“Do I like them? Yes, but I—”
“Me and Emerson Elliot are gonna split one of your big plates.”
Was it just her or did Dana look disappointed? “All right. I’ll bring them on out when they’re ready.”
“Thanks, Dana,” Bash said brightly.
Was she living in la-la land right now? Emerson looked around, and it seemed the giant bear shifter that had come down from the mountains had captured nearly everyone’s attention. Most of all hers since she’d harbored a crush on Bash from afar for nearly two years, and now he was sitting across from her ordering them food like they were longtime friends. This was way better than talking to Ferdinand the squirrel or her potted plants. Or Dana.
“Is that the cherry one?” he asked, pointing to the slice of pie she’d been nibbling slowly on.
“Y-yes. Do you want a bite?”
“Do I ever.” He forked half of the slice into his maw and rolled his eyes back in his head. “Oh, my God, I could eat, like, four pies. I’m not kidding. I eat a lot. What’s your favorite food?”
“Barbecue?” She didn’t know why she’d answered it like a question, so she cleared her throat and said it more strongly. “Barbecue. That’s my favorite. You?”
“Everything. If it’s edible, it’s my favorite. I’m a logger so I use a lot of calories.”
“Oh. Cool.” Everything was so surreal right now, from the oversaturated sunlight making his eyes look like two glimmering gemstones, to the way his biceps bulged as he wiped a napkin over his mouth.
“Are you finding an online date?”
“Kind of.” Nope, she wasn’t about to admit she was looking for a baby daddy.
“Let me see, and I’ll help. I’m good with reading people.” He tapped his temple. “Good instincts. What are you looking for in a man?”
“Well, I’m not really looking for a man, but more like a…friend.” A sperm donor could be her friend, right? She considered Dana to be one of her besties, sooo…
“Okay,” Bash mumbled, pulling her laptop around to face him.
She squeaked and clenched her fists, barely able to resist the urge to yank her computer away and bolt.
“I want a nice…friend.” Emerson rolled her eyes heavenward and puffed air out of her cheeks. She could not believe she was having this conversation with a complete stranger, Bash especially. “Funny would be nice.”
Bash looked up from the screen and canted his head. A slow smile crooked his lips. “What else?”
“Caring and generous.”
Bash’s smile widened slowly. “What’s the most important thing to you?”
“Smart. I want an intelligent man.” So that perhaps her baby would have an easier time in school.
Bash’s face fell so fast his ears moved. He ripped his solemn gaze away from her and looked back at the computer. Silently, he scrolled and scrolled.
She’d said something wrong, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what. Above average intelligence was one of the boxes she’d checked on the questionnaire that would match her with potential candidates.
“Sooo, what are you meeting with the bank for?”
“My financial advisor is there,” he murmured in a deep, distracted timbre. “He helps me take care of my crew.”
“Oh, are you some kind of financial guru?”
“No. Just a logger. Nothin’ more.” The last part had been tinged with sadness, though.
“I’m sorry if I said something wrong,” she whispered. “I don’t get out much and talking to people comes hard to me.”
“Why don’t you get out?”
“Well, because I work from my duplex. I edit articles for the Saratoga Hometown News.”
“Oh, you’re real smart then.” He nodded for a while, then turned the computer toward her. “This one,” he said pointing to the screen. “And him and him.” Insanely, he’d picked her top three favorites. Bash frowned down at his empty coffee mug and encircled it with his hands. “I should go.”
“But…” He couldn’t go. She was actually getting to talk to another living being, she was enjoying herself, and he was funny and easy to converse with. Mostly. “Our fries will come out soon, and I can’t eat them all by myself.”
“You’re right.” A hint of that heart-stopping smile was back on his lips. “I’ll help you. It would be rude not to.”
She giggled at the funny way he said things and took a sip of her coffee.
“For real, you don’t want a man?”
“That ship has sailed, I’m afraid.”
“You like girls?”
She laughed again and crinkled up her nose. “I like men, but they don’t seem to like me.”
“Horseshit. You’re a ten.”
Wow. That was a helluva line and one not used on her before. Truth be told, she could stand to lose twenty pounds, had wild hair, her face was on the round-like-the-moon side, and she was too short to be called a beauty by classical standards. Still, she liked the way Bash was looking at her, as though he believed what he said. He was the ten. She was a six and a half. It wasn’t low self-esteem that made her think so either. She was content being on the plain end of the spectrum, and she was realistic. Bash was a beautiful, muscled-up bear shifter with a smile that made her want to drop to her knees.
And now, she was staring like a simpleton. Fumbling for a response, she panicked and stammered out, “I m-messaged you once on bangaboarlander.com.” She gasped and slapped her hands over her mouth to stop any more stupid words falling from her lips.
Bash’s dark eyebrows lifted up, and he opened his mouth to say something, but before he could get anything out, Dana set a giant plate of cheese fries in front of them.
“I made them extra cheesy,” Dana said. Shooting Emerson a narrow-eyed glance, she leaned toward Bash and whispered, “Just for you.”
A vivid image flashed across Emerson’s mind of her pushing Dana’s face into the fries and screaming, “We are not pretend friends anymore!” Which was insane because she wasn’t a violent person in general. Instead, she choked her coffee mug and gave the clingy server an empty get-lost smile.
When Dana walked off, swishing her tail feathers, Bash reached for the fries, but stopped his hand midway.
“What’s wrong?” Emerson asked.
With a deep frown marring his perfect face, Bash leaned back in his chair and clamped his hands in his lap. “I don’t know. It don’t feel right eating anything. Not until you’re full. I’ll eat them all up, and you won’t have enough. Go on. You get your fill first and maybe my…”
“Your what?”
Bash lifted his gaze to her then back to the fries. “Maybe my animal will stop rippin’ me up.”
“Oh,” she said on a breath. She didn’t want that at all. Didn’t want him to hurt. She didn’t understand his instincts, but she wanted to help him, so she forked a mound of fries onto one of the plates Dana had brought and said, “This is more than I have room for. Now you can eat as much as you want.”
“Thank you,” he murmured, but he was pressing his hand on his chest now, right over his heart.
“Are you okay? Does your animal hurt you badly?”
“No,” he whispered with a slow smile. “Feel this.” He reached across the table and grabbed her hand, then pulled her too hard until her palm was pressed against his taut chest.
Oh, my damn, he had a rock-hard-body, and right about now this was like fondling a granite sculpture. But under that taut exterior, Bash’s heart was pounding really fast.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
Bash released her hand abruptly and went immediately to eating. “I think it means you should say fuck those boys on the computer and be my friend instead. I ain’t smart, but I’ll make sure nothin’ bad ever happens to you.”
What a beautiful promise. Emerson gave him a slow, stunned blink as she sank back into her chair. Years ago, she’d put off her plans for a family for a man who didn’t deserve her. For a ma
n who had wasted her time, and she wouldn’t do that again. She would order a donor sample and go forward with the hopes that she would get pregnant this month. This was just fate teasing her again. She’d learned a hard lesson before, and she was smart enough not to make the same mistake twice.
Sebastian Kane was nothing more than a speedbump on her road to happiness.
Chapter Three
Flowers were flowers to Bash, but Audrey had given him a very specific list of plants that would do well in his landscaping. Already, he’d built a big, pretty porch off the front of his trailer and scraped the top layer of weeds clean off his lawn with the bobcat. He’d replaced it with sod so fancy he could walk around barefoot without getting any sticker burs stuck in his feet. He was bound and determined to make his home more attractive to a mate looking to raise cubs with him, and the next step on his to-do list was to put in landscaping. “Curb appeal,” Audrey had called it.
She was at work, but she’d drawn him a sketch of how to do the flower beds, which basically looked like hieroglyphics to a man who didn’t have a creative bone in his body.
Bash wiped his forearm over his sweaty brow and stared into the back of his truck. The bed was layered in plants and flowers that apparently did well in direct sunlight and would survive the harsh winters. For Audrey’s help, he would fix up Harrison’s yard next as a present for her. Clinton could keep his weeds.
Bash had picked up two pink knock-out rose bushes just because they were the color of Emerson’s cheeks the other day. Would she like a place like this?
A strange ache unfurled in his chest, and he locked his arms against the lowered tailgate. He thought about her too much, but maybe that’s what friends did. Audrey was the only female friend he’d had, and he thought about making her happy a lot, too. Maybe not as much as he thought about Emerson, though.
Bash shook his head hard to dislodge his daydreams about Emerson. Two more days, and he would have some serious potential pairings come in for the Meet-A-Mate Bash. Emerson didn’t want a man. She’d said so herself, so maybe if he found a girl who was interested back, his brain wouldn’t be so filled up with Emerson.
But…another woman wouldn’t be as pretty as Emerson. It wasn’t possible. And she wouldn’t be as funny, or cute when she laughed. She wouldn’t have her pretty, shiny, spiraled black hair or her deep dimples. She wouldn’t have gold eyes that crinkled in the corners when he said something that made her laugh. If Emerson hadn’t smelled utterly and deliciously human, he would’ve thought she was a lion shifter with those pretty eyes. And her curves were perfect, like an hourglass or a number eight. He’d had a boner the entire time he’d talked to her at the diner. Usually he would’ve just announced that out loud and taken the awkwardness out, but she only wanted to be friends, and Audrey had told him last week he needed to stop telling her his dick was bigger than Harrison’s. It was true, by at least a centimeter, but maybe girls didn’t like knowing that stuff.
He spent three hours making the landscaping on either side of the new front porch look like the scribbles Audrey had drawn, and he was sure to put the pink rose bushes right next to the sides of the porch so he could see them first thing when he left for his shift in the mornings and right when he came home after work every day. Emerson roses.
“Looks good, man,” Kirk called. He was sitting in his yard in a dingy white plastic lawn chair with duct tape on the leg and drinking a beer while he faced the sun setting behind the mountains.
Bash stood back and dusted the mulch from his hands onto his work jeans. With a smile, he took eight giant steps back until he was on the edge of the gravel road. Hooking his hands on his hips, he nodded, impressed with himself. “It looks real good.”
“Yeah, you need to get that door fixed, though.”
Angling his head, Bash stared thoughtfully at the stack of tires in his doorway. A lady probably wouldn’t appreciate having to stack those all the time. “I ordered materials from Kong’s sawmill when I was down in Saratoga, but it won’t be delivered up here for a few days.”
“Thank God,” Kirk muttered. “I’m kind of surprised a woman like Audrey moved up to this craphole.”
“Me, too,” Bash murmured. “Audrey is special, though, and didn’t have no expectations. What if I don’t find a girl like that?”
“Well, you might not find her right away, but be patient enough, and you’ll find the right mate.”
“You really believe that?”
Kirk took another swig of his beer and nodded, squinting at the sunset. “I do. You’re a good man, Bash. A thoughtful one. I don’t necessarily think there will be a mate for all of us at the trailer park, but there will be a good woman for you.”
“How do you know that? Do you have dreams like Beaston?”
“Nope. I just have an instinct that tells me you will find someone. Look what you did,” Kirk said, pointing the neck of his glass bottle at the landscaping. “You made a right pretty set-up for a woman you don’t even know yet. You’ll find her, and she’ll be lucky to have you.”
“Like Kong found Layla?”
Kirk’s smile fell from his face, and he stared at the sunset for a long time before he said, “Yeah. Layla is his family group, and you’ll find that, too.”
“But you’re a silverback. He always had you in his family group. He was okay until he found Layla.”
“No, Bash, I don’t belong in Kong’s family group. Two mature silverbacks in one crew? I’m registered to Kong’s Lowlanders, but we butt heads too damned much. It was an easy decision to come help the Boarlanders for this logging season. I don’t belong anywhere.”
“But someday you can find your Layla, and your chest won’t hurt anymore. Not like mine does.”
Kirk’s lips curved up in a smile, just at the very corners, but his eyes still looked sad and empty. “I hope so.”
“Well, I have an instinct, too, and it says you will. And I don’t want to hear that bullshit about you not belonging anywhere. You belong here well enough.”
Silence stretched between them as Kirk stared at him with a frown. Bash couldn’t tell what was going on in that head of his, but that was normal. Kirk was smart, and his brain worked faster. He could’ve been solving some long-ass math problem for all he knew, but then Kirk said, “Maybe I’ll put my picture up on bangaboarlander.com.”
Bash thought he was serious, but he winked and downed his beer. Funny monkey. But what Kirk said scratched at a memory. Emerson had said she’d sent a message to Bash on bangaboarlander, right before Dana-the-waitress had distracted him away from the conversation with cheese fries.
“Hey, Kirk?”
“Yeah, man?”
“Can I invite whoever I want to my party?”
“It’s your bash, Bash. Do what makes you happy.”
Emerson made him happy. With a grin, he bolted up the stairs and gladiator-kicked his tires out of the way, then stumbled over them and into the living room. He was a man on a mission now because Emerson had messaged him on bangaboarlander. Him. The prettiest girl he ever saw had found him online. He hadn’t looked at the hits on his profile because Willa from the Gray Backs had set up the site as a way to prank Clinton, but now he had a reason to check it out.
His shoes were muddy, but he would clean up the boot prints on his dark laminate wood flooring later. His heartbeat was racing again, just like it had been at the diner. He might not be able to talk about science shit with people, but he understood computers. They made sense, along with numbers, where people confused the toots out of him. It had always been that way. He could focus if he thought about numbers, and he could hack just about anything, which was how he’d taken the bangaboarlander site back from Willa. She still bitched about him stealing her fun, but Harrison had asked him to do it, and Bash would do just about anything for his alpha. Harrison never steered them wrong.
His office took up an entire third of his trailer, but that was necessary since he was in charge of all the Boarlanders’ finances. From
401ks to investments, he was proud that he was the go-to guy when it came to money questions. Or he had been until Clinton had chased off most of the damned Boarlanders. Still, as much as Clinton hated him, someday, he would thank Bash because, even though he didn’t know it yet, Bash was setting him up for life and an early retirement with the money he took from Clinton’s paycheck and invested it each month. He was taking care of Harrison and himself, too, and hopefully someday, Mason and Kirk would trust him enough with their money so he could make sure they were set up.
He bolted past the wall of filing cabinets to the computer desk. The trailer park had gone to shit in the time Clinton had been here, but Bash’s office was pristine. It had to be for him to be able to work undistracted in here.
He rolled his chair under the desk, and his fingers flew over the keyboard as he linked up to the bangaboarlander site and logged in, password: badwillawonka.
He groaned as the number of messages his page had received popped up. There were hundreds, and all under fake names.
Wetkitty
Bignips
Lickme
Geez. He squinted as he scrolled down the list. Emerson was a classy lady. She wouldn’t be one of the dirty names.
Lookingforlove
There. He poked the message and scrolled real quick to the bottom where she’d signed her name. Sure enough, it was Emerson Elliot.
Dear Sebastian,
Oh, goodness, that sounded formal. Uuuum, I don’t think I’m using this website right, and you’ll probably never respond with all the pretty women you probably get messages from, but I know you in real life. Or, not know you in an official sense, but I’ve seen you around town. I live in Saratoga. The first time I saw you was in the library. You were in line in front of me, right after you’d registered with the Boarlanders. You turned around and told me I smelled good and you had a really nice smile, like you meant it. I liked that you gave such a nice compliment so freely. I like to tell people the nice things I think too. You were checking out a book on what women are looking for in a man, and I liked that too. It made me think that you are possibly looking for the same thing that I am. Companionship. So, full disclosure, my cheeks are burning as I write this. I’ve never done a matchmaking site before. A part of me hopes you see it and respond, but another part of me hopes you’ll overlook me and forget the silly girl from Saratoga.