Page 28 of OctoBEARfest

And he had completely failed to tell her he was a shifter.

"Gwen—"

"So I emailed—oh. Yes?" Gwen stopped her burst of enthusiastic speech that ran over his, her pale eyes carefully bright. It was as if she'd applied armor as well as the makeup. She'd almost said as much, talking about how she'd cut her hair, dyed it, and learned whole different makeup styles from what she'd been like as a kid. He thought about her 'Day Job Gwen' picture on her driver's license, and how even that woman was a far cry from the waif of a girl she'd been famous as. It wasallarmor, in its way, and the last thing Bill wanted was to give heranother reason to get defensive now. It would be one thing if he had some idea of how she'd react to learning his secret, but even though his bear—and every shifter he knew who'd found their mate—said it would befine, trusting that in the moment was much scarier than Bill had imagined.

"You go first," he said with a smile. "You're in there doing double duty getting makeup on and emailing people while I'm out here twiddling my thumbs, so hit me up."

She laughed, which was good. Maybe she wasn't too upset about confessinghersecrets to him. "I emailed a poster over to the print shop in town and asked for a rush job. It turns out my new friend Ripley works there during the day, so by the time we get over there, they should have a hot stack of flyers ready for us to paper Renaissance with."

"I'm half afraid we're going to end up with a crowd too big for the pub," Bill confessed.

Gwen tossed her hair, which she'd dried into the same kind of spiky ponytail she'd been wearing yesterday, and sparkled those amazing eyes at him. "Then I guess I'll have to come back to play Renaissance again. I'm not busy next weekend."

Bill's heart lurched so hard he stood up like he couldn't contain the feeling. Then he felt silly for the sudden motion, and couldn't figure out what to do with himself. He managed to say, "Don't tempt me. I could book you every weekend for a year and not get enough of you."

Her eyebrows quirked and a funny little smile, almost like a question, formed on her lips before she glanced down, shrugged a bit, and glanced back up at him. "Only weekends?"

"I didn't want to presume?" He wanted to do much, much more than presume, and he wanted it all to start like they'd begun on the couch, but he still couldn't figure out how to blurt 'by the way, sometimes I'm a bear' without sounding like a complete lunatic.

Shift,his bear said mellowly.That'll prove it.

That would scare her! And bears don't fit in hotel rooms very well!

How do you know?the bear asked curiously.We've never shifted in one before.

That was true, and made Bill chuckle despite his feeling of awkwardness.Trust me. We'd knock over the coffee table, and probably shred the furniture.

The bear looked around, and allowed that the coffee table, at least, seemed like it would be endangered.Let's go to the woods, then.

There was no way the bear would really understand why large human men didn't suggest taking small—or medium or large, for that matter—human women into the woods less than a day after meeting them.You'll just have to trust me,he said again.That kind of thing doesn't seem as great to humans as it does to bears.

A mighty sigh met this remark, but the bear settled down, and Bill discovered Gwen was at the door, waiting for him with a look of amusement. He wondered if she would still be amused if she found out he was debating a bear, and then thoughthewould think that was hysterical.

"Come on," Gwen said. "We have flyers to pick up. And…a year might be a little presumptuous."

He scrambled through his thoughts as he followed her out of the hotel, trying to remember what he'd said before the bear interrupted, and then hope flew through him. "Next weekend, then? Whether you want to play at the pub or not?"

"Yeah," she said with an almost shy smile. "I'd like to spend some time with you when we'renotrunning around trying to make a gig happen."

"It's a date," Bill promised fervently. If he didn't have to explain everything this weekend, he was sure he could figure itout. "Although I can't believe you want to spend any time with me at all after being introduced to half my family."

"Oh, no." Gwen's eyes were bright. "No, they're honestly great, Bill. I told you what my family was like. So many of you getting along so well? It's wonderful. And I like your cousin Ashley. She plays hardball."

Bill laughed as they left the hotel. "Yeah, she does. She used to keep the younger cousins in line. Still does, I guess. She's about ten years younger than me, but I think Laurie and Jon actually live in fear of her."

"As well they should." They did an awkward little dance at her car that ended in Gwen dangling the keys at him. "It's chivalrous and everything for you to want to open the door for me, but I've got the keys, so get out of the way." He did, sheepishly, and Gwen opened her door and crawled in to open his from the inside, calling, "Oooh, it still smells like cinnamon. That's my new favorite scent. Okay, where's this print shop?"

"On Second and Main," Bill said as blandly as he could after he'd gotten in the car. Gwen gave him a hard stare and he laughed. "Oh, you meant how do we get there? Left out of the parking lot, right after three blocks, I'll navigate more from there."

"Hnf. Thank you, Mr Bad Jokes Man."

Bill sketched a bow. "You're welcome. It's not far. Nothing's far, in Renaissance."

"I like it. And the setting couldn't be more perfect." Gwen nodded toward the mountains that soared up more or less a stone's throw away. "I assume this is a real skiing hotspot?"

"Summer tourism is the Ren Faire, winter tourism is skiing." Bill pointed out their next turn. "I don't do either."

Gwen laughed. "No? No skiing? Why not?"

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