Bearly Interested
Authors: Kim Fox
Tags: #PNR, #Paranormal Romance, #Werebears, #Shifters, #bear shifter, #shifter romance, #werebear, #steamy pnr, #funny pnr, #shapeshifting, #bears, #wolves
BEARLY
Interested
Sidney & Angie
By KIM FOX
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including emailing, photocopying, printing, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
Please respect the author’s hard work and purchase a copy. Thanks!
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contains explicit love scenes and adult language.
18+
Copyright © 2015 by Kim Fox
Other titles in the Werebears of New Hampshire series:
Book One
Book Two
Book Three
Book Four (Last Book)
one
Angie rolled her eyes as the other scientists in her team packed up for the night. It was only seven o’clock. She turned back to the Graphene Quantum Dots Accelerator and set it up for another test. Her team might be finished for the night but she wasn’t going anywhere. They were close to getting all of the results that she needed for her study and she wasn’t about to let up now.
She hummed as she worked, trying to block out all of the distracting, friendly chit chat of her fellow workers as they packed up for the night. So Frank’s son won his soccer tournament. So Betsy and her husband were going to their cottage for the weekend.
Who cares? Really?
Who could care about stupid family stuff when they were close to unlocking a mystery of the universe?
“Wait,” Betsy called out, getting everybody’s attention. “I have an announcement to make.”
The team of five other Quantum Electrochemists gathered around her with smiling faces. Angie muttered to herself as she put down her clipboard and walked over. She hated being interrupted when she worked.
“I am happy to say,” Betsy said, pausing to drag out the news. Angie glanced back at the Accelerator. “I’m pregnant!”
Angie’s coworkers clapped and cheered as Angie jerked her head back.
Is this good news?
Betsy was one of the leading figures in her field. She had such a bright future ahead of her and she was throwing it all away for what? Diapers and sleepless nights? Spaghetti plastered walls and more diapers? That was ridiculous.
What a waste
.
Angie forced out a smile and clapped as the other scientists hugged the new mom.
“Congrats Betsy,” Angie said, when it was her turn to congratulate her on her career death sentence.
“Don’t worry boss,” Betsy said. “I’ll finish up the project. It won’t effect my work in any way.”
Yeah right.
Angie smiled. “I wish you all the best.”
She walked back to the Accelerator and noted down the data points that the machine was spewing out.
Interesting
. There was a slight variation on the previous tests.
How exciting
. The numbers varied by 0.00000005%.
Angie glanced at Betsy and shook her head, feeling sorry for her. She was going to miss all of this when her baby came.
“We’re going to the pub to celebrate,” Sara said to her as the rest of her team left. Angie was team leader on the project. “Want to come? I’m going to buy Betsy a shot of apple juice.” She chuckled at her bad joke.
“No,” Angie said. “I’m going to finish this up.”
Sara leaned forward, looking at her faded reflection in the stainless steel Graphene Quantum Dots Accelerator. She pulled out a stick of red lipstick from her pocket and puckered her lips.
“There’s going to be men there,” she said, slathering it on her lips. “You have to leave here once in a while. Go on a date.” She placed the lipstick back in her pocket and turned to Angie. She had a smudge of lipstick on her teeth.
“When was the last time that you had any fun?” Sara asked.
Angie sighed. It had been over a month. She went kayaking in New Hampshire with her friends Becca and Grace. A wild storm separated her from the group and she ended up staying the night in an abandoned cabin with a huge bear shifter named Sidney. He was a know-it-all and frustrating as all hell but she had a lot of fun with him. They played games and got drunk and then he fucked her brains out. All in all a great night. But she didn’t have time for that now. Her career was exploding and she had no time for anything else.
“I have fun,” Angie lied. She marked down a number on her clipboard.
Sara snatched it from her hands. “This is not fun. Come have a drink. The mysteries of the universe will still be here tomorrow waiting for you.”
Angie grabbed the clipboard back and shook her head. “Maybe next time,” she said, turning back to the readings on the machine.
“Alright, suit yourself,” Sara said, getting up, fixing her blond hair in the reflection of the machine. “One day you’re going to wake up and be ninety and all you’re going to have is a shelf full of studies and awards to love.”
Angie rolled her eyes as Sara left to catch up to the others. They just didn’t understand. If she nailed this project she might get asked to work at the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The major leagues of Quantum Physics.
Then she would be happy.
Angie flipped off the light switch of the lab and locked the door. She rubbed her eyes and looked at her watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.
Her stomach growled as she headed for the elevator. She had forgotten to eat since lunch. Again.
The elevator binged as the doors opened and she walked inside. She leaned against the elevator wall and closed her eyes. Sidney’s large arms and massive chest thrust into her thoughts. She remembered the way he lifted her onto his strong shoulders and made her feel so girly. The way he made her pulse speed up in a way that it never had before. The way it felt when he pushed up inside her.
The door binged open and the image vanished from her mind. She shook the distracting thoughts out of her head and walked out. Her mind always came back to him when she was tired and unable to focus on not thinking about him.
“Another late night Angie?” Gary the overnight security guard, asked from his little booth.
“Einstein never went to bed early,” she said as she passed him.
The cool evening breeze hit her as she walked outside. She breathed in the thick, foggy air of downtown Manhattan and glanced up at the night sky. No stars. You couldn’t see any stars in the city with all of the light pollution. She remembered the blanket of stars in the sky in New Hampshire when she spent the night with Sidney. He pointed out the constellations to her but was wrong on every one. He actually tried to convince her that there was a constellation called Captain Crunch.
She loved the stars. Her first choice was to become an Astrophysicist but her parents had convinced her to go into Quantum Electricity instead because it was an emerging field with lots of potential for recognition. Her parents were always hard on her, putting unrealistic expectations on her ever since kindergarten. The curse of the only child. She always had to be better and smarter than everybody else and it still never seemed to be enough for them.
Angie walked past the pub. She stopped and glanced in the window to see if her team was still there. Not to join them but to see if they were going to be hung over tomorrow. She needed them on their A-games.
Men flirted with dressed up women at the bar. Hands were on arms, fingers twirled in curls of hair, chests were puffed out (from both men and women) and smiles came fast and frequent. She felt a pang of envy and then shook the thought out of her head. She was destined for bigger things than family and a long string of unfulfilling relationships. She was going to be the best Quantum Electrochemist on the planet.
She couldn’t see any members of her team so she hailed a cab and went home. It was a fifteen minute ride. She paid the cabbie and went up to her apartment.
She flicked on the light to her small, one bedroom apartment and headed for the fridge.
When was the last time I did groceries?
She opened the door and sighed at the pitiful selection. Condiments lined the inside of the door and one package of yogurt sat alone on the top shelf. She pulled it out and glanced at the expiry date.
“Yuck,” she said, as she tossed it in the garbage.
She opened her cupboard and pulled out a box of Special K cereal. She filled a bowl and headed for her balcony, stopping at her large bookshelf, situated where most apartments would have a TV.
Ooohhhh. I haven’t read this one in years.
She pulled out a thick, heavy book:
Advanced Multiscale Modeling of Electrochemical Systems
and stepped onto her balcony.
She was thirteen stories up in the Upper East Side. She would’ve had an amazing view if there wasn’t another apartment building in front of her, right across the street.
She sat down at the small table and laid the book out in front of her. A flickering candle in one of the apartments across from her caught her eye. There was a couple her age talking at the table holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. The candles on the table were on their last breaths, dangerously close to the candle stick holders. They both laughed at something the man said. Their eyes never left each other. They looked completely in love.
Angie groaned and turned back to her book. The third chapter was her favorite: Applications of Electronic Structure to Geometric Properties. She decided to treat herself and flip forward to it.
Her eye wandered up as she flipped the pages and another couple in another apartment caught her eye. They were cuddled up together on the couch watching a movie. The woman’s legs were wrapped around her boyfriends’ and her face was cuddled up on his chest. He had his arm around her, stroking her hair.
Angie turned back to her book and shook her head.
What a waste of time
, she told herself.
They could be learning something interesting and advancing their careers but instead they spend hours cuddling and watching romantic comedies.