Page 18 of Grumpy Bear

Austin steered me toward the end of one of the tables closest to the windows. I pulled up a chair and nodded to the handful of guys eating. I recognized a few of them from the bathhouse. “Everybody, this is Luke. Luke, everybody.”

“Hey.” I smiled and nodded. “How’s it going?”

I got a quick grin from the guy Austin had been making eyes at in the shower. He introduced himself as Ryan. A few others nodded and mumbled hellos over their plates.

Once the others returned to the table with more food, Austin leaned in with a smirk. “Listen to this, y’all. The boss helped Luke pitch a tent right next to his shack.”

“I’ll bet he did,” deadpanned some dude who looked like he competed in those strongman competitions where they tossed entire trees around.

Austin lowered his voice dramatically. “And guess what he told him to call him?”

A few of them looked up, eyebrows raised in mild interest.

“Are we talking about Sawyer?” asked Hank.

Austin nodded and elbowed me. “Tell them what you told us in the shower.”

“What are you talking about?” I hated this kind of attention, not knowing what kind of amusement he was setting me up for.

“What did he tell you to call him?”

I shrugged. “He told me to call him Coleman.”

Barely contained glee and groans of delight exploded around the table.

Their responses actually startled me.

Everybody was grinning at me, except for one person—the dark prince who’d been shaving in the bathhouse. He sat at the end of the table, apart from everyone with a couple of bodybuilder types. He stared at me, slowly chewing his food.

I felt heat flood my face, and I knew I was turning beet red.

Gunner the Viking wiped his smile with a paper towel. “I don’t think I even knew Sawyer had a first name ’til like the third season I worked here.”

“I know, right?” Austin hissed like it was the most scandalous piece of gossip ever.

The dark prince leaned back in his chair and openly studied me. Considering the complete lack of emotion on his face, I didn’t think it technically qualified as glaring.

It disturbed me all the same.

What the fuck?

I kicked Austin’s foot under the table. “Why are you making such a big deal about it?”

“Aww, bro. I’m sorry.” Austin put his arm around my shoulders and squeezed me in a side hug. “You don’t have the full context. But these guys do. They all get it. Some of them have been coming here for years, and he”—his voice dropped to a whisper as Coleman walked across the room and sat down next to Jim at the farthest table from us—“barely even looks at anybody. Even people who work here. He might grunt if he’s feeling especially friendly.”

“There wasn’t anything to it.” I pitched my voice so everyone around the table could hear me. “I called him ‘sir,’ and you know, he was, like, ‘Call me by my name.’ He was just… being nice.”

“Oh, I’ll bet he was,” Austin said through a mouthful of food.

The dark prince exhaled through his nose and slowly shook his head as if privately contemplating how pathetic he thought I was.

He stood suddenly with a scrape of his chair, grabbing his plate and cup. I thought for a moment he was headed right for Coleman and Jim, but their table was closest to the bus tubs and the garbage can.

He moved more like a big cat than any kind of bear or otter or wolf or whatever. His shoulders and biceps were slightly overdeveloped for his frame, and he slouched under their weight with a sulky grace.

I frowned at Austin. “Did I say something to piss him off?”

Austin rolled his eyes. “That’s Trey. Sorry.” He looked anything but sorry. “Sawyer—Coleman—hooked up with him at the end of last season. Now he’s back, thinking he’s a shoo-in for a seasonal position.”