Husband Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #1)(11)

Skin and bones. Fuck. She looked so different from the folded picture he’d been carrying around in his back pocket for the last four months since he’d put Cole down. She was thin in the picture, sure, but now? Her damned collar bones were sticking through her thin, gray shirt as though she had no meat on her at all. And her hands were shaking, but she didn’t smell nervous. And it wasn’t the drink or any other kind of self-medication that was making her this way, either. He would’ve smelled that, too. No, she was hungry and working herself to death to keep that place running.

There had been two salmon in her freezer. Two. The first snow would come in two months if she was lucky, and all she had stocked up for it was two goddamned fish. He hated Cole all over again for not being stronger. Giving her chickens away to his no-account brothers. That wasn’t the crazy part of him. That was the learned, freeloading part of him. He’d thought Elyse could save him, but Cole hadn’t ever stood a chance of her doing him any good. Not when he used her up like that.

For the hundredth time, he wanted to read the letter Cole had given him to deliver to Elyse. Ian had kept it neatly and tightly folded over the last four months. It was private and none of his business, but dang it all, he was curious about what Cole could’ve possibly written to make an apology this big.

She was hiring a husband!

Ian didn’t like it, but he got it. Homesteads around here usually went to sons, but Elyse had been handed one and was stubborn enough to work herself into a grave to keep it up. Romantics need not apply. Ian wanted to spit. She was screwing herself out of any chance at a happy life by the way she was going about this, and all for the sake of keeping her homestead.

Ian leaned his elbow on the open window of his truck and gritted his teeth. He would make a damned poor husband, but even he could see the merit in him helping her. He could work harder and longer than a human man, he slept all friggin’ winter so she wouldn’t have to worry about him getting cabin fever, and he could help her in the warm season to stock up. He could provide for her. Make sure she lived comfortably during the snowy months.

But…

His secrets could get her hurt, or worse. He’d just come back from checking his den on Afognak, and the McCalls had burned his cabin in the cave. They’d been thorough about it, and now it was nothing more than ashes. How they’d tracked him down, he didn’t know. He’d used that den for a decade without problems. Miller was hunting him slow, and burning his den was a warning. They hadn’t forgotten about their brother, and if Ian stayed here, a mere thirty miles upriver from where the McCalls lived, Elyse could get caught in the crossfire.

But then again, the last place Miller would expect to find him was with Cole’s ex-mate.

Ian could prepare her homestead for winter, hunt the meat she needed, then go bear and find a natural den on Kodiak Island with the wild bruins. It wouldn’t be a fancy cabin in a cave, but his animal wouldn’t care overmuch as long as he got to sleep peacefully. Or as peaceful as possible knowing Miller would be searching every den in Alaska to kill him in his sleep.

His stomach soured at the thought of dying like that. Miller didn’t know anything about giving an honorable death. Miller would do it when Ian couldn’t fight back.

He leaned over his window and glared at the muddy road that stood between him and Elyse’s homestead. He could be happy here, and that was a truly dangerous thought. He was having a hard enough time leaving after talking to her for five minutes. What was going to happen when he fell for her completely? Her life would always be in danger because of him.

A scarred-up grizzly shifter enforcer could make no woman happy.

But from the way she acted back there, she wasn’t looking for happy. She was looking for security.

He would make a shite husband, sure, but he could get her fed.

Ian growled and jammed his foot on the gas. Putting distance between them was vital. He was compromising with himself, justifying staying and putting her in danger. This is why he had stalled on delivering that note. This is why he’d waited four months and then decided, in a moment of weakness, to give it to her himself. He had harbored an unhealthy amount of obsession over the woman in the picture since he’d awoken from hibernation.

His damned bear was clearly broken, and now he was convincing Ian to shack up with a needy human.

No. She would find someone decent to fill her advertisement and live a longer, happier life for it.

Ian was no better a choice for a mate than Cole McCall.

****

Ian Silver had lied.

He’d said he would give an answer by weeks’ end, but it had been nine days since he’d graced her doorstep and given her freezer that judgmental look. He’d backed out, and the brute hadn’t even had the decency to tell her in person.

And now the applicants for her advertisement had waned to no prospects, and she’d wasted all that time interviewing for nothing.

Now, she was further behind than the last three years, and by a lot. Uncle Jim would be so disappointed in her if he saw his place now. This land had been in the Abram family since 1914, and it had never been more at risk than when it fell into her lap. And most nights, she still stayed up wondering why her uncle had thought it best to give her the land instead of her brother, Josiah.

Josiah was strong, had a good head on his shoulders, and wouldn’t have ever let this place fall to ruin. He would’ve never been duped by someone like Cole.