Chapter 7 Bear Trap #4
April wanted to believe her. Like Bear, though, she had some reservations concerning the match — ones she hadn’t considered before now. “Where did you meet him?”
Kaya flushed and glanced away. “While I was sitting in a dental chair in his exam room. It’s not very romantic, I know. I was having an old silver filling replaced with a white one so it would look prettier. He took care of it, then asked me to a movie. One thing led to another, and…”
“How long ago was this?” April pressed.
Kaya’s smile told her volumes. “Three months, four days...” She glanced down at her watch before finishing, “and two hours.”
“One last question.” April would undoubtedly think of more later, but these were her most burning ones. “Does Tiffany Masterson know you’re dating Ben?”
Kaya visibly wilted. “Yes, but only because I thought we were best friends. What have I done?” Her expression twisted with agony.
“What every best friend would do,” April assured firmly. “You shared your secrets, hopes, and dreams with her. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I should’ve known.” Kaya shook her head, growing tearful. “I’m about to become a lawyer. Where were my spidey senses?”
“Lawyers are human, too.” April lightly bumped shoulders with her. “We all have our blind spots. Even me. That’s how you snuck into the morgue and pulled the wool over my eyes.”
Kaya’s expression brightened. “Not for long, though.”
“Eh, you had me going for all of ten seconds, at least,” April returned dryly.
“Ouch!” Kaya’s expression turned pitiful. “Lowly assistant humbly requests to borrow your cell phone.” She held out a hand
April didn’t hesitate to hand her phone over.
Kaya made a big show of slinking to the other side of the room with it, where she called her boyfriend. After he picked up, she moved into the adjoining room and shut the door.
Liking the privacy Kaya’s absence gave her and Bear, April waved him over to the kitchenette and offered refreshments.
“This is nice.” He took a seat on a barstool, eyeing the remains of the latest feast Kaya had ordered. There was fresh fruit, veggie sticks, bagels, cream cheese spread, and finger sandwiches.
April poured two iced teas and joined him at the bistro table, sliding one of the glasses of tea his way.
“It’s been a few days since I had a decent meal,” he admitted, filling the paper plate she set in front of him.
She’d been wondering about that. “What have you been eating on the road?”
“Mostly beef jerky,” he replied. “A favorite of mine, but it’s no substitute for fruits and vegetables.”
April was glad he didn’t mind helping them polish off the leftovers. “Kaya said you make your own beef jerky.”
“Yeah, it’s a hobby.” He described how he sliced and marinated the meat and how he usually ran two dehydrators at a time. “I’ll have to replace the dehydrators before my next batch.”
She knew he was referring to his home being ransacked. “Did the police ever find out who broke into your place?”
“Not yet, but Adriel’s working on it.” He sounded confident in his friend’s ability to get to the bottom of it.
April cradled her glass of tea between her hands, enjoying his company and hoping she wasn’t boring him. She didn’t have any hobbies or other interesting stories to share with him in return. Her days were filled with one thing only: work.
She scrambled for a topic that would interest him and ended up just saying what was on her heart.
“I’m glad you’ll be staying at the hotel for a few days.
” She would sleep better tonight knowing he was nearby instead of hiking up and down the barren old highway.
“Kaya is ecstatic about having you so close. She constantly worried about you out there bivouacking all alone.”
“Why?” He looked surprised. “Living off the land is what I do. I’ve built a profitable business around it.”
April was impressed. Plus, it was seriously hot. However, she understood why Kaya worried about him. “She confided in me that her relationship with her mother is lukewarm, which makes her relationship with you all the more impactful.”
“I know.” Bear crinkled his eyes warmly at her. “I’m glad she has you to talk to.”
Me too. Their mentor-mentee relationship often held the overtones of a mother-daughter one.
“I’m every bit as grateful to have her in my life.
She’s smart, curious, and a go-getter. I couldn’t have found a better assistant if I’d advertised for one.
But back to your earlier question. Kaya thinks you’re lonely, and that bothers her. ”
He shrugged. “It comes with the territory of being a widower.”
His honesty was refreshing. A lot of guys would’ve denied it, not wanting to appear weak. As for her own experience with loneliness, she could write a book about it. She was well acquainted with solitude.
“As Alfred Tennyson said,” Bear mused, “‘better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’”
She was utterly charmed that he could quote Tennyson, but there was so little inflection in his voice that she wondered if his marriage had been a passionate one.
Almost immediately, she felt awful for letting her mind go there.
It wasn’t her place to psycho-analyze him or the things he’d been through.
He seemed at peace with his life, something she suspected was tied into his faith.
He finished eating but seemed in no hurry to end their visit and get back to work. “What about you? You don’t talk much about yourself. Have you ever been married?”
“Only to my job.” She shook her head shyly, surprised by such a direct question. “I’m afraid I inherited my parents’ all-work-and-no-play ethic.”
He cocked his head at her. “That’s not what I see.”
It was impossible not to ask what he meant by that, since she was dying to know. “What do you see when you look at me, Bear Dakota?” It was starting to feel like they were flirting.
His eyes burned into hers. “I see a brilliant, successful, beautiful woman. It feels like a miracle you’re back in town, that I’ve been handed a second chance to get to know you.”
She caught her breath. A second chance? As in you wished you’d done so the first time we’d met? “You sure don’t hold back.” She hadn’t expected him to speak so openly. Most people didn’t.
“At my age, what’s the point of holding back?” His voice dropped to a lower, huskier note. “I can’t help noticing that you’re not taking off running.”
She briefly closed her eyes, longing to tell him the truth since he was being so open with her — the whole truth. Things she’d never confided in another person before.
“What is it, April?” His rich baritone filled her ears, her thoughts, her heart. It tangled her emotions.
She reopened her eyes, summoning the courage to put her feelings into words. “I want to get to know you better, too. It’s something I’ve wanted for a very long time.” Her breathing grew shallow, and she immediately feared she’d said too much.
Being in the same room with him, sitting across from him, and talking so openly with him was like having her biggest, most treasured dreams come true.
But did he long for the same things she longed for?
He’d lived more, experienced more, and suffered more than she had.
He was probably still navigating the grieving process for his late wife.
Was he ready to move on from that? Would he ever be ready?
He was silent for so long that she wished she hadn’t laid her heart quite so bare before him. She parted her lips to launch a gentle backtrack of things that would’ve been best left unsaid.
But before she could get a word out, he started speaking again, his eyes pleading with her to understand. “Would you consider me a bad person if I told you that’s exactly what I wanted the first day we met?”
“Bear,” she whispered, stunned. Had he actually felt the same attraction to her all those years ago? Before he’d fallen in love with and married someone else? It was the last thing she’d expected to hear him say. Hope trembled cautiously inside her, while doubts crowded around it.
It was possible Bear was only being nice — letting her down easily after the bomb she’d just laid on him. Yeah, I used to feel that way, too, April. Past tense. Such a claim risked nothing, nor would it obligate him to follow up with any action.
“You must be wondering why I did nothing about it back then, and there isn’t a simple answer.
” He held her gaze steadily, making no effort to mask his emotions the way he often did.
“You were so far out of my league, April. I had nothing to offer a woman like you. You were going places, and I would’ve only held you back. ”
Her heart nearly stopped beating. Oh! My! Goodness! He’d honestly thought she was too good for him? That was why he hadn’t pursued her?
“I don’t know what to say.” She was swimming — no, half-drowning — in the new and painfully poignant awareness radiating between them.
It was almost too much to bear. Never before had anyone knocked her so emotionally off-balance.
She was a planner, a list-maker, a woman of logic, and an occasional daydreamer in moments of weakness; but nothing had prepared her for this.
Dreams only came true in fairytales, right?
Not in the gritty alleys of real life, certainly not in her life up to this point.
“I hope you’ll give us a chance to see where this goes.” Bear didn’t put any masterful moves on her or try to get physical. He simply waited for her to process his request. His patience was her undoing.
She felt like weeping and laughing. Like climbing down from her stool and twirling around the room with her arms outstretched. She wanted to climb mountains with him, feel the sunshine on her face, and dance in the rain. She wanted to live, really live for once.
All that bubbled to the dazed surface of her mind, however, were two raw words. The truth stripped of everything else.
“I will.” Her voice was as airy as the breeze blowing off the distant foothills. Her heart was equally light.
Bear had done more than nudge her intellect toward faith. He’d done more than give her a Bible that he’d cleverly turned into a love letter. He was opening the door to a whole new world of possibilities, and he was inviting her to step through it.
Together.
She reached for his hand, craving reassurance, craving his touch, just plain craving.
He covered her hand with his. They sat there, drowning in each other’s eyes.
And for the first time in a very long time, April was no longer alone.