Bear Meets Girl

CHAPTER TEN

Cella followed Crush, but stopped when the door closed in her face.

Gasping, “Oh, no, he did not!”

“Cella—” Jai began, but Cella didn’t want to hear it.

The bear hadn’t locked the door, so Cella threw it open and marched inside.

“What are you mad at me for?” she demanded, following the bear into his tidy kitchen.

Placing his bag of groceries on the table, the bear said, “I didn’t say I was mad at you. Just don’t want you in my house.”

“Well ...” Cella stopped talking. What had she just seen? She spun on her heel and walked back through, meeting up with Jai in the middle of the bear’s living room.

Together the friends studied the area, gazes moving around until Jai observed, “I’ve never in my life seen so much hockey stuff in one place that wasn’t a museum or your father’s closet.”

Jai wasn’t kidding, either. There were framed and signed jerseys from what Cella assumed were the bear’s favorite players, including her dad; someone’s signed skates; a glass case with signed pucks; and framed signed sticks, crossed, on his wall.

“It seems,” Jai went on, “that he favors the Islanders, Philly Flyers, and the Carnivores.”

“I knew he was a fan, but ... wow.”

“At least he didn’t ask you to punch him in the face.”

“It seems he’s a fan of my team, not of me. According to him, I fight too much.”

“You do fight too much,” he called from the kitchen.

Cella’s right eye twitched, but Jai caught her arm, held her in place. “Cella ... remember. Calm. Rational. You need him.”

Cella went back to the kitchen, Jai behind her. The bear was unpacking his grocery bag. Cella folded her arms across her chest, and asked, “So why don’t you want me in your house?”

“Because I can just look at you and tell that you’re trouble.”

“I’m trouble? It wasn’t my brothers softly threatening me with some unknown ‘she.’ And you gonna tell me about that?”

“What would make you think I’d tell you anything at all?”

Cella opened her mouth to say something rude, but Jai cut her off.

“Calm down. Let’s discuss this.”

Cella rolled her eyes. “Discuss this? Really?”

“I have two words for you, Malone,” Jai reminded her, “matchmaker and cousin.”

Realizing she was right, Cella pulled out a chair and dropped into it.

The bear eyed them both. “Matchmaker?”

Jai shrugged. “Like I said, we need a favor.”

“What kind of favor? Does it involve money? Gambling debts?”

Annoyed—again!—Cella slammed her hands on the table and went to stand, but Jai shoved her back down by pushing on her head. “Sit!”

“I’m not a dog!”

“Do as I say.” Jai faced the bear again. “I know you two have a history but we, I, have a big favor to ask.”

“Let me guess. This involves her father and him thinking I’m her boyfriend?”

“Well—”

“I told you that was going to be a problem,” he told Cella. “You don’t listen, do you?”

“Look—”

“She doesn’t,” Jai quickly cut in. “She’s a determined, unreasonable female, and she desperately needs your help.”

“Jai!”

“Quiet, difficult female!”

Cella and Jai scowled at each other until, at the same moment, they both burst out laughing. Cella was not surprised when she heard the bear sigh.

While the two females found reasons to laugh, Crush finished putting away his groceries and put down food for Lola. That was around the time the laughter stopped.

“You have a dog?”

“I’m fostering for a friend.” He whistled and Lola came out of the hiding place she always went to whenever his idiot brothers broke into his home. It used to be his apartment, now it was his house.

Lola trotted into the kitchen, but commenced to barking as soon as she saw Malone and her friend.

The two women looked at him and he shrugged. “She’s not a cat-friendly dog.”

“You foster this dog?”

He didn’t know why Malone sounded so disbelieving. Bears had pet dogs all the time.

“Yeah. You have a problem with that?”

Lola continued to bark, so Crush said, “Cut it.” She did and trotted over to him, turning and sitting down on his foot while facing the two felines.

Malone and the other woman exchanged another glance and Malone said, “This is your dog.”

“She’s a foster. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh. How long have you fostered her?”

“Three years.”

The felines began laughing again and Lola snarled at them. That was his girl.

“What?” he asked.

“She’s your dog. Your dog. No one fosters a dog for three years.”

“It’s hard to place her.”

“A purebred English bulldog?” the woman with Malone kindly asked. Unlike the She-tiger, this woman had basic manners.

“I don’t have papers or anything and she’s been fixed.”

“No one has shown interest in it?”

“ ‘It’ is a her,” he snapped at Malone. “And there have been a few interested people but they weren’t the right family for her.”

“For three years?”

“Why are you here?” he barked, fed up with this line of questioning.

“I need a boyfriend or my aunts are bringing in a matchmaker so they can possibly hook me up with a distant relative.”

With a snort, Crush picked up Lola and put her in front of her food bowl.

“What’s that mean?” Malone asked.

“It means you’re insane. I thought you just acted crazy for the crowd. But no”—he faced Malone, briefly studied her pretty face—“you’re really crazy.”

“Crazy’s relative,” the woman with Malone remarked. When Crush only stared at her, she smiled and added, “I should introduce myself. I’m Jai Davis.”

Crush tipped his head to the side and studied her. “Jai Davis? Head of the medical team for the Carnivores?”

“You know the head of our medical team?”

He shrugged at Malone’s question. “They mention her at the beginning of every game.”

“Wow,” Malone said, eyes wide. “You really are a fan.”

“Why are you here?” he barked again, annoyed with having strangers in his house. “In my space?”

“I’ll tell ya what ya can do with your space—”

“Cella.”

Hearing her friend’s voice, Malone took a deep breath and said, “I need a favor.”

“From me?”

“Yes. From you.”

Crush sized the feline up before answering, “No.”

“No? What do you mean no?”

“I mean no.”

“But I haven’t even told you what it is yet.”

“I know. But I don’t deal with crazy in my private life.”

Malone crossed her arms in front of her chest, gold eyes locked on him until she snapped at her friend, “And you can stop laughing.”

Her hand over her mouth, Dr. Davis choked and mumbled, “Excuse me,” before quickly walking out of the kitchen.

“Thank you very much, cop, for embarrassing me!”

Crush gawked down at the feline, mouth open.

“What are you looking at me like that for?”

“I embarrassed you? Is that what you just said to me?”

“Your point?”

“You’ve been embarrassing me since I met you. It’s like your goal or something.”

“My goal is to get you to loosen up. You’re so uptight.”

“Why do you care if I’m uptight or not?”

“Because I’m a caring and giving person.”

Imitating her stance, Crush crossed his arms over his chest and stared down at her.

Finally, after a couple of minutes, she finally admitted, “All right, fine. In truth, I just like how your face gets all red when I embarrass you.”

“Honesty. How nice of you to finally use some.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I only torment those I actually like.”

“Why would that bit of information make me feel better? That’s like saying ‘I only set fire to the ones I love.’ ”

“It’s nothing like that. I just think you take yourself too seriously. Although, after meeting your brothers, I can see why you’re more tense than most polar bears.”

“Tenser.”

“What?”

“It’s not ‘more tense,’ it’s ‘tenser.’ ”

“Really? You’re correcting my grammar?”

Frustrated again—because she was kind of right—Crush snapped, “It’s not like I invited you over here to abuse you about your grammar. You came over uninvited.”

“Because I need your help.”

“In some wacky scheme?”

“Of course it’s not wacky. I just need you to pretend to be my boyfriend so my aunts don’t bring in a matchmaker in the hopes of getting me married off to my cousin.”

As the feline stated her purpose in coming to his house, Dr. Davis walked back into the kitchen. But she took one look at Crush’s flabbergasted expression, covered her mouth, turned, and ran out again, her laughter floating in from his dining room.

“You really think that’s a reasonable request, don’t you?” the bear asked her.

“Define reasonable.”

“Not crazy?”

“What do you mean by crazy?”

The bear rubbed his eyes with both hands and Cella marveled at the size of them. Although the way his biceps bulged kind of pulled her away from his hands.

“Why are you staring at me like that?”

Realizing he was now watching her, Cella answered honestly, “You’re kinda hot.”

“Is this your way of seducing me into doing what you want?”

“No, I only seduce for fucking. But for you to pretend to be my boyfriend, I was going to offer access to the owners’ box for the rest of the season. But in this particular instance, I was actually doing neither. Simply noting your hotness.”

“Okay. But you are willing to bribe me into being your boyfriend. Something a cop always loves to hear.”

“It’s not like I’m trying to bribe you into doing something illegal. That would be wrong.”

Jai stood in the doorway again, but after a moment of wide-eyed staring, she shook her head and said, “I’ll wait in the dining room for you, Cella, because I ... I ... I just can’t.” She burst out laughing and again walked away.

“How do you get rational, well-respected people involved in your insanity? I mean is it something you taught yourself to do or is it part of your sociopathic nature?”

“First off, I’m not a sociopath. I looked closely at that checklist and I’m in the clear.”

“Checklist? You mean the Robert D. Hare Psychopathy Checklist?”

“I don’t know. It was online.”

“But being a sociopath was such a concern for you that you felt the need to check it out online?”

“Once, but I’m in the clear. So you gonna help me or not?”

He leaned in and said, “Not.”

“So you’re just going to make me have to beat up an old woman?”

Startled, the bear stood tall again. “When did beating up old people come into play? How is that an option?”

“I didn’t say that was an option. She’s just going to make me do it.”

“You’re blaming the potential victim of your elder abuse?”

“First off—”

“Again with the first off?”

“—she’s only ‘elder’ in the strictest sense.”

“You mean by actually being old?”

“And second, I’m the one being abused.”

“And you get there how?”

“Because she’s the one who’s going to challenge me to a bare-knuckle brawl when I refuse to marry my cousin just so she can ruin my relationship with my kid.”

“So if anyone comes up to you and says, ‘I challenge you to a brawl,’ you just have to do it? Is that how this works?”

“No. Of course not.” Jeez. Where did the bear get his crazy ideas? “But if my aunt officially challenges me to a brawl, I have to say yes or lose respect among the Malones.”

The bear placed the palms of his hands against his eyes and again rubbed them. “Why?” he finally asked.

“Because that’s how Malones settle things.”

“But that’s not normal.”

“Define normal.”

“Not you!” He dropped his hands, black eyes scowling. “Your world of brawling with old people is not normal. Verifying from the psychopath checklist that you’re not a psychopath is not normal. Coming to my house on a random Sunday to bribe me to be your boyfriend is not normal!”

“You wouldn’t be my boyfriend, just my pretend boyfriend.”

Roaring, the bear suddenly picked Cella up, tossing her over his shoulder.

“Hey! What the hell?”

Ignoring her, he stalked through his house until he went out on his porch and down his steps. There, on his lawn, is where he dumped her.

Crush walked back into his house and slammed the front door, locking it. Then he stalked back to his kitchen and stood there for a moment to get his raging annoyance under control before he walked back into his dining room.

Dr. Davis still sat at his dining room table, all calm and controlled. He could see the mountain lion side of her, watchful but not panicked.

He sat down across from her. “I’m sorry about—”

“No apologies, please. We did come here uninvited.”

“I just don’t know how to ... she’s just so ... my life is usually so ...”

“I get it. Your life is quiet and normal and Cella is anything but.”

“Actually, up until about two weeks ago, my life was kind of a nightmare. Until my recent transfer, I was undercover. Every day that I woke up, I didn’t know if I’d see the end of it. Would they realize I’d tapped their phones? Did they have a cousin that maybe I’d previously arrested? Would they find out I had photographed them dealing? But all that seems less of a challenge compared to her.”

“So in other words when you come home you like peace and quiet?”

“I don’t know. I will say that I’d like to come home and not see someone beating up on the elderly.”

The doctor laughed, gold eyes bright. “I understand that, which is what Cella wants, too. She’d really rather not get into it with her aunt. But Deirdre doesn’t make it easy on her or anyone.”

“This is going to sound really wrong but ...”

“Why am I friends with her?”

“You two couldn’t be more different. Unless I’m missing something.”

“You’re not missing anything. We’re both felines, but when she shifts she’s four hundred pounds and nearly nine feet long from nose to tail. I’m one hundred and fifty pounds and not even seven feet. She’s loud, I’m skulky. She loves to attack from behind. I’m known to pounce from overhead.”

“But you’re friends.”

“Because I know that no matter what happens, Cella Malone always has my back. Always.”

“And you think I’m being a prick.”

“No! Not at all. I mean, from the outside looking in to the world of Malones ... complete and utter craziness.”

“But ... ?”

“But think of it this way. You get a couple of free dinners, your brothers could—accidentally, of course—see you hanging around Cella Malone and maybe the Marauder since she’s the only one on the team who can tolerate being around that man. You’ll get a chance to spend time with Butch Malone, and he does like you.”

“He does? Really?” Then Crush realized what a complete geeky loser he sounded like and lowered his voice several octaves to say, “Oh. Yeah. That’s nice.”

Dr. Davis smiled, but didn’t openly make fun of him. “And what’s most important to me—you can help make a girl’s life a little bit easier for the next four weeks or so.”

“The five-year-old?”

“I promise you Meghan is eighteen as of two-oh-three this morning. She’s an amazing girl who wants to be a doctor and always feels the need to smooth things over between her mother and the Malone aunts. I can assure you the aunts do not make it easy.”

“They give Malone a hard time?”

“Not always, but one in particular ... Cella’s tried, very hard, to find her own way in life. But her Aunt Deirdre fears her effect on Meghan.”

“But Meghan is Malone’s daughter.”

“Exactly. Of course, Meghan’s kind of my daughter, too. And my daughter, Josie, is kind of Cella’s.”

“And so you always have Malone’s back?”

“Always. If you want, you can think of it this way: You do this and you’re helping me out. Because if Cella gets into it with her aunt, she’ll come to me to complain, and I’ll be up all night listening to her rant. And then what if I’m not a hundred percent with my job? On the day that the Marauder is playing? Gasp!”

“That’s extortion, Dr. Davis.” Crush laughed.

Her smile ... gorgeous. “You’re absolutely right. But think about it. You’ll be helping out your favorite team, keeping them safe.”

“Low, Dr. Davis. That’s very low.”

“Due to my smaller size, I have to be able to fight a little dirtier than the bigger cats.”

“Dirtier and a lot smarter.”

“We have no choice when the Pride lions are running around calling us house cats.”

Crush blew out a breath. “Something tells me this might be the stupidest thing I’ll ever agree to do.”

“Really, Detective Crushek? Because something tells me ... this will be the best thing that’s happened to you in a very long time.”

Cella sat in the SUV, waiting for Jai to come out. That big, bastard bear was probably asking her out. All that class and education compared to Cella’s complete lack of both.

She briefly wondered if she could get away with just lying to her aunts until after the wedding. It would probably work with all of her aunts but Deirdre.

A knock at the driver’s window made Cella jump a little, but finding Crush standing outside her car door just confused her. She rolled down the window. “Hi.”

“Hi.” When he stood there, not speaking, she tentatively asked, “Is there something you need?”

“A promise. Two, actually.”

“Pretend we never met?”

He smiled and she had to admit—he had a really handsome smile. “No. I just need to know that when we’re done with your crazy scheme, the world will think you broke up with me.”

“To protect my fine reputation?”

“You mean your reputation as a brawler and homicidal maniac? Yeah ... not really my concern.”

“Oh.”

“But I don’t want Nice Guy Malone thinking I broke his daughter’s heart. Can you promise me that?”

“I can definitely promise you that. And the second?”

“That if you ever see me reaching for a Jell-O shot again, you’ll take me out like you did that goalie in last month’s game against the Utah Sinners.”

Laughing and cringing at the same time—she really took that goalie out—Cella nodded. “If it gets you to help me ... you’ve got it.”

“Then I’m in.”

Unable to help herself, Cella asked, “So you’ll be my pretend boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Will we have pretend sex? What about pretend children?” She pressed her hands to her chest and happily sighed, “How about a pretend dog?”

“Leave Lola out of this and don’t freak me out.” He stood tall—really, really tall. “So when do we start this?”

Cella grimaced and admitted, “Tonight.”

“Tonight?”

The passenger door opened up and Jai slipped into the seat as Cella explained to Crush, “Kid’s birthday dinner. Please?”

He looked off, blew out a breath, then finally nodded. “Yeah, all right. I’ll follow you. Just let me take Lola to my next-door neighbor’s and then I’ll be ready to go. Oh, unless I need to dress up?”

“The only parties Malones dress up for are wakes and weddings.”

“I don’t think I’d consider a wake an actual party.”

“It depends on who died.”

He shook his head, refusing to respond to that. “Let me take care of Lola before I change my mind about all this.”

“You can bring Lola if you want,” Cella offered, feeling pretty impressed with herself for doing so.

Crushek stopped, looked at her. “You want me to bring my fifty-pound dog—”

“Thought it was a foster?”

“—to a predator-only birthday party?”

Cella blinked. “Well, when you put it like that ...”

With another sigh, the bear headed back to his house and dog.

“He had a point about bringing the dog,” Jai murmured, finally closing her door.

Cella shrugged. “Yeah, I kind of realized that once I said it. But by then the words were already out of my mouth... .”