Bear With Me (BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance)
Read Bear With Me (BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance) Online
Authors: Jasmine White
BEAR WITH ME
A BBW Paranormal Romance By..
JASMINE WHITE
Summary
A routine camping trip for Helen and her mother turns into drama when Helen's mother goes missing without a trace.
Enter the hunky and handsome David. He is the forest's resident Werebear and he advises Helen comes with him if she ever wants to see her mother alive again.
But can she trust this mysterious stranger? Is he really planning to help her or does he have motives of his own?
Copyright Notice
Jasmine White
Bear With Me © 2014, Tia Archer
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.
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I pulled up alongside my mother’s house and plaster
ed a smile on my face. I checked my smile quickly in the rear-view mirror for authenticity. It wasn’t perfect – there was something in my eyes that refused to cooperate with my lips – but it would have to do. Now to go inside and see if she notices my fake grin.
For the hundredth time that day, I asked myself exactly
why
I had thought it a good idea to suggest that my mother and I spend the weekend together in a small tent, in an isolated part of the forest, with only each other for company.
Then for the hundredth time that day, I told myself sternly that it was madness. I was as crazy as she was. I should make up an excuse to get out of it somehow – I was sick, I had suddenly remembered a deadline I had forgotten about,
anything!
Then I could turn my car around and drive a hundred miles in the opposite direction.
The lace curtains in the front window twitched and caught my attention. There she stood - her round, pale face peeking hesitantly in the tiny crack in the curtains. Seeing me, she wiggled her fingers in the tiniest, most inconspicuous of waves, and grinned broadly. The stark relief on her face made me cringe inwardly and, for the hundredth time that day, I yelled at myself for being so damned selfish. Despite the endless phone calls I had made, reassuring her over and over again that yes I
would
be picking her up on Friday at four pm, she had still doubted me. It was as though she had read my mind and knew how much I
didn’t
want to spend time with her.
But, at the end of the day, she was my mother. She drove me nuts. She made me question my own sanity. She made me want to scream and tear out my hair. But, in the end, I love her and I would do anything for her.
Baring my teeth into an even wider smile, I waved back, braced myself, and opened my door to welcome her. Little did I know this would be an interesting weekend in more ways then one.
*
She dipped her head in that apologetic little bow she always did, hesitated, then leaned up to kiss me on the cheek. Her lips were cold and hard, and it was all I could do not to wince.
Seventy-two hours and counting,
I told myself with gritted teeth.
“
You’re looking well,” Mom told me earnestly, pulling me into the lounge. “It feels like forever since I last saw you…” her voice trailed off in reproach.
“
Yeah well.” I shrugged awkwardly. “I’ve been busy with school. Sorry. Anyway, I figured this would give us time for a decent catch up. Just you and me, right?” My own voice – bright and fake – was painful to my own ears.
But Mom didn’t seem to notice. She squeezed my hand tightly, delighted with my enthusiasm. “A proper catch up,” she echoed, smiling at the feel of the words on her tongue. “Yeah, it’s been long overdue. I’ve been looking forward to it for ages.”
Every word sounded like a reproach; every word a criticism of me as a daughter. I could feel my head beginning to ache with the strain of it already. It would almost be better if she yelled at me – telling me how much she hated me for not doing more, for not being
better
, for being the selfish bitch that I knew I was. Anything was more bearable than this pathetic, scraping gratitude. It was like she was a whipped dog, begging for scraps of affection, no matter how sparse. I wished I had never come. I wished that I had the courage to say ‘fuck it’ and just leave.
I glanced past her to the old, blue plastic clock mounted above the door.
Seventy-one hours and fifty-five minutes to go…
I was pretty sure that this was going to be the longest, most excruciating weekend of my life.
*
My car was so full, with the door of the trunk practically straining from the ridiculous amount of camping gear I managed to stuff into it. I can feel every single bump in the road on our way to the Vanderwhacker Mountain Wild Forest. I chose our destination based on my roommate’s recommendation – apparently she’d been going there every summer without fail for the past decade or so. I figured, if she can stand to spend time with her whole family with going completely stir crazy
and
want to keep going back, it must be something pretty special.
So far on our road trip, Mom was doing a pretty decent job of driving me mad. We’d been sitting in the car for two hours straight and she had not shut up for a single second. And it wasn’t interesting, two-way conversation, like you’d expect from your mother who you only saw once in a blue moon – she never once asked me anything about myself, about school or my friends or guys – it was just two solid hours of inane babble. She seemed to take great pleasure in providing a running commentary of our trip, like a broken discount GPS, pointing out everything from gas prices every time we passed a station to reading the number plates of the other cars around us, as if somewhere it contained crucial information.
Never had I been so grateful for the Delilah Show.
Everything was pitch black by the time we turned off onto the gravel road which lead us far away from the clamour of the highway and down into the secluded valley where our home would be for the next few days. As the rumble of cars grew quieter, so did the hum of silence thicken around us, broken only by the odd howl of coyotes and the eerie hooting of owls sounding high above us from the canopies of trees over our heads and the frost-capped mountains in the near distance. Even though it was no later in the year than mid-October, this far north it was practically winter. Thank god for thick fleece-lined sleeping bags is all I can say!
Even my mother had finally fallen quiet, her eyes wide as she peered out of her window into the darkness – perhaps as stunned as I that we had undertaken such an absurd trip.
Camping in fall…
even the voice in my head was derisive and disbelieving.
But we were there now and by god! We were going to make the best of it. Even if we killed ourselves in the process.
Mom hovered a little way off, her arms wrapped tightly around her thick middle in a useless attempt at warding off the night’s sharp chill as, by myself, I hauled all our equipment out of the trunk and began assembling the small pyramid of a tent – a relic from my school days when my class would be dragged out on the annual camping trip in a bid to make us well-rounded and self-sufficient individuals. My fingers were numb and stinging within seconds handling the thick metal poles. None of your new-fangled fibreglass nonsense for us! We were going old school here! Speaking of which…
“
Hey,” I called out over my shoulder to my mother, who was still doing her startled deer impression. “Go and find something we can make a fire with if you want to be useful.”
She hastened to obey, almost tripping over herself in her eagerness to do something that would make me happy. It was
excruciating
, the way she would grovel for praise. It was definitely for the best that she had never managed to have a man in her life, he would be able to trample all over her. For the millionth time, I gave sincere thanks that I was
not
like her.
But, still, I kept one ear sharpened for her as she shuffled off into the forest, quickly swallowed by the density of the trees, listening out for the crunch of paws that might signal danger. My friend had assured me that she had never come across a wolf or a bear or anything of the sort in all the years she had come here. The fiercest animal she had ever seen had been a fox snapping at the heels of a rabbit. But, nevertheless, I didn’t want to get complacent. You only get one mother in your lifetime and, no matter how annoying mine was, I wasn’t about to lose her to a four-legged freak.
*
The silence around our makeshift camp fire was almost tangible. I sat silent and fuming, staring avidly at the flaming lump of molten marshmallow on the end of my two pronged stick – far beyond edible at that point – trying and failing to not feel my mother’s eyes boring into me, desperate for me to break the unbearably awkward silence which was growing thicker and thicker with every wasted moment. Already, even this early, I could not summon the energy to force the conversation. Already, I could not bring myself to be bothered. Instead I tortured my marshmallow and bottled up my boiling guilt, seething silently until every muscle in my body felt like it had been sculpted out of cement.
“Anything bothering you, Nellie?” my mother asked me in her soft, mousy voice.
“
I told you already,” I snapped back, rounding on her. “
Don’t
call me that! My name is
Helen
, remember?
You’re
the one who called me that; you could at least bother to use it!” I was being unnecessarily cruel, I knew it – I was painfully aware of it with every barbed word that sprung from my lips – and when she flinched and ducked her head, cowed, there was nothing else I could do but apologize. “Sorry,” I muttered, looking back into flames and letting the heat burn my eyes in some sort of self-punishment. “Sorry… I don’t mean to snap.”
“
It’s okay-“
“
No.” I shook my head vehemently. “No it really isn’t. I don’t know why I’m like this. I really don’t want to be. Especially not to you.”
And it was true. Of anyone I had ever come across in all the twenty-two years of my life, she was the one who deserved the most and received the least. She had never spoken a single angry word to me – even though I’m certain I deserved a thousand of them – she had never been bitchy with any one of the countless people who had screwed her over. She possessed the kind of unlimited patience that I had always been crazy jealous of but could never
ever
hope to achieve. She was amazing. She deserved so much more than me.
Shaking my head, I tossed my gooey stick into the middle of bonfire and shoved my hands deep into my pockets. “I think I’m going to turn in,” I muttered, addressing the worn toes of my boots. “It’s been a pretty long day…” It was the lamest excuse but, of course, she didn’t call me out on it.
“Okay,” she said placidly. “I’m going to pop back to the car. Don’t want to forget my meds. That would certainly ruin the mood…” Her voice trailed away in an awkward titter.
I shrugged. “Sure. Do what you like. I’ll probably be asleep by the time you get back.”
“I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.”
I’m sure you will
, I thought to myself with clenched teeth. “Good night then.”
“
Good night, Nellie.”
Despite my certainty that I would fall asleep the moment my head hit the pillow, as soon as I had managed to find a reasonably comfortable place on the ground and had wriggled down into my sleeping bag all the tiredness I had felt deserted me and I was left wide awake and staring up at the crooked seam in the room of the tent, listening to the wind humming through the trees outside. I heard Mom throw sand on the embers of the fire and then felt the crackle of dead leaves and twigs next to my head as she passed by me on the way to the car.
I closed my eyes and counted backwards from a thousand, not wanting to be awake when she got back – I knew that I’d never be able to relax myself enough with her snuffling one foot away.
I was asleep before I reached seven hundred and fifty.