Page 5 of Cross To Bear

“Don’t hassle the boy,” Nelly said, giving her husband a shove. “He’s here now and everyone’s in one piece.” She looked past the men at me. “We don’t need to send the boys around to do any repairs at the apartment, do we?”

As if summoned by their collective name, ‘the boys’ arrived. Not Jesse’s boys, those were the hangarounds that appeared at the garage once it was knock off time. No, these were Bjorn’s sleuth.

They’d come by the office that I worked at a few times since I’d begun dating Jesse. When they heard I was an accountant, the garage books were transferred to my firm, if not to me personally. The ladies in the office had just about had a conniption when they all walked in the door and I knew why. Because in comparison to Jesse, they looked like real bikers.

Bjorn took everything in with eyes of pure amber. A lot of bear shifters had those pale brown eyes, especially if they were a brown or black bear. I’d never seen his animal, but I felt like I could see him if I closed my eyes just a little, the tawny of his hair, scraped back from his face, becoming a black bear’s fur. The thick, short clipped beard just accentuated that whole thing, though it was his build that made him seem bear-like. Jesse was tall, muscular, but he looked slender as a reed compared to Bjorn’s powerful frame. The man was wearing a button-down shirt right now, the sleeves rolled up over forearms as thick as hams, bluish black tattoos swirling under the dense, pale arm hair.

And why was I looking so closely at Jesse’s brother?

“Do you want me to put those flowers in water?”

Razor appeared at my elbow, making me jump. His overly full lips spread into a slow smile at that. He wasn’t named Razor at birth, earning the name because he shaved his otherwise shaggy hair back on the sides to keep it out of his face, giving him this weird punk mullet hairstyle.

“You got me flowers?” The look on Nelly’s face, the way it lit up was why I’d sprung for them at the supermarket. I’d have organised something much nicer if I had the time, though it didn’t matter. As Razor grabbed a vase from the cupboards, she cradled the bouquet in her arms. “Oh sweetheart, they’re gorgeous!”

“Glad you like ’em, Mum,” Jesse said, his chest puffing out.

“Not you!” Nelly gave him a shove, so she didn’t see his face fall. “Maddie bear got them, didn’t you?” Not sure how in two sleuths I got the nickname bear, but I just nodded. “I knew it.” She shook her head slowly as she looked at her youngest son. “You’re hopeless, you know, hanging out with those boys at the garage—”

“And leaving Maddie at home at night.”

Hawk stepped forward, his arms crossing. The man was intimidating as hell, with a thick dark beard and a shock of dark hair. I’m not sure how Jesse stood there, meeting Hawk’s stare, but he did.

“Maddie doesn’t like hanging out at the garage—”

“What does she like, Jesse?” the last of Bjorn’s sleuth asked.

In years gone by, Crash would’ve been a knight or a paladin or something. He had that look about him, his eyes so pale blue they were almost white, standing out starkly against his tanned face. Longish white hair was raked back from his face as he stared Jesse down.

They all did.

This was a familiar thing. Bjorn and Jesse seemed to have a very distinct older/younger brother dynamic. Most people wouldn’t have worked that out with his tattoos and the piercings, but Bjorn was the responsible one who would’ve had his mother’s gift picked out and wrapped weeks ago. They were like oil and water and the two men mixed as easily as those two liquids.

His sleuth was much the same.

Crash didn’t blink for a second, his brows creasing as he watched Jesse stiffen.

“Maddie likes staying home,” Jesse reasoned and I watched Nelly tense. Her eyes flicked from one person to the other before she went to say something, but Taz put his hand on her shoulder then shook his head slightly. “Don’t you, Mads?”

This was my prompt to agree with him, to back him up against the unceasing stare of his family, and my mouth moved to do just that. It was one of the things Jesse and I had bonded over.

My father was stern, demanding, and my mother submissive towards him up until the point she wasn’t, right before she turned and hassled me to conform to her standards. Jesse stepped in each time and deflected their attention away from me with his charm, or gave them a target to focus on instead. To say Jesse wasn’t what they wanted for me in a partner was an understatement. Mum still tried to give my number to the sons of her friends in the hope of finding someone more suitable.

As I tried to muster the words, to soften the intensity in which Bjorn’s sleuth stared at my boyfriend, I saw it all.

I didn’t like staying home all the time, though I did enjoy nesting on the couch with a hot chocolate, a book or a movie, and lots and lots of blankets, way more than Jesse did. He could never sit still long enough for a movie, and books were a waste of time in his eyes. If we nestled down on the couch, he’d get bored and start snuggling up to me, kissing my neck, running his hand up my thigh to try and distract me. When we first got together that was hot—that he looked just like he did, but he couldn’t keep his hands off me. Because the shop assistant’s assumption was a common one. I lived in the special kind of hell where women looked at me and looked at him and decided I was punching way above my weight.

But I liked going out too. I used to with my girlfriends all the time. We’d go out for cocktails or a meal at a cute restaurant on a Friday night and vent about our week. I’d get lost in the tastes and smells and the excitement of being out in the world, watching all the pretty people walk by. My friends had all coupled up, most having gotten married and starting to have kids, whereas I—

“Jesse!”

A little blonde-haired child came running in through the door, the girl zeroing in on Jesse and wrapping her arms around his legs.

“Kara!” He swung his little cousin up in his arms, settling her on his hip. “How’s my girl?”

“Bear back rides!” she shouted, throwing her arms up. “Bear back rides!”

And that was one of the things I loved about him. He was always awesome with kids, chuckling before throwing her up in the air, then catching her and putting her on his back. He hunched over dramatically then let out a thunderous growl, Kara cackling in response as they thumped out of the kitchen sliding door to where the pool lay beyond.

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