Bearly Out Loud (The Matchmaker’s Book Club: Villains #2)

Prologue

Another successful match. Gerri reached for her bag. The engagement party swirled around her as she sat back with her glass of wine and bag of sweet delicacies.

Two women approached her. They arrived with the unmistakable posture of women on a mission—expensive clothes, determined expressions, the shared anxiety of mothers whose brilliant children were driving them to wine-fueled intervention.

Gerri recognized the type. She’d been expecting them.

The first was short, slim, with the bearing of old money and the kind of structured, angular short bob that screamed of a standing appointment at a salon that didn’t list prices. She settled into the chair across from Gerri with the composed poise of boardroom experience.

“Mrs. Wilder. My name is Suki Saitō. My granddaughter, Nari Wixx, is a voice artist.”

“How lovely.” Gerri folded her hands. “Tell me about her.”

Suki’s poise cracked at the edges, and suddenly, her eyes filled with sadness.

The familial worry underneath was genuine, raw, the kind expensive composure couldn’t mask.

“She can be anyone behind a microphone. A queen, a villain, a warrior. Her clients call her a chameleon. She’s voiced campaigns for three Fortune 500 companies and two animated features, and she’s twenty-eight years old. ”

“Impressive.”

“And she can be anyone except herself.” Suki’s grip tightened on her glass.

“She hides behind characters because she’s terrified of what happens when she speaks as herself.

She hasn’t had a relationship last more than four months because the moment someone asks her to stop performing—to show them who she is without the characters—she bolts. ”

Gerri said nothing. Listened. This was the part most people didn’t understand about matchmaking: it wasn’t about knowing who fit. It was about hearing what was missing.

The second woman was taller, a little rounder, with warm brown skin and an emerald wrap dress that Gerri approved of instinctively. She carried herself with the quiet gentleness of someone who had raised something large and wild and deeply kind.

“Colette Keiser.” She sat beside Suki. “My son is a bear shifter.”

“Ah.” Gerri’s eyebrow rose a fraction. “Bear.”

“The most protective soul I’ve ever raised.

He opened doors for strangers until one of the doors came off its hinges.

He volunteers at a children’s literacy program.

He builds furniture by hand. And his last three dates—” Colette exhaled.

The exhale carried the exhaustion of a mother who had heard these stories over the phone and tried not to laugh and failed.

“The first ended because he growled at a waiter who brought the wrong order. The second ended because he accidentally crushed a doorknob when he went to open the door for her. The third ended because he snarled at an Uber driver who braked too hard, and the woman thought he was going to eat the driver.”

“Was he?”

“He was protecting her from whiplash. He’s convinced he’s too much for anyone. Too large. Too loud. Too... bear.” Colette’s voice dropped. “He’s the gentlest man I know and he can’t make it through a dinner reservation without scaring someone.”

December glittered around them. The jazz trio played on. On the dance floor behind them, the string lights caught the silver band on Lumi’s finger as she moved.

Gerri watched them for a moment. Then she turned to the two mothers.

“A woman who hides behind every character except herself,” Gerri said, “and a man who can’t control the volume of his.” She reached into her bag. Selected a lemon cookie with deliberate care. Bit into it. Chewed. Swallowed.

“Finding your true voice requires someone willing to listen past the performance.” She smiled. “And sometimes the gentlest souls come in the most intimidating packages.”

Suki and Colette exchanged the look of two women who had been told that Gerri Wilder could do the impossible and were now watching her decide whether she would.

“Does your son like lemon?” Gerri held out the remaining cookie.

Colette blinked. Took it. “He prefers honey.”

“Bear shifters often do. We’ll work with it.”

Gerri rose. Smoothed her silk. Settled her bag under her arm. The rooftop party buzzed before her—string lights and jazz and the Manhattan skyline and two people dancing who had started the year as strangers with locked drawers and ended it as mates with open ones.

She pulled out her phone. Typed a message to a contact she hadn’t used yet—someone in the voice acting industry, someone who owed her a favor from a Book Club event in March, someone who might know a studio where a bear shifter with a door-crushing grip volunteered on weekends because he loved the sound of children reading aloud.

The message was brief. Gerri’s messages always were.

Darling. I have a project. Two creative souls. One hides behind voices. The other can’t control his. I’ll need a venue, a pretext, and a batch of honey cookies. Details to follow.

She pressed send. Pocketed the phone. Looked out at the city—cold and amber light, the skyline doing its indifferent, beautiful thing while sixty people celebrated because two creatives had been brave enough to unlock what they’d hidden.

Below, Manhattan hummed. Cabs and sirens and the distant bass of a club on Spring Street.

Above, the lights swayed. Lumi was teaching Zeir to dance properly and failing spectacularly and laughing about it, and he was letting her, and that—the letting—was the whole story.

A man who had controlled everything learning to let a petite artist with ink-stained fingers rearrange his entire world.

Gerri straightened her necklace. Adjusted her bag. Took one last look at the couple she’d built—the wolf and the artist—and walked back into the party to begin planning the next love story.

She had two people, a voice artist, and a bear shifter who crushed doorknobs.