Hollywood Bear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (9 page)

Once again a hesitation, and then he continued in a bland, even voice, “We ended up in a small town up Highway 5, where I found a couple buddies who were as good as brothers. Between them and Saturday morning cartoons, I not only learned English, but the mysteries of American culture. It was they who changed my nickname from Misha to Mick, convincing me that I would not survive the jungle of small town middle school unless I had a name that sounded like everyone else’s.”

She gave him the expected laugh, but wondered what he’d been leaving out. Maybe it had to do with his father’s death. “Were Saturday morning cartoons what got you into film?”

He flashed a grin. “That was mecha.
Gundam
, specifically. A scratched-up, worn-out VHS tape my friend had swiped from his older brother. The first time I saw that, there was no looking back.”

“Who could not be inspired by giant robots?”

“Exactly. The grandparents wanted me to become a doctor or a lawyer. Something respectable. But they let me go my own way when I spent all my carefully hoarded allowance to get myself a camera when I turned fourteen.” He paused as the waiter, a tall, thin guy with a droopy face that a cinematographer would love, shuffled by to offer them coffee.

Once that was poured, Mick said, “You mentioned UCLA. Did you major in film?”

She shook her head. “Theater.”

He leaned his elbows on the table. “Theater? How did you end up doing stunt work? Would you rather be on stage?”

“No, not really. I got into UCLA on the strength of my audition, reprising my role as Big Nurse in our drama coach’s adaptation of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
. I discovered when I got to college that I didn’t really like memorizing wads of Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde—that I much preferred comedy, if I wasn’t stomping around as villains.”

He shook his head. “I cannot imagine you as Big Nurse. No.”

“Oh, I was terrific! Totally over the top. But I’m afraid my stage career peaked at eighteen. By my senior year in college, I was already doing character bits and stunt work for friends over at the film school. Which led to some actual paid gigs. Which in turn got me an agent. And here I am. What kind of films did you make? Animation is tough. How did you manage that as a kid?”

“Too tough,” he agreed. “I made the leap to action films . . .”

She leaned in, enjoying the slow rumble of his voice, silvered with laughter, as he gave pungent summaries of his and his friends’ film projects. Again she sensed a reticence, as if he meant to say one thing, but changed his mind. Each time his voice would smooth to blandness, and then the emotion would return.

She realized that she had become sensitized to his voice in a way that had taken over a year with Dominic, and that was only after she’d begun to suspect that he was leading a secret life. And lying to her. Was something like that going on here?

***

He saw the exact moment her mood changed. Sometimes, while he’d been enjoying the way her green-brown gaze sometimes touched quick and light as a butterfly to his hands, his arms, then back to his own face, her focus narrowed in. As if she sifted his words.

As if she intuited how near he’d stumbled on revealing things it was not his place to reveal. Whatever happened about his own secret, the shifter community that had welcomed stone-broke immigrants must be protected. He could not imagine taking anyone back there, but if he did, they would reveal themselves or not as they chose.

He’d intended this date to be something they both enjoyed, but also to try to get to know her. The problem with starting off with terrific sex first was everything felt backward. He wanted Shelley to understand that she wasn’t just a booty call.

Though maybe she felt that way about him?

She tipped her head, then said with a questioning look, “You don’t have to edit them out completely, if you don’t want to.”

“Edit them?” he repeated, his brain freezing.

She ducked her head in a nod, and he was distracted by the brush of her curls against her cheeks, those same curls he’d felt ruffled against his chest—

He blinked, as she said, “Your early films. I mean, I know how bad student films can be. You were kids. Believe me, I participated in some howlers at UCLA. And we thought they were great at the time.” Her entrancing lips curved. “The deep and meaningful ones were the worst.”

He grasped gratefully at this straw. “I have bored people into catatonia describing what we thought were surefire Oscar winners. Let me put it this way. The last time my buddies were in town, after a few beers we decided to screen one of these. I thought we were going into cardiac arrest. At the serious parts.”

He began to summarize his first precious film project, and smiled inwardly to see her doubt change to quiet laughter.

She responded by telling him about a senior’s final film project that she’d acted in, a painfully earnest examination of the need for recycling that had featured, for some reason known only to the filmmaker, students dressed as crows in order to symbolize the imminent destruction of the world.

“Each scene ended with us flapping and hopping around in circles, then swooping in slowly toward the camera to embrace it with our dark wings. I felt pretty dorky,” Shelley admitted. “But when the auteur screened the final film for us, we crows turned out to be only watchable part of it.”

“The rest being a couple of guys standing around speechifying, as the camera hopped and swooped around them—guaranteeing seasickness in all but the hardiest viewers.”

“You actually saw it?” Shelley asked.

“I was invited to judge the senior projects that year,” he replied. “It was one of the first of the batch. After three or four even more . . . earnest, shall we say, one of the senior profs took me out for a stiff drink and assured me that they were only going to get worse.”

After more discussion of disastrous movies they’d been involved in, he became aware that the shadows had shifted dramatically. Their one hour lunch had turned into almost three hours.

“We’d better go,” he said. “We don’t want to be up here after dark.”

He paid, texted his drivers to meet them back at the lot, and they raced off to regain the trail. Because it was so late, they took the straightest route back, riding side by side. He could see the enjoyment in her grin. She clearly loved fast machines, wind, and sky as much as he did, and there was nothing more graceful, exciting, or sexy than the sight of Shelley handling that bike.

Which gave him an idea.

By the time they reached the private lot belonging to one of his trail-riding friends, the shadows had stretched long. Mick had stuck to his plan, but as they climbed off the bikes, he was already searching his mind for a way to prolong the date.

Once the bikes had been wheeled onto the trailer, those guys took off, leaving Shelley and Mick with the Lexus she’d ridden in and Mick’s Mercedes. The driver of the Lexus waited, texting on his phone.

Mick turned to Shelley. “I’d be delighted to drive you home. Or if you’re hungry, maybe we could discuss a new idea I have. Over dinner.”

Her lips parted, then her head dropped and she made a gesture at her dirt-spattered clothes that Mick interpreted as ‘I’m dressed for riding, not for dinner.’

He flicked a look at the driver, who stood a discreet distance away, apparently absorbed in his phone. Mick restrained himself from blurting what he really thought, which was,
I like you whatever you wear. Including wearing nothing
.

Stick to the plan!

She also glanced at the driver, then said, “I need to go home and grab a shower. Then I’d be glad to meet you anywhere.”

Nothing would be easier than assigning a driver to her, to make her comfortable. To treat her the way he thought she deserved. But he sensed in her watchful gaze and tense shoulders that she needed some boundaries.

“Sure,” he said. The flash of relief in her expression convinced him that he’d guessed right.

He was surprised at the sharp sense of disappointment that she needed distance between them, as though she didn’t trust him. He kept his voice neutral as they agreed on one of his favorite restaurants, which that was not frequented by the gossiping Hollywood crowd. He wanted Shelley all to himself.

***

Shelley got home, having spent the entire trip running mentally through her wardrobe.

“How’d it go?” Jan asked.

“Great. Fantastic. He wants to meet for dinner. To talk over an idea, he says.”

“An idea?” Jan repeated. “What kind of idea?”

“Didn’t say. I’ve got nothing to wear!”

Jan mimed shock. “Words I never thought to hear from
you
. What happened to ‘Which of my three date outfits will I put on this time?’ or the old favorite, ‘If he doesn’t like my wardrobe, he can take a hike. I dress for comfort,’” Jan said, complete with hand-waving air quotes. “You must have it bad for this guy.”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. Too soon.”

“Too soon?” Jan asked. “After what the two of you have been doing?”

“That’s just it. Out of all the time we’ve been together, that is, two days and one really,
really
memorable night, we’ve only talked today.”

“Okay, this is true.”

“And I don’t want to end up wearing my two-year-old bought-on-sale date outfits to some fancy restaurant where they charge ten bucks for a glass of water, and have the upper crust of Hollywood wondering if he’s taking out the maid,” Shelley said.

“Maybe he won’t take you to one of those places.”

“Yes, so then I wonder if he’s ashamed to be seen with me.”

“Shelley.” Jan drew out her name in a low, thrilling tremolo. “Is it possible that you are seriously overthinking this?”

“Right. Right. Okay, outfit number one it is.”

On the drive to the restaurant, a small place in the Valley, Shelley brooded. She wasn’t sure she liked the woman she’d become. Even in the early days of her relationship with Dominic, when he’d been dazzling her by saying what she wanted to hear, she hadn’t felt this way. She’d come to the painful realization that with Dominic, she’d been more in love with the idea of being in love. And though her brothers had spent years training her how to handle attackers, she’d been a sitting duck for the insidious type of predator.

Turning herself into a woman who never let things get past two dates had supposedly solved that problem. But as she pulled into the parking lot, she knew that it had been easy because she hadn’t cared about any of the guys she’d tried on those one stop shopping dates.

They hadn’t been sleazebags, either. She’d just not cared.

Until now.

A few minutes later she sat down across from Mick, and her nerves calmed under the effect of his smile. She kept forgetting the way he
looked
at her with that smile in his eyes. For a moment, she felt like she was seeing herself through his eyes. Not a two-year-old pale blue wrap top over her utility black broomstick skirt, but how the soft fabric clung to her curves as it crossed over her chest, and how the crinkly skirt hinted at the outline of her long legs. With his eyes on her, she felt like she’d just walked out of a Rodeo Drive boutique wearing five grand worth of bespoke clothes.

They ordered drinks, food, and chatted pleasant nothings, but when at last they were alone he leaned on his elbows. All her worries and questions vanished when he said, “I’d like to create a show around you.”

“Me?” she repeated, then looked at him suspiciously. “In a fat suit?”

“Do you want to do that kind of comedy?”

“No,” Shelley replied. “Though I know I’m good at it.”

“True, but I’m not good at comedy. That takes a special skill. Instead of another show centered on another stubble-chinned guy fighting his way through drug lords or gangsters, I want to do a remake of
Route 66
. It would be about a lone woman riding cross-country on the old route.”

“Me?”

He lowered his voice. “I know it’s a lot to think about. You don’t have to answer right now. I was going to suggest this. I have a place up in Idyllwild. Four guest rooms. Take your pick. We’ll spend a few days doing some riding shots so I can put together something for the networks and the money people to look at.”

Considering how few shows there were starring women, especially women who didn’t fit the usual type, she knew it would be a crime to turn him down. Besides . . .

She gazed across the table at his eyes, which looked honey-brown in the candlelight, and said, “When?”

He shrugged, smiled, and said, “The weather is great. Anything the post-production people need from me can be done by wifi. How about we beat the traffic and leave tonight?”

Shelley blinked, her entire body aflame like those candles. “Sure.”

And as they ate, he began throwing out ideas, his accent subtly strengthening as his enthusiasm took fire. She tossed in a few of her own ideas, appreciating the way he listened, gave a little nod, then began weaving her ideas into his own rapidly evolving thoughts.

When it was time to leave, Shelley excused herself to visit the restroom, where she called Jan, who answered on the third ring.

“Where are you?” Shelley asked, holding the phone away from her ear because of the background noise.

“Kara invited a few people over for Rob’s birthday,” Jan replied. “What’s up?”

“Oh, what a relief. You’re only two blocks away from the apartment. Jan, I need your help.”

“Hang on
on-n-n-n-e
sec.”  Shelley heard muffled noises, then the slamming of a door. “Okay, I’m in the bathroom,” Jan whispered. “What happened?”

“Are the roommates home?”

“Not sure about Annette, but I heard Taylor’s TV booming, and she left zero calorie popcorn all over the kitchen counter. I think she’s in her lair for the night.”

“Hell.” Shelley quickly told Jan what had happened, then broke into Jan’s squeal of glee. “Jan! Focus! I need you to get rid of the roommates. Can you do that? I don’t mind Annette, but if Taylor is there, you know how she’ll be.”

“Yes! Score! She takes one look at Mick Volkov walking into our crappy apartment, she will
have
to shut up about the ice cream at last!”