Bear Essentials (2 page)

Chapter Two

“Caroline, I need information on The Wish Bear.”

“Yes, Mr. Webb.” His smooth and polished secretary went to
work after closing the intercom connection.

Granger looked around his office. His office staff worked
flawlessly together. It was a synchronized team that he was proud of.

Still, he had to wonder if there was any loyalty in them.
Blue eyes and strawberry pigtails surfaced from his memory. Granger indulged
himself in a good long moment of recollection. She had naturally curly hair.
One pigtail on either side of her head, only a little more on top. They stuck
up before falling back toward her head. The hairstyle should have looked ridiculous.
Instead, he found himself grinning at the charming sight her little bouncing
curls made as her full figure bounced along with the ringlets.

Oh, she wasn’t big, just curvy. She had full cheeks and full
breasts, and well, he was kind of happy that she’d turned her back on him. Her
bottom was the kind a guy could enjoy patting.

His phone buzzed and he jumped. His knee collided with the
top of his desk, making him grunt. Grabbing the phone, he rubbed his smarting
thigh and tried to keep his voice even.

Girlfriends weren’t hard to get and they certainly didn’t
capture enough of his attention to cause him to daydream during business hours.
Little Ms. Roslyn wasn’t even the type he dated.

Her face swam before his eyes as he tried to listen to his
caller. Instead, all he wanted to know was how those eyes looked when she was
happy. Considering her temper over his last visit, he probably should drop that
idea, but it stuck to his mind as he tried to assemble another plan of attack.
He wanted the bear and had been way too close to that stack of boxes to let it
go. Caroline slid a report onto his desk before she left and he grinned as he
studied the rise of Roslyn’s bears. It was admirable. In a time when handwork
could be bought for pennies overseas, the woman was carving out a niche market
for herself. Pitting her work against similar products and still turning a
profit.

It was a businessman’s dream.

But there was more to it than that. Her charity work
astounded him. It also unleashed a pang of guilt that he’d thought himself
immune to. His corner office was plush and state of the art, but tonight he
found it lacking a human element. Glancing back down at the report, he soaked
up the details of how Roslyn gave away a third of her profits every year to
sick or injured children. It should have given his business-minded heart
palpitations. Instead, he felt a steady rise of admiration warming that muscle
inside his chest. No perfect, Harvard-schooled female had touched his heart,
but Roslyn, with her quick temper and hand-me-down shirt, had managed to poke
him in a soft spot that he didn’t know he had.

He was just going to have to see her again.

Quit wasn’t in his vocabulary.

* * * * *

“You have to put that thing next to your ear if you want to
use it.”

Roslyn looked up from her cell phone and stuck her tongue
out at her unexpected guest. A little shiver raced through her, making her bite
her lower lip as she took in the sight that had kept her company most of the
night.

Fate was sure being difficult lately.

Granger laughed at her. Roslyn tossed her head and glared at
the sight of Granger Webb in her parking lot. In the bright morning sunlight,
he was even taller than he’d been standing in her factory. Lord, the shoulders
on the man made her mouth water. That wasn’t something that made her happy, but
well, the man was built to fuel female fantasies. There was no way around it.
He defined sexy. Unfortunately, her sex drive wasn’t as dead as she’d thought
it was. That shiver turned into a blush that warmed her face.

Just her luck.

His shiny new sports car was pulled up in her parking lot.
Sunbeams danced across the recent wax job, making it sparkle like a Christmas
toy. Yup, she was wasting her time. This man had enough money to get any girl
he wanted and that didn’t include mouthy redheads.

And she wasn’t changing either. Besides, her thighs weren’t
model perfect and never likely to fit that image either.

“What did the cell phone do to tick you off?” he asked.

“Huh?” He was looking at her mouth. Roslyn watched the way
his eyes lingered over her lips before snapping out of her trance. Just the
idea that he was looking her over sent electricity zinging straight down to her
toes.

“Ah…just work troubles. An employee had to call off work.
His wife is in the labor ward having their baby.”

“So get someone else.” His voice was full of confidence,
just like yesterday’s suit. Perfect and flawless, he came from a world where
there was always a backup plan. That sort of thing was still a distant mirage
to her.

“I wish I could.” She did too, but wishing wouldn’t solve
her dilemma. Neither would Granger Webb, but he wasn’t laughing at her today.
There was a hint of some emotion that looked a lot like caring on his face. He
stepped closer on his long legs as she forgot just what the topic was for a
moment.

“It can’t be that hard to get a replacement, what does the
guy do?”

Roslyn stuffed her phone in her pocket and tried to force
her brain to work. That current of energy zipped through her body again. He
sounded as if he was actually trying to help her. Considering their first
meeting, she was amazed to find any form of compassion in him. It looked really
good on him too. You could always see a person’s true nature in their eyes.
Right then, Granger almost looked like somebody she could like.

Oh brother. Her body latched on to that and hung on tight.
Her blood raced through her veins at light speed. All those muscles on his
shoulders began to whisper just how good they would feel under her fingertips;
taut and firm and oh so male.

Oh right, like that was ever going to happen.

“Earth to Roslyn…”

“Ah, yeah, he was Wish Bear.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. It wasn’t a friendly
sort of smile. Instead his attention settled on her mouth, considering her
lips. Her breath froze in her lungs as his eyes closed to mere slits before
opening to peg hers with twin flames of knowledge.

“I mean, he is the person who wears the life-size costume of
Wish Bear when we do meet and greet at the hospital.” She shook her head as she
tried to stop mooning at her company. The guy must think she was desperate.

Just because she was didn’t mean she needed to share that
with him. Men had turned into a foreign species since the opening of her
factory. The last thing she needed right now was a stinging conscience tomorrow
due to acting on impulse today.

She turned around and showed off her backside once again.
Granger shifted as his fly became too tight. She’d been looking him over. Not
his clothes—him—and the damnedest thing about it was, he liked it. His body was
tightening and itching for the chance to make her admit it in that husky voice
of hers.

She rustled around with a folder of papers laid out on the
bed of a pickup truck. The bed was loaded with the costume of Wish Bear.
Wrapped in clear plastic, it was a giant fur pile that he’d just bet would act
like an oven if you got inside it. A little sigh hit his ears, making him
frown.

“Hey, there’s got to be a guy you can call to do the job.”

She tipped her head around and just about broke his heart.
It wasn’t that she looked at him expecting help. It was the fact that she just
looked sad, yet completely resigned to dealing with her problem. She didn’t
expect anyone to help her and she wasn’t going to ask.

Hell. It had been a long time since a woman didn’t try to
needle him into coming to her rescue.

“There just isn’t time. Right now, I’ve barely got the time
to drive over to Children’s Hospital. The kids are going to be so disappointed,
but I’m too short for the costume.” She seemed to try to shake off her
disappointment and plastered a calm smile across her face. Granger didn’t buy
it. Right in the depths of her eyes there was the evidence that told him she
really cared about those kids waiting for their fuzzy visitor. But she didn’t
even consider asking him for help. That bothered him. Women always asked him to
solve their dilemmas. Hell, a lot of his fellow male colleagues came to him
when business went south. He was well practiced in the art of saving important
people’s butts when push came to shove and major money was on the table. Roslyn
didn’t even bat her eyelashes at him.

Hell, he was losing his touch…

“I’ll do it.”

“Excuse me?” She sounded as if she was choking on the idea.
Granger felt his temper straining to break free. Maybe his total community
service hours were a little low, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find some
time for kids.

“Am I too big for the bear suit?”

Her eyes ran over him before she began twisting one of her
ringlets around her finger. “Actually, it will fit you. But you just aren’t
Wish Bear material.”

“How hard can it be to be a bear?”

Her eyes flashed with wounded pride. She propped her fists
onto her curvy hips.

“Wish Bear is more than just a stuffed animal. He’s a friend
to these kids. Besides, why would you want to spend your Saturday doing this?
The pay isn’t measured in dollars.”

That hurt. Maybe it had been a really long time since he’d
done something that didn’t have a gross profit measurement, but it was hard to
find someone who could point it out so bluntly to him. His income didn’t impress
her, and for the first time in a really long time, that seemed to hit him,
hard.

“Make you a deal.” But Granger wasn’t a man who let
impressions hinder him. He exploited them to get what he wanted. “I’ll be the
bear and you move me to the top of your order list.”

Her face told him she expected that kind of offer from him.
His temper boiled dangerously in response. Maybe he was ruthless in business,
but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a scrap of a heart. Hope danced across her
eyes as she scanned his shoulders again with her tailor’s eye. Being reduced to
a self-centered man in her opinion bothered him too much to ignore. He was
going to get into that bear suit.

“All right, maybe we could work that out.”

“One more thing.” Granger clicked the button to set his car
alarm before grabbing the truck keys off the tailgate. She gasped, but he’d
pushed the lowered gate up into place before she got a single word past her
lips.

He leaned down over her ear before giving her his final
demand.

“I want one Wish Bear by the end of the week and one
adult-style kiss from you when we get back.”

“What?”

He winked at her. “Doesn’t the hero always get a kiss?”

“You aren’t my hero.” No way. It wasn’t going to happen.

He glanced at his Rolex. “Give me a couple of hours.” He
looked up at her with a promise glittering in his eyes. “And I’ll be happy to
change your mind.”

She gasped again. The sound just escaped her lips as he
grinned so presumptuously at her. Her face exploded in flames and he yanked the
driver’s side door to her truck open. It was the devil’s candy, watching him
get into the truck. Her teeth were set against her lower lip as she bit back a
retort. What horrified her was the surge of anticipation sweeping through her
as he sat in the driver’s seat and dared her to toss his conditions aside.

It was unethical of him to demand a kiss.

But so damn sexy.

Ohhhh! She stomped her foot and yelped as her little dress
shoe let the impact with asphalt travel all the way up her leg. It was her
truck, she could tell him to go to hell. Her cell phone was in one hand and the
printed email from the hospital coordinator in the other. All she had to do was
dial the phone number.

The huge “thank you” printed across the bottom of the
message stopped her. It was in bold type and enlarged. Granger was turning the
ignition over and all she had to do was swallow her pride and get into the
truck. Or at least keep her mouth shut for the next couple of hours.

Her stomach flipped in her belly as she considered getting
into that seat. She’d be accepting the terms, and her word was her bond.
Looking up, she caught his hard eyes watching her in the side mirror. It gave
her a reflection of his hard jaw and firm lips.

Her stomach flopped and knotted as she thought about those
lips touching hers. Heat raced along her body as she looked at the email again.

Oh hell! One kiss for a whole lot of happiness? She couldn’t
live with herself if she let those kids down.

The problem was, she wasn’t sure she could live with a
lifetime of knowing what that man tasted like.

Curiosity was a bitch. But she wasn’t, so she gathered up
the file folder.

Mr. Webb would be getting his kiss and since she was a woman
of her word, it was going to be a good one.

Granger listened to his own amusement. He wasn’t laughing at
Roslyn. He was enjoying the pure rush of male enjoyment that her blush set off.
Women blushed so rarely in his world. It was something he wanted to savor. In
fact, he let his eyes slip down her body; there were a whole lot of things
about her that a man should take the time to enjoy.

His hands were tense on the steering wheel. Her tendency to
say exactly what was on her mind was rubbing off on him. He’d never given a
woman any advance notice of his intention to make a move on her. His grin just
grew bigger as he watched her begin walking towards the passenger side door.
Maybe he’d done it for the shock value.

Then again, the idea that she just might think about his
kiss made him almost giddy. He wanted to be in her thoughts; wanted the idea of
his touch to be floating around under those fiery curls needling her until he
got the chance to add reality to imagination. He wanted her to want it.