Free Unbearable Desire: Lone Pine Pride, Book 4 by Vivi Andrews Page A

being such a fool again. Until she forgot the look in Hugo’s eyes when he asked her how to fight for her. Until the last clinging thread of hope finally snapped and her heart was finally free.

Chapter Eleven
    “Hugo’s here again.”
    Moira looked up from the computer with a muted growl she couldn’t quite suppress. Grace stood in her office doorway, hip cocked, lips quirked in barely contained amusement.
    “Tell him to leave,” Moira said, turning back to the computer. “I won’t see him.”
    “I already did,” Grace announced cheerfully.
    Moira’s head snapped up and she frowned. “You did what?”
    Grace shrugged, unrepentant. “I figured you wouldn’t mind if I jumped right to the kicking him to the curb portion of the proceedings, since that’s been modus operandi for the last four days.”
    Four days. Four days since she’d turned him down and four days that he’d been showing up in the infirmary—sometimes with presents, sometimes just with a pathetic hang-dog expression that had all their pride mates who had seen it looking at her speculatively when she threw him out.
    “Kudos, by the way,” Grace went on brightly. “Not every woman can turn a big bad bear into her personal slave. Mad respect. Not that I didn’t already think you were badass, but I kinda had you pegged more for the give-in-at-the-first-sign-of-groveling type than the make-his-ass-work-for-it kind of girl.”
    Moira frowned. “That isn’t what I’m doing.” She didn’t want to torture him. She just wanted all of this to be over so she could move on.
    At Grace’s extended silence—wildly out of character—Moira looked up and found the lioness watching her with a single brow arched high. “Don’t tell me you’re kicking him to the curb for real. I’m all for making him pay, but…” She paused, making a show of thinking. “No, you’re right. You should never see him again. I mean, I’ve seen how you are when you’re together and why would you want to be with someone who lights you up like that and brings out a passion you’ve never displayed for anything else ever in your life. You’re totally right. What’s worth fighting for in that?”
    Fighting for . Why did everything have to be about fighting? “He hurt me,” she snapped, hating that she had to defend herself. Wasn’t Grace supposed to be on her side? What happened to feminine solidarity?
    “Can you forgive him?” Grace asked.
    “I don’t want to.” And she didn’t care how petty that made her sound. She wanted someone she didn’t have to forgive. She didn’t want Hugo to be it for her. “I want someone who would choose me from the start. He had his chance.”
    Grace nodded sagely. “He was an idiot. Men are idiots. You’re right. So the question is, do you want to be the woman who gets to be right or be the woman who gets screwed into happy oblivion?”
    “I don’t know what I want.”
    Another sage nod. “Women are idiots too.” Grace shoved away from the doorjamb. “Think about it. You can be right or you can get the guy.”
    Moira gritted her teeth. “How can someone who is so pragmatic in every other way be such a romantic idiot?”
    “Are you talking about him or you? Because one of you needs to stop being an idiot and it’s unlikely to be him because he’s got too much testosterone poisoning to think clearly.” Grace shrugged. “If I were you’d I’d grab onto happy. It’s hard enough to come by without spitting in its face when it does come along.”
    Moira glared after the lioness’s retreating back. It was easy to say that, easy to dispense forgive-and-forget counsel, but a lot harder to open up her wounded heart to the man who’d hurt it in the first place.
    But Grace was right that they couldn’t go on as they were. Something had to give.
    Maybe it was time to open her heart up to someone else…
    The Lion’s Den was packed. Moira had never been here on a Friday night and she was already regretting her decision