The Bear Who Loved Me (21 page)

It took three tries before he could form a word. Even so, it came out more like a grunt. “No,” he said. Then the most important thing for her own safety. “Leave.”

“…can't.”

Hell.

O
MG! OMG! OMG! OMG!

Julie Simon was not a prude. She enjoyed a finely honed male body as much as any woman. But when said finely honed man answered his door stark naked and proceeded to look at her like she was the answer to his prayers, well then, her libido kicked into overdrive. Especially when that look turned into hunger and his already thick cock stiffened into a staff that aimed unerringly at her.

She was not a prude, but hell, this was sexuality at its most raw. And she apparently liked raw.

Who knew? All her boyfriends up to now had been friendly, flaky men who spoke in full sentences and never ever growled. And yet one horny grunt from this hairy guy and her nipples tightened while everything else went liquid.

Not a prude then. Apparently, she fell more into the slut category, because if he made a move on her right then, she wasn't exactly sure what she'd do to stop him. First of all, he looked like he could overpower her in a heartbeat. Second, the moment he'd offered her his mocha latte, her knees had gone weak and her lust spiked. When the hell had she developed a caveman fetish?

Insane!

But she wasn't a beast to be ruled by her hormones. And she certainly wasn't going to jump a near stranger, no matter how ripped his abs or how much he stared at her. Good lord, she'd never been the center of such focused attention. Need rippled off those sculpted pecs, it vibrated in the air between his broad shoulders and her tight breasts, and it seemed like he wanted her so badly it was hard for him to form words. But how was that possible? All he'd done was answer the door…naked.

She took a breath, startled—but not surprised—to find it thick with musk. His? Hers? Who knew?

Get a grip!

She momentarily flashed on what she could grip and struggled to restrain a near-hysterical laugh. She was not a woman who thought things like that. Not in the usual course of the day. So she closed her eyes and lifted her mocha to her lips. Damn, he made a great cup of coffee. The honey added just the right amount of sweet.

Focus on the essentials: caffeine and sugar.

That's when he spoke. Two words: “no” and “leave.” Well, that was par for the course from the men in her life. They'd act one way, then say the opposite. Get her revved, then disappear. Give her a mocha and then order her to leave. All he needed to do now was invite her to move in then break up with her and he'd be just like her ex.

But unlike what she'd done with her ex, she refused to leave. Her father needed his help, and so she would be stubborn. At least until she got a fuller explanation from him. One that included two syllable words.

“So,” she ventured when the silence stretched too long between them. “Do you remember me?” She certainly remembered him. Linebacker for the football team with a crazy streak. She hadn't gone to high school here, but she'd spent a few summers being rejected by his clique while listening to tales of his antics. Everyone had talked about the crazy stunts he'd pulled running wild in the state park. According to the gossip, he'd jumped from tree to tree the length of the park. He'd raced the train and won. He'd swum the river when it was still clogged with ice.

Blah, blah, blah.

What she remembered was him finding ways to keep her away from the group. He stopped people from talking to her, he hosted parties in places she couldn't find, and he never did anything but give her the cold shoulder. And where the great Mark Robertson went, everyone else—but her—followed. Which meant she'd had two very lonely summers thanks to him.

He was a dick of the first water…except for that one amazing, incredible, life-altering night. But she refused to think about that. Ever.

She grabbed on to the cruel memories now. In her mind's eye, she lined up every time he'd turned away from her and used them to ice her hormones. She was here to get her father's journals and she'd be damned if he frightened her away with his hard muscles and his manly lust.

“I'm Julie Simon,” she said clearly. “You have my father's journals, and I need them.”

He blinked at her, his brows narrowing enough that she noticed a long scar along his forehead. Probably from tripping while racing a train, she thought sourly. Though, damn, that looked like it had been a scary wound.

“Your father?” he said, his voice gravelly and bedroom sexy.

“Yes. My father is Professor John Simon. You've been working with him. Helping him with his computer system for his research. He said you had—”

“I don't.” His voice was clearing, going from bedroom sexy to just radio mellow.

She huffed out a breath, irritation doing little to cool her lust, but every tiny bit helped. “He gave you his journals to digitize. I'm going to transcribe them for him while he's in the hospital.”

His gaze sharpened. “Hospital?”

“Yeah. Heart attack. Bypass surgery yesterday.” She kept her answer short, not wanting to relive the frantic midnight phone call from her mother or the scramble to drive from Chicago to Saginaw, Michigan, when her life was already in so much chaos. But considering the circumstances, her boss had given her leave from work. Then she had that anxious wait through the surgery while she, her mother, and her sister went slowly crazy from too much bad coffee and too little news.

“He okay?”

She nodded. “He's lucky he collapsed at the café in town. He got CPR immediately and then was airlifted to Saginaw.”

She fell silent while he studied her face. His eyes narrowed and the intensity kicked up in his dark blue eyes. She hadn't thought anything about the man could be more raw than what she'd felt earlier, but his scrutiny made her uncomfortable. Like he was reading every curve and hollow on her face for way more than she wanted to reveal.

Then he set down his coffee with a hard click. “You are worried.”

“Of course—”

“But not too worried. You believe your father will be fine.”

Two complete sentences full of two syllable words. Quite an improvement. Maybe now he'd put some pants on. Meanwhile, she watched him curve his mouth into a slow smile, his voice becoming less of a grunt, more of a smooth, deep rumble.

“I'm glad he's going to be okay.”

Hard not to soften when he spoke in those bedroom tones. “So am I. But by tomorrow he's going to be bored. I was sent here to get his journals.”

He frowned. “I gave them back a while ago.” His gaze shifted from her to a large calendar on the wall. It was a Dilbert one full of cartoons about working in the cubicle jungle. And it was on the wrong month. “What day is it?”

“Tuesday.” Then when he stared at her in confusion, she got more specific. “June second. Do you need the year, too?”

He slowly shook his head as he walked over to the calendar. “I've been asleep for three days.”

What? Holy shit! “Are you sick? Do you need to go to the hospital?” That would explain a lot.

“What? No.” His voice was emphatic, but given that he was still staring at the month of May, she wasn't convinced.

“It's not normal to sleep for days on end.” She kept her voice neutral, but was pulling out her phone to dial 911.

He swallowed, then carefully switched the calendar over to June. “It is for me. Lately.” Then he stood there glaring at the new Dilbert image. “I woke up a couple times, I think, but fell right back to sleep.”

“For three days?”

His gaze cut to hers and in those dark blue depths, she saw a haunting despair. Like a man staring down the barrel of a gun, and she had no understanding of why. She moved toward him, the gesture instinctive. She couldn't look at that much pain without reaching to comfort him. But she got only one step closer before he stiffened and turned from her.

“I'm suddenly starving,” he said, his voice settling into a forced cheer. After the husky tones from a few minutes ago, this was downright irritating. “Want something to eat?”

“No thanks.”

He crossed to a large refrigerator and pulled it open. A big T-bone sat in the center, as well as a couple more cuts of beef, plus milk and a surprising number of fruits and vegetables. Given that her refrigerator contained an expired tub of yogurt and a crappy bottle of wine, she had to be impressed that Mr. Caveman kept a well-stocked kitchen. “You sure?” he said, his voice becoming cheerier with every word. “I've got plenty.”

“No thanks. I had a burger on the way up.”

“Ugh. Fast food.” His tone held all the contempt of a celebrity chef. Meanwhile, he pulled out two steaks and threw them on a plate. His movements were efficient as he poured on a homemade marinade and set them aside to soak. Then he grabbed a variety of leafy greens, tomatoes, and God only knows what other vegetables for an amazing salad. Just watching him work was a delight, especially given the way his muscles rippled as he sliced and diced.

The steaks went into the oven right before he started sautéing some kind of mushroom and onion mixture. Oh hell. It smelled amazing and her stomach rumbled. That burger had been a while ago. He heard it, of course, and his eyes cut to hers even while he stirred his mixture.

“I was rude earlier. Please, let me make it up to you with some decent food.”

She swallowed. Damn, she was tempted. Hot guy who cooked like a dream? Sign her up! But she knew the truth of him from high school. Someone who was mean to the outsider as a teen didn't grow up to have a generous soul. It just didn't happen, no matter how well he cooked— even if she could play name the muscle on every part of his body.

“I just need those journals,” she said. “Then I'll get out of your hair.”

“I told you, I don't have them. I digitized them, then gave them back…” He glanced at the calendar. “Eight days ago.”

“They're not in the cabin.”

“Sure they are. You just don't know where to look.”

Actually, she did. With nothing else to do those two lonely summers, she'd learned her dad's “filing” system by heart. “They're not in the cabinet beneath the desk. They're not in the pile behind his lounger or beneath his bed. They're not in the pile by the toilet and the cabinet next to the coffee just held car magazine crap.”

He turned and frowned at her. “Are you sure?”

She glared at him while desperately trying not to admire his profile. Muscled thighs, taut butt, washboard abs, and that dusky erection that had yet to shrink down. “Yes,” she bit out. “I'm sure.”

“Huh.” He turned back to his sauté pan. A moment later he sniffed the air. Apparently he could smell when the steaks hit the right temperature, because he quickly pulled them out of the oven. Then he set them on two plates and poured the sautéed vegetables over them, making Julie's mouth water. Next came the salads, with a homemade dressing, of course, plus two glasses of lemonade that were probably homemade, too.

“Join me,” he said. “Then I swear I'll help you find your father's journals.”

Well, hard to deny him when he was acting so polite. And when everything smelled so divine. Then her stomach growled again, which had him smiling at her. God, he even had a dimple on his left cheek. Unfair!

A normal woman would cave gracefully. She would smile and nod prettily while she joined him at the table. She might even offer to decant some wine or something. But Julie wasn't that smooth. Instead, she exhaled a reluctant breath and closed her eyes.

“I will on one condition,” she finally said.

“What?”

Couldn't he guess? Hell. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He'd just put the plates and glasses on the table. He stood there full frontal, looking as clueless as any child. But he was adamantly
not
a child.

“Could you please—for the sake of my sanity—put on some pants?”

He blinked at her. Two full blinks, then he looked down at himself. Yup. There he was in his full woody glory.

She didn't realize a man could blush with his whole body. Truthfully, she'd never had the opportunity to see it happen so clearly. Golden brown turned mottled red. And the dusky wood? That even purpled a bit.

He made a choked sound, deep in his throat, and then his hands dropped to cover himself. Where before he'd been confident and manly, suddenly, his eyes were wide and his cheeks were bright red.

Adorable.

He gave her a quick nod before he dashed past her into the hallway and downstairs. Even his ass had turned pink. And wasn't that going to feature in her fantasies for years to come?

Julie smiled as she settled down at the table to wait for Mr. Pink Cheeks to return.

Kathy Lyons
is the wild, adventurous half of
USA Today
bestselling author Jade Lee. A lover of all things fantastical, Kathy spent much of her childhood in Narnia, Middle Earth, Amber, and Earthsea. There is nothing she adores more than turning an ordinary day into something magical, which is what happens all the time in her books. Winner of several industry awards, including the Prism Best of the Best Award, a Romantic Times Reviewers' Choice Award, and Fresh Fiction's Steamiest Read, Kathy has published more than fifty romance novels, and she's just getting started.

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KathyLyons.com

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