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Chapter Five
Two agonizing days had passed since Espie had scented her fated mate at the park, and since then, she’d had barely had one decent hour of sleep. Shifters could handle more than humans could in a lot of ways: they had more endurance, heightened senses, and their strength was unmatched. Nevertheless, everyone felt a bit off-kilter when they didn’t get much sleep, shifters included.
Espie’s body had been going haywire since she had last seen him; unwilling to settle, always wanting to move. Even her inner grizzly was suddenly active and alert, insisting she head into the mountains—as if that was where he would be lurking, hiding behind a big tree or something, waiting for her to find him. Espie had never felt her inner grizzly this active before, but that only confirmed in her mind that the handsome man she had briefly met at the park was the one for her.
No one else had ever driven her this wild with so little interaction. It was chemistry. It was biology. It was hormones, for goodness sake. She couldn’t shake the feeling, and so in an effort to distract herself, Espie had taken on more duties around the resort—which left her more tired than ever.
Hence, the three cups of espresso she had already downed like shots of tequila before asking her friend for a fourth.
“You know, if you keep pounding espressos like you do, you aren’t going to sleep for the next week.”
Espie chuckled at Maida, who stood in her peripheral view with a hand on her hip and a little saucer with a tiny cup clasped in the other. Tongue poking out between her lips, Espie hastily finished adding a signature to her latest email, then hit send before turning in her chair and cocking her head to one side, eyeing her best friend cheekily.
“What are you, a bartender cutting me off at two a.m.? Gimme!”
She made hand-it-over motions with her hands, and Maida rolled her eyes dramatically before setting Espie’s latest drink down on the round table she had set up shop at almost two hours ago. She always brought her laptop to A Cup of Beans so that she could answer emails for the resort.
“Seriously, I’m surprised you’re not a ball of jitters,” Maida muttered, that hand on her hip reminding Espie of her mom when she was on a scolding warpath. She raised espresso number four to her lips and took a little sip, wishing the effects were as immediate on her body as the effects of being in her fated mate’s presence. Her inner grizzly rumbled discontentedly, annoyed with all the substitutions for what they both clearly wanted.
“I’m fine,” she insisted with her usual grin—which felt a little forced today, even with Maida. “Promise.”
Maida pressed her lips together and raised her eyebrows, a perfect vision of skepticism, then hurried back behind the counter, when a trio of high school customers strolled into A Cup of Beans.
Espie had brought her work with her when she found out Maida was working the afternoon shift. The hours between the lunch rush and the post-work rush were usually pretty quiet, giving both of them a chance to work on their tasks in near-silence.
While Maida sat behind the counter highlighting key information in her anatomy textbook, Espie sat at one of the nearby tables and typed away, returning emails for her family’s resort. Tourist season was on the horizon, and it was usually at this time of year that the front desk was swamped with booking inquiries and a boatload of questions.
“Honestly, some people are such fucking idiots,” she complained. “This guy wants to know if the rooms at the resort have king-sized beds. He totally could have found out that they do, if he’d only done about a half a minute of research.”
As Maida rung up a trio of hot chocolates and a ton of baked goods, Espie huffed and puffed and grumbled to herself, forcing all the snark and sneer out of her written words as she replied with an “of course we have many king-sized beds for the comfort of our guests”, all the while rolling her eyes so hard they might just have popped out of her head. She tapped her finger down on her laptop’s touchpad a little harder than necessary to hit send.
“As someone who has worked retail and is preparing to enter the medical field, I can back that up a hundred percent,” Maida lamented. She slid into the seat across from Espie with a sigh. The recent onslaught of teenagers, meanwhile, appeared to be making a mess at the condiment stand, which brought a heated red flush of irritation to Maida’s usually pale cheeks.
Espie leaned across the table somewhat, and in a lowered voice asked, “Want me to go growl at them?” Maida’s grin was infectious, and Espie giggled. “Come on. I’ll let the she-bear out for thirty seconds—”
“No!” Maida cried, eyes wide.
The teenagers went quiet for a moment, one of them glancing over her shoulder to check the situation. When all was clear, they went back to horsing around, oblivious to the fact that Maida would have to deal with their mess once they left. Espie scowled and flexed her hands in and out of fists.
She would never change into her grizzly form just to startle a bunch of teenagers, of course, but for some reason, Maida always took her seriously when she suggested it. All shifters learned at a young age when it was and wasn’t appropriate to shift, but Espie always knew she’d let her protective grizzly side show if the safety of her loved ones was in question. She wouldn’t hesitate. Not for a second, no matter how many “regular” humans were milling about.
The little bell over the door jingled at the arrival of new customers, but just as Maida started to drag herself out of her chair, it became clear that the group wasn’t headed for the counter.
Espie frowned as the new arrivals diverted toward their table, led by a man with distinctly Spanish features: the tousled dark hair, bee-stung lips, and high cheekbones. He was also wearing clothes that she knew were meant to look casual, yet somehow reeked of a designer’s showroom. Honestly, his cologne reeked a little bit as well.
He was that sort of man. An obvious try-hard. While most of Angel Fire’s residents were mutts—a mix of ethnicities—a purebred like him somehow seemed out of place. She closed her laptop slowly, her inner grizzly stirring in alarm. Something felt…off, even if Maida didn’t have the extra senses to realize it.
“Do you work here?” he asked, eyes flickering down to Maida’s apron. She nodded, lips parted to speak, but he barreled right over her as he held up a handful of multicolored papers, in neon shades so bright that they made Espie’s eyes hurt. “Can we hang a few of our flyers on your community board? Maybe leave some at the tables?”
Maida stared up at him for a moment, mouth hanging open, before she spared a quick glance to Espie and shrugged. “Sure. I guess. I mean, that’s what the community board is for.”
“Thanks.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, offering a sort of predatory quality to it that made even Maida flush. Espie’s inner grizzly was on full alert now, sensing the discomfort radiating from her best friend. While her inner bear was quieter, softer, and more inclined to solitude most days, she was a protective bitch when it came to anyone who threatened her loved ones.
The man turned and divided his huge stack of flyers among the two women and one man standing behind him. They were decidedly less suspicious than the ringleader. Espie had gone to high school with one of the women, though she was a few years younger and remembered almost nothing about her. She was, however, still a local girl, and Espie could handle that.
Once the stranger had finished doling out his flyers, which his lackeys immediately began adding to each and every table, he went for the community corkboard nearby, tacks at the ready.
“Are you from Angel Fire?” Espie blurted out, unable to contain herself a second longer. He grinned without looking at her, stabbing one of the red tacks into the board to hold a flyer in place. Maida shot her a confused look, but she waved her off. “I just feel like I know most people in town, but I swear I’ve never seen you before.”
