Page 11 of A Bear in a Birdbath

“Will that work?” Margo wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Eva admitted. “I’ve done what I was asked, so maybe it will be enough.”

There was a groan from the man Margo had knocked out and they went to make sure he was still sleeping. Margo rolled him effortlessly over, and Eva could see his face for the first time in the bright light.

He was incredibly handsome, with one of those chiseled movie-star faces edged in neatly trimmed facial hair. “That’s Bruno Bigliotti. He makes those fancy birdbaths that win art awards. He’s a cave bear shifter.”

Eva looked up in time to catch Margo blushing as she knelt to check his pulse. She was blushing! Well, no wonder. The man was an absolute beauty, even if he was a huge brute. Eva returned her gaze to him so that she wouldn’t stare longingly at Margo and disturb the fragile truce they had right now.

“Mate,” he murmured. “You’re my mate…”

Eva and Margo both froze and exchanged an astonished glance over his head.

Margo was this man’s mate?

Eva told herself that there was no reason for her bolt of jealousy. She didn’t even know the terrifying man, and she didn’t have a claim on either of these people.

“Let’s get out of here before he wakes up and calls in reinforcements,” Margo advised sensibly.

11

MARGO

Margo anxiously watched the papers for an entire week before she let herself believe that they’d gotten away scot-free.

There was no news about a break in at Wilson Kinetics, and no report of one of their high-profile Chief Operating Officers being found knocked out with a popcorn machine broken over his head. There was no mention of thieves being caught on tape or evidence of any misdemeanors.

No one came to Harriet’s bakery with an arrest warrant, and no investigators stopped by with innocent questions like ‘Where were you at midnight on December 28th?’

Eva was safe.

Safe from persecution, at least. Antonio seemed satisfied with the pictures that Eva had sent him. At least, he didn’t seem to be pressing her about her hanging debt, or talking her into further industrial espionage.

But Eva wasn’t safe to Margo now.

Margo’s crush had been buried so deep that she barely recognized it herself, and now it was out in the unflattering light. Eva was out of Margo’s league. She was someone else’s mate. And yet Margo couldn’t stop wanting her.

Margo prowled the bakery more diligently than ever, and probably scared off more sales than she secured. She caught herself scowling for no reason, only realizing what she was doing when someone burst into tears or started stammering apologies.

She didn’t see much of Eva because she avoided Harriet’s second floor office unless she was directly summoned for some reason.

When they met, briefly, in the hall, or in the kitchen after hours, their conversation was badly stilted and they hung to opposite sides of the stainless steel counters even when it was obviously what they were doing. They escaped every encounter as quickly as possible.

Margo had ruined everything.

One impulsive, unwelcome kiss, and she’d shattered their fragile friendship.

She couldn’t stop thinking about what Eva had felt like in her arms, the soft, warmth of her, and the flutter of her lips as they kissed. She convinced herself that Eva hadn’t really kissed her back. It was just a reflex, a moment so keen in Margo’s memory that she’d exaggerated what really happened.

Because she saw how Eva looked down at Bruno when he was asleep. And she was his mate.

Two kisses in one night, both of them just a tease at what might have been, and all of her opportunities overwhelmed and washed away when they met each other.

Margo was thrilled for them at the same time that she despaired for herself, because how could she be so selfish as to deny them that shred of happiness she briefly thought might have been her own?

But Margo couldn’t have either of them, there was no point in pining, and if she wanted to remove the horrible complication that Eva had become, there was one thing she could do. If Eva wasn’t going to willingly follow up on her mate, Margo wasn’t going to wait for the factory head to send out a glass slipper or an invitation to a ball to find his escaped princess.

“You want to set Eva up with who?” Harriet had mellowed considerably since she met Tobias and agreed to marry him, but she still had her sharp wit and suspicious mind. “Why?”

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