Grizzly - Bundle Parts 1-3 (3 page)

God, I could only hope so.

In some ways, the writer’s life is so solitary that when my phone rings, it surprises me. The outside world has a way of intruding on your inside world and short of the fridge being absolutely empty of food, do you pull yourself together to go outside and face the world and join reality. Briefly.

As sparingly as possible in my case.

Weaving make-believe and pretend into fiction was a time-consuming love affair of its own kind. One that I was an expert at, apparently. If I was capable of suspending my disbelief for the love of a good story, then why would it be so hard for me to believe that I’d found a man, to be truly interested in?

That sat on my chest, like an elephant. I bolted up in my bed.

It wasn’t so hard to believe… which made me wonder, did I need to fire my new editor? End this working relationship straight-away so we could pursue a relationship outside of the arrangement of a work-related one?

I almost picked up my phone to do exactly that, but stopped.

This would be true, only if he was interested too. Was he interested? I sighed and leaned back against my bed’s headboard. I’d always been a bit too impulsive. And I knew that right now, I was headed in that direction. In danger of making an ardent fool of myself if I didn’t just wait this out.

Allow some time to pass and not ruin it before it even had a chance to get started. When I got like this, there was only one thing to do. Work out. Go for a swim. Take a walk. Get some fresh air. That was exactly what I was going to do next.

After I finished reading the next chapter in my book.

Chapter Two

(( 2 ))

ABE

Once done with breakfast, I walked a few blocks away, to a nearby independent coffee-shop that I liked to frequent, so that I could start straightaway on the edit for my new client. Settling in at a cozy spot, tucked up front, in the apex where the window and wall met, a perfect spot for people-watching, I mused on the woman and author I’d just met and had breakfast with.

She was beguilingly lovely and utterly oblivious to herself. She burned bright with the creative mania of a writer intensely absorbed in her fictional worlds and universe. Without a laptop, pen, pencil or typewriter – she would simply be another escapist fool hell-bent on getting away from reality.

And this was exactly why I was so charmed by her. Her creative mind hinted at places tucked away, barely revealed and full of heat, longing and passion.

How I knew all of this about her – I couldn’t say, but I’d felt it. From the moment we’d laid eyes on one another. That intense charge and connection between us, brimming just beneath the surface.

I sighed and took a healthy slurp of my coffee, the caffeinated brown nectar I enjoyed the most of all beverages. Well, maybe except for beer. Breathing it in, I thought about her scent. So feminine, soft, sweet – erotically enticing. I found myself imagining licking parts of her tucked away, deep within her inner folds.

My manhood was waking up and I suddenly realized I’d need to get my mind out of the gutter so as not to have a raging boner in a public place. It had been too long. Too long since sex.

My divorce had been difficult but necessary.

It was a simple case of getting married too fast, too soon at far too young an age. She’d just been a month or two over twenty when I’d proposed and eloped with her. I was only eight years older than her, but that made all the difference as each year passed. She’d felt robbed of her chance to get to know herself better and become her own person.

Thankfully, we’d opted to wait to have children, so that made our separation and subsequent divorce much cleaner.

For that, I was immensely grateful.

In the end, the woman I’d fallen in love with was no longer in love with me and I’d done the right thing by her. I walked away from everything we’d built together. I let her have it all. Just gave it to her, didn’t even challenge her attorney at all. Signed the dotted line, picked up what belongings I truly wanted and left. At first, I’d stayed with a friend in
Jackson Hole
, enjoying the posh
Rocky Mountain
town.

Granted, not having to be monogamous and sex-starved since we’d long since stopped having it, I fell into a pattern of casual sex for a couple years. Which was nice. Okay, more than nice.

I kept my heart at a distance, but enjoyed the raw, primal companionship that sex offers.

Then I got the itch. The urge to find my real mate. My true mate. Bear nature and all.

I didn’t want to have just sex any longer, I wanted a partner again. A companion. A mate to mate with. One to keep. Call my own. A wife. I wanted children. Yes, it was old-school. And traditional. But romantic and simple.

Starting over, I’d decided I would need to take some risks. Get outside my comfort zone. Be brave and go somewhere I’d never been before. Of all the East Coast cities, Boston appealed the most to me. Maybe it had to do with
Red Sox
and the history. Or the weather and collegiate influence. Maybe all of it. So I went. Which was hilarious, at first, in retrospect.

A shifter like me, in the city!?

Ha!

But I’d done it. Because waiting any longer wasn’t going to work. I was fighting against my bear nature to be more alone, stand-offish and reclusive. Everything in me screamed –
find a cave already!!

Sure, it was that time of year when my kind would stock and store up, disappear for a deep, winter’s sleep and burrow away somewhere safe, dark, earthy and dry to slumber away the darkest part of winter until early spring. A
Rocky Mountain
shifter, I’d been incredibly reluctant to move to a thriving metropolis area, but I’d trusted my gut that for some reason, I needed to make my way to the East Coast to find my match. My partner and better half.

My mate.

I opened Cassidy’s manuscript, scrolled to page one and began to read. After meeting her for breakfast, having a better sense of her persona, I wanted to start from the beginning again, even though I’d already started reading her book.

I reminisced a bit, observing her squirm as she’d explained why she wrote shifter
erom
, the term the industry used for erotic romance. How it had started as a way to pay the bills, then turned into a lotto ticket of hard work plus some publishing good fortune along with right timing. That she still had literary ambitions.

Cute. Charming. Amusing…

I wasn’t one to judge. I admired the writer’s gift and talent to weave realities from words, grammar, sentences, paragraphs and chapters that turned into stories of every imaginable kind. It was a noble profession, a respected art-form, and it required a brave tenacity to be willing to put out to the world a title that was worth reading.

Because criticism was as intense as the sharp, hard surface of a diamond-cut jewel. Unforgiving, unrelenting, cruel and very rarely fair. Readers were sometimes an assumptive, apathetic bunch. But when that
sweet-spot
was found, when the story captured a reader’s mind and heart – then magic happened.

As I read, I was pulled in. I’d suspend my inner editor for the first complete read-through and then I’d allow the red-ink to fly. Although she only needed and was paying for me to edit the three final chapters, I’d decided to do both. Considering that Charlene had already done a final edit, I wasn’t convinced she’d made the most of Cassidy’s book.

I’d run the risk of doing a full edit as well as the partial she required. This way, she could get a feel for my editing technique. Hopefully, she’d appreciate my style, my approach?

Besides, Charlene had confided in me that she had grown tired of editing all of Cassidy’s shifter titles, no matter how reliable and consistent the stream of income was. She needed a break and was hoping I’d consider filling in the gap. She didn’t want to leave Cassidy hanging or hurt her feelings. Maybe we could finesse a transition without Charlene realizing it?

The day passed from mid-morning light to the twilight of evening before I left the coffee shop, having ordered a sandwich mid-afternoon to pull me through from the big breakfast I’d eaten, to the salmon, baked potato and asparagus dinner I would cook for myself once I got home.

Done with reading her story, I’d shifted into editor mode and was already halfway done. I’d give it a break, enjoy my dinner and then continue on into the night after taking a nap. Rising from the table and gathering up my belongings, I noticed that the tall, slender barista behind the counter was watching me closely. She’d flirted a bit when I’d placed my order.

It was always a bit awkward and flattering. But how does a man, a bear like me explain to women;
Sorry, you’re not my type. I like plus-sized women with soft, sweet, feminine curves. Creatures ample with cleavage, hips and ass. Lane Bryant women… Women like Cassidy, for example.

I wouldn’t. I never did. There was no need to be rude, but I sure hated it when they assumed that they were my type, flirting up a storm and ending up confused when I didn’t return it. Most would assume that I was gay and I was perfectly fine with them thinking that.

Nope, I was looking for a big, voluptuous,
Mama Bear
type.

One to keep me and my bed warm. For life.

Chapter Three

(( 3 ))

CASSIDY

At some point, spending most of my day in bed, reading – I finally got up and went for a swim. My preferred form of exercise. As a plus-sized, curvaceous woman, I’d found that the hardest part wasn’t the actual workout as I loved getting in the water and how calm, relaxed and
zen
I felt during and after a workout.

Nope, the hard part was the scrutiny I would get from other people. Some disapproving, some amazed, others, mainly men, who were attracted to me. Over time, I’d become more accepting, kind and loving of my body. Once I got past all the stereotypical, societal bullshit, I was finally able to look beyond what was dictated as attractive and desirable to find that I was an attractive woman, in my own, curvy way.

I ate well, exercised, went to the doctor and in the end, I’d realized that having a positive and healthy attitude about my body was far better than being on some sort of never-ending diet that never worked, deprived me of the pleasure of food, and let’s face it – was a type of psychological hypnotism that the diet industry used to make money.

It had taken some time to readjust my expectations about myself, to be more realistic, kind and fair. Instead of berating myself constantly, like seemingly so many plus-size women do, I learned to love, accept and take care of me and my body the best I could. So, at the end of the day, I was confident, comfortable and proud of my rubenesque physique.

About the only area I still struggled with was how to meet a man’s attraction and desire for me, head-on. To believe it, accept it and know it was real – no doubt or question’s asked. A type of assumptive confidence that many thin, slender women seemed to take for granted.

That teenage part of my brain that had been mercilessly teased about being chubby or plump still lurked, deep in the recesses of my psyche and unconscious, wreaking havoc on my self-esteem. As if being either of those things was a bad thing? But the world sure did make it seem terrible. Foolishly, when young and naïve – we fall prey to and believe this utter nonsense. The focus should be on health and well-being, not some magically-defined pant size.

It was like a demon in there, roaming around sometimes.
Cast thee out!!

I’d decided that I needed an exorcist to face my inner demons surrounding self-esteem and body acceptance. It arrived in the form of my therapist, Stanley. I paid to talk my way to sanity, when being perpetually solitary got to me. When I was climbing the walls. I was more than happy to pay for some talk-time that brought peace of mind and some sense to my life, my silly little existence on Earth.

So, there I was, doing my laps and just as I’m about to flip and go down the other side, a guy in the lane next to me makes a mean remark;
watch out, the whale is doing a flip!

Most of the time, I would just let that slide. Besides, whales are perfectly amazing animals. In any other context, I’d take that as a compliment.

But not today.

Maybe it was because I’d met Abe earlier in the day, an attractive, handsome and physically fit man I clearly desired and had no idea if he would ever be interested in me. It was hard to figure for the most part since the amount of bullshit a plus-sized woman endures is only equal to the amount of grief and shame that gets poured onto men who happen to find us attractive, sexy and desirable. So, they learn to hide it and they hide it well.

I was already feeling vulnerable, so to be provoked and made fun of, in public,
while I’m bloody, fracking exercising
, no less – was too much!

Instead, today, I stopped swimming and decked him. Just out and out hit him. Straight in the face. He didn’t see it coming either. Next thing I knew, there was blood everywhere, pouring out of his nose. Disgusted, I made my way to the steps and got out of the pool. I ignored his wailing and all the shocked looks by other swimmers and gym members, and made my way to the locker-room showers.

Allowing the warm water to run over me, soothing and calming me, my seething anger turned into a sob.

What had I done?!

I was almost done drying myself off when a staff member of the gym made her way to me in the locker-room. I could tell that she looked about as awkward as possible, but it was her job.

“M’am. The police are here to ask you some questions about assaulting another gym member. I’ll need you to come out and speak with them, please.” She said, her voice shaky but still considerate.

“Okay,” I said miserly. Somewhat embarrassed, I finished dressing as fast as I could while she waited for me.

Once she escorted me out of the locker-room, two burly-sized police officers stood by, waiting.

“M’am, we need to talk with you. Please come with us.” One of them said to me, his voice firm but not rude.