Billionbears' New Honey: BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Mail-Order Bride Menage Romance (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Rhett

“We ain’t in Kansas no more,” Rush Dean drawled in his best Southern twang.

Any other time, it would have scraped at Rhett’s ears, but this time he didn’t mind. Hell, he even chuckled.

“You’re right about that,” Rhett agreed.

They were both sitting on the hoods of their matching blue F-250s, and the nearer they’d got to Shifter Grove, the more awkward he felt driving the big truck. He was no cowboy, and neither was his brother, or at least they hadn’t been for a long time. The sun was slowly setting behind the hulking mountains, and Shifter Grove, nestled in a cushy little valley, was basking in the last rays. The Dean brothers had stopped on a hillside that gave them a good view of the town – they needed a moment of peace before rolling in.

Rhett hadn’t even had to radio Rush to ask him to pull over. Operating on the same wavelength as usual, Rush had probably got the idea of taking a break before rolling into town at the same moment as Rhett had. Anyway, when they came to a stop, neither one of them was even a little bit surprised at what the other had been thinking.

“So, you think Mama’s gonna have a big spread waiting for us? I’m fucking famished,” Rush said, leaning back on his elbows and chewing on some sort of stalk he’d plucked from the tall grass.

Rhett shrugged. His thoughts were as far from food as they could have been, though he heard his stomach growling angrily at him – maybe dinner was a good idea. They hadn’t stopped to eat since dawn when they rolled past a pancake place and went to town on their all-you-can-eat policy. Those people didn’t know what they were getting themselves into, offering unlimited servings to two Mississippi black bears. But the pancakes had been damn delicious, and the Dean boys had left a generous tip.

“Probably. I bet she’ll be ecstatic to see us.”

“Billionaire boys return to their mother, the town remains indifferent,” Rush said, moving his hand through the air as if envisioning a headline in the local newspaper.

Does Shifter Grove even have a newspaper? Probably not.

“I’d be surprised if we were the first in Shifter Grove, though. Shifters have been killing it lately. Must be all that pent up animal rage, making them take the business world by storm. But I don’t know how many of them return to be chided by their mother,” Rhett said, chuckling.

He dragged a hand through his messy auburn hair and then scratched his chin. He hadn’t shaved in days. That hadn’t happened in forever. He kind of liked it.

“Well, money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure keeps the local mammal population safe and sound,” Rush noted with a yawn, adjusting his sunglasses.

Rhett and Rush Dean weren’t your average black bear shifters. They were Alpha twins, destined for glory since the moment they were born. To the best of their ability, they had made good on that natural ability. Not only were they athletic (Rush in particular), they’d also made it their business to know everything they could about the world around them. Rhett made his first million at eighteen, putting up a hardware exchange business back home in Mississippi, and Rush had picked up a big endorsement the same year for his mountain biking achievements.

Now they were both made men in their own right. Together, they owned expansive oil fields in both Texas and up north, and though Rush had hung up his helmet some time ago, he still managed a number of top athletes through one of his firms. Rhett had kept close to his roots as well – he owned Dean’s Hardware, the first and foremost seller of heavy equipment in the east.

Yet, here they were, hanging out in bumfuck Idaho, considering their options for approaching their mother. Rhett felt Rush’s clear blue eyes on him and looked over to his younger brother by a few minutes, cocking his head to the side.

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Rush asked.

“That mama’s going to have us married off so fast we won’t know what hit us? Yeah.”

“She’s going to be ecstatic…” Rush said.

Rhett caught the thoughtfulness in his brother’s tone. He knew where it stemmed from. What were two billionaire bad boy bears doing in Idaho, visiting their mother? Why, it was easy, of course! They were twenty-nine, going on thirty, and if that big 3-0 hit before they were married… Well, there would be trouble.

Trouble that Mama Dean would never let them forget. Rhett shook his head. Their father had passed away when he and Rush were seventeen, just on the verge of their first breakthroughs. Before he left to join the great spirits above, their father had made a deal with them. Get married by thirty or give up everything they’d achieved and start fresh. Just donate everything and learn what it feels like to live as a nobody again, a man with just a name but no substance.

And as much as they would have wanted to, the Dean boys couldn’t go back on their word.

“You’ll never be real men before you know the love of a good woman. And you will never be as strong apart as you would be together, with a third to complete your Triad. You boys aren’t ready for this yet, but I want you to know that there will come a day when you will need each other, and you will need someone to show you what you two are truly capable of.

If I know anything about the Dean men then it’s that they don’t know what’s good for them unless someone shoves their face in it. So that’s what this contract is for – so you two would get your noses out of the air and see what’s actually going on around you.”

They’d signed and sealed it and everything. And now they were a month from turning thirty and the weight of their offhanded promise – though heartfelt and earnest – had come crashing down on them.

“We shouldn’t have put this off for so long,” Rhett murmured, sighing.

“Well, tough shit, brother. Here we are. I had my heart set on a nice Mississippi girl, but mama would never let us live it down if we picked someone she didn’t personally get to meet before we married her, so we better hope you’re handy with that dating app and find us plenty of hotties here.”

Rush grinned wickedly, popping his shades up in his wild hair. He was wearing ripped jeans and a white wife-beater and looked every bit the laid back thrill-seeker that he was.

Rhett snorted in response, whipping out his smartphone. He’d been poring through SassyDate for days now and he had pretty much given up all hope. He never had had much patience. Only one woman had caught his eye – a curvaceous beauty with honey-blonde hair and deep blue eyes that made him think of the ocean – but she was in Ohio and they were in Idaho and it was all sorts of dire from there on.

For now, Rhett’s only real mission in life was to survive the first dinner with their mother and listen to the very extensive nagging session they were sure to get for being so careless with their futures. Money certainly wasn’t everything – and Rhett secretly wondered that perhaps life without their vast, amassed fortune would be so much easier – but it was the life they knew. The Dean boys loved their mother dearly, but Mama Dean was an old-school shifter, and she had never failed to remind the boys that their mission was to give her plenty of grandbabies.

A mission they had so far failed at.

“Anyone we like?” Rush asked.

Rhett had kept staring at Daniela’s picture on SassyDate until Rush’s voice stirred him from his thoughts. He closed the phone and tucked it in his pocket, shrugging his shoulders. He was still wearing a clean-cut white button-up and slacks and was starting to feel painfully out of place in them. You could stick a cowboy hat on Rush and he’d fit in right as rain. But Rhett? Classic case of a country boy who needs to get the country put back in him. Tragic, really.

“She’s in Ohio.”

“We’re good at driving!” Rhett called, banging his fist against the hood of his Ford.

“True,” Rhett agreed, smiling to himself.

Sure, they were good drivers. And even though they’d spent a lot of time apart in the last ten years, having lived in opposite ends of the country for most of their adult lives, they were still close as ever. But Rhett knew that they hadn’t postponed their search just because it was disadvantageous to their life of drinking and partying.

What woman could fit perfectly between him and his even wilder brother Rush, filling all their nooks and crannies and making them into a cohesive whole? And why should she be in Idaho? Hell, she might just as well have been in Los Angeles… Or maybe she was a dragon shifter in Tokyo or a bunny shifter in France, or just a nice girl in Vancouver. Wherever she was, Rhett wasn’t going to believe she existed before he saw her, and he was running out of time to find out.

So far, he’d only seen forests and mountains and a brother as unsure of everything as he was – not quite the winning combination.

But Deans never quit, and Rhett wasn’t going to.

Trust the process,
he told himself.

With that, he jumped off the hood and dusted himself off.

“We ride?” Rush asked, always ready for adventure.

“We ride!” Rhett hollered, and both of the billionaire werebears scrambled into their cars to see who could peel out onto the road first.

Boys will be boys.
 

CHAPTER THREE

Danni

Danni idly thumbed through her contacts, picking and choosing who to delete and who to keep. It had taken just a few weeks in Shifter Grove to really show her who her true friends were – the people who still called and still cared about how she was doing even if she wasn’t in immediate coffee and chatting distance. To her somewhat painful surprise, she’d found that it didn’t leave all that many people on her list.

Who would have known that moving and shunning her former life brought such negative consequences?

Grimly, she smiled and set the phone down.

She grabbed her cup of warm chamomile tea and sipped it, looking out the window. Like most nights, Danni was spending this one in the sanctuary that was the Sunrise Diner. It had been raining most of the day – not exactly a rarity in early summer – and Danni enjoyed the view. The tiny droplets of water formed great big puddles and, in true small town fashion, she could even see a few kids playing in the rain, sloshing around in the puddles with their little rain boots.

It sent a sharp pain through her heart. She wasn’t too old to have kids, not by a long shot. In every possible way, she still had plenty of time to have a family and settle down. But that was just rationality talking – her heart knew that she’d fully expected to be married by now (to Taylor, of course) and maybe even have a child on the way.

Danni had often tried to ignore the fact that her fiancée was in no rush to marry, telling herself that the day would come. But it hadn’t, and now there was no more fiancée to talk about. She glanced at her ring finger, and the tan line left by her engagement ring. It still stung.

How could I have been so naïve,
she asked herself, shaking her head.

“What are we depressed about now?” Cerise’s happy voice queried, pulling Danni from her thoughts.

“Nothing!” she responded automatically, doing her best to hide the glumness within.

It wasn’t too hard. Cerise’s curious green eyes and oft-smiling face was really enough to shake even the grouchiest of bears from their reverie, and it certainly was plenty for Danni. And even if it hadn’t been, that piece of coconut lime pie Cerise pushed in front of her patched all the leftover misery. Another thing to love about Shifter Grove – the locals just wouldn’t let you get all down and out. Not as long as they could help it.

“Don’t you lie to me, Danni. I’ll have you know that I am the town psychiatrist as well as the town barkeep – at least until we get someone better. But, I intend to take both of my jobs super seriously until then, and I can tell that you’re not as peachy keen as you’d like me to believe!”

Cerise scooped some meringue on her spoon and popped it into her mouth. Her eyes rolled back a bit and Danni snickered at the overly expressive shifter she was sharing the table with. Nobody knew what kind of shifter Cerise was, but the big cats maintained that she had to be one of them – they just didn’t know which one. But Cerise wasn’t the kind of woman anyone would want to push into revealing things she wasn’t comfortable with. After all, everybody needed their dose of spiritual healing, and if Cerise cut them off from the cake and the booze, what would they do!?

“No, honestly, Cerise. It’s nothing. Maybe I’m just a little homesick,” Danni said, taking a bite of the pie.