Bloodrunner Bear (Harper's Mountains Book 2) Read Online Free Page A

wasted on a beast. Aaron had felt the effects of her thoughtful burn cream gesture for less than an hour before Bear was ready to rip out of his skin and brawl again.

Chapter Four
     
    Alana marked out number fourteen on the dream man list. Pursing her lips in concentration, she carefully and completely blacked it out with a permanent marker, then folded the paper and tucked it in her back pocket.
    Snatching the basket of pastries off the end of the counter, she strode for the door, turned the hands on her clock sign to say be back in fifteen minutes , and made her way into the crisp winter weather outside. A few stores down, she gave a friendly wave to Fiona Cooper and her daughter who were walking along the sidewalk across the street.
    “Hey, Alana!” Fiona called. “How’s business?”
    “Just fine,” she lied. Business had never boomed for the coffee shop. In fact, to rent the space and keep up with her bills, she was barely breaking even every month. She’d had all these ideas for her café. Pretty paint colors, a mural on the back wall, chandeliers instead of the crappy, rusty lighting fixtures her landlord insisted on keeping for sentimental reasons. She wanted wood flooring and better display cases for her pastries and an updated kitchen in the back, but all that took money. She’d emptied her savings on startup costs two years ago, and if she was perfectly honest, Alana was disappointed she hadn’t made enough profit to fix it up yet. She’d had all these plans, all these to-do lists, but all those dreams had circled the toilet when she’d failed to make enough to keep the place afloat long-term. She loved the café. It had made her feel brave for starting a business, and her heart belonged in between those four walls. But now she felt like a huge failure that she hadn’t been able to do more for her café. That was the pitfall of starting a niche business in a small town. Not enough customers to sustain shops like hers.
    Her heels clacking on the concrete, Alana ducked into the giant open garage door of the fire station. She’d never been in here before, but there were three men cleaning the bright red fire engine that shone in the hanger. And one of those men was none other than the Sexy Yeti she’d met the other day. She’d known he would be here since she’d watched the firehouse for the past three days, waiting for him to show up on his Harley. And this morning, her stalking had been rewarded with the deep rumble of his bike echoing off the early morning Main Street.
    He looked up from where he was folding a hose, dropped his gaze back to his task at hand, then jerked his attention back to her. “What are you doing here?” he asked so loud, his question echoed off the towering garage space.
    “I brought you and the boys a thank-you basket.”
    “Please tell me there are lemon bars,” Mark Trainor said as he and Bryant swarmed her like hungry seagulls. She’d gone to high school with both of them.
    “Of course there are lemon bars.” She handed over the basket, but snatched a box out before the boys laid waste to all the sweets she’d made them.
    “This one is for you,” she said, holding it out to Sexy Yeti.
    He shifted his weight from side to side, like a starving animal that debated the trustworthiness of her offered beef jerky.
    “She isn’t going to bite you, Aaron,” Mark griped at him.
    “Aaron,” she murmured, testing his name on her tongue.
    Around a bite of lemon bar, Mark said, “Yeah, you’re looking at the Aaron Keller of the Breck Crew.”
    “What?” she squawked, too loud. Her heart leapt into her throat. She eyed him and tried to match his face to the boy who had been all over the news when the bear shifters had first come out to the public. He’d been a little blond, wholesome, squeaky-voiced kid when his crew had first made national news. Now he was a tall, strapping, tatted-up beefcake on a Harley.
    Aaron angled his face away, his eyes hardening. Clenching