Bear's Christmas Bride: BBW Werebear Holiday Romance (Shifter Grove Brides Book 8) Read online

  “How’d you two meet? You don’t have to answer, just…”

  He didn’t finish that thought. He didn’t really have a follow-up to it, because he did want to know how they met. Maybe that would explain why his bear was so adamant about sticking around this woman, and maybe it would help him make sense why his heart beat so hard around her.

  Maybe if he was an asshole…

  “We didn’t,” Christine said, rousing Finn from his thoughts.

  “You didn’t what?”

  “Meet,” she continued, sipping on her drink again and averting her gaze. “Not before we were engaged, anyway. It’s an arranged marriage. His parents know my parents and… well, they figured that it would work. You know how tigers are. Arranged marriages are still a big thing with them.”

  She shrugged her shoulders again like it didn’t mean much at all, but the expression she was wearing was telling Finn an entirely different story.

  And what’s more, it made his bear all the more certain that his instincts had been right. This was not just any woman.

  This might just be the woman.

  6

  Christine

  “So let me get this straight. Your parents decided that the two of you should get married, and that’s why you’re getting married?” Finn echoed, making it sound like the most preposterous thing in the world.

  He sort of sounded like Christine’s friends had, the first time she’d told them. She could feel her cheeks getting red again, and she wasn’t sure if it was annoyance or shame. Maybe a little bit of both?

  I thought I’d dealt with that, she told herself, but that didn’t make her blush any less hard.

  “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this,” she said curtly, finishing off her glass and standing up.

  “Christine,” Finn murmured, and the deepness of his voice when he said that sent a shudder down her spine. “I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did. I’m sorry. Please, take a seat.”

  She met his gaze and he looked so earnest. He looked like it might just about break him in half if she let him think that what he’d said had actually hurt her, when all it had done was remind her of her own poor choices.

  “Okay,” she finally said, plopping down on the seat opposite of Finn again. “It’s not so unheard of, you know. I bet your parents knew plenty of people who got married with someone their parents chose for them.”

  “My parents actually got married that way themselves,” Finn chuckled. “My mom was a mail-order bride, sort of. Back then, there weren’t a lot of options for bears to meet other bears outside their own clans other than to write to one another… Weird times.”

  “We have apps for that now,” Christine said, relaxing a tiny bit.

  She even smiled.

  Something about Finn kept making her say and do things she otherwise wouldn’t. Like blab about her fiancé, or give up on her dinner plans for the opportunity of spending some time alone with him, without a dozen pairs of eyes following their every move. You know, little things!

  “I’m not here to judge. If you’re happy, that’s all that matters, right?”

  “Right,” Christine agreed, trying her damndest to ignore the very painful jab in her chest.

  Catching Finn looking at her with one of his worried frowns instead of the scowl he used on her when she arrived, she felt guilt swirling in her stomach. Somehow, it was very hard to lie to this man.

  Especially about something that she hadn’t even realized that she was lying about. As far as she’d been concerned, she’d been perfectly happy with her decision to do as she was told and to get hitched to a man as rich as he was impossible.

  Only now that she had been removed from him for three days did she realize that she didn’t even miss him at all.

  It might have been the whiskey, which she poured herself another shot of, or it might have been something else, but when she’d decided that she wouldn’t say anything more about it, she found herself unable to shut up.

  “You know, we’ve barely even kissed. And it has nothing to do with wanting to be chaste and pure and whatever. It’s just that he barely makes the time to meet me anywhere but in public and he’s strictly against public shows of affection. I just get to be his arm candy at luncheons and charity dinners and smile and let him tell people about how nice it is that ‘women can work’ these days.”

  Her face twisted as she said that and she felt a bitter taste in her mouth that whiskey couldn’t wash down. Finn was looking at her again like the notion of physically removing her from her bullshit was an option worth considering.

  “So why are you doing it?” he asked.

  Christine slicked her tongue over her teeth. It was an easy question, without any easy answers.

  “Because… Well, you know how sometimes you make a choice because you have to, and then you later can’t change your mind about it?”

  Finn shook his head, because of course he would.

  “No. Circumstances change and you have to be willing to change with them.”

  “Well, good for you, but we’re not all stocked with that richness of character that allows us to change on a dime, okay?” Christine said, sounding a little more forceful than she would have liked. “I thought I met the right man. It felt right. I now know I was a teenager and I was confusing hormones for true love, but I thought I was going to be with the man that I was meant to be with. My fated.”

  She paused, falling quiet. Thinking back to that time never made her feel very secure or seated in who she was. Somehow, it always came with a kind of odd disconnect, like someone had flicked a switch and she was relegated to watching herself do things in her past without having any personal involvement in them.

  “But he wasn’t it. He left me, he found his mate, and I… went down a dark hole.”

  Her hands clutched the whiskey glass so tightly she thought it might shatter. Either Finn was thinking the same or he caught onto the tightness in her speech and the shortness in her breath, because he suddenly peeled her hands off the glass and took them in his big, warm palms instead.

  A fuzzy, happy kind of warmth tumbled through her and she felt like her lungs were finally opening up. They’d been on the verge of that since she’d gotten to Shifter Grove, or so she thought. Now she wondered if it wasn’t because she’d met Finn that she’d felt like she could finally breathe.

  He didn’t say anything, nor did he coerce her into saying more, but Christine found herself wanting to speak. Maybe she hadn’t even noticed how hard she’d been working just to distract herself from what was going on in her head. Now, ignited by a surprisingly soft touch and a fire in her belly that could have been the whiskey, but was probably something else, she couldn’t seem to stop talking.

  “I do this thing where I throw myself into things. You know, try to fill my time completely so I don’t have any time left to notice that something’s wrong? I do that a lot. They say I’m a project person, but I think I’m a manic distraction pixie instead.”

  She rolled her eyes gently at that, but the look on Finn’s expression told her that he didn’t exactly appreciate the fact that she was talking down at herself. That, too, only added to his quiet, gruff and sometimes sarcastic appeal in Christine’s mind.

  “So was Cisco a project?” Finn asked, doggedly coming back to the topic of her would-be husband.

  “Ah, Cisco… you see, he’s an outside project. What I said about my parents arranging the marriage is entirely true, but I didn’t fight it at all. When my mom came to me with the idea – that a big cat, in more ways than one, needed a mate and someone who was presentable, I basically jumped at the chance.

  “I didn’t know him, barely by reputation, and I thought it would be a good match. He’s too busy to deal with anything but himself, and I like to keep too busy for anything involving myself, so the two together might be a match made in heaven.”

  What she wasn’t saying was that after her foiled first love, romance sort of had
lost its appeal. And, what more, how could she pretend to believe in fate and fated mates, when the one time she’d thought that she’d stumbled upon it, hadn’t been it at all? An arranged marriage made a hell of a lot of sense in a situation like that.

  “Are you saying it isn’t?” Finn asked, cocking a brow at her.

  I probably am, she admitted, but only to herself.

  It made the warmth in her belly subside a little, the icy touch of reality creeping in where it wasn’t wanted. Before it could take hold of her, she carefully removed her hands from Finn’s and poured them both some more whiskey.

  What the hell. You only live once.

  And if she had any say in it, she wouldn’t be spending a whole lot of time in a trailer on half-finished worksites, so this opportunity to get semi-drunk with a werebear she barely knew anything about in a setting like this probably wouldn’t come around ever again.

  “I’m saying that I’m a woman set to be married in a little more than a week, and I’m here toiling on a house that I’ll probably rarely get to stay in because my fiancé asked me to. What that implies I won’t guess at, because I’ve had a little too much whiskey and my judgment may be impaired.”

  With that, she picked up her glass and clinked it against Finn’s, willing him to join her in her drinking.

  She had no intention of getting too drunk – there was work to be done tomorrow, after all. But what she did plan to do was distract herself yet again, and that seemed to be an easy feat the longer she stared into Finn’s dark eyes.

  Finally, after two more drinks and with the bottle getting dangerously empty, they seemed to decide as if of the same mind that they were getting far too tipsy, and the conversation kept rounding back to topics neither wanted to discuss anymore. Like that of Christine’s mystery man, or whether or not she was truly happy.

  They both got up from the table and Christine swayed a little, gripping the edge of the table for support before a strong arm wrapped itself around her waist and kept her solidly upright. It was a familiar touch, not least of because she’d felt those same big, strong palms on her when he’d unceremoniously removed her from the building site a couple of days ago.

  It made her blush the same way as it had then, but this time there was none of the immediate anger and humiliation that had followed the last time. She fought her urge to lean into the touch.

  “You were teetering a little there,” Finn mumbled apologetically, letting go of her.

  “Thank you,” she said, hoisting on her coat again and not bothering to do it up in the front.

  She walked to the door, managing to stay completely perpendicular to the ground this time by her own strength. The door, however, wouldn’t budge. She pushed on it once, twice, and before she could launch into curses, she felt Finn leaning over her and making the door knob do a little click and then fall outward.

  “It wasn’t opening,” she sighed.

  “It does that,” he said with a shrug.

  But he was still right there, leaning over her, so close. Her eyes met his and her breath seemed to completely catch in her throat, with her animal telling her to go for what so obviously at that moment seemed to be hers for the taking. Before she could really launch into the argument she knew she was going to have with herself later, she leaned into Finn.

  And he didn’t back away.

  Instead, he wrapped his arms around her in the most protective way Christine could have ever imagined, and kissed her deeply on the lips. He hugged her tightly and almost lifted her from the ground as her hands went to his neck and she kissed him back eagerly.

  He tasted of whiskey and something that she would happily dub pure masculinity. It was intoxicating and as she kissed him and breathed him in, she could tell that her eyes were turning a stark gold.

  For a moment, there were no consequences, no worries, no nothing. Just him, and her, and that kiss that felt like it would go on forever. He was gentle but commanding and his mouth seemed to be made to kiss hers. It was the kind of kiss chemistry you don’t even know exists… until you do.

  It was Finn who pulled away first and they stared at one another with wide eyes full of surprise, both seeming to be as taken aback as the other by what had just happened.

  “I-” Christine gasped, taking a quick step back and slamming into one of the cabinets instead in the cramped space of the trailer.

  “Christine,” Finn started, but he didn’t seem to have a follow-up to it.

  Whatever thought he had, it vanished as she looked at him, half expecting him to solve this mess they’d just created for one another by something, anything, that he could say, and half convinced that he couldn’t.

  “I’m sorry. I need to go,” she mumbled, pushing past him in a mad dash, her whole face feeling like it must have been beet red.

  She hopped down into the snow, more of which had fallen during their dinner, and ran through it towards the back porch entrance. She didn’t look back once, but she could distinctly feel Finn’s dark brown eyes following her every step.

  Fumbling once or twice, she kept going, and when she made it to the door, she was well and truly in tears.

  The only problem was, she didn’t even know what she was crying about.

  Though, truth be told, she had a couple of guesses.

  7

  Christine

  “Hey,” she breathed into the telephone the next morning, having waited impatiently for the first hour at which she could call her fiancé without getting his voice mail, or simply told to fuck off because it was the middle of the night.

  She wasn’t sure if she’d slept at all that night. The likely answer was that she hadn’t.

  In any case, sitting on one of the stepladders in the middle of the room that tended to be the only one with any reception, she knocked her heel against one of the rungs in a shallow, echoing pattern, hinting at her nervousness.

  “Hey,” Cisco said. “What is it? I’m in a hurry, Christine.”

  “Could you come here?” she asked nervously, recognizing the slight tremor of pleading in her voice.

  All night, she’d been trying to figure out what to do. Not only had she kissed another man – something which she’d have to tell Cisco about as soon as she could – but she’d done something potentially even worse.

  She’d slowed down to think, for once. Not only about the things that needed to be done immediately, but what they would mean in the future. What it would actually look like to be Mrs. Cisco Mayer, other than the blatantly obvious, like having his heir and being his arm candy.

  And, on top of that, she had spent a considerable portion of the night absolutely horrified at the possibility that she might be starting to question her earlier convictions. Like that of the fact that she’d spent the last several years absolutely convinced that love was for suckers, and the only way to make something of it was to play it like love tended to play those in love.

  Being with Finn, though, or even thinking about Finn… well, suffice to say, it made her wonder about the possibility of there being another way.

  “Why? What is it? Something with the house?”

  “Um… no. I just need you here. Come for a day, please? You know I can’t make it out for my bachelorette party so maybe we could have a quiet night in Shifter Grove instead? I know you’re busy and you need to be back in Los Angeles as soon as possible, but… think about it? Please? I need to talk to you.”

  She tried to make the last part sound less dreadful than it really was. In truth, she couldn’t really put it any other way.

  There wasn’t a part of her that didn’t know that if she told Cisco what had happened over the phone, he’d scoff and likely shrug and not care about it at all. He was the kind of guy to do that. He’d likely only remind her that she could never do it again after they got hitched.

  But that was not what Christine needed. What she needed was to be together with him, if even for a little while, and to see whether there was actually something there to begin with
. Or if maybe their whole future wedding and whirlwind romance, which had truthfully been more whirlwind than romance, hadn’t been there at all.

  “I’ll think about it. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay. Thanks. Please come,” Christine said, but it went on dead ears.

  He’d already ended the call, leaving Christine sitting on top of her makeshift perch, while the men tasked with building her perfect house milled around and worked.

  And all she could really think about was the fact that she had no idea at all as to what she was supposed to be thinking about, but that Finn Themps was far too distracting of an option.

  A distraction which she had to, if she at all could, avoid at all cost.

  The whole notion of ‘ignore him and you’ll forget about him’ was flawed from the start. For one thing, she needed to work closely with him, unless she wanted to admit defeat and go home. Knowing that she’d be sent right back by Cisco if she came with news that the house was likely to be unfinished by Christmas, that wasn’t really an option.

  On top of that, he also seemed to be everywhere even when she wasn’t around him. The air suddenly seemed rich with his scent, and her animal kept sniffing it out at every turn, breathing in greedily when she caught a whiff of him.

  And everywhere in the worksite, she could see signs of his doing. Not only in the carvings, but how he managed his men – fairly, but strictly, as a friend and as a boss at the same time. He made it look so easy, too.

  Cisco was the kind of man who ruled over those who worked for him with the expressed understanding that they were there to serve him. Finn worked with his men like an equal among equals, even though he was just a little bit better. It was that which made them follow him, though it was a pack of shifters who were more than likely mostly Alphas themselves.

  “Are you gonna be sitting up there like an owl for the rest of the day or are we gonna get to work?” a voice asked from behind her, making a shiver run up her spine.