Bear to the Rescue (Bear Claw Security Book 3)

C
opyright
© 2016 by Robyyn Huttchings

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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O
ther Books in the series
:

Bear to the Bone

Bear-ly a Hero

B
ronson felt
a prickle of anticipation as he put his hand on the cold chrome doorknob of the new tech girl’s office. He hesitated, not sure if the feeling was dread or excitement.

Bronson was used to having an easy time with people. He was simple, straightforward. He spoke his mind as he saw it and generally told people what he wanted and when.

He liked people, and people generally liked him.

Simple. No problem.

Except
nothing
was simple with Regan, the sassy new tech girl they’d hired on as a replacement while their usual guy was on his honeymoon.

Bronson took a deep breath, opened the door, and tossed a file onto Regan’s desk. She barely looked up from her current screen. There were at least three monitors on her desk at any one time, and she switched between them easily and without distraction.

Bronson didn’t know how she kept them all straight.

“Bronson,” she said flatly. She had very short curly hair, mostly black but with little curls here and there that had been dyed blue. It was a good look with her natural deep tan and her extremely striking jade-green eyes.

She also shared Lime’s love of punk fashion, often wearing tight, black ensembles with skinny jeans that hugged her curves and boots.

Bronson had been drawn to her from the moment they’d met.

“Regan,” he said calmly, leaning against a filing cabinet. “How are you doing on the Salazar case?”

“Business as usual,” she said. “Still fixing some weak spots and helping their security team build a better infrastructure that will be more immune to cracking. And then it’ll take a lot more testing after that.”

Bronson wrinkled his nose and waved a hand. “You know I don’t know the jargon.”

She turned to him with a grin, something sparkling in her green eyes. “Right,” she said, “You’re just the muscle. Or are you?”

She turned a screen toward him, and he was taken aback by what he saw. It was a picture of him when he was younger, on one of the rare days he’d been home from boarding school and spent some time with the family.

Before everything went wrong.

He narrowed his eyes at the screen, seeing other images and windows of text.

“So you’ve been stalking me?” He shook his head and then flashed her a grin that would have had most women melting. “Regan, I didn’t think you cared.”

She snorted. “It’s not hard,” she said. “Just a reverse Google image search.”

He frowned. “Great. Well, it’s good the rest of my family shares my inability to care about technology, because they’ve left me alone so far.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why did you leave them anyway?” She gestured to the monitor and then pulled a chair in front of it and propped up her booted feet. Her curvy legs looked luscious in tight leggings, her upper body in a low tank top covered by a fringed leather jacket.

She was all woman and all curves, and Bronson wanted her.

But this wasn’t the time to fall for an employee. Especially since she’d done nothing but verbally spar with him since she’d shown up. Well, and stalk him online apparently. Should he be flattered by that?

But she was still waiting for an answer about why he’d left his family.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I wanted to make my own way,” he said.

“Interesting,” she said, folding her arms, making the sleeves of her leather jacket squeak. “Except that’s not really the case, is it? You used family money to start this place, right? You had a career in the military, but let’s be honest; it doesn’t pay well enough to buy a place like this outright, and there’s no lien on the building.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. Damn, she was sharp. Like Limes, the other hacker, who also bugged the hell out of him.

“Fine,” he said. “I inherited from my grandfather. It wasn’t my choice, but I decided to do something good with it. The rest is invested.” He folded his arms and glared down at her. “What, you have a problem with rich people?”

Her eyes nervously darted over his body, and he suppressed a grin. He had one thing on her that he’d never had on Limes. Even if she’d never admit it.

Regan was a bear shifter, like him, and she definitely liked his bod.

“Uh, no,” she said, putting her legs down and turning back to her desk. “Just as long as you admit it.” She picked up the file he’d brought her. “What’s this?”

“Another security breach issue. Should be simple again and leave you some extra time to stalk people.” He pushed off the wall and walked over to her, crowding her in against the desk, one hand on either side of the computer. He surrounded her small, curvy body, loving the spicy vanilla scent of her hair.

The slight tension at his presence. The arousal in the air.

He could sense all of it, and he liked it.

“You’re, um….” She squirmed slightly in the chair, too aware of his closeness. “Well, I wasn’t stalking. But I knew you had secrets…” She trailed off, biting her lip.

He moved to the side of the desk, leaning on it and putting his body on display, all hard abs and broad shoulders, and watched her eyes slowly make their way over every ridge.

He grinned. “Aren’t we all allowed some secrets? What makes you so interested in mine?” he asked, folding his arms over his chest and letting his pecs flex.

She blinked and pushed away from the desk abruptly, clasping the folder to her chest. “Stop that,” she said, tucking back an errant curl. It was too short and immediately bounced forward over her forehead. She bit her full bottom lip again, her eyes making another quick survey of his body.

He knew his height and size were intimidating, and usually, he was extra pleasant to try and put people at ease. But since all she did was tease him and try to ruffle his feathers, he didn’t mind that his feathers seemed to ruffle her.

“Stop what?” he asked in a calm voice.

She waved a hand at him, as if trying to brush away the pheromones between them. “That… thing you do. Using your… maleness on me. It won’t work.”

“It won’t?” he asked, walking forward quickly, backing her into the opposite wall without ever touching her. He ran his eyes down her body and felt the air heat tangibly. “It’s not working?”

She let out a heavy breath. “That’s not fair…”

He grinned. “Totally fair if you rummaging in my private affairs is fair.”

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll stop looking.” She took a deep breath and pushed past him. Not before he’d seen her pulse pounding at the base of her neck, her lips slightly parted as she looked up at him.

“I’m going to… take this home to work on it. I think I’m done for the day,” she said.

She was only an independent contractor for now, not even an employee, so he really couldn’t protest her leaving whenever she wanted. He eyed the computers as she shut them down, getting rid of any windows she’d had open that had his info on them.

“Still don’t get why any of you rich boys would leave a life like that,” she said with a shrug as she gathered her things off her desk and shoved them in her purse, still flushing deeply. “Seems like the kind of life most would dream of being born into.”

His lips tightened into a frown. “Maybe for some people. Maybe it came with a price I couldn’t pay.”

“Sure,” she said flatly, as if she didn’t believe him. “Well, oh well. Good for you for being a man and able to run away from anything you don’t like.”

Frustration flashed through him, and he opened his mouth to retort, but before he could, she was out of the office, door swinging behind her. Bronson stared at the empty room, the hollow need to defend himself echoing through him.

He sighed and checked the time on his phone. He didn’t have any other client meetings today, so he’d probably follow Regan out to her car as usual. It had become a habit, mainly because he suspected beneath her tough exterior, something else was going on.

There was something about the way she watched her back, something about the way she handled herself that made him think someone was after her.

Or maybe it was just something that tingled in the back of his mind, some kind of intuition.

Not that Bronson minded an excuse to follow her around. Ever since he’d met her he’d been wanting to get closer to her, and so far he was utterly failing at it.

She might like to tease him, might like looking at his body, might even like to stalk his past online, but she wasn’t interested in actually getting to know him as a person. Not at all.

He walked out to the front desk and saw their new employee, Hercules, talking to Cage and his mate Carrie. Cage was Bronson’s other partner, and the dark-haired, sapphire-eyed shifter was Bronson’s closest friend. Carrie, his mate, was their office manager. She gave him a wave, and he waved back.

“You headed out?” Hercules asked in a deep voice. Hercules had only been with the company about a week. He was hired muscle, like Bronson, and had served with them in the military. He was a quiet man, with long, luxurious hair that could make any girl jealous and a tall, muscular body that made any girl stare.

“Yeah, just making sure Regan gets out okay,” Bronson said, looking out to see her get in the elevator.

“Damn, Bronson, when did you become stalker boss?” Cage asked, teasing.

Bronson snapped a glance to Cage and then took a deep breath and relaxed. “Since Limes’s mate nearly got kidnapped in the underground garage.”

“Yeah, but she had people after her.”

That was true. But
I just feel like following her
didn’t sound like a good enough rebuttal.

“So might Regan,” Bronson said, heading out the glass door. “After all, she was real insistent on taking the job here working security. My guess? She’s looking for protection. I’m going to give it to her.”

“Okay, Bronson,” Hercules said with a low laugh. “You go give it to her.”

The others burst into laughter at the joke, and Bronson rolled his eyes. “Shut up,” he said, walking out of the office and into the hallway. He pushed the button to wait for the elevator, ignoring the raucous laughter behind him.

He didn’t need this. He just needed to see Regan get to her car and know she was okay.

Then he could get back to work.

R
egan tried
to ignore the screams from her body to go back and take everything that big, gorgeous bear shifter was offering.

She didn’t buy his chivalrous, good-guy act. Not for one moment. Sure, he was movie star handsome, with wavy blond hair, a huge muscular body, and a protective streak as big as the Mississippi.

But he was a bear shifter—an alpha bear shifter at that—and she knew what trouble those were.

The problem was her body didn’t. Her body thought a little bit of Bronson might be just what Regan needed about now.

Her body didn’t know shit.

She tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for the elevator to stop. When it did and the doors opened, she poked out her head tentatively.

She was always on guard lately. In fact, the job at Bear Claw Security had come at the right time. She’d upset some serious losers, and while she didn’t think they could really do anything to her and she expected their online threats would stay online, she didn’t mind being surrounded by humongous, ex-military shifters in the meantime.

She genuinely liked Cage and his mate Carrie. They were a sweet couple who’d been friends since childhood and been through a lot to be together.

The kind of romance she never expected to happen to her. It was too late for that.

Hercules was nice, too. Always gentlemanly, despite having a wild, untamed appearance with his long mane of hair. But his face was gentle, kind, and masculine.

He was the type she should be going for, if she were willing to mate a shifter at all.

But she wasn’t, and besides, her traitorous body wanted that fake Bronson, with his gentle smiles that turned predatory as soon as there was something he wanted.

She knew it was partially her fault. She liked to goad him, even though she knew the result was him using his closeness against her. She secretly even liked the way she reacted to him, the way her body heated in response to so much hot, clean, sexy male.

Bronson was top shelf bear shifter. His family was pure-blooded, going generations back. Incredibly wealthy and known as elitist in the bear shifter community. The same kind of family her father had come from, before he’d gone slumming with her mom and then abandoned them with nothing.

A growl sounded from her stomach, reminding her she’d skipped lunch, as she often did while working. As she walked to her car, she ticked off the different options for lunch.

Not in the mood for Chinese. Maybe Indian? Italian?

She stopped a few yards from her car, prickles going up her spine. Something didn’t seem right. She could just sense it. Despite being only half bear, her ability to sense things was strong.

“Who’s there?” she called out, feeling watched. But no one answered. She just heard the gentle howl of wind moving through the parking garage. Sunlight streamed from the entrance at the other side. She looked both ways and took a wide circle around her car.

As she came to an angle where she could view the side, she saw a shadowy figure, wearing a dark hoodie, stand up abruptly.

Someone had been hiding by her car, waiting for her.

Her heart pounded as the person looked right at her, face shaded by a low hood and sunglasses as well.

For a moment, her body froze, uncertain if she should run or chase him.

Then he turned and darted for the exit, and her flight response kicked in, sending her barreling back toward the building wildly, aiming for the elevator.

She screamed when she ran straight into something hard. She beat against it, panicked, and then found her hands caught in vises and held out to the sides.

She struggled wildly until she heard a familiar voice.

“Whoa, Regan. Calm down. It’s me. It’s Bronson.”

She looked up into his sky-blue eyes, intense with concern, and humiliation flooded her. Even though she knew she should be grateful he’d come to check on her, her smart mouth got the best of her.