Signed, p.1
Signed, page 1
SIGNED
BEAR MAIL
LAYLA NASH
Copyright © 2016 by Layla Nash
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Satyr Media.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Connect with Layla
Also by Layla Nash
CHAPTER 1
HANNAH
Traffic was always the worst when I was running late. And I hated being late. The taxi sat on the same block for at least thirty minutes before I finally got out and walked. My best friend and roommate was a party-planner and managed to get me on the list for one of her high concept fetes, and a night of champagne and hors d’oerves on someone else’s dime sounded a hell of a lot better than Chinese takeout that had been in the fridge for a week. So I hustled, even though the city air was sticky and hot with the last bit of summer before fall took hold.
I found her inside the trendy club after navigating the long line of people waiting to get in, and squeezed through the crowd to where she’d claimed a few seats at the end of the bar. Jen hopped up to give me a hug, “Hey! Glad you could make it. Dhera, this is my roommate, Hannah.”
I shook hands with the dark-haired girl Jen had been talking to, then shed my bag and cardigan as I ordered a beer. Jen always gave me crap for not getting some trendy cocktail, but I preferred a cold beer to almost anything else in the world. When I leaned back into the conversation, Jen waggled her eyebrows at me. “Check this out. Dhera was just telling me about this new dating service.”
The beer concealed most of my laughter as I shook my head. “You’re kidding. Another online service? Didn’t you learn your lesson after the last one?”
Ever the optimist, Jen’s eyes widened in her earnest excitement. “This one is different. I promise. Tell her, Dhera.”
Dhera leaned forward and dropped her voice, as if it was some kind of secret. “They call it a mail-order bride service, not a dating service.”
“Mail-order bride? Is that even legal?” I downed the rest of the beer and motioned for another. If Jen’s latest romance scheme meant getting married to someone for a visa, I was definitely out.
“You’re not required to get married when you sign up,” she said. “It’s a great deal. Turns out there are all kinds of eligible men in different parts of the country who don’t have the time to date or live in a location without a lot of women. You just have to be willing to travel to meet them, maybe move to where they’re at if you find someone you like.”
“Leave the city?” I raised my eyebrows at Jen. “You’re kidding, right? You love the city.”
“I do,” she said, then shook her head. “But so far there’s no one here for me. And I’m tired of dating pretty boys. I want a man with some substance, you know? Someone who knows what he’s doing with his life. Someone who has a plan.”
“And where are you going to find that?” I rested my chin on my fist as I watched her. I knew what she meant, of course; I hadn’t been on a date in months. Meeting someone online probably involved less effort than getting dressed up and trolling clubs and bars, or hoping to meet someone at work.
“North Dakota,” Dhera announced, and I almost spit out my beer.
“I’m sorry? Did you say North Dakota?”
Jen nodded, blonde hair flying. “Hell yeah.”
“You?” I tried not to laugh, imagining my party planner best friend somewhere in the wilds of North Dakota. “You are going to North Dakota?”
“Well, North Dakota or Alaska or some other remote place.” Jen flushed with excitement, almost elbowing her phone off the table. “Real men, Hannah. Real men. Ranchers and cowboys and guys who work on oil rigs.”
Dhera held up her left hand, where a diamond sparkled in a beautiful setting. “Real men with money, too, and most of them haven’t dated in a while. There aren’t many women in these places, so all the men are eligible. Handsome and kind and stable, normal men.”
“Did you stop to wonder why there are no women out there?” I motioned for my third beer, and looked around for one of the trays of hors d’oerves. If Jen was going to talk me into another hare-brained scheme of hers, I needed more to eat and more to drink, for sure. I could already see the outcome — both of us signed up, flying out to North Dakota to meet complete strangers, and getting stuck in a blizzard or a plague of locusts. Seemed on par with the kind of adventures we normally got into.
“It’s a little rough out there,” Dhera said. She swirled a swizzle stick in one of the fancy cocktails that matched the decorations. She smiled. “I’m not going to lie. It was kind of a surprise to get to the town and realize you could actually have a town without a stoplight. Right? What the hell? No taxis, no all-night delivery, not even a movie theater. But it’s so beautiful out there. Unbelievably beautiful. You wouldn’t believe the stars at night.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t,” I said. “But won’t you miss the city? Getting takeout any time you want, from any place you want? The museums and galleries and symphony? They can’t have all of that in North Dakota.”
Jen gave me a sideways look. “Are you trying to talk her out of this?”
“No way.” I held my hands up, not wanting to be the asshole who crushed the dreams of a woman I’d just met. “Not at all. I think it’s a great option for some people. I just don’t know if I could leave the city, is all.”
“The traffic, the pollution, the crowded streets. Always having to wait for a table...” Jen sighed dramatically and flung her arms out, as if to encompass the entire venue and the city besides. “Come on, Hanners. Seriously?”
I laughed, shaking my head, and felt heat gather in my cheeks as the beer finally kicked in. She’d been my best friend for as long as I could remember, and she could probably have sold ice to all those eligible men up in Alaska if she put her mind to it. And they’d have been happy to buy — sweet blonde Jen, petite and lovable and way too kind for someone so pretty. That was why she was so successful as a party planner — no one ever saw her coming. She looked like a blonde bombshell but was a shark when it came to business. I had the opposite problem — I was a business shark but no one took me seriously because I was curvy and taller and generally got over-looked. It worked for me, most of the time, particularly when I was the only woman in a meeting and hardly anyone knew I was there. It just made it easier to sneak deals by the rest of the managers because they never thought to suspect quiet, little Hannah of running both ends against the middle.
I listened to Jen and Dhera make plans, come up with schemes for how to set up profiles to get the best response from lumberjacks or cowboys or oilmen, and I just smiled. I really couldn’t imagine leaving the city for a place as quiet and far away as North Dakota, regardless of what Jen said about traffic and pollution. I liked my life, even if there was a bit of a hole where my love life was concerned.
By the fifth or sixth beer, it seemed like a much better idea. And when the three of us piled into a cab to get back to the apartment Jen and I shared, it seemed like the solution to all of our problems. Sign up to be a mail-order bride. Meet a rancher from North Dakota and move to a town with no stoplights. It took us at least half an hour to find the website, to giggle over what pictures to use — then another forty minutes to play dress-up and take new pictures, and to finally set up a profile for Jen and me both. I sat back and let them do the work, since Jen had a way with words and could turn ‘kinda chunky’ into ‘curvy and sassy’ without sounding like she lied. Jen and Dhera were still howling with laughter as they sorted through our matches by the time I crawled into bed, dreading an early morning conference call.
CHAPTER 2
HANNAH
Three weeks later, Jen was in love. She’d gotten half a dozen emails right away from a couple of different places, but she seemed intrigued by North Dakota. And one rancher in particular caught her eye. They emailed back and forth, then talked on the phone, and then video-chatted. Jen claimed she knew he was the one. In three weeks. I just smiled and shook my head. She’d declared the same thing at least four other times during our friendship, so I didn’t take her too seriously.
Until I ended up on a plane to North Dakota with her to meet the guy, Henry something. She didn’t want to go by herself, in case he ended up being a serial killer or the whole thing turned into a human trafficking scam, and I pointed out that if that was the case, we’d both end up dead or disappeared. She didn’t see the problem.
Jen practically bounced in her seat as the tiny plane began the descent into some airport in the middle of North Dakota. I didn’t even know what the name of the city was, if it counted as a city at all. We’d had to switch planes in Minneapolis, and the prop plane we got into didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidenc
“You’re a grown adult, Han,” she said, flipping through one of the trashy magazines she loved. “Are you seriously afraid of flying?”
“If you knew where most of the parts inside this plane came from,” I said under my breath, not wanting to freak out the half dozen other passengers in the tiny plane. “You’d be worried too.”
“You have the weirdest job.” She eyed me sideways and offered the magazine. “Will something to read help?”
“Nope.” I reached for an air sick bag, just in case things really didn’t go well. It felt like we’d been on a plane forever, even if it had only been a few hours from New York to Minneapolis, then a couple of hours to the tiny-ass boondocks airport in North Dakota. “But thanks.”
“Then talk to me about something. That meeting at work. Did you get promoted?”
I concentrated on not barfing, and didn’t have the heart to tell her that most of the nausea came from the meeting I’d sprinted out of in order to make the flight with her. Despite that I was the highest performer in my section, handling supply chain management for one of the largest tech companies on the East Coast, I didn’t get the promotion. Of course I didn’t. They couldn’t trot me out in front of shareholders like they could one of the fashionable men or women who clicked through the halls in expensive shoes and designer suits. They weren’t as good at what we did as I was, but no one recognized me. I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried not to think about it — or anything — as the turbulence increased and the pilot’s laconic voice came on the overhead to warn us about ‘a bumpy ride’ on the descent.
Jen held my hair back and patted my shoulder. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. I swear, I can’t take you anywhere.”
“I swear, I shouldn’t go anywhere with you,” I said, though it was mostly a groan. “We could be in Bermuda right now. The Bahamas. Some place nice and sunny and warm. Instead of heading into the goddamn winter in North fucking Dakota.”
She snorted and handed me a bottle of water from her purse. “Give me a break. You hate the beach.”
I bent over to try to relieve some of the rumblings in my stomach as the plane tilted to the right in a long swoop and all of my equilibrium fled, and I remembered the look my boss gave me when I asked why Drew got promoted and I didn’t. He seemed surprised that I thought I deserved a promotion. He said something about sitting down in a couple of weeks to discuss my career progression — which was usually code for getting transferred or fired.
At least Jen wanted me to go with her to North Dakota, otherwise I would have spent the entire weekend moping around the apartment and drowning my sorrows in beer and Thai food. Maybe a couple of days in the middle of nowhere would do me good. Maybe there would be a hunky beefcake to distract me as well. I covered my eyes and tried not to think of anything to do with work or flying. “Distract me, Jen.”
Jen practically chirped in excitement and fluttered her hands around as she pulled out another design magazine and started walking me through the newest venue for one of her parties — a wedding reception. And that was why I loved her — she overloaded me with details about flower arrangements and seating and where to set up the ceremony, then quizzed me or asked my opinion even though I had the worst design sense, and eventually I could almost forget about work and hurtling through the air in a metal tube.
In a blink, she slapped the magazine shut and bounced up from her seat. “We’re here.”
I looked around, feeling bleary-eyed and unsteady, and clutched the air sickness bag. I looked up in time to see the rest of the passengers heading for the exit. Everything outside the plane looked gloomy and dark in the late afternoon sky. “You’re joking.”
“Welcome to Crook’s Hollow, North Dakota,” the flight attendant said with a tolerant smile. “Why don’t you take that with you, honey?” she added when I tried to hand her the empty air sick bag.
Jen grinned and pulled her overnight bag down from the tiny overhead compartments. “Yeah, Hanners, we’ve got an hour in the car. You might need that bag again.”
I gave her a dirty look. “Didn’t you say one of the benefits of being out here was not having to commute?”
“Once a week isn’t that bad.” She waited until I managed to extricate myself from the window seat and staggered into the aisle, and Jen handed me one of the overnight bags to haul as she headed for the door. “Hold on to the handrail, crazy.”
I managed to thank the flight attendant and the pilot as I paused to take a breath at the top of the stairs. We seriously had to walk out of the plane and down to the actual runaway before we could walk to the terminal — which looked like little more than a glorified shed. I took a deep breath and held on to the railing with all my strength, concentrating on getting to the ground in one piece as the sun set somewhere beyond the terminal.
Jen nearly bounced on her toes as she waited for me, grinning. “Come on, slow-poke.”
“You’re lucky I’m still walking,” I said under my breath, but managed to find a smile as she threw her arm around my shoulders.
Jen rested her head against mine as we walked slowly to the terminal building, where a few people waited. “I’m glad you’re here with me, Hanners. I feel like this is going to be a great adventure.”
“I hope so,” I said. I squeezed her back, maneuvering my overnight bag so I didn’t knock her over. “What are the chances you can convince your cowboy to move back to New York with us?”
She laughed, her steps slowing just a little as we got closer and it looked like someone there might be waiting for her. “I don’t know, babe. What if this was a really bad idea?”
“Too late now.” I held up the air sick bag. “If we need to retreat, I’m happy to play up the sickness. No one wants to be around the barfing girl.”
“And this is how I know you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” Jen grinned, winking at me as she straightened and tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “Willing to barf to save me from an awkward encounter.”
“Anything for a friend.” Before I could go on, though, she took a deep breath.
“I think that’s him.” She squeezed my hand, hard enough to make my bones bend, and I looked at her in disbelief. I’d never known her to be nervous about meeting a new guy. Maybe she was right. Maybe this guy was the one.
My throat burned suddenly and I wondered if I was going to lose my best friend — if this was the beginning of the end. She’d fall in love with this Henry guy, she’d move out to North Dakota, and we’d gradually lose touch. I couldn’t breathe, my steps slowing as she strode ahead, and my hands shook as I pretended to fuss with the overnight bag and my purse. I told myself to get it together, to get control. There wasn’t any reason to start thinking my life was falling apart — I still had my job, I still had my life in the city, and I still had Jen. For a little while, anyway.
“Hannah!” she said, gesturing for me to hurry up, and I clutched the air sick bag as I approached where she spoke with two giant men. Two of them. Great.
I forced a smile on my face, hoping that it looked sincere, and tried not to panic as Jen beamed at me. “This is Henry.”
I shook hands with the tall brown-haired rancher in nice jeans, a button-down shirt, and a sports coat, and he held his hat in his other hand as he flashed a winning smile. “Nice to meet you.”
“N-nice to meet you,” I managed to say as my stomach grumbled in warning. So not all of the air sickness and nerves were totally gone. Also wonderful. I looked at the other man, equally as gorgeous as Henry but with a more rugged, weather-beaten cast to his features. He’d spent most of his life outside, it seemed, and had dark hair with just a hint of gray at the temples. He was dressed like Henry, but didn’t seem as friendly.
