Bear Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #2)(36)

There were more. One of him on the deck at the lodge, amusement in his eyes. One of him in front of the mirror in his room, claw marks jagged across his ribs. He had his hand out, as if telling her not to come any closer, but his eyes were soft. There was another of him with his back to her, riding his horse on a trail, and all around them were quickly sketched trees with a bald eagle flying overhead, but it was the last one that made him draw up in realization. It was a detailed drawing of him sitting on the other side of the campfire, smiling. He flipped through them again, faster this time. She’d captured actual moments between them, and as he studied the pictures, he could feel her falling in love with him.

Chest aching, he pulled her camera into his lap and sat heavily on the ground. He flipped through the pictures, one by one. She had taken lots of photographs of him when he hadn’t been paying attention, and they told a story. They transformed him slowly from a mysterious, cold soul to a warm man. Care had been taken with the last several pictures, and he stopped scrolling on one of him sleeping. She must’ve taken it that first morning in the tent when he’d slept through the night beside her. He’d never slept so good in all his life, which made no damned sense because they were out in the wild and his instincts were always on alert.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt and was sleeping on his stomach, his cheek resting on his arm and his face completely relaxed.

Jenner turned the camera off and looked up at where Lena lay asleep on the cot.

He’d screwed up.

He’d lost track of why he couldn’t make a move on her. Now their separation would hurt them both, and it was all his fault. Dammit, if he’d just kept it professional, he could’ve stopped the bond. Probably. Or at least he could’ve hidden it from her if he’d remained aloof like he’d meant to.

But no. Like a rutting animal, he’d given into his wants almost immediately, and then bore his entire freaking bear-tainted soul to her. Now she would leave. She had to. The pictures on her camera would give her huge opportunities in her career, and he couldn’t stand in the way of that. Jenner couldn’t ask her to be happy with a man who hibernated six months out of the year instead of following her dream.

He loved her enough to want better for her.

One more day, and Lena would leave, and when she did, she would take his heart with her.

****

“I have to take lots of landscape pictures so the art department has options in case they want to put an animal into different scenery.”

“Mmm,” Jenner rumbled distractedly as he skipped another rock across the creek.

He’d been distant all day, and her conversations had turned desperate. She wanted so badly for him to open up again, but whatever Titus’s attack had done to her, it had locked Jenner up completely.

Jenner frowned off into the woods, then back at the cabin that was barely visible through the trees. “I tracked down my mom.”

Lena stopped taking pictures and let the camera rest against her chest. “What? When?”

“Five years ago. I never told my brothers.”

“Why not?”

“Because I still don’t know how I feel about it. I found her in Anchorage. I was too young to remember what she looked like, but apparently she’s a big, respected news anchor. I’d been watching her on the news for years and hadn’t even known she was my mom.” He skipped another rock, then sank down onto the gravelly beach, resting his arms on his knees as his eyes got a faraway look. “We met for lunch at this nice restaurant, and I was sure I would feel this connection to her, you know?” Jenner leveled Lena with those vibrant baby blues.

Lena sat beside him and rested her cheek against his arm. “What happened?”

“There was nothing. I didn’t know her, and she didn’t know me. And she didn’t want to. My dad spent a lot of time convincing us that he didn’t care that she left. That wasn’t true. My dad had tried to make it work with her. Tried to co-parent us. Even thought about telling her what he was and what we would become.”

“She didn’t know?”

Jenner huffed a breath and shook his head. “Some people can be trusted with this secret. Some can’t. Dad was right not to tell her. I can hear a lie, and she was full of half-truths. I thought for a minute she wasn’t capable of being genuine, but then she told me the reason she left, and it was the first truly honest thing she said to me. She hadn’t wanted the life Dad offered her. It wasn’t enough.” Jenner rested his cheek against her head. “She hadn’t wanted to be a mother, and when she found out she was having triplets, she felt this heaviness, like she couldn’t breathe because her life was over. She had big dreams, and living in some cabin out in the middle of nowhere, raising multiples, wasn’t what she wanted. She said she tried for the first two years, but every day she woke up feeling like she was drowning. And then she told me that she was sorry, but she didn’t regret her decision because she’d made something of herself.”

“Wow, what a horribly shitty mother.”

Jenner sighed. “Yeah, her mothering instincts weren’t awesome.”

“You know she could’ve chased those dreams and been a parent too, right?”

“Lena, she didn’t even know what she was into, though. She had triplets, and that was breaking her. Imagine when she learned we were all bear shifters.”