Choose the Bears (Ursa Shifters #6)

Chapter 36

Chapter 36

Imogen

I was a complete idiot and now everyone knew.

That was a tad overly dramatic, but hey, I didn’t exactly have an Emily Post sanctioned response to being caught dry humping one of the guys that helped you leave your shit ex by the other guy who helped you out. So right now my cheeks were burning red hot, the feeling of shame keeping my lips tightly closed.

“So one of the previous therapists had the kids playing with this paint mix.” Kyle’s voice sounded strained, which only made this ten times worse. “I think they mixed flour in with it?”

“Corn flour.” Where had that come from? Oh, me. I shook my head, then stopped. Kyle noted this and turned to face me. “They would’ve used cornflour. It makes a nice consistency in finger paint, lets kids draw with their fingers in it and then you can take a print from it with paper.”

“I knew I had the right woman for the job.” His smile was like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, a welcome sight. “I grabbed some regular flour and would’ve made a real mess of things.”

Well, I knew what that felt like. I swallowed hard and put my big girl panties on, figuring the only way to get rid of the elephant in the room was to address it.

“I’m sorry about… that.” Yeah, great apology , I thought furiously. “I’m sorry you found me with Lucas.”

“Why?” The smile faded and something else rose, turning his eyes to gold. “Did Luc hurt you? Do anything you didn’t want?”

“What? No, I…” Just admit shit, I thought to myself. Stop the foreplay and confess. Foreplay was an unfortunate choice in words, but hey, here we were. “Lucas was comforting me and one thing led to another.”

“So you kissed him?”

Why did Kyle seem so pleased by that idea? Was he ready to pimp his friend out or something?

“Um yeah, at first, then the kissing seemed pretty much both our ideas.”

“And how did that feel?”

It could’ve been a cool, clinical question, but his low purr of a tone had me thinking of Crispin the tiger shifter in the book I was reading. I blinked, remembering why I’d gone to Lucas in the first place.

To ask him if he was a bear shifter.

I could do that right now, but as Kyle stared, my nerve left me. The idea seemed completely and utterly ridiculous now, so I forged on.

“Good. Really good.” I shrugged. “Better than it has…”

Ever been, I quickly realised. No one had ever kissed me like that, with such a combination of sweetness and sensuality, which was perhaps why my fingers went to my lips. It was as if by touching them I could recover that pleasure.

“Good.” Kyle shot me a smug smile. “You can go back to him if you want more. I’d advise locking the door, but?—”

“You want me to…?” I shook my head. “No, you guys are employing me to help out, so I’ll help. I’ll make up some finger paint and if I want… more of that, I’ll see if Lucas is interested once the work is done.”

“OK, if that’s what you want.” A perfectly reasonable response from Kyle, but there was a strange edge to it, something that had me reexamining my memory of him busting us. He wasn’t amused, horrified, or annoyed by catching us mid clinch. Kyle seemed…

Into it.

Like he wanted to watch every second of what was happening, right before he?—

Finger paint , I told myself firmly, moving down the hallway to find a gaggle of kids waiting by the door.

“We’ve got some eager little artists,” Ursula said, but the truth was more complex. Some kids seemed unfazed, fidgeting and moving like a happy young child might, but others…? There were shadows in their eyes. Ones we could hopefully dispel with some art, I hoped, walking in through the door.

“Ready to do some finger painting?” I asked brightly.

“Yeah!” the more energetic kids said, coming rushing in. Kyle took over, very gently shepherding the less-certain children inside.

It was now I realised what a mistake teaching art would’ve been.

There was paint everywhere. On the tables, because we’d poured an amount on each laminated surface, ready for the children to play with, but also all over the plastic smocks we’d had to make each child pull on. In their hair (thankfully it was not the kind that would stain), on their hands, their faces. Ursula had hung around to help and was cackling at the mess everywhere.

“This is awesome,” she announced, right as a child babbled the story of what they painted to her. “Some of the kids are terrified of the idea of a mess, and you’ve got every single one of them engaging.”

A few of the quieter kids warmed up once we got started, taking the squealing, shouting cues from the other children, but some remained restrained. They worked carefully to draw different shapes in the paint, intent on recording something.

“They are,” I agreed, even if it was a little ruefully.

“Miss Immie! Miss Immie!” A little girl waved me over frantically with hands painted neon green. “Look! I drewed my family.”

I resisted the urge to correct her, sinking down to her level to look at her table.

“That’s Mummy. That’s Dan-dan.” Her brother’s name was Daniel. “That’s Bingo.” She was a dog drawn with a few too many legs. “And that’s me!”

No father, I noted that silently, even as I smiled and nodded through her explanation.

“It’s beautiful, Chloe,” I said. “Should we take a print of it?”

“Yes!”

“One piece of paper coming right up.”

Kyle swept in with a piece of paper, not noticing the way Chloe scuttled back a little too fast. Her little eyes widened, and I wondered at what she was seeing, but the little girl recovered quickly. Kyle was big, he was strong, but he was safe, she seemed to decide. A small smile formed, fragile and ready to be dashed away, but as he carefully laid the paper down to take a print of her painting, then used his hands to smooth down the paper, not hurt her, she rallied.

“Your mummy will love that painting,” I told her, reaching out, and her little hand gripped mine tightly, hope flaring to life in her chest. “She’ll be very proud.”

“All printed.” Kyle peeled the paper back and showed it to her and the girl’s face lit up, her fingers twitching as she recognised each figure on the print. “So what else are you going to paint, Chloe?”

“Kyle!” she said, pointing to the man. “Books! Bear!”

I blinked.

Inside my head I knew what was happening. All the kids seemed completely taken by the grumpy bear books, so of course that’s what they talked about or painted, but… What was with those damn dreams?

“Everything OK?” Ursula paused midway through taking a print over to the drying rack. She seemed as attuned to my mood as the kids.

“Everything’s great,” I replied, right before I was summoned forth. Another child and another wanted to tell me the story behind their artworks, and I did what they seemed to need: listen.

After what felt like hours, the session came to an end and the real work commenced. We helped the kids clean themselves up, tossing the smocks into a tub for washing, then began scraping the tables clean.

Well, Kyle and I did.

“Shit, looks like we’ve got a new client being brought in,” Ursula said, looking down at her phone. “I’ve gotta go. I can send someone up?—”

“It’s cool.” Kyle was the perfect guy for this kind of thing: endlessly calm and placid. He worked to scrape the paint into a big bin with slow methodical strokes. “We’ve got this.”

“You don’t meet the new clients?” I asked him when Ursula rushed out.

“Not at first.” His focus was on the tabletop, not me, so I started scraping down my own table. “Seeing a big dude when you’ve just escaped a brutal situation.” He shrugged. “Not great for making you feel safe. Honestly, when Ursula first started this place up, she wasn’t sure if we should have any role at all.” His eyes met mine. “Every woman is here because of some dickhead who went out of his way to hurt her.”

Even me , I thought idly, then shook my head.

“So it makes sense that we should steer clear until people feel secure enough to deal with us.”

“But not me.” That came out without thought. “You didn’t do that with me.” I’d finished scraping this table clean and was moving to one of the last ones that needed cleaning. “You three were all over the whole process, getting me out of my old place and into the new one, then protecting me from Phil.”

“That was different.”

He said that so definitely, as if he knew exactly why, but I didn’t.

“Why not send Ursula to install the security system?” I asked. “Change the door?”

“Well, for one, she’s shit with tools. Never seen a person strip a screw faster than her,” he replied, trying to smile but that faded under my steady regard.

“That’s not it.”

How did I know that? I’m not sure, but I was willing to bet it was the same strange impulse that told me to get the fuck away from Phil at the party, that let me know that someone was waiting for me behind my car. The same sense so many women have that they are surrounded by sharks, just looking for a bite.

The same sense men worked so hard to stifle in us.

“No, it’s not.” His acknowledgement was a relief when it came, because I anticipated the opposite. For him to pull the same shit so many guys did, deny, downplaying, and redirecting. I watched his hands shift, his palms face up. “It’s not, Imogen. You are… special.”

How? Why? In what way? I wanted to bark out those questions rapid fire, like bullets from a gun, but a customary reticence stopped me.

One I pushed back against.

This, this ‘special treatment’ was what had me coming up with weird theories to explain it. That he, Asher, and Lucas were not men but shifters, even when I knew the real reason would be something much more prosaic. So I did ask every one of those questions, watching him straighten up.

“You ever see someone and just know?” he replied, a wistful note in his voice. “With one look, you’re hooked. You don’t know their name, their life story, or how they take their coffee, but you want to.” He nodded slowly. “You really, really want to.”

“Yes.” That was blurted out, but as I heard my reply, I frowned. In some ways that’s what it felt like with Mike, but… Was that what it was? He was mysterious, notorious, cool, and remote, so when he spoke to me it was like an alien had descended from the stars to communicate with me only, but just like an alien, we had little in common once that process started. We kept looking for it though, searching for something to build a relationship on when sands kept shifting the foundations, no matter what we did. “No,” I amended, and he nodded slowly.

“Well, that’s what it was like for me, for Lucas?—”

“Lucas?”

That shouldn’t have been a surprise because we were pashing earlier this morning.

“And Asher.” I couldn’t help but show the surprise I felt then. “Asher too. All three of us were drawn closer the moment we saw you, Imogen. At first to protect you from Phil, but that wasn’t enough to keep us around. We’d have referred you to the triage team and organised support, but…”

He shot me a rueful smile and I saw the fear, the sadness there.

“That wouldn’t be enough to keep us coming around.”

“Then what would be?” I wasn’t fishing for compliments. This was the moment the other shoe dropped, and I’d been waiting for it to happen for way too long.

“Kyle.” Of course, that’s when Asher walked in the door. “I got news…”

His words and Kyle’s played over and over in my head as he turned to stare at me.

Those pale blue eyes felt like they burned into my skin, but it wasn’t a painful thing. How could it be when it’d happened so many times before? In real life and in my dreams, I couldn’t seem to escape them. I watched him take me in, that cool gaze taking in the paint on my skin.

The way my lips felt overly full and swollen.

I fought the urge to flick my tongue over the bottom one because they felt way too dry right now.

“Mama Lisica got back to you?”

Kyle broke the spell, referencing some woman I didn’t know.

“Yeah, we… we’ll talk about it in the meeting room. I let Lucas know he needs to join us.”

Kyle was leaving. Our conversation was over, something I wanted to protest, but of course couldn’t, not without seeming like a whiny little bitch.

“Right, well?—”

Kyle turned to me with an apologetic look. He was going to give me the brush off, but I got there before him.

“You go, I’ll sort out the clean up.”

“No need.” Asher pulled out his phone and made a quick call to the cleaning staff. “That’s what we pay them to do. Also, the morning mail came and this arrived for you.”

Another box was held out, heavier than the last. I accepted it as a substitute to the conversation I needed to have.

“We’ll talk more later,” Kyle said. “At dinner?”

I just nodded, then watched the two of them walk out the door.

Sure enough, a team of people walked in the door and took in the mess with a smile.

“The kids look like they had a lot of fun,” an older lady said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “It always seems to be in proportion to the mess they’ve made.” I offered to stick around, but she shook her head. “We’ve got this.”

So instead, I walked down the hall to the library, slinking between the quiet stacks to find an armchair and a table in a corner. I opened the box and there they were, my favourite series. Hard male bodies and roaring bear shifters were on each cover as I shuffled through the contents, realising this.

This place seemed to do a lot for the women and children they housed here, but buying expensive books and freighting them from overseas? I was willing to bet they’d never done that for anyone else. I’d check when I made sure to catch up with Kyle later this afternoon, but right now, I sank into the chair and opened the first book to page one.