Protected by the Claws: A Motorcycle Club Bear Shifter Romance Read online

  “It’s just part of the job. I think I was cursed when I first took it, so nothing new to worry about.”

  “Even though your father was attacked so viciously?”

  I didn’t add anything because she was the one fishing. Trudy was far better at it, and I smiled back at her.

  “That is the past. This has nothing to do with that.”

  She gave me a look like she was done talking if I was going to say such silly things at that. I wanted her to give me something, but I wasn’t getting anything from her. Not if it wasn’t reciprocated because I wasn’t in the business of starting more rumors. The town was already busting at the seams with them.

  Trudy move closer to me and whispered something about men that turn into bears, and I waved her off.

  “I’ve heard those stories too, Trudy, but that’s all they are. They are just stories that we were told as kids to keep us out of the woods at night. We weren’t allowed to explore, but nothing is in these woods, just darkness.”

  She didn’t agree with me, but she did smile at me when she handed me my beer. That was all I was getting, and that was all she was getting. I don’t think either one of us was happy.

  “There is something for your gossip column, Kayla. There’s Baron. I don’t think I’ve seen him in over ten years. Didn’t the two of you used to date a long time ago?”

  I choked on the cold beer and looked in the direction she was signifying. I was trying my best to hold my composure, but I hadn’t heard that name in a long time. A really long-ass time, and I wasn’t prepared to hear it again.

  Chapter 3

  Baron

  I knew she had walked into the bar before I saw her. I wanted to say that I wasn’t here for Kayla. I wanted to think that I was here for the lawyer that called me to sign some paperwork on an aunt that had died and left me something in her will. It wasn’t worth my time, not by far, but at the end of the day, I was here for her.

  The crowd around me opened, and I was led right to Kayla. She even smelled the same as she had a decade before, but the sound of her voice had changed a little. Kayla wasn’t the young girl that I knew before. Now she was a cop, detective from what I heard, and I didn’t know if I should be happy or nervous that she ended up that way. I’d broken so many laws with her that it was hard to see her that way. At least she didn’t have a uniform on.

  “Kayla.”

  She turned around completely, and I knew then that nothing had changed between us. There was a lot of time that had spanned since I’d seen her last, but I still felt the same way about her that I always had. She was who I was here to see, but by the look on her face, it didn’t look like she was all that excited to see me. I didn’t blame her. Not after how everything ended between us. It wasn’t the way that I wanted it to end, but I was given no choice.

  “Baron.”

  Kayla just stared at me as if I was a figment of her imagination. I wanted to tell her that I was real, but it didn’t look like she was all that interested in talking to me. She turned back around and took another drink of her beer and ordered a couple of shots. This was not going to be as easy as I would have hoped it would be.

  I sat down next to her and heard the loud sigh that she made. Kayla never had been one to suffer in silence, and she was quick to let me know that she was not happy with me. Things were supposed to be so different between us then how they turned out. I was hoping that things would be like they were before, but I realized now that it was going to take some work to get there.

  I didn’t know what I was thinking when I strolled up to her, but the fact was that I wasn’t thinking. I had always been drawn to Kayla in a way that I wasn’t ever able to understand. She wasn’t a super model, though she was as pretty as any other woman I’d seen. There was just something about her, but I didn’t miss her temper. It had been pointed at me many times before, and I knew for a fact that there was a devil inside of her that would take no shit.

  “I didn’t know you were back in town, Baron.”

  “Have been for a couple of weeks now. Won’t be here too much longer.”

  “You didn’t come to see me?”

  She had a sound in her voice, but I was too busy smelling her. She smelled so damn good. It was the same perfume, and it brought back so many memories that flooded through me in one flash. I wanted her to see that things weren’t the same. Times had changed, and I was a different man, but I had no answer for her. Kayla wasn’t worried about anything else. She couldn’t believe that I hadn’t come to see her. Not only did we have history, but we had unfinished business, and I’m sure she had a lot of questions. I knew this was coming, but that didn’t mean that I was actually prepared for it.

  “No, I was going to. I just…I don’t know. I didn’t know what to say after all this time.”

  “You could have just said hi. I would have liked to have known that you are good and okay. You left, and I never knew what happened. No one would tell me anything.”

  Kayla downed another shot, and I asked her what she was drinking so that I could get her some more, though she looked like she would be better off with some coffee.

  “I don’t need anything else from you, Baron, except answers. I can buy my own booze.”

  She wasn’t going to make this easy on me at all. There was a reason that I had not gone after her. It was pure fear on my part. If I didn’t see her, then the possibility of there being an ‘us’ again would still be a possibility. If I see her though and things go south, that could be it altogether. I liked the chances of something, better than the guarantee of nothing. Now it was all coming to a head, and there was no going back now.

  “I know you can. I had to leave. You know why. Your dad caught us and …” Hell, I didn’t want to finish that sentence. It was the worst night of my life. It had started off so well and with so much promise, but it had all came crashing down in a big way.

  “I know. Dad chased you off, but you didn’t even say good-bye. You just left me, and I thought you would come back. I waited for a while, but you never showed up. Where have you been all this time?”

  “I went to start my way out west. You know that I don’t have any family, so it just made sense to start fresh somewhere where no one knew me. I had to get away from here, so I went to California. Remember how we used to talk about going to California and starting a restaurant? Remember, you cook, I sell out the back?”

  I remembered those talks, but that was all they were, stoner talks that we would have when one or the other one wanted to get out. I couldn’t imagine him there, but then again, he wasn’t from Shady Way. He didn’t have the same entrenched mentality that kept the rest of us here. I don’t know what it was about this place, but for some reason, it was hard to leave.

  “Well, you could have sent a card or something. You could have called. I kept that same cell phone number until about a year ago. You never called.”

  She was hurt, and I knew that I was hurting her when I left. I hadn’t had a choice though. I had to leave, or the consequences would have ended my life in the physical sense or from a freedom standpoint. However, it would have gone down, it wouldn’t have been for good. I’d had to go, but she was right, I could have gotten a message to her. I should feel horrible about her waiting for me to call for so long, but I didn’t. That meant she still cared and I wasn’t here to catch up on old times. I was here to get the one woman that I’ve ever loved, only woman in fact, to take me back. We had a long road ahead of us, but such a long past as well. I’d spent the last decade moving around and doing everything I could to make myself happy, but there was always something missing.

  “I know. You’re going to have to forgive me, Kayla. I fucked up in a big way.”

  Kayla took another sip of her beer, but she hadn’t touched the other two shots. That was probably a good thing. She wanted to be semi-clear-headed, and that was better than getting blitzed and trying to forget that I was here at all.

  “I forgave you a long time ago, Baron. I knew
what had to happen and why. Dad made it clear in more ways than you will ever know. He really hated you, and I heard about you for years after you left. Dad had nothing good to say about you after that night.”

  I agreed. I’d known he had never cared for me. He’d told me before that there was something intrinsically wrong with me, and I’d shown him that he was right the night he wanted to push things. I hadn’t missed her father, could spend the rest of my life never seeing him again, but his daughter was not someone that I could forget, no matter how hard I tried.

  “Yeah he did.”

  “What happened that night? You got up and took off running and that was the last I saw of you. I heard them outside talking, but Dad wouldn’t let me go outside. What happened?”

  I could have given her all of the horrid details, and she would never forgive him. He was all she had left for family after her mom killed herself, and I wasn’t going to do that to her. She didn’t need to know what the man that made her was capable of. No one really needed to know that sort of information.

  “He ran me off. I had to go, or he was going to put me in jail for a long time. Had his friends rough me up a little bit. It was one of the best things that could have happened to me, if I’m going to be honest. I needed that kick up the backside to get myself in gear. I was going down a bad path, and he was right to get you away from me. Only bad things happened to people that were around me back then. I don’t know what it was, but your dad saw it in me and just knew.”

  “You weren’t a bad influence. I mean, I would have gone that way, trying out new things with or without you. I’m glad that you were with me because I knew I was always safe with you. Dad didn’t know shit. You wouldn’t have let anything happen to me. I thought I could always count on you.”

  I knew that not counting on me came because I wasn’t able to be there for her. I had to go. I wish I could tell her what really happened that night, but she would never believe me, and I never wanted her to know certain things about me. There were some parts of me that needed to remain a secret. That was the only way that I could guarantee that people would be safe. I hated that her father knew so much about me, and I was a little surprised that he hadn’t told her to keep her away from me for good.

  “I’m sorry, Kayla. I thought things were going to work out a lot differently too.”

  “So, did you ever get married?”

  She threw me off with the question. I wondered then how long she had been thinking about that to ask me such a thing out of the blue.

  I chuckled in response because the idea of it was so absurd. Why in the world would I marry someone else when all I was worried about was her? She was the memories of the past that I could never stop thinking about, and no matter how much I tried, she was always there. I tried to forget her. I really did. I mean, I really tried, but at the end of the day, she was always right there again as soon as I closed my eyes.

  “No, no, I never got married.”

  “Why is that so funny?”

  “I could never marry anyone else but the woman I asked so long ago. She never gave me an answer though.”

  She was the one that laughed now. “God, that was so long ago, and you were drunk. I didn’t even think that you would remember asking me. You were so wasted.”

  “How could I have forgotten that or anything about you, Kayla? You were always the girl for me.”

  “So, you’ve been waiting all this time for me, huh?”

  I shook my head. She didn’t know how true her words really were. I’d been waiting a long damn time for her, and now here she was in front of me finally.

  “Yes, Kayla, and I’d wait another decade if I had to. I miss you. I miss us.”

  Chapter 4

  Kayla

  I really didn’t need this. The man had come out of nowhere, and he was saying all of the things that I’d heard him say to me before in my head. But now it was real. He was real and standing right in front of me. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that, but I was feeling anxious and horny all at the same time. I shouldn’t have told him about my number and waiting for him. He didn’t need to know that, but the liquor had loosened my tongue. I was really going to have to get a handle on that.

  “I missed us too, Baron, but a long time has passed.”

  He grinned at me and told me that not too long had passed. “You still look just as good as you always did. How are you still single?”

  That was the same question that I’d asked him basically. I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t gotten married, but I hadn’t either. I hadn’t even really dated all that much. I really just shut that part of me down because the one I wanted, I couldn’t have, and it made it so that I didn’t want anything at all. It was hurting only myself in the end, but Baron was a damn hard man to rebound after. Who in the world was going to live up to the high standards that he had set? It was almost impossible really. I knew from the moment that I saw him years ago that he was the one for me.

  But he’d taken me down the wrong path, as my dad said and Dad was right. Life was maybe not better, but safer without Baron in it. He’d made me do things that I never would have done and though I don’t regret it, I like the new life I have. I couldn’t let Baron pull me back into his chaos. I was doing well since he left, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  “I’m not here to ruin anything that you have going on.”

  “Why does it feel like you can still read my mind?”

  “Because we are that in tuned to each other?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not it.”

  I didn’t know what it was, but he’d always had a canny ability to tell me what I was thinking, and he would respond just the right way. I don’t know if it was intuition or what it was, but that was fear on a platter. He was here in Shady Way to make my life complicated again. It was a good complicated, I mean a really good complication if memory serves me, but that didn’t mean that I had time for it. I was too old for the fairy tales that he was peddling because they never came true.

  “I don’t know what it is, but I am a little worried about what you’re going to do here. I mean, you never did like to do anything quietly or legally.”

  “I’ve changed, Kayla.”

  I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. There was always something to be said about a bad boy, and that was certainly Baron for as long as I’d known him. He didn’t like rules and broke as many of them as he could when we were younger. It was fun and exciting, but now I was a detective, and it was my job to keep the peace. Baron was not good for the peace. That much I knew for sure.

  “I doubt that, Baron. What brings you back after all of this time? You have a heist planned?”

  He grinned and then chuckled, but he didn’t disagree for a while. Finally, he gave me an explanation, but I wasn’t sure if it was one that I believed or not.

  “Nothing like that. I had an aunt die and she left me some property in her will. I’ve been meeting with the executor of the will and getting it all sold and straightened out before I go back.”

  “To California.”

  “Yeah.”

  That was a long way, and I didn’t like to think about him vanishing again. At least this time I would know about it and know where he was, but that wasn’t going to change the fact that I would still miss him. I miss him after all of these years. Nothing had changed in that department and that’s what made me so nervous.

  “Well, I wish we would have been able to spend more time together.”

  “We have now. We have tonight.”

  He was trying to get into my panties, and I don’t know if I was supposed to feel good about the fact that he still wanted to. It was hard to feel that way when I knew what could happen. The consequences of being with him before were almost too much to bear. I had done what I had to do, but I missed him in more ways than one.

  “No, we don’t. I’ve got a case that’s going to keep me busy for a while. I don’t have tonight. We don’t have
anything anymore, Baron. It’s been a long time. Too long. If you would have come back sooner, I don’t know, maybe things would have been different. But we can’t do this now, not this time.”

  I was holding it all back. I knew that I wanted him. He looked the same as he did before. He was larger maybe, more muscular on the top half than he was when he was younger, but nothing else had changed. He still had the same devilish grin that would get me in trouble. Baron’s bright blue eyes held promise of pleasure to come, and I had to look away.

  I knew what he wanted, and I knew that he would give me everything that I needed and more. He was the only one that was ever able to make me feel the way he did. That was a lot to give up, but I knew it was for the best if I wanted my sanity in a week or two when he left again for another decade or more.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can make this work.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I knew better. All Baron was going to give me was pain. It was just that simple, but it was a fact that I knew to be true, all too well...

  “I wish we could, Baron, but a lot happened back then, and I think it’s best that we don’t try to relive it. It’s for the best that we just go our separate ways tonight.”

  He sighed and told me that he understood. I was waiting for his pressure and sugared words that always worked before. I wanted him to handle me in that way. I don’t know why, but I wanted Baron to disagree and make me listen. I didn’t want his understanding.

  “I’m staying at the hotel if you want to see me, or you change your mind. I won’t push you, Kayla. I know that it wouldn’t do me any good anyways, but I do want you to know that I still love you like I did before. That part of me will never change.”

  I didn’t say anything else about his comments. I didn’t want to get into it with him. I just couldn’t. I didn’t want him to know how long I’d waited for him and the disappointment when I couldn’t go with him. I was going to regret it, but I knew that there was no world where the two of us could really be together. It just wasn’t supposed to happen. Like before, there were so many things that were keeping us apart.