All About the Bear (Grizzly Cove Book 1) (2 page)

Then the newcomer started speaking in a heavily accented voice, and his words told Brody all he needed to know. The man definitely had a one-way ticket on the bus to Crazytown.

“I heard there’s supposed to be a lot of bears around here,” the stranger said in a voice that carried to Brody, even as he stood to intervene. “But so far, all I’ve seen is a whole lot o’ nothin’.” The man leaned over the counter that separated them and took a very obvious sniff around Nell. Brody felt the growl reverberating in his throat as the man turned. “Finally!” he said, looking with challenge at Brody as he prowled across the floor of the bakery.

“You’d better leave the lady alone, son,” Brody growled, moving closer.

“Why? I thought Grizzly Cove was the place where bears could be bears. Or is that just a PR slogan?” The man—scratch that, the
shifter
—was breaking all sorts of rules, including the most important. Don’t let the humans find out.

“Let’s take this outside, friend.” Brody tried to intimidate the man out of the place, but apparently, a dominance contest was about to take place, whether he wanted it or not, and Nell was going to witness it. Goddess help them all.

He tried one more time, pitching his voice so only the newcomer would hear his words. “She’s human, man. Don’t be a fool.”

“A fool! Who’s calling Seamus O’Leary a fool?” the stranger demanded, reaching up to unbutton his shirt.

Only then, did Brody catch the underlying scent of alcohol.

“You’re drunk,” Brody snapped out, hoping Nell would accept that excuse for the man’s bizarre behavior.

“I am not,” Seamus objected, continuing to unbutton his shirt.

If the moron was going to get naked right here in the bakery and shift, Brody was going to have to do the same and show him who the bigger bear was in the most graphic terms. But Nell didn’t know about shifters. And Brody didn’t want to be the one to break it to her.

Better to arrest the drunken Aussie and handle all of this down at the station. When the foreign shifter sobered up a bit, then maybe Brody could make some sense out of his bizarre appearance.

Brody put one hand on the foreigner’s shoulder. “Don’t do this here,” Brody coaxed. “Come with me, and we can do it properly.”

Seamus shook his head. “Don’t want to meet me in public, eh, mate? Why? What are you? A pansy-assed panda?”

Brody personally knew at least one resident of the cove who would take marked exception to that comment, but he was more worried about Nell, at the moment. The Aussie’s shirt was off, and he just unbuttoned and unzipped, kicking off his sandals.

And then, he shifted. And got a lot smaller.

He wasn’t a big man to begin with. Built more on the wiry side than the massive scale of most of the residents of Grizzly Cove. And he was gray. With tufted ears. And he wasn’t chewing cough drops.

He was a fucking koala bear.

CHAPTER TWO

Brody learned, at that point, that koala bears—cute as they seem—have big fucking teeth. The furry little gray monster swiped at him with sharp claws and bared his chompers menacingly. The little bastard wanted to fight?

Brody looked at Nell’s pale face. She was in shock, and Brody knew there was no putting this genie back in the bottle.
Shit.

The crazed koala came after him again, and Brody had had enough. He tugged his embroidered golf shirt over his head and dropped trou, shifting seamlessly into his beast.

As a five-hundred-pound grizzly bear facing a comparatively tiny koala, the match was completely uneven. The koala seemed to realize it about the same time the alcohol he’d consumed when in human form caught up with him. He shuddered once, then collapsed into what Brody belatedly understood was a drunken stupor. The dude just passed out, right there on the bakery floor.

Brody sat back on his haunches, contemplating the hugeness of the mess the Australian had just created. Nell hadn’t quite fainted, but she was visibly shaken. Brody didn’t know how he was going to fix this.

And then, the Alpha walked in.

Big John took one look at the koala bear passed out on the linoleum and started to laugh.

Brody snagged his pants in his teeth and ducked behind a display case to shift. He struggled into them while the Alpha chuckled. When he emerged, dressed only in his uniform trousers, he looked at Nell but knew he had to square things with his Alpha first. It would be up to John, what happened next.

Although, if John had any thought about running Nell and her sisters out of town or trying to silence them permanently, he was going to have to go through Brody. He would protect the brown-eyed baker with every fiber of his being.

Whoa. That sounded serious.

Brody realized, in that moment, that all of the lunch hours spent here in the bakery were merely excuses to be close to Nell. He’d made up errands near the bakery, just so he could catch a glimpse of her through the window. And he’d come in more often than he probably should have.

All because of her. Nell. The sweet lady who baked the sweet pies he liked so much.

But he liked her even more.

Probably more than was good for him.

“I’m sorry, John. This guy just came in here and shifted before I could stop him,” Brody said to his Alpha, leaving the more troubling thoughts about the pretty baker for later.

“I saw most of it, though I couldn’t believe my eyes when he turned into a koala. Never seen a koala shifter in my entire life. Cute little fuckers, aren’t they?” John bent down to get a closer look at the snoring marsupial. At that point, he seemed to get a good whiff of the stranger and backed off quick, shielding his nose. “Whew! Eucalyptus and alcohol. Not sure which one is stronger. I’m amazed he was sober enough to walk in here.”

“He passed out. I can put him in a cell to sleep it off. Then, he’s going to have to answer for his actions.” Brody frowned. “And one of us is going to have to deal with the fallout.” He glanced significantly at Nell, still standing with her mouth open, behind the counter.

John looked at her too, then frowned. “She saw you shift. You’d better talk her down. I’ll take sleeping beauty to the jail.” He held out his hand for the keys. “You give me a call if you need help with Nell.”

John threw the small bear over one shoulder while Brody bundled the man’s clothing into a ball that John tucked under one arm. Without a backward look, the Alpha was out the door and down the street a moment later.

Brody realized he was still shirtless, so he found his golf shirt and spent a few stalling seconds turning it right-side out. He pulled it over his head before turning to Nell, once again. She still hadn’t moved.

“Are you okay?” Brody asked quietly, not wanting to startle her.

Nell blinked at him. “Was that…” She paused, then tried again. “Was that real?” She gestured widely to the floor of the bakery and back to Brody. “You were a bear.”

Knowing the time for lies was over, he nodded. “Yes, I am.”

That got her full attention. She stared hard at him.

“You can turn into a bear?” Shock. She was definitely in some form of shock. “How is that possible?”

Brody shrugged. “I was born this way. It’s what I am.”

Nell just shook her head, clearly unable to deal with the revelation. Brody sighed.

“Look Nell, I’m the same guy you see every day. Now you just know a little secret about me.” He tried to be casual. “And it
is
a secret. You understand? You can’t tell anyone about us. The world isn’t ready to know about shapeshifters.”

“There are more?” She looked slightly appalled by the idea.

Brody wasn’t certain if that boded well for getting her cooperation on this matter. And without her cooperation… He feared what the group might decide if Nell couldn’t be counted on to keep their secret.

“Honey, this entire town is made up of shapeshifters. That’s why it was so difficult for you and your sisters to get permission to open your store here. We weren’t sure about letting humans in.”

“Humans?” she repeated as if it was just sinking in, despite what she had seen. “You mean everybody is a…a…bear?” She looked outside at the people walking down the street, fear in her eyes. “Don’t bears eat people?” she whispered, working up to a full-fledged freak out, if Brody was any judge.

He decided to tease her. Now that she knew the secret, she was fair game. And he’d seen her first.

“Only if they ask very nicely,” he said in a husky drawl that made her gaze shoot back to his.

“Are you
flirting
with me? Now?” Outrage wasn’t quite what he’d been aiming for, but it was better than panic.

At that moment, the little bell on the door jingled, and two of the town’s most recent arrivals entered. Lyn Ling and her daughter, Daisy, had moved in last month. They were Chinese by birth, but the loss of her mate had sent Lyn running from her homeland, looking for a safe place to heal and raise her baby. Daisy was about four years old and cute as a button. She had just about every man in the settlement wrapped around her little finger, Brody included.

Daisy skipped up to the counter, looking with wide eyes into the glass display case as her mother said hello to Brody and Nell. As Nell looked from Brody to Lyn and back again, her eyes widened.

“You said everyone,” Nell repeated. “Oh, God. Lyn too? And Daisy? They’re…bears?”

Lyn scowled, looking at Brody. “What have you been telling her?”

“I didn’t tell her. Some dumb drunk koala came in here and challenged my dominance right here in the middle of the bakery. Nell couldn’t help but see. John left me to deal with it.”

Lyn huffed at him. “Well, it’s clear you’re not dealing well.” She then lapsed into Chinese muttering, probably saying unkind things about men in general, and Brody in particular, as she lifted her daughter into her arms. Pasting a smile on her face, she turned to Nell. “Yes, we are bears,” she said firmly. “No, we do not hurt people. Not unless they hurt us first. We just want to live in peace. In harmony with nature. Free to be who we are. Is that too much to ask?”

Nell was left gaping at the outburst from the normally quiet woman. Slowly, Nell seemed to calm down. Eventually, she nodded.

“No, Lyn. It’s not too much to ask. I guess, when you put it that way, it’s kind of what everybody wants. Freedom to do what we wanted is why me and my sisters came here too. As long as you guys…bears…are okay with that, I think we can get used to the idea of people turning into grizzly bears.”

“Not grizzly,” Daisy decided to interject in her high voice. “Panda!”

CHAPTER THREE

“Oh, dear Lord,” Nell whispered, completely overwhelmed by the craziness that had invaded her bakery today.

Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe somebody had spiked the flour with PCP or something. That would explain why she was seeing koalas and grizzly bears in her store, and the cutest little four year old on the planet just claimed she was a panda.

“She better sit down,” Lyn said in that no-nonsense way she had of talking.

“Yeah, I think you’re right,” the sheriff agreed, taking Nell’s arm across the counter and guiding her out from behind. He escorted her to the nearest chair, and she let him.

She sat, only then realizing she was trembling from head to toe.

“You gonna faint on me, honey?” Brody asked, squatting down in front of her chair.

He had that boyish smile on his face that usually made her knees weak. But they were already weak. They’d turned to rubber when the men had turned into bears, and only her death grip on the display case had kept her upright.

Nell had had a thing for the sexy sheriff since she first moved into her new shop. He’d come by to welcome her to town and had been by most days since, usually eating lunch here, while she covered the store. Her sister, Ashley, got up with the roosters and stayed until after the breakfast rush. Then, Nell took the afternoons, and little sister Tina covered the evening shift, which wasn’t nearly as busy.

Nell was the oldest. She had brought her sisters here. Were they safe? Had she moved them all to an even more dangerous place than the one they’d just left?

Oh, God. Bending over, she wrapped her hands around her middle, feeling ill.

Brody’s warm hand settled on her back, rubbing slow, pacifying circles as he moved closer. She felt surrounded by his warmth, but oddly, it made her feel safe.

This was the closest she’d ever been to him. The barrier that had seemed to keep him at a distance was gone. But was her safety gone with it? Nell frowned, worrying.

“It’s okay,” Brody whispered. “You’ve had a shock. But you’re safe, Nell. Nobody in town would ever hurt you.”

A clatter on the table beside her made her look up. Lyn had brought her a strong cup of coffee.

“Drink up,” Lyn said. “You need a jolt of caffeine. Only wish I had something stronger to give you.” Lyn’s smile was friendly, and Nell realized that the woman she’d become friends with over the past weeks was still the same, even if there was some bizarre way she could turn into a enormous bear.

Brody took the mug and handed it to Nell. He was such a gentle giant of a man. She had admired him from afar over the past weeks, glad his habit was to take a late lunch when the shop was quiet, as it was now.

Nell drank a sip of the coffee, and it did make her feel a little better. The heat of the liquid and familiar flavor of the brew grounded her a bit. It wore down the shock that had been riding her for the past fifteen minutes.

“Can you call Tina in to take over a little early?” Brody suggested as she downed the coffee. “Tell her you’re not feeling well or something?”

Nell’s eyes widened. “Are my sisters safe here?”

Brody nodded solemnly. “Safer in this town than anywhere else,” he insisted. “Our residents have all been vetted, and most have known each other for many years. While it’s true we recently opened up to new faces, there’s a procedure for shifters who want to join the community. That drunken Aussie wasn’t supposed to just show up in town and go furry. He’s going to face the Alpha when he sobers up, and believe me, that won’t be pretty.”