Bear Meets Girl Read Online Free Page B

father had talked not only Juen Davis, Jai’s mom, into making the move, but had convinced his sisters to allow outsiders onto their street, Cella still didn’t know. But her father did have a way.
    Yet Cella had never been more grateful for her father’s smooth-talking ways as she was the moment she walked into the Davis kitchen and asked, “Am I dying?”
    Jai Davis, working on paperwork at the kitchen table, didn’t even look up as she replied, “Yes. Although to be accurate we all are.”
    Cella rolled her eyes. That was the only downside of the Davis family. They were intellectuals. Juen Davis was a lawyer, Jai’s father had been a heart surgeon before his death five years ago, and Jai was an orthopedic surgeon with a side specialty in artery repair. Necessary for her job as head of the entire medical staff of the Sports Center, where most shifter games, pro and minor, for the tri-state area were played—and where many arteries were severely damaged.
    “Well,” Cella pushed, “am I literally dying? You know. This moment. From a tumor or something you haven’t told me about?”
    Jai finally raised her head and studied Cella. They had similarly colored eyes: bright gold, although there was no green in Jai’s. Otherwise, they couldn’t look more different. Jai was black and Asian while Cella couldn’t be more Irish if she’d come from Ellis Island with the word “Irish” stamped across her forehead. “Why would you think you are?”
    “Because my family just met me in the kitchen to tell me they love me. My family.”
    “My mother tells me that all the time.”
    “My mother wasn’t there, and your mother is a well-balanced, normal woman who can shift into animal form. She’s not descended from gypsies. Nor was your father.”
    “Nope. Third generation Chinese me mum, and daddy was good ol’ Jamaican. And I thought Malones preferred ‘Traveller’ to gypsy.”
    “I can call my damn family whatever I want to. Does it look like I give a shit about any of that right now?”
    “I’m still not clear on why you think you’re dying.”
    “Because”—Cella rubbed her forehead, still hungover and beginning to panic—“when the Malones come at ya, and are nice ... someone’s dying! ”
     
    After dinner with his team to celebrate another devastating loss to shifters in the Long Island Fire Department, Crush got home, tossed his equipment and clothes into a corner, and took a quick shower. Once clean, he sat on his bed, a towel around his waist, his sidearm within easy reach. He shook his hair out to dry it before dropping back on the bed, letting out a breath, and smiling.
    “Hello, sexy,” he said. “You lucked out tonight. No other females to keep me from you.” He crooked a finger. “Now come over here and keep me company.”
    Lola moved in, snuggling up against his side. At least tomorrow morning Crush wouldn’t be waking up with any unknown felines wrapped around him. It was kind of a relief really ... while at the same time strangely disappointing.
    “Don’t drool on me tonight,” he warned Lola, the English Bulldog. “You know I hate that.”
    She snorted, as always completely ignoring what he’d just told her, and rolled to her back, belly exposed. Like most animals, Lola knew what Crush was, but she trusted him. Knew he’d never hurt her.
    With Crush rubbing her pink-and-white exposed belly, Lola fell asleep almost immediately, but it took Crush another hour, even though he was exhausted down to his bones. But he knew the following week his life would change—and he still wasn’t happy about it.

C HAPTER T HREE
    A fter four solid days of waiting and not wanting to spend another day—or even worse, an entire weekend—anticipating the anvil about to drop on his head, Crush went to his boss’s office and stood silently in the man’s doorway. Miller had his back to him, going through his files, when he suddenly tensed, his entire body going rigid. His reaction didn’t shock