“Oh?” Lauren craned her neck to look at him in disbelief. “What problem are you thinking of, because nothing in front of me looks easy?”
He smiled, barely visible through the beard in the shifting shadows of the firelight. “Well, once we leave this cabin, you’re coming home with me. There’s plenty of food, we won’t need firewood, and I’ll sharpen whatever axes you want me to.”
Another kiss and he patted her stomach. Lauren’s face burned. Did he really want her to go live with him, after knowing her only a day or two? And learning what he had about her? “But I’m a criminal. A wanted criminal. Aren’t you worried about…”
“I believe you’re innocent,” he said. “And we can deal with the charges and bounty and all that. Just a matter of getting the right lawyer and making a deal with the bondsman to start with. We’ll get it sorted out.”
There he went, sayingweagain. Her feet moved uneasily and bumped his, but Finn’s only response was to adjust how he heldher so she had more room to fidget. It was too good to be true. Lauren knew the other shoe would drop eventually. She didn’t dare get her hopes up or let herself believe that Finn would actually follow through on his promises about a lawyer and a safe place to stay. It was just so he could sleep with her again. That had to be it. “I don’t think it’ll be that easy.”
“Well, the other thing I’ve learned is that money fixes a lot of problems,” he said. Finn yawned and she heard his jaw crack. She couldn’t help but yawn as well, and her eyes drooped as he stroked her stomach absently. “I’ve saved a lot over the years and never had anything worthwhile to spend it on. Don’t you worry about a thing, darlin’.”
She didn’t want to believe him, and she didn’t want to rely on charity like that. Lauren had learned the hard way that letting a guy pay her bills usually meant paying him back in ways too costly to tolerate. She didn’t want to think Finn was like that, that he’d hold the money over her head and make her feel bad that he’d wasted money on a lawyer or whatever, but a small part of her knew it was just a matter of time until he woke up to reality. “I don’t know if…”
“Tomorrow morning we can talk about what to do next and who to talk to first,” he murmured. Finn nuzzled behind her ear and patted her hip. “How about I tell you about the beach in Somalia?”
She frowned at the fire. “What?”
Finn started to describe a faraway beach, his husky voice almost hypnotic as he told her about waves and shells and sand. Lauren yawned again and snuggled deeper into the blankets and his arms. Maybe it would all be okay. Her eyes drooped more and she drifted away while he talked about spearfishing and learning to surf. She heard the sound of the waves in her dreams, too.
FINN
His instincts told him something was off even though Lauren eventually relaxed and fell asleep in his arms. The uncertainty in her voice, in the way she searched for excuses on why he wouldn’t want her around, made him nervous. Between the bear and the man, there were no doubts that they were meant to be together. Lauren was his, and he was hers, and that was how things were going to be.
He’d expected to need to convince her, but not as much as he apparently would have to. He’d go as slow as necessary to build her confidence in him, even if it drove him crazy that she questioned his intentions and searched for reasons why things wouldn’t work out. She definitely searched for the worst-case scenario. He couldn’t blame her, not really, based on what he’d heard about her past.
Finn told her about a beach he dreamed about from one of the few quiet times he’d experienced in the Horn of Africa, spearfishing with a few buddies while they waited for a new contract to come through and a helicopter to pick them up. Simon had been there, too, and a couple of other bears. Granted, the bear was fucking miserable in the heat, but Finn could havebasked in the sun all day if it wouldn’t have burned him to a crisp.
But once she’d fallen asleep, finally quiet and still except for a few mutters and twitches, sleep eluded him. Finn wouldn’t ever let her know, but he wasn’t entirely confident that all things would be handled as easily as he’d said. Sure, he could afford the best attorneys in the area, and would levy whatever defense needed to keep her from spending a second in jail. But the so-called justice system chewed people up and spit them out, and sometimes the innocent got caught up in it just as much as the guilty. He could do everything right and it still not work out the way he wanted.
Which meant he needed to stack the deck. He’d bend the rules and break the laws to ensure Lauren didn’t pay the price for what those fucking activists did to her, throwing her under the bus. He shoved that fury down deep as his arms tightened around her and she murmured in her sleep. He would deal with those assholes later, after he was sure Lauren was off the hook and everything would be fine.
He rubbed his chin against her shoulder, the bear wanting to scent mark her a little yet again, and worked the problem over in his mind. Simon and Noah were better at this kind of shit. Finn’s solution was to grab Lauren and disappear somewhere wild where the bounty hunters and cops wouldn’t bother to search for her. Maybe they’d fake her death so they wouldn’t come after her at all. Buy her a new identity and leave the country, go on an adventure together through all the wild places he’d been before but hadn’t really enjoyed. He’d show Lauren all the finer things, and the less fine things since she didn’t seem like the kind of girl who wanted hoity-toity Parisian restaurants. She could rough it in a hut on the beach or a hammock in the jungle or even an igloo in the Arctic.
It didn’t sound like she had any family that would have searched for her or bothered to help her out, otherwise she wouldn’t have been staying in a dilapidated pile of sticks in the middle of the forest. Maybe her friend, the one whose parents wouldn’t help Lauren. He tried to understand where they were coming from, but obviously they’d never met her, because it would have been damn impossible to meet Lauren and not want to help her.
He closed his eyes and tried the falling-asleep trick that Ethan taught him, listening to waves in his mind in the hopes the white noise would relax him and get rid of the troubling thoughts running around in his head. He had the same problem Lauren did, apparently.
It didn’t help that the bear wanted to stalk through the woods around the cabin to search for hints of any intruders or Shotgun’s guys. Finn had sent the coordinates and the cop could have sent a team in to search out the drug runners at any time. Finn assumed he wouldn’t do it in the middle of a blizzard, but the old man had done crazier shit in much worse conditions. He didn’t have any reason to search for the cabin or assume that Finn or the smugglers were inside it. Finn hoped that was enough to keep them out of the line of fire until he had a chance to shore up some defensive positions and figure out what the fuck to do.
He needed to call Simon so the bears could meet him and Lauren in the town much closer to the cabin than the way he’d originally trekked in. He could sneak Lauren out without her being seen if Simon brought the trucks right to the cabin, and with all the bears there, he’d have enough firepower to ensure Shotgun didn’t get jumpy or sloppy when it came to calling in his dogs. Once they were back at the Lodge and Lauren was for sure safe, he would figure the rest of the shit out.
It wasn’t his problem if Shotgun caught the smugglers or not. They wouldn’t figure out he killed the missing men, when obviously they’d been torn apart by a bear’s claws. Sure, stuffing them in a crevice and hiding them with rocks was a little outside of the typical ursine behavioral patterns, but what the fuck ever. They had it coming. If anyone searched for the drug runners, so be it. He’d deal with the consequences later. There weren’t witnesses and there sure as hell wasn’t evidence that tied Finn to the deaths. Lauren wasn’t about to volunteer information to the police about what happened on the trail. They wouldn’t believe her even if she did go tearing off to announce a man turned into a bear and clawed apart a couple of guys who threatened her with guns, and the bear carried her back to a cabin and turned back into a man. He shook his head to himself, not wanting to think about the circumstances where poor Lauren might have had to talk about him changing forms.
Finn didn’t sleep much as he turned the problem over and over in his head. Despite what he told Lauren about leaving it for another day, he couldn’t get past the immediate issue of getting out of the forest without getting shot by cowboys with badges or drug smugglers. That was the real problem. He didn’t want to highlight that to Lauren, otherwise he’d have to toss her over his shoulder to haul out of the cabin and into the open.
Not that he minded the idea of carrying her around.
She slept hard enough she didn’t even stir when he untangled himself and eased out from under the layers of sleeping bags and blankets. He made sure to tuck everything in around her so none of the chilly air drifting in from the holes in the walls disturbed her. He fed a few sticks to the coals and relit it to make sure it caught, then made a lap of the perimeter to ensure they were still safe.
The blizzard had dumped a good three feet of snow outside, though it drifted up against the cabin almost over his head inplaces. Finn didn’t bother opening the front door, since he didn’t want to leave an obvious sign to anyone passing by that someone recently entered or exited the building. Plus opening the door would have woken Lauren for sure.
So he opened one of the windows in the back of the cabin, leaning out to sniff the crisp air outside. He inhaled until his whole chest expanded and the air nearly froze his lungs. Nothing but pine and typical forest animals and snow. No metallic scents or humans or drugs or ammunition. None of the smells he would have expected if trouble were about to drop on top of them. The forest was silent in the early dawn.
Too silent.
His nerves prickled and his bear side wanted to prowl through the snow to make sure the rest of the forest knew an apex predator was walking through the trees. It wouldn’t make anything better, really, even though it would have placated the bear. And it might end up scaring the shit out of Lauren, if she woke up and found him missing and then in bear form. Just because she’d kind of accepted it the night before, coming out of a serious shock, didn’t mean the cold morning light would show her the same thing.
Which left him with only a few options. Finn closed the window and shook off the snow that had fallen on his head, brushing off his shoulders before returning to the front of the cabin. Lauren still slept, curled up in a little ball with her face buried in his sleeping bag, and he paused to study her, smiling despite himself. He didn’t know how it was possible for her to have worked her way into his heart so quickly, but there they were.
