Vega Brothers: Khan: Secret Baby BBW (The Bear Shifters of Vega Ranch Book 2) (2 page)

Ava frowned at him. “I meant personality wise.”

“Someone that won’t nag me.”

Ava exhaled a frustrated breath as she turned back around to the computer. “Someone with a great sense of humor, smart and nice.”

“What’s next?” Khan asked, tapping his foot on the floor.

“Just relax,” she said, typing away at the keyboard. “I’ll finish it for you.”

Khan plopped down on the leather sofa. He stared at the ceiling as he wondered what Bailey was doing at this exact moment. Was she married? Did she have a boyfriend? She must. A woman that amazing wouldn’t stay single for long.

She probably had a long line-up of men waiting to ask her out once Khan had been shipped overseas. The thought made his bear growl inside him and made the vein in his temple twitch.

“All done,” she said, hitting the enter key.

“Now what?”

“Now we wait to see if you have any matches.” Khan stepped off the bed and stood beside her as the website went through the possible matches.

It binged and six women popped up on the screen. Khan’s eyes flew open and locked on the fourth one down. He would recognize that chestnut hair and those sparkling brown eyes from anywhere. It was Bailey.

“Oooh,” Ava said. “Look at this blond one. She’s pretty.”

Khan didn’t look up. He didn’t even so much as glance at the other women. His eyes were glued to Bailey’s picture.

How is she still single?

This was a website for women looking to get married.
I can’t believe that she’s still single.

What difference did it make? Really. He still didn’t have a shot with her and now he had to deal with this glimmer of false hope. It would have been easier if he found out that she was married with a dozen kids.

“What about her?” Ava asked, hovering the mouse cursor over Bailey’s forehead.

“No!” Khan snapped, causing Ava to jerk her head around and look at him in shock.

“Sorry,” he said, composing himself. He didn’t want Bailey to see his profile. “Let me just look at them in private. Please.”

Ava nodded and headed for the door. “Having a mate is a good thing, Khan. Your father may have gone about this whole thing wrong but he was right. You’ll see.”

“Thanks for your help, Ava.”

She nodded and closed the door, giving him some alone time.

Khan spent a whole five minutes just staring at her picture. His Kodiak bear purred and was content for the first time in five years.
I know. I miss her too, buddy.

His fingers flew over the keyboard and before he knew it, he was changing his whole profile. He changed his name from Khan Vega to Chip Edwards. Chip was an investment banker with a weekend home in the vineyards of Northern California. He liked biking, cooking and giving foot massages.

He uploaded a picture of a good looking guy who he found off of Google images and swapped his photo for Chip’s. When all signs of Khan Vega were erased from the profile he clicked on Bailey’s image.

She lives in Davenfield now?
That was a town that was only about half an hour away.
She moved.
Her family had lived in Portland when they had dated but Bailey always loved Montana. She loved the mountains and the vast outdoors and all it had to offer. She had been amazed when he showed her around the Vega Ranch. They spent the summer hiking over the hills, swimming in the lake and river, and making love everywhere they could.

Khan’s heart pounded as he stared at the big green message button at the bottom of the page. His hand had a mind of its own and moved the cursor over the large button. He closed his eyes and clicked it.

An army of butterflies fluttered in his stomach as he typed five measly letters that could change his life:

Chip: Hello.

He gulped as he hit send.

Shit!

There was no take-back button. He jumped up off the chair and paced around the room while the little cloud bubble popped up in the chat window, signaling that she was typing something back.

The computer dinged and he lunged at it.

Bailey: Hi
.

Khan wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans and tried to figure out what to say back. He was in over his head here. This was a bad idea.

The little cloud bubble appeared again and he watched in an excited panic.

Bailey: You’re hot. Want to go out some time?

A tinge of rage flew through him at Bailey finding Chip Edwards hot but he was excited to talk to her nonetheless. He had dreamed of talking to Bailey again for years. This wasn’t exactly what he had in mind but he would take what he could get. His hands flew to the keyboard.

Chip: Definitely.

two

“Not again!” Bailey hissed as she grabbed the burning ginger chicken breast off the stove. The pan was smoking and she turned the fan over the stove on before the fire alarm went off again.

Bailey tried to make an effort to cook healthy for her growing boy but she wasn’t the most able cook. Her ginger chicken breast already tasted like newspaper but it was even worse when it was overcooked. Now it would taste like burnt newspaper.

“Oh no,” Jodi said, scrunching her nose up. “Is it supposed to be black like that?”

“What do you
think
?” Bailey asked, scratching it off the bottom of the pan.

“I
think
we should do take out,” Jodi said.

Bailey sighed. Her sister was always offering up clever commentary but she was never any help.

Jodi was sitting beside Bailey’s son, Liam, who was playing with his LEGOs and talking non-stop in incoherent sentences that only loosely flowed together. He was almost four-years-old and he never shut up.

“Can you come help me?” Bailey asked, scraping the pan in frustration.

“Wait,” Jodi said. “Liam is on hour two of his story and I think he’s about to get to the good part any second.”

Bailey sighed. “Trust me, he’s another hour away from the good part,” she whispered as her son babbled on.

“Does he ramble on like this all of the time?” Jodi asked.

“Yup,” Bailey answered. “He’s just like his aunt.”

Jodi grinned. “Lucky you.”

“Can you go with him to wash his hands?”

“Come, Liam,” Jodi said, turning her back to her nephew. “Ride on the Jodi train.”

“Wasn’t that your nickname in college?” Bailey teased. “Didn’t the guys always line up to ride the Jodi train?”

Her sister stuck her tongue out as she ‘choo chooed’ to the bathroom with Liam smiling as he hung onto her back.

Bailey cut all the burnt parts off of the chicken that she could and placed the mangled and hacked chicken breasts onto three plates. She set the table and quickly washed the pan as her two favorite people walked back into the kitchen.

“Can I have some juice?” Liam asked.

“Sure!” Jodi said.

“No,” Bailey corrected. “No juice during meals.”

“But I want juice!” Liam whined. Bailey envied her son. The harshest part of his whole existence was being denied juice. He didn’t have to worry about the unpaid stack of bills piling up in the drawer in the kitchen or her boss demanding that she worked overtime at the Vet clinic. He didn’t realize how easy he had it.

“Yeah,” Jodi joined in, hitting her fists on the table. “We want juice! We want juice!”

Liam laughed and copied his aunt. “We want juice! We want juice!” he chanted along with her.

“Fine,” Bailey said, rolling her eyes. “But I’m not getting up!”

“Yay!” Jodi and Liam cheered. “We stuck it to the man,” she said getting up and heading to the fridge. “Score one for the little guy. Literally.”

Bailey smiled at her son’s thrilled face as he watched his aunt move around the kitchen. He had been having it hard lately. He didn’t understand all of these changes that were going through his body. Bailey glanced over at the claw marks on the sofa and sighed. She didn’t understand them either for that matter.

Jodi came dancing back, shaking her hips, with two glasses of apple juice in her hands.

Liam squealed in delight when she handed him the glass. “I wish you could live with us,” he said before attacking his hard-earned juice like a thirsty man who just walked out of the desert.

“Me too,” Jodi said, ruffling the brown hair on his little head. “I like it here.” She poked the dry chicken with her fork and grimaced. “The food not so much, though.”

Bailey narrowed her eyes at her. “Yeah, it’s
really
too bad you have to go.”

“I know, right?” Jodi answered with a grin. “Oh! I want to talk to you about something,” she said.

Uh oh. This can’t be good.

“I think it’s time to find a man.”

“What?” Bailey said, spitting out a mouthful of her failed dinner.

“Ew,” Jodi said, looking at the chewed up chicken on the table. “We’ll have to work on your chewing first.”

“I don’t have time to date,” Bailey said. “My boss is forcing me to work unpaid overtime and I have Liam to take care of.”

“You have to get out there some time,” Jodi said. “You’ve been single for
way
too long.”

It had been since Liam’s father had broken her heart. She had spent an amazing summer with a bear shifter named Khan but at the end of it, she was left with only a shattered heart and a baby growing in her belly. From that moment on Liam was the only man in her life.

“You have to make time for it,” Jodi pressed. “You’re a single mom. You’re always going to be busy.”

That’s what Jodi didn’t understand. She didn’t have children. She didn’t realize how life-consuming the little guy was.

“When was the last time that you had some time to yourself?” Jodi asked.

Bailey glanced up. “Sometimes when I do laundry I crouch and hide behind the dryer for ten minutes. It’s wonderful.”

Bailey laughed at Jodi’s horrified face.

“That’s pathetic.”

“That’s having kids.”

“It’s still pathetic.” Jodi pulled out her phone from her purse. “You should sign up to a dating site. Get a real man.”

Bailey glanced at Liam as he ate. He still had an eye on the television playing in the living room. He wasn’t listening to them at all.

“Not with the issues that Liam has been having lately,” she said. His daycare worker had called in a panic this week again. He had shifted into his bear at daycare for the third time this month. Bailey was lucky that the daycare worker on duty had a cousin who was a shifter so she was sympathetic but she warned her that something had to change. She was worried about the other kids and Bailey couldn’t blame her. Liam’s bear was getting bigger every time he phased and was starting to get more aggressive and unruly. Bailey could handle him and keep him contained before but now he was getting to be too strong for her. She didn’t know what to do anymore.

“Did he…
change
again?” Jodi whispered.

Bailey had done tons of research on shifters but the only info that she could find was on conspiracy theory sites that had other articles like,
How to survive an alien encounter
and
The best camera lens to film Bigfoot
. They weren’t any help.

“And you still haven’t talked to his father about it?”

“Jodi!” Bailey snapped. “Please!” She took a deep breath and turned back to her ginger chicken with narrow eyes. Jodi should have known better than to bring
him
up.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I just thought-”

“Well, unthink it. Okay?”

“Fine,” Jodi said. “But you still need a man.”

Bailey dropped her head and sighed. Sometimes her sister was just too much to handle. She never knew when to stop pressing.

“Don’t be mad,” Jodi said, turning her phone on.

Bailey’s stomach dropped. “What did you do?”

Jodi held up her phone and there was a picture of Bailey on what looked like a dating website profile.

“Before you yell at me,” Jodi said, her voice racing, “my friend Angela found a really great guy on here. You should try it. I already paid for three months.”

“You wasted your money. Again.”

“Look,” Jodi said, thrusting the phone forward. “You already have four connections.”

Bailey lowered her fork and looked. “I do?”

“Look at this guy,” Jodi said, pointing to a picture of a handsome blond man with a nice smile. He wasn’t big and rugged, which she preferred but he was still pretty hot. “Chip Edwards. He’s an investment banker with a weekend home in the vineyards of Northern California. He likes biking, cooking and giving foot massages.” Jodi raised her eyebrows at her sister. “You like getting foot massages. Sounds like it was meant to be.”

“He sounds too good to be true,” Bailey said. “He probably lives in his mom’s basement.”

“Let’s find out,” Jodi said, turning the phone to herself.

“Wait,” Bailey said, trying to reach for it. Jodi jerked it out of her reach.

“He just messaged you,” Jodi said.

“Really?” Bailey asked, her heart beating faster. “What did he say?”

All of a sudden Bailey felt like a teenager again getting a note or a phone call from a boy. That part of life had been so far removed from her in the past few years that she forgot how fun and exciting that it could be.

“He wrote,
hello
.”

“Wow, clever,” Bailey said with a giggle.

“Well, he’s a banker, not a poet,” Jodi said. “I’ll write back,
hi
.”

Jodi’s fingers kept typing past the two letters that it took to write ‘hi.’

“What else are you writing?” Bailey asked, craning her neck to see the phone.

“Sent.”

“What?”

Jodi smirked. “I wrote:
You’re hot. Want to go out some time?
”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.”

Bailey swallowed hard. “Did he write back?”

“He wrote:
Definitely
.”

Bailey felt a lightness in her chest as her pulse sped up. She hadn’t felt anything like this in way too long.

“I’ll watch Liam,” Jodi said, taking away her best excuse to turn it down.