Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears #4)(4)

“I’m not watching you limp and whimper all the way to the passenger’s side, lady.” He lowered his voice and muttered darkly, “I have a dragon to skin.”

Mason yanked open the door to his truck and dumped her unceremoniously inside.

“Ow!” She swatted his hand as it brushed her boob. “You are the worst driving service on the planet.”

“Oh, so you’ve used every driving service on the planet?” He reached across her lap with the seatbelt, but she shoved him back when his beard brushed her cleavage.

“And furthermore,” she said, good and furious now, “a pig shifter would have zero chance skinning a dragon.”

“Boar shifter,” he barked out, then slammed the door.

Shocked by his brash behavior, she stared at him as he marched around the front of the truck and pulled himself into the driver’s seat.

“And furthermore,” he mimicked her, “today is my day off of driving, I have a splitting headache thanks to some * doing his damndest to put a brick through my skull, my best friend thinks he’s a f*ckin’ matchmaker, but he missed the mark, and wide, proof the one person in the world I thought actually knew me doesn’t actually know a thing about me! You aren’t my type, lady.”

She felt slapped. “W-what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he muttered as he turned on the engine.

“You cuss a lot. And you’re wrong about your friend setting you up. I’m here on a job, you jerk, and besides”—she clenched her left fist and lifted her ring finger, the one with her wedding ring—“you aren’t my type either.” Lie, and even she could hear it on her voice. Big, burly muscle man with sexy eyes and triceps flexing as he gripped the steering wheel. He was exactly her type, though she hadn’t known until right now. So what if she was divorced and single? He needed to stop thinking the world revolved around him.

He glanced at her ring once, twice, then slammed on his brakes at a red light and clenched his jaw so hard a muscle jumped there. “Fantastic. Thanks, Damon.”

Pissed off, she swung her purse around to throw it in the back seat, hitting him in the side of the face on purpose. Beck scrambled over the console clumsily as Mason complained, “Don’t hit the driver.”

“Driver, yeah. You know, you aren’t the only one who’s had a shit day,” she muttered as she buckled her seatbelt in the back seat.

“That water puddle doesn’t trump a brick smashed against my head.”

“And whose fault was that? You can’t be fighting, Mason! My job is to take care of the Boarlanders’ public relations. To take care public relations for all the shifters in Damon’s mountains, and minute one that I meet you, you’re bleeding from a fight! Please tell me you weren’t videotaped.”

“I broke the phone.”

Her mouth fell open, and she gasped out. “You can’t break people’s personal property!”

He made a clicking sound behind his teeth and shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand, human. You’re safe. Your people are safe. The government doesn’t want to strip your rights, cage you, or sterilize your entire species.”

Shaking her head, she huffed a humorless laugh and stared out the window at the town blurring by. He was so wrong. She had just as much worry about the vote as him, or she wouldn’t have taken this job. It wasn’t just his world that was burning. Hers was, too.

Beck cast a quick glance to the back of his neck. There was a massive amount of bruising and a deep gash. Shifters healed fast, so he’d taken a beating to have marks like that. “I think you should eat,” she murmured.

Mason ignored her, the stubborn man.

“Fine, I’m hungry, and Damon assured me that you would take care of me.”

“Chhh,” he huffed out. “I can’t take care of anyone.” He’d said that last part low, as if he didn’t care if she heard it. She knew that feeling.

“Drive-thru is fine.”

The steering wheel creaked under his grip. He inhaled deeply, then asked, “What kind of food do you like?”

“Anything, you pick.” She pulled her phone from her purse as he pulled a U-turn. He could think what he wanted about her being some kind of blind date for him, but she was actually in Saratoga to work. To help. To relieve Cora Keller of some of the pressure on her and the Breck Crew and to make a decent wage because she had bills to pay.

Beck called the printer back because she’d missed a call from them. She haggled prices to print calendars and settled on one that fit the budget Cora had given her. And after she hung up with them, she made yet another call to the head of Saratoga Parks and Rec because they’d been putting off her plans to include special events for shifters at the Lumberjack Wars, and she was not taking no for an answer.

More than once, she caught Mason glancing at her in the rearview mirror, but when he adjusted his dick, she figured it was just because the low V of her button-down shirt had slipped to the side and was soggily stuck, exposing most of her lacey bra and left teat. Great. With a dirty look for him, she covered herself back up and agreed to have a conference call with a couple of the higher ups at Parks and Rec to discuss the Lumberjack Wars. After Beck hung up, she opened her daily planner and added the one o’clock call for tomorrow’s agenda. She was scribbling away at questions she wanted to ask in the notes section when Mason pulled into the drive-thru lane of a restaurant called Butters Beer Burgers and Shakes.