Two Bears are Better Than One (Alpha Werebear Romance) (Broken Pine Bears Book 1) (4 page)

Jill kinda wanted to punch one of his pooched out, pouty lips to see if it was full of that stuff that fills beanbag chairs.

“I bet he fucks it up,” Tripp said, cocking his obnoxious grin. “Sorry about swearing.”

Jill pursed her lips, in a sarcastic smirk, accidentally. “I can handle bad words,” she said. She was getting nasty, which meant she was getting bored, which meant she needed to go, but she promised herself she’d at least give this guy a shot.

After all, the alternative was, what? Keep diddling herself at work? She wasn’t fooling anyone. Jill was a girl needing a release. A big one.

How long does it take until I’ve done my due diligence?

The drinks arrived, not a second too soon. Jill’s was in a highball, and Tripp’s was... a thing to be admired, that’s for sure.

A massive umbrella was jabbed into the side of a hollowed out pineapple, filled with so much rum and juice and coconut shavings that it almost sloshed out when he set it down. “Ready to order?” he asked with a grin in Jill’s direction. “Or would you like a minute?”

“I’ll take the rare porterhouse, baked potato, uh, broccoli and mac and cheese,” Jill said, smiling.

“Great. You know that’ll be extra for the three sides?”

“Yep!” Jill said. “He’s rich. Like, super rich.” She batted her eyelashes almost comically. “He told me so, over and over again. I think he can swing the extra eight bucks. Right Tripp?”

The look on Tripp’s face was a vast ocean of bullshit. Jill figured it was laid on so thick that floating an ocean liner on top wouldn’t be that tough. He smiled the kind of smile that people give off when they think they’re better than everyone, but don’t want to admit it.

“Oh yeah,” Tripp said, “I can definitely cover some sides.”

He looked back at Jill and winked.

He winked? Who the fuck winks? Am I on a date with someone’s grandpa who is about to pull a quarter out of my ear? What’s next, balloon animals?

“I’ll have the surf and turf,” Tripp said, never taking his eyes off Jill for a second.

“We don’t have any lobster, sir,” the waiter said. “There are cows hanging on the wall. Steakhouse, and all.”

Finally turning to the waiter to regard him like a human, Tripp smirked casually back at Jill. “What sort of steakhouse doesn’t have
lobster
?”

The waiter popped his neck. “One that has two lockers full of aging sides of beef and a third full of aging cut steaks. If you want a surf and turf, go to Red Lobster.”

A smile crossed the man’s face that he wiped off very quickly. Jill did exactly the same, except she hung onto her grin a little longer.

“I can’t... I can’t believe a
waiter
is speaking to me like this! If you don’t watch your mouth, you’re going to get this restaurant a one star Yelp review!”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir,” the waiter said, faked meekness apparent to everyone except Tripp. “I was just joking with you, I thought we’d established a rapport, what with the drink you ordered and all. By the way, have you tried it?”

Tripp eyed the pineapple suspiciously.  “Smells strong.”

“Yes sir, it is quite. Made exactly to order.” He smiled broadly, watching Tripp squirm.

Pulling his pineapple over by the napkin underneath it, Tripp grinned at Jill. She pretended not to notice. As the pompous jackass flashed a smile in her direction, vague remorse crept into Jill’s stomach. She wasn’t sure why, but she began to feel a little bad about the riding she was putting on.

Sure
, she thought,
this guy’s the giant tool who kept posturing more and more until he ended up looking like an idiot, but he’s probably a decent enough guy, I—

The slurping noise, followed by the sharp exhalation, and then the coughing, made her smile, but she banished the laughter as quickly as she could. She reached over and urged him to put down the pineapple, out of fear he might drink himself somehow more smug than he already was, and that, she thought, might actually make him explode.

“I’m okay,” he coughed again. “I mean, boy, yes, that’s fantastic! Best I ever tasted, I...”

Suddenly, Tripp started looking a little bit more like drip. He frowned, he lurched, and then he started swallowing a little too much.

“Are you okay?” she stood up as Tripp made a deep, unfortunate
yurk
sound, and grabbed the tabletop.

In a moment of clarity, Jill realized what was happening and also figured the answer must be on him somewhere. She pushed the woozy, gurgling jackass to the floor and started riffling through his pockets, starting with his jacket, and then the pocket of his vest – the one she’d thought so comically overdressed for a steakhouse in Santa Barbara that she’d laughed in her water – and found nothing.

“I’m not sure you can do that here,” the waiter said. “Maybe—”

“Shut up,” Jill shot back, “looking for an EpiPen. This guy was so pompous he wouldn’t admit he was allergic to something in that drink. Here, got it.” Wrapping her fingers around the metal and plastic cylinder in his man-purse, Jill threw the bag aside and glanced briefly at the instructions.

“Are you a doctor?” the waiter asked.

“Sort of,” Jill said, gritting her teeth. She readied herself to cram the needle in somewhere that wouldn’t hit a vein. Tripp raised a plaintive hand and started mouthing something.

“N...no!” he hissed. “Don’t... need...”

“You sure?” Jill asked. Already, he was starting to deflate, but slowly. He pointed for a glass of water. She shook her head, unsure this was really the best idea, but grabbed the water and cradled Tripp’s head as he drank.

Halting, choking breaths began to calm, and even though it wasn’t perfect, Tripp started breathing again in something approaching normal. She checked his pulse, he croaked, and then smiled.

“Uh... thanks,” he said, blushing. “Maybe I shouldn’t have,” he paused for a halting breath, and fell into a coughing fit.

“What was it?” Jill asked. “The pineapple?”

Tripp’s lips were a red, and still a little swollen. He nodded, but refused to look her in the face for a moment. “The Epi-Pen is for ant bites. Pineapples and chili peppers, they both do the inflated lips thing. It just takes a few minutes to clear up.” He pulled a couple of Benadryl tablets out of his wallet and tossed them back. “But I do sorta need to go to the doctor to make sure.” He was talking, but he still wouldn’t look at her.

“Hey,” she said, as gently as possible, but refusing to touch him because honestly his whole face was puffy, and it seemed uncomfortable. “It’s all right. We all do stupid shit to impress people sometimes. And at least you keep Benadryl in your wallet instead of condoms.”

His eyes were watery when he looked back at her, sad and droopy, and more than a little red. He sniffed, but then he laughed a little at her joke.

In a way she
did
feel for him, but in another, she was just tired of the games. The charade, the constant, pointless, endless make believe of dating. She wanted someone who knew who he was, someone who was comfortable in his own skin, someone... she’d probably never find.

And then her thoughts turned back to the year she was about to spend in the damn woods.
I’m sure after a year in the Appalachian outback, even this guy will seem like the kind of treat I need to wrap my legs around and ride into the sunset.

Somehow, Jill turned the exact same color as Tripp’s shrinking bottom lip. “Are,” he coughed lightly. “Are
you
okay?”

She flushed when she realized how visible her embarrassment was, and shook her head with a smile as she stood up. She had her hand lying on his chest, and was absentmindedly curling her fingertips against him. She shook her head at that too.

“We can do that,” he swallowed, “if you want,” he swallowed again, his throat clicking that time. “But I’m not sure we can do it here.” A mischievous smile crossed his face, and the two of them laughed for a moment. Tripp chuckled at his own joke, and Jill at the idea of actually having sex with this guy in the middle of Ruby Montreal’s steakhouse.

“We should get you to the hospital,” she said, helping him to his feet. “You okay to walk?”

“Oh yeah,” Tripp said, his voice hoarse and raspy, but he was absolutely going to continue talking like there was nothing wrong. “Go get patched,” he paused to cough, “patched up, get a breathing treatment and then get the okay from the doc to—”

“Uh, yeah,” Jill said, smiling. “I think that might have to wait for the second date.”

For once, he let his humanity shine through his bullshit. When Tripp threw his arm around Jill’s shoulder, she knew it was because he needed the help walking, not because he was trying to cop a feel.

Even though he did.

And that was how dates went for Jill Appleton, PhD.

One thing, at least, was that even if they
very
rarely resulted in anything resembling the earth shattering, screaming-and-pounding-the-wall kind of nights she longed for, they were never boring.

At least there’s always something interesting happening
, she thought, as the unlikely pair shuffled up the steps into Santa Barbara General, and her date pretended to need her help signing the insurance papers.

She went along with it, if nothing else, because making this guy feel good, even if he was a jackass of legendary proportions, made Jill feel good.

He wasn’t so bad, he just tried too hard.

Way, way, too hard.

They sat in the alcohol-smelling waiting room, on rubber-seated chairs that squeaked and protested every time anyone shifted their weight back and forth. For what seemed like hours they sat and waited and watched Anderson Cooper, and then a re-run of
The Andy Griffith Show
where Barney screwed up an arrest. Andy set it all up so that his overly intense, slightly doofy deputy ended up hauling the pair of would-be burglars in, and you could just see the scrawny, cartoon-faced Barney Fife puff up with pride.

Andy smiled, and so did Jill.

She grabbed Tripp’s hand, and gave him a squeeze. He looked over, and they exchanged a moment’s glance that said they both knew why she was holding his hand, but reality didn’t matter just then.

Really, when does it?

Tripp let out a long sigh and curled up in the chair, laying his head on Jill’s shoulder.

She sighed, and rolled her eyes a little, but in the end, it was fine. She didn’t mind being the alpha here. In fact, she rarely minded, because she generally ended up in eerily similar situations. But what she really wanted? She really wanted someone who
she
could lay her head on, someone who made her feel as safe and taken care of as she apparently made her allergic date.

Jill wanted herself an alpha, one with big shoulders, strong eyes, and a way of kissing her that took her to another planet.

And... I’m about to spend a year in the woods. Only alphas I’m going to find there are bears. And somehow, I doubt any of them are interested in a date
.

She smiled, blowing a fallen curl of brown hair back out of her eyes.

Tripp, for his part, started snoring.

––––––––

W
hipping above her head, the chopper blades
thump-thump-thumped
deep in Jill’s stomach, giving her a distinct I’m-not-so-sure-about-this feeling.

“All ready, Doc?” Jacques Poirot, the displaced Cajun pilot who was taking her from the small regional airport in West Virginia where she flew in, all the way to her outpost camp, asked. “The bears, them is waitin’.”

She smiled, or tried to, but the vague green tinge on her face gave her actual feelings away. “Yeah,” she gulped. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Hopping down from the small, low-altitude helicopter, Jacques helped her load up an overstuffed backpack. Both of them were glad the camp had already been outfitted over the course of the year it’d been built. She’d been in two times before to oversee construction and setup, so she knew what to expect.

Grabbing Jacques’s hand, she pushed off the ground with a half-hop and climbed in beside him. This was the sort of helicopter big enough for two seats, and a pick-a-nick basket. Jill laughed, Jacques looked at her like she was crazy, but he knew she wasn’t.

Well, mostly not anyway. Luckily, they weren’t going on a picnic, so there was enough room for a week’s worth of stuff to be hauled in on Jill’s back.

She buckled in, the click of the seatbelt a very dramatic punctuation to the rest of what led to this point. She closed her eyes and slid the helmet on, adjusting the visor without looking. She took a deep breath, and Jacques noticed.

“You all right, Miss Jilly?” he’s the only one who ever called her that, and she wasn’t ever sure why. “You lookin’ like you not so sure ‘bout this all.”

She shook her head as they lifted off the ground, and opened her eyes to the tops of the pines, the firs and the oaks. “Can you open a window?” she asked, before remembering the opening mechanism was beside her, and cracking the window.

Even this late in the summer, the morning was slightly crisp up here in the foothills, and the green, piney scent of the forest was cut slightly by the chill bite of a coming storm. As she massaged her temples, she thought back to her absurd fantasy with the two giant men on either side of her.

Prickles rose up on one of her arms as she imagined the sensation of fingertips brushing along, curling around her elbow. She had no idea why, but in that moment, she wasn’t able to think of anything else except their breath, and their hard, leathery, earthen scent. And, of course, the fact that there were two of them.

Oh no,
she thought.
Not here, not in the front of a helicopter with a Cajun a foot and a half from my elbow.

Gazing out the window, Jill tried to concentrate on anything except the desire burning in her chest. She watched the trees whiz by underneath, and let them lull her into a momentary trance.

Jacques stayed quiet until she finally spoke. “Sorry,” she said. “My mind’s a million miles away.”
Ain’t that the damn truth
.