Dating Agency Bear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (BRIDES fur BEARS Book 6) (8 page)

Penelope hummed softly as she
designed her new website. She was revamping her website so that
clients could sign up for her agency's services online. At present,
her client base consisted of just the residents of Shadow Point.

Damien had rightly pointed
out that to expand, she had to make it easier for singles from other
towns and cities to sign up for her services. “Online dating
is the in thing,” Damien said. “I've never tried it
myself, but some of the guys have been boasting about how many women
they've hooked up with online.”

Penelope agreed it was a good
idea but she didn't want people signing up for her agency's services
just to get a casual date. She was committed to finding the perfect
match for her clients. She wanted her clients to find true love,
just like she had.

Penelope let out a happy,
contended sigh. She was a woman in love. She had given up on love,
or so she thought. Well, she had proven to herself that love did
work in strange and wondrous ways.

She could hardly believe that
she had fallen so hard and fast for the very first client that her
brother had dragged into her office. But—when the right one
came along, it was foolish and futile to run. She had tried to deny
her feelings for Damien because she was too afraid to take the plunge
and get hurt again. But she should have known that Damien would
never hurt her. He was cheeky and playful, but his actions were
always thoughtful and sweet. A sweet, sexy, growly mate. What more
could she want?

Her brother, Graham, had been
merciless in his teasing. All Damien's work mates knew about his
newly mated status, and Graham was already calling her Mrs Ken even
though she wasn't married yet.

They would have a big white
wedding, but she was just so busy with her agency right now. Graham
had volunteered to plan the wedding with Damien, and she couldn't
wait to see how that turned out.

Two pranksters planning a
wedding. It was going to be the craziest wedding ever.

Penelope looked up at the
sound of the door chime. Three men had just walked into her office.
Two of the men were in black muscle shirts and sported buzz cuts
while one of them wore a tailored suit and had a hat pulled low over
his face.

She stood up immediately.
“Good morning,” she said, an inexplicable sense of unease
rippling through her.

One man moved to the door and
flipped the sign to Closed. The other walked briskly to the back and
scanned the pantry. “No one,” he reported when he came
out. “She's alone.”

“Good.” The man
with the hat smiled thinly. He looked like the leader of the trio.
“Miss Hatfield, allow me to introduce myself. I'm John, and
I'm here to get something from you.”

“John,” she
repeated, staring at the three intimidating men. Were they robbing
her in broad daylight? Her pulse began to race as she considered her
options. She couldn't fight them off. If she screamed really
loudly, would anyone hear her? Or would they slit her throat before
she could even scream?

“What do you want,
John?” she spoke calmly enough. “I don't have much money
here...”

“Oh, I don't want your
money, Miss Hatfield,” John said, still smiling. “You
have something that belongs to our boss. Just give it to us, and
we'll leave.”

“Your boss.” She
blinked at them. “Who is your boss?”

“Frank Fronzo.”

“I don't know a Frank
Fronzo,” she answered.

“Sure you do. You've
taken his money, and you're keeping a copy of his accounts.”

Penelope gawked at him. “I
don't know what you're talking about. What money? What accounts?
And I've never heard of Frank Fronzo!” She took a deep breath.
“You should get out of my office now. I don't know who the
hell you think you are, but I'm calling the cops right now.”
She snatched up the phone and started to dial.

“Put the phone down,
Miss Hatfield,” John said evenly.

She felt a meaty hand squeeze
the back of her neck. “Lenny can snap your neck before you can
even blink,” John said.

Penelope turned around
stiffly, her eyes level with Lenny's biceps. She looked up with a
gulp and met a pair of black, soulless eyes.

She put the phone down
slowly. “I think you got the wrong person. I really don't
have what you want.”

John sighed regretfully.
“You're making this hard for us, and for yourself, Miss
Hatfield.”

She shook her head. “Please,
you're making a mistake. I really don't...”

John gave Lenny the signal
and a large hand clamped over Penelope's mouth.

She struggled and tried to
bite him, but Lenny simply dragged her backwards and muffled her
cries with his hard, huge hand.

Penelope watched helplessly
as John and the other guy pulled out her drawers and searched through
her whole office. They opened her files and notebooks, scanning
through the contents and leaving papers scattering all over the
floor.

“Nothing,” the
other man informed John as he emptied out the last drawer.

John narrowed his eyes at
Penelope. Then he said, “Get her laptop. It's in there.
Check if she made copies.”

John turned to Lenny and
ordered, “Get her out of here. Once we have the files, we'll
get rid of her.”

Penelope fought harder as
Lenny manhandled her towards the back door. “Let me go!”
she wheezed. She tried to kick him but her legs only jerked
uselessly in the air.

Lenny grunted as he lifted
her and dumped her in the trunk of a car. She saw John and the other
guy coming out of her office and walking swiftly towards the car.

John held up her laptop and
shook his head at her. “You shouldn't have lied, Miss
Hatfield.”

“No!” Penelope
managed to scream before the trunk lid slammed down.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE

Damien finished his lunch in
a hurry and strolled to the florist. He would get some tulips for
Penelope. Tulips were her favorite, and he was going to hide her
ring in the bouquet. His grin stretched wider as he patted the
dainty velvet box in his pocket.

A man hurried past him,
knocking into his side. Damien spun round but the man didn't stop.
“Hey...”

Damien took a sharp whiff and
started. He recognized the man's scent. That was the mousy-looking
human man who had stepped into Penelope's office and interrupted them
just as things were steaming up. He remembered thinking that the guy
looked like a Doe caught in the headlights. Ben Doe, yep, that's his
name. It suited him to a T, he thought.

But Mr Ben Doe looked
different. Almost unrecognizable.

Damien remembered he had
black hair and wore a boring pair of spectacles. But the man who had
just passed him was blond, without glasses and he was wearing jeans
and running shoes instead of a rumpled suit. He also moved with the
speed and agility of a much younger man.

Damien sniffed the air again.
The scent was unmistakably the same, but Ben Doe's appearance had
changed completely.

With a frown, Damien turned
round and followed the man. Something was up with the guy. No one
would change their appearance so drastically in such a short time.
Unless they were up to something.

“Where are you going,
Mr Ben Doe?” Damien muttered. “And I bet that's not your
real name.”

Damien stopped in front of a
corner bakery and pretended to be interested in the pretty cupcakes
on display when Ben glanced over his shoulder.

The street was reasonably
busy so he could hide in plain sight. He watched Ben Doe intently,
never letting him out of his sight.

Ben turned around to scan the
street and Damien saw that even the color of his eyes had changed.
Damien remembered they were black before. But now they were a clear
blue.

“Colored contact
lenses, hair dye, hmmm…” Damien mumbled to himself.
“Why the disguise, Mr Doe?”

Damien followed him down
another street. The crowd thinned out and Damien had to duck behind
parked cars and trees in a hurry to prevent himself from being
spotted.

Near the end of the street,
Ben looked around surreptitiously and scooted into a small alley.

Damien tiptoed to the side of
the building and flattened himself against the wall. His bear
rumbled to the surface and sniffed the air. Yep, Ben Doe was in the
alley. And there was someone else with him.

His bear pricked up its ears
and listened. Damien stilled his breathing and let his shifter
senses come to the fore. He could hear Ben speaking rapidly, and he
could make out every word.

“I did what you wanted,
Ian,” Ben hissed. “Where's my money?”

“I paid you already,”
a deeper male voice answered smoothly.

“You paid half,”
Ben snarled. “You said you'll pay me the other half when they
come for the Hatfield woman. Don't fuck with me, Ian Renshaw!”

Damien eyes bugged. Ian
Renshaw!

Penelope had told him all
about her ex. Her face had twisted in disgust when she mentioned him
to Damien. It was as if just saying the creep's name had left a vile
taste in her mouth.

Ian Renshaw. That was the
name of her cheating, lying ex.

Damien inched nearer to the
mouth of the alley when Ben Doe began speaking again. He was talking
about that Hatfield woman again.

“Penelope,”
Damien hissed under his breath.

“I hid the file in her
laptop. It's hidden in a folder within a folder. She wouldn't
notice it, but it's not that hard to locate. I did my part. Now
give me my half of the money,” Ben said threateningly.

This wasn't the same timid,
fumbling man who had walked into Penelope's office. Damien regretted
not staying that day to keep an eye on him. What did he hide in
Penelope's laptop? A file? Did it contain a virus? Some malicious
spyware? And Ian Renshaw had paid him to do it.

Whatever it was, it wasn't
anything good.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

Penelope groped around
blindly for her glasses. Her glasses had fallen off when Lenny threw
her roughly to the ground. She found them and put them on quickly.
It didn't really make much difference. The room was still too dark
for her to see anything.

A light came on. Penelope
saw John and his two beefy henchmen enter the room and walk towards a
table. John placed her laptop on the table and turned it towards
her.

“Look at this, Miss
Hatfield,” John said. “Mr Frank Fronzo's accounts.
They're all here.”

“What accounts?”
she demanded. “What are you talking about? How dare you mess
with my laptop! I have all my clients' confidential data in
there...”

“See for yourself.”
John folded his arms and jerked his head at her laptop.

Penelope scrambled to the
rickety table and squinted at her laptop screen. She pushed her
glasses higher up her nose and peered at the confusing columns of
numbers across the screen.

“What is this?”
She shook her head. “I've never seen this before.”

John clucked his tongue and
gave her a look that held both scorn and pity.

“Take a closer look,
Miss Hatfield. Take all the time you need,” he said and
stepped away from the table.

Penelope stared at the screen
again. She was looking at a spreadsheet, with rows and rows of
large, mind-boggling numbers. She had seen Ian working on these
before. Ian was an accountant, and he often brought his work home.
These were the very detailed and complicated accounts of some
organization or company.

“I have never seen
these documents in my life,” she stammered. “And I don't
know what they're doing on my laptop.”

John regarded her
dispassionately. “These are Mr Frank Fronzo's accounts. His
other
set of accounts,” he said.

“Other? There's
another set?” she squeaked. “Are you going to tell me
that you've found this other set of accounts in my laptop too?”

“No. The other set of
accounts have been submitted to the tax authorities. Don't play
dumb, Miss Hatfield.”

Penelope reeled back as the
pieces clicked into place. She didn't like the picture that she was
seeing at all.

“Ian...” She
took a shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “Ian
Renshaw is Mr Frank Fronzo's accountant, isn't he.”

John looked bored and pissed.
“Stop playing games, Miss Hatfield. You know all this. But I
must say that you are a rather good actress.”

“I'm not...”

“You blackmailed my
boss. You struck a deal with him, but you didn't keep your end of
the bargain.”

“What?” Penelope
shouted. “This is all a mistake! I have never...”

“We wrote out the check
in your name. You deposited the check but you never handed over Mr
Fronzo's accounts.”