Bearly Interested by Kim Fox Read Free Book Online

door without looking back.
    Angie sank to the floor as tears rushed down her cheeks, her insides rattling more than the stupid machine above her.
     
     
     

     
     
     
    “Knock knock,” Sidney said as he opened the door of the lab.
    You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
    Angie was a mess. She had been running around frantically trying to set up the Accelerator to run another test, something that normally took her team of five other people to do. She finally got the rattling fixed and got the machine up and running and now she was desperately trying to follow the figures as they came spewing out of the Accelerator.
    She was standing by the display screen with her legs crossed. She had to pee so bad that it hurt. The last thing that she needed in the world was Sidney coming in and doing anymore damage to her experiment than he already had.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked.
    He held up a basket full of food and smiled. There was a wine bottle sticking out.
    “Sidney I can’t right now,” she said, scribbling furiously on her clipboard, trying to keep up with the machine.
    He barged into the lab and placed the basket on a table. “Where is everyone?” he asked while pulling out dish after dish.
    “They quit,” she said, her chin quivering. This was all too much to handle.
    “That sucks,” he said, opening the wine. “Do you need help?”
    “What I need,” she snapped, “is for you to go.”
    The cork popped out as he pulled it out of the bottle. “What you need. Is a glass of wine and a foot massage.”
    She slammed her clipboard onto the desk. “You’re not listening to me,” she screamed. “I need you to leave.”
    “I can wait outside.”
    The machine was beeping like a bomb about to go off. She rubbed her forehead. Her head was throbbing. “No,” she said. “I want you to go back home. Please.”
    His mouth dropped open, his posture suddenly stiff and rigid. He stared at her with confusion in his eyes.
    Angie rubbed her forehead, her chest feeling tight. The machine spewed out numbers faster than she could deal with.
    “Look,” she said, squeezing her tense hands into fists. “I told you I can’t do this right now.”
    “Okay,” he said, placing the cork back in the bottle. “We can do it at dinner.”
    “No,” she snapped. “This. Us. A relationship. I can’t do a relationship right now.”
    Sidney winced like he just got kicked in the dick. His hands started trembling.
    She turned away from him, back towards the machine. “I never asked you to come here,” she said. “Just go back home.”
    “But we’re-”
    “Don’t say it.”
    “Mates,” he whispered.
    “No. We’re not. Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
    He raised his head like something just dawned on him. “It’s the city that’s driving you crazy,” he said. “Come live with me in the woods. The city is so unnatural. You’ll see.”
    She huffed a frustrated breath. “Maybe the city is unnatural for a bear shifter but it’s where I live.”
    The machine beeped and shook violently. “Shit,” she cursed as she smacked the metal beast. The display screen went blank. “No, no, no,” she said, smacking her hands on her head. “This can’t be happening.”
    Sidney rushed forward, rolling up his sleeves. “I can fix it.”
    “Don’t touch it,” she yelled. She pushed his chest away with all of her might, which wasn’t much. “Just go.”
    He backed away, his hands shaking like an earthquake. His face winced in pain and then all of a sudden he was curling in on himself with white hairs sprouting from his face.
    “No, no, no,” Angie said, hiding behind the machine.
    When she peeked around it there was a fully formed polar bear standing in her lab. The last, last thing that she needed.
    The bear went straight for the picnic basket and took a bite out of the lunch. He sniffed the bottle of wine and it fell off the table, smashing on the floor. The large bear lumbered around the lab,