jobs that didn’t pay well. She couldn’t cook boxed macaroni if her life depended on it, and she didn’t know how to keep house either.

She’d make a mess of the perfect life he was living.

Then again, looking around the beautiful house, she guessed any life this lonely might not be perfect. It clearly wasn’t the type of place you brought women to play around. It was pristine and everything about it screamed family.

Perhaps because Bronson had left his, he was looking to start another.

“So when are you going to tell me why you ran away from your family?”

He looked over his shoulder with a smirk. “When are you going to tell me why you don’t want a mate?”

She sighed. “I guess I’ll tell you that if you tell me about your family.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she heard the sizzling of something in a pan. “I don’t know. I don’t know why you want to know.”

She shrugged and took a cookie off the plate he’d set out for her while she was waiting. “I don’t know why you want to know why I don’t want a mate.”

He set down his spatula with a clang and turned to her, blond hair falling over his face, handsome features twisted in frustration. “Yes, you do. You know damn well why.”

She looked at him innocently. “I do?”

“Yes,” he said, pinning her with an intense glare that looked similar to the way he’d looked at her during sex. The thought of it filled her with warm anticipation.

Mine
, the bear in her said.

“I just… I don’t know,” she stuttered. “I guess it’s just the kind of family I would have killed for. I had to do a lot on my own and it didn’t go so well.”

“I thought as much,” he said, turning back to the food with hunched shoulders. “I thought the only reason she wouldn’t want a bear for a mate is if she saw one do a bad job of it.” He looked back at her. “Was it your dad?”

She nodded, her stomach beginning to twist uncomfortably at the memory of it. “All right. But if I’m going to talk about this, then we’re going to discuss your family right after.”

He was quiet for a moment and then nodded. “Fine. We can talk about it after.”

“Yeah,” she said as he went back to cooking. “So I had two bear shifters for parents. I was young when they were together, but even then, I could see things weren’t working. They were from different worlds. He was from this rich family, and she was from the mountains. When it was hot, it was hot, but when they were cold…” She shuddered as she remembered the clanging of thrown pots and pans. “Anyway, I believe Mom wanted to work things out. But Dad left her. Left both of us. I guess at first, I was relieved because there was no more fighting.”

Bronson turned the stove to low and turned back to her with folded arms, listening intently. It did something to her to see him watching her with such caring. No one had ever seemed so interested in her life, and she didn’t know quite how to deal with it. A part of her wanted to just grab him and run into the bedroom, but she knew what was happening right now might be even more important than that.

She also knew she used sex to get away from emotion.

“So what did your mom do then?” he asked.

“She went back to school,” Regan said. “Well, she tried. Dad was supposed to pay alimony and child support.” She shrugged. “But he stopped. Mom took him to court. He won.” She tapped her fingers on the granite of Bronson’s counter. “He had more money. Apparently, even the house we lived in was his. We were evicted.”

Bronson swore under his breath, and his blue eyes flashed angrily. “You’ve got to be kidding. You mean he left your mom
and
took your house?”

“I didn’t know people could just stop caring like that,” Regan said quietly. “I guess at first, I thought it was a fluke. But as my mom moved on, the pattern kept happening. My mom liked bears, always picked another shifter. I kept hoping, with every man she found, this time we’d have a home. But, no. They were never reliable. They cheated, found other women.” She shrugged. “Plus, as I got older, some of them started to notice me. Well, one in particular.”

Bronson went quiet and still, his handsome face frozen. “What do you mean? You were a child.”

“Well, I mean when I was like fourteen.”

His mouth grew even sterner. “That is a child.”

She shrugged. “Not to some people. Anyway, I had to get out. I asked Mom to leave, but she wouldn’t. She was almost… addicted I guess. To these men. Around then is when I started getting really into computers. It was a way of escaping.”

“Did he ever…?”

“Not successfully,” Regan said. “But I saw it in his eyes some nights, and when he’d come over and take my arm, I’d run away. Back to my computers.” She looked up at him. “You know, there are so many things you can learn all on your own. Before I was even a sophomore in high school, I was already a programmer. It was just a practice sport.”

“So when did you leave?”

“I was emancipated at fifteen,” she said. “Not that I needed to have bothered. My mother wasn’t what you would call maternal.” She sighed. “Maybe I’d be the same. Maybe it’s just bear shifters. You’ve seen them in the wild…”

“Or maybe bear shifters are half people, and the people part of them determines just how much of an ass they are. Because people have a choice to be good, Regan. A lot of them just don’t bother.”

“You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” she said quietly, exhausted from having to talk about her past.

“I worked in Special Forces,” he said. “With a lot of guys that had a rough go of it. I mean, as a leader, it was my job to understand them. To figure out what they needed from me emotionally and why. With battle-hardened men, that wasn’t exactly easy.” He did something on the stove and then turned back to her. “Anyway, between that and working at Bear Claw, yeah, I guess you could say I’ve been exposed to some of the worst elements of humanity. But so have you. Like those revenge porn guys you upset. Men like that make me insanely angry.”

She saw red moving up his neck and the tight way he was holding his body and realized she had somehow made him angry.

“What’s wrong?” she said. “Did I say something?”

He shook his head and turned away from her, leaning on the rail of the oven. “No. I just… can’t stand hearing that you’ve been treated so much worse than you deserve. Your family… should have treasured you. I don’t understand a man that wouldn’t take care of his kids, let alone throw them out on the street. And more than that, I don’t understand a man who would come on to a preteen. Or a woman who wouldn’t care about her daughter.” He sighed hoarsely. “I mean, I guess I’m used to hearing about the worst of humanity, but it’s different when it’s someone you care about.”

She bit her lip, shocked by his statement, and he turned around to look at her with serious eyes.

“I can see why you don’t think well of bears,” he said. “I know from experience it’s hard to think well of people, shifters or not. I don’t even know how to explain what happened to you.” He crossed over to the counter, leaned on it with his elbows, and looked into her eyes.

She could feel the warmth moving between them, the intimacy that seemed to be ramping up every hour they were together.

“But I know one thing. If you were mine, I’d never hurt you. Never do anything like that.”

She nodded at him. “I’m sure you’d take care of whoever you were with. I just don’t think it can be me.”

He stood up with a huff. “So you say.” He sent her a sneaky glance. “But we’ll see how you feel after you taste the best pancakes in the entire world.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “You think sex can’t convince me, but pancakes can?”

His blue eyes darkened as he lowered his lids slightly and leaned forward again. “I’m hoping to use a combination.”

She blinked as lust rolled through her like wind rushing through trees on a mountain. She tried to remember what she was supposed to be thinking or saying as she registered the proximity of his body, the nearness of his perfect lips. She looked from them to his beautiful eyes, like a sunny day on the ocean.

She licked her lower lip slowly as he watched her with hot eyes.

“All right,” she said. “I guess I better try those pancakes.”

B
ronson tried
to ignore the stirring in his pants as Regan let out another moan at the taste of his pancakes.

He shifted position and stabbed into his own, but even though they were amazing, the taste of them was nothing compared to the taste of her he’d had the previous night.

He chewed slowly, watching her face contort in pleasure with each bite.

He wanted to give her pleasure forever, whether it was feeding her, protecting her, or sexing her; he couldn’t imagine not being able to watch those green eyes roll back in ecstasy or that caramel skin flush in pleasure or those curls damp from rolling around together.

When she finally finished her pancakes, she sat back in her chair and looked at him with a glazed expression. “Damn, you were right about the pancakes. They make a girl want to get downright domestic.”

He grinned. “A man can hope.”

Then she straightened in her chair and said the words he’d been dreading. “Now tell me about your family. A deal’s a deal.”

“Sure you don’t want more pancakes?” he said, starting to rise. “I made extra.”

She reached across and grabbed him by the shirt to tug him down. “Not so fast, big guy. It wasn’t exactly easy to talk about my shit, but I did. So now your turn.”

He sighed and slumped into his chair. She looked gorgeous in the evening light coming from the slits in the blinds on the windows all around the kitchen. He wished he could take her out on the back porch and watch the evening light stream over her beautiful dark hair with its little highlights.

To him, she was already precious, and he hated anyone had treated her as anything but.

But talking about his family was something he never did. With anyone. Even Limes knew it was a hot button and a sure way to get Bronson riled up.

And Bronson was aware other people saw his family as perfect, the best situation one could hope for. Respected, rich, pure-blooded.

Only Bronson knew what went on beneath all of that. Corruption. Greed. Elitism. Breeding.

“What do you want to know about my family?” he asked, feeling his whole body tense in response. He took a couple deep breaths to calm himself.

“Wow, they messed you up, didn’t they?” she asked softly, looking him over.

He swallowed. It was weird how she already saw that after so little time with him. “Yeah. They did.”

“What did they do?” she asked.

“I don’t want to talk about that. Anything but that.”

“Why did you leave?” she asked. “Can I ask that? I mean, other than that, I don’t know what to ask.”

He swallowed. “I just… hated it there. I didn’t like their assertions that we were better than others. I didn’t like their treatment of people they felt were beneath them. I didn’t like what they expected me to do with my life.”

“Run a company?” she asked. “Enjoy unimaginable privilege?”

“Privilege that came with a price,” he said. “One I wasn’t willing to pay.”

“Okay,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Then what should I ask?” She let out a long breath. “Do you have siblings?”

“One,” he said quietly. “A brother.”

“Do you still talk to him?” she asked.

“No. He’s still connected to the family. He doesn’t know about what happened.”

“Younger brother?” she asked.

“Yes,” Bronson said shortly.

He saw frustration in her face but didn’t know what to tell her. This was just who he was when it came to his family. Clipped. Short. Unhappy.

“How old were you when you left home?” she asked.

“Eighteen,” he said. “That’s when I joined the army. And that became my home.” He sighed. “Honestly, sometimes I do miss my brother, but he’s so caught up in that world he’d never see why I did what I did. Plus, my father never wanted the same thing for him that he did for me.” Bronson shrugged. “Maybe one day we’ll catch up again, but not now.”

“Maybe you should go talk to him,” she said.

“I can’t risk that,” Bronson said. “For now, I trust him not to tell my father where I am. But if he were to find out…”

Regan shook her head. “That’s fucked up. You think they’d come after you? I’m really not getting this.”

“They wanted to breed me,” Bronson said, standing angrily and setting down his napkin. “They had someone all picked out, and I was just supposed to go do my duty. I guess you, being someone who doesn’t want to settle down, couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t want that. I guess this is the part where you call me a hopeless romantic. Where you say I just fucked up and ran off when I shouldn’t have.” He folded his arms and dared her to say something.

But for the first time, he felt she was seeing the man beneath the muscle. The vulnerable one who’d been brokenhearted when he’d found out he was sold off for nothing but his blood. The teenager who didn’t understand what’d been happening to him.

She swallowed. “What do you mean
breed
?”

“I mean they’d found a woman who wanted pure-blooded bear shifter offspring and sold me off to her.” Bronson shrugged. “She was ready to make a powerful investment in my father’s company in exchange. It was just business. And in our world, to mate with anyone not of pure blood is catastrophe anyway.” He blinked rapidly, suddenly feeling like the room was too hot. Like it was spinning.

“I’d already hated my father growing up,” Bronson said, unable to stop the words flowing out of him like lava, scalding him as they went. “He sent me away to boarding schools when I was young, and when I returned home, I hated being there. And my brother hated me for being gone. My guess is he had to deal with more of my dad’s coldness.”

“And your mom?” Regan asked.

“Absent,” Bronson replied. “For all I know, she was just someone bred to my dad for the purpose of cubs.” He scowled. “I’m just giving you an awesome impression of bear shifters, aren’t I? But I guess I should just keep going. I shouldn’t stop now.” He paced the kitchen anxiously. “Even if you look at me differently at the end of this, I don’t think I can not tell you.” He paced to the window and looked through the slats at the yard behind him.

“When I was done with school, my father told me. I was shocked. I said no. I was still stupid enough to think I had some control, some leverage. After all, I’d been raised to take over his company. I thought I was… important in some way. Even though, being at school, I’d learned things that made me think I was going to change how the family did things. I was going to make things more egalitarian. I wasn’t going to let my family feel above others.”

“Then what happened?” Regan asked, looking a little pale.

Bronson shrugged. “They drugged me and delivered.”

Regan went quiet. “Your dad did?”

“And his workers.” Bronson clenched his jaw. “I don’t know if anyone else in the family knows. Probably my brother doesn’t.”

“So they delivered, but you got away?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I escaped. Even drugged, the bear in me wasn’t totally out. I could sense something was wrong when I woke up at a new house. There was a woman standing over me. Called me her fiancé.” He laughed hoarsely. “What a joke. I knew then my father had betrayed me.”

“What did you do?”

“I told her no. I thought maybe she’d been forced into this, too, and we could both get out of it. But she was older than me and quite sure she wanted it,” he said.

“What did she do?” Regan asked angrily. “She didn’t…?” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.

“No, I fought. I was huge, even then, and she had guys try to hold me down, but the bear in me was furious. I guess you’ll make fun of me for being romantic, but that woman was not my mate, and I knew it.”

“What happened?” Regan asked, her hand at her throat, her whole body clenched in tension.

It warmed him a little that she even seemed worried for him. She’d never looked at him that way before.

But when this was over, was he going to regret telling her?

“I ran,” he said. “To a friend’s house. I didn’t tell them what happened. I think, as a guy, I was confused. I wasn’t sure anyone would feel bad for me. You know, guys are just supposed to want sex. But I didn’t. Not with her.” He gave Regan a rueful smile. “I guess you could say I’m the opposite of a player. I’m almost lame in my lack of play.”

She shook her head. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m sorry I misjudged you.”

“We’re certainly a pair, aren’t we?” he asked, slumping in his chair again, feeling exhausted from talking. “Anyway, after that, I didn’t talk to my dad again. I enlisted at eighteen and never looked back. Except a couple times when I checked in on my brother to make sure my dad didn’t pull the same thing with him. I might have sent him a note detailing what would happen to him if he did.”

“I see,” Regan said, looking as exhausted by hearing the tale as Bronson had been from telling it.

He wondered if she was disgusted by him. What he’d just admitted made him look weak, made him feel sick.

But to his surprise, she stood and walked over to him. He started to stand to face her, but she put both hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down into his chair.

“Sit,” she said, and he did. “Good. This is a one-time thing, but I’m going to make you feel better.”

He nearly made a snarky remark, but then he felt her hands dig into his tired muscles and let out a groan of relief. “Regan…”

She laughed. “Yeah, I know. I’m pretty good at this.”

He sighed and relaxed into her hands, loving the way his troubles and worries melted away as she touched him, accepted him. He could just imagine more nights like this, together at his house.

If he told her that now, she’d just chide him for being overly romantic. Maybe he was. Maybe he liked the idea of there being one mate for everyone. One person to spend the rest of your life with.

One person you could trust no matter what.

“Regan,” he said quietly as his muscles relaxed under her strong, capable hands. “Let me do something for you, too.”

“You already have, silly. You trusted me and let me into your house, protected me and told me your secrets. Even your deepest, darkest ones,” she said.

“I don’t know about that,” he muttered.

“I just… Let me do this for you,” she said.

“All right,” he relented, resting back and closing his eyes. “If you say so.”