The Bear's Secret Surrogate

  THE BEAR'S

  SECRET SURROGATE

  BEARS WITH MONEY BOOK 2

  AMY STAR

  Copyright ©2018 by Amy Star

  All rights reserved.

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  About This Book

  When billionaire bachelor Atticus Grevieux felt his secret identity as a werebear was about to be exposed he decided to take drastic action.

  He knew he had to do whatever it took to appear as human as possible.

  And that meant starting a family. That meant having a child.

  So he hired young Casey Madison to be the secret surrogate to his future baby.

  However, when Atticus found himself getting closer to Casey than he intended he knew he had no choice but to tell her his secret.

  And once Casey knew the truth, life as they both knew it would be changed forever...

  This is a fun standalone werebear romance full of adult scenes, furry heroes, action and mystery. Perfect for a good afternoon/evening read!

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  C HAPTER ONE

  When one has a great deal of money, it could be rather stunning how quickly people were willing to spread rumors. It could be even more amazing just how outlandish some of the rumors could be. People would invent no end of imaginary skeletons in a rich person’s closet if it would make them feel better about themselves.

  Having grown up in a very wealthy family, Atticus Grevieux was used to it. Some were more bland (mistresses, shady business deals, theft). All unsubstantiated, of course, and they always fell off the radar fairly quickly. Others were a bit more entertaining -- midnight rituals, haunted houses, curses, all kinds of wild ideas, generally trying to explain away why he still hadn’t secured a legacy even at the age of thirty-two, and he usually found it pretty funny.

  At least, he found it funny until someone came a bit too close to the truth.

  He liked to troll conspiracy forums from time to time, where he could keep up to date on the strangest parts of the rumor mill. On occasion, they were good for a laugh. And when someone suggested that maybe he was some sort of monster and that was why the bloodline hadn’t continued yet, he laughed it off at first. Just about anyone could be called a monster in the present day, and it rarely actually meant anything.

  Even so, he kept an eye on that thread, so he noticed when people started talking specifically about bears.

  There were even pictures. Pictures of him in his bear form. All very blurry and far away, but still too close to what was recognizably his car or his yard or his house. (Ordinarily, he might assume someone was stalking him, but he had found paparazzi in some very inconvenient places, so the proximity to his house didn’t actually stand out as particularly unusual.)

  A few people tried to play the voice of reason, pointing out that he lived far enough out of the city that a bear could just live in the area. But enough people were throwing around the idea of Atticus being a bear for him to take notice, some of them even tossing around the idea that he hadn’t worked on continuing the family legacy because he needed to bite and change someone to breed.

  They were partially right. He couldn’t actually change anyone else into a were-bear. It didn’t work that way. But he didn’t want to spring a surprise like that on a regular human woman. He wasn’t exactly thrilled at the idea of telling someone he was a were-bear when he had no proof that she wouldn’t run screaming into the night to tell as many people as she could.

  In theory, he could have simply had a child with another were-bear, but there were a few problems with that. There was one other family of were-bears in the area: the Croasdells. However, one of his older cousins had already married into the family two decades back, and while it wasn’t technically incest, it felt a bit too much like incest for him to be comfortable with it, and he knew it would set off some new and substantially more stubborn rumors. (Besides, he wasn’t even sure if the Croasdells had any female heirs.)

  He thought that if he just ignored it, the rumors would go away. Eventually, that particular thread would die, and it wouldn’t be a big deal. He could look back on it and laugh.

  But that wasn’t what happened. The voices of reason got tired of arguing and abandoned the topic, leaving it to fill up more and more with people who decided it seemed perfectly logical that Atticus Grevieux might be a bear.

  If that hadn’t actually been the truth, then he wouldn’t have cared, but as it was, complete strangers were dancing too close to the truth for him to be comfortable. Were-creatures had too many bad experiences with regular humans to just be open and honest about it. If too many people started to believe the rumors, then it could very well lead to other were-creatures getting hurt or, more importantly, trying to hurt Atticus.

  Granted, the vast majority of the rumors seemed to hinge upon figuring out why he hadn’t started a family. He supposed it made sense. Basically, everyone else in his family had married off and started having children—preserving the were-bear bloodline or something like that—so it would make sense that people would notice if he hadn’t. To be frank, he just liked his house too much to pick up and move.

  But considering that, he supposed if he had a kid, then the rumors would probably not stop because rumors never stopped entirely, just based on how many people were still convinced that the moon landing hadn’t happened, but they would quiet down, if nothing else.

  He didn’t actually have anyone he was particularly interested in having children with, though, nor did he know of anyone particularly interested in having children with him. Luckily, he had a great deal of money. Billions of dollars, in fact; he was a very successful businessman. And a lot could be done with a great deal of money.

  He had a few phone calls he needed to make.

  *

  When it came to money, there was a lot that Casey Madison was willing to do. She liked to think of it as self-defense. She had been homeless for a time. Not direly so, she supposed—she had couch-surfed in a friend’s run-down little apartment until she managed to scrape up enough to pay rent on her own run-down little apartment—but the point still stood. Even with a roof over her head, she rarely felt particularly stable, like the ground was just waiting to fall away under her feet if she breathed wrong.

  When a man in a very expensive suit met her as she was leaving work, closing the door on the restaurant’s noise, maneuvering carefully with her rollerblades dangling around her neck, she nearly panicked at first. She didn’t remember being late on any bills. She was pretty sure she had paid all of her taxes. And she was pretty sure government officials would meet h
er at her apartment rather than her job. So, who was he, and what did he want?

  He didn’t tell her his name. It wasn’t important just then, apparently. He simply had a deal to offer her on behalf of Atticus Grevieux.

  Casey knew the name. If something in the tri-state area involved the words “power” or “refinery,” then it seemed like his family probably owned it. It led to the sort of money that nearly had Casey drooling just at the very idea of it.

  “Recent… social matters,” the scary man in the very expensive suit spoke carefully, “have made it rather important that he at least puts up the appearance of starting a family.”

  “I don’t know what that has to do with me,” Casey mumbled, fidgeting from one foot to the other and picking at the aglet of one of her rollerblade laces.

  “After very carefully looking into several potential candidates for him, we’ve agreed that you would be a good option,” the man explained simply, linking his hands together behind his back and shrugging one shoulder easily, as if he was just discussing the weather over coffee. “You marry him and have a child, and you will never need to worry about money, security, or anything else ever again. You will want for nothing.”

  “There has to be a catch,” Casey returned cautiously, twining one lace tightly around her finger. “There has to be more to it than that.”

  The man looked strangely amused for a moment before he cleared his throat. “Should you agree,” he replied slowly, “you would be marrying a man you don’t know and having his child, and there is no guarantee on how the two of you will get on with each other.” His voice dropped to a stage whisper as he added, “Most people would consider all that to be a catch.”

  Casey’s face heated, and her hands curled into fists. “Do not patronize me,” she snapped, eyes narrowing as she scowled up at him. “You are asking for a favor from me. You don’t get to be a shit heel.”

  He held his hands up in front of himself as if in surrender. “My apologies. You’re right; that was rude.”

  Casey huffed out a sigh and folded her arms over her chest, her shoulders rounding defensively. “And what if we don’t get on?” she asked expectantly. “What if we can’t stand each other?”

  “You would be free to leave,” the man explained, waving the matter off with a flick of his wrist.

  “But…?” Casey asked, tapping one foot on the sidewalk.

  He blinked and cocked his head at her. “But… nothing. That’s it. Well, mostly. The child would be left in Mr. Grevieux’s care, but you would have visitation if you wanted it, and he would continue to support you monetarily. As you said, this would be a favor from you, and a very large one at that. Mr. Grevieux is very good at paying back his favors.”

  Casey hunched further, her fingers tightening around her upper arms. She stared down at the sidewalk between her toes as her thoughts raced.

  After a moment, the man cleared his throat and pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket. He handed it over with a slightly unnecessary flourish, and when Casey took it, it simply had a phone number on it.

  “You think about this,” he told her, his voice gentling just slightly. “And when you come to a decision, you call Atticus,” he pointed to the card, “and let him know what your answer is.”

  She nodded stiffly, holding the card so tightly that one of the edges began to wrinkle. “Right,” she mumbled faintly.

  The man cleared his throat and gestured loosely over his shoulder to a car parked along the side of the road. “Would you like a ride—”

  “I’m not getting in your car,” Casey informed him flatly, finally stuttering back into motion to shove the card into her pocket. She sat down on the edge of the sidewalk so she could begin to put her rollerblades on, hardly sparing the man another glance.

  He backed up a few paces before he turned on his heel and made his way back to his very expensive, very shiny car.

  Casey watched warily as the car pulled away, as if it would turn around and come back. That didn’t happen, of course, and she finished lacing up her rollerblades and got to her feet.

  *

  “’Scuse me, sorry, pardon me.” The words left Casey’s mouth in a low, nearly unconscious stream as she wove her way through the near omnipresent crowd of people around the front of her apartment building (many of which were there for what Casey was certain were… dubiously legal reasons). Even racing along at top speed, she didn’t bump into any of them; it was a well-rehearsed routine.

  She barely slowed before she simply tossed herself down to sit on the building’s front step, sliding slightly on the cement. Eventually, one of the back pockets of these jeans would rip free too, but she probably had a few weeks before that happened, and then she could probably staple it back into place.

  She tugged her rollerblades off and heaved herself back to her feet before she made her way up the steps and through the front doors. She passed through what counted as the building’s lobby, though it always smelled like cigarettes and something that Casey was convinced was cat pee, and she had never seen anyone in the room for longer than a few minutes, save for the poor receptionist (who was, hopefully, immune to the smell by that point). She got to the stairs and practically sprinted her way up them until she got to the third floor, where she latched onto the corner of the wall and used her momentum to launch herself around it, continuing down the hall with the same amount of speed.

  She grabbed onto the frame of her apartment’s front door to drag herself to a halt and threw the door open. It wasn’t locked; she didn’t have anything that was really worth stealing, and if someone was really determined to get into her apartment, they would find a way in regardless of whether or not the door was locked.

  Her apartment was… small, to say the least. It consisted of three rooms—a kitchenette and sitting room, a bedroom, and a bathroom—and all three rooms together were approximately the size of a shoebox. The sitting room was mostly just a loveseat, an armchair, a side table, and a static-filled television crammed into one half of the main room, and while the oven in the kitchenette worked more or less, the stove had long ago kicked the bucket, forcing Casey to rely on a hotplate. It lived on top of the mini-fridge so she wouldn’t have to sacrifice any of her limited counter space, most of which was taken up by a drying rack for dishes.

  She tossed her rollerblades down on the loveseat, letting the front door slam closed behind her, and she breezed into the bedroom. It consisted of a mattress on the floor, a footlocker she had acquired at a thrift store and repurposed to use as a dresser, and a floor lamp that only successfully lit half the room on a good day (and on a bad day, it flickered like it was trying to give her a seizure).

  She threw herself down on the mattress, the comforter easing the landing slightly. The springs in the mattress were starting to give, so she may as well have just been throwing herself straight down onto the floor. She stared up at the ceiling for a moment—an unattractive popcorn ceiling speckled with yellow, water-stained patches—before she slung an arm over her face, hiding her eyes in the crook of one elbow.

  She had a rather important decision to make, she supposed. One that could change the entire course of her life. A huge decision, but as she thought about it, it was hard to think of any actual drawbacks. There were risks to any pregnancy, of course, but with the medical care she was sure Atticus would get for her, it would be about as safe as it could be. She was pretty sure she was genetically predisposed towards easy births, she wasn’t against getting a C-section if it was necessary, and she was only twenty-six, so it wasn’t like she had to worry about any age-related complications.

  She would never need to worry about money again. She could leave her little apartment with the leak in the bathroom faucet and the peeling wallpaper and the smell like moldy carpet behind. She would be able to send money to her sister and her best friend to help them get out of their own apartments, so none of them would need to live in conditions that were only half a step above being condemned.

  S
he would need to deal with the paparazzi, she supposed. And Mr. Grevieux’s no-doubt very wealthy, upper crust social circle. She doubted they would look kindly upon her and her origins.

  But she had always been good at getting people who sniffed and looked down their noses at her to back off. She liked to think of it as a special talent of hers. She imagined she would hold onto that skill even in a new environment.

  She supposed it was also a risk that she and Atticus just wouldn’t like each other. But was that even really a risk when he would still support her afterwards? Even if they completely hated each other, she only needed to put up with him for nine months, and then, once the kid popped into the world, she could file for divorce and leave.

  Nine months wasn’t that long, especially when she would have the resources all around her to be safe and happy and comfortable. Besides, she had seen pictures of his house; she was positive that they could go for days without ever even walking past each other in that behemoth.