Winston (BBW Bear Shifter Wedding Romance) (Grizzly Groomsmen Book 3) (98 page)

“Valerie,” she said shaking his hand.
 

“Oh, so you’re the assessor huh?” he asked and then he smiled, “Don’t look so shocked, it’s a small town and news travels like the wind.”

Valerie shivered at the thought of everyone knowing that she was with the big bad corporation.
 

Wyatt sighed, “Why don’t you come in. Jess, my fiancée, would love to meet you. Besides, she makes the best hot chocolate in the state.” He smiled at her and offered a hand.
 

“But my car?” Valerie asked.
 

Wyatt shrugged, “Well, if you’re worried about it you can drive and I’ll ride.”

Following a man on horseback was interesting but it turned out that had she driven just over the rise ahead, she would have come to Wyatt’s gate on the right anyway. He opened it for her and she drove in and down to the ranch house.
 

It was a double story, with a wraparound porch. The place looked lovely, painted a cheery yellow with a deep green roof. Normally she didn’t like colors like that on a house, but it suited this place down to the ground. An old man was sitting on the porch doing something with a piece of wood.
 

“You brought a stray home?” the old man asked Wyatt.

“Now Charlie, be nice. This is Valerie,” Wyatt said as she got out of the car.
 

Charlie peered at her with old but bright eyes and shook his white dandelion hair, “Well, it’s your funeral.” And he stood up, making his way down the steps and across the yard with quite a turn of speed.
 

“Don’t mind him,” Wyatt said, “He doesn’t like strangers is all.”
 

“Which is going to make turning this place into a B&B interesting in the spring.”
 

Valerie turned and saw a short, curvy woman with her dark hair tied up on her head in a bun, standing in the doorway. She had clear blue eyes and the same kind of olive skin that Valerie had herself. She smiled broadly.
 

“You’re Valerie?” she asked, “I’m Jess. It is so good to meet you.” And she pulled Valerie into the house and straight through into the living room.
 

Valerie found herself deposited on a candy-striped sofa, a mug of hot chocolate pressed into her hand and Jess seated in front of her in a red velvet wingback chair. She was also holding a mug. Marshmellows bobbed in the chocolate.
 

“So it’s a pity your bosses didn’t say anything interesting last night. Did you get a mail or something perhaps with more details of what they want to do with Sun Valley?” Jess asked conversationally.
 

Valerie was shocked. How did everyone in this place know everything?
 

Jess smiled, “Wyatt and Kyle have been best friends forever. He was here last night, moaning about you. So I’m thrilled to finally be able to put a face to the name. You’ve made a lasting impression on him.”
 

“Oh. Good,” Valerie said weakly.

“It’s not all bad,” Jess said, “For him to be this angry he must really like you.”
 

“What? Kyle doesn’t like me,” Valerie said shaking her head. “He hates my guts. All because I answered an ad in the paper two years ago. And I only took the job because I love houses and buildings and travelling. Well I did, right up to this trip.”
 

“Please don’t judge us all on Kyle’s example. I know what it’s like to answer to a boss, I used to be in advertising,” Jess said smiling.
 
“Which firm do you work for?”

Jess was so friendly, and genuinely hospitable, so Valerie told her. “It’s a conglomerate Petersen-Snow,” she said.
 

Valerie had heard of people going pale, but she’d never actually seen the color drain out of someone’s face, until now. Jess dropped her mug and pushed her chair back. It clattered on the floor, spilling the last of her hot chocolate on the wood.
 

“Oh, no,” she said backing away.
 

Valerie stood up. “What did I say? Jess, are you okay?”

Wyatt came into the room then and seeing Jess’s face he rushed to her. Jess grabbed his arm and with obvious terror on her face, she turned to him and said, “It’s all my fault.”

Valerie’s head was swimming. Jess had calmed down and then the phone calls started, and people arrived. Soon Ryan and Kyle strode into the living room, followed by Marcus, Paul and the woman with the braids from the meeting in the woods. They all sat around in Jess and Wyatt’s living room, while Jess sipped a whiskey and spoke.
 

It was a story that Valerie could hardly believe, but it was real. The story of a possessive, manipulative, ex-husband who had chased Jess across the country just to make her life hell. How he had attacked her and she had killed him in self-defense. Everyone in the room, bar Valerie had been there that night, and so that part of the story was just for her.
 

“What I didn’t tell you,” Jess said,” Is that Conrad’s father is part owner of the firm Petersen-Snow. It owns the ad agency we worked for. And it’s the company now looking to buy up Sun Valley.”

“Coincidence?” Ryan asked.
 

Wyatt shook his head. “Not likely.”
 

“No, Sun Valley’s been targeted and it’s all because of me. Old man Petersen wants my blood, he wants revenge for Conrad,” Jess said. “I don’t think there’s a way to stop them from taking your home.”
 

She looked so sad, so defeated. The happiness that had been bubbling out of her when Valerie had met her only a few short hours earlier, had all drained away.
 

“It’s all my fault,” Jess said and dissolved into tears on Wyatt’s shoulder.
 

Valerie looked away, feeling hollow and like an intruder in the room. Her eyes fell on Kyle and he looked at her and smiled. It was a small smile, just a little lift of the corners of his mouth, but it was enough. Valerie sighed and felt her own tears recede.
 

“Those blasted wolves will stop at nothing,” the braided woman said. Valerie thought she’d heard someone call her Eugenie.

“They need taking down a few pegs,” Paul said hotly. “A taste of claw and teeth.”
 

“That’s what got us into this mess,” Marcus said shaking his head. “We need a smart plan.” He looked at the assembled faces. “Anyone have one?”
 

“But we can’t let those stupid werewolf boys walk all over us, we should have a good honest battle, like in the old days,” Paul said.
 

“You are a daft old man!” Eugenie said angrily. “You would have us all dead at the bottom of a ditch!”
 

“They’re no match for bears, and you know it!” Paul bellowed.
 

“Excuse me,” Valerie said putting her hand up like she was in school. “Werewolves? Bears?”

“Yeah, what did you think we were talking about all this time?” Paul blustered at her.
 

“Well, I don’t know, maybe you were being figurative?” Valerie asked with a huge amount of hope in her heart. And slowly a memory trickled back of her Granny Fifi saying, “Don’t play there child, it’s wolf territory.”
 

She looked at the faces and now she could see it. The eyes, the broad shoulders, the way their hair was so thick and glossy… “Just like a fur coat,” she said in the smallest voice. “Oh. God!”
 

“Well maybe there’s hope for this one yet,” Paul said and actually smiled at her.
 

Valerie felt sick. The world was upside down and she was dangling from a very thin thread. Suddenly someone had her by the arm and she looked up into Kyle’s gorgeous face.
 

“You’re a bear,” she said and her knees gave way.
 

Valerie woke to the sound of snoring. She was in her tiny room at Grandma’s Inn and seated in the armchair in the corner near the bathroom, was Kyle. His head had slipped back, his mouth hung open and he breathed in and out in a ragged, sawing grate. Valerie sighed.
 

He was a bear. But she realized that he was also a man. A passionate man, one who loved his little slice of the world and wanted to protect it. She also realized, watching him sleep, that she very much wanted to help him. So she got up, noticed she was still fully dressed. Even her shoes were still on her feet. Well no one could accuse Kyle of inappropriate behavior.
 

Funny now that she was thinking about it, she couldn’t remember getting home. She couldn’t remember much passed the four whiskeys she’d downed out of Jess’s glass. Oh God, what must they think of her?
 

Changed into her pajamas, Valerie woke Kyle. His head shot back up with a “snark” sound and he looked at her with bloodshot eyes.
 

“Come on, I won’t bite,” she said and opened the covers. “It’s a double, there’s enough room for both of us.”
 

Kyle regarded her. “You sure?”

She nodded.
 

Kyle took his shoes and jeans off. He wore boxers. Somehow that is exactly what Valerie had expected. Then he climbed into her bed and snuggled down, pulling the duvet up under his chin.
 

“Now no funny business,” he said to her.

Valerie laughed and said, “I promise.”

“You’re okay with having a bear in your bed?” he asked.
 

“Hell no!” Valerie said, “But I’m fine with having you. Actually I’m more than fine with you being in my bed.”

Kyle smiled, yawned and rolled over. “G’night,” he said and soon was snoring again.
 

“Good night,” Valerie said and this time when she slept her dreams were warm and happy.
 

The next few days passed in a blur and Valerie and Kyle spent them together. She had to turn in reports all nice and regular just like normal. So she had to actually go and do her job. In the time when she wasn’t doing her job, which Kyle found hellishly boring, she was out with him and his people trying to find a way to save Sun Valley.
 

Paul proved to be annoying, and Jess was all in pieces, saying she would fly to New York and just let Mr. Petersen have her. This sent Wyatt on a tirade and it took her, little Valerie, to point out that it probably wouldn’t make any difference anyway.

“I know him,” she said at one of their meetings. “He won’t care. You killed his son, there’s nothing on earth you could do to stop him nuking this whole place.”
 

They went pale.
 

“Oh, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have one,” Valerie said and then stayed silent for the rest of the meeting.
 

At night she and Kyle would have dinner and talk. They purposefully stayed away from the trials of the day, and spoke about their childhoods, their dreams.
 

“I wanted to be a jazz pianist growing up,” Valerie confessed over coffee one night. “Yeah, my dad paid for lessons and everything. Eventually the teacher asked him to please stop paying. He said I was terrible and no amount of coaching would change that. Sad but true.”
 

“Man, that is harsh!” Kyle said.
 

“I know, right?” Valerie said and smiled.
 

They were at the Lemon Drop Café, sitting in the back. A storm was raging outside and they were huddled together at a table. “I always wanted to be a police man, you know, get the car and the siren. But then I found out that most of the job was paperwork so I decided on being a cowboy. Anyway, I guess cattle are easier to handle than gun toting bank robbers and drug crazed lunatics, once you know how.”

“So you say,” Valerie said. “Listen, I’m sorry about all this. I’m sorry we couldn’t meet under better circumstances.”
 

Kyle shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t determine who we are and what we’ll be to each other in the future, now does it?”
 

“I guess not,” she said, and sipped her coffee. It was strong and black and totally unsweetened.
 

Valerie liked things to be simple in her life, and since taking this job on, her life was anything but simple. And here she was in a little café with a man, who under normal circumstances would make her mouth water and she was just talking. He’d slept in her bed and nothing had happened, not one single solitary thing.
 

Well that’s probably because you’re not his type, Valerie thought. Face it Val, a man built like this doesn’t want a girl who spends all her time eating airplane food, and rushing around the country. A man like this wants the kind of wife who can lift a cow, and give birth to a million sons to help run the ranch.

 
And I just put him squarely in the Wild West. Wow!

She chuckled.
 

“What’s so funny?” Kyle asked.
 

“I was just picturing what you must probably look for in a woman,” Valerie said and then realized she’d said it. “What I mean is, I was just thinking stupid thoughts,” she finished lamely.