Scottish Werebear: A New Beginning: A BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Scottish Werebears Book 4) (6 page)

"I can see that," the female responded.

"Please come with us," the bigger male said. He had an inherent authority hanging around him, but Matt wasn't so easily deterred.

"I've got to check on Leah," Matt explained as if that would make these two figments of his imagination vanish into thin air, allowing him to focus once more on the task at hand.

But they didn't vanish. Instead, they exchanged a look and almost instantly morphed into humans. Very naked humans.

The man snipped his fingers, and, from the other end of the hallway, someone flung a couple of bundles of clothes at them, which they swiftly put on.

Jeez, how many of them were there?

"You're just going to stay like this, are you?" the woman, who looked a lot less distracting now that she was wearing a pair of cargo pants and a black pullover, asked.

"Who are you people exactly? And why are you here?" Matt responded, ignoring her odd question.

"I guess a thank you was too much to ask. Be glad we came when we did, or these clowns-" The woman nodded at the kidnapper who was still lying at Matt's paws. "Would have taken you and the human woman as soon as their backup arrived."

Backup? What the hell was she talking about?

"Oh, you didn't think it was just the two of them and another standing guard, did you?" she asked.

"That's enough. Matthew. You'll have questions. We'll answer them to the best of our knowledge, but only once we get back to base. Margaret here will ensure your lady friend is all taken care of. All right?" the man took over.

"Okay..." Matt frowned. Margaret, eh? That name really didn't suit her; it seemed too old fashioned.

"I'm Henry, by the way. Let's go then."

The black-haired woman, Margaret, resolutely marched off into Leah's bedroom, and soon the two of them could be heard talking. Perhaps these guys were real then, not imagined.

Matt finally gave in and allowed himself to be escorted through the hallway and lounge and out of the house, where a bunch of dejected looking skinheads stood around with their wrists tied together, surrounded by even more big men and a couple of women wearing black commando gear.

Every single head turned in Matt's direction when he stepped out into the street. It was nightmarish, and hair- no, fur-raising.

"That's really him, isn't it?" someone whispered behind Matt.

"Yeah. He's been missing for so long everyone thought he was dead."

Were they talking about him? How did these people even know anything about him? He needed to find out exactly the how and whys of today's events; that was the only reason he was going along with these people. And Leah... he couldn't wait to come back and talk to her. In person.

It had to have been a dream. A crazy, surreal, impossible dream.

Leah kept watching the woman- she'd introduced herself as Margaret - as she spoke, but her words weren't getting through to her at all.

One moment, Leah had been remotely watching a movie with Matt, the next all hell had broken loose. Who the hell were the two men who had come into her house and tried to take her? What possible reason could they have had? They seemed to know something she didn't.

And who were the people who intervened, including this Margaret woman who had stayed back to talk to her? She'd introduced herself as being from some kind of covert police task force, but Leah found that hard to believe.

"It's strange, how our mind tries to trick us, isn't it?" Margaret asked.

"What? Oh, yeah, very strange," Leah mumbled, averting her gaze from Margaret's prying eyes.

Margaret continued to speak, and Leah made sure to nod and voice her agreement in all the right places. She was being handled, just like her supervisor in her old job used to do when she wanted Leah to take on more work for the same pay. Much like her supervisor, Leah could tell Margaret wasn't used to having someone disagree with her either, so it would be easier - and quicker - to just agree to anything she said while letting her own thoughts run rampant inside her head.

If the entire home invasion part of tonight wasn't bad enough, Leah couldn't get one particular image out of her head. The bear.

She'd been terrified when the bear came in - after all, who wouldn't be - but there was also something strangely familiar about it. She could swear there was something familiar in its eyes, something that had had a calming effect on her...But how could that be? She'd never seen a bear before, well, not outside of a zoo anyway, so how could she possibly have recognized it?

And then, if that wasn't weird enough, the bear hadn't attacked her. Instead, it had gone straight for the intruders in her house. As though it was trying to protect her. That wasn't possible either, though, was it?

After what felt like hours of nodding her head like a bobblehead to all sorts of explanations of stress induced hallucinations, Margaret finally left Leah to be alone with her thoughts.

Still shaky with the after-effects of her insane ordeal, Leah headed straight for the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. No, better yet, something a bit stronger. The morning was early enough that it still counted as night, or at least, that's what she told herself. Propriety be damned; she needed a drink.

As she poured herself a stiff one - Scotch that had been in her possession for much too long, she realized there was something else she needed as much, if not more. Her phone.

Matt would have seen the commotion outside her home and be desperate for some kind of update. Leah knew she would be if she were in his place.

Drink in hand, Leah rushed back into her bedroom. Where was the damn thing? Under the bed! That's where she had it last. She got down on all fours and found it soon after. No unread messages. Nothing.

What the hell? The last thing she sent to him was a call for help. Wasn't he, at least, a little concerned?

Sure, their relationship - if you could call it that - wasn't exactly traditional, but she'd felt that he cared about her at least a little. Had she been kidding herself?

Had it all been in her head? The little flirtations, the bond she'd felt toward him?

Then again, he wasn't anything like her previous lovers. He wasn't really normal, strictly speaking. Could she expect him to react like a normal guy would to an extra-ordinary situation like this? Perhaps not.

Leah took a deep breath, and a generous sip of the burning amber liquid she'd absentmindedly poured into a mug rather than a glass and decided to be the bigger person. She'd send him a message then.

I guess you're wondering what went on here tonight, eh?

Send.

Leah stared down at her phone for much too long, but nothing happened. There was no response, no matter how long she tried to hypnotize it.

Goddamnit. She had moved to this place in search for a simpler life. Two weeks in, she'd been the victim of a home invasion, come face-to-face with a life-sized bear inside her own home, undergone a weird brain-washing exercise courtesy of Margaret, who mysteriously showed up just around the same time as the bear.

And, to top it off, she'd developed a one-sided crush on someone she can't have. She had completely misread that situation. Bloody brilliant.

She threw the phone down onto the sofa in disgust and headed back into the kitchen. Through the windows, she could see that even the last one of the blacked out vans that had not too long ago been parked up outside her house had left, presumably taking Margaret with it. Good riddance.

As Leah poured herself another double, she wasn't shaken anymore; she was furious.

An insomniac at the best of times, Leah hadn't even tried to go to bed that night, so come 8 o'clock, she was still up. The buzz from the two shots of Scotch had worn off for the most part, and last night's events seemed very long ago.

She began doing the one thing that usually seemed to help when she had some issues to work through in her head: cook up a new batch of product. Funny, how she hadn't attempted to cook a meal for herself from scratch, but thought nothing of combining all these strange ingredients to produce soap.

She'd been telling herself for a while now that a new scent was required but just hadn't found the right combination of fragrances yet. Perhaps today was the day she'd figure it out.

Leah laid out all her essential oils, pairing them up in groupings she hadn't yet tried together, and put on a pair of gloves.

Although December had just begun, she didn't want to do anything Christmassy, so she quickly pushed aside the spicier scents.

Something fresh, new. That's what she was after. Like newly cut grass or the first flowers of spring. Daffodils? Why not...

She was just getting into the spirit of things when the doorbell rang and dragged her back into the real world. God. Hopefully, it wasn't that Margaret woman again.

Leah took a deep breath and rushed out to open the door only to find her other neighbor, Carrie, waiting outside. Just great. She'd probably seen the activity outside her door at night as well.

Matt had said she was a gossip - though, screw whatever Matt had told her.

"Hi!" Leah greeted Carrie with an attempt at a wide smile.

"Hey, Leah, how's it going?" Carrie couldn't quite disguise her curiosity. Her eyes clearly darted back and forth between Leah and the hallway behind her, as though she was looking for something or someone.

"Yeah, not too bad, considering. I suppose you must have seen a bit of what went on here at night?" Leah said, hoping to speed things up by steering the conversation in the direction she expected Carrie wanted to head in anyway.

"I did wake up to an awful ruckus outside. Cars pulling in, people running back and forth. I hope everything is okay?"

"Someone broke in; can you believe it?"

"No way! In this neighborhood?"

"That's what I thought. I still don't know what they were after. It was lucky the police showed up when they did, or I don't know what might have happened," Leah said.

Carrie's eyes widened at her mention of the police.

"So it was the police outside? I didn't hear sirens or anything."

"Standard procedure apparently, when the intruders are still in the house," Leah explained. "I was hiding under the bed when they came in." There was no way she was going to tell Carrie the truth, but she felt she had to give her something in order to get rid of her.

"Oh, my word! You must have been terrified!"

"Yeah, it was quite something. Say, you haven't had issues like this before, have you?"

"No, nothing like that. This has always been a very safe area," Carrie mumbled, obviously impressed by Leah's version of events. "Well, do let me know if you need anything. I'd better be off making sure the kids are dressed for school..."

Good. Leah smiled and nodded at Carrie as she said her goodbyes. Hopefully, that would be the first and last time she had to tell that particular story to anyone.

Leah wrapped her arms around herself against the chill still coming through her open front door. She'd changed things a bit, but her new version of events was so much more plausible than what had actually gone down, it actually felt a bit real.

She glanced over to the left, in the direction of Matt's place. Unbelievable that he still hasn't made contact. After everything that had happened.

Leah took a couple of steps outside and peeped across the low hedge separating their houses. His place looked dark - not that that was unusual - but just a bit darker than normal. As though he wasn't even home. But how could that be, when he himself had admitted to her that he never left his house?

Well anyway, if he wanted to hide himself away from her also, that was his problem, not hers. Leah took a deep breath, suppressing the sting in her chest that had first developed hours before when she'd messaged him and not had a response.

She shook her head and walked back inside, returning to the neatly lined up bottles of essential oils she'd left in her otherwise pristine kitchen. Sniffing the various combinations one by one, none of them seemed quite right.

No matter how hard she tried to concentrate, it was no use, though. Angry or hurt, she couldn't stop herself from feeling something. Something that affected her ability to work.