by Anya Nowlan
BEAR MY LOVE
SHIFTER GROVE BRIDES
BOOK 4
BY
ANYA NOWLAN
Copyright © 2015 Anya Nowlan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Bear My Love
Shifter Grove Brides
Book 4
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Anya Nowlan. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
Cover © Jack of Covers
You can find all of my books here:
Amazon Author Page
www.anyanowlan.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
EPILOGUE
WAITING FOR WOLVES EXCERPT
WANT MORE?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER ONE
Keesha
“I know you’re in there, you know. If you don’t come out soon, Parker’s just going to fire you. Come on, Keesha. You can’t hide there forever.”
Keesha scrunched her nose – she wasn’t hiding from anyone.
Okay, so that wasn’t entirely the truth. Maybe she was hiding. Just a little. But it certainly wasn’t for the reasons that Carly thought she was.
“I’m on my lunch break,” Keesha bit back, putting one leg over the other and letting her stiletto heel dangle from her toes.
“In the bathroom? Far be it for me to judge, but I think you could do better,” Carly replied, laughter in her tone.
It wasn’t that Carly was wrong. It wasn’t even that Keesha didn’t agree with her. It was just that if she were to step out of the posh, wood-tiled bathroom stall at that very moment, she might end up punching someone in the throat – someone who had all the power in the world to fire her on the spot.
“It’s the only private place in the entire building,” Keesha replied indignantly. As an afterthought, she added, “At least it used to be.”
Carly snorted and Keesha could imagine her friend’s face as if there wasn’t a door separating them at all. Carly was probably twirling one of her super curly strands of hair around her long nails, rolling her eyes and leaning against the polished marble counters. Keesha knew it so well because she’d done it several times before while waiting for other coworkers to get over their misery and get on with their day.
It was sort of a rite of passage at Jules, Veron and Blake to stand around offering snarky comments and platitudes while one of the paralegals was working hard on crying her eyes out.
Instead, of course, in this case, Keesha wasn’t crying. It would take a lot more than a bunch of self-involved lawyers and asshole senior partners to make her shed a tear. But they could drive her into a murderous rage. That was exactly what this was – Keesha Bailey’s half-assed attempt at not turning into a nuisance in the eyes of the commonwealth of Massachusetts through unarmed assault and battery.
“I’m not going to wait forever, you know. I might just leave. Tell Parker Waylan that you’re having a mental breakdown and that he won the war against the great, the undaunted, the never fazed Keesha Bailey. Is that what you want? Because I swear, I’ll go and tell him right now, and you know he’ll never let you live it down. He’ll probably hold an entire staff meeting just on the topic of mental health in the firm and how we’re supposed to take care of one another before more of such unfortunate incidents as Miss Bailey’s come to pass. All the while wearing that simpering smile that he has. You know the one.”
Oh yeah, Keesha knew the one. She stuck her tongue out and made a face that vaguely described her utter and boiling contempt for Parker Waylan, the senior associate she was working for at the law firm. If there was ever a man to hate, it was him.
With a long and resounding sigh, Keesha stood up and unlocked the stall door. She smoothed her tight skirt over her thighs and walked out of the little booth as if she were a queen leaving her castle. It wasn’t much of a castle, but dammit, presence was everything, right?
Carly snapped her fingers, chuckling.
“That’s it. Can we please actually go to lunch now or is crossing through the hallowed halls of Jules, Veron and Blake too much for Miss Bailey and I should smuggle you out through the back exit?”
Carly’s bright green eyes were twinkling with laughter as per usual when one of them managed to fish a colleague out of the depths of despair. It was such a daily occurrence at the firm – which had to have been just the most soul-sucking place to work at in all of Boston – that it had become a bit of an office sport between the assistants, paralegals and secretaries.
They currently even had a pool running. Before this little fit, Keesha had been winning by a mile. Unlike most of the other women at the firm, the high-strung, entirely problematic men that roamed around like a pack of unwitting orangutans had rarely ever got to her. She could deal with their bullshit. She could even deal with their rampant sexism, their unreasonable demands and their frankly horrific understanding of working conditions.
But today, she had been broken. Apparently even she couldn’t stand with quiet and stoic grace as Parker Waylan called her the most inept, uninspired and idiotic paralegal ever to have worked for the firm.
What did he know, anyway!? If he couldn’t read a damn legal brief then he couldn’t bloody well dream of commenting on her work.
“Sad excuse for a lawyer,” Keesha muttered, staring daggers at the mirror and imagining Parker’s face in the reflection instead of her own.
It was a mild relief to see that she still looked as put-together as usual. Her steel gray skirt and blazer set went perfectly with her dark mocha skin and the white blouse underneath gave her just the right level of sophistication while not hiding what she was – a curvy black woman with the brains and sass to boot, and a booty that wouldn’t quit.
Well, maybe it could do with a few more weight-training classes, but it was a miracle she had time to sleep these days, let alone work out.
It came with the territory of working a full-time, demanding job, getting her degree and trying to figure out what the hell she wanted to do with her life. So far, she had the working and the struggling down, but she hadn’t quite figured out the dreaming and achieving part of the whole thing.
“He’s still your boss,” Carly said, giving her a commiserating look and bringing Keesha out of her quiet musings.
Somewhere further in the gorgeous bathroom, someone was sobbing uncontrollably. Carly and Keesha exchanged a glance and, with a sigh, Keesha admitted defeat. Carly had just talked her down, so it was her turn to volunteer.
“You okay, Sally?” she called, splashing water on her cheeks to get
the redness of anger down.
She’d heard Sally cry enough times to know it was her. She could recognize most of the women in the office by the very distinct tone of their sniffles.
“I’m fine. Just need a moment!” came a muffled reply.
“You sure?” Carly asked.
“Yes, sure!”
“If you say so,” Keesha finished, fishing out her phone from her ridiculously overpriced Chanel Boy Bag (which she had saved up to buy for nearly a year, but had to have because she couldn’t possibly be a paralegal in Boston without one).
“Is that your bear again?” Carly asked, dropping her voice a bit.
Keesha nodded noncommitally, opening up the text. She couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t hide the smile that came to her lips when she saw the message from Battle.
BattleBear: You know, I still think you should come to Idaho. I think you would like it here.
Just last night, they’d been talking about how her job had been slowly driving her to the brink of madness. For the last few months, she’d been getting closer and closer to the sexy, mysterious bear and it was becoming troublesomely easy to open up to him.
Keesha wasn’t sure whether she was worried or excited about it.
On the one hand, she was a tired, overworked and far too capable paralegal who had just recently finished her law degree and taken the bar exam (fingers crossed!) and who was all but stuck at her soul-sucking job. On the other hand, she was far too busy for a relationship. Especially for a relationship with a guy called Battle of all things, and who had recently moved from Alabama to Idaho of all places.
But then there was the slight problem of him being stupid hot and the best listener in the world. So all of Keesha’s plans to just ignore his messages on SassyDate had gone up in smoke after the first few notes he’d dropped her. And now she was hooked, hopelessly.
“So, what’s he saying?” Carly asked, nosing in over her shoulder.
“Nothing,” Keesha said with a small smile, pushing the power button and dropping the phone into her purse again. “Let’s take the main exit. Fuck Parker.”
“That’s what I like to hear!”
With her head held high, Keesha exited the lavish bathroom and entered the busy, sprawling bloodstream of Jules, Veron and Blake.
Please don’t let that asshat walk into me! I just want a cinnamon macchiato and maybe then I can deal with his crap again, Keesha pleaded wordlessly, strolling through the corridors with long, determined steps.
She and Carly were halfway through the large office floor when Parker suddenly appeared in front of them seemingly from thin air. He stepped out of one of the glass-walled meeting rooms, no doubt having seen them coming, and stopped them by standing smack-dab in the middle of the corridor.
“So, Miss Bailey! Done with your little pause?” Parker asked, grinning like he was a cat staring down a mouse.
Keesha felt the rage beginning to boil in her again. Her hands balled into fists, one by her side and the other around the chain of her bag.
“I am, Mister Waylan,” she said, forcing the words out from behind clenched teeth.
“Isn’t that lovely. Wouldn’t want you to get too upset,” Parker said, still grinning like a maniac and raising his voice so he could be sure that everyone in the near vicinity could hear him. “I mean, I understand that you are somewhat delicate about these things, but I really do expect you to perform well on the work I assign you. Can’t tolerate you just ignoring your duties, now can I?”
If glares could fell walls and slay men, Parker Waylan would have been one dead man under a pile of rubble by now.
“No, we can’t, Mister Waylan,” Keesha said, shaking with fury.
“Good. I trust you’ll fix all of your mistakes now, hmm? Learn to read the law and make concise briefs based on the law, not on whichever column of Cosmo that was worthy of your attention that day? Because that last work of yours, my lord! Sloppiest piece of nonsense I have ever seen!”
Keesha could hear ringing in her ears. She had done the task exactly as he had wanted, following the exact laws he had cited and doing research on the cases he had mentioned, as well as at least five others his self-admiring brain couldn’t wrap itself around. But because she had not been psychic, foreseeing that one of the partners had told him to change his approach, Keesha hadn’t done research on a whole different set of cases. And somehow, the fact that he hadn’t told her about his change of heart was her fault.
It wasn’t the first time. But it had been the first time he’d kept her standing in the middle of the main meeting room, chiding her like she was a little girl for half an hour. And now he had the nerve to do it again.
Keesha was just opening her mouth to utter another completely unfelt apology for her ‘mistakes’, when her phone beeped. In a haze, she took it out of her purse and clicked it on, Parker’s surprised eyes following her motions – as if she was committing some sort of unspeakable crime by taking her attention off of him for a second.
BattleBear: I’m serious, you know. Come here. I can’t promise you much, but I would treat you right.
He would treat her right. Suddenly, it was as if the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders. Why the fuck was she here, letting this puny excuse of a man treat her like she was sub-human, doing work he himself wasn’t intelligent enough to do? Why couldn’t she be in Idaho, even for just a little?
Everything fell into place inside of Keesha for one beautiful moment. She looked up at Parker and grinned, making his simpering smirk falter and break.
“Parker. Fuck you. I quit.”
She wished she’d taken a picture of Parker Waylan’s face when she walked out of the office, a shocked, mildly appalled and entirely enthusiastic Carly following her out. She’d never seen a man quite so disappointed at having his tirade broken.
Of course, that feeling of bliss was just momentary. By the time she reached the front door, she was already well on her way to freaking out.
What the hell did you just do!?
CHAPTER TWO
Battle
And what if she shows up? What then?
It was a question Battle had been asking himself for the past few days, and he wasn’t entirely sure what the right answer to it was.
Keesha Bailey had completely caught his interest, his attention and his desire from the very first moment he laid eyes on her profile picture. He wasn’t the dating kind of guy, having preferred to keep to himself for most of his life. One bored afternoon of scrolling through SassyDate had taken him a step too far and now, here he was, practically in love with a woman he had never actually met.
It didn’t really fit in ideally with his current existence, but then again, nothing did.
With a sigh, Battle slung the ax over his shoulder and trudged deeper into the clearing site. It had been a long day of marking trees to be felled the next day, cutting out underbrush and doing some general ‘housekeeping’ before the work could really begin in the coming few days.
Toiling away in the woods was hard, physically exhausting and pretty much thankless – Battle loved it.
In the distance, near where he had parked his beaten up Chevy, Battle could hear an engine being cut. He walked towards the small clearing that acted as a parking lot in the middle of the tall trees, barely rousing from his internal monologue about what the hell he’d do if the woman that made every part of him buzz with excitement decided to show up in Shifter Grove.
Seriously, what the fuck would he do?
“Long day?” Warren called, leaning on his truck with a knowing smile on his lips.
“You know it,” Battle said, grinning at the other werebear.
He’d been lucky to get a job with Warren. In fact, he’d been damn fortunate to happen into Shifter Grove to begin with. Battle had been passing through on his way to Montana to check some old clan lands, when he’d stopped in Shifter Grove for dinner.
One thing led to another and, through a combination of knowing when
to not ask too many questions and recognizing a bear in need, Warren had offered Battle a job he couldn’t refuse – that was, any job. There weren’t many options for a bear on the run from himself, and others, but he preferred to not think about the latter part.
“I think I can join you tomorrow. There’s been a lot of work in the sawmill lately, but I’m hoping to find some time to do some real labor again. Can’t get old and complacent or my wife won’t let me in the door soon.”
Warren poked himself in the side, smirking. It would take a lot more than a few days of paperwork for a werebear like him to become flabby, but Battle could understand the desire to keep active. He’d been enjoying the hell out of being in fresh air and putting himself to some use for a change.
Battle was built like a tank. He was tall, square-shouldered and wide. A burly kind of werebear, he lacked what one might call elegance but made up for it in pure brute force. He hadn’t always been quite so imposing, but a bear had to do what a bear had to do when he got into as much trouble as Battle had in his life.
He felt his mood souring at the memories, cursing himself for veering onto a path he knew he didn’t want to go down. Trouble was something he was looking to avoid now. Unless it was the kind of trouble a sexy chocolate goddess could get him into.
He could never get enough of that kind of trouble!
“Kacey didn’t seem like the love ‘em and leave ‘em type,” Battle said with a grin, chucking his ax into the bed of his truck and grabbing a bottle of water.
He took a long swig, enjoying the taste as it went down, washing away the fine sawdust and grime he’d tasted before.
“She isn’t,” Warren said thoughtfully.
Battle felt his boss’s eyes on him, a quiet question in them. Battle cocked a brow, looking at Warren.