Boarlander Beast Boar (Boarlander Bears Book 4) (2 page)

That couldn’t be him. Beck squinted at the grainy photograph in the newspaper clipping. Emerson Kane had written about the shifters’ battle with IESA. It included a black and white photograph of the Boarlanders, but Mason Croy’s face was hard to make out. In the newspaper article, he was next to Kirk Slater, the gorilla shifter’s arm thrown over Mason’s shoulder. They were sitting on a porch step in front of a mobile home, so he definitely didn’t resemble the towering behemoth jogging across the road toward a jacked-up black-on-black Ford Raptor.

The man was talking into a cell phone, his dark eyebrows lowered into a frown as he spoke too low for her to hear. He skidded to a stop and said a few more words, then pulled his cell phone away from his ear and stared at the screen. “Mother fucker.” That part she did hear, as the words snapped to her on the wind.

That was him. Probably.

Except a helluva lot sexier than she’d imagined a pig shifter to be. Thick-soled work boots, long powerful legs, and a small, tapered waist drew her gaze up his muscular physique. His shoulders were massive, and his chest pressed deliciously against a thin blue V-neck T-shirt. He held a pair of sunglasses in one massive hand, and the phone looked like a baby toy in his other. That man was built like the Keller brothers of the Breck Crew, who were the only predator shifters she’d ever met.

Beck shouldered her purse and her two floral totes and pulled out the handles of her giant suitcases. Ready to meet the giant pig-man, she tugged the luggage and stabbed the concrete with her high heels in what she liked to think of as her power walk. “Mason?” she called.

His eyes snapped to hers, and she stumbled. The bright blue stunned her, but there was no way he was born with eyes that color. They were a wild, glowing blue that looked like flames. Her ankle went to ninety degrees in a deep sidewalk puddle, and she went down hard with a squawk. Ungracefully, she twisted in midair right before she landed with a splash hard enough to put her tailbone through her esophagus.

She squeezed her eyes closed and wished for thirty seconds in a time machine. When she eked her eyes open, the bearded behemoth was standing over her, zero humor in his eyes.

“Rebecca Anderson?”

“Mmm hmm,” she said from under her pile of luggage. Her cheeks now felt like the surface of the sun. “People call me Beck.”

Mason grunted as he ran his gaze down the length of her body. “What are you wearing?”

Beck pursed her lips and mentally flipped off the rain clouds that had dumped buckets of water on the town. “White dress slacks. They’re my power pants.”

Mason dropped his chin to his chest and arched his dark eyebrows up. “Your power pants are wet and see-through.”

Shit! Squirming under the pile of her luggage only got her more tangled.

“Stop, stop, woman, you’re making it worse,” Mason muttered as he pulled one of the tote straps over her head and yanked her up into a sitting positon.

She was still struggling hard, though, because she needed to cover up her cookie box. She hadn’t worn her cutest panties today. Nudes went under white, so she’d adorned her pelvis with beige granny panties.

Mason snorted and then cracked a slight smile. That’s when she got a really good look at his face. His beard had been taking up a lot of real estate, but from this close, she could make out the start of one impressive black eye and several gashes that were leaking slow streams of blood down his face. She flailed her arms, swatting at his paws. When he held his hands up in surrender, she asked, “What in the curse word happened to you?”

Mason blinked slowly and lifted those animated eyebrows of his. “Curse word?”

“Did you get in a fight?”

The blue in his eyes cooled, and he stood smoothly, taking her totes with him. Without a word, he picked up her suitcases like they weighed nothing more than dandelion fluff and strode toward his truck.

“Please tell me you weren’t in some bar brawl with the protestors,” she called, scrambling after him. One look down at her clothes, and she groaned. The puddle was a muddy one, and now she was smeared in dark water. She limped after Mason on a sore leg, gave up on looking professional, and pulled her sky-high heel off that foot so she wouldn’t roll her ankle again. She whimpered as shooting pain zinged up into her knee with each step.

Mason threw her belongings—literally
threw
them—into the back of his truck. Her make-up was probably all broken now. She gasped out an offended sound. “Hey! Careful with the merchandise!”

Mason cast her a quick glance, then drew up short and frowned at her limp. Beck lifted her chin primly and tried to look unaffected when she took the next step.

“Humans,” Mason muttered as he made his way to her in three giant-man strides.

“Humans what?” she barked out. He was being ridiculous and prejudiced, and even if he was the most striking, handsome, muscular, sexy…
Stop it.
Even so, he was being a pitstain.

Mason bent at the knees and picked her up, hands supporting her shoulders and behind her knees. She yelped and drew her purse over her nethers because, yep, she could see her beige grannies practically laughing at her. “Put me down!”

“I’m not watching you limp and whimper all the way to the passenger’s side, lady.” He lowered his voice and muttered darkly, “I have a dragon to skin.”

Mason yanked open the door to his truck and dumped her unceremoniously inside.

“Ow!” She swatted his hand as it brushed her boob. “You are the worst driving service on the planet.”

“Oh, so you’ve used every driving service on the planet?” He reached across her lap with the seatbelt, but she shoved him back when his beard brushed her cleavage.

“And furthermore,” she said, good and furious now, “a pig shifter would have zero chance skinning a dragon.”

“Boar shifter,” he barked out, then slammed the door.

Shocked by his brash behavior, she stared at him as he marched around the front of the truck and pulled himself into the driver’s seat.

“
And furthermore
,” he mimicked her, “today is my day off of driving, I have a splitting headache thanks to some asshole doing his damndest to put a brick through my skull, my best friend thinks he’s a fuckin’ matchmaker, but he missed the mark, and wide, proof the one person in the world I thought actually knew me doesn’t actually know a thing about me! You aren’t my type, lady.”

She felt slapped. “W-what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he muttered as he turned on the engine.

“You cuss a lot. And you’re wrong about your friend setting you up. I’m here on a job, you jerk, and besides”—she clenched her left fist and lifted her ring finger, the one with her wedding ring—“you aren’t my type either.” Lie, and even she could hear it on her voice. Big, burly muscle man with sexy eyes and triceps flexing as he gripped the steering wheel. He was exactly her type, though she hadn’t known until right now. So what if she was divorced and single? He needed to stop thinking the world revolved around him.

He glanced at her ring once, twice, then slammed on his brakes at a red light and clenched his jaw so hard a muscle jumped there. “Fantastic. Thanks, Damon.”

Pissed off, she swung her purse around to throw it in the back seat, hitting him in the side of the face on purpose. Beck scrambled over the console clumsily as Mason complained, “Don’t hit the driver.”

“Driver, yeah. You know, you aren’t the only one who’s had a shit day,” she muttered as she buckled her seatbelt in the back seat.

“That water puddle doesn’t trump a brick smashed against my head.”

“And whose fault was that? You can’t be fighting, Mason! My job is to take care of the Boarlanders’ public relations. To take care public relations for all the shifters in Damon’s mountains, and minute one that I meet you, you’re bleeding from a fight! Please tell me you weren’t videotaped.”

“I broke the phone.”

Her mouth fell open, and she gasped out. “You can’t break people’s personal property!”

He made a clicking sound behind his teeth and shook his head. “You wouldn’t understand,
human
. You’re safe. Your people are safe. The government doesn’t want to strip your rights, cage you, or sterilize your entire species.”

Shaking her head, she huffed a humorless laugh and stared out the window at the town blurring by. He was so wrong. She had just as much worry about the vote as him, or she wouldn’t have taken this job. It wasn’t just his world that was burning. Hers was, too.

Beck cast a quick glance to the back of his neck. There was a massive amount of bruising and a deep gash. Shifters healed fast, so he’d taken a beating to have marks like that. “I think you should eat,” she murmured.

Mason ignored her, the stubborn man.

“Fine, I’m hungry, and Damon assured me that you would take care of me.”

“Chhh,” he huffed out. “I can’t take care of anyone.” He’d said that last part low, as if he didn’t care if she heard it. She knew that feeling.

“Drive-thru is fine.”

The steering wheel creaked under his grip. He inhaled deeply, then asked, “What kind of food do you like?”

“Anything, you pick.” She pulled her phone from her purse as he pulled a U-turn. He could think what he wanted about her being some kind of blind date for him, but she was actually in Saratoga to work. To help. To relieve Cora Keller of some of the pressure on her and the Breck Crew and to make a decent wage because she had bills to pay.

Beck called the printer back because she’d missed a call from them. She haggled prices to print calendars and settled on one that fit the budget Cora had given her. And after she hung up with them, she made yet another call to the head of Saratoga Parks and Rec because they’d been putting off her plans to include special events for shifters at the Lumberjack Wars, and she was not taking no for an answer.

More than once, she caught Mason glancing at her in the rearview mirror, but when he adjusted his dick, she figured it was just because the low V of her button-down shirt had slipped to the side and was soggily stuck, exposing most of her lacey bra and left teat. Great. With a dirty look for him, she covered herself back up and agreed to have a conference call with a couple of the higher ups at Parks and Rec to discuss the Lumberjack Wars. After Beck hung up, she opened her daily planner and added the one o’clock call for tomorrow’s agenda. She was scribbling away at questions she wanted to ask in the notes section when Mason pulled into the drive-thru lane of a restaurant called Butters Beer Burgers and Shakes.

Mason leaned out the window at the intercom and said, “I’ll have three number ones, no onions, a large vanilla shake, and one of those apple fried pies. No…two of those.” Mason twisted around. “What do you want?”

“Oh, my gosh,” Beck said, cracking a grin. “That was all for you? What a pig.”

Mason narrowed his eyes to angry little slits. “Boar.”

“I’ll have a cobb salad with light Italian dressing.”

“God, are you one of those dainty fancy-pants women always counting your calories? Sipping on water, and then you’re like, ‘I’m stuffed.’” He shook his head in mock disappointment. “So boring.”

Actually, she’d eaten an airport burrito a couple of hours ago and this food run was more for him than her, but he could think what he liked. “I’m boring? You ordered a vanilla shake.
Vanilla
.” She shot him a challenging look but took the bait. “And I’ll have a small strawberry shake.”

Mason smirked and put in her order, then changed his to a strawberry shake, too. Competitive much? She hid a private smile as she logged onto Cora’s shifter site from her phone. Beck was helping run it now that she was officially on the payroll.

Yelling carried on the wind. A chant. “Cage the shifters…stop the epidemic…” A group of twenty or so walked a tight circle in front of the hardware store a couple doors down. Beck’s stomach curdled at the picket signs. One was of a bear with Xs for eyes and its leg in a giant trap.
Get them before they get us.

Mason had his head carefully turned away, too, but his shoulders had gone rigid. Before she could change her mind, Beck reached forward and slid her hand over his tense arm. He was even harder than she’d imagined. Mason froze under her touch, didn’t move a muscle for a moment, then leaned forward and out of her reach. “My people don’t like touch,” he said in a voice that was low and growly.

How sad. She couldn’t even imagine a life without physical affection. Sure, her marriage had been like that, but she’d had Ryder, and he loved cuddling. Another deep ache cut through her stomach just thinking about him. Blinking hard, she hit her ex’s speed dial and waited for the tenth time since she’d come to Saratoga to hear it ring and ring until his voicemail came on. “Hey, this is Robbie. If this is a booty call, leave a message. If this is Beck, fuck off.” He’d always been so charming.

She plastered an empty smile to her voice, because screaming never worked with him. “Hey Robbie. I really wish you would change your voicemail. And maybe pick up your phone because I’ve called a bunch of times, and this isn’t how it’s supposed to work. I’m supposed to be able to talk to him still, just like I always let you talk to him when he is with me.” She sighed deeply and prayed for patience. Robbie had been the worst decision she’d ever made. “Anyway, please call me back. I’m starting to worry. Okay, bye.” She hung up the phone and relaxed into the back seat. Another flash of blue, and she caught Mason’s eyes in the rearview again.