Hare Today Bear Tomorrow (Mating Call Dating Agency, #1)

by Lynn Red

  He just smiled. She stared at his hands. “So, Stacy—is that what you like to be called?”

  “Variations on a theme are what I’m used to, and most of them vulgar, which I won’t repeat. Anyone who really knows me usually ends up calling me Blade.”

  “Middle name?”

  He grinned again. “Either that or I remind them of that comic book movie from the 90s.”

  “You don’t look much like Wesley Snipes,” Eve said. “So I’m guessing it’s the former. Right, so, you’re… a grizzly?”

  “Would you believe Red Panda?”

  “Ha!” Eve burst out with a thunderclap of laughter. “Uh, no.”

  “Would you believe overgrown raccoon?”

  “All right, let’s cut the Get Smart routine. We’ve got a bunch of questions here, but… you know what?” Eve pushed the reading glasses back up the bridge of her nose, where they’d fallen just slightly. “I think we can skip most of them. Why are you here, Mr. Graves?”

  “Blade.” He was growly and serious all of a sudden.

  “If you insist. You’re a professional athlete, you obviously have no problem talking to women and charming them. What on earth does a guy like you need from a gal like me? Don’t tell me you have some weird thing for ferrets? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you.”

  He shook his head, tossing dark curls in both directions. “I’m… not very social. I talk, I joke, but I can’t ever connect with anyone on a level past them rubbing my arms. It sounds ridiculous to complain about, but, there it is. And even though I said I wanted to cut back on the road trips and settle down some, I still want adventures. I’ve seen the inside of every wrestling venue from here to Madison Square Garden, but I’ve barely seen any place I’ve been.”

  Eve scribbled furiously, jotting down the most important of his remarks. Her list, when he stopped talking, was simply ‘adventurous’ and ‘grizzly’ and the word ‘muscled’ crossed out, but then re-written.

  “Any species you’re incompatible with?”

  “Uh, grizzlies?” he said with a charming smile. “We’re sort of territorial. Also, bugs are out. I don’t even know if bug shifters exist, but centipedes make my damn skin crawl.”

  “Right, I have no idea either, but they’re out regardless. Anything else?”

  Before he could respond, even though his mouth was wide open and he was beginning to gesture, Eve cut him off. “I forgot one thing – since I’m sure you read your informational packet thoroughly when you signed up for this interview, you know we don’t do anything on the basis of appearance. We find that at least shifters tend to find mates based on useful things like personality compatibility and… you’re getting up?”

  Blade, Stacy, whatever his name was, stood up, stretched his arms above his head and yawned mightily. “Sorry,” he said. “Like I said, we’ve really been beaten to hell lately. Look, I just want someone that can keep me on my toes. Someone who isn’t scared to take a chance on a person like me. Hell, I just want to meet someone who won’t stare at my neck and ask how I got it so thick. You got anyone like that?”

  Without missing a beat, Eve bent over and pulled open her locked file cabinet where all the women’s profiles were kept. She was serious about security. “You in a hurry?” she asked. “Because it’s gonna take a while to find anyone who won’t be fascinated with your muscles.”

  He let out another booming laugh. “If you got someone for me, I’ve got as long as it takes. I’m gonna go harass your secretary.”

  “Assistant!” Dora shouted from the other room, through the intercom.

  “Sorry, sorry! I always do that!” Stacy laughed.

  The thundering, giant, wild man who had just strode through her door and confused the living hell out of Eve – a first, almost certainly – was just what she’d been looking for.

  Garnet, she thought. I think I finally found the bear for you.

  3

  “I’m sorry, what?” Garnet Pendleton answered Yvette’s call right when she had two fists full of ketchup packets. Hurriedly, she stuffed them into her fridge and shut the door. “Did you say you found someone?”

  “I’d say I found someone, yes,” Eve said, barely concealing what Garnet took as either excitement or terror. In all the times she’d met the Mating Call proprietor, she’d never been anything other than cool, calm and collected. This time though, she was much more like a really tart dill pickle than a cucumber. “Although I did have some reservations.”

  Garnet reached into the grocery bag, grabbed a handful of mayonnaise packets, and then decided just to stick the bag in the fridge. It’s not like she sorted the huge piles of condiments she helped herself to every time she got a deli sandwich. And hey – they said take as many as she wanted. Truth was, this was one of the little ways that Garnet managed to keep herself in the black. Freelance journalists who moonlight as super low-paid librarians had to cut corners.

  “Is he a murderer or something?” Garnet faked a laugh. “Not that, you know, that would stop me if he was nice enough. Sorry, that sounded really desperate.”

  Eve let out a muffled laugh of her own. “No, no he’s not a murderer. I like to think I’m better at my job than to set clients up with serial killers.”

  “I didn’t say serial killer. I wouldn’t take one of those. But just a regular murderer? I gotta be honest with you. The thing that dissuades me about the serial guys is the trophies they take. Gross.”

  When there was no response on the other end, Garnet suddenly felt like maybe her sense of humor had crossed a line from clever into horrifying. “Uh, sorry,” she added sheepishly. “I tend to make jokes when I’m nervous.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Eve said. “But the first part of the Mating Call Dating Agency’s mission statement is that we will never hook anyone up with a murderer. What happens after the hookup, though, we can’t guarantee.”

  Garnet meant to respond, but instead just sat there with her mouth open for a moment before she realized that was a joke. “Ha! Ha-ha!” she let out. “That was a joke.”

  “And that wasn’t a question,” Eve added. “But anyway, sorry to bother you, I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time. Although from the way you’re talking, I doubt I have.”

  “I was just putting ketchup packets in the fridge,” Garnet answered.

  “Huh.”

  “It’s an old habit. My grandma taught me to do it from living through the Depression. She also taught me to hoard creamed corn but thankfully I couldn’t ever stomach that stuff.”

  “I’m learning a whole lot right now,” Eve said, kindness in her voice. “Listen, I’m sorry to be short with you, but,” she trailed off momentarily, trying to figure out how to explain that there was a professional wrestler in her office with a winning smile, eyes that could disarm a statue, and who was willing to pay a lot for someone just like he described.

  And as luck—or whatever—would have it, Garnet Pendleton’s file had been sitting in the depths of Eve’s file cabinet for a lot longer than she normally took to make a match. It was just that most people were looking for someone with a steady job, or someone who wanted to settle down. It was a rare thing that someone actually requested a woman who wanted some spice and adventure in life.

  “Your file says that you want a guy who is fun, handsome, blah-blah-blah. Honestly everyone that walks in the door says that stuff. But you also said, and here’s the key, that you wanted someone a little off center.”

  Garnet thought about that choice of words for a moment. Freelance journalists are nothing if not analytical. “Off center? You’re trying to get me to date an attempted murderer, aren’t you?” She laughed, but in the back of her mind, she wondered if that were actually true, and if it were, if that would be a game changer.

  “No murderers,” Eve said. “We consider criminal backgrounds, and only match people with dates that have a like amount of felonies.”

  “I don’t know whether you’re joking or not,” Garnet
said. “Because if you are, you’ve mastered dead pan comedy. Assuming you’re not, that’s actually really impressive.”

  “Our name is Mating Call, isn’t it?” Eve decided to leave that particular question open to interpretation. “But in this case, no felonies. Hell, not even a misdemeanor. He was arrested on accident one time when his opponent really sold a chair shot.”

  The total lack of laughter gave Garnet the idea that whether or not the older woman was being entirely honest, it was definitely an interesting story. “Chair shot? What’s that mean?”

  “Uh,” Eve trailed off. “Listen, this is really out of the ordinary, and I’m sorry for doing it this way, but the guy we’ve picked for you is sitting in the office. And to be honest, he can explain it a lot better than I can, because honestly I can’t explain it at all.”

  Arching her eyebrow in a silent question, Garnet let out an inquisitive humming sound. “This is weird,” she finally said.

  “Yes, it is,” Eve admitted, obviously not terribly happy about it. “But listen, this guy is really a catch. I can find someone else if you want, and I’d totally understand, given the odd circumstances, but—“

  “No,” Garnet cut in. Her journalistic moxie was running at an all-time high. Even if this turned out to be weird, well, what the hell: a story is worth some pain if it’s good enough, right? “I want to meet him. Er, talk to him, or whatever. Do you mean a chair shot like in pro-wrestling?”

  “Uh,” Eve clicked her teeth. “I think I better let you talk to him. He’s… yeah. Listen, honey,” she said as an aside, “he might have a slightly odd job, but I have never seen shoulders like his.”

  In the distance, Garnet thought she could make out the sound of someone with a very, very deep voice, and someone with a much higher pitched one, laughing. “Is that him?”

  “He’s got my assistant in stitches. And you know Dora isn’t one to get all giggly.”

  Garnet had initially found out about the agency because of Eve’s assistant. During one of her late night shelving marathons at the White Lake Public Library, she’d accidentally spilled the beans to one of the regulars about her dire romantic straits. As luck would have it, that regular turned out to be the very assistant that Eve was talking about.

  Ever since Garnet moved to White Lake four years earlier, she’d been a loner. Not a Unabomber sort of loner, just the sort of loner that writers tend to be. She spent her free time, what little there was of it, either reading or watching old gangster movies. In her line of work, there wasn’t any time for playing around, and there certainly wasn’t any room for someone that was going to want her to sit at home and get dinner ready.

  “She’s… yeah, definitely not,” Garnet said with a fond smile. “This guy must really be something if he’s doing that to her.”

  “Let me tell you this,” Eve said with a hint of secrecy in her voice. “I’m all business with men. Absolutely straight faced and serious. But this guy—Stacy—he had me cracked up like one of those old Mad Magazine spy cartoons can. I’ve just aged myself terribly, but you get the idea.”

  “His name is Stacy?”

  “Yeah, Stacy Graves. But let me tell you, he doesn’t look anything like a Stacy. He has some alias that he works under, but he won’t tell me what it is. Something about not wanting me to think he’s a lunatic for doing what he does.”

  “Which,” Garnet said, balancing a fork on the end of her finger, like she always did when she was even the slightest bit nervous, “you still haven’t told me.”

  “Well, he collects baseball cards and also said something about being a nerd. Listen, you really do need to talk to this guy, and the reason I’m dropping this bomb on you with such short notice is that he’s only got three days before he leaves town again.”

  Immediately, Garnet’s heart sank, and the sigh she released told the whole story. “Oh,” she said. “I thought he was looking for something serious. I don’t have time for the up and down of another one-night-stand. Or long-weekend-stand. Whatever.”

  “Oh no, no,” Eve said quickly. “That’s not it at all. He travels for work.” She was very proud of the way she’d dodged that bullet – if it even was a bullet at all. “He’ll just be off on business for a time.”

  “Business? I thought you said he was”—the question was cut short by something that sounded to Garnet a hell of a lot like someone tickling a toddler. “Fun?”

  “Can you hear this?” Eve asked. “He ain’t in any normal kind of business. Look, do you want to talk to him or do you want to just go out? I promise this one’s a keeper. And if anyone is in the business of picking the heroes from the zeroes, it’s me.”

  For a second, Garnet bit her bottom lip between her square, slightly-sharp incisors. She had a story due in forty-eight hours about the degeneration of the American news media, and a shift at the library the next morning. “What the hell,” she said. “You only live once, right?”

  “Yeah, YOLO,” Eve said.

  “Oh God I so didn’t mean it like that,” Garnet said.

  “It’s true though, you really do only live once. And I need to get this guy out of my office before I get the White Lake police in here because my damn secretary can’t stop cackling like a damn loon. Listen, what kind of food do you like?”

  “Shit, Thai?”

  “Was that a statement of cause and effect?” Eve laughed. “Sorry, okay, I’ll have him meet you. Unless you want him to pick you up?”

  “No, no,” Garnet said. “Meeting is fine. I’ve heard enough blind date horror stories to have a shred of caution left.”

  “This one is… well anyway, sounds good. I’ll text you the restaurant. And as always, first date is on us. That’s how we roll at Any Stripe. Talk at you soon. Or text at you, whichever.”

  A smile broke out across Garnet’s lips even as she looked at herself in the reflection of her refrigerator door and realized that she needed a hell of a lot of hair and makeup work if she was going to put her best face forward. But then she realized that… you know what? If a guy didn’t want to take her as she was, then what kind of guy was he anyway? It didn’t matter how funny and exciting he was, if he was some kind of prick that wouldn’t give anyone without six layers of foundation the time of day, she didn’t want any part of him anyway.

  With resolve strong enough to withstand a hurricane, Garnet pulled the jeans back on that she’d discarded as soon as she walked into her apartment about an hour before. The hairs on her legs prickled against the gentle tug of denim. For just a second, she thought maybe she should do something about that hair. And then she thought, why? It isn’t like she was gonna be shedding those jeans anytime soon.

  She just wasn’t that sort of bunny. Er, not that sort of girl.

  No matter how much she wanted to be, she just wasn’t. Even if the guy really did have all those things Eve said he did.

  As she continued to wage a mental war on whether or not to get out her razor, Eve’s text message with the location of the Thai place interrupted her train of thought.

  On her way out the door, Garnet grabbed her keys and gave herself one last look in the mirror. “You know what?” she asked. “Aside from that zit on your cheek, you ain’t too bad, girl. Hopefully the guy is worth all this stress.”

  From the corner of her eye, she noticed her lip gloss sitting on the small table. “I can at least do this, though,” she told herself as she slicked it on.

  She doubted it – she really did. But anyone that could get the cool-as-ice proprietor of the most famous shifter dating agency this side of the Mississippi as worked up as she was?

  Yeah. YOLO.

  Sometimes, as dumb as they can be, bumper stickers are right. As much as it pained her to say it, sometimes they hit the nail right on the head.

  With images of smiley faces and SHIT HAPPENS floating in front of her head, Garnet couldn’t figure out exactly what the hell she was doing, but she knew that whatever it was, just doing something different felt good.


  “I don’t even like muscles,” she announced to the slightly rusted door of her ’99 Civic, in the instant before she swung it open and winced at the squeak, just like she always did. She sat in the seat, skillfully avoiding the sprung spring that always stuck her in the left part of her ass, and turned the key in the ignition. “I don’t like muscles… do I?” she asked, looking at herself in the mirror and not quite sure what to make of what she saw. “Or… oh God, what if I’ve turned into one of those girls that goes weak in the knees and starts jabbering when a guy with biceps that sorta peak up walk into a room.”

  The way she pursed her lips at her reflection and then shook her head from side to side before rolling her eyes confirmed that no, in fact, she was decidedly not that sort of girl. But still, here she was, going to meet some giant hunk of meat for Thai food, and she had no real conscious realization that she’d agreed to anything. It was just like a drifting mist that floated into her nose and out her mouth.

  “But what the hell,” she said with a little twist of a grin. “If nothing else, at least I’m walking out of this place with a full stomach and gas.” She laughed at herself. “Okay maybe I’ll hold off on the chili sauce. I can’t in good conscience submit anyone else on earth to Garnet Gas. Unless they really, really deserve it.”

  4

  The glow of Siam Sushi, Ribs, Chinese and Thai was something that could only be described as ‘Las Vegas, if it were tackier.’

  Framing the door to the joint were huge topiaries in vague panda shapes. They were once very well-manicured, sharply trimmed panda bear shaped shrubs, but had long since fallen scraggly and frazzled. Weird vines, featuring bell-shaped flowers, hung limply from what Garnet knew were once panda ears. “Been a while, I guess,” she said with a sad smile.

  As Garnet conversed openly and publically with the shrubs, the phone that she always kept snugly tucked into her back pocket buzzed hard enough to give her a jolt of surprise. For once, her balance didn’t fail, which was good, because it’s one thing for a rabbit to be clumsy in the privacy of her own house or apartment, or meetings, or pretty much anywhere else. It’s entirely another to trip over your own ass and have a blow out right in front of a fairly well-populated restaurant.