Shifters of Grrr 1 (97 page)

“Oh, shit, Ada, don’t do this.”

Her hand shot in the air, signalling for him to keep away.

Ranger shook his head taking another step towards her. “Not staying away, honey. I know what you’re thinking, and this isn’t the same situation as your parents. Tell me you understand that.”

“I don’t understand that. Oh, hell.” She ran out to the bathroom, bending over the sink as waves of nausea threatened to take her to her knees. When the dizziness passed, she ran the tap. The door opened behind her as she was splashing cold water across her face. Looking up, Ranger was reflected in the mirror at her shoulder.

“Are you okay?”

“No.” Fuck, she was so far from okay she didn’t know what to address first; the images bombarding her from her childhood, or the way her heart seemed to be disintegrating.

“It’s going to be fine, Ada. We’re going to be fine. Come out, please?”

She let him take her hand and he held it so tight it hurt. She welcomed the pain as something tangible to focus on.

He pulled her down onto the bed with him, but instead of the warmth that normally flooded her when she was near him, she felt numb. They lay together for a while until Ada summoned the courage to question him.
 

“This trip, it’s not for the hedge fund, is it?’

His chest rose and fell with the enormous breath he took. She could feel his bear rumbling, and this agitation was so different to the happy rumbles she’d heard all week.

“It’s a Bear Force trip.”

Now it was her turn to breathe deeply. “Where?” she finally managed.

“Russia. Bear baiting.”

“You’ll be armed?”

He nodded.

She reached for his shirt, pulling up the hem and taking a closer look at the recent scarring. In a normal state of mind, instead of the one she’d been in for the last ten days, where everything was sunshine and fucking sparkly dolphins farting rainbows of gold dust, she’d have seen it for what it was.

A bullet wound.

“This here,” she said, running her finger around the scar tissue, “you were shot.”

She heard him swallow.
 

“That’s right.”
 

She swung off the bed and started packing the small bag of things she had with her. All the time, Ranger followed her, begging her not to go, but she was right back there, back at the moment the police came to the house, telling her she no longer had a father, and in essence, a family. If only they’d known, from that moment, she no longer had a mother, either, there might have been some help for her.

The heartbreak she’d carried from her childhood had stayed as a hairline fracture.

What Ranger had just revealed split it completely in two.

As she turned to say goodbye to Ranger, her cheeks soaked with tears, the devastated look on his face wrecked her.
 

CHAPTER TEN

~ADA~

Six Months Later

At the
In Depth
magazine Monday morning editorial meeting, Ada’s career hit a new low. She drew circles in her notebook, all the while watching three straggling passengers on the street ten storeys below make a suicidal bolt across the traffic of Auckland’s Quay Street to catch the departing ferry.

Not a chance.

In fact, they had about as much chance of making the ferry as her boss had of her dressing up in a bear costume and rattling a donations bucket on a street corner for an entire day.

On the other side of the boardroom table, Sally Warner, her colleague who got all the good assignments because she
really did give a fuck
, smirked at her.

“You and Sally can stay on in the boardroom when we’ve finished the meeting and nut out the sort of background she needs for the story; responses from donators, those who turn you down, that sort of thing. Collection day is Friday, and the briefing is at Bear Protection Society HQ tomorrow. Any questions?” asked Barry.

Ada turned her attention to the editor who’d done nothing but assign her shit work since she turned him down for a blowjob after a particularly drunken work function several months ago. The same function where it appeared Sally had given up some oral love and was now thusly rewarded.

“Sure, I have a question; why me?” Ada set her mouth tight and fixed Barry with a glare.

Barry smiled. “You did such a good job on the animal welfare story, I thought this would be a good match for you.”

What a slimy little liar. She didn’t even get a by-line on the welfare story, despite having done the bulk of the research and writing, and she probably wouldn’t get one on this story either.

Apart from the fact he was a vindictive prick, she couldn’t see any reason why she had to be the one wearing the bear costume collecting for charity.

When Barry shot a glance at Sally, Ada switched her focus and raised an eyebrow.

“Well, it’s ob-vi-ous.” Sally punched out the syllables in a completely adolescent fashion, and if she’d finished with a
duh
and an eye roll, Ada wouldn’t have been surprised.
 

Ada slowly nodded her head. “Obvious, huh? Go on.”

“You’re the only one in the office capable of filling a bear costume.”

A couple of her colleagues laughed, while others looked uncomfortable.

Keep going, Ada thought, you’re only a few words away from HR’s worst nightmare, until…stuff it; she’d put up with this crap long enough. Today something pinged in her head as the taut elastic of her self-control finally snapped. “Sorry, Goldilocks, I forgot you preferred to be on your knees under a desk, sucking the—”

“That’s enough.” Barry stood and shuffled his papers, giving the stack a couple of hard knocks on the table to straighten them. “Sally has all the details you need, Ada.”

He left the room, the others taking his lead and bolting right after him.

When the door closed, Ada straightened in her seat making full use of her size to stare down Sally. Her pleasure was hollow, but a victory nonetheless, when she noted the small quiver of unease that had Sally shuffling in her seat.

Ada wasn’t in the habit of using her size to her advantage, but Sally had taken too much that didn’t belong to her. Ada had come to the conclusion that being the nice girl was getting her nowhere in this game.

Fifteen minutes later, she sat at her desk going through the pile of press releases from PR companies all vying for a few column inches for their clients.

Another junk job.

When she’d started at the magazine, she’d been made all sorts of promises about writing features once she’d done her time supporting senior staff, but then she’d turned down the opportunity to kiss the editor’s ass, or cock in this case, and suddenly ditzy Sally, who was perfectly suited to the gossip rounds, was handed the features with Ada to support her.

Sally got the by-line and the kudos, and Ada got the experience, the legwork, and the anonymity.

She’d leave if there were any media vacancies going in town, but print publications were diminishing every quarter, and she was lucky to have landed the job she had.

Her only hope was to outlast Barry’s editorship and not cause Sally bodily harm in the meantime.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

~ADA~

“Coffee’s made. Tell me what’s happening in the world of investigative journalism this week?”

Ada’s flatmate, Nicki, loaded muesli into a bowl.

“This week, Blow-job Barry has surpassed himself. I’m dressing up as a fucking bear so that I can stand on a street corner, waving a bucket and begging people for donations for the Bear Protection Society.”
 

Nicki’s eyes grew wide. “A bear? Wow, what sort of story are you working on?”

Ada pushed in the empty dishwasher rack and lifted the door to hip height before flicking it shut with her butt. “We’re doing a piece about chuggers.”

“What’s a ‘chugger’?”

“A chugger is a charity mugger. One of those people who harass you on the street for your spare change, or hangs around malls trying to sign you up for a monthly subscription. You know how it goes:
‘Ten dollars a month will keep a small village in goats and running water.’
Except, the small village doesn’t exist beyond the imagination of a rip-off merchant who thought up the scam.
 

“So the piece is basically legit charity collectors, dodgy chuggers, yada yada. Barry wants a bit about what it’s like to be a chugger. As usual, I get the part nobody else would touch.”

“Why you, though?”

“Apparently, it’s
ob-vi-ous
.” Ada mimicked Sally, adding an eye-roll and expressive hands over her ample curves before helping herself to coffee.
 

Nicki spooned a couple of dollops of yoghurt onto her oats. “Nah, not getting it.”

She sat beside Nicki at the breakfast counter and added milk to her coffee. “Somebody decided I was the only one at the office who could
fill
the bear suit.”

She knew the effect her height and curves had on people, and years of practice had given her a smile that instantly set people at ease. She worked hard not to appear intimidating, but it was a useful skill to call on if necessary.

Men often found her size overwhelming. Ranger had been the only guy she’d gone out with whose magnificent presence was enough to make her feel feminine. Despite being unsuitable as a life partner, he’d raised the bar for any guy expecting more than a date from her. So far, she had yet to meet someone else who measured up.

“I know that look.” Nicki jabbed the air with her spoon.

“What look?”

“The wistful, misty-eyed one. You’re thinking about your bear-man again.”

She was. And if she could just get herself over the major hurdle that had made her run from him in the first place, she’d track him down in a flash. But she’d stated her position before she left: if he stopped doing the dangerous stuff, he could come looking for her, but until then, he wasn’t welcome.
 

“I’m thinking about how weird my life is, having to dress like a bear and collect money for them.”

“Ye Gods, the irony is unBEARable.” Nicki giggled, muesli raining from her spoon all over the counter.

“Don’t even start, Nicki. If one more person at the office calls me Honey, there’ll be blood on my hands. This morning I have to go to a briefing. I’ll be furnished with a fluffy suit and assigned a street corner where I’m to rattle a bucket and collect donations; something like a prostitute—”

“Minus the sexual favours.”

“Precisely. Most likely, I’ll be spotted by somebody I know, and my humiliation will be complete.” She dropped her forehead to the counter. “I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. If I was helping anyone but Sally with the story, I wouldn’t mind so much, but the girl’s an idiot and an ideas thief.”

“With a talented mouth.”

“Yes, well thank you for the reminder.” Ada stood. “I’m toasting crumpets, do you want any?”
 

“Just one, then. Any more and I won’t fit that hot little red dress I’ve bought for the conference next weekend.”

“Did you manage to get a couple of extra days in Sydney after the conference?”

“I did. And I’m flying business class, so I’m hoping to find myself a handsome businessman for company during my free time.”

“Sure, because you’re the girl who jumps into bed with anyone.”

Nicki shrugged. “A girl can dream. What’s more, it worked for you.”

Ada dangled her left hand in front of Nicki. “Is there a ring on this finger?”

“No, but whose fault is that,
Miss
Hastings?”

“I guess I jumped into bed with the wrong man. So let that be a lesson to you. Don’t believe that a holiday hook-up is going to be the answer to your prayers.”

“Holy hell, Ada. That man you found
was
the answer to your prayers. Ranger Sachs-Severin, screamingly rich, hot-bodied sex god, eligible bachelor, everything a girl could wish for. You wished, you found him, and you ran. There’s no second chances, girl. The man-fairy delivers you sex on a stick with pockets full of gold, and you’re all,
nah, I’m not keen on that weird special ops stuff he does. Bring me another.
”

“Have you quite finished?”

“Actually, no. You see, there are a lot of ladies around town who find that whole special ops lark screamingly sexy, too. You had the package, Ada. What you did was like turning down the lottery winnings because all that extra money would mess with the spreadsheet columns of your cleverly planned monthly budget.”

“That special ops lark meant I would be left at home wondering where the hell he was and if he was coming back in one piece. My mother did that her entire life. It destroyed our family. There’s more irony for you, because the guy of my dreams has this appetite for going out and saving god-knows-what, just like my father did. I can’t live like that, so I got out quickly before my heart became involved.”

“Bullshit.”

Ada’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Your heart’s involved. You wouldn’t be reacting like this if it wasn’t.” Nicki slipped off her stool, widening her arms. “Come here and have a hug.”