Gray Back Bad Bear (Gray Back Bears Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the damned time.
    Being a Gray Back was hell on the body.
    Matt had enjoyed the fight to forget about Willa, but now, as Clinton snapped his splintered bones back into place, he thought of her to escape the pain.

Chapter Four
     
    Saratoga’s small town charm was growing on her. Willa smiled as she thought about the pottery shop owner who had shook her hand and talked to her as if they’d known each other for years. Here, everyone smiled at everyone, whether they were a tourist or a townie.
    She tossed a look at the little brown bag sitting in her passenger seat and sighed. Matt would probably hate the gift, but that wasn’t going to stop her from giving it to him. She’d spent the day at the brewery festival tasting tiny samples of beer, then window shopped in the downtown district before downing a personal mushroom pie from a local pizzeria that one of the nice brewers she’d met had told her she had to try. And then she’d wandered into a paint-your-own pottery place out of curiosity and bought a piece someone had left behind. Probably on account of its hideousness, but it was on the clearance table and reminded her of Matt. Not because it was ugly. Matt was extremely not ugly, but it was a mug with a handle shaped like a jumping salmon. And bears ate salmon. At least that’s what she read in a pamphlet from the visitor’s center about the sparse wild bear population around the area. She thought it was more a trout region, but the pamphlet had listed salmon as a grizzly’s favorite food. With that knowledge in mind, she’d purchased the ugly mug from the pottery shop, two salmons from the grocery store, and thrown the smellier of her gifts into a cheap cooler packed with ice.
    She was the best friend in the world. Suck it, bombshells, for not realizing her friendship potential.
    Lodgepole pines lined the roads and filled the forest so thickly, she could barely see any brush on the wilderness floor. She drove curving roads edged with green and brown. Some of the trees were dead. A lot of them, in fact, but that had been explained in the pamphlet, too. Some kind of beetle infestation was taking over the forest here.
    “Okay,” she drawled out, pressing the map Matt had drawn against the steering wheel so she didn’t have to take her attention away from the road to read the directions. A right turn here where the road was washed out to a well-worn dirt track, another mile winding through the trees that followed the tire marks, and then she was there. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked through the woods. Lush green gave way to a river. Even from inside the Tacoma with the air conditioner turned up, the babbling water was loud and beautiful.
    She stepped out of her truck and pulled the backpack she’d brought over her shoulders. Shoving her glasses up her nose better, she hiked through the trees until she reached the water’s edge. Matt had been right. This was sort of a beach, complete with pebbles that led to sand under lapping waves. The difference was the fresh water, the lack of brine scent in the air, and the bright greenery that lined the river on both sides. And no sharks. She could hear the waterfall, but she couldn’t see it yet, so she hooked her thumbs through her backpack straps and tromped up an incline.
    When she got to the top of the small hill, she locked her legs and halted.
    Matt was sitting on the shore, water lapping at his toes as he scooped handfuls of waves onto a burgundy stain down his side.
    She was early by a half hour, and she hadn’t expected him to be here yet. And she especially didn’t expect him to be bathing what looked like copious amounts of blood from his torso. She backed up a foot, but a twig snapped under her flip flop.
    Matt jerked his gaze to her. His eyes were churning silver, like mercury, and his face was bruised. He stood in a blur. “It’s mine.”
    “What is?” she asked more high-pitched than she’d intended.
    “The blood.”
    Oh. Well that