A Grizzly Kind Of Love (The Mating Game Book 3) (4 page)

Wynona yawned hugely as she stood by the lakeside and admired the fishing boat that Zane had just carefully backed into Lake Serena. It was a lot fancier than she’d expected. Twenty feet long, all kinds of hidden compartments for tackle boxes, a rack for their fishing rods, and cushy leather seats.

She’d woken up at four a.m., showered and dressed, and downed three cups of coffee before Zane came in his pickup truck to fetch her.

She’d never been to Lake Serena before, even though it was only about half an hour from her house. She’d definitely be coming here again in the future, she mused. It was so peaceful and still here, away from the traffic noise and city sounds and smells. The sunrise splashed the horizon in blazing red and orange. Pine trees rimmed the banks and stretched off into the distance as far as the eye could see, and the morning air was crisp and cool.

When they arrived, she’d been surprised to find that a couple of friends of his, a lion shifter named Rex and his mate Tara, were standing by their own boat, waiting for him. Rex had thick dark hair pulled back in a ponytail and a lush dark beard. He and Tara both wore Harley T-shirts and jeans.

Wynona had worn jeans and a light blue T-shirt and sneakers, figuring that she’d probably get muddy or wet or both. Zane was wearing a T-shirt and jeans too, but that seemed to be his uniform.

“So that’s her,” Rex said, walking up and sticking out his hand. “Where’s her purse dog?”

“Left it home. Don’t know if it swims,” Zane said. “And the bass might think it was bait and eat it.”

Zane had been talking to his friends about her? She shuddered to think what he’d been telling them. They were certainly friendly to her face, at least.

“Beer?” Tara said to her, holding out a cold, frosty Coors.

“No thank you, still working on waking up,” she said, holding up her Styrofoam cup of coffee and yawning again. “But hit me again any time after five p.m. and we’ll talk.”

“We got a contest going,” Rex explained to her. “See who brings back the most fish. Loser buys a round at the Red Lion.”

“Rex gets tired of being the loser, so sometimes I let him win,” Zane said, shaking his head at his friend in mock sorrow. “Otherwise he cries.”

“Don’t mind Zane’s hallucinations – he only has them when he’s awake. All those times he was dropped on his head as a cub.”

“Well, that certainly answers some questions for me,” Wynona said, which earned her a dirty look from Zane and smiles from Rex and Tara. She yawned again, drained the last of her cooling coffee, and tossed it into a big metal garbage can that sat by the lake shore.

Rex and Tara waded to their boat, climbed in, and roared off towards the east.

“They’re a nice couple. Where do you know them from?”

“Rex owns the shop where I work. Shop’s kind of a mash up of all different species, mostly people who don’t fit in too well with a pack or a clan. Okay, they went east, we go west,” Zane said. “We meet them back here in three hours.”

He took her down a river that fed into the lake, and they sliced through the clear water until he found a spot that he liked and cut the engine.

“This is heaven on earth out here,” she said admiringly.

“Almost worth gettin’ up at the butt-crack of dawn for, huh?”

She suppressed a smile. She should be chiding him for his language, but she was enjoying herself too much.

“Almost,” she agreed. Then she glanced at his tackle box. “I lied about baiting the hook for you, by the way. You’re going to have to bait the hook for me,” she informed him. “I don’t do worms.”

“Neither do I.” He opened the box. It unfolded to reveal half a dozen plastic shelves, with extra fishing line, bug repellent, dozens of colorful lures, a set of boat keys, hooks, and things she didn’t recognize. “We’re fishing for large-mouth bass. I’m partial to a spinnerbait.” He held one up to show her. It looked like a little red-and-yellow fish wearing a red tutu made of plastic fringe, connected to a couple of dangly metal pieces.

“And there I thought you’d just dive in and catch them with your teeth.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Was that the sarcasm thing I’ve heard about? The ways of you city folk are so mysterious to me.”

He handed her a fishing rod and began explaining what she should do. Then he watched with amusement as she cast her line, ducking as she nearly took his eye out.

“That was not intentional,” she informed him.

“So you don’t try to kill all your clients?”

“Only the special ones.”

“Well, at least I’m special to you, Miss Bennett.” He winked at her.

Damn it, he was being charming. She thought about telling him to act just like that with Tiffany, but she didn’t want to ruin the moment.

They floated in silence for a while, not casting, and she breathed in the pine-scented air and his sexy masculine scent.

“My father used to take me fishing,” he said, out of the blue, and knowing that his father had been killed when he was at a young age, she felt a sharp pang of sympathy.

“What did you fish for?” she asked.

“Oh, everything. Mostly freshwater. Bass, crappie, steelhead, trout, catfish, walleye.”

“That must have been wonderful.”

He flicked his rod back and cast expertly, and she admired the way his line whipped through the air and actually did what it was supposed to instead of wrapping around someone’s head. Yeah, she needed some practice, all right.

“What did you do with your parents when you were a cub?” he asked.

She shrugged. “My father died young. My mother and I didn’t do things together. She hired nannies, she sent me to diet camp and etiquette class and boarding school. She’s still alive. We don’t speak.”

“Damn. I wouldn’t speak to her either.”

Wynona grimaced. He was right. There was really no point in trying to repair things with her mother; Wynona wasn’t the one who’d broken them. “I’ve tried to talk to her. She’s mad at me for breaking it off with my ex-husband after I caught him cheating on me. Bennetts don’t divorce, we endure. That should be our family motto. Also, she’s got this rule that if I weigh over a hundred and forty pounds, which I do – considerably, might I add – then she won’t speak to me. For my own good.” Ouch. How had things suddenly gotten so personal?

“Sounds like a real prize.”

“I’m sorry about what happened to your parents. I’m glad you had such nice memories with them.”

He cast his line again. “If I have cubs, I’m taking them fishing,” he said. “Boys or girls.”

When she caught a fish a little while later, she felt a surge of triumph. “In your face!” she yelled, waving the puny two-pounder at him before she tossed it into the ice chest. The fact that he’d already caught several bass that were four times the size of hers did nothing to diminish the happiness she felt.

“Make a good fish fry tonight,” he said. “I’ll show you how to clean it properly.”

“Tonight?” she echoed, surprised.

He shrugged. “’Less you got other plans.”

She should be spending as much time as possible with him, of course. This was not a man who’d civilize easily. “Uh…no…okay, I guess we can go over polite topics of conversation for first dates tonight while we clean the fish,” she said.

As they headed back, she caught a whiff of someone in the dense tree line. A human.

Then she heard a loud crack, and something whizzed by her right ear and splashed in the water. It was followed by several more loud cracks.

“Duck!” Zane shouted, and threw himself against her, covering her with his body. Fear washed over her in a mighty wave. The next thing she knew, they’d both tumbled overboard and hit the ice-cold water with a loud splash.

She and Zane sank under the water and stayed there for what felt like forever but was probably less than a minute. There were no other gunshots splashing near them that she could see.

The water was shallow there, and they stood up and waded to the shore. Zane made sure to stand in front of her, blocking her from the other shore with his massive body. His white shirt had gone see-through, and so had hers. She was shivering, partly from the cold and partly from the shock.

His wet shirt outlined every muscle and the dark circles of his nipples. He glanced at her, his gaze traveling over the thoroughly soaked shirt clinging to her curves, then up to her face.

“Damn hunters. You okay?” he grunted.

“I’m fine.”

He glared at the woods. “I’ve half a mind to shift and go hunt those hunters.”

“Don’t,” she said, placing a hand on his muscular biceps. She felt a zing of attraction shoot through her, and quickly jerked her hand away. “There’d be legal implications. I’ll call up the local game warden and report it just as soon as we get back.”

“All right,” he said, scowling at the tree line and sniffing the air. Bears had a sense of smell that was even better than wolves’. “They’re gone,” he said. “We can get back in the boat.”

When they met Rex and Tara and told them what had happened, Rex wanted to go hunting for the hunters too, but Tara pointed out they’d be long gone by then.

Wynona fortunately had a change of clothing in the truck, as did Zane. Most shifters carried extra clothing with them. Once they’d gotten dressed, they headed back to town.

“I’ll be by at six with the fish,” Zane said to her as he pulled up in front of her house.

“I don’t know what to do with a whole fish,” Wynona protested. “My experience with fish ends with me either ordering sushi or getting a nice fillet at the grocery store.”

“Figures.”

“Well, excuse you,” she said with annoyance. “I do have
some
useful skills. For instance, I know how to spend time with members of the opposite sex without making them want to kill me.”

“You sure about that?” He rolled up his window and drove off, leaving her muttering curses under her breath as she stomped into her house to take a shower before heading off to work.

Once she got to work, she called the Wildlife Resources Commission, and they put her through to a game warden named Tremont. He wasn’t particularly helpful.

“Well, hunting is illegal in that area, although there’s a lot of poachers this time of year. We’ll send some men out there, but I’m sure they’re long gone,” Tremont said. “We’ll increase patrols in the area, though.”

“Thanks,” she said, but she doubted that they’d make much of an effort, or that she’d ever hear from them again.

She hung up, still feeling uneasy about the whole thing.

Could it have been deliberate?

Could it be because of her ex-husband somehow? Wynona had always lived a quiet, uneventful life, and now she was being sued, blackmailed, and bullets had whizzed by her head. Was it a coincidence?

Unsettled, she started when the door to her office slammed open. It was Gillian, of course. Her nerves were just rattled.

Gillian walked in and slapped a bunch of folders down on her desk with a vehemence that was out of character for her.

“Here is the research that I’ve compiled on your current clients,” she said. “Those who have passed the initial qualification tests to determine whether they’d be eligible for your services.” Was she placing a peculiar emphasis on those words? Why? And why was Gillian telling her something she already knew?

They’d established the system when Wynona had first hired Gillian. All her clients had to agree to submit to a criminal background check and credit check. Gillian and a private investigation firm did the preliminaries, ensuring that her clients didn’t have any nasty little secrets hidden away that could come back to bite her. Literally or figuratively.

Gillian was halfway out the door before Wynona realized why her office manager was out of sorts, and then she felt like an idiot.

Gillian wanted to be one of her clients. But she didn’t want to have to come out and ask.

It never occurred to her to offer her services to anyone, because she assumed that anyone who was interested would just ask.

But Gillian wasn’t a normal someone. She knew that she was odd, and that sometimes – okay, all the time – her personality was off-putting to a lot of people.

“Gillian,” Wynona called out. “What about you? I mean, what if we drew up a dating profile for you?”

Gillian stopped in the doorway and turned around.

“Me?” she echoed cautiously. “I believe it is statistically unlikely that there is anybody out there who would be an appropriate match for someone like me. I am aware that my mild obsessive-compulsive disorder and insistence on grammatical correctness cause me to be considered undesirable by many members of the male sex.”

“Well, we don’t know until we try, do we? We haven’t had you fill out a questionnaire and done a preliminary search of my existing client roster.”

“That’s true.
We
haven’t.”

Wynona heard the emphasis on the word “we”.

She saw the look on Gillian’s face. For the first time since she’d known Gillian, her office manager looked embarrassed.

“Are you…blushing?” Wynona demanded.

And now Gillian was avoiding her gaze. She never did that. “Well, since I am not looking in a mirror, I cannot answer that question with complete accuracy, although my cheeks feel unusually warm, and there is an unpleasant prickling sensation in my skin.”

“Did you fill out a questionnaire for yourself?”

Gillian’s face turned redder. “If I had done such a thing, and compared the results with the prospective clients currently existing in our database, then I would not have found anybody compatible.” She stared at the ground. “And in my entire life, I have never been asked out on a date. So there is probably no point in pursuing this further.”

“Hey, listen, just because you haven’t found anyone in the
current
database who would appreciate your many special, wonderful and unique qualities, doesn’t meant they don’t exist,” Wynona said. “I’ll keep an eye out for someone who would be your perfect match.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to take time away from your work…”

“It’s no trouble at all,” Wynona said. “I should have thought of it ages ago. You’d be an absolute catch, and anyone would be lucky to have you.”

Her phone rang as Gillian left the office, and as soon as she picked it up, she wished she hadn’t.

“Tiffany’s father has called me several times,” Hubert Shepherd said without preamble. “He is eager to get her off his hands.”

“You don’t say.”

Hubert failed to take the bait. “I expect a progress report emailed to my office in ten minutes,” he said.

“Hello, Hubert,” Wynona said with annoyance. “It’s a pleasure to hear from you. How is your day going so far?”

“I’m on my way to lunch with the district attorney,
a close personal friend
of mine,” he said. “Nine minutes and thirty seconds. If you make me late, I will be displeased.” And he hung up the phone.

She buried her face in her hands and groaned. Her lawyer was running into brick walls trying to track down her husband and get more details about the shell corporation which had defrauded the Shepherds. . He’d filed a discovery motion, but that would take time, and every damn thing he filed cost her money. Soon she wouldn’t have any savings left.

It looked like she had at least a few more weeks of taming the wild beast ahead of her, and what was worse, she was becoming more and more convinced that it just wasn’t possible. She didn’t think all the training in the world would make a gentleman out of Zane Shepherd.

* * * * *

Zane came over that evening with a cooler full of fish on the back of his bike. He was wearing a fresh T-shirt, and motorcycle boots again. The jeans clung to the muscular curves of his thighs, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the outline of his thick cock when she’d taken his measurements. She studiously avoided looking at his crotch area.

That didn’t help much, because instead she found herself looking at his sexy five o’clock shadow and wondering it would feel like rubbing against her skin.

“What?” he growled, and she realized that she was staring at him.

“Nothing!” she said brightly. “Why don’t you get those fish ready, and I’ll start cooking the vegetables? We’re going to review the proper use of tableware while we eat dinner.”

He grumbled mutinously as he cleaned and deboned the fish, but he used the napkins and tableware appropriately throughout the entire meal, made normal conversation, and was entirely enjoyable as a dinner partner.

Great! She was actually making progress. Maybe, just
possibly, she could actually get him ready to date Tiffany Charles.

That idea didn’t cheer her up anywhere near as much as it should have, considering that the alternative was bankruptcy, the likely loss of her business, and possibly her very own eight-by-ten jail cell.

Right after dinner, as she stood up to clear the plates, his phone buzzed. He glanced at it. “Sorry, I have to take this.”

He walked out the front door and stood on her porch, letting the door shut behind him.

She couldn’t help herself – she used her shifter hearing to eavesdrop, partially shifting her ears so that she could enhance her hearing to its fullest.

What she overheard was puzzling. As far as she could tell, he was giving someone instructions on how to take apart an engine. But more specifically, it almost sounded as if he were telling someone how to sabotage an engine, without the sabotage being detected.

How odd. Was he involved in some kind of criminal activity? And if so, why? He wasn’t wanting for money – he didn’t strike her as someone who yearned for the flashy lifestyle that his aunt and uncle and clan members lived.

She couldn’t ask him about it, though, because then he’d know she’d been listening in.

Was that the kind of thing she should warn Cecily and Hubert about? What if they arranged a mating with Tiffany Charles and it turned out that he was actually a criminal?

Then again, she didn’t have enough to go on at this point – she didn’t really know much about engines, and she couldn’t even be entirely sure of what she was hearing.

“No problem,” Zane growled into the phone. “Don’t worry, we’ll have a new garage soon. Just make sure he doesn’t find out, or there’ll be trouble.”

She turned and hurried into the kitchen with her dishes, and was setting them in the sink to be rinsed when he walked in.

“All right,” she said. “Now we need to practice polite conversation. You’re going to need to be able to charm Tiffany if you want to win her over.”

He just stood there, leaning on the door frame, and stared at her.

She remembered how Tiffany had been obsessed with being complimented.

“You should tell me how pretty I look, as a start,” she said.

“Don’t you already know?”

She flushed. Well, at least he’d called her pretty. Not that she was the one he should be complimenting.

“It doesn’t matter if I already know; women like to hear it from time to time. And we’re not really talking about me, we’re talking about Tiffany. This is just us practicing, so that when you see her, you can totally dazzle her. Go ahead, say something flattering.”

He glanced around. “Your house is clean,” he said.

Stupid, obstinate bear.

“About
me
.”

“You’re also clean. Looks like you took a shower before I arrived.”

She heaved a sigh. “That’s not a compliment – that’s pretty much taken for granted. One would hope, anyway. Compliment my looks.”

“Okay.” He shrugged. “They’re great.”

“What are?” she demanded through gritted teeth.

“Your looks.”

She glared at him. Damn it, he’d done so well at dinner. And here he was, being himself again. Himself would just not do. He needed to be somebody else.

“Zane, you’re being a stubborn ass on purpose. Okay. Fine. What will it take for you to agree to learn how to give normal compliments?”

This time he didn’t hesitate. “Go on a bike ride with me.”

Him and his weird requests. Did he think she’d be scared to ride on a motorcycle? Ha. She’d show him. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Nah, day after tomorrow, after you get off work. I didn’t bring an extra helmet with me tonight. And tomorrow I work late at the shop.”

“I mean…it might be okay without a helmet… I’m a shifter, I heal fast…”

He shook his head.

“Nope. Safety first.”

“All right,” she said, exasperation bubbling up in her. “Fine. I will go with you tomorrow night if you can give me a sincere compliment right now. Let me give you some tips. Take a quick look at the person you’re complimenting. See what stands out to you right away. Shiny, pretty hair? A new dress? If you’re noticing it, it’s probably something she put some effort into. Perfume is a good bet; you can tell a woman she smells pretty.”

He looked her in the eyes. “You have beautiful eyes,” he said, with a warmth that sent a rush of arousal through her whole body. “I could stare into them forever. And that dress is very pretty; pink suits your coloring.”

“Wow,” she said with surprise. “That was amazing. You’re a natural at this.”

“Am I?” He looked amused.

She scowled at him and put her hands on her hips. “Zane Shepherd, you could have done that any time, couldn’t you have? You’re just being obstinate.”

“Think so?” He favored her with a white-toothed grin. “If I make it too easy on you, you’re not earnin’ your money.”

She sighed. “Right. My pimp money.”

He shrugged. “Hey, we all gotta make a living somehow. Some of us fix motorcycles. Some of us pimp men out for cash. See you tomorrow. Meet you here at six.”

Do some of us sabotage people’s cars or motorcycles for a living?
she wondered. She found it hard to believe that Zane would really do something like that. He seemed like a basically decent guy underneath it all. Blunt, uncouth, for sure, but certainly not the type who’d hurt innocent people.

She walked outside to the front porch to watch him drive away, then went back inside, feeling thoroughly unsettled. He was actually, grudgingly, making great progress, even if he felt the need to give her a hard time every step of the way. She might really be able to pull this off – which made her feel a sharp pang that stabbed into her very core.

Her entire living was made off fixing up couples, so why did she feel bad about doing this?

Because it was a fake, and she was teaching someone to put on an act, which went against everything she believed and was the exact opposite of what she told her clients. She always told them to be themselves on their dates. If that wasn’t good enough, then the other person wasn’t the right match. Why would you want to be mated to someone who didn’t care for the real you?