A Bond to Bear Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Foreword

  Chapter One – Jared

  Chapter Two – Kelly

  Chapter Three – Jared

  Chapter Four – Kelly

  Chapter Five – Jared

  Chapter Six – Kelly

  Chapter Seven – Jared

  Chapter Eight – Kelly

  Chapter Nine – Jared

  Chapter Ten – Kelly

  Chapter Eleven – Jared

  Chapter Twelve – Kelly

  Chapter Thirteen – Jared

  Chapter Fourteen – Kelly

  Chapter Fifteen – Jared

  Chapter Sixteen – Kelly

  Chapter Seventeen – Jared

  Also By Harmony Raines

  Get In Touch

  A Bond

  to

  Bear

  ***

  All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written consent of the author or publisher.

  This is a work of fiction and is intended for mature audiences only. All characters within are eighteen years of age or older. Names, places, businesses, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, actual events or places is purely coincidental.

  © 2016 Harmony Raines

  Kindle Edition

  Foreword

  A Bond To Bear by Harmony Raines

  Billionaire Jared Sinclair has found his mate, but she doesn’t know it yet. He isn’t even convinced he wants a mate and all that goes with it. Yes, he wants to claim her, but children, and marriage, he’s not sure that’s the kind of man he is.

  Although his bear disagrees.

  Kelly is juggling two jobs to support her mom and brothers. With debts to pay, she can only fantasize about what it would be like to be with a man like Jared. Until he offers her half a million dollars for one weekend.

  One weekend ... easy, right?

  But they soon discover neither of them wants to walk away ... and this is a bond they will both have to bear. Forever.

  Chapter One – Jared

  Jared sipped his coffee, leaning against the wall of the employees’ lounge, a place he had never entered until she started working here. The first time he saw her, he knew she was the one for him. His mate. The first time he spoke to her, he knew this was one deal he was not going to win with brute force alone.

  As the owner of one of the largest companies in the city, Jared Sinclair was used to steamrolling over everyone and everything in his way. He was used to getting what he wanted, but in the case of his mate, she was going to be the toughest hostile takeover he had ever undertaken.

  And she was hostile. It was his own fault. On the day she started work, he had fired a finance clerk right there in front of her. The guy had messed up, not once, but over the course of four days, he had mishandled three accounts, and in the process lost around half a million dollars. It wasn’t the money that bothered Jared—he had managed to personally get the transactions reversed—but he could not stand incompetence.

  Since that day, he had tried to talk to her, but they had both noticed how the other employees looked at them. Jared was not known for small talk and social skills, so she had always politely brushed him off and got away from him as quickly as he could. He knew why. He knew everything about her. She was in trouble, and she needed this job. Yet the urge to claim her was growing to be an incessant clamoring in his head.

  However, that was all he wanted. To claim her, to mate with her, and maybe have her as a mistress. The rest, a home, a wife and bear cubs, that wasn’t for him.

  Although his bear disagreed loudly.

  Jared had built the company up from nothing when his father left, leaving his mom and two brothers destitute. He had no desire to have the same thing happen to him. His mom was a shifter, his father a human: the bond had only worked one way, and that had led to devastating heartbreak. If Jared’s mate had been a shifter, too, and had found the bond as compelling as he did, things might have been different; as it was, he was content to have her at his beck and call. He just had to find the right kind of leverage, and as usual for Jared, money talked.

  Sacrificing his personal life for money and power, he had amassed a large fortune. Not that having no life outside of work bothered him. At least not until Kelly Hanson walked into his office and into his life.

  “Mr. Sinclair.” A tall man who looked as if he didn’t get outside enough came up to him with a sheaf of papers in his hand. Jared knew he should probably know the guy’s name, but it escaped him, as most things did when she was close by.

  “Yes.” Jared’s voice was clipped as he answered, hating being interrupted on his musings when Kelly was close by. If any of his brothers behaved like a lovesick fool, he would have been the first to tell them to get a grip. However, this was all new for Jared. None of his brothers had mates, so he was out on his own, blazing a trail.

  No, he wasn’t. He was leaning against a wall drinking coffee while she sat talking to a guy from IT.

  “I wondered if you would look over these?” the pale man asked.

  His attention shifted to the papers being handed to him, and his glare must have been piercing, because the pale guy visibly quaked. “What are they?”

  “It was a proposal I’ve been working on.”

  “A proposal,” Jared said, taking the papers and glancing at them his eyes resting briefly on the name on the report. “What kind of proposal, Mr. Carson?”

  “I have been looking into how the company can save money on a variety of purchases. Particularly office stationery.”

  “Office stationery?” Jared looked at Mr. Carson and realized why the man looked so pale. “Do you ever get out?”

  “Get out?” Mr. “Pale-face” Carson asked.

  “You know, that world outside?”

  “I… Is this a test?” Mr. Carson was visibly sweating now, and Jared was aware that more than a few people were now watching the exchange. Including Kelly.

  “You look like a few hours in the sun would do you the world of good.” Jared smiled, trying to look friendly.

  “Are… Are you firing me?” Mr. Carson asked.

  Jared let the smile dissipate as he stared at the man in front of him who had disturbed his coffee break. Was he firing him? His eyes flicked over to where Kelly sat, as they so often did. It was as if he had some uncontrollable urge to seek her approval. Damn this mating bond.

  “Why would I fire you?” Jared asked, the good-natured question obviously lost on Pale-face, who looked as if he was going to puke. “No, on the contrary, I think you deserve a few hours off for compiling this proposal. After all you spent your free time on it. Didn’t you?”

  The insinuation was there; he couldn’t help it. Had this man spent company time compiling a report he had never been asked to?

  “Yes. I stayed late last week and worked on it.”

  You sad little man, Jared thought.

  “Then take the afternoon off,” Jared said, with a smile that didn’t spread naturally over his face. He probably looked like some kind of caricature. Damn, this was terrible. He was changing his personality, changing the way he treated people, all for a woman.

  His mate. Yes. But he was changing for her and they weren’t even together; he hadn’t been able to get her to understand what he wanted. She had no idea what he was or how he craved her lusciously curvy body like it was a drug.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sinclair,” Mr. Carson said with surprised relief.

  “What?” His attention snapped back to the man in front of him.

  “For the afternoon off…�
�� Uncertainty reigned again in his employee’s voice.

  “Oh, yes. Good work.” He held the sheaf of papers up, and then, with one last look around the room, stalked back to his office, a scowl on his face. From now on he would go back to drinking his coffee in his office, and find another way to spend time with Kelly.

  Spend time with her. That was a ridiculous perception of their relationship. He spent time in the same room as her, for fifteen minutes every day at eleven o’clock when she took her break. Apart from that he never spoke to her except to say “Hello, Miss Hanson,” in passing, afraid to say more.

  As he shut the door of his office and walked over to the window to look out across the city, he wondered what the hell was wrong with him. He was a take-charge kind of guy, and that was what he needed to do. Take charge. Tonight.

  Yes. Tonight he was going to follow her home and then ask her out, just as he should have done weeks ago. He needed her out of his system, and the only way he was going to do that was to claim her as his mate and put his child in her belly.

  Simple.

  Damn it, no child, he told his bear.

  His bear simply watched him with an all-knowing expression. We’ll see.

  Jared shook his head. This was becoming more difficult by the day, and, his resolve firmed, tonight he would act.

  Chapter Two – Kelly

  She could not make him out. Not that it was up to her to make him out. Jared Sinclair was well out of her league, both in looks and fortune. No, the only reason a man like him would sleep with a woman like her was for sex. And she was not going to complicate her life any further by sleeping with him, no matter how many times he looked at her and made her panties melt.

  Smiling to herself at the thought of him, she made her way back to her desk. Memories of his smile would see her through to the end of the day. She didn’t think he realized how sexy his dimples were. Even when he scowled there was something about him that made her want to reach out and touch a finger to his cheek.

  OK, so maybe she wanted to kiss his lips, too. Still smiling to herself, she began to type, her fingers dancing over the keyboard, as her eyes grew more tired and her neck began to ache. Kelly worked hard, she needed this job, needed the money, and the stability it gave her and her family. Ever since her mom had been laid off from work with a bad back, she had become chief breadwinner, and she took the responsibility very seriously, never complaining despite the fact that straight after work here, she had to go on to her second job.

  At that thought, her eyes flicked up to the clock: only another hour to go. Stretching her neck, tilting it from side to side, she relaxed for a moment and let her eyes become unfocused. When she brought them back into focus, she was staring at Jared Sinclair, who had entered the office and was prowling around like a caged lion.

  She didn’t know what it was about him, but she found him exciting and dangerous in equal measures. If she didn’t have so many responsibilities, she might have looked up and smiled at him, but she didn’t want to bring his wrath down on herself. Dimples or not, he was a predator, an alpha male, and dangerous.

  She was sure if she kept those descriptions in mind, she would be able to talk herself out of fancying him; after all, he was everything she was not looking for in a man. Kelly wanted safe, she wanted security, but she knew she would never have time to find those things in her crazy life.

  “Miss Hanson.”

  “Hmm?” She looked up into the face of her manager. “Oh, sorry. Miles away.”

  Her manager cast an anxious glance at Mr. Sinclair, and then said, “We don’t employ slackers, Miss Hanson, remember you are still on probation.”

  “I… I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” She looked at her screen and then began to type, blanking out those piercing eyes of Mr. Sinclair, who she knew was staring at her. She suspected there would be no dimples on display now, but she didn’t dare look up to see.

  As if they had some kind of metaphysical connection, she felt a small loss in her soul when he walked out of the room. The words on the computer screen seemed to blur slightly before she pulled herself together and gave herself a firm talking-to. She needed this job, her family needed her to keep this job. Mr. Sinclair did not even know she existed, and that was a good thing. Any other thoughts she had toward him were nothing but romantic nonsense, and she had no room in her life for what amounted to a girlish crush.

  That’s what she told herself every few minutes as the time crept slowly around to five o’clock and she at last was free to leave one job and head over to the next.

  Wearily, she grabbed her coat and her purse and waited for the elevator, sure she could feel Mr. Sinclair’s eyes on her back, but when she turned around, he wasn’t there. She was beginning to have a fixation on him, one that was unhealthy and unneeded.

  As she rode the elevator down to the ground floor, she gave herself a good lecture. There was no room in her life for any kind of distraction, she had to keep her family together, and that meant working to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.

  Leaving the building, she turned left, heading across town. It would be quicker to take the bus, but she liked to walk, it was a time of solitude, and time where she could feel the breeze caressing her skin and dream that one day she would be free to follow her dreams. It didn’t help that right now her head kept telling her that Jared was her dream.

  “Hi, Kelly,” Kev, her other boss, said as she walked into the diner.

  “Hi, Kev, busy?” she asked.

  “Getting there,” he said, hopefully.

  “I’ll just go get changed.” Kelly had worked here in The Rambler’s Rest, a stupid name for a city diner, for around seven years, ever since she had been old enough to take on a part-time job to help support her family.

  “You look tired,” Kev said, concerned, not critical, and he raised his eyebrow in a question. “Doing too much, Kelly?”

  “I’m OK, Kev, thanks for the concern.”

  “You know you are my favorite girl.” He winked at her, and she smiled back at him; he was as close to a father figure as she had these days. Knowing how much this job meant to her, he had always given her extra shifts through school vacations, making sure she got good tips and ate a good meal while she was here.

  “So you tell me every day.” She headed out back to put her purse in her locker, and then changed into her uniform. After hanging her office suit up, she closed her locker and then leaned against it, taking in a deep breath and letting it go, trying to summon the energy and enthusiasm to put a smile on her face.

  Heading back out towards the bar, she picked up her note pad and pen, and walked over to one of her tables, and said, “Hi there, are you ready to order?”

  Smile fixed in place, she tried to ignore the ache in her back and the way her feet were beginning to throb. Only five more hours and she could go home, fall into bed, and sleep. Only to wake up tomorrow and do it all over again.

  “Thanks,” she said, taking the menus and heading to the kitchen to hand over the first of many orders she would take tonight.

  “Looking tired, Kelly,” Violet, one of the other waitresses commented.

  “So everyone keeps telling me,” she said evenly.

  “How’s your mom?”

  “A little brighter. But her back is so bad, there’s no way she can go back to work.” Kelly turned to look over to her next table.

  “You can’t keep this up forever, you know that, Kelly,” Violet said kindly.

  Kelly rubbed her hand over her eyes. She didn’t think of her future anymore: one day at a time, that was all she could cope with. “I know. But what else am I supposed to do?”

  Violet sighed. “Find a rich husband.”

  “Like any man would want to take me and my baggage on, let alone a rich one.”

  “Listen, I’m going to take your Friday evening shift, you can have the money,” Violet said, before Kelly could protest. “I’ll tell Kev to just pretend I’m a curvy five-foot-six
brunette.”

  “Violet, I can’t let you.”

  “Yes, you can.” She gave Kelly a quick hug. “You already have Saturday off. Go home and rest.”

  Kelly felt tears prick her eyes. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Yes.” With that, Violet walked off to her next table, and Kelly felt an overwhelming sense of relief. Until Violet had made her the offer, she hadn’t realized just how tired she was. Exhausted, more like, as if every movement was an effort, every step she took a strain. She hid it from herself every day.

  Working hard, trying to keep busy because she knew that once she stopped she would want to collapse, the evening passed quickly. With a reminder from Violet not to come in the next day, she got changed, grabbed her purse, and headed out the door into the night.

  One bus ride and she would be home.

  However, as she walked across the parking lot, a voice called out. “Need a ride?”

  She spun round, scared as to who it might be, and wondering if she would make it back into the diner before she was abducted. Then she looked closer and realized the person sitting in the car was none other than Jared Sinclair.

  Chapter Three – Jared

  This was a mistake. He felt as if he was propositioning her, and that was when the idea struck him. Jared had double-checked her files after she had left work, and then he had checked her employment record and found she worked here at The Rambler’s Rest as well as working for him. Digging deeper, he had found out her mom had been involved in a car accident with an uninsured driver and was trying to claim compensation, but so far nothing had come of it and the family was out of money.

  So she works two jobs, a good provider, his bear had said.

  Therein lay his opportunity to get her alone and into his bed. It was simple, but not as simple as asking her for a date.

  “Do you need a ride?” he repeated.

  “I can catch the bus,” she said, and took a couple of steps away from him, but Jared wasn’t ready to let her go. He had spent the last few weeks trying to figure out how to get her alone, without ending up with a sexual harassment lawsuit hanging over him, because when he got too close to Kelly, it became hard to control his needs and urges towards her.