Unbearable Arms (The Grizzly Next Door 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 2 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 3 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 4 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 5 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 6 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 7 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 8 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 9 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 10 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 11 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 12 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 13 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 14 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 15 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 16 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 17 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 18 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 19 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 20 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 21 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 22 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 23 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 24 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 25 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 26 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 27 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 28 | VIOLET

  CHAPTER 29 | ASHER

  CHAPTER 30 | VIOLET

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 31 | ALEX

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  CHAPTER 1

  ASHER

  Asher opened the door and walked into the office chest first. The receptionist, a young girl with a pretty face and pretty makeup, stopped typing and looked toward him. When her eyes caught him, she perked up, stuck her own chest out, and smiled.

  “How may I help you?” She licked her lips. “Sir.”

  Yeah, she looked good. Definitely not Asher’s type though. There was no meat on her bones. Pencil skirt over pencil legs.

  “I’m here to interview for the concept artist job. I hope I’m not too early.”

  In the SEALs and in SHIFT, there was no too early or too late. He was always on time. He’d forgotten what life was like outside, and he’d poured through countless job interview forums before deciding that five minutes early would be best.

  “No,” the receptionist said. “You’re mister...” She clicked rapidly through her Outlook calendar.

  “Mr. Pines.” He could see her screen, but from a steep angle. How many other people were interviewing for the job? He tilted his head a bit to try to see, but she closed out of the calendar before he could get a good glimpse.

  “Asher Pines,” she said. “There you are.”

  She looked up at him through her eyelashes and then leaned forward so he could see down her blouse. “I’m Maya.”

  Can’t she smell that we don’t like skinny girls? Asher’s bear asked.

  “Should I have a seat?” Asher asked.

  “Oh,” Maya said. “Yeah...let me tell her you’re here.”

  Her? Morgan Dyer was a woman? He felt like he should have known that, but why did it really matter? Was he surprised a woman was in charge? No...but he’d been picturing this interview in his head for weeks now, and every time he’d imagined some guy in a suit at an oak desk. Maybe he’d even have a bottle of whisky and fancy glasses handy. He thought harder about that and realized it wasn’t 1950, so why had he thought the interview would be like that? Shit. He realized he had no idea what it was going to be—

  “She’s ready for you,” Maya said. She stood up and grabbed lightly onto Asher’s arm. Her perfume was feminine and overpowering. “I really wish you luck. I’d love to see you around the office.”

  “Thanks,” Asher said. It came out way colder than he’d hoped, and she let go.

  “That door there,” Maya said in a terse and bristly tone. She pointed and then spun on her heel and went back to her desk.

  Shit! All the advice he’d read said to be especially nice to the secretary. They often had way more sway in the decision than you’d think, and the boss would ask what the secretary’s first impression was—how the person behaved when they thought no one was really watching. Now he’d likely pissed her off and made her feel like she’d been given the cold shoulder. He just hadn’t wanted to give her the wrong idea.

  Morgan Dyer came to the doorway and smiled. She had frazzled hair, glasses, and was wearing some kind of T-shirt. She had on a skirt and boots and thigh-high socks with colored rings. He was expecting some kind of ice queen, but instead he got the lady from the Magic School Bus.

  “Ma’am!” Asher said, and stood at attention.

  “Uh, you’re Asher?”

  “Ma’am!” he said. Shit, why was he saying ma’am? “I mean”—he relaxed his posture—“good day, Mrs. Dyer.”

  “Good day...but you can just call me Morgan. We’re pretty chill here. Come in!”

  She gestured him into her office, and it was covered in shelves full of figurines from cartoons he’d seen as a kid, as well as monsters from movies through the ages. She had piles of magazines strewn across her desk, no less than three iPads, and laptops and screens everywhere. He spotted an electronic tablet with a stylus at her computer, and she was drawing some kind of underwater scene.

  “So,” she said, “before we get started, I just want to let you know that we are required by law to at least interview all veterans who apply. I’m sure you realize you’re not exactly—uh, how do I say this without sounding really rude? You’re not exactly...overqualified for this job.”

  Asher held his lips shut and nodded. He wouldn’t make things worse by interrupting her.

  “Like, your portfolio was kind of interesting and shows promise, but it looks like something you did in high school? And no digital paintings?”

  “The posting said entry-level, ma’am. I’ve been in the military since high school, and the portfolio is from high school...except for those last two drawings. I did them a few days ago. I don’t know how to use a tablet, but I’m willing to learn. I learned to drive an M1 Abrams tank in just under two months. I’m confident I can learn to use a tablet.”

  Mrs. Dyer thumbed over to the last two drawings. The first was a dragon attacking a helicopter, and the second was a bear wearing a minigun vest, growling while the guns fired.

  “These are creative...and show potential...but they’re not polished. If we hired you, we’d need you at a computer producing specs for clients from day one. I don’t have time to train you, and I don’t have time for you to learn to use a tablet and polish up finished concept art.”

  “I understand, ma’am—”

  “Morgan.”

  “Morgan, I understand. You were required to interview me, and I’m wasting your time.”

  “My Grandfather fought in Vietnam. I really respect what you did, and instead of just saying that I’m not going to hire you, I’ll give you some advice and an open invitation to another interview when you think you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, ma’am—I mean, Morgan.”

  “You look really good in a suit and tie,” she said, looking him up and down. “We’re chill here, but you definitely want to wear that suit when you interview.” She grinned. “That’s my first piece of advice. Second, lose the stiff posture and ma’ams. I’m used to it from my Grandpa, but most of these creative types are going to think you’ve got a stick up your ass. I can tell from your drawings that you’ve got some serious creativity, but you don’t want to give off the impression that you’re uptight.”

  The gun vest is real! Asher’s bear said. Tell her!

  “Understood,” Asher said. “Thank you.”

  “Finally,” she said, and reached into a drawer and then pulled something out. “This i
s an older-model Wacom tablet. You can see from the thick layer of dust that I haven’t used it in ages. It’s yours. Learn to draw on it. Charcoal and paint is great, but your foundation seems strong already. Learn to use this thing or you won’t be taken seriously.”

  She handed it to him, and he tucked it under his arm and nodded.

  “Okay, Asher, come back to me with a killer portfolio. If you come back with crap, you will have wasted my time!” She smiled and spun her chair back to her computer.

  CHAPTER 2

  VIOLET

  Violet tested the sample again.

  “Dammit!”

  This time it was 40,000 years old. Yesterday it was 2,000 years old. How old would it be tomorrow?

  “Dinosaur tooth again?” Laurence asked her.

  “It’s not a dinosaur tooth,” Violet said. “I asked all the dino nerds at another museum, and they were super interested until they ruled it out as not a dinosaur tooth. Then it might as well have been fossilized dog shit to them.”

  She’d had to take it to another museum because she wasn’t even supposed to be working on it.

  The tooth was about eight inches long, and it was sharp and curved. The museum she worked at had acquired it last month, and it had been sorted into the miscellaneous pile, which was Violet’s favorite. Her specialty was Eastern European artifacts, and some of the residue on the tooth ruled out Africa, the Americas, East Asia...but nothing more conclusive than that. If she got caught having wasted a bunch of time on it, she had the “it came from eastern Europe” excuse in her pocket, and she could try to argue it would be worth it. What if it was some previously undiscovered species?

  “What about the marine life nerds?” Laurence asked.

  “No,” Violet said. “They got bored of it even faster. It definitely isn’t from the sea.”

  “You reconstructed that masonry from the castle yet?”

  “I haven’t,” Violet said. “I will though. I just can’t understand why the carbon dating on this—”

  “Mr. Sanchez is gonna be on your ass if you don’t get going on that masonry. And no, I’m not going to help you.”

  “He’s already on my ass,” Violet said.

  The masonry was her usual thing, the thing she was sick of doing. They’d uncovered big chunks of wall that had been shattered—into dust in places—by a cannonball. Violet’s job was to put the jigsaw puzzle back together. It was just as tedious as it sounded.

  And then came the tooth. Something about it was drawing Violet to it. It was irrational, but real. She could feel it. It felt like an evil pull, and she wondered if Gandalf was going to storm into the museum and demand she go throw it into a volcano or something.

  It was just a stupid tooth. She was imagining all that, but carbon dating never messed up like this. Could she possibly be doing it wrong?

  “Hey, Laurence...”

  She saw him holding a magnifying glass over some cracked scroll and prodding it gently with tweezers.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you carbon date something for me?’

  “Is it that tooth?”

  She let out a long breath. “Yes, but—”

  “Do the masonry! Sanchez will be on my ass if you don’t.”

  “Fine,” Violet said. “I’ll put the boring-ass rocks back together. Happy?”

  “Yes,” Laurence said. His mouth was in a permanent frown as he eyed the scroll.

  “I’d hate to see you when you’re sad then.”

  “Violet,” he said, putting the tweezers and magnifying glass down and then looking up at her gravely. “You want to know why I’m not smiling?”

  “Uh,” Violet said, surprised. Laurence never talked about non-work stuff with her. “Yeah, why?”

  “Because,” he said, “when I was all young and pretty like you, when I could have been having crazy nasty sex with all kinds of guys, you know what I was doing?”

  “Uh,” Violet said, “did it involve tweezers and a magnifying glass?”

  “Damn right it did. I thought work was just so important, like I was gonna crack the Da Vinci Code or some shit and my name would be all over the history books. If you go into the super nerd section of the university library and dig out some obscure publications on pre-Byzantine scrolls, my name is all over that shit.”

  “Well,” Violet said, “it’s great if you’re well-published...”

  “No!” Laurence said. “It’s great if you have fun while you’re young. What are you doing tonight?”

  “Well...” Violet said.

  “Don’t lie!” Laurence raised his eyebrows.

  “I was going to stay late so I could run another carbon dating on the tooth.”

  “Dammit. Give me your phone!”

  Violet felt afraid to refuse, so she handed the phone to Laurence.

  He furrowed his eyebrows and flipped over to her recent calls. “No calls all week.” He shook his head and then went to her text messages.

  “Who’s Lina? She’s texting your ass all the time. Why aren’t you responding?”

  “Uh,” Violet said, “she’s, like, super outgoing and likes to go to really noisy clubs, and—”

  Laurence started typing away on Violet’s phone.

  Violet grabbed for it, but he pulled it away and typed fast. Then he slammed his thumb down. “Done,” he said, handing her the phone. “Thank me later.”

  She looked at the text message and saw herself texting Lina:

  Hey! Sorry I’ve been so busy, but let’s go out tonight. You pick the club. :).

  Violet bit her lip. “No one texts with good punctuation like that. And no one uses emoticons like that anymore. There’s better ones you can get to by pressing this button—”

  “I don’t think Lina’s going to go all Sherlock on the text message. Go out. Have fun tonight! Don’t end up like me.”

  Violet looked at Laurence’s salt and pepper hair. He was only about mid-fifties. He wasn’t so old that he could really talk as if his life were already over. And he looked pretty good too. Even though his hair was half gray, it was a full head of hair, and he looked like he at least worked out from time to time.

  “Laurence...” Violet said.

  “Ah, don’t start feeling sorry for me.”

  “I’m not,” she said. “Or, well, maybe I am. But you were feeling sorry for me first, so it’s fair. Whatever club Lina wants to go to, why don’t you come with us? We can help you find a nice guy.”

  “What?” he said. “Why do you think I’m gay?”

  Violet’s face flushed, and she started to stammer. “Uh, you said earlier you wanted to, uh, do stuff with a different guy every night, and...”

  He laughed. It was the first time she’d seen him smile. “I’m just fucking with you! Of course I’m gay. So you and Lina are what, like twenty-five? You’re going to take me to some club full of twenty-five-year-old straight people?”

  “We can go to a gay club,” Violet said. “It could be fun.”

  “All right,” Laurence said. “If you think something other than that dusty-ass tooth could be fun, I’ll do it. For you.”

  ***

  “Oh my god!” Lina said. “We’re going to a gay club? That is fucking awesome! Is this him?”

  Laurence grunted.

  They shook hands, and Lina smiled widely to Laurence’s squinting frown.

  “So, I asked my gay friends about the best place for an older, erm, I mean for a place with mixed ages, and there’s this really chill place on Stockton Avenue that’s supposed to have really good drinks and really hot guys.”

  “If it has even one of those,” Laurence said, “then I’m down.”

  Violet had met them outside the museum, and they were standing outside in the cold. She was shivering. Lina told them it would be a ten-minute walk or so. Lina loved walking even when it was way too far away. Violet liked paying for cabs even though she had an old beater. Every time she drove that thing, she worried it would be the last time.

 
“I can’t believe you texted me,” Lina said. “You won’t believe how rude she is to me, Laurence. I always text her, and she usually doesn’t even bother making an excuse.”

  “Oh,” Laurence said, “I’d believe it.”

  “And you text like my grandma,” Lina said. “Goofy smiley faces and nice and proper punctuation.” Lina checked her phone and laughed. “You even put a period at the end of the sentence, then a smiley face, and then a period! You punctuate your smiley faces!”

  Violet glared at Laurence, and he let out a dry chuckle.

  The club was way too far away, and Violet was way too cold by the time they got there. She had never thought she’d be glad to step into a noisy-ass club, but she couldn’t wait to feel the heat.

  They opened the door, and it was surprisingly relaxed inside. There were candles lit at many of the tables, and some kind of electric-jazz fusion was playing. She’d expected nothing but dudes, and maybe a view butch lesbians, but it looked surprisingly normal inside. Nothing like she’d expected. There were a fair number of women, and there was a wide range of ages. She spotted people a bit younger than her and men older than Laurence.

  “You’re so tense!” Lina said, putting a hand on Laurence’s shoulder. “This place is so chill. How can you be scared?”

  “I haven’t been out in a long time,” Laurence said. “I’m like a dusty old scroll being brought into the cool-kid bookstore.”

  “Actually,” Lina said, “the hipster bookstore types would be all over a dusty old scroll. Relax, Laurence. It’s cool to be nerdy now! I tell that to Violet all the time, but she doesn’t believe me. You wouldn’t believe all the hot guys I run into who scoff at me when I don’t know who the fucking elf character is on Game of Thrones.”

  Laurence and Violet both said at the same time, “There are no elves on Game of Thrones.”

  “See!” Lina said. “It’s cool that you guys know all the useless shit! Now, since I know you two will be too afraid to approach anyone, and left unattended you’d get a little corner table and sit there, I’ll go find some people and force you to talk to them. Drinks?”

  “Yes,” they both said at once.

  Lina went to the bar, and Violet asked Laurence, “Corner table?”