Page 22 of OctoBEARfest

Gwen couldn't evenpretendnot to look horrified. Bill burst out laughing. "I was going to say six, but eight was obviously terrible enough. I'll see you when you get here, okay? This was a great evening, Gwen. Everything else aside, I haven't been out to a club like that in years, and I think it was really good for me. Thank you."

He hesitated, studying her, and Gwen's heartbeat quickened again. Before she could break the stalemate and lean in to kiss him, he ducked his head, said, "Good night," and left her to drive off to her hotel alone.

CHAPTER 14

There was valor and there was cowardice, and tonight, Bill decided he was a coward. First off, he was a coward for not kissing Gwen Booker. There'd been a look in her eyes that said she would have invited it, and he'd certainly wanted to, but somehow it seemed like he should try to explain the whole shifter thingbeforehe started kissing her.

Mostly, though, he was a coward for sneaking to his truck and driving home instead of going into the pub to see how much of his family was left in there. For one thing, he knew for a fact that if hedidgo in, he would end up with at least two cousins staying at his three-bedroom ranch house a couple miles from the pub. It wasn't that he didn't want them to, exactly. It was more that it had been a hell of a day, and he wanted some quiet in which to sit down and contemplate it. All of it, but especially the fact that he'd met his fated mate, and that she was a rock star.

He really seemed like the least-likely person on earth to be partner to someone like Gwen Booker. His bear, huffily, began a protest, and Bill shook it off as he got home and went inside.I know,he reassured the bear.I believe it. It's just an idea thattakes some getting used to, even for me. I don't know how I'm going to explain it to her.

The bear settled, and Bill went to bed, convinced he'd be staring at the ceiling all night. Convinced he'dbetterbe staring at the ceiling, and not stroking himself off thinking about Gwen. Even if the attraction was mutual—and he was fairly certain it was, mate bond aside—it seemed faintly rude somehow, like he should make his intentions to Gwen clear before he started getting off on active fantasies. The vague idea that it was rude didn't make keeping his hands folded firmly behind his head and not wrapped around his cock any easier, though eventually it did make him laugh at himself. He was pushing forty, not fourteen. A little discipline shouldn't require so much active contemplation.

Luckily—or not—sleep did claim him after a bit, and if his dreams were filled with rock stars, that was just fine with Bill.

An incessant buzzingwoke him not all that much later, although his phone—the source of the buzzing—claimed it was nearly nine in the morning, when he picked it up. Bill stared at the time a moment, trying to remember the last time he'd slept this late, then dropped the phone and collapsed back into bed. The incoming messages could wait a minute.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd ignored messages, either. Or the last time he'd woken up without a sense of grim doom hanging over him, for that matter. There was a strange lightness in his chest, like it was easier to breathe today than it had been in months, maybe years. He rubbed the heel of his hand against his sternum, half expecting some kind of mystical golden glow to arise, but instead a sensation of contentmentsettled into his bones in a way that was totally unfamiliar. For the first time since he'd taken over the pub, he felt like everything was going to be all right.

The phone buzzed again and this time he checked the messages, which was—of course—all from his family. Most of them were in the larger family chat, but a bunch were in the immediate family one, and the last of which, from Laurie, said,The cinnamon rolls are gonna be gone before you get here, dude.

Bill, blearily, said, "Cinnamon rolls?" and scrolled back in that chat, then switched to the other one, where an absolute wall of messages were moaning happily about cinnamon rolls, or bemoaning being too far away to have any. He scrolled up through that, too, until he found a message that saidI'm moving to Renaissance, a punk rock lady just showed up at the pub with cinnamon rolls,with a photograph of what had to be at least fifty huge, fluffy, cream-cheese-covered cinnamon rolls in giant boxes on one of the pub tables.

'A punk rock lady' could only be Gwen. Bill jolted out of bed and into the shower, holding one arm out so his phone didn't get wet as he texted her,I thought you didn't get up until late!

I lied,she wrote back after a minute, followed by winking and smiling emojis.I thought you got up early!

I usually do,he sent.Slept in this morning, probably because somebody kept me up late at a concert. Showering now. Don't let everybody else eat the cinnamon rolls.Then, aloud, he said, "Oh, God, everybody else. She's met the family without me. Oh my God," and put the phone down so he could hastily wash and get out of the shower.

There was another message from Gwen when he did:Pix or it didn't happen.

Still aloud, he said, "Uh," and texted back,or what didn't happen?

A shower,she wrote, and then a facepalm emoji followed.OMG. I did not just ask a guy I've known like 19 hours for shower pix. Please ignore.

As far as he could tell, Gwen Booker had been put on this earth in large part to make Bill blush. He wrote,Too late, I'm already out,then stared at himself in the mirror a moment. Hewasout of the shower, but not dressed, just wrapped in a towel. Aloud again, he said, "I'm not doing this," and then found out fast that he was actually terrible at taking 'hot shower guy' selfies. After about a dozen tries he got one he more or less liked, and without letting him think about it any more than that, sent it to Gwen withThis'll have to do.

Response dots came up, went away, came up, went away, came up, went away, stayed away. Bill, concluding that the only correct thing to do was go die of mortification, went to get dressed with another blush staining his skin so deeply he could see it in his shoulders as he pulled a shirt on. He was just about dressed when his phone buzzed again. He picked it up so fast he fumbled it, dancing it across his hands before managing to get the screen on.

A series of gifs, starting with Blanche from the Golden Girls spritzing herself with water and eventually ending with the one of James McAvoy fromWantedfanning himself, rushed across his screen, followed by Gwen'somfg,and then a gif he didn't know with a bearded guy and text that saidI'll be in my bunkacross it.

There was really only one thing he could think of that that gif could mean, but he checked the internet anyway, and yes, that was what it meant. He wrote back with a devilish smiley face and a blush that Gwen responded to with a laugh andI'd say you should've warned a girl, but God damn, Mr. Torben.

Bill, feeling unreasonably pleased with himself, said,I'll be there in a few minutes. Don't let them eat all the cinnamon rolls.

She actually wrote back withBaby, you can eat my cinnamo,strike marks included, followed byI mean, I'll make sure they'll share.

Bill could not get to the pub fast enough.

For cinnamon rolls? his bear asked with a mix of curiosity and hope.They're good for getting fat for winter.

"Yeah," Bill answered through strangled laughter. "Yeah, for cinnamon rolls. You and me, we're gonna win the Fat Bear Contest."

The bear gave a happy wriggle, which made it very hard for Bill not to wiggle happily along with it. He was still chuckling about it when he pulled up to the pub several minutes later. It wasn't open yet, but there were still seven cars in the parking lot, evidence that his parents had collected even more of the extended family overnight. Gwen's Impala was one of them, and the idea that she was in there with eight or twelve of his family members made Bill's stomach dip nervously. Although unless Jon had betrayed him, at least they didn't yet know that she was his fated mate. Theyprobablywouldn't be regaling her with stories of his mis-spent youth, although the truth was, he'd been pretty clean-cut his whole life.

Cinnamon rolls,his bear reminded him, and Bill, chuckling again, got out of the truck to go get cinnamon rolls, and even more importantly, see Gwen. Only as he pushed the pub door open did he think he should have stopped for coffee, although a heartbeat later its scent hit his nose, so either someone had, or they'd broken out the staff's espresso machine from the back. They'd dragged a few tables together, taking up the middle of the room now, and a dozen people were shouting cheerfully, everybody trying to be heard over one another. Well-depleted boxes of cinnamon rolls had been broken down so they were mostly flat and kind of served as plates, even if that meantleaning forward, as one of his cousins was currently doing, to eat over the box so the crumbs didn't go everywhere.

Gwen, with her black, ragged hair and her rock star eyeliner, looked small, pale, and entirely at home in the midst of a bunch of enormous, blondish, golden-toned Torbens. She was sitting next to his mother, Heather, and his brothers were at opposite ends of the table, with their dad, Pete, across from Gwen at the middle. The rest of them were cousins and one uncle, who looked almost as much like their dad as Bill and his brothers did. One of them, Luke, glanced up, saw Bill, and roared a greeting that involved something about cool girls and cinnamon rolls. Everybody else joined in, although his mother, at least, got up to give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, while Gwen, grin-deep in a cinnamon roll, waggled her eyebrows in greeting.

---