Bear In The Rough: Book 1: Treasure Hunt (BBW Bear Shifter Romance) by L. Foster Read Free Book Online

the ground beside me. Carrie was right: my parents would have been horrified if I had known I had put my job on the line to hook up with a homeless man who lived in a cave.
     
                  The blue jay was twittering pointedly, and it took me a few minutes to realize that it was actually trying to communicate with me. “What is it you want?” I asked, in the tone of voice we reserve for animals and babies. “Do you want food?”
     
                  The bird shook itself vigorously.
     
                  “Do you have a message from someone?” Negative again. “Do you know where I’m headed?” This time the bird bounced up and done, more merrily than before. “Could you take me there?” And the bird was off, up in the air, skimming over the tops of trees, soaring through the air like a cloud.
     
                  I was lucky I had the bird to guide me, as I might not have been able to find the cave even in daylight, even knowing the right path. The opening in the rock was so small that I might have missed it had the bird not flown directly above it and then vanished, as though sensing that it's task was complete.
     
                  Henry was standing in the door of the cave, partially concealed by a boulder. It was impossible to tell from this distance whether or not his lower half was as naked as his upper limbs and torso. He was brushing his teeth using a toothbrush and mirror he had presumably stolen from a hotel bathroom. The mirror was propped up on a ledge that jutted naturally out of the cave rock.
     
                  I paused and watched him performing his morning routine, sighing at the torments fate and circumstance were inflicting upon me. Why had they conspired to make this vagabond so handsome, so peerless and without fault? Every movement of his body was a sly taunt from the gods who had made any thought of relationship impossible. I felt like a child whose parents had shown him the most beautiful toy in a shop window, only to tell him he could never have it.
     
                  Henry himself seemed to be in on the joke. For a split-second he turned his head, and I felt sure he must have seen me. But he kept brushing his teeth, quietly flexing his arms as he did so. How long was he going to do this? I had heard stories of people who had destroyed their enamel from brushing too hard and too long. Yet the repetition of movement carried its own thrill; he seemed transported out of his human self and into some lower register of being, more beast than man. For a moment I forgot my despair and stood looking on in a lucid dream of perfect happiness.
     
                  Suddenly there came a loud groan from the forest, like a bear growling. It was close enough that I instinctively flinched. Henry, who was stooped over rinsing out his mouth into a porcelain basin, shot straight up, every sense taut. For a split-second I caught a glimpse of his perfect pecs, on which were imprinted a design I could swear I had seen before.
     
                  “Did you hear that?” he asked me, putting on a Van Halen t-shirt. “And how long have you been standing there?”
     
                  “I just got here,” I said, which was true in geologic time. “And yes, I heard the growling. Maybe a tree fell?”
     
                  He shook his head darkly. “That was no tree. You’d better come inside, at least for a few minutes.”
     
                  Inside the cave, I returned the stone to him and told him what I had learned in my online investigations the night before.
                 
                  “I knew I recognized this thing from somewhere,” I told him. “I knew it the moment I saw it, I just didn’t know where. Turns out, it was dug up near the money pit by a small team of private explorers back in the 1950s. In fact, it’s one of the few