A Bear of a Reputation (5 page)

Despite my anger at him, I couldn’t help but soften a bit toward him as those memories surfaced. “My dad would get so mad that I’d go home all hyped up on sugar. I think he must have told Bea a million times not to give me any more ice cream, but she never listened.”

“It’s because she thought you were too skinny and that your dad wasn’t feeding you properly after your mother passed away,” Lukas said. His eyes flitted down to my chest. “’Course, looking at you now, it doesn’t appear that she had anything to worry about. You filled out nicely in all the right places.”

My cheeks flushed, and I saw Billy’s eyes narrow. “You just know all the nicest things to say to a lady,” I said sarcastically, taking another sip of wine. “What time did you say that your friends were getting here?”

“Soon enough,” Lukas said.

A chirping noise interrupted me just as I was about to ask him to leave. Again. Billy pulled out his phone and grimaced at the number he saw on the screen. “It’s Magda. I have to take this. I’ll be right back.” He stood up and hurried toward the lobby, where I knew the noise level was several decibels lower than the main dining room.

“Nice guy,” Lukas said.

“Are you following me now?” I hissed. “I thought I made it abundantly clear earlier that I don’t want to see you, Lukas.”

“Well, I want to see you,” he said as he leaned in closer to me. “And if you expect me to believe for one second that you are really into this vanilla, corn-fed boy, I’d eat my socks.”

“I am,” I said indignantly. “He knows how to treat a woman right, which is more than I can say for some people I used to know.”

“Maren, I’m sorry about how things were left between us. Give me a chance to talk to you for five minutes,” Lukas said. He reached across the table and touched my arm, but I pulled it away as if he were a snake getting ready to bite me.

“You had ten years to talk to me. Ten years! There are these things called phones that people use to communicate these days. Never once have you tried to call me. For Pete’s sake, you could have emailed, even. But nothing. Not one word. Especially after…” I choked on the words. But I couldn’t let him know how deeply he had hurt me. “Especially after what happened between us. I didn’t even get the courtesy of a ‘see you later.’ We were friends for eight years. I deserved more than that—better than that.”

“I know,” Lukas started, but then Billy reappeared. I could see from the look that he gave us that he sensed he had missed something. I was on the verge of tears, and Lukas’s face was stormy.

“Sorry, Maren,” Billy said. “There’s been some trouble out at White Oaks. I need to go.” White Oaks was the private neighborhood outside town where most of the Grizzly Clan lived.

For the first time since he sat down, Lukas’s attention was wholly on Billy. He stood up. “What kind of trouble?”

“Nothing that I am willing to discuss here,” Billy said.

I stood up and used the movement of putting my napkin down on the table to cover how woozy I suddenly felt. I hadn’t eaten a thing and had downed three glasses of wine in quick succession.

“I’m going too,” I said.

Both men looked at me as if I had grown a third eye.

“This is official police business,” Billy said.

“Until we know what it’s about, it’s better that civilians stay out of the community,” Lukas said.

“Civilians? Is that what you call us? You and your grizzly army?” I knew by the tightening of the lines around Lukas’s mouth that I should probably close mine. Unfortunately, the wine had loosened my tongue. “Always so secretive up there in your private little community. Well, I am invoking the First Amendment. My readers have a right to know what’s going on.”

Lukas’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t think that’s exactly how that works, Maren.” He swung his head toward Billy. “I can take her home, but I’ll be right behind you. Make sure the sheriff knows that.”

I saw the slight grimace cross Billy’s face. Given the little tidbits that I had heard so far, I had no doubt that Sheriff Monroe would be less than pleased to hear that Lukas was on his way at all. Just like me, the sheriff was more than ready to see Lukas Kasper’s backside.

It was the same backside that I was admiring a few minutes later as Lukas walked Billy out to his car. I could tell that Billy wanted to protest the plan, but he was also eager to get out to White Oaks now that he had his marching orders. That was just the kind of cop Billy was. The men spoke in low voices and kept glancing in my direction every few moments. I rolled my eyes at them. They didn’t need to try that hard to keep whatever they were talking about away from me.

A minute later, Billy got into his car, and Lukas was striding back in my direction. There was something about the way he walked that sent shivers down my spine. It was almost a loping action, and it reminded me that no matter how he tried to dress it up otherwise, there was always something feral about him.

His hand was under my elbow then, and he guided me across the parking lot toward his truck. “I’m going to get you home.”

I shook off his hand. “I can walk on my own just fine, thank you.”

I heard his exasperated sigh, but I didn’t care. He opened the passenger door for me, and I probably would have fallen on my butt trying to get up into the cab, but I felt his hands on my waist as he pushed me gently upward. As soon as I was sure that I wasn’t going to fall out, I swatted his hands away. “You are not allowed to touch me!”

“Calm down before you fall down,” Lukas said. “You’re making a scene.”

I was suddenly aware of the fact that we weren’t alone in the parking lot. Several pairs of eyes were looking in our direction. I wasn’t sure how he was keeping his cool. The old Lukas would have been yelling at me by now, but this Lukas just closed the door before I could say another word. He climbed into the driver’s seat next to me and turned on the ignition.

“I’m going with you,” I said, crossing my arms. “You can’t stop me. If you try to drop me off, I’ll just get in my car and follow behind you. So then it’ll be your fault if I get a DWI.” I frowned. “But if they’re calling the police officers out to White Oaks, then there probably won’t be anybody around to give me a DWI, so maybe that’s okay.”

“I don’t remember you being this stubborn,” Lukas said. “You aren’t in any condition to drive. I still remember getting grounded for a month after you convinced me to try out the contents of your father’s bourbon collection. You were sick for three days after that. You always were a bit of a lightweight.”

I scowled at that memory. I hated that this man knew so much about me. “Guess you can’t take me home then.” I pointed out the windshield. “Let’s get moving. I know you want to get out there as much as I do.”

I could see by the way that Lukas’s jaw was moving that he wasn’t happy about my little blackmail threat, but if it meant that I got my way, I didn’t care. The only bad part about my plan was that it meant I was about to spend the next thirty minutes in the small quarters of the truck’s cab with a man I despised. The scowl on my face deepened as I realized that in the end, Lukas had gotten exactly what he wanted. He was going to try to talk to me.

I turned my head to stare out the window. “I don’t want to talk,” I said preemptively. The truck screeched to a halt on the side of the road. “What the hell?”

Lukas slid across the leather seat and was in my space a moment later. Before I could say another word, his lips were on mine, and all thoughts flew out of my mind.

The kiss caught me completely by surprise, and Lukas used it to his full advantage. His tongue probed my lips, and they parted to him of their own accord. His tongue danced with mine, and I felt his hands wrap into my hair to turn my head so that he had better access to my mouth. I whimpered. My body felt like it had been doused in gasoline, and Lukas threw the match that set it ablaze. I melted into him, and even though I thought to push him away, my fingers wrapped around the collar of his shirt instead. I clung to him as if he were the last person on earth giving me oxygen. His scent curled in my nostrils, and as I felt his fingertips trail down the side of my neck, I felt my panties growing wet. This was exactly what I had been missing in my life, and I knew it.

He broke the kiss all too soon and stared down into my eyes. “I need you to shut up for a minute and listen, and that seemed like the most effective way to do it. Can you do that for me?”

I wanted to tell him to go to hell, but I knew that he had won this battle. He had felt how my body responded to him. It was as if he had never left. “Fine,” I said. “But you aren’t allowed to do that again without my express permission.”

I saw the tug of a smirk in the corner of his mouth. “If that’s some kind of bet, then I look forward to winning it.”

“It won’t happen,” I said, trying to catch my breath and act as if guys kissed me like that every day. “I told you that I’m done playing this game with you.”

He held up his finger. “You promised to listen. Otherwise, if you’re not holding up your end of the bargain, I don’t see how I can be expected to hold up mine.”

“You are infuriating,” I said, trying my best to squirm away from him. He hadn’t left my space, and I was finding it hard to breathe. That had everything to do with the fact that I wanted to beg him to take me home and see if we could make that last first encounter nothing more than a distant memory.

“I’ve been called worse,” he said. He smiled at me, but I saw something primal as his eyes traveled back to my lips. I had a feeling they were looking more than a little puffy, based on the soreness that I felt. Lukas had a day-old scruff of beard across his chin. I couldn’t help but wonder how that would feel skimming across other parts of my body. I shivered.

“Are you cold?” He had the nerve to sound concerned.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m listening. Let’s drive.”

He looked like driving was the last thing on his mind, but he reluctantly slid back to the driver’s seat. He gave me a long look before putting the truck into drive again and pulling back onto the road. I was glad, for once, for the remoteness of Greyelf. The road was a two-lane, tree-lined highway almost the entire way. It would be hard for him to see my facial expressions.

“So talk,” I finally said after the silence became too much to bear. “You’ve gone through an awful lot of trouble to get me to listen to you, so let’s hope this is good.”

Lukas sighed. “I need your help, Maren. I don’t know any gentle way to say this, so I’m just going to say it. I don’t think what happened to Markus was random or an accident.”

My brain short-circuited for a minute. That wasn’t even close to what I was expecting him to say. “You mean because of the head wound?”

The dashboard lights gave off just enough illumination that I was able to see Lukas’s expression of surprise. “So you did catch wind of that. It wasn’t in the news story in the paper.”

“Sheriff Monroe asked my dad to keep it out for now,” I said. “So everyone in town thinks it was an accident. He didn’t want anyone panicking leading up to the Summit.”

“Probably not a bad call,” Lukas said. I was sure that he hated the fact that he agreed with anything that Sheriff Monroe thought was a good idea. “The thing is that this whole thing smells bad. And I can’t get anyone to talk to me about it. The sheriff is hiding behind the ‘official police business’ line, and the only way I think I can pry it out of him would be to make sure that I take control of the clan. Then he has to tell me.”

“Why do you think anybody is going to tell me anything? I’m assuming that’s why you want my help.” I said. “People are cautious in pretty much everything they say to both me and my dad. They don’t want to end up inadvertently being a source, especially about something like that. What’s going on here can easily make national headlines.”

“Your dad has been watching all of this unfold with the clans since this went public,” Lukas said. “I used to hear people say that he was planning to write a book.”

I winced. So that was yet another secret that wasn’t so secret after all. “My dad has his nose in a lot of things; that’s true. But that’s just part of the job. I’m not nearly as well connected as he is.”

“But you basically grew up here, and you’re still here.” There was an awkward pause. “You know how things are now that I don’t know. I need somebody with insider access in the community to help me if I’m going to make this work. This isn’t just about taking over as alpha, but making sure that the rest of the clan is safe from any threats.”

“Is that really what you want?” I asked softly. “This isn’t the kind of thing that you can just do for a couple of months until you get bored with it, Lukas. Being the alpha is important. You have people who are going to rely on you.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Lukas’s voice grew terse. “Look, I know that I wasn’t the world’s best kid growing up, but that was ten years ago. I’ve grown up. I understand now what Markus was doing. I get why he wasn’t always there for me when I wanted him to be. This whole thing was a lot bigger than me and Markus. He was the voice of an entire species that came out of the shadows and stopped being ashamed of who they were. I owe him at least the courtesy of giving it a try. Plus, I need to know what really happened to him.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This wasn’t the Lukas that I knew at all. He sounded determined and passionate and, most of all, commanding. If there was one thing that I knew about having to be an alpha, it was that you had to have the ability to make other people stand up and take notice. But they also had to follow and believe in you, and I wasn’t sure if that was something that the Grizzly Clan or the people of Greyelf could get behind when it came to Lukas.

“Your brother was a good man,” I said. “Is it possible that you are reading too much into this? Why do you think that there’s more to this than a simple unfortunate accident?”

“The real question is, why don’t you?” Lukas looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “C’mon, Maren. You’re a journalist, and you’re good at your job. This whole thing has to smell like week-old fish to you.”

“How do you know I’m good at my job?”

“I do read, you know,” he said.

I was shocked. “You’ve read my articles?”

“It isn’t that hard with the Internet,” Lukas mocked. “It’s constantly hard for me to believe, but the
Greyelf Gazette
is considered
the
source for all things swirling around the shifter community. Your dad has created quite a name for himself.”

I felt faintly proud. “It’s all my dad. It’s not me. I got my journalism degree because I didn’t know what else to do, and Dad said he’d pay for it if that was my major. I’m not that good.”

“Not that good? I am pretty sure I’m talking to the woman who took first place in a national journalism contest two years running with the series of exposés that you did your last two years of college.”

Now I openly gaped at Lukas. “I suppose you read those too?”

He nodded. “You’ve definitely matured in your writing style since then, but you’ve always had the critical eye needed for those kinds of hard-hitting stories. You tell the facts, and you leave emotion out of it. That’s also how I know you wrote that story about me, even though you denied it. If your dad wasn’t running the paper at the center of the maelstrom for shifter politics, I’d tell you that you were wasting your talent staying here in Greyelf.”

The compliments were coming fast and furious, and between those and the kiss, I wasn’t sure what side was up at the moment. Leave it to Lukas to come in and turn everything upside down on me. I was supposed to be hurling insults at him, not wanting to tear my clothes off and throw myself at him because he was being nice to me. I needed a counterargument to get this conversation back on track.

“Still, you know as well as I do that I wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near White Oaks by myself. You said it yourself when you called me a ‘civilian.’ We aren’t welcome there.”

“You can be,” Lukas said. “I can make that happen.”

“How?” I was immediately suspicious. My father had tried every way possible to endear himself to Markus over the years to get an insider’s view of life in White Oaks. Every time, he had been turned away. Finding out that information had turned into my father’s personal quest for his sort of Holy Grail.

“As the alpha’s intended mate, you’d have unfiltered access to everything inside the community.”

I felt as if the air had been sucked out of the cab. For a minute, I thought for sure I had drunk too much wine, and I was hallucinating. What Lukas was proposing seemed far-fetched and outrageous.

“What?”

“I’m going all in to get to the bottom of this, Maren. I need eyes and ears on the inside, and I don’t trust one single person in this town other than you. It’ll be completely aboveboard. I know it’s asking a lot, considering how things ended between us, but I’ll make that right too. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. Grovel? Beg? Name it.”

My heart beat in my chest so fast that for a moment, I thought for sure that I was going to pass out. I rolled the window down and gulped in the crisp night air. It sharpened my thoughts. “You are kidding me, right?”

“I wouldn’t kid about something like this,” Lukas said. His gravelly voice deepened. “You’re all I’ve got at the moment. So, please, will you help me? You have to know how desperate I am that I’d even ask.”

That’s when it hit me. I was being used by Lukas. Again. I wanted to throw something at his head. For a brief moment, I thought that he cared about me, or at least was attracted to me, and that he wanted to make it up to me for what he did ten years ago. But that wasn’t it at all. He wanted me to do something for him. Good old Maren, always willing to step in during a pinch. Good for a laugh or a roll in the hay. He could count on me.

I crossed my arms and turned my head to look out the window. “If I do this for you, you will let me write the story about what really happened. If there’s anything there, it’ll make national news, and then maybe I can get the hell out of this town.”

There was a long pause. “So trying to tell you that the clan business isn’t for public consumption is going to be the deal breaker here?”

I shrugged, but I still didn’t look at him. “You’ll be the alpha, remember? Seems to me you can do whatever the hell you want. I don’t care. If you want my help, you are going to give me full access to the whole story.”

“I didn’t realize that you were so eager to get out of Greyelf,” Lukas said quietly.

“Why? Just because you ran away doesn’t mean it’s so easy for everyone else,” I said. I knew that my tone was bitchy, but that didn’t bother me. I had to keep Lukas at arm’s length if I was going to get my story and get out of the whole deal with my fragile heart still intact. There was no time like the present if we were going to start.

“About all of that,” Lukas started.

I held up my hand. “It doesn’t matter now. As long as we have agreement on our terms, then let’s let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Or bears,” Lukas grumbled.

My heart sped up again. I was willing to play it off casually that I had agreed to become an alpha’s mate. I had no idea what that even meant, but judging by the swirl of emotions in my chest, I needed to temper that flame before it became a full-fledged fire.