C
HAPTER
T
EN
C
ella followed Crush, but stopped when the door closed in her face.
Gasping, “Oh, no, he did not!”
“Cella—” Jai began, but Cella didn’t want to hear it.
The bear hadn’t locked the door, so Cella threw it open and marched inside.
“What are you mad at me for?” she demanded, following the bear into his tidy kitchen.
Placing his bag of groceries on the table, the bear said, “I didn’t say I was mad at you. Just don’t want you in my house.”
“Well ...” Cella stopped talking. What had she just seen? She spun on her heel and walked back through, meeting up with Jai in the middle of the bear’s living room.
Together the friends studied the area, gazes moving around until Jai observed, “I’ve never in my life seen so much hockey stuff in one place that wasn’t a museum or your father’s closet.”
Jai wasn’t kidding, either. There were framed and signed jerseys from what Cella assumed were the bear’s favorite players, including her dad; someone’s signed skates; a glass case with signed pucks; and framed signed sticks, crossed, on his wall.
“It seems,” Jai went on, “that he favors the Islanders, Philly Flyers, and the Carnivores.”
“I knew he was a fan, but ... wow.”
“At least he didn’t ask you to punch him in the face.”
“It seems he’s a fan of my team, not of me. According to him, I fight too much.”
“You do fight too much,” he called from the kitchen.
Cella’s right eye twitched, but Jai caught her arm, held her in place. “Cella ... remember. Calm. Rational. You need him.”
Cella went back to the kitchen, Jai behind her. The bear was unpacking his grocery bag. Cella folded her arms across her chest, and asked, “So why don’t you want me in your house?”
“Because I can just look at you and tell that you’re trouble.”
“
I’m
trouble? It wasn’t my brothers softly threatening me with some unknown ‘she.’ And you gonna tell me about that?”
“What would make you think I’d tell you anything at all?”
Cella opened her mouth to say something rude, but Jai cut her off.
“Calm down. Let’s discuss this.”
Cella rolled her eyes. “Discuss this? Really?”
“I have two words for you, Malone,” Jai reminded her, “matchmaker and cousin.”
Realizing she was right, Cella pulled out a chair and dropped into it.
The bear eyed them both. “Matchmaker?”
Jai shrugged. “Like I said, we need a favor.”
“What kind of favor? Does it involve money? Gambling debts?”
Annoyed—again!—Cella slammed her hands on the table and went to stand, but Jai shoved her back down by pushing on her head. “Sit!”
“I’m not a dog!”
“Do as I say.” Jai faced the bear again. “I know you two have a history but we,
I
, have a big favor to ask.”
“Let me guess. This involves her father and him thinking I’m her boyfriend?”
“Well—”
“I told you that was going to be a problem,” he told Cella. “You don’t listen, do you?”
“Look—”
“She doesn’t,” Jai quickly cut in. “She’s a determined, unreasonable female, and she desperately needs your help.”
“Jai!”
“Quiet, difficult female!”
Cella and Jai scowled at each other until, at the same moment, they both burst out laughing. Cella was not surprised when she heard the bear sigh.
While the two females found reasons to laugh, Crush finished putting away his groceries and put down food for Lola. That was around the time the laughter stopped.
“You have a dog?”
“I’m fostering for a friend.” He whistled and Lola came out of the hiding place she always went to whenever his idiot brothers broke into his home. It used to be his apartment, now it was his house.
Lola trotted into the kitchen, but commenced to barking as soon as she saw Malone and her friend.
The two women looked at him and he shrugged. “She’s not a cat-friendly dog.”
“You foster this dog?”
He didn’t know why Malone sounded so disbelieving. Bears had pet dogs all the time.
“Yeah. You have a problem with that?”
Lola continued to bark, so Crush said, “Cut it.” She did and trotted over to him, turning and sitting down on his foot while facing the two felines.
Malone and the other woman exchanged another glance and Malone said, “This is your dog.”
“She’s a foster. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh. How long have you fostered her?”
“Three years.”
The felines began laughing again and Lola snarled at them. That was his girl.
“What?” he asked.
“She’s your dog.
Your
dog. No one fosters a dog for three years.”
“It’s hard to place her.”
“A purebred English bulldog?” the woman with Malone kindly asked. Unlike the She-tiger, this woman had basic manners.
“I don’t have papers or anything and she’s been fixed.”
“No one has shown interest in it?”
“ ‘It’ is a
her,
” he snapped at Malone. “And there have been a few interested people but they weren’t the right family for her.”
“For three years?”
“Why are you here?” he barked, fed up with this line of questioning.
“I need a boyfriend or my aunts are bringing in a matchmaker so they can possibly hook me up with a distant relative.”
With a snort, Crush picked up Lola and put her in front of her food bowl.
“What’s that mean?” Malone asked.
“It means you’re insane. I thought you just acted crazy for the crowd. But no”—he faced Malone, briefly studied her pretty face—“you’re really crazy.”
“Crazy’s relative,” the woman with Malone remarked. When Crush only stared at her, she smiled and added, “I should introduce myself. I’m Jai Davis.”
Crush tipped his head to the side and studied her. “Jai Davis? Head of the medical team for the Carnivores?”
“You know the head of our medical team?”
He shrugged at Malone’s question. “They mention her at the beginning of every game.”
“Wow,” Malone said, eyes wide. “You really
are
a fan.”
“Why are you here?” he barked again, annoyed with having strangers in his house. “In my space?”
“I’ll tell ya what ya can do with your space—”
“Cella.”
Hearing her friend’s voice, Malone took a deep breath and said, “I need a favor.”
“From me?”
“Yes. From you.”
Crush sized the feline up before answering, “No.”
“No? What do you mean no?”
“I mean no.”
“But I haven’t even told you what it is yet.”
“I know. But I don’t deal with crazy in my private life.”
Malone crossed her arms in front of her chest, gold eyes locked on him until she snapped at her friend, “And you can stop laughing.”
Her hand over her mouth, Dr. Davis choked and mumbled, “Excuse me,” before quickly walking out of the kitchen.
“Thank you very much, cop, for embarrassing me!”
Crush gawked down at the feline, mouth open.
“What are you looking at me like that for?”
“
I
embarrassed
you
? Is that what you just said to me?”
“Your point?”
“You’ve been embarrassing me since I met you. It’s like your goal or something.”
“My goal is to get you to loosen up. You’re so uptight.”
“Why do you care if I’m uptight or not?”
“Because I’m a caring and giving person.”
Imitating her stance, Crush crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, she finally admitted, “All right, fine. In truth, I just like how your face gets all red when I embarrass you.”
“Honesty. How nice of you to finally use some.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I only torment those I actually like.”
“Why would that bit of information make me feel better? That’s like saying ‘I only set fire to the ones I love.’ ”
“It’s nothing like that. I just think you take yourself too seriously. Although, after meeting your brothers, I can see why you’re more tense than most polar bears.”
“Tenser.”
“What?”
“It’s not ‘more tense,’ it’s ‘tenser.’ ”
“Really? You’re correcting my grammar?”
Frustrated again—because she was kind of right—Crush snapped, “It’s not like I invited you over here to abuse you about your grammar. You came over uninvited.”
“Because I need your help.”
“In some wacky scheme?”
“Of course it’s not wacky. I just need you to pretend to be my boyfriend so my aunts don’t bring in a matchmaker in the hopes of getting me married off to my cousin.”
As the feline stated her purpose in coming to his house, Dr. Davis walked back into the kitchen. But she took one look at Crush’s flabbergasted expression, covered her mouth, turned, and ran out again, her laughter floating in from his dining room.
“You really think that’s a reasonable request, don’t you?” the bear asked her.
“Define reasonable.”
“Not crazy?”
“What do you mean by crazy?”
The bear rubbed his eyes with both hands and Cella marveled at the size of them. Although the way his biceps bulged kind of pulled her away from his hands.
“Why are you staring at me like that?”
Realizing he was now watching her, Cella answered honestly, “You’re kinda hot.”
“Is this your way of seducing me into doing what you want?”
“No, I only seduce for fucking. But for you to pretend to be my boyfriend, I was going to offer access to the owners’ box for the rest of the season. But in this particular instance, I was actually doing neither. Simply noting your hotness.”
“Okay. But you are willing to bribe me into being your boyfriend. Something a cop always loves to hear.”
“It’s not like I’m trying to bribe you into doing something illegal.
That
would be wrong.”
Jai stood in the doorway again, but after a moment of wide-eyed staring, she shook her head and said, “I’ll wait in the dining room for you, Cella, because I ... I ... I just can’t.” She burst out laughing and again walked away.
“How do you get rational, well-respected people involved in your insanity? I mean is it something you taught yourself to do or is it part of your sociopathic nature?”
“First off, I’m not a sociopath. I looked closely at that checklist and I’m in the clear.”
“Checklist? You mean the Robert D. Hare Psychopathy Checklist?”
“I don’t know. It was online.”
“But being a sociopath was such a concern for you that you felt the need to check it out online?”
“Once, but I’m in the clear. So you gonna help me or not?”
He leaned in and said, “Not.”
“So you’re just going to make me
have
to beat up an old woman?”
Startled, the bear stood tall again. “When did beating up old people come into play? How is that an option?”
“I didn’t say that was an option. She’s just going to make me do it.”
“You’re blaming the potential victim of your elder abuse?”
“First off—”
“Again with the first off?”
“—she’s only ‘elder’ in the strictest sense.”
“You mean by actually being old?”
“And second, I’m the one being abused.”
“And you get there how?”
“Because she’s the one who’s going to challenge me to a bare-knuckle brawl when I refuse to marry my cousin just so she can ruin my relationship with my kid.”
“So if anyone comes up to you and says, ‘I challenge you to a brawl,’ you just have to do it? Is that how this works?”
“No. Of course not.” Jeez. Where did the bear get his crazy ideas? “But if my aunt
officially
challenges me to a brawl, I have to say yes or lose respect among the Malones.”
The bear placed the palms of his hands against his eyes and again rubbed them. “Why?” he finally asked.