Stranger Creatures 2:
BEAR’S EDGE
Christina Lynn Lambert
www.loose-id.com
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
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
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Loose Id Titles by Christina Lynn Lambert
Christina Lynn Lambert
Stranger Creatures 2: Bear’s Edge
Copyright © September 2017 by Christina Lynn Lambert
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
eISBN 9781682523919
Editor: Rebecca Fairfax
Cover Artist: Valerie Tibbs
Published in the United States of America
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San Francisco CA 94117-0549
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This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Dedication
For everyone who needs a reason to keep being, these lyrics by Big Country say it better than I ever could:
“In a big country dreams stay with you
like a lover’s voice fires the mountainside
Stay alive
So take that look out of here it doesn’t fit you
Because it’s happened doesn’t mean
you’ve been discarded
Pull your head off the floor, come up screaming
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted”
“Big Country” by Big Country
Acknowledgment
A huge thank-you to my editor, Rebecca Fairfax, for helping me to make Bear’s Edge incredible. Hugs and love to Scott—thanks for bringing me chocolate milk shakes late at night when I was stuck at the computer, writing and revising all the ideas I had to get out of my head. Thank you to all my friends who babysat my kids when I had a deadline to meet, looked over paragraphs where I was stuck, and always encouraged me to keep moving forward.
Prologue
Three years ago—Towson, Maryland
Shayla Patrick’s new desk had everything. The sun gleamed in through the wide picture window to bounce a wicked glare off the polished mahogany where sharpened pencils sat together with pens in a pewter canister and a little brass cat held out its arms to hold Shayla’s brand-new business cards. The cat had been a gift from her boss. That bitch.
Though the morning had barely begun, the company had held a huge welcome-back party for her on her first day back at work. Shayla was glad she’d used a hell of a lot of concealer to cover the bruising on her face before leaving the house. Concealer couldn’t hide everything, though, and that was part of her life in the aftermath. Obligatory hugs and a frosted sheet cake had been followed by a surprise—she’d received a promotion. Her new Sales and Advertising Director position involved a raise, which would be nice. It also involved being stuck in an office all day long. Not so nice.
She picked up the little brass cat, pretending to examine it while she tried to wipe the scowl off her face. Her boss’s plastic smile slipped for a moment. Shayla put the cat down and pretended she felt civilized. Elizabeth—Elizabitch might be a more fitting name—started up again, this time about Shayla’s career advancement.
“You’ll get a chance to be a mentor with the great responsibility for supervising the sales and advertising force of this company. Your two major responsibilities will be monitoring your employees’ performances and finding marketing trends that Edwards Advertising can capitalize upon.”
“Elizabeth, you know I never would have applied for a job like that.” Shayla liked it out in the field. She made great income in the form of sign-on bonuses.
“I know, but it’s a better place for you now. I just think this will be easier for you considering—” Elizabitch stopped herself—a wise move—then stumbled on some more, trying to make the position sound exciting.
Shayla fought to keep an even expression at being warehoused in an office job so her healing face and future scars didn’t scare the clients. She didn’t know which she wanted to do more—cry or throw the stupid brass cat her boss had just given her out of the window. In the end, she rose to hang her coat on the sterile-looking shiny silver coatrack sitting in the back of her new office. Elizabitch got the message and left.
No sulking. She admonished the part of herself that wanted to hide under her new desk and cry all day in private. Is being hidden away in an office my new normal?
Shayla had a natural talent for reading people. Well, she could do more than just observe, but she never allowed herself to take things to that level. She would study her clients, watching their expressions and gestures, looking for clues to show her when to push and when to be gentle. Her skill had improved with time and practice. Now she would no longer be able to get the clients to look directly at her. Shayla sighed. A tear slipped down her cheek, but she put her pity party on the back burner and sat in her new leather swivel chair, making it squeak and squish.
Shayla’s talents weren’t gone. She could still read people, but the messages were different these days. People tensed up around her now, focusing somewhere past her head, giving her all the personal space she never wanted. And these were the people she knew! She supposed to some degree they were getting used to the idea. Her friends and family had come to visit her at the hospital, despite her requests for no visitors. She’d hated the moment when they’d come in, seeing an uncontrollable look of shock or pity immediately replaced by an uncomfortable smile.
A nurse had whispered, “Oh honey, the Lord must have his reasons.” Shayla knew no God or creator had caused her pain. A crazy man with explosives had decided to light his stash right near where Shayla had sat drinking her coffee and sending out e-mails on her computer tablet, enjoying the quiet ride of a new commuter van bound for Annapolis, Maryland.
An earsplitting sound had rung out inside the vehicle, and she’d flown sideways into something hard, pain radiating down her whole right side and blood dripping into her eye. When she’d lifted a shaking hand to wipe away the blood, the van had lurched, pitching her to the floor, ears ringing, eyes and throat stinging from the smoke filling the air. Bodies had piled on top of her, refusing to budge no matter how hard she’d yelled and pushed. A rescue worker had reached for her, telling her, “I’ve got you. You’re going to be fine. Everything’s okay.” She’d let herself believe those words so she could give in to the roaring in her head and the blackness overtaking her vision.
She’d woken a few hours later in the hospital to the news that a lot of people had died that day on the commuter van. Well, a lot relative to the zero who had expected to die that morning. It wasn’t the commuter van that had been the problem—it was the man riding with homemade explosives. People watching the story on the world news had been grateful just one small commuter van with one severely schizophrenic man off his meds had exploded and that no terrorist attack had occurred. The threat was gone, and people went on about their day. The local newscasters liked dredging stuff up, though.
Sensible heels had click-clacked from hospital room to hospital room, looking for stories. The jerks in flannel wielding cameras didn’t seem to care that Shayla’s face was swollen and purple or that she’d been trying to eat blueberry pie with her parents who had come from Connecticut to visit. The jerks in flannel had just hit Record, and the harpy in the pancake makeup had manipulated Shayla and threatened to just keep coming back until the interview happened.
Shayla could have terrified the reporter into leaving with nothing more than a few words, but she refused. Reading people and being savvy in business deals was one thing, but she wouldn’t allow her other ability to grow, no matter how much she wanted to make the reporter leave the room screaming in terror. Shayla’s dad had politely but firmly ushered the woman out by her elbow.
She was alive, but she had a way to go before she reached some the status level of “fine.” Shayla reached for her water bottle to wash the phantom taste of disaster out of her mouth.
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Shayla’s days were filled with supervising employees who didn’t actually need anything from her, hours of solitary research at the computer, and meetings that solved nothing and went nowhere. She hadn’t thought before about the management aspect of a company, but jeez, time and money were wasted at every level. Not to mention the lack of communication between different departments, which caused even more meetings that solved zero things. Edwards Advertising made money on the regular in spite of itself.
December turned to March, bringing with it green trees and annoyingly happy birds sitting on her office windowsill, singing to her. Shayla turned to stare out of the window at the amazing view of the lake and the park. The sun poured in, and she glared right back at the world.
The lake and the park. She didn’t have any more time now than she’d had in her advertising rep position to enjoy the spring weather and take her lunch to the lake for a picnic. Before, she hadn’t minded—she’d lived for her work. Now work sucked, but she had nothing else in her life to make up for it. Her so-called friends were all absorbed in themselves and their own careers, and it had begun to grate on her nerves. Going out with them felt more like a chore, and not telling them to get over themselves took effort, so she just stayed home. All. The. Time. The warmth of summer baking the streets of Baltimore intensified the restlessness building inside her. The heat cooked her from the outside, and the restlessness cooked her from the inside, boiling and churning until she couldn’t ignore it any longer.
Sitting around on Saturday mornings watching TV and finishing paperwork started to feel more pitiful than comforting. She switched off the reality show she shouldn’t have gotten into in the first place and decided she needed to get out of the house, for more than just errands. She touched her cheek and eyebrow self-consciously.
Time for a new look. She booked an appointment with Evie, her fabulous hairstylist. This woman could make Shayla’s hair shine, even if Shayla had flat ironed it for a month straight. Two days later, she sat in her stylist’s chair holding a picture of what she wanted Evie to do with her long dark-blonde hair.
“That short? Are you sure?”
Shayla nodded.
“But with all your waves, if I cut your hair to your chin, it’ll just fall in your face if you don’t keep a clip in it. I doubt you’ll want to wear it that way every day. How about some bangs so you don’t end up looking like a shaggy dog?”
“No bangs. I want you to angle the front so it falls over the right side of my face.”
“You want to hide,” Evie whispered in recognition.
“I want to go out without being stared at.”
Evie left it at that, which Shayla appreciated.
After a week with her new hairdo, she kind of did feel like a shaggy dog with her hair always in her face. Burning through workout DVDs before work hadn’t helped her mood or her restless aggravation at all. In her supervisory position, she saw Edwards Advertising in a whole different light, one that shone on untapped possibilities and wasted money, but she wasn’t high enough on the food chain to make any real changes. She was just there. Sitting at her computer. Where it all felt pointless.
She stood and stretched her sore back and shoulders. She had been at the screen for hours, pulling data from willing sellers, looking for trends to capitalize upon for a company she didn’t care about so she could go home late to an empty condo. She walked around her perfect office. The standing mirror she usually avoided became a temptation. Why is this thing in here anyway? Was Elizabitch just trying to be mean when she decorated my office? Shayla turned to face the mirror, staring intently to see what it had to offer.
Her face didn’t look horrible or monstrous but would never look the same as before. While she didn’t need to jump on the wrinkle-cream and line-eraser-injection bandwagon just yet, hiding behind her hair had taken its toll. The mirror reflected the slump of her shoulders and the turn of her mouth. Even the way she dressed had changed. Without meaning to, she had traded her usual bright, unique style for more somber colors and appallingly sensible shoes. Jesus, her shoes that day were taupe, for fuck’s sake!
Shayla’s entire world had become muted, as if somebody had filtered out the color and dimmed the lights. Life had closed in on her. Even her once vivid dreams had become dull and gray. Is this it? Is this all there is? She wanted more.
Enough already. I don’t know what the answer is, she told her reflection. But it sure as hell isn’t this. She knew all the looks she would get when she dared to show her face and she decided she would look back and smile. No apologies. She pulled her hair back using a rubber band from inside her desk and stood straight. She needed a fresh start, a reason to get up in the morning. Now was the time to work on making a trade. She had some money saved up and the perfect idea for how she could use it.
Chapter One
Present day—Great Oaks, Virginia
Grant laid out spreadsheets around the empty conference table, then set up the computer display screen. In a minute or two, Shayla Patrick, the owner of Brass Cat Advertising, would be sitting around the table along with the rest of the management team, and Grant would talk numbers and statistics, trends, probabilities, and viability. Fuck his personal life. His shitty mood had carried over from breakfast when his girlfriend, Zoe, had dumped him. Grant had made the mistake of ordering his favorite breakfast, shrimp and grits, right before Zoe thanked him for the “wonderful time” they’d had together over the past three months.
“I’ll miss you.” She’d smiled sadly and fondly but without any hint of tears.
When Grant had suggested trying things long-distance, Zoe had shaken her head and sighed.
“Come on, Grant. You know that never works. I’m leaving this Saturday. I’m going back a week early to get the jump on a new project. Let’s just enj
oy our last two days together without it getting all weird.”
Grant hadn’t thrown a fit or cried or pleaded in the middle of a crowded restaurant. The anger and blown-out temper were contained inside his head while he prepared for the upcoming meeting and tried to figure out what had gone wrong with Zoe. Numbers made more sense than people, the reason he worked in financial management. He could create probability scenarios and give financial advice with ease. Trends and research, he could analyze.
Grant liked dealing with numbers. The basic formulas were always the same, and the numbers didn’t care how he reworked them. People? Not so much.
Apparently Grant was the perfect casual lay or light social relationship, but did it ever occur to the women he dated that he might get attached? That he might want something more than a “thanks, see ya later”? Grant sighed. Nobody’s fault but his. Casual relationships were what he sought in the first place. Any feeling other than that he made sure he kept to himself. He just couldn’t put himself on the line, and the women he dated didn’t ask for it. And so it went. Fuck all that shit anyway.
He flipped the switch for the light above the projection screen only to find it was out. The handle to the supply closet in the back of the conference room broke off when he tried to turn it. Damn the bear. Too strong.
You did it, asshole, the bear growled in his mind.
Grant shook his head. What the hell is wrong with me?
“Grant?” Not even the bear had heard Shayla’s soft voice or scented her lovely perfume until she stood right next to him. Her dark golden-blonde hair looked elegant pulled back into a braided bun, and her dress was a slightly darker color of rose than her lips. Even in heels, Shayla was petite, but Grant could always see power in the way she carried herself. Sometimes, he could feel her strength.
“Hey, what’s going on? Are you okay?” Shayla laid her hand against his arm and looked up at him. Oh man, had he been wondering out loud what the hell was wrong with him? Most likely. The bear snorted in laughter while Grant tried to set his features back into the relaxed, aloof expression he usually wore. He ordered the bear, his companion, his brother, his alter-ego, his…whatever—he couldn’t figure out the right word—to hush and concentrated on keeping the blood flow away from his dick, where it always tried to go when Shayla got too close to him.
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