Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(3)

What? Everyone’s known hearts don’t control the emotions since at least the Middle Ages. And as far as all that fate stuff goes? Even though her stomach was currently in a big knot, and she couldn’t stop blushing every time this jackass in the lumberjack outfit opened his mouth or smiled one of those smiles that produced a dimple in either cheek, she didn’t believe in fate.

Or hell, even love, really.

“So can I complain now?” he smiled again. Damn it, why can’t he stop smiling or anything. And why can’t I stop staring at him?

“Complain away, friend,” Erik said with a wave of his hand. “Although I don’t think I know your name, which is a little weird, considering how close I am to the people of this fine city.”

“Can it, Clark Kent,” Izzy fired a shot with her eyes. “You’d forget my name if I didn’t make you—”

“We can’t really talk about how you make me remember your name without getting in trouble again for public lewdness,” he corrected. Erik shot a sneer in her direction, and she was still glaring, but the looks both of them gave were looks that only lovers who never want anything but each other can manage.

And good God did they ever want each other.

They hadn’t stopped the slightly-embarrassing public displays of mutual ass-grabbing since Izzy got knocked up. Jamie looked over at the two sweethearts, and couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy.

From the alpha’s administrative assistant to being full of his furry little cub. Life’s a funny damn thing sometimes, she thought with a wry grin, as she watched the bear cross, and then uncross his legs.

“Anyway,” Erik said, his gaze lingering on his mate, his eyes dropping and then raising a little. “Tell us everything that’s bothering you.”

“My shoulder hurts, my sex life sucks, and I want to get a new car I can’t afford,” he said.

Oh yeah, of course he’s funny. I bet he cooks, too. And bakes. She felt herself swoon, and then immediately recoiled. Or he’s a giant * with a cocky streak a mile wide, and a brain the size of a walnut.

“You can get a massage from Jenga’s zombie, the Tavern is right down the road from here and we’re all going to be there in – God willing – two hours, and as far as the car, I thought all you bears rode motorcycles.”

“They’re not zombies!” Jenga protested, but as usual, no one listened.

“Shoulder will heal, I don’t have to get a girl drunk to ask her out, and some of us like to drive cars that do something other than make us look manly.”

Okay, so stupid is out the window. Cocky * is still definitely in the cards, but...

“But all wit and cuteness aside,” he grew very serious, very quickly. “Winter is coming on fast, and a bunch of us are without any real way to get ready for it. I’m fine, but I can’t chop enough wood for an entire valley of old, broken, sick shifters. We got a family of cougars without a roof on their house, a half dozen bears who can’t burn a furnace for a lack of wood and won’t ask because of an overabundance of pride.”

And a kind heart? What just walked into my life—?

“Or the whiny ones. Although those you just have to let freeze a little, and they start making their own way. But seriously? You’re sitting up here complaining about three grand worth of stoplights, while some of your oldest citizens freeze?”

Erik turned his head and mouthed something to Izzy, which no one could hear.

“And yeah, they pay taxes and also vote in the alpha choosing,” the giant bear said, his gruffness showing again. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

“That’s some high gravity for a complainer’s court session. How about you come back next week and I’ll have an answer?” Erik said with an uneasy laugh.

Both Izzy and Jamie were staring at him. They’d both been hounding him – so to speak – for months, about this exact problem. Old shifters, sick ones, homeless ones that took to the forest, a clutch of runaway fox kits and adolescent raccoons that functioned as a sort of furry Robin Hood and his Merry Men, they all lived out there in the great wilderness around Jamesburg, and almost none of them had any way to keep warm, or to keep fed. Erik, of course, preferred to think it was all made up. Mostly because with everything else going on in town, and with Izzy, he couldn’t handle anything else.

“How about you come up with one now?” Izzy asked. “He—what’s your name?”

The bear narrowed his eyes. His beard, when he did that, almost looked like it swallowed his face.

I really, really want to see this face shaved. Or at least just stubbly. Jamie bit her own tongue, irritated with herself for not being able to focus.

“Ryan Drake,” he said with a growl. All that gruffness and all those smiles vanished into pure, focused anger. “Fix it.”

With that, he gave Jamie one last look that just about melted her to the core, stood up, and left without another word.

Oh shit, Jamie’s stomach hit her feet. He’s hot, he’s got a hell of a sneer, and even though he’s got a gnarly beard, and I don’t even like bears very much... Maybe I just had to see the right one. I’m in big, big trouble.

She took a deep breath, and swallowed hard. For the first time ever, not even complainer’s court could get Jamie irritated.