A Promise To Bear (Second Chance Shifters 4)

A
Promise
to Bear

Published By Meredith Clarke

Copyright © 2015 Meredith Clarke

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places or events are entirely the work of the author. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, or places is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Please purchase only authorized editions and do not participate in piracy of copyrighted materials.

“
I
can’t believe
she’s dead,” Twila said in a rush of words. The phrase felt like it was coming out of her mouth without her even trying. She shook her head back and forth slowly, the phone still clutched in her hand. “How? When?” The questions seemed insignificant, yet she felt like she had to ask them. It was her duty.

The girl on the other end of the line simply responded about how she passed away in her sleep and that it was peaceful and short. An aneurysm they said, so she didn’t even feel the pain. But Twila felt the pain, the stabbing through the heart. She rubbed her chest, wondering if she would feel the warm, sticky blood on her fingers; there must be some physical evidence of the pain she was feeling. But instead her hand came away clean. “I was supposed to come visit her. I was just about to book my ticket.”

The unknown caller sighed heavily. “Well, you’ll still have to do that. Someone needs to take care of her affairs. And there’s the lodge to think about.”

Of course. The lodge. It was her grandmother’s life’s work to open a lodge in New England. Twila had moved to Montana with her parents as child, but she spent all of her summers at the lodge. That was until three years ago. Three years ago, everything had changed, and she hadn’t been back since. She had only seen her grandmother for Thanksgiving once since then. She should have spent more time with her. She should’ve made more of an effort—she wasn’t some child that could hide from her past anymore. She was an adult, and she should’ve acted like one. And now it was too late.

“Of course. I’m sure that she had some arrangements in place?”

“Yes. There’s a will, but there are some things that I would like to discuss with you personally.” The woman on the other end of the line was Lauren Turner, her grandmother’s lawyer. It was sad that she had been the one to call Twila, but none of her friends had picked up the phone. Twila doubted any of them had her number anyway. This was the most direct route. Besides, no one wanted to call a woman’s Granddaughter to tell her that she had passed. This was reserved for a professional.

“I’ll check flights today to see if I can get on anything tomorrow. I’ll have to take vacation time with my job so that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“It’ll be good to see you again, Twila. It’s been a long time since you visited.”

Twila chewed on her lower lip nervously. There was a reason for that. But she wasn’t ready to tell anyone yet. “Yes, well, I have a flight to book. Thank you for calling.”

She hung up the phone and imagined dialing her mother to tell her the sad news that she already knew. Twila’s parents had been killed in a tragic accident while visiting her grandmother three years ago up at the lodge. She struggled with the pain of losing them for so long, and now she felt truly alone in the world. She had no family left. It was just her and her cat, Ice. There was absolutely no funny story behind his name; she just liked the song “Ice Ice Baby” when she got him. Old-school rap was kind of her thing. She sat down on the floor and he padded over to her, climbing into her lap and rubbing himself against her chest. Usually, he settled down into a little ball and fell asleep, but he could tell something was wrong. Instead, he continued to rub his head back and forth on her arms.

“It’s okay. We’ll be okay. We’ve been here before.”

She grabbed her phone and started looking for flights. It was time to go back, whether she wanted to or not.

“
I
f we get
one more order of ugly ass flowers in this lobby, I’m going to kill someone.” Jasper knew it wasn’t a kind thing to say. But he couldn’t help it. There was a part of him that was broken inside about the death of his beloved Grace. And the more flowers that sat around the lobby and made more work for him, the crazier he became. He didn’t want a constant reminder that she wasn’t here anymore. He couldn’t walk into the hotel kitchen and grab freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and he couldn’t go upstairs and smell the overly fragrant perfume after she had made beds. She wasn’t here anymore. And the memories just made it worse.

He collected three of the floral arrangements at once and walked them to the back of the lodge through the kitchen and outside. He wanted to throw them over the mountainside, but he knew he couldn’t. He pulled each of the cards off the plastic stakes in order to write thank you notes later. Would he have to do that? Or would someone else? Grace had a granddaughter who she talked about all the time. But he had only met her once, and their meeting was less than ideal.

Twila had come to the lodge for a weekend in college. The only thing that her friends wanted to do was drink and lay out in the sun. Except Twila was different. The moment they met, there was a spark between them. He stayed up with her the second night she was there, and they passed a bottle of whiskey between them while they told each other about their lives. He couldn’t help but reveal himself to her.

But then everything suddenly changed. One of her friends got lost in the woods, and their parents all came up to help with the search effort to find her. Jasper knew he could have done it all by himself, but he couldn’t risk shifting at that time. The only person who had known was Grace. She never asked him to, and he never offered. The girl was found a day later; she had gotten heinously drunk and walked away and must have passed out somewhere in the woods. But while the search was on for her, Grace’s daughter and her husband, Twila’s parents, were mauled by a bear.

Jasper had spent months afterwards looking for the beast, trying to figure out if it was a rogue shifter or a natural animal. But he never even found a clue about what had happened to them. For a moment, he had wanted to see the bodies, to make sure the claw marks weren’t his own, or someone he knew. But he knew he couldn’t ask for that. It would cause too many suspicions. He had to stay hidden for fear of persecution. He had seen it happen to other shifters. Sure, they were registered and allowed to be out in public, but the court of public opinion was far worse than any real judge. People still saw them as dangerous, especially around these parts. Jasper thought it was because they mostly knew about real bears. People around here knew what kind of beasts they could become, and Twila’s parents getting murdered only solidified that. He made sure that when he Changed he would travel far away from the lodge, away from people.

That was typically how he liked to live his life. He did handiwork for Grace, fixing sinks and toilets in the lodge and doing all the landscaping in the spring. It had been steady work, and he was grateful for it. He lived in a little cabin out back and got to eat and stay for free. He didn’t really have any needs besides surviving, so he didn’t need any money. But what would happen when a new owner would buy this place? For now, the lawyer had told him that he was in charge, but he didn’t know how to deal with guests or manage the staff. He simply wanted to go back to his cabin and hide, but he knew he couldn’t. It wasn’t fair to Grace’s memory to let this place fall apart before the new owner showed up. He allowed himself just a moment to linger on who that might be. Grace had never given him any indication of who she would’ve chosen to leave the place to. Jasper knew she had had offers in the past, so maybe upon her death it was supposed to go to one of those businesses. He sucked in a deep breath of cold mountain air and tried to calm himself, shaking those ideas from his head. There were at least a hundred and fifty guests in the lodge right now, and he had to attend to them first.

“Jasper! Are you out here?”

He turned around to see Lauren, the lawyer who had been handling Grace’s affairs, walking down the back steps of the lodge. She was a pretty girl, but not his type. She was thin, with long, dark blonde hair and pretty blue eyes. She was petite, and he thought about how if they were ever together, he would break her into a million tiny pieces.

“Hey! I’m over here. What can I do for you?”

She smiled at him for only a moment. “Too many flowers for you?”

“Ah shit, yeah. These. I guess I should really do something with them. I don’t know where Grace had the vases or anything. Maybe somebody from catering does.”

“The new owner has arrived, and I was wondering if we could have a sit down.”

“The three of us?”

“Yes. We need to discuss Grace’s will and how she wanted you to proceed with the business. I know it’s very soon after this devastating loss, but you have a business to run and a lodge full of people. I suspect you want to continue.”

He sucked in another deep breath and held it for a moment, considering her proposition. Meet the new owner now? He didn’t even get a week before some asshole wanted to come in here and change everything and take over? Finally he released it. “I guess now is as good a time as any.”

“Wonderful, let’s go to Grace’s office.”

Jasper nodded and followed her up the back steps into the service entrance of the lodge. They made their way through the kitchen and out into the lobby. Standing at the front desk was a deliciously curvy woman with dark auburn hair facing away from him. Could it be?

T
wila turned around just
in time to make eye contact with Jasper, another memory of this place that she had tried to forget. He looked just as sexy as ever, with broad shoulders and thick, built chest. He stood almost six inches above her, and yet she could still see the green flecks in his dark emerald eyes. His hair had grown longer, dark brown wisps falling slightly into his face. But he kept it short in the back, just as she remembered.

Flashbacks to the night before her parents were killed were seared into her brain. Her nails digging into his skin, the sweat dripping off of their hot bodies in front of the fireplace. Sex with Jasper was like nothing else she’d ever experienced in her entire life. The way he touched her curves like he worshiped them, holding her voluptuous breasts in each hand, squeezing just hard enough to send her over the edge. Everything about Jasper Blake was sexy and totally forbidden. So why, standing at the desk and waiting to discuss her grandmother’s affairs, did she feel the ache between her legs? “Jasper.”

“
T
wila
, been a long time.” He wanted to reach out and touch her, run his fingers through her dark hair. His bear could immediately smell her arousal in the air, so clearly, she still had feelings for him. He had held onto his feelings for her even in her absence. For a long time, he thought he would never see her again, and as much as it killed him, he had become accustomed to the loneliness. He was tied to the death of her parents, so they could never be together.

Now, seeing her again, he wanted to wrap his calloused hands around her soft, supple skin once more. If there hadn’t been about fifty people in the lobby at that time he would have considered doing it right then and there. Praying that she wouldn’t notice how hard he was getting, just being in her presence, he walked around the back of the front desk and into Grace’s office. No one had been in here since her passing. He was embarrassed for having such strong feelings for Twila when they were about to discuss his favorite person’s lost life, and what she had left behind.

Once there, he shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at the floor while he waited for the lawyer and the new owner to enter the office. When the door shut behind Lauren, he was surprised to see Twila standing in front of them.

“What are you doing in here?”

“I’m not really sure,” Twila answered. She seemed honestly as confused as he was.

Lauren extended her hand to the two wooden chairs that were on the visitor’s side of Grace’s desk. “Why don’t you sit down so I can explain it?”

Twila nodded and sat down nervously. Jasper sat beside her, still looking at the floor. For some reason, he just didn’t feel like he could make eye contact with her. What Lauren had to say right now was too important to be focusing on what Twila was doing here, and what she had under her shirt.

Lauren sat down on the other side of the desk in Grace’s chair. She opened up a folder and placed her hands on the desk. “So I’m sure both of you have probably guessed by now that we’re here to discuss Grace’s affairs, the lodge, and who it now belongs to. Twila, your grandmother left the business to you. Her entire will explains how everything should be left in your name and how you are to run the business. Jasper, you’re to stay on and become head manager and assist Twila in anything that she needs, and you’ll see a very nice salary as a result.”

Twila’s mouth dropped open. “Me? I don’t know how to run a business! I’m a hairdresser. I have no idea how to work in hospitality, besides snipping people’s hair.”

“How am I supposed to work with her?” he exclaimed. “And I’ve never taken a salary before. Why would she suddenly want to give me money? Besides, I don’t even like working with the guests.” This was a nightmare.

Lauren shrugged, “She explains it all in this letter. You can see for yourself.” She passed it across the table, and Twila grabbed it quickly.

“I can’t believe this! I haven’t even been here in years. I have a life back in Montana, friends!” She paused for a moment, “And I have a cat. And the apartment. How am I supposed to leave all that and just come here? I don’t know anybody here.”

Jasper could hear the paper crinkling in her hands as she scanned the document. “Lauren, I understand that you’re just trying to follow whatever Grace thought she was doing, but clearly she was out of her mind when she wrote this. The two of us cannot run this place. Besides, you heard Twila, she doesn’t want to live here.”

For a moment, Twila stopped reading. She knew it was stupid, but she was slightly crushed that Jasper didn’t want her to stay. He had fallen so quickly into her trap of how wonderful her life was in Montana. She had her cat, sure, and her apartment and a job. But the part about friends? That was mostly a lie. When your parents die, people feel sorry for you. They bring over casseroles for a few weeks, and every time people see you, they avoid eye contact and say how sorry they are for your loss. Friends? They disappeared with her parents. Montana was kind of a sad place now, but she didn’t dare tell anyone that. She had made it this long on her own, and she would continue to do that.

Lauren sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, I’m just the executor. I have to put in place what Grace’s wishes were. What you two decide to do with the business after one year is your call.”

“I’m sorry? What about a year?” she inquired.

“I’m sorry. I guess you didn’t get to that part of the letter yet. You two are to run this business together for a year. After that, if you choose to sell it, the money is yours for the taking. And let me tell you, this lodge is extremely successful, so any big hotel chain would love to take it over. I’ve seen some of the offers that Grace has gotten over the years. If you manage this place for one year and decide to sell, you would be set for life. I suspect that was her goal all along.”

“Then why make us do this for a year? Why don’t we just sell now?”

“Well, there’s a lot of people here who really like their jobs,” Jasper said, with a bite in his voice.

Twila dipped her head slightly in shame. “I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry. I just don’t understand the year minimum. Again, I’m uprooting my life to come here, so why would I do it for just a year?”

Jasper rolled his eyes. “Don’t you see it? She thinks that after a year we won’t want to sell this place.”

Twila sighed. “Is there any way out of this?”

Lauren shook her head. “I’m afraid there’s not. Also, she wants many of her personal artifacts donated, and she would like to be cremated and her ashes spread on top of the mountain. We’ve already begun that process for you, as she had some money set aside to take care of her end-of-life wishes.”

“Damnit Gram. You couldn’t have waited just a little bit longer?” Twila mumbled under her breath while looking up toward the ceiling. She had been speaking to her parents this way for the past three years, and now she just had another person to talk to. She shook her head back and forth. “Well, I guess we don’t have any other choice then, do we, Jasper?”

His head snapped up and their eyes connected once more, sending a stunning shock of electricity through her veins. “I’ll deal with the guests if you can handle the management side,” she continued. “I have no idea how to run a business, and at least you’ve seen my grandmother do it. And I’m horrible with money. So you’re going to have to manage the books. I can handle the other housekeeping and run the staff, and I’m pretty good in the kitchen, so I can help with the catering side too. You can hang out in here and run the business side. I get that that’s not what she completely wanted, but she was out of her damn mind if she thought that I could take care of a business this big. She had to know that we would make some adjustments.”

Jasper simply looked at her. She was bossy, and she hoped he didn’t mind. He’d have to get used to it if she was staying. “I think I can do that. I know where she keeps all the accounts and who her tax person is. I’ve seen her do it all before. I want to keep my cabin though, regardless of what we do in a year.”

She nodded. “I think that’s only fair. Lauren, it looks like I’m going to need an apartment. I can’t live here and work here. I need some time away from this place. I’ll try to find a manager so I can split my time between here and home.”

Lauren nodded, her hair falling into her face. She swept it away gracefully, “I know a couple of real estate agents in the area. We’ll find you something very soon.”

Twila rolled her eyes. “I cannot believe I’m doing this. And of all people, with you.” She locked her eyes on Jasper for just a moment and set the letter back down on the desk before leaving the office.

She looked over her shoulder to see Jasper lick his lips as he watched her flounce away.

“Something happen between the two of you?” She heard Lauren say, turning to him.

“You could say that.”

Twila raised an eyebrow. Maybe he had been waiting for her this whole time.