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“Want something simple for dinner?” Nacho asked, giving me a sympathetic smile.
“You cooking?” I asked. “I’m…I’m not in the mood. If you don’t want to, there’s still stew.”
I stared at the fire, wishing on its flames that this wasn’t what our entire winter would be like again. Eating. Cooking. Working. Rinse and repeat.
Ungrateful wasn’t a word I’d use to describe my situation. Hell, I was living in my dream cabin in the woods with my best friend.
“Ham and eggs?” He suggested our dinner on the nights when I didn’t want to cook.
“Sounds good.” I sat at the counter while he pulled out the few ingredients.
He stopped while slicing some ham steaks and cleared his throat. “I’m ready, Riggs. If you want to try this app thing, let’s do it.”
I barely quelled my excitement. In fact, judging by his smile and the way his eyes lit up, I was sure I didn’t. “Are you sure? What changed your mind?”
He waved the tip of the knife toward the door. “Seeing Ivan. I want that, Riggs. I want that for us. A mate. Someone to take care of. Someone to belong to. Cubs, maybe.”
“Let’s sign up after dinner, then.”
Nacho shook his head as he plopped two huge ham steaks into a hot cast-iron pan. “Can you go ahead and start while I’m cooking? My bear…damn it, he is as restless as ever. I am sure my ribs and muscles have claw marks.”
“I’m on it.” I slipped my phone out of my back pocket and downloaded the app while he finished cooking. A few minutes later, I’d created my profile and linked it to his after he handed over his phone. Nacho slid a plate in front of me piled with ham, over-easy eggs, and toasted bread. In my opinion, it was the perfect dinner. “Thanks. I made our profiles and linked them since we want to share a mate. Now comes the tedious part. I read in some forums that the questionnaires are complicated and long, but what else do we have to do?”
Nacho snorted while we took our plates to the living room. “Let’s do this.”
My best friend and I laughed as we took pictures of each other for the profile but had plenty of others to add to our shared photos. My bear was pleased with the progress, even though he believed we should’ve just gone out into the world and hunted down our mate the old-fashioned ways. He was right about a lot of things, like trusting my instinct, but on this one, the beast needed me to help him move into the next century. It was a big world, after all, and I’d rather find my mate, our mate, this way than to pine after her for decades only to find her and lose her too early. Or she lose us too early.
“Whoa…” My friend shoved the screen of his phone in front of my face. “Those are some specific questions in this section.”
“I haven’t gotten there yet.” I pushed it away, not wanting any more spoilers. “We can do that part together.”
There wasn’t anything too personal since he and I had been friends forever.
“Should we talk about some of this?” I asked, knowing that it would be better to have this discussion now than in the throes of passion.
“We share a mate.” Nacho shrugged, as if it were that simple.
“What if she and I want to mate and you’re not around or you’re hunting or running. Can we not?” I asked.
“Of course you could. Just because I’m not here doesn’t mean you can’t mate with our female.”
I huffed out a breath through my nose. “That clears that up.”
We had a long discussion about other things while we answered the questions. Positions, preferences, all the things came up. I wondered about the mind of the person who made up these questions. They were genius, obviously. But damn, some were surprising, even for me.
“There. What do we do now?” Nacho said. Our plates were empty of the food and the fire had begun to die down as the night went on.
“We wait for someone to send us a message or view our profile.”
He put his phone down only to pick it right back up. “But, we can look as well, right? We can scroll through profiles as well. Maybe send a message ourselves? We would have to agree, of course.”
“We could absolutely do that. And the profiles they show us are females who are wanting to be in a polygamous relationship. They’re not going to show us a woman who wants monogamy.”
I put on a movie while Nacho scrolled and oohed and ahhed over several, but none of them really called out to us. My polar bear was particularly loud when he saw a woman he liked, but it never went beyond that. We weren’t looking for a one-night stand or a short-term relationship. We were looking for a life partner.
My polar bear needed to be loud if he wanted her. Louder than he’d ever been.
Chapter Seven
