Authors: Anya Nowlan
Bear My Love: BBW BWWM Paranormal Shapeshifter Werebear Mail-Order Bride Romance (Shifter Grove Brides Book 4)
B
EAR
M
Y
L
OVE
S
HIFTER
G
ROVE
B
RIDES
B
OOK 4
BY
A
NYA
N
OWLAN
Copyright © 2015 Anya Nowlan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Bear My Love
Shifter Grove Brides
Book 4
All rights reserved.
No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of
Anya Nowlan
. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.
Cover ©
Jack of Covers
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
Keesha
“I know you’re in there, you know. If you don’t come out soon, Parker’s just going to fire you. Come on, Keesha. You can’t hide there forever.”
Keesha scrunched her nose – she wasn’t hiding from anyone.
Okay, so that wasn’t entirely the truth. Maybe she was hiding. Just a little. But it certainly wasn’t for the reasons that Carly thought she was.
“I’m on my lunch break,” Keesha bit back, putting one leg over the other and letting her stiletto heel dangle from her toes.
“In the bathroom? Far be it for me to judge, but I think you could do better,” Carly replied, laughter in her tone.
It wasn’t that Carly was wrong. It wasn’t even that Keesha didn’t agree with her. It was just that if she were to step out of the posh, wood-tiled bathroom stall
at that very moment
, she might end up punching someone in the throat – someone who had all the power in the world to fire her on the spot.
“It’s the only private place in the entire building,” Keesha replied indignantly. As an afterthought, she added, “At least it used to be.”
Carly snorted and Keesha could imagine her friend’s face as if there wasn’t a door separating them at all. Carly was probably twirling one of her super curly strands of hair around her long nails, rolling her eyes and leaning against the polished marble counters. Keesha knew it so well because she’d done it several times before while waiting for other coworkers to get over their misery and get on with their day.
It was sort of a rite of passage at Jules, Veron and Blake to stand around offering snarky comments and platitudes while one of the paralegals was working hard on crying her eyes out.
Instead, of course, in this case, Keesha wasn’t crying. It would take a lot more than a bunch of self-involved lawyers and asshole senior partners to make her shed a tear. But they could drive her into a murderous rage. That was exactly what this was – Keesha Bailey’s half-assed attempt at not turning into a nuisance in the eyes of the commonwealth of Massachusetts through unarmed assault and battery.
“I’m not going to wait forever, you know. I might just leave. Tell Parker Waylan that you’re having a mental breakdown and that he won the war against the great, the undaunted, the never fazed Keesha Bailey. Is that what you want? Because I swear, I’ll go and tell him right now, and you know he’ll never let you live it down. He’ll probably hold an entire staff meeting just on the topic of mental health in the firm and how we’re supposed to take care of one another before more of such
unfortunate
incidents as Miss Bailey’s come to pass. All the while wearing that simpering smile that he has. You know the one.”
Oh yeah, Keesha knew the one. She stuck her tongue out and made a face that vaguely described her utter and boiling contempt for Parker Waylan, the senior associate she was working for at the law firm. If there was ever a man to hate, it was him.
With a long and resounding sigh, Keesha stood up and unlocked the stall door. She smoothed her tight skirt over her thighs and walked out of the little booth as if she were a queen leaving her castle. It wasn’t much of a castle, but dammit, presence was everything, right?
Carly snapped her fingers, chuckling.
“That’s it. Can we
please
actually go to lunch now or is crossing through the hallowed halls of Jules, Veron and Blake too much for Miss Bailey and I should smuggle you out through the back exit?”
Carly’s bright green eyes were twinkling with laughter as per usual when one of them managed to fish a colleague out of the depths of despair. It was such a daily occurrence at the firm – which had to have been just the most soul-sucking place to work at in all of Boston – that it had become a bit of an office sport between the assistants, paralegals and secretaries.
They currently even had a pool running. Before this little fit, Keesha had been winning by a mile. Unlike most of the other women at the firm, the high-strung, entirely problematic men that roamed around like a pack of unwitting orangutans had rarely ever got to her. She could deal with their bullshit. She could even deal with their rampant sexism, their unreasonable demands and their frankly horrific understanding of working conditions.
But today, she had been broken. Apparently even she couldn’t stand with quiet and stoic grace as Parker Waylan called her the most inept, uninspired and idiotic paralegal ever to have worked for the firm.
What did he know, anyway!? If he couldn’t read a damn legal brief then he couldn’t bloody well dream of commenting on her work.
“Sad excuse for a lawyer,” Keesha muttered, staring daggers at the mirror and imagining Parker’s face in the reflection instead of her own.
It was a mild relief to see that she still looked as put-together as usual. Her steel gray skirt and blazer set went perfectly with her dark mocha skin and the white blouse underneath gave her just the right level of sophistication while not hiding what she was – a curvy black woman with the brains and sass to boot, and a booty that wouldn’t quit.
Well, maybe it could do with a few more weight-training classes, but it was a miracle she had time to sleep these days, let alone work out.
It came with the territory of working a full-time, demanding job, getting her degree and trying to figure out what the hell she wanted to do with her life. So far, she had the working and the struggling down, but she hadn’t quite figured out the dreaming and achieving part of the whole thing.
“He’s still your boss,” Carly said, giving her a commiserating look and bringing Keesha out of her quiet musings.
Somewhere further in the gorgeous bathroom, someone was sobbing uncontrollably. Carly and Keesha exchanged a glance and, with a sigh, Keesha admitted defeat. Carly had just talked her down, so it was her turn to volunteer.
“You okay, Sally?” she called, splashing water on her cheeks to get the redness of anger down.
She’d heard Sally cry enough times to know it was her. She could recognize most of the women in the office by the very distinct tone of their sniffles.
“I’m fine. Just need a moment!” came a muffled reply.
“You sure?” Carly asked.
“Yes, sure!”
“If you say so,” Keesha finished, fishing out her phone from her ridiculously overpriced Chanel Boy Bag (which she had saved up to buy for nearly a year, but had to have because she couldn’t
possibly
be a paralegal in Boston without one).
“Is that your bear again?” Carly asked, dropping her voice a bit.
Keesha nodded noncommitally, opening up the text. She couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t hide the smile that came to her lips when she saw the message from Battle.
BattleBear: You know, I still think you should come to Idaho. I think you would like it here.
Just last night, they’d been talking about how her job had been slowly driving her to the brink of madness. For the last few months, she’d been getting closer and closer to the sexy, mysterious bear and it was becoming troublesomely easy to open up to him.
Keesha wasn’t sure whether she was worried or excited about it.
On the one hand, she was a tired, overworked and far too capable paralegal who had just recently finished her law degree and taken the bar exam (fingers crossed!) and who was all but stuck at her soul-sucking job. On the other hand, she was far too busy for a relationship. Especially for a relationship with a guy called Battle of all things, and who had recently moved from Alabama to Idaho of all places.
But then there was the slight problem of him being
stupid
hot and the best listener in the world. So all of Keesha’s plans to just ignore his messages on SassyDate had gone up in smoke after the first few notes he’d dropped her. And now she was hooked, hopelessly.
“So, what’s he saying?” Carly asked, nosing in over her shoulder.
“Nothing,” Keesha said with a small smile, pushing the power button and dropping the phone into her purse again. “Let’s take the main exit. Fuck Parker.”
“That’s what I like to hear!”
With her head held high, Keesha exited the lavish bathroom and entered the busy, sprawling bloodstream of Jules, Veron and Blake.
Please don’t let that asshat walk into me! I just want a cinnamon macchiato and maybe then I can deal with his crap again,
Keesha pleaded wordlessly, strolling through the corridors with long, determined steps.
She and Carly were halfway through the large office floor when Parker suddenly appeared in front of them seemingly from thin air. He stepped out of one of the glass-walled meeting rooms, no doubt having seen them coming, and stopped them by standing smack-dab in the middle of the corridor.
“So, Miss Bailey! Done with your little
pause
?” Parker asked, grinning like he was a cat staring down a mouse.
Keesha felt the rage beginning to boil in her again. Her hands balled into fists, one by her side and the other around the chain of her bag.
“I am, Mister Waylan,” she said, forcing the words out from behind clenched teeth.
“Isn’t that lovely. Wouldn’t want you to get
too
upset,” Parker said, still grinning like a maniac and raising his voice so he could be sure that everyone in the near vicinity could hear him. “I mean, I understand that you are somewhat
delicate
about these things, but I really do expect you to perform well on the work I assign you. Can’t tolerate you just
ignoring
your duties, now can I?”
