Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1)(24)

He had managed to sputter an apology before kissing me soundly and stomping away, so at least there was that. But it had happened so quickly, I almost wondered if I had imagined it as I stood there staring.

I missed him before he was out of sight, which was insane, given he’d almost confessed to me his true nature, something I was sure he would’ve done had his blasted phone not come between us. To be fair, he was a cop, and they had emergencies. It wasn’t like he was a landscaper with an emergency pond to install. Whatever it was had to be important or the cussing decibels wouldn’t have reached such intensity.

A bear. He was a bear. It made sense. He kissed in a raw animalistic way that never failed to steal my breath. Meemaw had said more than once he was one of the good ones, and she never trusted anyone without some gift, as if that was a barometer of goodness. and most importantly, my gut said he was more than just a man. Bear wasn’t my first thought when I saw him, his body less bulky and far more built than I expected a bear to be, but what the hey did I know. Only a half hour earlier, I hadn’t expected to learn there were bear-men at all.

After a half hour of pacing, I gave up on him returning in the near future and headed to the one place I could let out all my frustrations, the bakery. The bakery was good and closed by now, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t work off some energy, beating some dough into submission. If I was lucky, I might be able to get in a few words with Meemaw. About time she stopped hiding things from me and treated me as a grown woman.

I made my way in record time, still uncomfortable about the whole bear-watching-me thing. I’d thought about it far too much along the way, and try as I might, I couldn’t believe the bear the ghost was talking about was Etienne. True, he was watching me, but more in the way a man watched a woman than anything sinister. Also, there was no way I’d have missed him watching me, given I was actively sucking his face with vigor.

I was on autopilot once I hit my kitchen, my safe haven, the place more like my home than my actual home.

Pizza dough was one of my favorite things to make in times where I needed to burn off excessive stress—energy—anything, really. It required all the physical release of any other kind of bread, but froze beautifully, allowing me to fill my freezer with yummy goodness to be sold to those who liked to pretend they had homemade pizza. All the winning.

“Bad day?” Meemaw popped into the kitchen, just as I’d hoped she would.

“Naw.” I fluffed off as I began to section the dough and ready it for retail packaging. “Interesting day.” It wasn’t a lie. I just didn’t want to lead in with, So I was kissing this bear because—reasons. “Where’ve you been?” She was around less and less lately, her form still not completely fading, but my comfort over the matter was far from strong.

“Miss me?” She sat on the work table, and I struggled not to shoo her away, like I would if anyone else tried it. It wasn’t like she could contaminate the food.

“Every day.” Some days worse than others, not that I wanted her to see just how much her loss impacted me. It was selfish for me to be glad she was still surrounding me when moving on was where she belonged, not that I could change how I felt.

“None of that melancholy garbage.”

She smacked the table with a thump. Huh? When did she become so corporeal, or was she always that strong?

“So, what gives?” She indicated the twenty balls of dough on the table. “I know you’re in the black, so don’t even pretend this is for profit.”

In the black was a subjective term. If we had any kind of mortgage, I wouldn’t be, but she was correct in her assessment. The bakery was getting by...more than.

“Just working out the frustration of having—of Etienne.” Flustered and confuzzled, I just let it out. No sense hiding it from my one confidant. Not like she could go telling the town about it. Stinks. Was I the only one left in town not a bear?

“He turned you down?”

“Seriously, Meemaw? You think there was ever a time I’d be all ‘let’s talk sex’ with you?”

“Then, what is it?” She was instantly serious and just as instantly by my side. I didn’t think I’d ever get used to her bouncing around like that.

“I find out he’s a bear just as his blasted phone rings and he needs to leave. Some emergency.” It felt good to get it off my chest, out there in the open, or open-ish, as the case might be.

“Bear?” She just stared at me, her hand on her chin. “Huh? Who would’ve guessed?”

“Like you didn’t know.” Honestly, from her reaction I wasn’t sure if she knew or not. I had assumed her weirdness about him from the get-go had to do with her knowing his secret. Now? Now, I wasn’t so sure.

“I knew he wasn’t human,” she confessed, and I waited for her to continue. She talked a mile a minute except when she was perplexed, and then you just waited as she thought things out. This seemed to be that kind of moment. “I was leaning towards dragon. Bear. He doesn’t come across as a bear.”

“Right?” I tied up the final bag and piled them onto a tray. “His muscle is too lean.” And his moves far too smexy, but that wasn’t something I wanted to discuss with her.

“Did he say the words, ‘I’m a bear’?”

Crap on a cracker. No. No he did not. What in tarnation was he? Because I might not know a lot about the world of the paranormal, but even I knew dragons were lore.