Mating Dance (2 page)

Ashley laughed. “Gus and I have an
understanding. You’ll see.”

“Gus?” Tom got to his feet.

He walked closer while Ashley opened the
door of the bakery and stepped out. She wasn’t surprised when Tom
followed, though she noticed he kept his distance when she went
right up to Gus and held out the dish of crumbs.

Gus the seagull came right over, used to
their routine by now. After a few vigorous pecks, Ashley placed the
dish on the ground and stepped back, watching Gus demolish the bits
of bread she’d saved for him. Tom came up beside her, and she felt
oddly comfortable with him, though they’d only just met.

She’d wondered what the town lawyer might be
like when she’d helped her older sister settle the paperwork for
their new business. Ashley was the one with the business
background, and she did most of the bookkeeping for their little
business. She’d liked the orderliness of the lawyer’s
correspondence and the clarity of his instructions. He’d laid out
everything in a sensible way, which was something she’d come to
learn wasn’t always the case with lawyers.

She had looked forward to meeting him when
they moved in, but he hadn’t come by the bakery. Until now. She
wondered why he’d waited so long, and why he’d chosen this odd hour
and this particular day to drop by.

He seemed nervous, so she didn’t press him.
She had sympathy for socially shy people, since she’d been one in
her younger days. It was only after she’d gotten involved in the
speech and debate club in high school and developed those skills in
moot court competitions in law school that she had really
blossomed. She’d lost her fear of talking in front of people and
was better able to handle social situations as she gained
confidence.

But then all hell had broken loose soon
after she took her first job, and she’d come running back home to
her sisters. She was better off with them, doing something she
enjoyed even more than her former profession. Law was work, but
baking… That was fun.

Baking had always been her outlet, even
before she had gotten serious about her education. Baking for her
was creating, and she came up with a lot of the unique recipes they
used in their shop. She liked spending the quiet hours before dawn
beating bread dough into submission and experimenting with new
flavors and textures.

She liked being in the shop alone from about
four in the morning until her older sister came in to help with the
breakfast rush, such as it was in this small town. Ashley left the
store in Nell’s capable hands after the breakfast crowd dwindled,
and she had the rest of the day to herself.

“You named a seagull Gus?” Tom said quietly,
picking up the question she hadn’t answered on her way out of the
store.

She shrugged. “Gus the gull. It seemed
appropriate.”

“I can’t believe the rest of his flock
hasn’t show up to fight him for those crumbs.”

“I don’t think Gus really has a flock. He’s
kind of a loner. And he’s been living rough. See his wing?” Ashley
pointed to the way some of Gus’s feathers didn’t quite sit right.
“I’ve tried to get close enough to examine why it’s like that, but
he won’t let me. I’m hoping someday we’ll build enough trust up
that he’ll let me help him out, but for now, feeding him in the
morning is all we’ve managed to agree upon.” She sighed as she
looked as closely as she could at the seagull’s injuries. He’d been
through the wars and had a few scars on his legs to prove it in
addition the wing issue.

They watched in companionable silence while
Gus finished his breakfast, then flew away.

“It doesn’t seem to affect his ability to
fly,” Tom observed as the seagull flew off toward the water.

Ashley watched the bird go and sighed once
more. “No, he can fly well enough, but something’s not right there,
and I’d love to see if I could help him be more comfortable.”

Tom turned and she looked at him, meeting
his sharp brown gaze. “You have a good heart, Ashley Baker. Not
many people would care so much about a dumb animal.”

“Gus isn’t dumb. He’s smart enough to con me
out of breakfast every day.” She smiled and opened the bakery
door.

“Point taken,” Tom said, following behind
her as she went back indoors.

She didn’t seek the imaginary safety of the
counter. Instead, she leaned against one of the tables and turned
to confront her guest.

“So, what brings you to my door this early
in the morning, counselor?” She folded her arms and watched him
squirm a bit before he came up with a reply.

She wasn’t sure why, but it seemed she made
him nervous. Imagine that.

“What makes you think I didn’t just come for
breakfast?” he countered, leaning on the table opposite her.

She should have expected the
counter-argument. He was a lawyer, after all.

“Well, let’s see. In the months since we’ve
been open, just about every resident of the cove has been in here
at least once—if only to check us out and grumble.” There were a
few notable curmudgeons in the area who would gladly buy their
baked goods but weren’t exactly friendly about it. “You, however,
have never been in. Not once. I noticed.”

“Why would you notice something like that,
especially?” His tone challenged her. The single arched eyebrow
dared her to tell him the truth. Ashley squirmed.

“If you must know, I’ve wanted to put a face
to your name ever since we started the application process to move
here. I liked your style, counselor. Your papers were precise and
orderly. That’s not something I’ve seen all that often, and I
admit, I admired your work. Can you blame me for wanting to meet
you?”

Tom shrugged those massive, muscled
shoulders. Ashley had noticed how fit he was. Then again, most of
the residents of this town were fit and what she’d call
buff
. They were shapeshifters, after all. She and her
younger sister, Tina, had seen a few of them shifting into bears
from their rooftop garden within the first few weeks of living
there.

At first, Ashley hadn’t been sure of what
they were seeing, but as time went on and more men got naked in the
woods behind their building, and then bears stood in their places,
Ash and Tina had put two and two together, as it were. Incredible
as it had seemed, they were living in a town full of bear
shifters.

And then their oldest sister had gone and
gotten engaged to one of them. The sheriff, a hunky guy named Brody
Chambers, was a hottie, no doubt about it, and he’d be their
brother-in-law in the not-too-distant future. They had been
planning the wedding for the past week, ever since the happy couple
had made the announcement at a dinner party at Brody’s home in the
woods.

Brody and Nell were supposed to break the
big news about him being a shapeshifter at that dinner, but Ashley
and Tina had already known. It was Nell who had been out of the
loop on that big secret. The younger sisters had opted not to tell
Nell until they were all well-settled into town because they didn’t
want their overprotective sister uprooting them. They were done
moving around. The sisters liked this cove full of extraordinary
beings, and they wanted to stay.

The lawyer was just as hunky as Brody. No,
he was even more handsome to Ashley’s mind, because not only did he
have those broad shoulders, narrow hips, and muscles that showed
through his clothes, he also had a demonstrated ability to use his
brain. Ash had always found a man’s mind as attractive as the outer
packaging.

And Tom definitely had superior outer
packaging to go with his orderly mind. She’d liked his style even
before she’d seen him, and now that she’d finally met him, she
found him very, very attractive.

“I guess your sisters let you handle the
paperwork, considering your background.” Tom’s eyes dared her to
confirm his suspicions, and they held far too much knowledge.

“You know?” She sucked in a breath, truly
surprised, though she probably shouldn’t have been.

“Honey,” his tone dropped, turning the word
into a soft endearment, “I did background checks on all of you. Big
John trusts me to vet whoever we allow into our community.”

She grabbed the back of a nearby chair and
sat, her knees almost giving out on her because of his stunning
news.

“Does everybody know?” she asked in a broken
whisper.

Tom crouched before her, taking her shaking
hands in his. “No. Only me. I just told John that you were okay,
and he took me at my word.”

Chapter Three

“I was cleared. Cleared of all charges, I
mean.” Her voice was weaker than she liked when she finally looked
up to meet his warm brown gaze.

“I know. I looked into it. The New York
press treated you badly. You did all you could for those kids. It
wasn’t your fault.”

His strong, solemn tone touched her, even as
the horror of the past that had sent her running from her big
corporate job in New York with her tail between her legs came back,
hitting her once more. It had been a long time since she’d been
confronted by such an out-of-the-blue reminder of everything that
had happened. She’d run home to her sisters, and they’d taken her
in and let her join them on their next adventure.

“Then you know it all,” she said, knowing
her tone was as bleak as the desolate place inside her that had
been utterly destroyed by the events that had run her out of New
York on a rail.

“Most of it.” He stood and pulled a chair
over, close to her, sitting opposite her.

He was easy to be around. He didn’t rush her
to speak or bombard her with questions. She liked that. But even
so, she knew he expected her to say something.

“Nell and Tina already had a successful
bistro in Portland. They had a regular customer who had retired to
the west coast, and he got me the interview with his old firm in
New York after I graduated law school. If I’d known what I was in
for though, I don’t think I would’ve done it. Hindsight is
twenty-twenty, isn’t it?” She had to laugh, or else she’d cry. And
she didn’t want to cry about this anymore. Especially not in front
of this man. “So there I was, fresh out of school, full of myself
and not knowing that I was as green as grass and ripe for a fall.
They put me on the Hilliand case, and I did my best to follow
orders and file all the motions for custody. Well, you probably saw
what happened as it played out in the media. I became the public
face of the law firm for software billionaire Bob Hilliand. And I
got the blame when his ex-wife won custody of their three little
ones and whisked them off to Slovenia. When they were killed in the
plane crash…” Her voice trailed off.

“The press hounded you, blaming you for
their deaths. If you hadn’t screwed up the paperwork, they would
never have been allowed to leave the States. Isn’t that how it
went?” Tom’s voice was neither accusatory nor sympathetic.

“Something like that. But…I didn’t,” she
whispered. “I didn’t screw up. What I filed should have worked.
When the papers were released… That wasn’t my work. Only, no one
would believe me.”

“Whose was it? Do you know?” His question
was gentle but firm.

She met his gaze. “I know who it was, but
there’s no way to prove it. She set me up for the fall in order to
climb right over my back into a better position in the firm. She
didn’t care about the client, at all. In fact, she probably counted
it lucky that the mother and children died. It made me look even
worse than losing the custody battle. I left the firm in disgrace,
and her way was clear to advance.”

“People like that are the reason I hate our
profession,” Tom said, sitting back in his chair and blowing out a
gusty sigh.

“You believe me?” Ashley searched his gaze,
surprised by his open attitude after the horrible reputation she’d
earned in the press.

“No reason why I shouldn’t.” He spread his
hands on his jeans-clad thighs, and she followed the movement with
her gaze. He had big hands. Rough and calloused. Not like most
lawyers’ hands she’d ever seen. This was a man who worked with his
hands as well as his mind.

He also had a mishmash of faded paint stains
on his fingers. She knew he was a painter of some renown. All the
residents of Grizzly Cove did some kind of art. The place had been
founded as an artists’ colony, though Ash and Tina had figured out
soon after moving here that a lot of the residents were also
shapeshifters.

First off, most of the men didn’t act like
artists. They weren’t flamboyant. Just tall, muscular and hunky.
The place was populated mostly by men, which the sisters had
discussed at length. It was a less civilized stretch of the coast,
to be sure, but they were slowly bringing the comforts of
small-town living to the area. The three sisters were the first
outsiders they’d let in to their growing community, and there were
very few females besides the three human Baker sisters.

In fact, she could count the other women in
the area on one hand. There was Lyn Ling and her adorable
four-year-old daughter, Daisy. Lyn made art out of bamboo, and it
was said she kept a grove of the stuff growing out by her home in
the woods. She was Chinese by origin, but had lost her husband and
come to this town for a fresh start.

Maya Marshall was Big John’s sister. She had
a lovely little workshop just down the street from the bakery,
where she sold the most amazing pieces of one-of-a-kind handmade
jewelry. Jayne Sherman was Maya’s best friend, off-and-on partner
in the jewelry business and the town’s only registered nurse.

The final female of note was a reclusive
watercolorist named Mary MacDonnell, who came in to the bakery
twice a week or so to stock up on breads and buy a few pastries.
All of the ladies were likely shapeshifters of some kind, though
Ash had thought it rude to ask.

Tom was probably one of the grizzly bears
she and Tina had seen roaming the woods behind the bakery. He was
certainly large enough. And muscular enough. She liked the look of
his broad shoulders and bulging biceps.