Grizzly Flying High (Air Bear Shifters 1) (6 page)

Amanda frowned at him. He wasn’t making much sense. She got the feeling that he was trying to say something romantic, but she didn’t quite understand what. And he had a faraway look in his eyes, like there was so much more to his statement than what he was letting on. But Amanda didn’t want to be part of a guessing game, and she intended to stick to her plan of avoiding men for the time being.

“I’m sure you’ll be just fine,” Amanda said as she walked over to the flowerbed and picked up her discarded coffee mug. Thankfully, it didn’t look like it had broken, since the flowers had cushioned its fall. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to return this to the diner and take care of my bill.”

She walked past Sawyer with her head held high, and didn’t look back at him as she walked into the diner and let the door close behind her with a jangle of the bells. She ignored the looks of the diner patrons, who, no doubt, had been whispering about her since the moment Sawyer so unceremoniously carried her out.

When she reached the counter, she grabbed her purse, which was still sitting on her chair, and started digging in it for some cash.

“Everything okay?” Peter asked, his voice laced with genuine concern.

Amanda sighed as she set down a twenty dollar bill on the counter and then put her coffee mug on top of it to keep it in place.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. He’s just a friend of mine who’s going through a rough time,” Amanda said. Peter seemed satisfied with this explanation, and Amanda said goodbye to him, wishing him well on his fishing expeditions and thanking him for his company. Then she left the diner, holding her breath as she walked back outside. She half-expected Sawyer to be out there still, waiting for her so that he could interrogate her some more. But he was nowhere to be seen.

Amanda sighed, unsure of whether she was relieved or disappointed to find him gone. She started the short walk back to her hotel, glancing over her shoulder every few minutes in case he was still around. But he hadn’t followed her. He had taken her incredibly obvious hint and moved on.

Amanda let herself into her hotel room and flopped backwards onto the bed, staring up at the peeling paint on the cracked ceiling for several minutes. She chewed on her fingernail, trying to convince herself that she had done the right thing. She had made her choice, after all, to focus on herself for the time being. She should stick by that.

But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Sawyer really
was
having a rough time. She had seen the pained look in his eyes, and the way he looked at her as though he was pleading with her to somehow understand things he could not say. And his insistence that he needed her had seemed so earnest.

Amanda frowned and sat up. He was a big, tough guy. He could figure out his problems, whatever they were, on his own. She had her own issues to figure out. Amanda reached for the directory of Kodiak tour guides that the hotel had provided, and began to flip through it, doing her best to push Sawyer out of her mind once and for all.

Sawyer slammed the front door of Ben’s house shut, then winced as a painting in the living room fell off the wall from the force. Sawyer quickly walked over to inspect the painting and put it back on the hook, relieved that it wasn’t damaged. He should be more careful and keep his temper better under control. Ben had been so generous to let him stay here while he and his new bride were off honeymooning. The least Sawyer could do was not ruin his stuff.

Sawyer breathed in deeply and let out the breath slowly, trying to calm the angry feelings bubbling up within him. He knew he had no right to be upset with Amanda. He had, after all, been the one to walk away the other night. He didn’t know what had come over him when he saw her. It was obvious that she didn’t have anything romantic going on with the guy she was sitting next to at the diner. But when he had unexpectedly seen her sitting there in the middle of his favorite restaurant in Kodiak, he had wanted to show everyone in that crowded diner that she belonged to him—even though she didn’t.

Somehow, the best way he had come up with to do that was to act like a crazy, jealous boyfriend. Sawyer sank onto Ben’s couch and shook his head, frustrated with himself. He had tried his best to push her buttons on purpose, thinking that he would force her hand and she would admit she still wanted him. But the plan had backfired, and she had pretty much told him to get lost and that she never wanted to see him again.

Sawyer laughed out loud into the empty room, the sound coming out bitter and hollow. He was such an idiot when it came to all things romantic. He had finally found a woman who he felt he actually connected with, and he was apparently determined to make sure she hated him. Or thought he was crazy. Or both.

Not that it mattered much at the moment. Sawyer should be focusing on his clan, anyway. He had decided to come to Kodiak to get away from the rising tensions back home, and to focus on working out and keeping his mind calm for the big fight ahead. He had no doubt that he would beat Simon, but he still didn’t want to take the fight lightly. His clan deserved better than that.

And his clan deserved better than the pointless division Simon was stirring up among them. Sawyer didn’t take any of it personally. Well, he took Simon’s threats personally, but he didn’t extend that anger to his other clan members. He knew it was easy to get riled up emotionally by passionate speeches, and to forget the good things Sawyer had done for the clan. And, damn it, he had done a lot of good for them. He had led them through attacks from rival clans, and through threats of termination by crazy scientists. He had never so much as flinched in the face of danger. Why would he? He was an alpha, bound to protect his clan members no matter what the cost. Even if that cost ended up being his own life.

Simon didn’t understand the great responsibilities required of an alpha. He only saw the power and glory that came with the title. But that power and glory came at a great price. One of the costs for Sawyer had been forgoing his love life. Right now, Sawyer would love nothing more than to run after Amanda. He knew if he tried hard enough he could show her that he was the best man for her to be with. But doing that would drag him away from his current focus, which was to prepare to defend his title of alpha to the clan he loved more than anything. Loving a woman would have to wait.

Sawyer changed into workout clothes and then laced up his tennis shoes. He would spend the day working out. There was a gym not far from Ben’s house where he could get in several hours of weight training, and then, when he couldn’t stand to lift one more barbell, he would go for a run through the streets of Kodiak. He was going to spend the next few days making sure he was in the best shape of his life.

Sawyer let out a roar as he headed out the front door, adrenaline and anger filling his chest.

He wasn’t just going to defeat Simon. He was going to crush him.

* * *

Several hours later, Sawyer finally made his way out of the gym. He had spent the entire day pushing his muscles to the limit, only taking a brief break to grab food from the gym’s café and then sit in the sauna for a half hour after eating. He had seen the look several of the gym’s personal trainers had given him. It was a mixture of awe and disbelief. One had even approached him and asked if he was looking for a trainer, but Sawyer didn’t need someone telling him how to work out. He had been pushing his body to its limits his whole life, and he didn’t need a trainer to tell him how to do that. Especially not a human trainer, who didn’t understand how quickly his body would heal itself.

If a human had done the workout Sawyer had done today, that human would probably be unable to move for several days due to the soreness that would follow. But Sawyer’s muscles would repair themselves at lightning speed, and tomorrow he wouldn’t even feel the strain of the work he had done today. He would, however, see the increase in his strength.

And Sawyer wasn’t done working out yet. As he closed the front door of the gym behind him, he broke into a run. He didn’t have any plans for how long or how far he would run. He just planned to keep going until he was too bored or too tired to continue. The cool evening air felt refreshing after the hours he had spent in the stuffy gym, and Sawyer picked up his pace as he ran toward downtown Kodiak. He jogged along the waterfront, then ran past the buildings and continued into the darkness, well past where the path ended. He ran for an hour, and finally decided to turn around and head back into town. He was getting hungry, and he had seen several bars that served food in Kodiak. He would find one that offered steak and chow down until he couldn’t stuff another bite into his mouth. No alcohol for him tonight, though. He needed to stay on top of his game. There would be plenty of time for celebratory drinks after he had taken care of Simon and reestablished his clan’s respect.

Sawyer slowed his pace as he jogged back into town. He took in the flickering lights from Kodiak as they stood out against the blackness of the vast Alaskan wilderness. The waterfront path was surprisingly deserted. Even though it was late, it was tourist season. Usually, more people were out here, milling around and taking selfies with their cameras so they would have plenty of evidence to post on their social media accounts that they had, indeed, braved Alaska. Of course, Sawyer didn’t mind the quiet. He breathed in deeply, closing his eyes for just a moment to savor its fresh crispness. Just as he began to open his eyes again, he suddenly stumbled as he bumped unexpectedly into another person.

Catching himself before he completely fell to the ground, Sawyer turned around to apologize to the woman whom he had knocked over.

“I’m so sorry,” he started to say. “I didn’t see you there. Are you okay?”

He stopped speaking abruptly when he realized that the person picking herself up from the pavement was none other than Amanda. She was examining her hands, which looked slightly scraped from their impact with the ground. His first instinct was to rush over and help her, but he didn’t know how she would react after the scene he had caused in the diner earlier.

“Sawyer?” she said in surprise when she finally looked up at him. She didn’t sound as angry as he had expected her to, which filled him with a sense of relief. He decided to try to apologize again, and see if he could get her to talk to him for a few minutes. Any plans he had made to stay away from her and not focus on women had gone out the window as soon as her beautiful face was right there in front of him again.

She quite literally took his breath away. The soft lights from the streetlamps made her skin look like it was glowing, and her hair fell in soft, shiny waves around her perfect oval face.

“Amanda, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there at all. Did I hurt you?”

Amanda looked at her hands once more, then looked up at him suspiciously. “I’m fine,” she said. “Are you stalking me or something?”

Sawyer shook his head in an emphatic no. “I swear I was just going for a run. I’m glad I didn’t hurt you badly. Can I get anything for you? Bandages or anything? There’s a pharmacy one block over.”

Amanda shook her head. “No. It’s just a very small scrape. Besides, I can take care of myself. I don’t need some jealous, possessive psycho to handle things.”

Sawyer winced at her harsh tone and words. “Okay, I probably deserved that,” he said. “I’m sorry about the diner earlier. Well, I’m sorry I embarrassed you, I guess. I’m not sorry I kissed you.”

He looked at Amanda, meeting her gaze unflinchingly with his own. He knew his eyes were burning with desire, and he tried his best to let her see that. She didn’t look away, and the harshness in her expression softened somewhat.

“You don’t own me, Sawyer. You can’t just drag me out of a diner and kiss me whenever you want. Although, I do have to admit that kiss was one of the sexiest experiences of my life.”

She laughed as she admitted this to him, then looked out over the water, staring unseeingly across the dark expanse beyond the boats that were bobbing gently near the piers.

Sawyer furrowed his brow. “If it was so amazing, then why did you still turn and leave?”

Amanda gave him a longsuffering sideways glance, as though she couldn’t believe he was actually asking the question. “It takes more than just a good kiss to make a relationship,” she said.”

“True. But we have more than just physical chemistry. We get along well. We have great conversations and we laugh well together. I think we could have something special, if you gave us a chance.”

Amanda frowned at him. “I tried to give you a chance, remember? And you didn’t take it. So you couldn’t have wanted to try things out with me all that badly, no matter how much of a connection we might have had. And, besides, I’ve decided that I’m not looking for a guy while I’m on this yearlong journey of finding myself. I’m going to focus on enjoying nature and the wilderness, and trying to get back to who I really am, whoever that might be.”

“So hanging around with the tourists in Kodiak is your way of finding yourself?” Sawyer asked, unable to keep the sneering tone out of his voice.

“If you hate Kodiak so much, then why are you here?” Amanda asked, crossing her arms.

“I don’t hate Kodiak. And I’m here for…work. But I thought you were all into solo hiking and backwoods camping. Why are you hanging out here with all the people who sign up for the stereotypical tourist experiences and then act like they’ve been such adventurous explorers?”

Amanda glared at him. “Not like it’s any of your business, but I had an encounter with a grizzly that shook me up and made me realize that maybe solo camping in grizzly country wasn’t exactly my thing. I decided to come here and do some group tours for the rest of my stay in Alaska. Don’t judge too harshly, unless you’ve ever been face to face with a grizzly. You may think you’re a large man, but you’d look like a dwarf next to the bear I saw.”

Sawyer took a step backward in surprise. “You saw a grizzly?” he asked. “What did you do?” Grizzly encounters with humans were still relatively rare around here, but he knew, better than Amanda could have ever imagined, that the size of a grizzly bear was nothing to scoff at. No wonder she was frightened to go back into the wilderness alone.

Amanda shrugged, looking back over the water with a faraway look in her eyes. “I didn’t do anything, really. I sat there, frozen in place by fear and praying that somehow I would get lucky and the bear wouldn’t eat me.”

“Did he see you?”

Amanda laughed. “Yes, he definitely saw me. He walked right up to me and sniffed me. I thought for sure I was about to die from a bear attack, but after he sniffed me he just walked away. I have no idea why he was so calm, but I’m not complaining. And I’m not taking chances on meeting a bear by myself again. The next one might not be so nice.”

Sawyer felt his heart pounding in his chest, and it was his turn to look out over the water with a faraway look. Amanda was completely unaware of the fact that she had just confirmed for him that she was destined to be the lifemate of a shifter. In the wild, grizzlies were aggressive bears, and it was almost unheard of for one of them to calmly walk up to a human and then walk away without harming the human. Sawyer had no doubt that the bear Amanda had met was a full bear, not a shifter. A shifter would never have walked up to a human in bear form like that, for fear of exposing himself. But full bears could sense when someone was connected to one of their shifter cousins, and usually, the full bear would respect a shifter or shifter’s mate and not harm them.

The grizzly Amanda met had treated her as though she belonged to a shifter. Sawyer swallowed hard, trying to keep his emotions in check. He couldn’t deny the connection he had with Amanda. If she was destined to be with a shifter, he couldn’t imagine it being any other shifter than him. He was her lifemate. She was his lifemate.

And she pretty much hated him right now.

“Is everything okay?” Amanda asked, giving him a funny look. Sawyer realized that he had set his face in a deep frown.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he said. Suddenly, he had lost his appetite. He just wanted to get away from here and away from Amanda. He needed to concentrate on his upcoming battle, and Amanda was doing nothing except distracting him. Her beautiful figure, and the revelation that she was almost certainly his lifemate, was too much to process. He needed space.

“I have to go,” he said, already beginning to walk away. “Enjoy your stay in Kodiak, and watch out for any more bears.”