Marrying The Bear (Gray Bears 1)

MARRYING
THE BEAR

By

Natalie Kristen

BEAR HEAT series

Bear's Bride (Book 1)

Bear's Kiss (Book 2)

Bear's Claim (Book 3)

Bear's Baby (Book 4)

Bear's Heart (Book 5)

GRAY BEARS series

Marrying The Bear (Book 1)

Loving The Bear (Book 2)

Coming Soon!

Copyright
© 201
5
Natalie Kristen

ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED

No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without the author's written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This
is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
used fictitiously or are the products of the author's imagination.
Any resemblance to actual locales, events, establishments or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

About
this Book

A
wish unleashes magic, mayhem and the mating heat...

After
suffering heartbreak and betrayal, Alisa finds herself out of a job
and running out of options. On a whim, she makes a wish. The wish
is simple enough. She wishes to find her true love and live happily
ever after.

Tristan
Gray, bear shifter and the boss of Gray's Domain, receives a call
from his grandmother. Gramma Gray raised Tristan and his three
brothers after their parents died, and Tristan would never deny his
Gramma anything. He agrees to her odd request to drive out of Shadow
Point to escort her new hire back to Broomstick Inn.

When
Alisa runs into danger, a big, growly man comes to her rescue.
Tristan is sweet, sexy, tough and protective. He is everything a
girl could wish for in a mate.

But
Alisa knows from experience that wishes don't come true.

Or
do they?

As
Alisa rolls up her sleeves and dives into her new job as a chef in
Broomstick Inn, she realizes that she just might have discovered the
recipe for her very own happily-ever-after.

*
* * * *

CHAPTER
ONE

Alisa Perez pushed away from
her small, wobbly dining table and rubbed her eyes. She threw her
head back and stared at the stain on the ceiling. Slowly her tired
eyes traveled from the stained ceiling to the cracks in the walls and
around her tiny rented space. She looked at the peeling paint and
heard the
drip, drip, drip
from the leaky tap in her bathroom.

She sighed. This place
wasn't much but the rent was cheap. Still, without a job, she might
not be able to keep this flimsy roof over her head for much longer.

Wrapping her arms tightly
around herself, she winced and was about to spew out another vicious
curse when she stopped herself in time.

She wasn't going to waste her
breath cursing and swearing at her ex-boyfriend. She had wasted
years, and even more tears on that creep. Alisa clenched her teeth
to stop herself from spitting out their names.

Alisa pressed her palms to
her forehead and sat down heavily on the plastic chair. Tears
threatened to fall but she fought them back. She wouldn't cry. Not
for them. She wouldn't cry for them, but she wanted to cry for
herself. Was she really such a loser?

Her ex-boyfriend had run off
with her ex-best friend. God, she had been so blind! How could she
not have known?

And not only had the creep
dumped her, he had emptied their joint account.

Alisa stared numbly at the
flickering light bulb overhead. She had no love, no friends, no
money and no job. The eatery where she had worked as a fry cook had
closed down unexpectedly three weeks ago. With the exploding
population in the city, there were more people than jobs. She had
tried to find another job, God knows she tried. But there just
weren't any openings.

With a sniff, Alisa sat up
straight and stared at her battered, second-hand laptop. She had
been looking through all the job sites, filling in countless
e-applications. She tried not to lose hope but she knew that she
would not hear back from any of those companies. She had been
checking her inbox every ten minutes, but nothing arrived.

Swallowing hard, Alisa stared
at the torn calendar on the wall. The dates seemed to stretch out
meaninglessly before her. Nothing was circled on the calendar. No
interview dates, no important events and milestones worth
celebrating, no happy holidays, nothing.

Her adoptive parents had been
kind and loving, but they had passed away. She had spent the first
ten years of her life in an orphanage, and the next ten years in a
loving home. Her adoptive parents weren't well off, but they loved
her with all their hearts. But now she was all alone once again.
She'd always been introverted and quiet, and didn't have many
friends. She was so happy when she got to know Lucy, who was fun and
loud and bold. And when she met Ben, she felt like the luckiest girl
in the world. She imagined they would have a house with a white
picket fence, two kids and a dog.

She was still thinking of
that lovely white house when Ben and Lucy's faces popped up in a
curtained window of her fantasy house. Alisa shook her head so hard
she almost fell out of her chair. What the hell! That was her dream
house, her fantasy, her happily-ever-after! How the hell did they
get in it! Shit, shit and shit!

Alisa stumbled away from the
table and went to splash some cold water on her face. She had to
stop thinking about her loser ex-boyfriend. Ben had hurt her, but
Lucy...Lucy was her best friend, and she had betrayed her.

Alisa yanked the almost empty
carton of milk out of her small fridge and gulped down the contents.
She had to stop dwelling on the past and move on.

When she'd finally stopped
shaking, Alisa forced herself to sit down in front of her blinking
laptop and curled her fingers over the keyboard. She had to find a
job pronto. Any job.

For just a moment, she
wondered if she would be able to finally get a job she loved. She
loved cooking, and she loved working in the kitchen. Being a fry
cook in a modest fast food eatery was as close as she ever got to her
dream job. But what if…

Alisa's eyes drifted to the
window. She could see the sharp edge of the crescent moon slicing
through the clouds and the faint glimmer of stars. In her mind, she
heard the lyrics of an old, beautiful song. It was from a cartoon
she had watched with her parents so very long ago.

Sighing, she rested her chin
in her hands and murmured the lyrics, “When you wish upon a
star…”

With a dreamy smile, Alisa
made a wish. She closed her eyes and wished with all her heart. She
wished for what she wanted, more than anything else in the world.

“...happily ever
after,” she finished and opened her eyes.

Alisa squinted at the night
sky. The stars still looked the same. No star glowed brighter and
no blue fairy appeared.

Blowing out a breath, Alisa
shrugged and turned back to her laptop.

She blinked and stared at the
screen, her eyes rounding.

The stars didn't glow
brighter, but her laptop screen certainly did.

CHAPTER
TWO

There was a pop-up box at the
corner of her screen that screamed, “New Job! Click here!”

Alisa moved the cursor over
to the flashing box and took a deep breath. With a loud gulp, she
clicked.

The pop-up box expanded to
fill the whole screen. The screen flickered and the small white
light came on at the top of her laptop which told her that her
computer camera was on. Alisa scrapped her chair back and jumped up.
What was this? Some sort of spyware?

Before she could shut down
her laptop, voices came over the speakers of her laptop.

“Hello? Testing,
testing...”

“What are you doing,
Neveah? Let me see!”

“Get your hair out of
my face, Glynda! Oof!”

There were sounds of
scuffling before two pairs of owlish eyes appeared on the screen.
The eyes moved back to reveal two excited, grinning faces.

Alisa gasped. She watched
the two smiling elderly ladies on the screen and slid slowly back
into her chair.

“Who are you?”
she asked, staring at their kindly faces. They didn't look like
crooks or voyeurs. They looked like sweet, little grandmothers with
their silver hair and gentle eyes. They were elbowing each other as
they peered into the screen.

The two women chuckled and
hi-fived each other.

“I'm Glynda Gray,”
one of the women replied. She had bright green eyes and curly white
hair. “And this is my partner, Neveah Wright. My business
partner. We run Broomstick Inn together.” The other woman, a
blue-eyed, bespectacled woman who wore her silver hair in a bun,
grinned and waved at her. Alisa waved back by raising her hand and
bending her fingers stiffly. She still didn't know what this was
about or if these two little old ladies were really there.

Was this some sort of prank?
Or a hunger-induced hallucination? Her last meal had been two slices
of stale bread and an apple. Her fridge was empty and she didn't
have enough money to go out and buy groceries. Her stomach growled
to remind her of that fact.

Glynda's green eyes flashed
as if she'd heard the sound. “Oh, you poor dear,” Glynda
mumbled.

“What?” Alisa
said. “What is this about? Did you click on something by
mistake? What were you...”

“Oh no, no, no. This
is no mistake,” Neveah answered. “You made a wish...”

Glynda clamped her hand over
her friend's mouth and interrupted, “You're looking for
something, yes?”

“Yes,” Alisa
said, still staring unblinkingly at the screen in disbelief. “I'm
looking for a job. That was what I was doing when I clicked on
this...”

“A job!” Glynda
clapped her hands. “Perfect!”

“We need a chef,”
Neveah said. “What's your name, dear?”

“Alisa. Alisa Perez.”

“Alisa, would you like
to work as a chef here? In Broomstick Inn?” Glynda and Neveah
asked together. They stared at her, looking so eager, anxious and
hopeful. In fact, the two of them seemed to be holding their
breaths.

Alisa's eyes and mouth
rounded. A chef! Did she hear correctly?

“I...I would love to!”
she spluttered at last.

Glynda and Neveah clapped in
delight. “Wonderful! Oh, this is simply wonderful!”

Alisa watched the two women
hug and congratulate each other. She should be the one doing the
happy dance, but it seemed Glynda and Neveah were doing enough
celebrating for the three of them. Which was a little strange. Why
were they so happy to have her as a chef? They didn't even ask for
her resume or anything.

“I've only worked as a
fry cook in a small eatery.” Alisa felt she should be honest
with them. “And I've been out of a job for almost a month now.
I don't have much...”

Neveah waved a hand. “You'll
love it here. We promise.”

“No, I wasn't...”

“Oh, of course!”
Glynda slapped a hand to her forehead. “She thinks we're
scammers!”

Alisa gasped. “No, no,
that's not...”

“Tell you what,”
Glynda said, peering intently into the screen. “We'll deposit
your first month's salary into your back account right now. You
don't believe you got the job? We'll prove it!”

“Yeah.” Neveah
rustled up a piece of paper and grabbed a pen. “What's your
account number?”