The Fox and her Bear (Mating Call Dating Agency, #2) Read Online Free Page A

never said I’d come!”
    Yvette was halfway out the door already, but she turned her head all the way around. “Your mouth might not have said anything, but those eyes sure did. Like I said, I do this for a living.”
    She was the last one out, as it happened. Somehow, Dawson had lost fifteen minutes talking to the woman with the strange accent and the slight slur in her voice. He stared, mouth agape, at his old friend, who was just then recovering his breath and his normal pallor. “You did this, didn’t you?”
    Tenner shrugged. “Did what?”
    “Set me up! You got her to come over and hoodwink me, shanghai me, bamboozle me into—”
    “Jeez, welcome to 1946, Beaver,” Tenner said, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes. “You’re the only bear in the world I ever knew that started talking like he was living on Nick at Nite when you get mad. It’s kinda cute.” The bartender fluttered his eyelashes, which were not at all luxurious, and sat atop ruddy cheeks and a giant mustache. Dawson glared.
    “Why? I mean, what the hell? Why’d you do that?”
    “Look, kid,” Tenner said. “You’re a nice guy, a little gruff, sort of a temper, but you’re a nice guy. You deserve better than sitting in a bar, noodling at a piano and playing Billy Joel covers for the rest of your damn life. And anyway, she was right. You’re a damn eyesore with your mismatched pants. Somebody’s gotta fix that.”
    As defiantly as he could, Dawson swallowed the rest of his beer. “Yeah? Oh yeah?” he stood up, a smile betraying his true feelings, but he was doing his best to look angry. “Well I’ll show you, you old son of a bitch, I’ll go to that woman’s place, and... wait, what the hell am I saying? I can’t do that.”
    Tenner got quiet all of a sudden. “You... can’t? Why not?”
    “I’m not the type to do all that sort of thing. I can find my own mate, thank you very much. It’s just that I’m not looking, is all.”
    “Right,” Tenner said, drawing the word out to about thirteen syllables. “So when you’re sitting there playing that piano—which by the way is just about the best mate-catching skill I’ve ever heard of, and it’s going completely to waste because you’re playing to a bunch of dudes—and you zone out, you gonna tell me you’re not thinking of some girl?”
    Dawson shrugged. “I don’t think of anything. I just zone out. What’s it to you anyway?”
    Tired, grumbly and grouchy at having been caught red-handed in his slightly-pitiful pining, Dawson got up and bid his friend farewell. “I’m going upstairs,” he said. “I got some thinking to do.”
    “Yeah, well,” Tenner said. “If I was you, I wouldn’t be late tomorrow. You really, really don’t want to be late.”
    “Why? And who says I’m going anyway?”
    “Oh,” Tenner said, “I think you made your mind up about five minutes ago that you were gonna go see ol’ Yvette. You better call her Eve though, everyone does. It’s kind of a ‘Walt sent me’ kind of passcode. But I’ll tell you this. Don’t be late, son, because Eve hates it when people are late. It’ll do you good anyway.”
    “Yeah, yeah,” Dawson grumbled, tromping up the stairs. But no matter what he said , the whole way up, and the whole time he was getting ready for bed, and the whole time he was lying in his mound of blankets and pillows, the only thing on his mind was flaming red hair, burning green eyes.
    Someday , he thought as he drifted off, someday I’ll catch you .

3
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    “W hat on earth is that ?” Dora walked through the front door of Mating Call Dating Agency’s office and dropped a pile of folders on her desk as the smell of something roasted and delicious hit her nose. “Is that pig?”
    Eve looked up from Dora’s desk, where she had been sitting for a couple of hours already. She pushed her reading glasses up her long nose and blinked a couple of times. “What?”
    “The smell. It smells good, but