by Lynn Red
Bear Arms
Mating Call Dating Agency
Alpha Werebear Romance
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(c)2015
Lynn Red
Also by Lynn Red
Jamesburg Shifter Romance
Bear Me Away
Kendal Creek Bears
Can't Bear To Run
Can't Bear to Hide
Mating Call Dating Agency
Hare Today Bear Tomorrow
The Fox and her Bear
Bear the Heat
Bear Arms
The Broken Pine Bears
Two Bears are Better Than One
Between a Bear and a Hard Place
The Jamesburg Shifters
Bearing It All
Bear With Me
Bearly Breathing
Bearly Hanging On
Bear Your Teeth
The Jamesburg Shifters Volume 2
The Jamesburg Shifters Volume 1
To Catch a Wolf
Standalone
Lion In Wait
Werewolf Wedding
Horns for the Harem Girl
Watch for more at Lynn Red’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Also By Lynn Red
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Special Previews and Excerpts | Keep reading for a bunch of great excerpts from more steamy, sexy, hilarious Lynn Red romances! | The Fox and Her Bear
Hare Today, Bear Tomorrow
Can’t Bear to Run
Lion in Wait
Bearly Hanging On
To Catch a Wolf
Two Bears are Better than One
Further Reading: Bear the Heat
Also By Lynn Red
About the Author
1
Chopper blades thumped overhead. The rhythmic throbbing pulsed through Blake Rogan’s chest as he massaged his temples, a thumb stuck in each one. He had just rolled his eyes back in his head and allowed himself to lean against the cold, metal wall for a rest when a sudden noise snapped him back to reality.
“What you gonna do when you get home, Rogan?”
It was Sergeant Morales, one of the first people Blake met when he deployed, and one of the only ones he still trusted. It had been a long four years in the desert, even longer because for a bear, a desert is absolutely no place at all to be.
“Sleep buck naked in the woods for a week. Just to be cold and wet, just to remind myself things aside from heat, sand, and wind exist. You?”
Morales laughed. He got it, he was a bear too – which probably had something to do with the two of them getting on so well. A pair of bears in a platoon made up mostly of wolves. If putting up with that doesn’t test your patience, nothing will.
“Oh, I think I’m going to just go to a Mexican place and make myself sick as shit on Dos Equis and chile rellenos. I like the ones with the really soft, pillowy dough. It’s like a doughnut, but made out of a chili pepper, with that oozy white cheese inside. Want to go with me? Where you going anyway? Back to the Creek?”
They’d talked about White Creek a lot while they were overseas. Home to both of them, but only Morales had stayed behind. Blake went off to school in New York, which was about as good a fit for a bear as was the mountainous desert. Meaning – not at all. The giant buildings gave him anxiety, and the man-made, manicured parks were little more than almost comical distractions from reality.
He hated it. Hated every second of it. Then again, he’d come out of NYU with a philosophy degree and not a whole lot to do with himself. Good thing he’d seen that commercial.
“I dunno,” he said. “Not like there’s much there for me.”
“So where is there a lot for you? I’m guessing you aren’t exactly flush with options, professor.”
Blake twisted his lip in a silent growl. That was the one thing his CO figured out that had really gotten to him – the whole professor gag – although saying that, he still thought it was kinda funny.
“Maybe I’ll use that little joke of yours. Maybe I’ll go to Harvard and get me a doctorate and a tweed blazer? Start smoking a pipe and lecturing teenagers on Heidegger and Schopenhauer?”
Morales looked at his friend with squinted, questioning eyes. “I’m guessing those aren’t girls you’re gonna chase?”
Blake laughed. “Well,” he said as he lay his head back on the metal, “I guess they are in a way. Old, dead, German philosophers are pretty much like women for me to chase. Except, you know, dead, German and male.”
As he stood up to crack his back and twist around, Morales patted his compadre on the shoulder. “You know, Rogan, sometimes I think you’re crazier than I am. And that’s real crazy.”
The chopper’s blades roared louder as the big, metal vulture heaved itself up and over a nearby mountain range. Blake Rogan watched as the desert disappeared into a field of green. Soon they’d be in friendly territory, and shortly after that they’d be at an airport and someone would ask where he wanted to get a ticket to fly. He could cash it in for a one-way to wherever the hell he wanted to go.
“White Creek,” he said softly, almost under his breath, as the greenery underneath scrolled by like the opening crawl of The Shining. “Is that even remotely a good idea?”
“You talking to yourself or to me?” Morales stood near the small window, but still near enough to hear. Bear ears helped with that, too. “As long as I’ve known you, neither would surprise me.”
“I was just thinking,” Blake said slowly. “I don’t know. I mean, I could go to the Creek. There’s just nothing for me there. Or at least, nothing I can imagine finding. Not exactly like there’s some huge booming economy for me to make my fortune as a mechanic.”
“Well, but you are a damned good mechanic, professor,” Morales said. “Which is surprising, because honestly I don’t remember the last time I found someone come from college and end up repairing APCs and choppers better than me. Hell, I don’t remember the last time I heard of anyone who could repair both APCs and choppers, come to think of it.”
“Thing is,” Blake acted like he hadn’t heard the compliments, though he had. “I don’t know what the hell there even is to do there. I mean, not like I need a party every night, but what if I was wanting to meet someone and—”
“You’ll stay at my place.” Morales looked over at the other bear, who seemed both confused and slightly irritated. “Don’t say anything about it. I know you had trouble with your dad, I know all that. I got a three bedroom place and no one to share it with.” For a second, he watched Blake’s face. “What? All the nights you and the others went out drinking, what did I do? Nothing, that’s right. And let me tell you, doing nothing for the majority of two four-year deployments means you save up enough money to do a whole lot of things – one of which was buy a house with cash.”
“I don’t really know what to say, I mean—”
“You’ll say yes, first, and then after that? Hell, I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
*
It was two weeks since touch down, and ‘weird’ didn’t start to describe life back in the Creek. It wasn’t that Blake minded living with Morales at
all. Hell, they’d lived together for most of the bear’s adult life. Not living with him would have been stranger.
More like, being home after a long time away – including a long time away that he voluntarily took to get the hell out of the place – had him feeling like an alien in a familiar land. Morales was in and out, always going to visit people or see about this new building or that—they were planning to set up a garage as soon as they found a good place—so Blake had a lot of time to himself. Usually he liked that. Liked to read and listen to music alone, usually with the lights down low enough that he wasn’t ever chancing a headache.
But something was different. Being alone wasn’t giving him the same solace it used to give him. As he sat there, late on that Wednesday night, listening to Terry Gross interviewing some director he’d never heard of for the second time that day, Blake realized what was wrong, and he didn’t like it one bit.
“I’m lonely,” he announced to his part of the three bedroom house his friend had kindly let him occupy. “Oh my God am I ever lonely.” But the only thing worse than that revelation was when he figured out that he didn’t have the first damned clue what to do about it.
Blake was still ruminating, as he called it, or ‘pining’ as anyone else on earth would say, when Morales finally rolled in about half-past one. He smelled a little like beer and looked a lot like drunk, but after all, this was a three-hundred pound bear, so the effects of alcohol are slightly different than they are on a normal human being.
“You know who I miss?” Morales asked as he tossed a very large, very heavy sandwich rolled up in a Jimmy John’s wrapper, to Blake. “Jane Pauley. Remember her?”
“Like the newscaster from the 90s? Sure, I guess.” Blake was trying so hard not to laugh that his face developed a slight twitch on the left cheek. “But, uh... why?”
“My friend,” Morales said with the sort of incredible gravitas that only a drunk can manage, “I have no idea. I’ll tell you this much though, I met this chick tonight—and I’m not being sexist, she’s an owl, so I guess that’s okay to say, right? Anyway, I met her at Tenner’s, you know, that piano place down the road? Anyway, she told me that she’s some kind of match maker. If you’re needing some help finding a girlfriend, she said she can help.”
“Whoa, whoa, you told some woman you just met about me being too pitiful to find a date?” Blake asked. He did his best to sound offended, but truth be told, he wasn’t exactly Don Juan. Still, he had his pride to consider. “Shouldn’t you be worried about yourself first? I mean... you’re pushing forty, after all.”
“And you’re pushing thirty-five so I don’t know why you’re being all high and mighty. Anyway, I told you, I did meet someone. I met the chick who makes the dates.”
“Wait,” Blake said, “you met a matchmaker? And now you’re match making me?”
Morales went silent for a moment, a look of intense concentration on his face. Blake thought that if the room were better lit, he could probably see his friend’s eyes crossing a little. “Yeah,” Morales finally said. “That’s about the long and short of it, I guess. Also I’m dating the date making chick. She’s an owl, remember.”
For a moment, the older bear sat there, staring at the wall just behind Blake’s head. “Long and short,” he said. “Long and short. Why do people say that? Why don’t they say ‘just the short of it’ or ‘just the waggle snits’?”
Of course, while he was rattling on about things that made no sense to more sober minds, Blake’s brain was churning onward. If I really do need someone, that’s probably the only way I’m ever going to manage, he thought. Guy gone for almost ten years, comes back and works in a garage on the edge of town? Not exactly the most conducive thing I can think of for finding someone. Sure it’s a small town and all, but... who knows?
“Do you think it’d work?”
“Snits and flap?” Morales asked. “I don’t know why not, I mean it makes as much sense as saying the long and short of something. I mean something can’t be long and short at the same time, can it?”
“What about a short story that’s so long it gets boring?” Blake asked. “Wouldn’t that count?”
Morales opened his eyes so wide Blake thought they might split open. “Holy shit,” he said. “That’s... how’d you know that? I mean that’s not a paradox or is it? I mean, this girl I met – Eve – I’m sure she could get you a date, but only if you can make sure you didn’t just split open the space-time continuum.”
“Nope,” Blake feigned a look at a watch on his wrist which didn’t exist. “Quarter to two. It was half past when you walked in, so we didn’t cause any splits in sanity or anything.”
“Thank God,” Morales breathed, as serious as you please. “I was pretty worried about that. Good to know we didn’t start the end of the world.”
It was Blake’s turn for comical overacting. “Yeah, I know what you mean. But I think we’re safe. I think the only real danger for now is that the world might actually explode if I end up with a date I don’t have to pay for.” When Morales didn’t respond, Blake told him he was joking. When he still didn’t respond, Blake went over to his friend, checked that he was still breathing, and found him actually asleep on his feet.
After helping the big, stunned bear to his own bed, Blake sat back on his, staring at the ceiling.
“Is this really what I want to do?” he asked himself. “I mean, what if it doesn’t work out? What if I just end up wasting my time, and whoever else’s I end up dating?”
“Go to bed!” Morales roared, and then laughed. “Whatever happens, at least you won’t be moping around here!”
*
Morning, and a very hungover Morales, came too early for comfort. The pair had another garage to poke around, to see if this was the one for them to use as the basis for their business.
Blake was hunched over the stove, slowly melting butter, when his friend marched into the room and promptly slumped into a chair. “Coffee,” Morales groaned, rather like a zombie needing his daily brain fix. “If there’s no coffee I’ll... I’ll... well go get some I guess, but I won’t be happy about it.”
Blake grunted a laugh and poured a very large mug full of muddy, almost motor oil-esque coffee. “How many eggs you want?” the answer was a grunt. “Bacon?” Another grunt came, this one more obviously irritated than the last, also accompanied by a soft yurk sound. “Right... sausage? I’ve got link and patty, or uh... I guess we can go get some menudo?”
In one long quaff, Morales drank down the steaming coffee. “This might be the only time in my entire life that none of that stuff sounds good. I don’t think I’ve ever had a hangover like this before.” He rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t say anything stupid last night when I came in, did I?”
“Nah,” Blake said. “Just told me you met a girl from a dating agency and that I should talk to her to find myself a mate.”
The two bears stared at each other over the rims of their coffee cups. “So, uh,” Blake started, “I might have given it some thought after you went to sleep last night.”
“Yeah?” Morales slid his coffee cup back down the table. “Talk. And also give me a refill. She was a hell of a woman, too. I’ve never met anyone who managed to talk me in so many circles. I think I might be in love. Or that could just be the caffeine buzz hitting. Anyway, your turn, talk.”
Blake poured the coffee and handed the mug back to his friend. “Oh, nothing major. I was just thinking that maybe it would be a good idea if I went on a few dates. If nothing else, it’ll keep me out of trouble, right?”
“Or get you into it,” Morales said with a wry smile. “Either way, I gave her your number and answered a few questions,” anticipating what was about to happen, he raised his hands defensively. “Come on! Cut me a break, I was trying to get with someone too. And I figured you wouldn’t mind. I mean, being my non-present wingman, you know?”
Blake sighed, but he couldn’t hide the smile. “Yeah, yeah, Morales,” he said. “Any build
ings we’re looking at today? I gotta keep my mind off kicking your ass.”
“Three of them out past the highway,” Morales said. “And just so you know, the only way you’d ever kick my ass was if I was this hungover, so you’re in luck.”
The two of them laughed, finished their coffee, and hit the door.
The day was mostly dull, mostly routine, but for the life of him, Blake could not get the call out of his mind that he knew—hoped—was coming.
2
“Son of a bitch!” Alexis Headly pulled out yet another knotted stitch from the pot holder she was attempting to knit. Her fingers worked clumsily, slowly, and somehow, as she tried to cinch the next loop, it went around her pinky and before she knew what the hell she was doing, she managed to knit her own finger into the side of her pot holder.
“It’s so easy that even a bear can do it!” the YouTube video she had playing on her tablet informed her. “See how easy it—”
“Shut up!” Lexie wrenched the conjoined potholder off of her hand, and threw first the project and second the tablet, across the room. Almost as a second thought, she stood up from her desk, plucked up the tablet, and downvoted the video. She was just about to add a nasty comment about the whole ‘so easy a bear could do it’ thing, when she realized what she was becoming.
“I’m my own enemy,” she said to her tablet. “I’m becoming an evil YouTube commenter. God almighty what’s happening to me? At least I left the white supremacy out of it like I keep finding in the worst of those comments.”
After catching her breath for a second, and pushing the hulk-like anger back under the cute, slightly fluffy, unassuming body she wore, she plodded back over to make another cup of coffee in the cheap French press she’d bought on a whim. Well, whim isn’t exactly the right word. She’d bought it in an attempt to save money instead of using a Keurig for her normal six-to-eight cups of coffee per day, but she generally only used it once or twice, since it was so much more of a pain in her bunny ass to go through all the fiddling and diddling necessary to make a good cup.