Can't Bear To Run (Kendal Creek Bears, #1)

by Lynn Red

  “Huh?” My head swam, either from the chemical vat, or more likely, from the way this giant had somehow managed to make me forget – at least for the moment – my awful situation and also the fact that I’d been in a car so long my legs were cramped painfully.

  He squinted. “I’m... not playing. I’m Daxon...”

  “Oh!” I shouted, shaking his hand. “I swear I’m not normally this dumb. I just drove in from Boston in two days, and my head is kinda wobbly.”

  “Nice to meet you, Raine Matthews, from Boston,” Daxon said. “I knew I’d find you again.”

  “Yeah, good to... wait, what? Do I know you?” It was all I could do not to flop on the ground and start gyrating like a lunatic. Of course I know you, I wanted to shout. When I’m in the worst way, I keep remembering your face. To not sound like a loon, I kept my mouth shut.

  “I’ve got a strange way with remembering names. And you’ve got a certain way with comically bad 80s power ballads.”

  “You... remembered?”

  “Yes.” He grew very serious. “There have been about eighteen hundred days since the last time I saw you, and I never forgot, not one single time, the way your eyes glittered on that stage. I knew I’d find you, and I didn’t stop until I did.”

  I was shaking my head. “You’re good at this game, aren’t you?” I dropped his hand and narrowed my eyes. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Game? Nah. I just act like a playboy when I get nervous. Honestly I like to play Dungeons & Dragons and read comics. But I do owe you something.”

  “You... do?”

  “A beer,” he said with a grin that made my knees a little unstable as he stared into my eyes. “Remember?”

  -9-

  Serious as a Bear Attack

  “Pretty good, huh?” Dax was pretending to watch the band, but was very obviously watching me. Every time I looked away from him, he’d steal a glance. It’s funny; here’s this huge guy who can very obviously take care of himself, and yet at the same time, there’s a kind of innocence about him.

  No, no, innocence is the wrong word. Maybe... inexperience? It’s hard to pin down. Eagerness? He certainly had that, for sure.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Never heard of these guys before.”

  Truth was, I hadn’t heard of any of the bands playing. The longer I was there – we were getting to the end of day one – the more I started wondering why the hell, exactly, I went. Then again, the more I questioned my motives, the more I realized they didn’t need any questioning.

  The day was fading slowly into evening, and with it, orange rays seemed to spray out from behind the mountains framing the fairground. “What brought you all the way out here, Raine Matthews?” that familiar, husky voice asked.

  On stage, the band quit playing, packed up their stuff and departed. In the lull between acts, the massive crowd dispersed a little – though we were so far back from the stage that the place wasn’t particularly crowded anyway.

  I shrugged, still watching the stage. “Just seemed like a good time, I guess. Also, ever since that night at karaoke when I saw you, I haven’t been able to get you out of my head. You’re like a bad dream that turned into a really good one.”

  “I know,” he said with a smile. “Funny thing about love, huh?”

  “Kinda forward, huh?”

  “I would say... straight forward rather than just forward.” The way he kinda growled when he spoke got my belly twisting just a smidge. I didn’t know if I was just heavily on the rebound, but I have the feeling I’d been over Dan for a pretty long time at that point. This just felt... fun?

  I smirked with the left side of my mouth, but kept staring at the stage. I was afraid that if I looked over at my new friend, I’d betray my own emotions far more than I wanted. “How about you? I don’t know the first thing about you, and you stole my wallet, so you’re about four up on me.”

  He grunted a laugh. “I’m... from a small town,” he said with the most obvious guard wall I’ve ever heard up. “North of here a ways. Deeper in the Rockies.”

  “Ah,” I said. “That’s specific. What’s it called?”

  “Kendal Creek,” he said. I felt his hand brush against mine and instinctively turned to see what it was. Turns out, it wasn’t just a brush. He’d grabbed my hand, immediately sending shocks of warmth up my arm.

  “Your skin,” I said softly, “it’s so hot. Are you sick or something?”

  “Lovesick, maybe,” he said with a cheesy grin.

  “Jesus,” I rolled my eyes, laughing. “I’ve heard some raunchy lines in my time, but holy hell that one takes the cake. Seriously, why are you so hot?”

  He laughed again, and tossed a fallen curl out of his eyes. Then he shrugged, which was the first time I noticed exactly how big his shoulders were. They were almost too much to be believed, the way the muscles towered toward his ears. “It’s a family thing. We run hot. And it means I’m a terrible baker, because every time I try to make pizza dough, it just turns into a sticky mess.”

  Speaking of sticky messes, I thought with a slight blush.

  “That’s oddly specific,” I said. I found that I was grinning again, which honestly isn’t like me at all. I’m normally so reserved and almost walled off. Something about either this guy, or the whole being across the country from real life thing was turning me into someone pretty different from my normal self.

  His eyes danced when he smiled again. “You have two more questions.”

  “I what?” he caught me off guard. “Oh right, the questions. Okay, well... Two easy ones. Are you married and do you have any kids?”

  “Speaking of forward,” Daxon said with a grin. “No and no. My turn.”

  “Fine,” I said, smiling despite my misgivings. “Go right ahead.”

  His hand slid up my arm, but I didn’t resist. Normally I would have shrugged it off or dodged away from him, but I just let him work his hot hand up to my shoulder where it rested. “Same question as before. Why are you here? You’re a long way from home for someone who isn’t some kind of superfan.”

  I was trying to play it cool. “Well... how honest do you want me to be?”

  “Is there really a continuum? I mean, aren’t you either honest or dishonest?” His fingers began massaging my shoulder. It felt really, really good – almost sinfully good. I knew that if he really tried to put some moves on me, I’d be a lost cause. Thing is though, I didn’t feel like he was doing anything I didn’t want him to do.

  Was this – this – what a real man was like? If so... good lord was I a mess.

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “So do you want honest or a more interesting, exaggerated version?”

  He let out a bellowed laugh that would have seemed fake if it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t seem capable of anything that wasn’t straight up. “I like you,” he said. “A lot.”

  He wasn’t laughing any more. His face was pure, steely, determination. It gave me a few wiggles deep in my core. “Let’s go with the honest version first. Later we can go with the exaggeration.”

  “Oh,” I exhaled. “Uh... wow, okay.” I found myself muttering. Oh my God what is happening to me? It’s like I’m turning into some kind of Rainenstein. This isn’t me, not at all.

  Thing is though, I liked it. Feeling like this guy, this enormous specimen of a human, was paying attention to me, and actually interested in what I had to say? “I needed to get away from home.”

  “That sounds like a good story,” he growled. Oh God he’s actually growling. Those fiery, gold and brown eyes caught my attention again. The way they tapered into the corners, and the way those corners traced down his cut cheekbones to the corners of his mouth just about made my heart drop.

  “I dunno,” I said bashfully. “It’s not all that riveting.” Of course, the story was pretty damn good, if unbelievable, but if I wasn’t going to blab the truth to Karen, I certainly wasn’t going to go telling all my secrets to some guy I hardly knew.

  But
it isn’t like I don’t know him. It feels like I’ve known him for a lot longer than I have. Still, I need to be careful. Like, real careful. I have no idea who he really is, after all.

  “Well try me,” he said. “I like stories and I like you. Seems like a good combination to me.”

  I laughed nervously. “Well, I just had a... let’s call it a pair of marriages that went sour. I just needed to get away, you know?”

  The hand on my shoulder was sliding back down my arm. He made me feel so warm, so... cared for? I don’t know. It sounds crazy, but somehow this rugged giant made me feel a lot like Dan did, back when marriage wasn’t even a consideration, you know, back when he was hiding who he really was.

  “You’d think you’d learn after the first one,” he said with a wry grin.

  Instinctively I elbowed him in the side the way I would someone I’d known for years, and he just laughed.

  “But seriously, I think I know what you mean. To be honest with you, that’s kind of why I’m here too.”

  “Oh?” I asked, thankful to be talking about something besides my own terrifying life story. “Divorce?”

  “Nah, nothing like that,” he said. “I’m uh,” he seemed to stumble a bit, searching for a word. “Mayor, I guess is a good way to look at it.”

  “Hoo damn!” I whistled. “A mayor! I’m hanging out with a famous politician, huh?”

  He bellowed another laugh. “Uh, like I said, small town. Really small. Anyway, I just needed a break. Running a little village tends to be a pretty intense experience most of the time. With the clans around us being all—never mind. Just politics.”

  “Wait, what? A clan? What are you talking about? Sounds like some weird Highlander stuff.”

  Dax shrugged. “Nothing, it’s just what we call the other towns around us. We’ve got, you know, a sort of rivalry going on. But the point is, it wears on a guy after so long. Gotta run and hide sometimes.”

  He was staring directly into my eyes. Those golden flecks in his were flickering every time the lights from the stage moved over the crowd. It felt like we were the only two people in the world.

  “I just had a crazy idea,” he said. It felt like his voice was sliding over my skin, prickling the back of my neck. “And I’m serious, this is really crazy.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Well, seeing as how this past few days have been nothing but wall-to-wall nutso, I may as well ask what your stupid plan is.”

  “Not a plan,” he said with a grin. “And not stupid. I said crazy. There’s a difference.”

  “Oh, right, of course. So what is it? You want to go make out in the porta-potty?”

  That got a guffaw. “Er, no. That would definitely tend more to the stupid side of the spectrum. I was thinking, neither of us really gives the first shit about any of these bands, right?”

  “That’s fair,” I said, without a clue in the world what this giant with the perfectly imperfect hair was getting at. “So?”

  “Well, I was just thinking. You’re on the run from something – I assume just your sourpuss husband and—”

  “Ex,” I interjected, though I was thinking technically missing and presumed dead. “That’s a very, very important distinction.”

  “Ex-husband,” Dax corrected himself. “Either way, if you’re on the run from something, I think I might know just the place.”

  Before he could finish whatever he was thinking, his phone buzzed in his pocket. For a second, Dax looked irritated. “You can answer that, I guess,” he said.

  “Like I need your permission to answer my phone,” I said, but I have to admit that his command gave me a little buzz of my own, as strange as it is to admit. “But that’s yours, jackass.”

  He turned a little red, and laughed. “Yeah, yeah, of course. That was a joke.”

  As he yammered away at whoever was on the other end, Dax’s forehead creased in concern. He didn’t strike me as the sort to ever get riled up, but that was based on approximately ten hours of acquaintance, so I was probably wrong. Either way, he was intense, that much is for sure. The way he handled the guy who was line cutting at the toilet gave me a little wiggle of excitement. And then how he let his eyes shamelessly slide up and down from my face to my body and back as he talked gave me another little jolt. It’s funny, I guess, how long ago I’d completely checked out of my life with Dan.

  I hadn’t even realized how much this big, dark-haired, tower of muscle had got to me until I caught myself staring straight into his gold-flecked eyes and smiling like a lovelorn high school kid.

  He tapped the phone, and slid it back into the pocket of his tight-on-the-butt-loose-on-the-legs jeans. They were worn and old, but it was very obviously honest wear. There were little strings of torn denim hanging down from the sides of the holes on the knees. This was a man who wore those holes honestly, not some kid who bought them like that from Macy’s.

  “That solves that,” he said brusquely and grabbed my arm, pulling me after him.

  “Whoa, whoa, cowboy,” I snorted, digging my heels in and grinding to a halt. “What the hell are you thinking, dragging me along? Are you some kind of caveman? Was that supposed to be attractive?”

  “I,” he stammered. “I mean, no? What?” he looked genuinely confused. “What are you mad about?”

  “Seriously?” I asked, hands on hips. “I haven’t even known you for a day, and you’re making decisions for me and then dragging me after you like a ragdoll. Do you seriously need to ask what I’m mad about?”

  Thing is though, I wasn’t mad. Not exactly. It was more like he’d put me on the defensive by grabbing me, but... holy shit yeah I was really over Dan. Not over the trauma or the shock of what I’d done, just over him as a human being.

  “I didn’t mean to irritate you,” he said.

  “That’s your version of an apology?” I couldn’t help but grin, completely betraying my faux-irritation.

  “Do you have something better to do?”

  I thought for a second. “Well, no, not really I guess. But will you at least tell me what we’re doing in such a hurry?”

  He grunted a laugh. “I guess that would make this look a lot less like a kidnapping, huh?”

  “Just a smidge.”

  He looked me up and down again. This time, his eyes settled on mine at the end of their short path along my curves. “I’ve been looking,” he said before pausing. “For...”

  “Oh don’t turn this into some weird fate thing,” I said. “I’ve had just about enough of that for a lifetime or two.” Though, in the back of my mind, the only thing that made any sense was fate.

  Dax snickered, and looked off to the side. His eyes caught the sun in such a way that it just about made my knees get wobbly – and trust me, I’m not the sort to go weird because some man is making eyes at me.

  Then again, this wasn’t ‘some man.’ This was something else entirely. This was one of those dreams you half forget when you wake up, only to slide into full-on deja vu when something later in the day reminds you of it.

  “Why are you staring at me?” he said with a bemused smirk. “Is it my dashing good looks and winning attitude?”

  “Yeah, something like that. There’s something about you that’s just... I dunno,” I said, sweeping a fallen tendril of hair out of my face. The wind blew it right back. I couldn’t bring myself to say what it was about him, because – come the hell on, I just met the guy – but he had this kind of... I want to say feral, almost animalistic look to him. Not like he was a wild person, or one of those weird people who live in a half buried school bus out in the desert.

  “Something about you, too,” he said. “I can’t put my finger on it exactly, but there’s some reason I can’t stop staring at you.”

  His words melted me, just a bit. “If I were about five years younger,” I said, “you probably would’ve gotten into my pants just then.”

  “Is that the kind of man you think I am?” he replied. “I’m not just laying lines on you to get a quickie.
”

  I stumbled over my words. “Erk, no, no that’s not what I meant. Although it isn’t like I really know you at all, so what the hell, that might be exactly what you’re doing.”

  My defenses shot straight up again. What the hell are you doing, Raine? I asked myself. Oh right, being careful and reasonable, just like that cop said. God only knows what kind of lechers are creeping around here looking for girls.

  Just then, as I had almost forgotten the whole thing about him taking me somewhere by the wrist, the drunk asshole from the toilet shambled up again. First I smelled his sweet and sour whiskey breath, and a moment later I felt his arm slide around my neck.

  “Hey sugar,” he said. My skin crawled. I hate people under the age of sixty calling me sugar. Dax stared daggers at him, but didn’t make a move. I was close enough to grab the guy if I wanted, but I was too shocked to do much of anything except stand there and look confused. “You want to go back to the place we met? Maybe have a little fun?”

  A few seconds later, captain idiot’s friends joined up. Three of them, all looking roughly the same – lanky, crooked hats, too much jewelry. “Who’s the meathead?” one of them asked.

  Dax growled. Honest to God. I’m not using that word as some kind of exaggerated description of what he was doing, he actually growled like a damn bear.

  “Shit, you mad about something, bro?” the first one said. “I’m Blaise, and this is El Jefe, Zane, and that’s Easy-Money.”

  I shook my head. “Are you serious? You have friends named El Jefe and Easy-Money? What the hell kind of bizarro world did I wander into?”

  “Into one where men are men and we know how to take care of our girls.”

  “Oh, honey,” I said, feeling a wheeze-laugh coming on. “You wouldn’t know what to do with me if you did somehow manage to convince me to do let you take care of me. And that’s about as likely as my ass running a marathon.”

  ‘El Jefe’ licked his lips. “Come on, mama,” he said. “Leave this lunk and find out what it’s like to party with me and my homeys, what-what?”

  “Holy shit, I’m in a Vanilla Ice video.”