She needed a plan. And she needed it fast. First thing was to tender her resignation before the office grapevine informed Chad she was pregnant. Except for big investments like her condo, usually she lived on her salary. But if she had to, she would rely on her trust fund until she found another job. Second thing was get the heck out of Olympia and stay a long way from both Luck Harbor and Chadwick Ellery Trafford III.
Except, she had to go home for Aunt Ursula’s birthday bash. Ninety-five was a milestone. How would she feel if she never got another chance to watch Aunt Ursula blow out her candles?
How would she feel if her uncles took one whiff of her and realized Chad had knocked her up?
CHAPTER TWO
Community Center,
Luck Harbor, Oregon
Mitchell~
Aunt Ursula was wearing the handsome red silk scarf he had picked up in a Middle East souk at the end of his last debriefing. His great-aunt was the unofficial matriarch of their tight-knit clan and one of his favorite people. He bent to kiss her cheek.
“Happy birthday,” he said again. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Breakfast,” she returned crisply as she kissed him back. “7:40.” It was an order.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be there.”
“Go dance,” she instructed briskly. She had stationed her walker in front of her legs as an eloquent announcement that her dancing days were done.
“Yes, ma’am.” He didn’t intend to do much dancing, if any, but he wasn’t going to become the first Luck Harbor bear in history to argue with Aunt Ursula. He had done his duty and could please himself.
Mitch made his way through the throng to the far corner of the hall where two tall men were propping up the wall and sipping from wet plastic cups. They smiled fleetingly in his direction. It was already too noisy for conversation, but their lips moved in greeting when he reached their corner.
To an observer they might have seemed unwelcoming. Dour. But Mitch knew his cousins. Troy and Cam Reynolds were glad to see him.
Troy waved at the cooler he was guarding. “Help yourself,” he shouted in Mitchell’s ear.
Cameron handed him a red plastic cup. “No bottles allowed,” he said solemnly.
In Luck Harbor the rule had always been that at clan gatherings you drank your beer from a solo cup. If there was a fight, it cut down on breakages and injuries. With bears, especially young bears, there was always a fight. Never vicious. But inevitable.
Hell, Mitchell liked a brawl himself. Went with the territory. Of course, these days he was expected to control himself and set a good example for the youngsters. No free-for-all for old Mitchell. Or for Troy or Cameron, for that matter. Buck up, buddy, nothing lasts forever.
A single bottle nestled in a bed of ice in the cooler. Not a beer in sight. Mitchell didn’t comment. He filled his cup with some of the ice and added a splash from the tall liquor bottle. He closed the lid firmly and sat on it. Sipped. Let liquid fire slip down his throat. Sipped again.
“Have you shared this with Aunt Ursula?” he asked, pitching his voice so it cut through the happy roar.
Troy grinned. “Lisa Marie and I brought her a bottle as a birthday gift.”
Cameron perched beside Mitchell on the half foot of cooler left. He edged over to give his cousin a couple more inches. Cam leaned towards his ear and murmured. “Is it true? You actually handed in your resignation?”
“Yup.”
“Jesus. What happened?” Not if, what.
Cameron obviously assumed Mitchell wouldn’t have left the Marines unless the Corps asked him to go. Not that Cam was asking if Mitchell had been given a dishonorable discharge. He just figured that Mitchell had wounds that didn’t show. Which of course he did. But it had been his own choice to resign.
“ I was just done,” Mitchell explained. “Suddenly I wanted a life.” He was going to be normal. Have a real life. Get himself a wife. Have a few kids. Settle the fuck down.
Troy put a hand the size of a shovel on Cameron’s shoulder and squeezed. “Let the boy be,” he said gruffly. “Fatigue comes to the best of soldiers.”
Cameron laughed bitterly. “He’s younger than me.” Last year, much against his inclinations, Cam had been given a medical discharge.
Mitchell shook his head and tried to lighten the mood. “Nah. I was born in January, Cam. You didn’t come along till April.” He sipped again and confirmed his initial impression. “New recipe?” he asked.
“New supplier,” Troy said. “You’re drinking hard cider from French Town. Lisa Marie’s Uncle Pierre took his still legit*. That’s genuine barrel-cured Bear Ridge Apple Jack. For sale at your local retailer.”
Son of a bear. Mitchell sipped again. “It’s good.” His eyes went around the room once more. They confirmed there were no snipers hiding in the shadows and re-focused on his cousins. He nudged Cameron. “Where’s your wife?”
“Studying. Frankie’s coming up to exams.” Cam’s wife was a phoenix who had decided to give up being an ace test pilot for the USAF. She had enrolled in medical school instead.**
“She couldn’t get away. My mother-in-law came out to Florida to spoil the baby, so I’m flying solo.” Cameron reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his cell. “I have photos.”
Troy countered with his own phone. Mitchell admired the cubs they showed him. Nodded judiciously. “Troy wins,” he said solemnly. “Hands down. Four to one.”
Cameron chuckled and tucked his phone away. “It’s time you started on a new generation of Reynoldses yourself, Mitch.”
Finding a mate had been in his mind, ever since Aunt Ursula had made her proposition. But Mitchell didn’t say so. “Is that your Lisa Marie cutting a rug out there with Uncle Bruce?”
He pointed with his chin at a buxom woman with long blonde hair and a wide smile who was showing old Bruce some high-stepping to go with the old-time jazz tune the band was playing.
“That’s right.” Troy banged his false leg. “I can dance if I have to, but my prosthetic would rather I didn’t. But Lisa Marie is a nice girl from French Town. I swear those bears were born dancing. She never misses a chance.”
As he was supposed to, Mitchell laughed. Troy had lost a leg on his last mission for Special Forces. It had taken time, but eventually his cousin had come to terms with his losses and married a widow with twin boys*** and fathered another litter of cubs. By all accounts, he was one happy bear.
That kind of happiness was what Mitchell wanted for himself. It was time to sit by the fire and tell stories about the good old days. Bouncing a cub on each knee would be a bonus.
Cameron had been forced out of Special Forces when he was injured. He appeared to have recuperated, but he had taken a medical discharge and was now working for some investigative agency. Which sounded like work that might fill the Marine-sized hole in Mitchell’s psyche. Not that he was in any hurry to decide on a new career.
Anyway, this was no place to initiate negotiations. Too noisy. Too many interested ears. He wanted to sound out Cameron. Not put him on the spot. He sipped his apple brandy until there was nothing in the cup but melt water. Drank that too. Enjoyed the silent company of his cousins who were warriors like him. Bears like him.
And then, suddenly it was just too much. All the voices hollering at once. The dance music. The merriment. Too much stuff roiling in his brain that he would prefer to forget. He located the side door and went outside to breathe in great gulps of fresh air. Not that the air out here was exactly fresh.
*Bear Fate
**Phoenix Alight
*** Bearly a Bride
CHAPTER THREE
Mitchell~
Two youngsters were giggling softly in the shadows. Leaning beside the windows and taking deep pulls off a shared butt. Crap. He was going to have to play the heavy. Again. He pulled himself together and interrupted the two teens.
He recognized one of Uncle Bruce’s grandsons. Sought the boy’s name in his memory. How could little Tyler be old
enough to smoke dope? Where had the fricking years gone?
“Hand it over.” Mitchell held out a broad palm.
“Huh?” Tyler’s eyes rounded. He clutched the other boy’s arm.
“Hand what over?” Tyler’s friend stuck one skinny arm behind his back. Like he was a fricking magician. Nothing to see here, folks.
“Whatever you’re smoking. I don’t have all night.” Mitchell pushed a little authority into his voice. A decade and a half of giving orders to soldiers hummed in the air.
“Do it, man,” urged Tyler. “He’ll turn us in for sure.”
Tyler’s friend assessed Mitchell’s face with bloodshot eyes. He must have been convinced by what he saw, for he pulled a lit toke from behind his back and dumped it on Mitchell’s outstretched palm.
Mitchell dropped it to the ground. Crushed it beneath his shoe. Recovered the remains, field-stripped them and dispersed the shreds. “Okay,” he kept his voice flat and businesslike. “Let’s have the rest.”
“What do you mean?” whined the teen with bloodshot eyes.
“Tyler?” Mitchell’s one-word command meant, ‘Do you give it to me, or let me get your dad out here?’
Tyler demonstrated that although he was stupid enough to smoke weed at a family reunion, he hadn’t lost both brain cells. “Give it to him,” he said desperately. “My dad’ll kill us.”
Grudgingly Tyler’s pal dug a baggie full of dried green leaves out of his jacket pocket. “We weren’t hurting nobody,” he griped.
Mitchell took the baggie. “Who’s your friend?” he asked his young cousin.
“Morgan,” Tyler admitted sullenly.
“Morgan who?”
“Finley.”
“Okay, Tyler, here’s what’s going to happen. Your friend Finley is going home. You are going inside to drink some coffee and keep your nose clean. I’ll keep this to myself – unless I hear you’ve been hanging out with Finley.”
Tyler stared at him in horror and disbelief. Pimples stood out on his white face. “Morgan and I are buddies,” he croaked. He was no longer sniggering.
“Not anymore. You’re a bad influence on old Morgan, Tyler, my man. He needs to find himself some better friends.” Mitchell showed Finley his teeth. The boy took a step backward.
“That’s not fair,” Finley said angrily, going from sulkiness to fury in one bound.
Mitchell stared them both down. He wasn’t about to repeat himself. They knew their options. Do as he said or face the wrath of the entire Reynolds clan. Nowadays, the family didn’t gather often, but they still had their standards. Smoking grass at Aunt Ursula’s ninety-fifth wasn’t acceptable. Or smart.
Finley shoved himself away from the wall with a burst of wrathful energy. He kicked the pine needles lying on the ground. “Shit,” he said eloquently.
Mitchell was prepared to allow Finley the last word – if he left. He watched until the kid hit the street. “Do I have to tell you all the reasons that smoking dope is idiotic?” he asked Tyler.
“Everybody does,” Tyler protested.
“Everybody isn’t a bear. Everybody isn’t a Reynolds. Inside.”
He didn’t follow Tyler back into the hall. He turned to the girl – make that woman – standing under the tree, listening in silence. Zoë Worth hadn’t been a girl in a long time. “Hey,” he said softly. “Sorry about that.”
She joined him in the light cast by the yellow bulb over the back door. Honey-brown curls danced on her plump shoulders. She was as pretty as he remembered. Prettier now that she had the braces off. Her hazel eyes were soft and luminous. “How are you doing, Mitchell?”
He shrugged. He liked Zoë. More than liked her. But he wasn’t about to bare his soul to her. “Enjoying my freedom,” he lied.
She nodded. Long dark lashes drooped over her eyes. They made lush crescents on her cheeks. “Will you be hanging around Luck Harbor now that you’re not a Marine anymore?”
“I’m still a Marine.” No such thing as an ex-Marine. “I’ve just been discharged.” His denial came out sterner than he meant it to.
But Zoë’s face didn’t change. She nodded as if what he had said was obvious. “Sure. So do you plan to stay in Luck Harbor?”
If he remembered right, there was a picnic table over by the two old oaks. “I’m only in town for this party.” And to sign the papers that would turn Aunt Ursula’s property on West Haven over to him.
Her shoulder bumped against him as she followed him to the table. He felt a jolt. Zoë wasn’t a great beauty. Not even as tall as he preferred a woman to be. Just a little bit of a woman. But she had It. Of course, hitting on his oldest buddy’s kid sister was not an option. Even if she was no longer a kid.
“You heard from Griff?” she seated herself opposite him.
“Not in months. How’s he doing?” Griff was his oldest friend, and also a Marine. But you didn’t ask the men in Recon where they were going, or why.
“He’s on a mission,” Zoë said forlornly. “Incommunicado.”
“He’ll be fine,” he said bracingly.
“Sure.” But her voice remained uneasy.
Of course. She was worried about Griff and he couldn’t blame her. Recon was assigned the roughest stuff. The forlorn hopes. The desperate missions. The tough jobs that only the toughest Marines could handle.
He changed the subject, even if the new one was just as melancholy. “I was sure sorry to hear about your dad.” Mr. Worth had died last year. Pancreatic cancer. The poor son of a bear.
“Thank you.” Zoë laid a little hand over his. Her gentle pats felt like coming home. “Daddy wasted away, and there wasn’t anything the doctors could do.” She brushed a finger under one eye. Repeated it on the other side. Poor kid smudged the heck out of her mascara anyway.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Again, he deliberately changed the subject. “So what are you doing these days? Last I heard you had some sort of high-powered job in Olympia?”
Curls bounced when she shook her head. “I’m still a cog in the governor’s office. One of many aides.”
His bear picked up something off in her tone. She was fibbing about something. Was it modesty about her responsibilities? Or evasion? Not his business. He had his own secrets.
“I hear you write the governor’s speeches,” he returned.
Her lips twisted wryly. “Mostly I edit the stuff other people write. Turn it into effective prose.”
How old was she? If he was thirty-three, she was twenty-nine. That four years had been unbridgeable when he was eighteen. Didn’t seem much of a gap now. She certainly looked all grown up tonight. Soft, womanly, desirable.
“Want to dance?” he asked.
She smiled. A watery smile, but a smile. “Sure. I don’t think I’ve ever danced with you.”
“Probably not. You were just a kid when I finished high school.”
“Yup.” She took his hand. Lightning sparked.
With the pretext of the uneven path, he pulled her close against his body. Breathed in the scent of warm honey hair. Lemon-scented soap. A staggering amount of some sultry perfume. He wasn’t much for artificial scents, but on her that spicy, musky perfume smelled sexy.
It was good to breathe in the aroma of this sweet woman. Sweet, she-bear. Sweet, pregnant she-bear. He halted and she crashed into him. Soft breasts smooched against his side before she righted herself. She brushed down her dress indignantly.
“I forgot to ask,” he explained. “Is there some guy inside who’s going to want to rearrange my face when I start showing you my best moves? Like a husband?”
“No,” she said firmly. “There’s no one at all.”
Which was a flat-out lie. That baby had a daddy somewhere.
CHAPTER FOUR
Zoë~
Mitchell Reynolds was bigger and taller than she remembered. She hadn’t grown much herself after she turned twelve. She was the baby of the family and the runt. Her big sister was five inches taller than her. Mitchell had to be ov
er a foot taller. Taller than Chadwick Trafford. But she felt protected walking beside Mitch, as she never had with Chad.
Thank goodness those boys had been smoking dope. She couldn’t smell Mitchell, so it stood to reason he couldn’t smell her. Besides, knowing she was going to be in a room full of bears tonight, she had doused herself in the pungent industrial-strength perfume the governor’s wife had handed out to all the female aides last Christmas.
Her baby was her secret and, for the present, her dilemma. She was going to have to decide what to do real soon. But not tonight. Tonight she was going to dance with the most handsome bear in Luck Harbor. Growing up she had had such a crush on Griff’s best friend. Mitchell was still pretty crush-worthy.
The slim handsome youth she had innocently fantasized about had turned into a rugged alpha male with hard muscles and a harder face carved out of pure granite. She hadn’t been surprised the boys turned their stash over to Mitchell without much fuss. Just that they had held out as long as they had.
He held the door open for her. She cleared her throat. “Hadn’t you better get rid of that baggie? Before we go inside?”
A dull wash of color rose from his collared knit shirt. “I forgot.” He opened the hand where he still clutched the baggie. The leaves were crushed to dust. He stalked into the trees, scuffed a line in the pine needles, dumped the contents of the bag, mixed them with dirt, and covered the mixture with pine needles.
It was a quick operation. Neat and economical. He rejoined her almost immediately. Threw the empty plastic bag into the trash barrel by the rear door. Held it open for her.
Smiled down at her. The smile changed his face. Turned the grim planes into chiseled handsomeness. Displayed his high cheekbones, and showed off a dimple in one cheek.
She smiled back. A genuine smile, unlike the ones she had been handing out in Luck Harbor all evening. The band was playing something rousing that had most of the room on the floor. People made room for Mitchell as soon as he swung her among the dancers. Partly because he was just that kind of guy, and partly because he was a hometown hero.
Bedded by the Bear: A Shifters in Love Fun & Flirty Romance (Mystic Bay Book 6) Page 2