Bear Me Away (Alpha Werebear Paranormal Romance) (A Jamesburg Shifter Romance) (2 page)

“Now you’re thinking,” she said. “A bean buffet, and a washateria. That’s the best idea we’ve had since you came up with that idea for a liquor store attached to a bowling alley with a pawn shop on the other side.”

A look of distant satisfaction came over his face. “That
was
a good idea, huh?”

“Anyway,” Elena said. “I’m guessing that call wasn’t about either beans or liquor store pawn shops?”

He shook his head. “No ma’am it was not.”

“Nanny St. Claire is ma’am,” she shot back.

It was like a rehearsed ballet, their banter. He called her ma’am, she said that. He made some vaguely offensive joke, she fake laughed and then real-laughed. Somehow, this life had grown comfortable. This strange, always-almost-broke, life-at-night had become a comfortable stasis. Her ramen noodle intake was dangerously high, her exercise level dangerously low, but somehow it just kept on working.

“It’s a real case,” Paul said. “Like, an actual one, with something... er... apparently dangerous going on, and—”

“So why didn’t this mystery caller ring the hyenas?”

“Because he wasn’t sure there’s actually anything wrong. Just a suspicion.”

Elena quirked an eyebrow. “We’re pretty expensive for someone to call just to find out if something bad is happening to them.” She stuck her hand up in the air. “Hold on. Wait a minute. How can you not know if something bad is happening or not? I just talked myself in a circle. I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore.”

“I don’t either,” Paul said, snorting a laugh. “Although I think you’re pretty close. The only answer I can give you is ‘I don’t know’, and that goes for all of it.”

He stared at Elena for a second. She could see the gears in his head grinding away. “I have a feeling this might be the one we’ve been waiting for,” he finally said.

“You mean it’s going to be a windfall payoff?”

Paul narrowed his already narrow eyes to slits. “Maybe not so much that one. But El!” he stood up, very quickly – obviously very excited, because the words ‘quick’ and ‘Paul St. Claire’ rarely occur close together. “It’s a real case! We’re not stalking some skirt-chasing, balding letch. We’re going after a
real
crime!”

Elena grabbed her bi-fold wallet, and the pepper spray she kept on her hip. Then, she grabbed the .38 Special she kept in a holster under her boot cuff, for which she may not have been entirely licensed. “Well okay,” she said as soon as she had all her things packed for the road. As an afterthought, she grabbed the camera she’d used to catch so many cheating mates. “But... what
are
we investigating? I know you don’t have any details, but—”

“A vegetarian, farmer bear thinks someone’s torn up his garden,” Paul said, rushing through the words as fast as possible.

“A... wait, I’m sorry. Did you just say a vegetarian bear? A farmer? Why not a cowboy?”

Paul was, intelligently, already out the door. “They’re pretty much the same thing. Overalls, and cowboy hats. And anyway, bears are mostly vegetarians in the wild, you know that.”

“Except for fish, I guess,” she said. “And burgers they eat out of the trash.”

“Come on!” he called back to Elena. “He said to hurry!”

She sighed deeply, rolled her eyes so hard they might’ve audibly clicked in her skull, and then realized she was putting on a show for no one except herself. With another head-tilting sigh, she pushed open the door to the agency, and stepped outside.

Oh well,
she thought.
He might not be a massive bad ass on the back of a bike, but... a bear is a bear, right?

A hot flush crept up Elena’s neck, peeking out of one of the open-collared tacky button-downs that may as well have been her uniform. She looked up at the sky as she slid her round-framed sunglasses into place.

Get a grip, fox-girl
, she thought.
Just a client, just a case. Time to quit with all the pining and the whining. You’ve got a job to do, not a mate to catch.
She took another breath, and stepped toward the beat-up Buick that functioned as the Saint’s company car.

“Come on, El!” Paul shouted, as he laid on the horn.

Sighing done, eye-rolling finished, and blushing somehow controlled, Elena hopped through the open passenger window and into the seat beside her partner. She shot a sidelong glance at Paul, and balled her fist, holding it out.

“Are you seriously wanting to fist bump?” he asked, with a half-smile that accentuated his jowls.

Elena shrugged. “It worked for Crockett and Tubbs, didn’t it?”

*

“H
oly
shit
,” Elena said, jumping deftly to the top of a modest picket fence, and then down to the brutalized garden on the other side.

Paul had gone to find the owner. Elena, for her part, decided to try and calm the completely unreasonable feeling of excitement she had over meeting said owner. She poked a lettuce head with her toe, and crouched down, slipping on a latex glove and picking up a fragment.

The leafy vegetable lay on the ground, mashed so viciously there was somehow a slight green stain underneath. To her left, three cabbages had been ripped up by the roots, bludgeoned until they were dented inward on the top, and then impaled on stolen fence posts. It appeared to be a medieval-style warning to... other cabbages?

Elena shook her head at the carnage. Looking to the right, toward a corner of the field, an entire patch of radishes had been yanked from the ground and ripped to shreds. The red, paper-like peels lay like freshly slaughtered corpses. The whole scene, really, was shocking. Considering the subject matter of the murder, that was more than a little ridiculous, but still, someone went after these hapless veggies with rage that Elena had never seen, even in the case of the angriest spurned mate.

The pea plants, watermelons, squash, and green beans were in a similar state of disarray. Okra had been erupted all over the ground, gooey insides spilled out onto the carefully tilled soil. Someone cared for these plants. Someone nurtured them, raised them from seeds.

Elena carefully tiptoed around a combination raspberry and strawberry area. She stared down at the red, seedy plant gore that soaked the dirt in horror.

Someone had loved these plants, and then someone else had come in and taken it all away.

“Oh my
God
,” Elena whispered as she finished her circuit and came to the pumpkin patch. Cut down in the prime of their lives, the half-grown, green globes were cracked, some were smashed, but they were all a mess of seeds, stems, and whatever that gooey crap inside a pumpkin is called.

Taking a step back, Elena took her sunglasses off and wiped the back of her arm across her forehead. It was a hot day, sticky and humid, and the field of carnage at her feet didn’t help one damn bit. Completely absorbed in cataloging the mess, she took out a notepad, grabbed one of the pens she had stuck in her hair, and began jotting notes.

She chewed her lip, as she always did when she was deep in thought. “Pumpkins there,” she said to herself. “Radishes, corn... oh yuck what a mess. Lettuce, Vlad the Impaler’s cabbage patch,” she trailed off, sketching the perfectly sectioned field. As she did, she backed up slowly, making sure not to miss any details on the map.

Taking another step back, Elena felt her heel sink into something, gasped, and stumbled back.

The mushed-up rutabaga rolled away as she fell backwards. She stuck her hands out behind her, trying to somehow balance out, but sometimes, even a fox takes a fall.

Except the impact wasn’t her tailbone hitting the ground, it was a firm, but gentle pressure under her arms. Elena blinked a couple of times and looked to the sides, then down. A pair of cowboy boots with leather so aged she could see the steel in the toe-tips, protruded from between her splayed out legs.

Effortlessly, the massive arms underneath Elena’s lifted her back to her feet. She turned as he set her on the ground, not noticing the blush that had somehow crept back onto her cheeks.

“Uh, hi,” Elena said, “I’m Elena.” She stuck out a hand and didn’t even notice when the massive, jeans-and-tight-shirt-wearing man in front of her took her hand and shook.

“Ma’am,” he tipped his hat toward her, and smiled in a way that embarrassed her a little even to think about. “I’m West,” he said. Dark blue eyes sparkled underneath his thick, shaggy, black hair. “My name is actually Thomas James Westing, Jr., but... right, West.”

Elena gulped. “Hi, West,” she mouthed, more than said. Her breath hitched in her throat. “I’m, uh, Elena.”

The smile that spread across the huge bear’s face took her a little by surprise. Underneath the tanned, dirty-from-honest-work face, perfectly white teeth sparkled. A dimple on his left cheek peeked out from under the growing stubble. She was still shaking his hand as her eyes unconsciously slid down from his face to his neck to his huge shoulders, and the arms that made his shirt strain.

“You’re still shaking my hand,” he observed, with just a little bit of a drawl. “Not that I mind, but—”

Elena snapped her hand back, grinning again.
You’re West, and I’m in trouble.

Her heart thudded, her breath came hot and quick. “I’m Elena.”

“You already said that,” he said, smiling again. “But in case I missed something, I’m West.”

When he said his name, she swallowed hard.
Yep
, Elena thought,
I am absolutely, definitely, positively in trouble.

“So,” West said, interrupting her being lost in thought. “What do you think of all this?”

“I think you’re huge,” Elena said, before she realized what was coming out of her mouth. She snapped her lips shut, but West just laughed.

“That,” he said, “is true. And you are very small.”

His voice boomed, resonating in Elena’s chest. “Uh-huh,” she said, open mouthed and nodding.

“Oh my God, get a look at this,” Paul said, sucking wind and approaching the unlikely couple. “I thought we were here for a case, not to make googly-eyes at each other.”

West kept smiling at Elena as he turned away, finally ripping his gaze from her eyes at the last possible moment. “I guess we should get down to business, huh?”

Elena nodded, Paul curled the right corner of his mouth up, and rolled his eyes.

“Sure,” West said, “come this way, I think I found something that might help you two.”

He walked past. Elena turned her head, following him. She just stared, watched, and breathed. She and Paul were both shaking their heads, but for vastly different reasons.

“You,” Paul said, when West was out of earshot, “are in trouble.”

For a second, Elena shook her head in protest. Paul shot her a raised eyebrow, and chuckled. “Really? You’re going to act like what I just saw didn’t happen?”

Elena took a deep breath. “I know,” she said. “I am in
big
trouble.”

––––––––

“A
carrot?” she asked. “In a garden? What a horrific mystery!”

At least if her sarcasm was intact, Elena knew she wasn’t a complete mess. Outwardly, things might be a different story, what with all the hair tugging and lip biting. She wasn’t the only one though. West kept stealing glances in her direction, and she kept catching his eyes and then looking away.

Sometimes though, he would be talking, and looking back and forth between the two investigators, but then just settle on Elena, eyes devouring her curves. She might be five-foot-nothing, and might be just over a buck-ten when she was sopping wet, but at her height, there were gonna be curves no matter how many sit-ups Elena did, or miles she ran.

Of course, generally she did neither. Not enough hours in the day

One of the times she caught him shamelessly watching her, she managed to summon the courage to shamelessly stare back. The two of them, locked in a battle of wills, completely forgot that Paul was still standing around. Elena watched his face, studying the tattoos around his eyes. West watched hers, entranced by her fiery green, amber-flecked, eyes.

Paul cleared his throat. “So, the carrot?”

“Oh,” West said, half-heartedly. “Yeah, the carrot.” He trailed off, still watching Elena.

“Well, what about it? What’s the big deal about a carrot in a garden?” she asked. Her voice was slightly breathy. “Why should we care about a carrot?”

Finally, West blinked and looked away. “The carrot matters because it’s the only one.”

“You mean whoever did this stole the rest?”

West shook his huge head. “No. If you look, there are two things
not
growing here. Onions, and—”

“Carrots,” Elena finished for him, then flashed him a quick smile. The game between them, apparently, was on in force. “There’s no carrots, or any,” she scanned the garden again. “Onions. Bears hate onions.”

“How’d you know?” West asked in his slow, deep voice. “I thought that us hating onions was a species secret.”

She quirked a quick grin, avoiding a look at him because she’d rather not get caught staring. If she caught
him
that was one thing. But if he caught her? It didn’t make much sense, but it was a different ballgame entirely.

“I know bears,” she said.

“I’ll bet you do,” Paul said, under his breath. “About as well as I know about chasing poodles.”

Elena shot him a judgmental glance.

West, apparently not having heard that, continued. “Anyway, yeah, that’s about the short of it. I’ve never kept carrots, and here, look at this, it’s almost as strange.” He walked past the two investigators, letting his hand brush gently against Elena’s arm as he did. Whether or not it was a conscious motion, a wash of goosebumps slid up her arm and disappeared underneath her button-down. She felt sweet in places, and salty in others. None of those places had felt very much for a very long time.

“Tomatoes,” he said. “Picked clean. Only thing taken. The rest, just,” his voice faded out, absorbed by the din of chirping birds. There was an emotional thickness to his tone that was a little surprising, but all things considered, made sense.