Bear Arms (Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) (Mating Call Dating Agency Book 4) (3 page)

“Oh hell, sorry,” Lexie said, laughing at herself at the same time as she blushed. “I was just, er, well...”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m nervous too,” the smoothly growly voice said. “It’s been a while since I talked to a woman I hadn’t paid.”

Immediately, Lexie burst into a roll of laughter that could have been mistaken for thunder. And it wasn’t even that she was laughing at something she didn’t think was funny just to get a guy to like her – she wasn’t anywhere
near
that sort. No, she was laughing honestly, and laughing hard enough to get her sides aching. “Sorry,” she said, in between snorting peals, “no, no, sorry, I’m—”

“I’m just glad you took it like that,” he said. “When I said the same thing to my roommate he thought I was being serious.”

“Are you?” Lexie asked as the laughs began to subside. “I mean, what the hell, it’s not like I care. Your business is your business and all.” She paused for a second, and when there was no response, she continued. “You
aren’t
serious are you?”

“No,” was the reply.

“Oh good,” she said. “I mean not that I’m judging, just that... oh my God I sound like a yammering kid asking too many questions about what the Sun is, don’t I?”

“It’s cute,” he said after a moment’s pause. “And trust me, it took me this long to call you for a reason. I’m not exactly the world’s smoothest operator.”

Coulda fooled me
, Lexie thought. Somehow she kept from announcing that to the world, which for her was a minor miracle. Filtering wasn’t her strong suit, to say the very least. “So, I guess I should know your name?”

“Blake Rogan and...” he grumbled something that sounded like a curse, but it was so quietly uttered she couldn’t make sure. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight. Sound good?”

Lexie shook her head, not entirely sure what was going on, but absolutely certain of one  thing. “Yeah,” she said. “That sounds like the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.”

It wasn’t until he hung up that she realized he hadn’t
asked
if she wanted to go out. Somehow, that was even more exciting than all the rest of it rolled into one. Of course, it didn’t occur to her until some minutes later that he had no idea where she was, and she hadn’t a clue what he was picking her up
for
. But somehow, the maven of
I Hate Arts and Crafts
just couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but excitement, hopeful anticipation, and just the slightest bit of nervous caution.

That was definitely, definitely a first.

––––––––

“W
hat is with
you
?” Dora, the second-in-command of the Mating Call Dating Agency, almost trumpeted as Yvette Lorraine, her boss and best friend on the planet, sailed through the front door. “You’re
late
!”

Eve looked down at her watch. “I’m two and a half minutes late. And wait the hell up, I own this place. How can I be late to a business I own?”

“The last time you were late at all, forget more than a minute,” Dora was having to work very hard to keep up the overly serious act, although in her defense, Eve
hadn’t
been late, ever, “you had the flu and were going to just ‘ride it out’. Remember that?”

“It would’ve worked if you hadn’t dragged me to the doctor.”

“They put you on IV fluids for three days!” Dora said. “Anyway, Monte and I were watching TV last night and I coulda swore he said something about seeing you at Tenner’s the other night with...  dun-dun-dun... a man?”

Eve scrunched one of her eyes almost shut. For an owl, with very owl-like eyes, that was no small feat. “So what if I did? You keep on me about how I have to find someone or I’m going to go crazy, don’t you? I mean
besides
Rake. I can’t do that. I just can’t. Too much baggage.”

Dora pushed herself to her feet. She plucked the gum out of her mouth and tossed it in the trash as she did. “I get you. I mean, I’m disappointed, but I’ll hold out hope for someday. If nothing else, because Rake sounds as hard up as you are. Anyway, are you saying you met someone?”

“It was business,” Eve grumbled. “Although I may have met someone. I think I like him a lot, but that might just be me forcing myself to not think about Rake.”

The two of them were both having a hell of a time not smiling. This was their game – one acted irritated, the other egged her on, and then they eventually dropped the whole thing just before it got
really
unbelievable. “Tell me about him,” Dora hoisted herself up on top of her desk and sat down, staring at Eve. “Let me guess, he’s a mongoose who teaches English at the White Creek Community College?”

“Guess again,” Eve said.

“Ah-ha! That’s an admission of guilt. Okay... cowboy yak who spends his free time making scarves to sell on Etsy?”

“Close,” Eve said with a smile. “Or not really. How about ex-soldier bear with dark blue eyes, dimples, and biceps about the size of my head.”

“Yeah, right,” Dora said. “Semi-homeless ferret who plays guitar at Mom’s Burgers on Wednesday night and has a weird addiction to chewing on paper towel rolls?”

When Eve’s response was just a grin, Dora got the hint. “Oh my god, you’re serious, aren’t you?” she asked. “For you or the client?”

“Client,” Eve said. “But mine is... well...” Eve just nodded, then smiled, and about a half-second later, the two of them were embracing and giggling like neither had giggled since they were high school sophomores and Bill Hutchinson, the captain of the wrestling team, made an inappropriate comment about Eve’s ass.

“So,” Dora finally said, when the two of them calmed down enough to actually talk again, “you’re going to tell me everything about him, right? Every last detail?”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Eve said, still smiling. “I’ll tell you as soon as
I
know. I have a date with him tonight at eight. It might be a double with his roommate, who I hooked up with Lexie Headly, the rabbit with the blog about how much she hates making potholders.”

“Wait,” Dora said. “You’re going on a double date? I thought that was strictly against the—”

“Yeah, the rules,” Eve said with a long trailing exhalation. “It is, but I figured this one time, it would be okay since the guy was really nervous about his roommate being awkward. At least, that’s what he said. He might be afraid of me, come to think of it.”

Dora puckered her lips in thought, and rubbed her finger across her chin, back and forth over the cleft. “You
are
pretty scary,” she finally said. “But scary enough to intimidate a soldier? What’s the real story?”

Eve sighed heavily. “Well... the real story is that,” she trailed off, very obviously trying to come up with something other than the truth. Dora called her out.

“You realize it’s perfectly okay to be nervous about something you haven’t done in over a decade, right?” Dora asked. She put her hands on Eve’s shoulders and squeezed gently. “And also, you realize you don’t have to be embarrassed about things like that with me. Remember when I started dating Monte... what, two months ago? Remember how much of a goddam basket case I was before our first date? And remember how that turned out?”

“I recall sitting on your bed and talking you out of dressing like a candy cane,” Eve said. A smile spread across her lips. “Look, it’s just that I don’t... I’m not used to admitting that I’m anything but perfectly calm and cool and collected.”

“I know, hon,” Dora hopped off the desk again and hugged her friend tight. “I know you are. But you know something else?”

Eve blinked and stared. “Don’t tell me the only way I’d be this nervous is if I’m in love. Just resist. Just—”

“Whoever this guy is, you better bring him to meet me before you propose a mating. Because if you don’t bring him to meet your sister, I’m never gonna bless thing mating that’s obviously in the cards.”

“Oh my god, shut up!” Eve laughed. “And wait, why am I the one who is going to ask him?”

“While we’re on the subject though, what about Rake?” She was going a mile a minute, but Dora felt like if she didn’t release every word in her brain that she might back up and pop. “I thought you two were going to get together? You said he was coming to town sometime soon.”

“I lied,” Eve said with a shrug. “I wasn’t sure I could go through with it and to be honest with you I felt kind of shitty about you putting yourself out like that, hunting him down and calling my old flame, and all... I didn’t want you to know how scared I was. I feel kinda stupid for doing it but, you know, I can’t much go back in time.”

“No, you can’t, but you also don’t need to lie to me. If you’ll recall,” Dora scratched at one of her ears in an uncontrollable tic, “that’s the one constant with us—no need to lie. But no I totally get you. Sometimes the past just needs to stay that way. You and Rake did have a pretty rough patch.”

Eve laughed so hard she almost made a snorting sound. “You could call it that. Or you could say that I watched him go feral, almost kill four guys who were chasing me, and then I flipped out on him because,” she paused for a second, looking backward in time with a wistful gaze that seemed to scan the years of her memories. “Well, I don’t know why, actually. He
did
save me. I guess it was just like flipping a switch in his brain that made him go from nothing to murderous.”

“He
did
still go bananas, even if there was a reason for it.” Dora offered. “I read the newspaper article. I can understand why he’d freak you out. It’s like when you see one of those shows on
Animal Planet
and a... I dunno, bear or a leopard or something is just kinda hanging out, and then in a terrifying instant of almost unreal violence, she sees some threat coming along and erupts into a ball of rage. Half a second later the only thing left of whatever approached them is a greasy red stain, and—”

“That might be overstating things a
bit
,” Eve said with a smirk. “But not much I guess. You’ve pretty much got it though. After that, I got wary of him, even though he’d never done anything in the entire time we dated for me to think of him hurting me. I just kept going back to that moment. I couldn’t get it out of my head, and then one morning I was watching him as he slept in the bed we’d shared for three years... and I couldn’t do it anymore.”

Dora watched her old friend, studying the look on Eve’s face. It wasn’t fear – not anymore, anyway – it was more wariness, more of just a detached observation of something that once was. A few moments later, Eve broke the silence. “I don’t know if I can do it again,” she said. “I don’t know if I can even look at him again, more out of my own shame than anything else. I did essentially run him out of town, after all.”

She had to cut in. “You can’t blame yourself for that. We were all fifteen years younger. Twenty?” she’d never been exactly certain on Eve’s life timeline. “It was before we met, anyway. Even if it was your fault, you can’t dwell on it. But you might be right. Maybe best just to let things lie.”

“He doesn’t let things lie,” Eve said. “I think it’s against his lion nature. And you don’t know Rake.”

That hung in the air between them like a limp worm. “That’s true,” Dora finally said. “But, well, you don’t know him either. Not anymore. He could show up with a sweater vest, tweed jacket and a pipe.”

Eve’s shoulders started shaking with laughter she wasn’t quite ready to release. “If he does, with all those tattoos all over his arms, I’m gonna laugh really, really hard. And then I’m probably going to pee my pants. I’d be less surprised if he showed up in, I don’t know, a Village People biker outfit.”

Dora scrunched up her face. “And
that
wouldn’t make you laugh?”

“Not as much as trying to imagine Rake Dolan some kind of history professor teaching college students about the history of England or something.”

The two of them sat quietly for a moment, Dora absent mindedly braiding Eve’s hair. It was just one of those things they did. Like some friends finishing each other’s sentences, Dora would just start braiding. Every now and then, Eve said something about how it was her inner gorilla coming out, and if there were any ticks, she’d collect those instead of braiding.

This time though, there weren’t any jokes. No cute quips or anything else, just two friends sitting quietly in an otherwise empty office and trying to figure out what life was about to throw at them.

“Listen, you must have your reasons for going on a double, and I think I understand them. You have to promise me one thing though.”

“I owe you,” Eve said. “Ask and ye shall receive.” She started twirling her own hair. That was Dora’s sign that Eve’s bravado was cracking just a bit.

“You have to tell me how it is when you get laid,” Dora said, somehow maintaining a deadpan in her voice and face that would have made Bob Newhart proud. “And I mean details.
Details
, you hear me?”

Eve exploded into laughter. The tension of the entire past week seemed to explode at once. “After all the times I harassed you about the same thing, and how relentlessly I made you tell me about you and Monte gettin’ it on, I guess I deserve that. Fine, fine,” she said. “You’ll get all the details you want. More than you want, probably.”

*

“I
’m nervous as shit,” Eve announced, stepping out of her office two hours after the two had stopped talking that morning. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

Dora looked up from her old mechanical IBM keyboard. She’d never felt any reason to advance. Her computer was plenty new, but something about the tactile clicking and bouncing of the ancient keys comforted her squirrel ears. She thought maybe it was like those sound machines that make babies think they’re still in the womb, except for squirrels it was making them remember the clicking-tapping-munching sounds of being a tiny newborn in a nest. All the sounds were the others eating.

Or at least, that’s what she told herself to justify spending a hundred bucks every time her keyboard needing servicing.

“Trash can’s here,” Dora said with a concerned look. “You’re not sick are you? Like actually, getting-the-flu-and-thinking-it’s-nerves sick?”