Melted By The Bear: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (6 page)

However, despite
not
being able to
not
take it all personally, as Cook had advised, I held my head up high and even waved at a few people, trying to smile. At one point, I even had to bite back a laugh, realizing I was receiving the exact opposite treatment I’d received in my “former life,” before the nuclear disaster and being frozen. Then, I’d often been mobbed in public, with my security team being an absolute necessity just to keep overly eager fans from trying to touch me, hang on me, and hug me. Once, a sobbing teenage girl had even tried to cut a lock of my hair, scaring me half to death by coming at me brandishing a very large and very sharp-looking pair of scissors.

Back in those days, I’d longed for a more muted response to my presence out in public. Now I thought that perhaps I should have been more careful in my wishing. Being glared at was definitely worse than being mobbed by throngs of people who, for the most part, just wanted to hug me.

Feeling like some kind of a criminal, though a criminal who didn’t even know what her crime had been, I ducked into a clothing boutique and was soon politely-yet-coolly greeted by a saleslady who reminded me of Hazel more than a bit. I didn’t stay there long, and despite seeing a few things I liked, I didn’t buy anything.

Visits to a few other boutiques went similarly. After the last of them, I spotted a large white sign with
Abby’s Antique Books
in navy blue lettering a short ways up the street. Remembering what Cook had said, I began speed-walking toward the sign, really striding hard. So hard, in fact, that when someone came striding out from one of the restaurants nearly as hard, I crashed right into them. Crashed right into what felt like a brick wall of hardened chest and six-pack abs. Cormack.

CHAPTER FIVE

I’d been striding so hard that I really nearly clothes-lined myself on Cormack’s muscular form. I would have, too, would have flipped myself right back on my rear, had he not grabbed me with one strong arm and held me up.

Frowning, though with his deep green eyes registering surprise at the same time, he continued holding me up even once I was very steadily standing on my own two feet. “You should really watch where you’re going.”

I thrashed my way out of his arm, livid. “How dare you? How
freaking
dare you, when you came striding on out of the restaurant almost just as fast as
I
was going.”

“Well-”

“And shouldn’t you, as a shifter, have faster reflexes than an average man or something?”

“I
do
.”

“Then why didn’t you display those faster reflexes when I-”

“I did. I saw you out of the corner of my eye, and I caught you before you could knock yourself right off your feet.”

“Well, it seems like if you
really
had faster reflexes, you would have avoided me crashing into you at all, thereby making sure that there wasn’t even the slightest chance of me knocking myself-”

“Well, maybe I wanted to catch you. Maybe I liked the feel of you in my arms when you nearly fainted yesterday, and I wanted to feel it again.”

That
silenced me. Because I realized that
I’d
wanted to feel him holding me again, too. Standing close enough to him to catch just a hint of his woodsy, masculine scent, I didn’t say anything for a moment, and neither did he. He just looked into my eyes, as if trying to gauge my reaction to what he’d said.

But then he abruptly looked away, scowling and raking a hand through his thick, dark hair. “Please just stay away from me, Aria.”

I could only sputter briefly. “Oh,
I’m
sorry, but the phone I was given doesn’t seem to have come with a Cormack alert GPS system, which makes it difficult for me to know when you’re about to exit a restaurant, which, in turn, makes it difficult for me to ‘just stay away’ from you. And my second response to what you just said is-”

“Look. Just-”

“‘Just stay away from me,’ says the man who invited me to dinner tonight. That was my second response. Makes a ton of sense, right? For you to tell me to stay away from you, when
you
invited me to have dinner with you this evening. But, oh... I’m sorry again. When
Cook
invited me to have dinner with you this evening.”

“I knew the second I laid eyes on you that you were going to make this hard.”

“Make what hard?”

I realized instantly that my question could be taken in a suggestive way, or maybe it was just that my mind was beginning to wander to suggestive sorts of places. With Cormack’s long, lean body seeming to demand my gaze, maybe the word
hard
, as it might relate to the male body, had just been floating somewhere in the back of my mind. Possibly somewhere near the same space as a few thoughts about what his body might look like without clothes.

If he’d realized that my question could be taken in a suggestive sort of way, he didn’t show it. Just raked a hand through his hair again.

“Everything. You’re making everything hard.”

Now I didn’t seem to be the only one saying things that might be taken in a suggestive sort of way. I wondered exactly what he meant by
everything
.

He heaved a sigh. “Look. I didn’t mean to tell you to stay away from me. In fact, I need to keep you close.”

I snorted, folding my arms across my chest. “You’re going to have to explain all this to me a little better. You’re going to have to explain
everything
to me a little better. It’s not fair that I’m in the dark about so many different things, which has apparently made nearly everyone in this town hate me. Which is why I was speed-walking so fast when I crashed into you, by the way. After withstanding probably at least a hundred withering glares so far today, I was just trying to get to the bookstore, where Cook told me there might be a person who isn’t rude like the rest of you. And by
rest of you
, I do mean
you
included. Which, by the way, has been the most surprising to me. I was frozen to eventually have children with someone for the good of humanity, and, yes, I freaked out at first shortly after I woke up from thawing; but then I met you and got the vibe that you weren’t the cruel man I was fearing. But then
you
rejected
me
, you’ve been rude, and cold, and hurtful to me, and I don’t know exactly why. All I know is that I deserve some answers. I deserve to know why I woke up to a man who apparently doesn’t want me, and nearly an entire community that apparently hates me.”

While I’d been speaking, Cormack’s expression had softened to one of clear sympathy, mixed with what appeared to be frustration. He’d even winced slightly a couple of times toward the end of my little speech to him, as if me expressing some of my hurt had hurt
him
.

He took a deep breath before speaking, expression still pained. “I’m sorry, Aria. I’m sorry, and you’re right that you deserve some answers. But not here. Not with so many people watching us. Dinner tonight at eight. I’ll see you then.”

He strode away to a shiny black truck parked in front of the restaurant, got in, and drove off, and it was only then that I looked around, realizing that there indeed had been a good number of people watching us. At least two dozen faces were just about pressed against the plate glass windows in front of the restaurant, and many more faces peered through shop windows to the left and the right. Across the street, at least a dozen people out on the sidewalk had stopped to watch the show. All of these people, or at least the vast majority of them, were outright glaring at me like I was the worst villain the world had ever seen. Just because I’d had the audacity to be frozen so that humanity wouldn’t die out. So that
their
leader could have heirs.

I began strolling down the street, giving the people in the restaurant window a wave. “Show’s over, folks! Heading to the bookstore! I’ve heard the owner might be one of the few people in this town who actually has manners!”

I didn’t look back to see if anyone had heard me or what their reactions were.

Abby, the owner of the bookstore, not only had manners; she was just as warm and friendly as Cook. When I walked through the doorway of the tiny shop, she looked up, smiling, from where she was shelving books not ten feet away.

“Hi there. I’m Abby. How can I... help....”

If she’d been going to say
you
, it had seemed to have gotten stuck in her throat.

Taking a step forward, she peered at me for a second. “Oh my gosh. You’re....”

I winced, closing my eyes briefly. “Yep. The new frozen woman. You going to kick me out?”

She shook her head, frowning hard, as if the thought horrified her. “Oh, no.
No
. I refuse to act like a complete jerk like most of the other people in town are being. And that wasn’t why I was oh-my-gosh-ing. I knew you were the new frozen woman the second you stepped in the door, just because I’ve never seen you before, but then I saw your face a little better, and...” Still peering at me, she took another step forward. “Holy... shit!”

Stupefied by her reaction to me, I said nothing.

She suddenly laughed briefly. “This is crazy. You’re really
the
Aria English, aren’t you? When I first heard someone say the name of the new frozen woman, I thought, ‘No...can’t be. It’s gotta be just a name coincidence,’ and a few other women I talked to said the same. And your hair is different... and your face is different, too, without all the stage makeup, even though you’re just as beautiful without it, but... it’s really you. You’re really Aria English from Gothic Essence. Right? Tell me I’m not crazy.”

Relieved to now understand her reaction to me, I gave her a little smile. “You’re not crazy. It’s me. Me without all the dark hair and makeup. I’m actually a natural blonde. Just before the nuclear disaster, I decided to take an indefinite hiatus from the band to start a new project, and I had all the black dye stripped from my hair. It was just time. Long overdue, actually. I’d been dark too long.”

I’d had black hair the vast majority of the time in the six years before the disaster, the years I’d been the lead singer for the most popular Gothic rock band in the world. We’d sold out the biggest arenas in North America and Europe and made millions and millions of dollars; my hair, makeup, and costuming, which had been something I’d eventually come to describe as “ballerina-vampire-prom queen,” had been a big part of it. My
image
had quickly come to matter as much as the music. Sometimes even more, I’d often thought.

Smiling, making a dimple in one of her rosy cheeks, Abby began backing up, gesturing for me to follow her. “Come on in. Let’s sit for a minute. I’ve got a little cafe table in the back by all the old atlases.”

I followed her through the shop, taking a look at the bookshelves as we went, recognizing a few of the dusty, faded books as ones that had been popular in the years before the disaster. Now seeing them as having aged hundreds of years, when
I
hadn’t, was more than a bit surreal.

Abby glanced back at me, seeming to read my mind. “It’s weird, isn’t it? That a lot of these falling-apart books are from
our
time. See, I’m a frozen woman, too. That’s how I recognized you, and how a lot of the other frozen women recognized your name. I was a fan of yours from the beginning. Don’t worry, though. I wasn’t the crazy kind of fan. I never had any thoughts about coming at you with a pair of scissors to try to get a few strands of your hair. I remember reading about that whole thing in a celebrity magazine.”

We’d reached the little table and chairs, and she told me to have a seat while she made tea.

“See, drinking tea is ninety percent of what I do here, or at least it feels like it sometimes. Other than that, I spend time repairing and sorting the books and lending them out like a library system. Maybe one percent of the time I actually sell them. I love it, though. I love the books, even the way they smell. I used to work in a library in my ‘past’ life. Can you tell?”

With another dimpled smile, she breezed off through a nearby doorway that I assumed led to a storage room or a kitchenette or something, returning after just a minute with steaming mugs of tea.

She set mine in front of me, then took a seat, giggling a little. “Tea with Aria English. This is kind of amazing.”

I smiled, enjoying her recognition, but her
friendliness
more than anything. “
I’ve
been finding it kind of amazing how one can go from idol to pariah from just a dip in a cryo tank. Although I hope to get answers about that this evening.”

I briefly filled her in on the chilly relations between Cormack and me, but then, not wanting to make her uncomfortable, like I’d done with Cook that morning, I changed the subject, asking Abby to tell me more about herself. After grabbing us a plate of cookies and fixing us some sandwiches to have with our tea for a late lunch, she did tell me more about herself, but kind of haltingly, and understandably so. The two years since she’d been thawed was a sad story.

She and the man she’d been thawed to have children with had not been a romantic match at all, and since they’d both realized this very early on, they’d never slept together. After a short time and a few feeble efforts trying to “force a spark that was just never going to happen,” as Abby said, the man had agreed that it was best to part ways. He’d get on the waiting list for a frozen woman again, and she’d be free to introduce herself to any of the single men in town that she liked. The first man she’d introduced herself to, who was a man named David, Cormack’s top lieutenant, turned out to be her husband three months later. They’d fallen deeply in love, and quickly.

But then, their first year together had passed without Abby becoming pregnant. Then six more months. When she’d finally become pregnant a month after that, they’d both been absolutely elated. But a week after her positive pregnancy test, she’d miscarried. Now about six months later, she hadn’t yet become pregnant again.

With her honey-brown eyes just slightly pink, as they’d been off and on while she’d been telling me her story, Abby set her mug down with a tiny smile. “See, I’m kind of a ‘dud’ of a frozen woman. I’ve been thoroughly checked out by our town obstetrician here, and also by Dr. Moore from DC, and they both say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me, and all the tests say I’m still just as fertile as before I was frozen. David’s been completely checked out, too, and there’s nothing wrong with him, either. It’s just what I said... I’m just a ‘dud’ of a frozen woman. Dr. Moore says there’s no reason to lose hope just yet, and I’m trying to stay positive, but....” Abby sighed, took a sip of tea, and set the mug back down. “I know David loves me no matter what, and I feel the same about him, but we both want a baby so badly. We just keep trying, and I try to keep myself busy to take my mind off things. The bookstore helps, especially on days that are busy.” Abby paused, breaking into a smile. “A visit from a famous rockstar to the bookstore helps.”