Commander Bear (Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (Bear Patrol Book 1) (4 page)

Z
oe was
nervous about her first day as Angus’s apprentice at his woodshop in town. As she got ready to go to work that morning, she felt an impending sense of doom hanging over her. It was like a heavy weight that was ready to fall at any moment.

She knew she never should have signed up for Mate.com. What had possessed her to do something so stupid? Willow’s prodding and prompting had gotten to her, and she had relented. In a moment of loneliness and weakness, Zoe had signed up for the stupid dating site, believing she too, for a brief moment, could have her own happily ever after. How could she have known that she would be immediately be matched with Fate Mountain’s chief of police?

She was in eight hundred thousand dollars of debt to a mob boss and she had stolen jewels under her bed. Rollo would see right through her. She had to avoid him at all costs. If she were smart, she would leave town right now and never come back.

But she had spent the last six months learning about woodworking and didn’t want to give up her newfound love. She had gone into carpentry for the sole intention of studying up on how to get into Caitlin Somerset’s Louis the Fifteenth chest.

Coming to the Bright Institute for Shifters had just been a cover in a long game heist. She had used the woodshop at the Institute to study how the chest was put together. She had successfully broken into Caitlin Somerset’s Louis the Fifteenth chest while inside the mansion and had managed to steal a million dollars’ worth of jewels.

But along the way, Zoe had fallen in love with working with wood. She’d never expected that to happen. Zoe had never really been a hands-on kind of girl. She hadn’t played sports in school; she’d been too busy smoking cigarettes under the bleachers with the bad kids. She had never been an artist or a painter or a gardener or anything like that. She really didn’t like getting her hands dirty at all.

But when she started making things, the pride she felt when she held the finished piece in her hands was like nothing she’d ever experienced before. Since Zoe had graduated high school and started traveling the world, she’d had this sense that nothing in her life was permanent or real. For several years she had enjoyed feeling unbounded by anything, but over time, her rootlessness began to wear at her soul.

When she arrived at the Bright Institute for Shifters and had taken up woodworking, Zoe suddenly felt at home. She was surrounded by people who cared about her. Truly cared about her. While she would always have a little bit of sibling rivalry with her brother, his wife Willow was fantastic. She’d made wonderful friends at the Institute like Heath, and she wouldn’t trade that experience for the world.

She hadn’t been part of a community, a real community, since she’d left the Midwest seven years ago. Now she was getting a taste of what community felt like, and she didn’t want to give it up.

The part of Zoe that been working with Dimitri Ivanov for the last three years knew that she should skip town as soon as possible. Like yesterday. The other part of her, the Midwestern girl whose family had been sustained by the generosity of the shifter community the whole time she was growing up, wanted to stay on Fate Mountain.

The child inside of her longed to be home. And this was the first place that felt like home in such a very, very long time. Instead of running away, Zoe put on her favorite girly coveralls over her short shorts and tank top. She donned a pair of practical shoes and put her hair in a ponytail. She was ready for her first day as an apprentice woodworker.

She took the bus from the Bright Institute into Fate Mountain Village, stopped at the cafe, and walked the rest of the way to Angus’s woodshop. When she arrived in the parking lot, she could see Angus working through the open garage style door. She walked up to him, holding a cardboard tray with two coffees in one hand and her protective glasses in the other.

Angus was sweeping sawdust out the front door into a big pile, and he looked up at her as she approached.

“Good morning, Zoe,” Angus said. “Is one of those for me?”

“I hope you like mocha lattes,” Zoe said.

“Chocolate and coffee? My favorite,” Angus said, lifting his coffee out of the tray. “Yum, thanks. Come on in the shop, and I’ll give you a tour.”

Angus showed her his workshop and pointed out all of the machines he had there. Zoe had trained on each of the machines and knew how to use them. Now that she was an apprentice for Angus, he would help take her education to the next level.

The young woman who had been to sixty-five countries over the last seven years thought it was funny that she was so excited about pushing two-by-fours through a bandsaw. But the hometown girl part of her told the traveler part of her to shut up.

The woodshop was Zoe’s new element, and she was not going to apologize for it.

“You’ve got really great equipment here,” she said, looking around.

“Almost as good as what they have up at the Institute,” Angus said.

“Your shop is more complete than the woodshop at the Institute. I can’t wait to get to it. What are you working on today?”

“Nothing all that exciting. I’m constructing the bones of some custom cabinets for a new build up on the mountain. I really could use your help. It’ll make the project go much faster.”

“I love cabinets.”

“What are your favorite cabinets?” Angus asked absently as he began to pull sheets of Spruce from the stack near the far wall.

“I’ve been studying Louis the Fifteenth cabinetry and chest-of-drawers.”

“I love Louis the Fifteenth style,” Angus said, moving the sheet of Spruce to the bandsaw table. “What are your favorite pieces?”

Zoe helped Angus arrange the sheet on the table. “I’m fascinated by chests with secret compartments from that time period,” Zoe said, regretting her words as soon as they passed from her lips. She was trying to impress her new mentor and just put her foot in it.

“You know; I’ve been meaning to start a project with secret compartments. We should make one together as our first custom project.”

“That sounds like a lot of fun,” Zoe said, pushing her goggles over her eyes.

Angus turned to shut the shop door when a black SUV with Fate Mountain Police Department in yellow across the side pulled up in the parking lot. Zoe’s heart sank and she began looking for any means of escape. But it was too late, she was trapped.

She clenched her fist and waited for the worst, expecting to be handcuffed at any moment. When the doors to the SUV swung open, she saw Heath step out of the passenger side in a blue uniform. The man who emerged from the driver’s side was dressed in dark blue jeans and a tailored but sporty tan suit jacket and a white shirt with a blue tie. His badge was hooked over his black leather belt and his holster gun was slung around his hip.

Zoe took and a sharp breath when her eyes wandered over the man’s incredible physique and up to his handsome face. It was Rollo, her mate. His sandy blond hair framed his angular, masculine face and his blue eyes shone in the morning sunlight. His eyes flashed when they saw her, and she gulped at his reaction. She took a step back into the woodshop, pretending like she was in desperate need of a sip of mocha latte.

“Hi, Rollo,” Angus said, in a friendly tone. “What brings you out to the woodshop?”

“Zoe,” Heath said enthusiastically, walking up to her where she stood beside a steel side table against the wall.

“Hi, Heath,” she croaked. Zoe cleared her throat and smiled at her friend. “You look great in that uniform.”

Zoe glanced over at Rollo who’d stopped in his tracks. Angus was waiting expectantly for Rollo to speak, but Rollo’s eyes were trained on Zoe. She could feel the heat of his dominant energy rolling in waves across the room. She felt like a deer in headlights, pinned to the floor by his animal magnetism.

Why was he here? Did he know?

“Angus,” Rollo said, as if suddenly remembering where he was. “I came down here to ask you a few questions about woodworking.”

“Shoot,” Angus replied.

“Take a look at this Louis the Fifteenth chest of drawers,” Rollo said, showing Angus some eight by ten glossy photographs. “I’m investigating a case involving one of these chests. It has a secret compartment. Are you familiar with this style of furniture at all?”

“I am familiar with the style and construction. As a matter of fact, Zoe and I were just talking about this exact subject,” Angus said, giving her away.

Zoe gritted her teeth, but pretended it was just a toothy smile as she looked up at Angus and Rollo. She could feel perspiration trickle down her arm under her coveralls, and she fidgeted where she stood. She drew on all of the skills she’d learned over the last seven years on the road and told herself to play it cool.

“We decided to make a chest with a secret compartment for our first project together,” Zoe said.

“That’s one crazy coincidence,” Heath said, his hands on his hips as he looked around the woodshop.

“That is quite a coincidence,” Rollo said, his eyes burning into Zoe.

“What did you want to know?” Angus asked.

“I need to know more information about how the secret compartment is constructed and how one might break into it.”

“I can tell you what I know,” Angus said.

Angus, who usually wasn’t a big talker, began to rattle off the details of the construction of a Louis the Fifteenth chest with a secret compartment. Heath listened intently and Rollo continued staring at Zoe.

Zoe felt tension hang like a heavy mist in the air. Her jaguar has been roaring and clawing ever since she’d picked up Rollo’s scent. He hadn’t taken his eyes off her the entire time he’d been in the workshop. She couldn’t get the look on his face out of her mind. It was somewhere between astonished and aroused. Not just aroused, full of lust. It was almost as if she could hear his grizzly growling inside her own mind.

They were both shifters. It was different when both mates had animals within. Shifter mates could sense each other in deeper ways than any human ever could. She could almost sense his heart beating and his blood flowing through his veins. She could smell his arousal, and it only heightened her own.

“That’s very interesting, Angus,” Rollo finally said as Angus expounded on the marvels of the wood joints used in the 18th-century. “I think I have everything I need.”

“Any time,” Angus said, slapping Rollo on the back with his big hand.

Rollo was anything but small, but even for a shifter Angus was big. The impact forced Rollo forward, and he came that much closer to Zoe. He straightened his tie and cleared his throat as he looked at her.

“So you have an interest in Louis the Fifteenth secret compartment chests?” Rollo asked her.

“A minor interest,” Zoe said, shrugging.

“You said they were your favorite,” Angus said. Zoe’s jaguar growled.

“Could we have a word in private?” Rollo said to Zoe. “Heath, wait here. Zoe, follow me.”

“What?” she said, following him out of the woodshop and around the side of the building. There was a strip of lawn that led toward a wooded area. Rollo continued walking, and she followed him until they were at the edge of the forest.

“What do you want?” she said again.

“You know why I wanted to speak with you in private,” he said.

She didn’t know. Was it because he knew she’d taken the jewels? Was her cover blown? Or was it because he still wanted to date? Neither of those options were any less daunting.

“Did you come down here on purpose?” she said, deciding to play the defensive card.

“I had no idea you would be here, if that’s what you’re suggesting?”

“I told you, I’m not ready to date right now,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest as she pursed her lips at him.

“I came down here to ask Angus about the Louis the Fifteenth secret compartment chest. A subject that you seem quite familiar with. I wonder why that is.”

“We should stop beating around the bush,” Zoe said, trying to change the subject. “You and I both know that we’re mates. Now that we’ve met, there’s no way of avoiding it. What do you propose we do now?”

Rollo drew back, his face changing from scrutinizing to confused. “Why do you think I signed up for Mate.com in the first place, Zoe Bright?”

“Probably for different reasons than I did. But usually people sign up for those things because they want to find a romantic relationship. Shifters, as we both know, usually want to settle down and start a family.”

“You are a shifter,” Rollo countered.

“But I’m not just any shifter,” Zoe purred, leaning toward him.

She could smell his arousal rising off him and sense the tension in his muscles as they coiled, ready to pounce on her. She slid past him, brushing slightly against his arm as she walked towards the forest.

“I’ve seen the world. I know what’s out there. I also know that shifter marriages don’t always work. My father was a jaguar like me, and my mother was a grizzly like my brother Corey. Their relationship didn’t work out. My father was a gambler and a lady’s man, and he never stayed home. He left my mother destitute with two children, but she always took him back. It was heartbreaking to watch my mother suffer all my life. So you see, you may be my mate, but that doesn’t mean that I belong to you. It doesn’t mean that we’ll have a happily ever after.”

She heard him turn behind her and felt his hot breath blow over the back of her neck.

“Your brother found a mate and he was a notorious bachelor. If Corey can settle down, so can you.”

She turned around, looking up at him through her thick, black lashes. She flicked her tongue across her lip and stepped close to him. They were so close she could feel the heat of his body radiating off of him, filling her with his warmth.

“Corey and I are very different people. Or haven’t you heard? I’m a bad girl. I traveled the world doing whatever I please for seven years. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, Commander,” Zoe purred.

He moved in closer until their faces were only inches apart, and he whispered into her ear. “I’m going to find out,” he said.

She took a step back and giggled as she turned away. It was getting too intense, and if he got any closer she might just throw herself into his arms. Her jaguar filled her mind with images of unzipping her coveralls and dropping on her knees in front of him. He caught her arm gently but firm and stood beside her.