The jokey one, with dark, chin-length hair in a shaggy cut, gave her a rakish smile. But despite his flashy good looks, he didn’t affect her like the blond.
The third brother was a little leaner, more refined than the others, though impressive in his own right. He was wearing finer clothing, clean chinos and a sweater in what looked like cashmere. He had what might be called an aristocratic face, with fine, high eyebrows and distinct cheekbones. Full, distinct lips, which all of them had. Rich-brown hair in a short, side-swept cut, and surprisingly, he had gray streaks at his temples and throughout, though, by his face, she’d guess him to be the youngest.
The middle brother grinned at her, a crooked grin that put one dimple in his cheek. His skin was tanned, more in a Hollywood way than the simple, work-tanned look her rescuer had. His dark hair was rakish and covered part of his face and seemed artfully cut to do just that.
She was sure he made panties drop in some place like L.A., but she preferred the more rugged look of her rescuer.
She basically preferred everything about her rescuer, except for his personality and the fact that he’d kidnapped her.
Plus, she wasn’t looking for a rebound. It was best to just take a break from men for now.
Especially if the men in question were bear shifters.
“Can you put that down?” the long-haired brother said, leaning back in his chair and putting one leg on the table. “It’s mean.”
“I’m Ryland,” the younger one with the gray streaks said. “That’s Rock.” He pointed to Hollywood. “That’s Riker.” He pointed to her rescuer, who was glowering up at her as if wondering when she was going to put down the spray.
As soon as she figured out what the fuck was going on, not a moment sooner.
“We didn’t kidnap you,” the blond giant snapped. “Now put that stupid spray down before you blind yourself.”
She sighed. “What do you mean you didn’t kidnap me?”
“You remember Rock shifting?” he asked.
“That’s the last thing I remember.”
He sighed. Even his sigh was pure masculine sexiness. “Then I guess you don’t remember taking off like an idiot and falling flat on your face, knocking your head on a rock.”
A deep flush worked its way from her neck to her cheeks. It burned. “No.” A silly grin curved her lips as she lowered the spray. “I did that?” She thought back. Oh, it was exactly the kind of thing she would do.
And truthfully, she would be relieved, because it would mean the men downstairs had just helped her rather than kidnapped her. And with it being night outside, she’d rather have friends than foes around.
She stood, setting down the bear spray and putting up her hands. “I put it down, see?”
Riker, a hot name, rolled his eyes. “What a relief.”
“Come down here,” Rock said. “Might as well get acquainted.”
She saw Riker give his brother a dirty look, but then he turned his attention back to her as she came slowly down the stairs. For some reason, she felt oddly like a girl coming down to her prom date. But that was stupid.
It was just that he had an intense gaze, and that huge body made it impossible to think normally, and his thick hair looked made for her to put her hands in…
She realized he was holding out a chair and sat in it. Three pairs of gorgeous male eyes stared at her. She felt a little like Goldilocks.
Goldilocks and the hot bears.
“So… um. You can all change like that?” she asked shyly. “Some kind of magic?”
“Beings like us have existed a long time,” Riker said, turning his chair to sit on it backward, resting his powerful arms over the top. He studied her with lowered brows. He had nice brows. Thick. “You just aren’t supposed to know about it.”
“What happens now, then?” she asked nervously, realizing she was alone in their little cabin and no one knew where she was… if she disappeared.
“We have to kill you,” Rock, the one with the dimple, said solemnly, earning a jolting smack to the back of the head from Riker.
“Shut up,” he bit out. He turned to her, his handsome mouth pulled into a frown that seemed to be permanent. “That’s up to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we can call someone to erase your memory, but it’d take time for them to get here.”
“Can’t I just leave?” she asked. “I promise not to tell anyone. I would just call a friend and go home.”
Riker looked at Ryland, who shook his head. “We’ve closed the canyon. It’s for the humans’ safety.”
“So you’re the reason the canyon closes for the week,” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” Riker said.
“Are you hungry?” Ryland asked politely, standing and waiting for her answer.
“I guess so,” she said.
“And, um, your name?”
“Oh, of course. How rude. Sorry, I’m Ana.”
“Nice to meet you, Ana,” Ryland said with a smile. “I’ll make you something.”
She warmed, feeling she’d found at least one friend among this weird group.
Riker was glaring at her darkly, as if trying to make up his mind about something.
“What is it?” she snapped, uncomfortable under his handsome gaze. Didn’t he have any idea the effect his glare had on women?
“What were you doing in the woods alone?” he asked. “From what I understand, human women, humans in general, shouldn’t be alone in the wild.”
She looked down at her hands, too ashamed to tell them the story. Saying it out loud would just make it too real as well. Some part of her felt this could all still be a dream. Corey could come back, apologize, say he’d been kidding.
No, he couldn’t. The canyon was closed. And she’d seen the text from his paramour with her own eyes. Tears bit at the corners of her eyes, and she blinked them back.
Rock sat up abruptly. “Hey now, you’ve made her cry.” He looked from brother to brother in alarm. “Someone make it stop.”
Ryland froze where he was in the kitchen, getting ready to put something in the microwave. He shrugged, looking equally panicked.
Riker sighed and scooted his chair forward until he was sitting next to her. She shouldn’t have felt comforted by it, but she was.
He raised an awkward hand, holding it above her back for a few seconds, and then brought it down in the most weird, tentative pat of her life. “There, there,” he said stiffly. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”
She laughed, shrugging away from him as she grabbed a napkin offered by Ryland to wipe her eyes. “Sorry. It’s nothing to do with any of you. I was dumped by my boyfriend, and—”
“Your mate?” Riker asked, looking at Ryland for confirmation.
“Something like that,” Ryland said. “Although, human males sometimes switch partners, even after committing.” The men in the room wrinkled their noses in disgust.
“Bear shifters don’t date around?” she asked, sniffling and giving her nose a last blow.
Riker shook his head. “No. I mean, we can go out, but when we get serious with a woman, it’s only because she’s our mate, and mates are forever.”
She glanced around. “So… any of you have mates?”
Ryland flushed and started the microwave. Rock scratched the back of his head and avoided her gaze, and Riker stared straight ahead at her.
“No,” he said. “None of us have found the time.”
“Um, right,” she said.
They sat there in silence until the microwave beeped and Ryland brought her a meal, peeling the film back as he went. It was some kind of chicken with rice, but it hit the spot.
“Anyway, I’m sorry,” she said when she’d finished and sat back in her chair. Riker’s inscrutable gaze just stared, daring her to go on. “I misjudged you, but you have to admit it’s been a bit of a shock.”
“I shouldn’t have shifted,” Rock admitted. “I’m sorry.”
She grinned at hi
m. “That’s okay.”
“Friends?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said with a laugh. He raked her with a gaze full of heat, and she stopped laughing abruptly. When he wasn’t being an asshole, Rock was powerfully handsome.
Riker glared at his brother. “We still have to figure out what to do.”
“She can hang out with me,” Rock said.
“Wait, who said I’m staying?” she asked.
“Do you have a choice?” Riker said. “Do you want your friends to go through the danger of trying to come up here?” He shook his head. “No, it’s safest if you wait until the Brawl is over. Plus, there’s the issue of your memory.”
“You said I had options,” she reminded him.
“Oh, right,” he said flatly, sitting back in his chair. “You could pick a shifter mate. I don’t recommend that, though.”
Rock leered at her, and Ryland sent her a shy look.
They had to be kidding.
“Um, I’m not in the market,” she said. “Besides, if shifter men look like you, they’re all gorgeous and out of my league.”
Riker snorted. “No.”
Rock wiggled his eyebrows with a leer. “We like ‘em soft.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, fury and embarrassment flooding through her.
“Rock, wrong words!” Ryland hissed.
Rock looked abashed but tried again. “Um. Shapely,” he said, looking hopeful. “Curvy?”
“Ugh, shut up. You’re making it worse,” Ryland said, putting his head in his hands.
Rock, still looking puzzled, put his hands out in front of him. “We like ‘em squeezable, you know, so you got lots to grab—ow!”
He stopped as a fork hit his head, knocking him back. “What was that for?” He turned angrily to Riker, who’d thrown the fork.
“Ignore him,” Riker said.
She wrapped her arms around herself. Okay, so she was curvier than the average hiker. And she’d always been plus-sized, with generous boobs and a rounded tummy, no matter how little she ate or how much she worked out.
But shifter men liked that? After the shock faded, a small hope set in. She looked at Riker questioningly.
“Ignore him,” he repeated, shaking his head.
“But is he right?” she asked.
“About shifters?” Riker asked. “Sure.”
She sat back in her chair. “Wow.”
“But I still don’t recommend it,” Riker said. “You’re better off with someone in your world. And especially with this group. The shifters here are wild animals. Some of the worst around. Here just to fight.”
“Right,” she said. “What is this brawl you were talking about?”
Riker sighed, as if tired of talking about it. “Once yearly, we have a fight up here, open to all bear shifters. A few others, if they want to enter. That’s what you saw going on yesterday, what you thought was illegal animal fighting.”
“Oh,” she said, letting it dawn on her. “But wait, why are you fighting?”
“Not us,” Ryland said. “We just organize it.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That seems a bit corrupt.”
“Not at all,” Riker said. “This was handed over to us a long time ago, and before that, our ancestors oversaw it. They found that giving male bear shifters an outlet for their aggression was good for the whole region.”
“And what do the fighters get out of it?”
“Then? Dominance. Territory.”
“And now?” she asked, thoroughly fascinated.
“Money,” Riker said flatly.
“Wow,” she said. “So am I going to get to watch the fights?”
Riker shook his head. “No. And if I had my way, you wouldn’t have come here.”
“Don’t be so harsh,” Rock muttered.
“No,” Riker said, slamming a hand down on the table. “Don’t you get it? She’s our responsibility right now. We’re the only things standing between her and a literal pack of hungry bears, and we don’t have time to be watching her all day.”
Hurt washed through her. The way he spoke of her, like an annoyance, a burden, felt too much like Corey when he was angry.
She set down her fork and pushed back from the table. “When can those people who erase memory arrive?”
“I’m sorry,” Riker said, running a hand through his hair. “I’m stressed, all right? I’m sorry.”
“Riker runs the whole town,” Ryland said, sitting across from her and addressing her calmly, his hands crossed in front of him on the table. “He hates this event as much as all of us do. But it’s our responsibility.”
“I understand,” she said, still feeling unreasonably hurt by his words. “I’ll try to stay out of the way. But I never intended to be left in the woods on my own. I wasn’t trying to get in your way.”
Riker’s tortured eyes met hers, a flame of rage lighting in them. “What do you mean left in the woods?”
“I told you he dumped me.”
“Wait… wait, wait, wait,” Rock said, leaning forward with disgust curling his lips. “He left you… in the woods?”
She nodded.
Riker snarled and stood abruptly, knocking the table back. He turned on his heel and strode out the front door, slamming it behind him.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, letting out a breath.
Rock shook his head, indicating he didn’t know.
The door opened again, and Riker came back in. She could tell he was making a great effort to stay calm, taking deep breaths and releasing them slowly.
He sat in his chair, acting as if nothing had happened. He faced her with his calmest gaze yet, and she could see that sense of responsibility Ryland had spoken of.
Perhaps he was so bossy because he had so much weight on his shoulders. But it still didn’t give him the right to boss her around.
“I’m sorry that happened to you,” he said. “If I could punch the bastard, I would. But since we can’t change anything that’s happened, I promise we’ll try to make the week as pleasant as possible for you.” He looked at his brothers. “Rock, Ryland, you can handle some of my duties with the fights, right?”
“Aw, I want to play bodyguard,” Rock said, pouting.
“Sure,” Ryland said. “We can do whatever you want.”
“Great,” Riker said, turning back to Ana. He took her hand in his, and she felt so small in his calloused palms. And safe. Her heart beat hard as she looked up into those thundercloud eyes.
“Tell you what. It’s only a few days. Then we can have someone come pick you up, get your memory taken care of. And in the meantime, if you’d like, I can spend time with you when there aren’t fights.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. And was she sure she even wanted to be around him?
“That’s what’ll be safest,” he said. “I want you to promise you won’t go anywhere without one of us.”
She swallowed, her throat tight from the knot in it. The idea of having to cling to a man all the time when she was trying to get over another one wasn’t exactly what she had in mind, but she didn’t have much of a choice.
The thought of being caught by another mob like she had today wasn’t something she could entertain.
She nodded. “Okay. I promise.”
“All right,” he said. “Then we all just have to get through this, and then it’ll be like it never happened.”
He stood and began to talk with his brothers, and she pushed around a stray piece of rice on her tray, an odd sadness waving through her as she thought about forgetting the men in the room.
She raised her eyes to Riker, and he immediately felt her gaze and looked over. Electricity sparked between them.
She swallowed. “So what are we going to do then, when you aren’t at fights?”
He shrugged. “Anything you want, as long as you’re out of harm’s way.”
“You can take her over to your shop tomorrow,” Rock said, nudging Riker.
“Your shop?”
/>
“Yeah, he can show you how good he is with his hands.” Rock teased, and Riker flushed and looked away.
Now that was adorable.
“Stop it,” Riker said.
“You have to drop stuff off anyway,” Ryland said.
“No,” Riker said. “You could do it.”
“Nah,” Ryland said, leaning against the fridge with a smirk that said he liked teasing his older brother. “I think Rock and I will let you handle it.”
Riker sighed. “Would you like to come see it?”
“Sure,” she said, nodding.
“It’s a date,” Rock said, laughing and jumping out of reach of Riker’s swipe. “All right, Ryland and I are going out to check on the camp and make sure everyone’s behaving now that we got things here settled.”
Her heart skipped a beat. She leaned forward as if to ask them not to go but saw Riker make the same uncertain move.
She sat back with a smile. Whoever her odd rescuer was, he wasn’t any more eager to be alone with her than she was with him. That was somewhat reassuring.
When the front door closed, he stood awkwardly. “Will you need anything before you head to bed?”
She shook her head. The tension in the air was too thick, and she was ready to make a break for it. Ready to burrow in bed and get some rest so she could face another day with him.
She’d be stronger then, hopefully.
4
The next day, Riker felt oddly nervous about bringing Ana to his workshop. He wasn’t used to bringing people into his world, and he definitely hadn’t gotten close with any women. But he needed to make the trip anyway, and he’d promised to watch out for her. She didn’t seem to mind going with him.
There was awkward silence between them on the short drive from his cabin to the shop, and Ana seemed to be lost in thought as trees and tiny houses passed by until he pulled up the cracked cement of the driveway leading into his second home.
To be fair, though, the past twenty-four hours had given her a lot to think about.
Both of them hopped out, and Riker unlocked the door to the garage, ushering her inside and closing the door behind them.
“Whoa, what is all this?” Ana said with surprise as she looked around.
Sheltered by the Bear (Trapped in Bear Canyon Book 1) Page 3