Edward (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 1)

by Becca Fanning

  She was brighter than Jane had ever seen her. Once the cold embrace of the great outdoors had finally left her body, Linzy resumed the appearance of a normal human being. Her cheeks were flushed pink where she sat beside the roaring fire of the lodge and, though Jane thought it was far too hot in the room already, the shabbily-dressed woman was glugging away at her scolding chocolate all the same. Hart had little beads of sweat dripping from his hairline where he sat beside her, poking the fire with an iron rod.

  “You feeling better?” he asked.

  “Much,” Linzy replied. “That was a hell of a comedown. I don’t think I’ll go for that stuff again, even if it was a free sample. I saw all sorts of weird things. Two-headed rabbits. Bears with golden eyes. Crazy stuff.”

  “Crazy,” Jane reiterated, and she and Hart shared a knowing look over the woman’s head.

  Every time he looked at her, Jane felt a new pang in her chest. Hart’s eyes burned with something bright and hopeful, his face a picture of serenity. Even now, amid the wild heat of the lodge, he was totally unflappable. Jane had to admire that, but she also wondered exactly what it would take for a man like him to really break down.

  “So Linzy, do you think you can tell us where to find the guys who sold you the drugs?” Hart asked gently. “You understand, I have to move them along. It’s park policy.”

  “Oh,” Linzy said, shrinking against her mug of cocoa. “Well, I don’t want to get nobody into trouble. Those guys were pretty tough-looking types.”

  “No trouble,” Jane said, her face totally neutral. “Like Hart said, we just need to move them along. No police, no statement from you. Just a location, then you can go back to enjoying your trip in Fairhaven.”

  She didn’t believe a word of her own lies, but Linzy did. Jane had had to lie on command for years in her profession, convincing angry clients that their deadlines had been met, telling haughty models how popular they were, when they were actually on the verge of career death. Her face was a picture of confidence, the way she’d trained it to be over the years, and Linzy nodded with every word.

  “Well, the one guy approached me down at the swimming center,” she began to reveal, “the one down by the campground.”

  Hart nodded. “I know it,” he replied. “This guy, who was he?”

  “Carter,” Linzy added, her voice growing in confidence. “You can’t miss him, he has a huge scar running right across his face, and a badly broken nose. He was nice, though, sweet talking type, you know? And he took me down a hillside off the back of the campground to show me the farm. It’s…”

  Linzy paused, and Jane knew this was the pivotal moment, the thing she did not want to give away. She reached out, taking Linzy’s boiling hot hands in her grip.

  “It’s okay,” she soothed, “you can say where the place is.”

  “Well,” the woman began again quietly. “I can’t exactly. It’s covered over with lots of bushes. You don’t even see it ‘til you’re right beside it in the trees. And it goes underground a little, where it’s cooler for the plants I guess. They siphon water off the swimming lake in little pipelines.”

  “How many plants would you say they’re growing?” Hart pressed.

  “A couple hundred at least,” Linzy replied. “It was pretty impressive. I’ve never been able to grow one, let alone… Well, anyway.”

  She sipped at her chocolate again. Hart rose from his seat and gave Jane a little tilt of his head. She got up too, dusting down her outfit.

  “Thank you for helping us, Linzy,” she said.

  “No, thank you for finding me,” the woman replied. “I mean, God only knows what would have happened to me otherwise, right?”

  “Right,” Hart said, smiling reassuringly. “Would you excuse us just a moment?”

  He began to make for the door, Jane beside him, but as they both reached the exit to the baking hot room, Linzy called after them suddenly.

  “I should tell you,” she admitted, looking down at the ground, “this Carter guy had at least eight others with him when I went down to the farm. And… they had guns. All of them.”

  Jane felt a lump leap into her throat.

  “Thanks, that’s helpful,” Hart answered calmly.

  And with that he led Jane out of the door. They raced for the cool, fresh air of early evening, gasping deep breaths off the veranda at the back of the lodge. Jane took a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her face, trying not to spoil her makeup as she mopped up a little sweat. Hart had much more of an animal approach to the problem, peeling off his shirt and wiping his face and hair with that instead.

  He was a glorious sight once again, and up close Jane watched his muscles ripple all over his torso. In the fading light, he skin seemed to gleam like freshly-smelted gold, still red from the fire. Hart caught her looking, and he grinned. The grin threw Jane off a little, and she frowned at him despite the tingles creeping into her body.

  “You are going to call the cops, right?” she asked him. “Only, Linzy just told you that there are nine armed men dealing drugs in the park, and you still look cool as a cucumber.”

  “Cool as a cucumber?” Hart challenged. “Who even says that anymore? Damn it Jane, you’re so cute.”

  It was the first time he had really given her an outright compliment, though their glances and smiles at one another had said much before. She tried not to smile, not to be sucked into his complacency, because this was serious stuff.

  “Answer me, Hart,” she demanded.

  He turned, resting his hands on her biceps. It was only in the firmness of his grip that she realized how much she was shaking.

  “This isn’t your problem now, Jane,” he assured her. “You’ve helped so much with getting the information, but now it’s up to me and the boys. I’ll rally them tomorrow, and we’ll sort Carter and his Boys in the Wood out ourselves. It’s how we do things in the clan.”

  “But guns, Hart,” Jane pressed. “I know you shifter types are tough and all, but you’re not going to stand there and tell me that guns aren’t going to hurt you, are you?”

  Hart’s smile faltered in his eyes, though his face remained a perfectly handsome façade. Jane didn’t need an answer. She could see now that his laid back attitude was, in fact, a wall. A wall that he wasn’t going to let her get past.

  “You know what?” she said bitterly. “Do what you want. It’s your park. I’ve got work to do anyway.”

  Finally, she pulled her phone from her pocket, and found over two hundred alerts screaming at her. The company was clearly in meltdown, and that was a situation she knew how to control. If she couldn’t solve the crisis right in front of her, at least she could bury herself in other matters.

  Hart’s hand slipped down her arm, snaking along her skin to cover the hand holding her phone. She looked up at him, and he drew her fingers to his lips. She felt the lightest graze where he brushed a kiss against her knuckles, and her whole body tensed at the sensation. Something powerful sparked between them, eyes locked for a long moment.

  “I know what I’m doing,” he promised her. “Please, don’t worry for me. You have enough stress in your life without mine too.”

  Jane wished, more than anything, that what he’d said wasn’t so horribly true.

  She hadn’t meant to get involved again. Jane Walsh was a smart woman, who made smart decisions every day of her life. Frequently, she found herself surrounded by idiots, and she was usually the only one who knew what had to be done. But now, she was the idiot. She was taped to a chair with powerful, sticky duct tape, her chest heaving dangerously sharp breaths. Panic rose in her body like a wild animal, making her flinch and struggle against her bonds. She really hadn’t meant to get mixed up with the Boys in the Wood.

  It had started on the same day that Hart was planning to make his raid and find the pot farm, but it was a little earlier in the afternoon. After lunch with Elise and Layla, Jane had gone out for a walk to make a few more calls, and once again found herself a little disorien
ted on the path. She could hear the sound of voices nearby, and she had managed to locate the swimming lake by following the sound of children’s laughter. Here, she was about ready to relax with an ice cream and for once, turn her phone off for a while.

  But that’s when she’d seen Carter, the man with the scar. He was just as Linzy had described him, unmistakable for the huge lump on the bridge of his triangular nose, and the thick, pink line of repaired flesh that ran from beneath his left eye to just above the right-hand corner of his mouth. Jane had spotted him on the very verge of the proceedings, talking to some young teenagers. Carter had been wearing a thick black coat despite the sunny weather, and he showed the teens something inside the flaps with great enthusiasm.

  Some kind of transaction was made. Jane watched with horror as the gleeful teens left with a mixture of guilt and excitement on their faces. Then, when she looked back to Carter, she found him watching her across the crowd. His eyes were dark and narrow, and they bored into her even across the distance between them. He knew what she had seen, and he didn’t like it. Jane had felt the first prickles of terror turning her skin to goosebumps then.

  In hindsight, it might have been more sensible to stay in the populated lakeside area, where the crowd would protect her. But Jane’s mind had been overcome by fear, and she found herself racing down the path that she hoped would lead her back to the Rangers’ Lodge. She was quite a long way from the area, and she realized the error of her ways as soon as she was alone on the deserted path. Behind her, there were footsteps, and she’d started to run.

  Only to run into two more unpleasant looking men at the top of the next ridge.

  Now, she was right in the cool heart of the farm, with plants under glowing lights all around her. The smell was fresh and spicy here, but mixed with the foul musk of the men who’d been hiding out since they began their operation. Carter was about the cleanest of the bunch, but that didn’t speak for much. When he grabbed Jane by her cheeks, she could feel the grime and dirt on his hands. She winced at the pain of his grip, and Carter’s scarred face broke into a horrible grin.

  “Too suspicious for your own good, miss,” Carter drawled in that typical, post stoned lazy way. “I’m sick of having to hurt nosey little pricks like you.”

  “Then don’t,” Jane struggled to say. “I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

  That was a lie, and a well told one, Jane thought. But Carter didn’t seem convinced.

  “You don’t think I’ve got eyes everywhere in this park?” he said slowly. “Johnny Boy tells me he’s seen you hanging around with a ranger. So I can’t have you running back to your boyfriend to inform on us, right? Seems to me that you’re going to have to stay here as insurance, to make sure the rangers don’t decide to rat us out.”

  Jane cursed inwardly. It was just her luck to have been spotted with Hart, when she’d hardly even begun their relationship. There was something about Carter’s confidence that stumped her though.

  “You…” she breathed amid her stunted sobs. “You don’t think those rangers are much of a threat, do you?”

  Carter gave a deep, guttural laugh at that notion.

  “Those pretty boy posers?” he asked, almost to himself. “You can tell they’ve never seen a real fight just by looking at them. They’re all workout regimes and protein shakes, but no genuine muscle.”

  There were three other men in the small, dark space at that moment, and they all chuckled in reply to Carter’s bold assurance. He had no idea that the Best boys were shifters, and that element of surprise was all the hope that Jane had. A buzzing sound alerted her, and her eyes moved to the sight of her phone, which was ringing on a nearby shelf of plant pots. Carter moved towards it, eyeing it malevolently. Then, to Jane’s astonishment, he swiped the screen and answered the call.

  “Yeah?” he said gruffly.

  There was a faint voice on the other end of the line, but Jane couldn’t make it out. She was certain it would be one of her useless interns, wondering what the hell had happened to her these last couple of hours. She was supposed to be getting back to them on approved headshots for the newest people on the books. A grim irony settled on her as she eyed Carter’s gun, which he toyed with in the holster as he listened to her phone.

  “Yeah, Jane ain’t coming to the phone right now,” he teased viciously. “I’m her new boyfriend, and we’re a little busy, if you know what I mean.”

  His voice rose to a wicked crescendo at the end of the sentence, and he and his cronies laughed as he hung up the line. Then, without a second thought, Carter dropped Jane’s phone to the ground and stomped on it with the heel of one of his boots. She watched her business, her lifeline, her whole livelihood smashed to pieces. And all she could think of was Hart, and how she desperately wished that she’d gone to see him after lunch instead of burying herself in stupid work once more.

  More than an hour had passed, and Jane was amazed to find that she’d been out cold for a while. She didn’t remember passing out on the chair, but hunger, thirst and exhaustion had gotten the better of her somehow. Her whole body ached from the tightness of her bonds, and once again her chest was heavily constricted. She feared the numbness in her lower body, wondering if the tape had cut off some of her circulation, and the atmosphere had turned much colder since she was last awake.

  There was little to see by except for the buzzing lamps which were trained on the nearest plants, but Jane had enough brightness to make out that she was alone. There was no noise outside, no sign that Hart and the Best clan had arrived to aid her rescue, yet something had woken her from her reverie. She strained in the dark, listening to the sound of something shuffling nearby. Jane tensed, knowing that the sound was behind her, and that there was nothing she could do to turn and see who was approaching. For all she knew, there was someone raising a gun to her head right now behind her.

  No shot came, but she did jump when she felt warm fingers against her own numb digits.

  “Shhh,” soothed a low voice. “Don’t you dare scream. I spent half an hour digging underground to get here.”

  “Hart?” Jane whispered in amazement. “It can’t be you.”

  She felt the painful tug of the tape as Hart worked to free her from the bonds. They had to be slow and methodical about getting it off, both fearful that the ripping sound might alert any gunmen nearby to what was going on. When Hart had unwound the first length that constricted her chest, Jane found herself looking down at his dirty body.

  “So… you didn’t bring the clothes bag this time?” she observed.

  She was trying, really trying, not to look at the shaft, half-erect between Hart’s legs, but it was totally impossible. Even in the shadowy light of the farm, he was magnificent to view. He looked up at her sheepishly, then went back to his work with the tape.

  “I lost it whilst I was digging the tunnel into this place,” he admitted quietly.

  “I’m not complaining,” Jane replied.

  Her breath was returning, and the numbness faded from her extremities as she began to be able to move again. When she tried to get up, however, she collapsed into Hart’s arms, and he led her to the doorway which would take them out into the open. He set her down there, rubbing her arms and legs back to life with vigorous strokes. She reached for him, touching his face.

  “How did you know I was here?” she asked.

  Hart paused, looking deep into her eyes. It was only now that she noticed his usually jolly presence had faded away. He was serious, the most serious a man could ever get, and he bit back a lump in his throat before he could reply.

  “It was me that called you when Carter answered your phone,” he revealed. “I put two and two together pretty easily.”

  “Clever,” Jane said, “but how do we get out now?”

  “You stay here and rest, ‘til everything’s clear,” Hart told her. “The boys are all in position. You want to know why it is that I can always be so relaxed?”