Timberman Werebear (Saw Bears Book 3)

  TIMBERMAN WEREBEAR

  (SAW BEARS, BOOK 3)

  By T. S. JOYCE

  Other Books in the Saw Bears Series

  This book was not written as a standalone.

  The author recommends to read these stories in order for optimal reader enjoyment.

  Lumberjack Werebear (Book 1)

  Woodcutter Werebear (Book 2)

  Timberman Werebear

  Copyright © 2015 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2015, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: March 2015

  T. S. Joyce

  www.tsjoycewrites.wordpress.com

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America

  Chapter One

  Danielle Clayton had made the worst decision of her life moving back to Saratoga.

  That awful choice was highlighted by the man sitting on the stage across the bar in a halo of blinding spotlight taking a long pull of what was likely a whiskey and coke as he prepared to perform his next song.

  How did she know it was a whiskey and coke? Because she knew him as well as anyone could get to know a sack of secrets like Denison Beck. Charming, funny, entirely comfortable under scrutiny, outspoken, mouthy red-blooded man. All the outer attributes he allowed people to see. Attributes that made people feel like they knew him when they really didn’t know him at all.

  Denison Beck was an enigma. Always had been, always would be.

  She cast a lingering glance over her shoulder as his darker haired twin brother, Brighton, strummed the first chord of the next song. Sounded like it would be a country crooner. Denison looked different than he had four years ago. He’d lost the lankiness of boyhood and grown short, dark scruff on his face. Probably intentional and not from laziness. Denison had been a perfectionist when she’d had cause to know him on a personal level. At least he seemed to be from the few times she was allowed to visit his meticulously tidy home, back when they were dating.

  As Denison pressed the frets of his guitar with long, graceful fingers, his bicep bulged under the dark green T-shirt that clung to his defined musculature like a second skin. Gym rat. She’d forgotten to add gym rat to his list of known qualities. And sex pot.

  She took a sip of her cranberry vodka and tried to yank her gaze away from his flexing pec as he strummed along with Brighton. Nope. Her eyes refused, the traitors, and traveled down to his powerful legs, bent at the knee as he settled into his rhythm on the old bar stool. Even the holes in his jeans had probably been bought that way. She couldn’t imagine him looking like a slouch without purpose. But it wasn’t his demigod body that had slayed her all those years ago. It had been his eyes. Under the designer-messy sandy-brown crop of hair, his eyes were soft and gray as he belted out the first lyric in that deep, rich baritone that used to make her ovaries explode. The trio of ladies at the next table sighed in unison, then leaned closer.

  “Aw, for crap’s sake,” she muttered and dragged her attention back to her drink. She wasn’t going to be one of his groupies. Not this time around.

  This time, she was here for a job. That was all.

  Her hands shook, and she checked the door once more. If Darren didn’t show in three minutes, she was out of here. It was cruel to expect her to sit here and listen to her ex sing songs about a love he knew nothing about. And Darren, that little piss-ant, was half an hour late. It was his idea to have a business meeting at a bar, and he’d just so happened to pick Denison’s old haunt. Admittedly, she had hoped to enjoy some fond memories here tonight, not see her danged ex doing what he’d probably been doing the entire four years she’d been away at school—singing at Sammy’s Bar and banging locals.

  Freaking Denison. He’d never change. Which made her take a long, head-clearing pull of air and nod her head at how justified she had been in leaving his ass. Except in her bout of self-righteousness, she inhaled the plume of a passerby’s exhaled cigarette smoke and coughed in the most unattractive snort she’d ever heard come from a woman. Lovely.

  Time to go. She stood, but a tall man with piercing blue eyes blocked her way.

  “Leavin’ so soon?” he asked in a thick drawl.

  She smiled politely and took a final sip of her drink, then set the glass on the table with a clunk. “I’ve been here long enough. ’Scuse me.”

  “Let me buy you another drink,” the man said. “My name’s Matt, and I’ve been watching you sitting over here by yourself. I came here alone tonight, too, so I get it.”

  “Get what?” ’Cause she sure as snickers didn’t need a man right now, if that was what he was implying. She especially didn’t need one to pity flirt with her to make her feel like she wasn’t just some loser sitting alone in a bar.

  Matt lowered his head and voice. “I get that you came here looking for a…connection.”

  She screwed up her lips and swallowed a giggle. “Connection, no. Stiff drink, yes.” And a meeting with that little weasel Darren before he headed into the wilderness on his own. “I’m just going to close out my tab and be on my way.”

  He snatched her cell phone from her hand and typed in a number, then saved it to her contacts, the ass. “So, what’s your name?” he asked with a cool, playboy smile.

  His teeth were blinding white, like he’d bleached them with household cleaners. She couldn’t take her eyes away from them. His feline grin was like a bug light, calling to her.

  Completely uninterested in getting to know more about Matt and his eye-scorching grill, she ducked around him and leaned onto the bar top. The bartender was busy with a buxom blonde down the counter. Meanwhile, Denison’s voice hit the slower last notes of the song. Panic constricted Danielle’s throat. He can’t see me, she reminded herself. The spotlight ensured Denison couldn’t see anyone past the first few tables from the stage. She was safe all the way over here in the shadow of Matt the flirty giant.

  Matt’s hips brushed her backside, and she jerked forward.

  “Let me take care of this one,” he said, his lips so close to her ear his voice vibrated through her.

  His arms propped against the counter on either side of her, trapping her. With a gasp, Danielle rounded on him. “Back. The fuck. Off.” Claustrophobia was going to give her a full-blown, double ball-kicking panic fit right here in the middle of this smoky joint.

  She tried to duck under his arm, but he moved to block her with his massive, muscled torso.

  “My girl here needs another drink,” Matt called down the bar.

  “I’m not your girl,” she gritted out, measuring the distance she would need to drive a knee into his groin if he didn’t move. Damn her stumpy, short legs.

  Matt bowed forward, the smell of alcohol pungent on his breath. Danielle leaned back as far as the bar top would allow her, but it wasn’t enough. She was pushing his immovable chest now, angling her face away from his as he zeroed in
on her lips.

  “Stop it,” she demanded, just as his lips brushed the corner of her mouth.

  Matt’s shoulder jerked backward, and he spun away from her. The wide expanse of Denison’s shoulders now blocked Matt from view.

  “Oh, shit,” she murmured. Frantically, she flagged down the bartender, kicking herself for not paying in cash. When she turned to her right, Brighton was sitting on the bar stool next to her, sipping a beer like he’d been there all night. “Double shit,” she said, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.

  With a sigh, she opened them again, just as recognition flashed across his green eyes. He didn’t look any happier about her being here than she was. “Hey Brighton. Good to see you again.”

  Brighton leaned back, exposing the thick cords of muscle in his neck and his bulging Adam’s apple. He pulled a pen from his pocket and wrote a hurried scribble across a napkin as Denison bullied Matt out the front door.

  She stared down at the napkin Brighton shoved in front of her. He didn’t talk. Never had from what she understood, and if he wanted to say anything, he wrote it.

  You’re gonna hurt him.

  The words cut her deeper than she thought possible. They also confused the devil out of her. Hurt him? That was practically laughable. Ha, ha, ha, hurt him. Denison was an invincible and unfeeling razor blade who’d shredded her when they’d split up.

  Brighton’s dark eyebrows lifted, and he shook his head, as if she were in it now, better dig in her heels.

  “You okay, lady?” Denison asked in that familiar baritone she’d fallen in love with.

  The voice that had made her feel things no one else had.

  The voice that probably made lots of women feel lots of things.

  She wasn’t special.

  “I’m fine.” Tears stung her eyes and red bubbled through her veins at the idea she was melting down in front of the man who’d destroyed her. With a tentative smile for the bartender who handed her back her credit card, she signed for a tip, dodged around Denison with her chin lowered to her chest, and made a bee-line for the door.

  She passed so close to him, she could hear him inhale sharply.

  “Danielle?”

  Yep, it was definitely time to go. She’d known she would run into him in Saratoga. In fact, it would be necessary for her to complete what she’d come here to do, but it wasn’t supposed to happen now. She had planned to swoop in here, settle in, maybe make some local friends, and throw herself into work. She had wanted to deal with the avalanche of memories before she tried to talk to Denison, preferably without a tremor in her voice. She’d be straight-up damned if she was going to converse with him all weak and teary. Nope, nope, nope.

  “Hey, Danielle,” Denison called from right behind her.

  She pushed her legs harder, realized the two double cranberry vodkas she’d slurped down had affected her more than she thought, and promptly tripped over the door stop. With a squelch, she lurched forward and landed on her hands on the unforgiving cement. Good thing she’d worn a hoochie skirt tonight and banged up her knees to match her scraped palms. Pain shot up the nerve endings of her scuffed up skin.

  And now the waterworks were unstoppable as embarrassment blasted heat up her neck and into her cheeks. As she looked up, she was mortified to find Denison crouching in front of her, hands out as if he didn’t know what to do to help her, a horrified look on his face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fantastic,” she said around a sob. “I’m just…” She struggled upward and wiped her bleeding hands on her skirt. “I’m just wonderful.”

  “Here, don’t do that. It’ll hurt worse.” Denison held her hands in his and studied her palms.

  And to her utter annoyance and dismay, her body reacted to him, just as it had those years ago. From where he touched her, tingling warmth ran up her arms. It pooled at her shoulders, then flowed into her chest and down into her quivering belly. He looked up with a startled look in his gray eyes—eyes that seemed lighter than she remembered.

  “You feel it, too,” he accused.

  Anger snapped her spine straight, and she yanked her hands from his. “I don’t feel anything.” Ignoring her stupid tears that stained her stupid cheeks in stupid rivers, she stomped around him and tossed her purse into the passenger seat of her open-doored jeep, then slid behind the wheel.

  “You can’t just leave without telling me why,” Denison said, suddenly at her door.

  “Why what?” she said, swallowing her anguish.

  “Why did you leave without saying anything? You were supposed to be here, with me, for three more days before you went back to school. Dammit, Danielle,” he said, clenching his fists on either side of her door. His voice dipped to a ragged whisper. “I was supposed to have three more days.”

  She huffed and shook her head slowly. Why? Because he’d invited her to watch him play a show, and when she’d come to meet up with him, he had his arms around another woman. His lips on another woman. She closed her eyes against the pain of his betrayal. “You really can’t think of any reason why I would’ve left without saying goodbye?” You cheating rat.

  Denison looked at her like he was lost and swallowed hard. “No.”

  The look on his face, so raw and open, nearly doubled her over. Her chest hurt more than her scraped hands and knees. “I can’t do this right now.”

  “Danielle—”

  “I can’t! I’m not ready for this conversation. I’m sorry I ever came back.” She jammed the key and turned the engine, then pulled through an empty parking space and sped off.

  She looked in the rearview mirror just once. Denison was standing in the middle of the gravel parking lot with his fingers linked behind his head, chin tilted back, agony written across his face.

  Danielle had made the worst decision of her life moving back to Saratoga.

  Chapter Two

  In utter shock, Denison stood in the half-empty parking lot of Sammy’s bar eating a cloud of Danielle’s dust and wondering what the hell had just happened. Four years without a peep from the woman, and all the sudden, she was back, riling up his bear just like she had once upon a time. He ran his hands up the back of his scalp and flung them in front of him.

  He’d almost gotten over her.

  Brighton snickered a silent laugh from beside him like he’d heard his lying thoughts.

  “Shut up, man,” Denison grumbled to his brother.

  Of course Brighton would find this amusing. He’d sworn off a mate since he was a cub. Denison had played that game until he’d met Danielle, fresh out of her first year of college for the summer, working an internship for some environmentalist group up in the mountains near Saratoga.

  One summer, and his bear had chosen. Too bad she hadn’t chosen him back.

  Denison bit back a curse and twitched his head. “Let’s grab our stuff and get out of here.” Preferably before that asshat Matt came back with a couple of his Gray Back buddies and began a crew on crew brawl in a parking lot of inebriated humans.

  Matt Barns was an old not-friend and definitely due for an ass-kicking, but not here, and not tonight.

  The toe of Denison’s work boot faltered on a stone sticking out of the gravel, and he fought the urge to rip it from the ground and chuck it against the lone tree that sat between here and the main drag in town.

  Four years ago, he’d imagined meeting up with Danielle again. After a few months with no word from her, he’d known she wasn’t ever coming back. She’d gone back to college and begun a new life that didn’t include him. But that hadn’t stopped him from visualizing what one more hour with her would be like, what he would ask, and if she still loved him. Well, apparently he’d done something wrong, but damned if he knew what. “Freakin’ women.”

  “You done for the night?” Ted, the bartender, asked.

  “Yeah, we’re gonna cut out early. We’re gonna try to beat rush-hour.”

  Ted chuckled at the joke and waved them off. Rush
hour didn’t exist here in this small town, and it sure wasn’t a problem out on the winding road from here to the Asheland Mobile Park where he and Brighton lived. The worst traffic he ever found was a family of raccoons taking their sweet-ass time to cross the road on occasion, but other than that, he was lucky to pass another car on the two-hour drive back.

  Denison picked up his guitar from where it sat leaning crooked against his chair. He wasn’t usually rough with his instruments, and especially not his favorite guitar, but when he’d heard the ruckus near the bar and squinted through the blinding stage lights to see Matt messing with another townie, well, he’d nearly lost it trying to get to her. That guy spelled trouble every time he came in here looking for an easy lay. He was never subtle about his intentions, and when he was rejected, which was often, he wasn’t very gracious about it.

  “You okay to drive?” Ted asked as Denison packed his guitar in an old, scratched-up case.

  “Old man, you know I don’t drink too much when I have a show. Brighton had a beer, but I’m driving.” His whiskey and coke was all for show. If he nursed a drink all night, the ladies laid off buying him more.

  “It’s habit to ask,” Ted called, wiping down the counter. “Same time next week?”

  “You bet.”

  The conversation went like this every week, on repeat for five years. Denison’s inner animal required a strict routine. Work until his bones were sore on the jobsite as a timber man, indulge in the company of his crew in the evenings, sleep a full eight hours, then do it all again. And on Friday, it was gig time at Sammy’s Bar. Good gravy, life was boring, but it was what his bear needed, so fine.

  He lifted his gaze to the road Danielle had disappeared down in that sexy, forest green, jacked-up jeep she’d been driving. Life hadn’t been boring the summer she’d been here.

  She looked different now. Her hair used to be long, down to her hips, and as dark as raven feathers. It was still dark, but only fell to her shoulder blades now, and she wore it in soft curls instead of straight. He liked it. She still had those fiery almond-colored eyes, pert little nose and tiny, elfin lips that he wanted to suck swollen, but as far as he remembered, she’d never worn a short skirt in front of him. Not until tonight. She hadn’t the confidence to dress like that when he’d known her before. Or thought he’d known her.