Bear Meets Bride (Online Shifter Dating Agency Romance) (11 page)

At last, the horror of their dire predicament sank in.

‘Tom, he’s shifting!” she cried. “He could still kill us; let’s get out of here!”

Erin thought she was the one on the ball but, on turning her head, found that she was quite far from it. Her dear Tom, the love she had waited for years to materialize, was pulling a silly face. So silly that it was utterly ridiculous—elongated even. And...furry.

There was a roar from behind her; the kind that residents of Cold Lake had learned to fear over the last few weeks—but it was answered. The truth suddenly hit home, and Erin pulled a stupid face of her own.
The site—it’s actually called Dare2Bear.com. It’s not a typo…it’s a dating site for bear shifters! How could I have been so blind? And how the hell did I not realize before now? The amount Tom eats…

This whole damn time, she had been romancing a bear shifter…and she hadn’t even known.

18

The cat was out of the bag and the bear was out of the woods.

Not that Tom stopped to dwell on his clumsy revelation there and then.

He had a very real problem on his paws. A full-sized male opponent, aggressive and snarling and—he believed—totally and utterly insane. Onlookers might have been tempted to think, ‘
Well, you’re a bear too, so what’s the problem
?’ He would have replied that, in this instance, the problem is knowing how to kill one of your own. No human would relish meeting a murderer in the street and having to face them off in a live or die situation, and it was no different for a bear shifter.

Tom didn’t know what it was like to kill another bear. Even in his transformed state, he was a peaceful creature, though he would now have to become something else very quickly. It was clear the foe facing him was quite capable and, answering his earlier speculations, looked as crazed as Tom had always feared. Though tall, the shifter in his human form had not intimidated him, but there was something unnatural about this bear’s gaze. Here was the mad animal that gun enthusiasts would refer to when justifying their hobby; here was a sickness like rabies that was every bit as ferocious in person as its reputation. How a being of such a peaceful and laid -back nature—as he knew bears really were—had become twisted into this was beyond him…and so might surviving the attack if Tom couldn’t find a similar ferocity.

Before transforming, Tom had been aware that his foe had been wounded. He didn’t know exactly where, suspecting it was somewhere in the groin or stomach area (though it was the groan that accompanied the extrication of the knife that succeeded in drawing Tom to the backroom just in time). This injury was a big plus in his favor, of course, but there were other odds to consider that he suspected evened things out.

A ten-minute run in bear form had been exhausting. There was a reason a bear’s bulk needed so much fuel to keep it going, and he was in dire need of reviving his energy stocks, as well as being dehydrated. As the two beasts discarded their brief show of intimidation before leaping into the physical combat they both knew was inevitable, Tom sensed the weakness in his limbs as a result of the miles in them, and he knew he would be hard pressed to avoid serious injury.

Knowing he would need wits as well as strength to survive, Tom made his first moves subtly offensive. His foe wanted to get into a grapple with him; wanted to bite, tear and kick in rage, perhaps sensing he would be unmatched in that department. Although Tom appeared to be advancing on his opponent in a similar manner, he avoided those deadly clutches by pushing instead, and so employed a strategy of blocking and deceiving. He knew his only chance was to wait for the killer to make a mistake, to become desperate and frustrated in his attempts to cause harm, giving Tom the opportunity to sink his teeth into an area that should have been defended—the neck perhaps—or to unbalance and topple to a point of no recovery.

He didn’t know how long the fight went on. It didn’t last as long as he thought, but during those frantic moments he came within a whisker of failure numerous times. The shifter who had given his colleagues the run-around was far from stupid and knew what Tom was attempting. People often say that brains beat brawn, but in their grizzly forms, both Tom and Neiman proved an equal match in these two attributes.

What won out instead was love.

Knowing that Erin was in close proximity and would likely face the jaws of death herself if he failed kept Tom going when he felt spent and close to collapse. He went through the pain barrier and into a state of complete physical numbness, but still refused to let Neiman grapple, when suddenly he spotted a slight buckling at his opponent’s knees and had the clarity of thought to seize his moment. Erin’s knife wound had caused that wavering and, though Neiman might have recovered from toppling backward, Tom took advantage of his foe’s forward momentum instead, pulling while stepping aside so that he fell forwards and his face struck tarmac.

Once above the killer at last, Tom wasted no time in taking advantage of the situation, clattering Neiman around his head which was already dazed from the fall; hitting him until blood flowed and it became obvious the bear would not be getting up anytime soon.

As his adrenaline was replaced by relief, Tom became instantly disoriented and collapsed to the ground himself. The world was spinning, but the danger was over and he had brought an end to the worst case of his career….one that he hoped the world would never have to see the likes of again.

The first sensation he then became aware of, advancing delicately through the roar of battle that was still echoing about his skull, was the sound of hurried cowboy boots coming his way. Erin was running to his side and, in spite of his aching limbs, he felt warmth and comfort at that sound, having expected only emptiness. He should have broken it to her much sooner that he was a bear shifter instead of drawing it out to tease her, and as a result, he wouldn’t have blamed her if she had fled from them both and decided never to see another hairy chest again.

Instead she was running towards him and after his wellbeing, which was a pleasing thought considering she had every right to be angry, while it was also, he thought, very brave given the fact that she’d just been attacked by another bear shifter. Her courage had already been proven, of course. The wound the serial killer had received by Erin’s hand had enabled Tom to get the upper paw during the fight. Bears and wild predators might have ideal features for portraying ferocity, but his girlfriend had proven it could exist just as readily where it was least expected. In the end, it was overlooking this factor that had led to Neiman’s defeat.

Feeling Erin’s hands upon his shoulder, Tom was reminded of his human form and remembered to shift back. As soon as he sensed the ability of his tongue to form words, he managed to look up into Erin’s eyes, which also came into focus at that moment, and half-spoke, half-growled the words, “I know I’ve got some explaining to do.”

That confession must have looked strange coming from a face that was half-bear, half-human, but the time had passed to be sensitive about such issues. All that mattered was that Erin was by his side and would be willing to listen.

Before they got around to that, they were distracted by a slight but noticeable change to the breathing of their defeated foe. Neiman’s chest suddenly started to shake with discomfort, and then they recognized by the slump and lengthy exhale that followed that the final air was escaping from Neiman’s lungs, and they wouldn’t breathe in again. The bear shifter serial killer was dead, and in its turn, also began to shift back into human form until the fair-haired eccentric who had charmed everyone in Erin’s store to buy lemon meringue pie was back. His smooth facial features appeared almost child-like then; innocent and untroubled. It was hard even then, when they knew who he was, to understand why such hatred and sinister intent had ever settled there.

“You know who this man is?” Erin asked.

“I’ve got no idea,” Tom replied, still struggling to catch his breath.

“It’s Andrew Neiman.”

“Who’s he?”

‘I don’t know exactly, but he came into the bakery the day that Nana Morgan was attacked. I’m afraid he followed her from there, and I wasn’t on-the-ball enough to put two and two together.”

“That’s supposed to be my job, anyway,” Tom replied. “How could you know?”

“I think that’s when he started to target me as well,” she continued. “I recall him sniffing the air, and I thought he liked the smell of my cooking but, of course, you shifters have a good sense of smell, so I hear, and I had been with you that morning. And like you thought…he really seemed to be targeting cops and their loved ones.”

“You should consider taking my job,” Tom replied, managing a smile. “You can certainly handle yourself.”

Tom promised to explain everything and knew there was much to explain, but Erin agreed with his suggestion that they should first get on the phone to Jake and have the relevant people gathered to come and collect the body of the murderer. Neither of them felt like talking much with him just lying there.

Seeing the sheet that was placed over Neiman’s face when that time came provided relief at last, and they both felt they could finally breathe easily. Strange how the ability of our fellow human beings to clean up a mess allows us to get on with life after times of terror and despair, but Tom needed to know for sure and witness this Neiman taken off his hands.

Only when that happened did he start to feel more like himself again.

By then, there were multiple police cars and ambulances all gathered around Erin’s bakery, blue lights flashing in every direction they turned, creating such a show that anyone driving past on the highway couldn’t fail to understand that a major incident had occurred there. Some members of the press had even turned up, having previously made their way to the first murder only to discover there was an even more interesting development occurring the same evening up the road. This was the death and identity of the killer himself, of course, and they were just dying to get an insight for their broadcasts.

Jake took the flak in handling the attention and did well to shield Tom and Erin from any cameras or microphones. Having brought an end to the terror between them, the two lovers could really not have gone higher up in his estimation, and they were likely to become honorary McClintocks as a result.

Once all this fuss was going on in the background—which included an investigatory team taking whatever evidence they could from the bakery (it was in their nature to seek to understand every little detail even when it was obvious the killer was dead and no longer a threat)—the two of them, huddled up in blankets and with steaming coffee to keep them from the growing cold, were able to have a quiet moment together.

“Thank you for not running to the hills,” Tom began. “I should have told you sooner, though I didn’t realize at first that you weren’t aware of my nature. I honestly thought you knew.”

“I know, I know…I should have realized. For some reason I always thought Dare2Bear was a typo on the website and never really thought about it beyond that. I thought it was meant to be Dare2Bare.”

“And all the info on the landing page about hooking women up with shifters didn’t clue you in?”

“I never read those parts!” she said. “I just saw that it was a dating site, clicked ‘Sign up’ and filled out my profile. God, though…how dim could I possibly be?”

“I only realized that you thought it meant something else when we were having dinner that time. By then you’d moved in, and we were looking to avoid another bear shifter. It was a strange development and I didn’t know how to break it to you. I thought it was quite funny, actually, and thought I’d wait to see how long it took you to cotton on. But I should’ve told you.”

“Oh, what a woolly-minded idiot!” Erin exclaimed, burying her head in her hands.

“I’m sorry…”

“Not you. Me!” she said. ‘I’ve had my head in the clouds on so many things; if it didn’t affect my little bakery world, I didn’t think about it. First I fail to even spot that I’m surfing a load of bear shifter profiles and then, when all the entire community is talking about who this murderer could be and how can we catch him, I don’t even think properly about the description they gave in the news. I’ve been living in my own little world and deserve to feel like a complete fool.”

“Well, I like you just as you are,” Tom said, seeing no reason why she should feel bad. “You get on with things, and when you’re faced with great odds, you’re unperturbed. Don’t feel bad for who you are.”

“Thanks,” Erin said softly, looking like she was failing to shake off the need to slap herself in the face but coming round all the same. “And you shouldn’t feel bad for who you are either,” she continued. “I don’t care that you’re a bear shifter. I don’t know much about them—that’s something else I should have been paying more attention to.”

“You know how to make one happy,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

“That’s true,” Erin replied, managing a smile. “And at least it explains all the food!”

***

Tom thought that Erin had let him off the hook lightly for not telling her sooner that he had a furry second identity, and he spent a while wondering why he had worried about the revelation so much…but that wasn’t to be the only confession of the night.

As they settled down to a hot chocolate and some well-needed snacks once they’d arrived back at Tom’s house, Erin happened to reveal that today hadn’t been the only time she had ever attacked a bear. Halfway through hearing her relate the story, Tom could hold back no more.

“Erin…” he began.

“Yes?”

“Erm….it was me.”

“What was you?”

“The bear in your bakery. It was me. I was very hungry one night while out for a walk—I think it was after a Christmas party—and I was in bear form, and I…er…I somehow found myself lumbering over to your bakery. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a pile of crumbs with you swatting at me with a broom.”

“Oh my god…it was you!”

That was just one too many discoveries for the night, and Erin finally gave in to the urge to give him a good grilling.

“Nothing else you want to tell me tonight, shifter boy?”