Hollywood Bear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (13 page)

Sunday night he was able to get a breather, and though it was nearly midnight, he texted Shelley to see if she might be awake.

The answer came back:
I’m up
. And so was he, at the thought of her lying tousled and sleepy in bed.

He went outside in the cool air and paced as he pressed her number. Two coyotes—both of whom he knew—howled and yodeled in the distance as they chased rabbits under the nearly full moon.

He felt the moon’s pull himself, but transformation could wait. “Shelley?”

“Hi, Mick. How is your grandfather?” 

The phone made squishy, muffled noises, and he imagined her walking to shut herself inside her closet-room for privacy. He longed to take her away from that place, to give her everything she wanted . . .

“He’s a lot better. It’s been wall to wall people. If he can survive that, he should be in good shape. I’m going to head back to town tomorrow.”

“I’m so glad!”

“Will I see you?”

“I
wish
,” she said, and at the breathy note in her voice his cock stirred. “But I took a job today. My agent says all this interest is due to your clip, and we should grab while the grabbing is good. And not one of the offers involves a flowered dress, falling down stairs, or spilling stuff!”

He could hear the warmth in her voice. She expected him to share the joke, but he couldn’t help a wince. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s not
your
fault!”

“I’ve pandered to that shit. And with you. At least twice!”

“It’s the way of the world, and it pays the bills. Besides, you must have thought I flopped with style or you wouldn’t have hired me back.” Laughter made her voice purr. “Anyway, this gig is a commercial for trail bikes. Marv says their switch from a guy to a woman is a huge change. That’s why I took it.”

“Where is the shoot?”

“Santa Anita Canyon.”

“One of those sites second only to Red Rock for Western shoot-outs, alien landscapes, and zombie attacks. Mine among them.”

She uttered her delicious laugh, and desire spiked through him, followed by urgency. “Listen, Shelley, I want to talk to you. But I don’t want to do that over the phone.”

“Me either,” she said, her voice altering, not angry or distant, but quiet. Urgent or wary? “I have to see people face to face,” she said. “Not that I’ve been all that great at reading people even when I am.”

“I get the impression you’ve been burned.”

“Like a burning thing. But nobody likes to talk about how they got completely played.”

Played how? He longed to ask, but heard ‘end of subject’ in her voice. This was not the time to go into lies and surprises. They were too far apart, and he had to see
her
face.

Sure enough, she went on, “Speaking of which, you’ll want to get your car, of course. Jan said she’d keep the keys since I’ve got this gig. I’ll text you her number.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll have one of the drivers pick it up whenever it’s convenient for her.” He thumbed tired eyes as he said, “Well, if you have to get up before traffic to drive out to Santa Anita Canyon, I should let you get some sleep.”

“Yes, I guess so.” The reluctance in her voice made me want to teleport straight to her.

“
Pust yah prisnius teb,”
he said, because some things were easier to express in Russian—though impossible to correctly translate. “Ah, I hope you get a good night’s sleep.”

And though he hadn’t been able to translate in bald English the affectionate humor in what was basically, ‘dream of me,’ she said, “I’ll sleep well if you show up in my dreams. If you know what I mean.”

They shared a laugh and ended the call—he with a boner the size of the Eiffel Tower.

The next morning, Mick and his grandparents finally sat alone over breakfast. Marisia had risen early to make porridge sprinkled with raisins. Mick took that as a sign that both grandparents were ready for life to return to normal.

Ivan smiled across at Mick. “And so, I’m told you have found your true mate?”

“I think so. Dyed Ivan, how do you know for certain?”

He spread his hands. “You know.”

Marisia nodded. “Both your natures must be certain. Then it will be right.”

“But you two are both shifters. It has to be easier for you. Did my father think my mother was the one? He sure didn’t think that way when I saw him last. He was so bitter and angry.”

Ivan looked down at his hands, and Marisia sighed. “He told us before he married her that she was the one. But later on we began to wonder if he said it because he thought we wanted to hear it.”

“I don’t want to upset you by raking up the past,” Mick said. “I know you’ve never really wanted to talk about him, except the positive things, so I’d have good memories of him. But I need to know, what was the problem? That last time we were together, he told me there was no such thing as mates, that everything about shifter life was fairy tales. I didn’t understand a lot of it at the time, but it’s sure stayed with me.” He saw the twin expressions of sorrow in his grandparents. “He didn’t deny the truth of his own nature, surely?”

Marisia and Ivan exchanged serious looks, then she said, “You must remember how much change we all had seen. There were some young shifters in our community, which was much diminished after all the troubles, who felt that to be truly modern we should forget our dual natures. Stay human. Marry outside the community so that our children would lose that second nature altogether.”

Mick suddenly understood why they were having this conversation now, and not ten years ago. “Exactly what I did.”

Ivan nodded slowly. “You are very like your father in so many ways.”

“And we never wanted to take that away from you,” Marisia said quickly. “Mikhail Ivanovich was our son, and we loved him dearly. And we could do nothing to make life better when the world situation was so uncertain. He saw us as antiquated, powerless.”

“But here I am choosing someone outside the community.” Mick rubbed his jaw. “And yet Jean-Pierre’s father isn’t a shifter. Nor is Lisa Goldstein’s mother.”

Both grandparents nodded, Ivan saying, “Your true mate does not necessarily have to be a shifter.”

Marisia said, “Sharon Goldstein and Philippe LaFleur are their spouses’ true mates. Those marriages are strong because their natures, human and shifter, are all in harmony. Is your bear nature in accord with your chosen—“

“Her name is Shelley.”

“I like that name,” Ivan murmured, his voice a deep growl of affection. “It reminds me of the ocean.”

“How did you find her?” Marisia asked.

“My bear was the one who chose her. Insisted at first sight that she was my mate. I didn’t trust that,” Mick admitted. “Oona had walked out on me barely a month before I first saw Shelley. And though I’d known pretty much from the start that that marriage had been a mistake, I had been trying to make it work, after two strikes. But she left anyway. Then here’s Shelley, the most attractive woman on the set in spite of the ugliest getup my wardrobe designer could conceive. We grow up hearing ‘Do not judge by appearances,’ and ‘Do not mistake lust for love.’ What else could it be but simple lust? I’d never even spoken to Shelley.”

Ivan reached to grip Mick’s hand. “Our bears are always aware, their senses strong, even when they are below the surface of our human selves, just as our human minds retain human awareness when it is their turn to let the bear nature surface.”

“I understand that. And most of the time, my bear and I are in harmony. He stays locked down tight in the city, and I let him loose to roam the mountains when I go up to Idyllwild, but we are always awake when the other is on the surface. He picked her first. But how do I tell her? How do I approach it?” Mick asked.

Marisia and Ivan sat side by side, fingers intertwined. Marisia stretched her free hand to Mick, who took it, and the three of them sat there holding hands, as they had when Mick was little Misha, and he was frightened or bewildered.

Even after he had reached the age to understand that they did not have all the answers, the comfort was always steady and true. And strong.

“If she is truly the right one,” Marisia said gently, “the right words, the right way will come.”

***

Shelley looked forward to the new gig. She always loved riding, and she could even cut short the commute and spend the night at her old home, though her parents, both being teachers, were always insanely busy those last couple months of school. And if she kept busy, she wouldn’t think about Mick.

The production crew had chosen a scenic gully by the waterfall, with a tumble of camera-friendly rocks and trees. They spent a day doing set-up and rehearsal. Basically she’d ride around some rocks, over a little hill, then sweep up in a slide and woo the camera for a long beat.

The next day, her costume arrived, and it looked great. Someone had obviously scored some advance stills from Mick’s new film, because the commercial’s wardrobe people had produced an outfit a lot like Evil Biker Chick’s, but without the fake tats, piercings, and Mohawk.

But as soon as they started the actual shooting, things began to slide  . . . sideways.

First, it was the heat. Not that she minded heat—she even enjoyed it if she wasn’t working hard, and being encased in tight leather didn’t help. Shelley had to do the ground riding at ten miles an hour with no helmet so her hair would blow photogenically. She knew it would look great, but the reality was the sun blazing down into her eyes above the cool sunglasses, and having her hair untangled and brushed out between each take.

None of that would have mattered, except that she could see disappointment in the director, a sour fifty-something guy named Eric. He chain smoked constantly, looking irritated. And he glared. She now knew viscerally the difference between what she’d taken to be the Bearzilla glare—it was Mick’s intense
I see you true
gaze—and a real glare from a guy who didn’t see anything but a big girl on a bike.

Who was supposed to be seducing the viewer into buying this bike.

The outfit was there, her riding was there. She was a trained actor. She knew how to fake every type of emotion. But whether the problem was her acting or Eric’s directing and shooting, she wasn’t coming across the way he wanted. Like she had in Mick’s clip, which was apparently all over Hollywood now.

On the last take, she steadied herself, and kept a mental picture of Mick firmly in mind as she circled the beautiful bike around and roared up to make her second sweep.

“Cut,” Eric snarled, chopping with his hands.

When Shelley stopped near him, he snapped, “You’re gritting your teeth like you got stomach flu. “ He squinted up at the cloudless sky, then said, “Let’s break for the day. Tomorrow we’ll try a different approach. Give me a couple of fancy aerials, then we’ll bring you in for a five second close-up, full make-up.” In other words, he’d paint another face on her.

He turned away without another word. Her sense of affront vanished when she realized that things were back to usual. She’d always been regarded as a thing, a piece of equipment. If you weren’t beautiful, you were part of the background decor.

Until this last week. Mick Volkov had spoiled her.
This
is my reality, she thought. The thing with Mick—whatever it was—was too new. When she was with him, nothing else mattered, but away? It felt like a mirage.

She brooded as she changed out of her leather outfit, then drove to Altadena, where her parents lived.

They greeted her with distracted surprise and she settled right into the family routine. At dinner they talked over what her brothers and little nieces and nephew were up to, and the school politics at Mom’s high school and Dad’s middle school. They asked about her, and she gave them a noncommittal answer because she wasn’t ready to talk about Mick until she understood their relationship herself.

Shelley helped clean up and then retired to her old room, which almost looked large compared to her current closet. She lay back on her bed, looking at her film posters and framed shots of motocross tricks that had once defined her entire life. The walls were faded blue, like the rest of the house. No one would have ever known a girl lived in the house—everything was masculine, sports oriented. Mom had never been “girly” either—she was a basketball coach.

This house defined comfort to Shelley, but she sensed that she had turned some corner, and had truly left this life behind. Mick was at the center of that. Did she want a man to define her life? No. But this much she knew: she wanted Mick Volkov to be part of her life.

She pulled out her phone, her finger hovering over the speed dial. Nope. Comfortable the beat-up old house might be, but their teen years had been grievous because of how thin the walls were. She wasn’t ready for the inevitable questions if she forgot to keep her voice down.

She texted him:
How is your grandfather today?

Shelley waited, then set the phone on her nightstand. He was busy, but he’d get back to her. For the first time, she noticed her own self-assurance. Wow. Another corner turned.