Unbearable Curves (The Grizzly Next Door 1) Read online

  Unbearable Curves: The Grizzly Next Door

  Copyright: 2015 Aya Morningstar

  ***

  You’re about to read...

  Effie Myers comes back to her home town, and women like her—big beautiful women with full curves—are disappearing. Terrified, Effie heads to the bar and runs into the boy next door, except he's not a boy anymore.

  He's Abel Bjornson, a rugged cop rippling with muscles, and though Effie doesn't know it, he's a bear shifter. And he's just found his mate.

  Effie wants nothing more than to fall into those big arms and wide chest, and—after a few dates—go much, much further than that.

  Abel wants to explore every inch of Effie's luscious curves, but with Effie in danger, he has to focus: he's on the case of the disappearing women, and it looks like Effie is next on their list.

  Abel was always there for Effie when she was the girl next door, and now that he knows she's his mate, he'll have to use all of his police training and grizzly strength to keep her safe.

  *This is a stand-alone novella with a happy ending and no cliff hanger. There is scorching and wild sex, so be warned!*

  Joining the Aya Morningstar's Sexy Shifters mailing list keeps you updated on new releases and free promos!

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Epilogue

  CHAPTER ONE

  Effie

  Effie stood at the door to her mom’s Bed and Breakfast and drew in a deep breath. If she put the key in, turned it, and opened the door, it would feel like her decision was final. She hadn’t fully committed to taking this place over until she stepped inside. If she never went in, she could simply sell the whole thing and never look back.

  But no, she couldn’t do that. Could she? How would her mom feel if she knew Effie just rinsed her hands of the family business? It was the business that her mom and dad put so much into for their whole lives, and it was a landmark of Oakgate. There were other Bed and Breakfast style hotels in Oakgate, but they had name’s like ‘Marta’s B&B,’ or ‘Bed and Breakfast and Biscuits.’ Her parents’—no, hers—was just called ‘Bed and Breakfast.’ If anyone in Oakgate mentioned ‘The Bed and Breakfast,’ they were talking about the place Effie grew up. She couldn’t sell something like that.

  Maybe her mom would have understood that Effie was finally starting to crawl her way up the corporate ladder in the city. She’s started out as a lowly intern, slinging coffee and groveling. But Effie had proven herself reliable, and they’d hired her as secretary, and after a few years of that, she had just been on the cusp of taking on real responsibility. She even had just lined up an interview when someone from the sales team left and a position had opened up.

  And then her mom had died.

  It hurt to give that all up, but Effie had decided that it would hurt even more to throw away her family’s legacy. And that’s why she was here, standing in front of this door. In front of the full weight of all that responsibility. So if she had already made up her mind, why couldn’t she just go inside? Running her family business was just another way of being a businesswoman. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t earned it: she’d worked here every day after school and every summer.

  She heard a loud drone approaching, and she saw Mr. Hofstead mowing the lawn next door. She worried he’d see her just standing at the door, not going inside or knocking—just standing there. Standing for how long now? Two minutes? Three? She really didn’t want to talk to him about her mom’s death, and she saw him glancing over at her. Soon she’d hear the lawnmower turn off, and it would be too late.

  She slid the key in, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

  Everything looked spotless, save for a thin layer of dust. Her mom hadn’t been sick; she’d just died suddenly. It made sense that everything would still be in order. The funeral had just been a few days ago, and Effie still didn’t really feel that her mom was gone. She knew logically that she was gone and that she’d never see her again, but she didn’t feel it. She knew that would come later, just like when she lost her father two years before this.

  Effie looked through the house, and her mind started spinning out ideas. She didn’t want to change too much—this place was a landmark for a reason—but she was good at planning finances and optimizing a business. It was hard to look at the place and not have the gears in her head start to spin. Besides, she didn’t want to leave the place closed for too long. Still, she wasn’t in a total rush to have guests staying here again. She still needed to go through all of her mom’s things and decide what she should donate, and what she should keep. She didn’t look forward to that, because in her grief she wanted to keep everything.

  Tomorrow Effie would get all the utilities put into her name, and take care of all the little hassles that added up to one big weight on her shoulders. Tomorrow.

  Today she would just relax and miss her mom. She’d think of all the happy memories she’d had growing up here. Even though Effie now owned this house—this business—in her heart, it would always be her parents’ house.

  She went to the grocery store, one of two or three in Oakgate. It was a small town, but not tiny. It was the kind of place where you wouldn’t see everyone you knew all the time, but just often enough that no one really felt like a stranger. Effie loved that about this place. The city was exciting, but she’d meet a cute guy at a coffee shop one day, and she’d smile at him, and he’d smile back. “Was he just being polite?” she’d wonder. She knew the only way to find out was to go up and talk to him, but then she’d let herself off the hook by promising herself she’d talk to him next time. In the city though, there never was a next time.

  Effie bought some chicken—mostly because it was on sale—eggs, and other staples. She didn’t feel like cooking tonight, but she knew she would eventually. She felt like she was almost sleepwalking through the store. She knew she needed to buy certain things, to cook, to eat; but she didn’t want to do anything at all. It felt surreal to be back home, and she was somehow in denial that tomorrow would even arrive, that she would really need to do all the things necessary to re-open the Bed and Breakfast.

  She ran into people she knew. People who knew her mom. They told her how sorry they were, gave her big, forced smiles, and tried to look sad for her. She thanked them and said it was okay, that she was dealing with it and would feel better soon. When she told them she would re-open the Bed and Breakfast soon, she smiled for real, and they did too. It was as if running her family’s business would somehow keep her parents alive, not just for her, but for the whole town.

  It was already getting dark when Effie got home. She turned on the TV and started dusting. She still didn’t want to cook or eat, so she’d clean. Tired as she was, she had too much nervous energy to just sit down and watch TV, so cleaning would hopefully tire her out enough that she could get to bed early.

  Just as Effie was spraying Windex onto that glass panel on her grandmother’s old clock, she heard “BREAKING NEWS!” from the news anchor on TV. Usually she’d ignore this kind of news, but it interrupted whatever gameshow was on in the background, and she heard ‘Oakgate’ and ‘serial killer’ mentioned in the same breath.

  She put the spray bottle and cleaning rag down to go watch the TV.

  She watched in horror as the anchorwoman reported with a grave and serious expression.


  Women were disappearing in Oakgate, and the third had just recently disappeared. Pictures of all three appeared on the screen, and Effie noticed that—like her—all three women had some extra curves on their body. Didn’t serial killers usually target tiny blonde women? Not this one, apparently, he wanted women like Effie.

  She felt her chest freeze, and she shuddered. None of the women had been found, and there were no witnesses or sightings of the killer. The only curious thing was that a panther had been spotted near the first and third woman’s apartment the night they were taken. Certainly a panther wasn’t making women disappear, so the panther was an irrelevant detail as far as Effie was concerned. Did the local news really find it necessary to try to drum up drama around what was already someone making women disappear?

  And it was never just ‘the serial killer,’ always ‘the alleged serial killer.’ “Ah,” Effie thought, “It’s just an alleged serial killer targeting women that look exactly like me. I’ll just chill out with the door unlocked tonight then.” The news was always so gross and tacky.

  Some things were too gross for alleged, even for the local news. Effie read between the lines: the women were disappearing, and she hated to even think what terrible things were happening to them between the time they disappeared and when their bodies would eventually be found.

  The gameshow popped back on, and the tall blonde women smiled as she unveiled some new vowels.

  Effie was not smiling. She looked out the window and saw it was dark. She imagined what she would feel if she suddenly saw a panther walk by, like some kind of terrible omen.

  No way. She was not going to stay at home tonight. She’d get the Bed and Breakfast open in the next few days, and she would not stay alone and defenseless in this big house all by herself.

  She made sure the bottle of mace was still attached to her keychain, and she got into her car and just drove.

  Before hearing the news of the serial killer, or rapist, or whatever he was; Effie hadn’t really wanted to see any of her old friends or be seen around town. Running into people at the grocery store had been enough for one night, at least until the serial killer. She felt completely different now, and she wanted to have a good time. To forget about being afraid.

  She’d go to The Rabbit Hole. It was a good mix of high-end and low-end. They had nice cocktails, but they also had louder music and pool tables. She didn’t want to go to a dive bar, nor did she want to go to some snooty cocktail lounge where all the men were wearing dress shoes. And if she went to a really fancy bar, she’d have to wear a fancy dress, and that seemed like the worst thing to do with a killer running around. Like painting a target on her back. “Hey, look at my dress! See how it hugs my luscious curves and barely contains my big breasts? Don’t I look just like your ideal victim?”

  No way. It was jeans and a t-shirt at The Rabbit Hole.

  She arrived and saw a lot of cars there. Thank God. Even though she drove, she was planning to drink a fair amount. If she was too drunk to drive, it would give her a good excuse to stay at the bar most of the night. She didn’t dare to go back alone.

  She felt safer as soon as she stepped inside. There was loud, bland music playing, a handful of people dancing, others playing pool, while the rest sat down and drank. Most importantly, Effie felt surrounded by people. No one would get her out of this bar without nearly 100 people noticing.

  Effie ordered a beer and sat down at the bar. She wanted to get a few drinks in her before she talked to anyone. She’d have enough to loosen her up, but not enough to make her do anything she’d regret.

  “Nice to see a girl drinking a real beer, none of that fancy crap,” the man next to her said.

  She looked over at him, and he looked familiar, but she had trouble placing him. She’d grown up here, but she moved for college at eighteen, and she hadn’t really kept contact with many people from Oakgate since then.

  Whenever she came back to see her parents on vacations, she’d helped with the Bed and Breakfast, and after her dad had died, her mom had needed all the help she could get. Effie had really liked going back and helping her mom out, because her mom had needed to work so much harder after Effie’s dad had passed. She hadn’t just liked the feeling of giving her mom a well-deserved break; she’d realized that running the Bed and Breakfast was satisfying and fulfilling, and that was why she found herself back in Oakgate now, even if she still had some reservations.

  The crazy serial killer, however, did not help strengthen her confidence in this decision.

  The man looked at her, as if waiting for her to laugh or smile. She decided on a smile.

  “Pretty smile you’ve got there,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Effie said, taking a sip of her beer to kill the silence. Something about this man made her uneasy, and she hoped that if she seemed boring enough, he’d go away.

  “So are you new in town?” he asked.

  Effie really looked at him then. His nose and face were red, and he had about two days’ worth of stubble crawling all the way down his neck. His hair was greasy and disheveled, and even though his features were fairly appealing, his sleazy smile and darting eyes made Effie feel incredibly uncomfortable.

  “Yeah,” she said, not wanting to tell the truth. She recognized this man, and it was someone she didn’t like, she just couldn’t remember who it was. She couldn’t remember his name, or where she knew him from. But she remembered she had a good reason to not like him. That was enough.

  “What are you doing here then? Not a lot of new people move here.”

  “Working at a hotel,” Effie said.

  “Which one?”

  “Lay off her!” another man said, leaning against the bar. “What’s your name, beautiful?”

  Effie started to stammer, and the man leaning against the bar swayed back and forth. Maybe he was so drunk that he’d forget if she just didn’t answer.

  “Shit!” A third voice said. “It’s Effie Myers!”

  The man sitting next to her and the one barely managing to stand both looked at her with wide eyes and slack jaws.

  Effie looked up and saw the three of them together. She recognized all of them, and seeing their faces together, it finally clicked. They’d always been together for as long as she remembered. And still they were together, graduating from terrorizing girls on the playground to terrorizing them at the bar.

  Effie looked first to the one sitting, then the one leaning, and finally the one standing. “Jake, Danny, and Nick,” she said, voice oozing with contempt.

  “Shit!” Jake said, standing up, “you remember me? That must help my chances though, huh?”

  “Do you remember,” Effie asked, “what kind of interactions we actually had throughout school?”

  “Uh,” Jake said, “we always joked with ya? Teased ya some? Ain’t that what kids do when they like a girl?”

  “You made fun of me,” Effie said. “You made fun of my weight, and Danny here, he asked me out to the little prom thing we had in middle school.”

  “Well,” Nick said, “if he asked you out, then surely he wasn’t just making fun of you? Maybe you’re not remembering too clearly?”

  Effie looked at them with exasperation. They really didn’t remember?

  “I was so excited,” she said, “I went shopping for a dress with my mom. I spent hours putting on and wiping off makeup…trying to get it just right. Then when I got to the prom, I pointed you out to my Mom,” Effie said, looking right at Danny, fighting to not let her lip tremble. “I waited until my Mom was gone to go talk to you, because I was embarrassed, for some reason, for her to see me happy. I’m glad I let her leave first though, because…do you remember what happened yet?”

  “Did we make out?” Danny asked.

  “You were with another girl, and you pretended you’d never asked me out. You laughed at me, asking why Danny would ever want to go out with someone like me. All three of you laughed at me. I still remember as if it were yesterday, and it made me afra
id to talk to boys until the end of high school, and you three have just forgotten? Completely forgotten?”

  “Uh…” Jake stammered, “I don’t think—”

  “Drop it,” Danny said, “forget it. Sorry Effie. If you think I did that, I mean”

  Jake put his hand on Effie’s arm, and she recoiled.

  All through elementary school, there’d been a boy who’d protected her: Abel. When Jake, Danny, and Nick had teased her and picked on her, Abel had been there. He always put himself in front of Effie and stood up for her.

  In third grade, they pinned Effie down at recess and started drawing all over her face with permanent markers. Abel grabbed Nick by his neck and flipped him flat onto his back, then he gut-punched Jake. Before Abel could get to him, Danny turned tail and ran, while the other two crawled and stumbled away.

  Abel held out his hand and helped Effie up. When Effie couldn’t wipe the marker off, even with the help of her tears, Abel picked up one of the fallen markers and started drawing all over his face.