Chapter 10

The family group chat, which Ollie hadn"t looked at all day, was ablaze with messages when he finally thought to glance at it on his way to bed. Most of it was panic, reassurance, and more panic over the state of the gazebo, and while he was sure texting late at night would set the whole thing on fire again, he sent a defiant, Tiffany will take care of the gazebo. Don"t worry about it, to the group, and went to bed.

Come morning, there were an awful lot of "oooh, TIFFANY will take care of it, oh, well, if TIFFANY is going to take care of it then I guess it"s FINE" kinds of responses, followed by who"s tiffany and why"s Ollie on a first name basis with the construction crew and if she doesn"t take care of it there"s gonna be a problem, the last of which made Ollie"s koala growl ferociously.

And despite it being a six kilo, eighty centimeter herbivore with little more than a bad attitude going for it, the growl was pretty alarming. Ollie, trying not to overreact, texted chill, you lot, to the group chat. Tiffany"s got it covered.

You"ve got a lot of confidence in a woman whose construction company made this mess,his cousin Bill wrote.

Lemme at him,Ollie"s koala said, and Ollie, taking some deep breaths through his nose, told himself he wasn"t tempted.

But you are!the koala said. You are, or you wouldn"t tell yourself you weren"t! Lemme at him! Lemme at him!

Aloud, because there was no one to hear him, Ollie murmured, "He"s a grizzly, mate. He"d swat you into the next state."

Not if I get my teeth into him first! The koala gnashed and brandished its teeth, growling even louder inside Ollie"s head as Ollie, trying to stay calm, texted the group chat with First off, it wasn"t Eric"s fault. The poor bastard got stung by a bee and went into anaphylactic shock. Second, Tiffany will get it fixed. And I need you lot to stop laying into her.

Laurie, the youngest cousin, sent an eyebrow-waggling emoji. Oooh, Ollie"s laying into her, IKYKWIM.

Ollie barked, "She"s my mate!" into the disappearing voice chat, and watched it flicker as each individual in the chat listened to it.

Roughly twelve seconds later, there was a thundering knock on his hotel door.

LEMME AT "IM!

Ollie, taking another deep, calming breath, rose and went to the door. For a moment he considered looking through the peephole so he"d know what he was getting himself into, but the truth was, he absolutely one hundred percent already knew. He exhaled, unlocked the door, and stepped back as he opened it.

Three very large, very similar men stood on the threshold, all with virtually identical expressions of wide-eyed glee. The largest and oldest of them, Bill, sported a pompadour that added a solid three inches to his already considerable height. The second oldest, Jon, was physically almost indistinguishable from the youngest, Laurie, who had been afflicted with that name because their mother had been reading Little Women when she was pregnant with him.

The younger Torbens were both big, good-looking guys who wore their hair long because they did renaissance fair reenactment…stuff. Ollie wasn"t clear on the details, but he didn"t have to be, because right now Laurie was hissing, "Your mate?" with a barely contained grin. As if his question had released them, all three men attempted to crowd through the door frame at the same time.

The frame in question was barely big enough to accommodate one of them at a time. They looked, Ollie thought, like a cartoon, all trying to squeeze through together. He wouldn"t have been surprised if their eyes started bugging or their ribs got narrowed to let them Squish through like they really were animated. Instead Bill put his hand between Laurie"s shoulders and shoved.

Laurie popped free like a cork and hit the floor on his belly while the other two brothers more or less walked over him. Ollie stepped back again, suddenly glad he was an only child. "Come on in," he said dryly.

Bill, who had somehow taken the lead, did so, but stopped a few steps beyond the short hallway that led to the hotel room"s door. He folded his arms over his chest, which had the effect of making him look twice as large as before. "Your mate?"

Ollie raised his eyebrows at Jon, the second youngest of the brothers. "Did you want to say it too?"

"I"ll get there," Jon promised. "I"m biding my time. Waiting for the right moment. Aiming for the full effect."

Ollie muttered something impolite under his breath and Laurie, crawling off the floor, cackled. "Seriously though, your mate? What, Steve finds his mate and now it"s everybody"s turn?"

"Steve found his mate almost two years ago," Ollie pointed out. "It"s not like it"s raining mates around here."

Jon raised his hands, waggled them in the air, and let them fall like rain, singing, ""Hallelujah,"" under his breath.

"No, seriously though," Laurie went on. "That"s two in Virtue in two years. I"m moving here."

"Mom would kill you," Bill said.

Laurie ignored him. "Does your mate have a sister?"

"No!"

"Mom would be delighted," Jon said to Bill. "Maybe not about the moving to Virtue part, but the mate? Potential grandkids? She"d be thrilled."

"Somebody has to stay and run the brewery," Bill growled. Both of his brothers looked a little cowed, and hairs stood up on even Ollie"s arms. Bill Torben was a big man, and a big big bear. Even Ollie"s fight-happy koala didn"t really want to take him on, although Ollie suspected that under all the responsibility, his oldest cousin was really something of a marshmallow.

He had to be. Nobody who was not at least partially a marshmallow would wear his hair in a pompadour like that. But Ollie had also noticed that Bill had gotten more surly in the family chats over the past couple of years, even though he"d mutter that nothing was wrong if asked directly. Ollie kind of wanted to corner him and see if everything was really okay, but also had that weird, long-distance-cousin thing that meant he wasn"t entirely sure being nosy would be welcome.

Or forgivable, more like. Given how grouchy Bill got in the family chat, it clearly wouldn"t be welcome. "I haven"t told her yet," he announced rather loudly, over the muttering argument the brothers were having about the brewery. "So keep your mouths shut, all right?"

He also found himself sitting on the edge of his bed with a wave of rue. "Also, how am I going to tell her I"m a koala? It"s not exactly the big sexy grizzly that you bastards are."

"She won"t mind," Bill said with unexpected confidence. "She"ll think it"s cool. Or cute. Either way, it"ll work for you."

"There are worse things than being cute," Laurie said with a toss of his hair. "Trust me on that one."

"Yeah, but you"re also a grizzly bear!"

Laurie lifted a lazy hand and swiped with it. "Rawr."

Another sudden bang sounded on the door. Ollie nearly jumped out of his skin, then rose to answer.

Steve, the last of the Torben brothers, was breathless and grinning on the doorstep. "Your mate?"

"Oh my God. You guys are…" Ollie shook his head and stepped back, letting his second-oldest cousin into the room, then peering after him into the hall. "You left Charlee behind?"

"She"s in the middle of the breakfast rush," Steve said guiltily. "If I"m not back in fifteen minute she"s going to eviscerate me."

"She"s working the day before her wedding?" The question chorused from everybody in the room as Ollie closed the door.

Steve grimaced. "She wasn"t going to, but she finds cooking soothing and she"s really freaked out about the gazebo right now."

"It"ll be fine," Ollie said. "Tiffany won"t let you down."

"I told her Tiffany"s your mate and that reassured her a little," Steve said, back to being guilty. "I mean, she"s in the family chat, but the voice message disappeared before she could see it, so?—"

Someone else knocked on the door. Several someones, from the sound of it. Ollie froze again, and this time did glance through the peephole.

To his intense dismay, none of the people outside the door were Tiffany. They were his mother, aunt, and uncle, who all had exactly the same eager expression his cousins had arrived with. He opened the door and said, "Yes, my mate," before any of them could speak, and watched their faces run through crestfallen at not getting to ask, amusement that he"d beaten them to the punch, and then outright laughter as they realized his hotel room was chock full of large men. "Go ahead," Ollie said with resignation. "Come on in."

His father had been the koala shifter in the family; his mother, Lily, was a true human, about five eight and silver-haired these days. Her sister Heather, Oliver"s aunt and mother of the Torben brood, wore her short hair blonde and had biceps almost as good as Tiffany"s, from carrying beer steins for forty years. His uncle Pete was a burly grizzly shifter who had passed his size on to all his sons. They all crowded in, with Aunt Heather saying, "So your Tiffany, does she have any sisters?" brightly as she squeezed toward the back of his room.

"I told you!" Laurie caroled.

Ollie half-yelled, "No! She"s an only child like me! Which means she"s not used to dealing with a hundred people stuffed into five square meters!"

A brief silence fell while the Americans—who were everyone but himself and his mother—tried to convert that into numbers that made sense to them, and then Aunt Heather sniffed. "Please, this is a very comfortable hundred and fifty square feet or so. In fact, I think it"s bigger than Pete"s and my room."

"I told you to book the rooms earlier, Mom," Steve said with a note of real anguish. "Virtue"s gotten more tourists ever since what"s his face, the fashion designer, came home for a while. People are still hoping they"ll see another celebrity land a helicopter in the town square!"

"This is a much more exciting town than anybody mentioned," Ollie said into the general cacophony. The entire clan had all started talking at each other, mostly about the limited number of hotel rooms, but also about fated mates, breakfast service at Steve"s gastropub, and whether the celebrity in question had actually landed the helicopter on the lawn himself or if it had been a different pilot.

Steve, looking guilty again, cast Ollie an apologetic look and tilted his head to indicate he was going to make his escape. Ollie nodded a goodbye—the last thing Steve needed was his bride having another reason to be upset—and took a moment to consider the rest of the family, who completely failed to notice that Steve had left.

They probably wouldn"t notice if he went and took a shower, either, even if they were all in his hotel room. He snagged clothes out of the closet—nobody else he knew used the closets when they stayed in hotels, but Ollie preferred to have his things tidy and put away—went into the bathroom, showered, dressed, and came back out again with wet hair. The discussion had moved on, and now everyone was discussing whether they should go over to Hold My Bear for breakfast or whether the hotel"s breakfast would do. Ollie said, "It doesn"t seem like adding work to Charlee"s plate would be very nice," into the general noise, which immediately started a debate on whether that was true or not.

His mum slid him a little sideways grin, then squeezed through the family gathering to murmur, "There"s a reason I moved to Australia," which made Ollie laugh.

"They couldn"t have been that bad back then," he replied as quietly. "Only Bill and Steve had even been born then, right?"

"Don"t forget your uncle Pete has two brothers and two sisters," his mum whispered. "Believe me, it was a lot. Even before I knew they were bears! Congratulations, sweetie. I can"t wait to meet her. Tiffany, right?"

Ollie snickered. "Tiffany Wright."

"That"s what I said."

"No, w-r-i-g-h-t, her last name is Wright."

"Oh. Oh!" His mother laughed, too. "Oh. Well, look, that"s a good way to start off a relationship: you know she"s always Wright."

Oliver laughed out loud, which somehow still didn"t drown out the sounds of the rest of his family"s enthusiastic debates over…everything. Literally everything, he thought. He was looking for a polite way to get them out of his room when his phone buzzed. He picked it up to read a list from an unknown number that began matcha latte, 2 black coffees, 1 black coffee with sugar, and went on for another nine drinks. He stared at it a moment, baffled, then yelped loudly enough to finally get the attention of his extended family.

"Out!" He held up the phone, not that anybody could see the screen. "Everybody out! I have a coffee delivery to make!"

A theatrically dramatic gasp ran through the room, and then, to his relief and amusement, everybody flooded out, leaving him to collapse on the bed in relief for three entire minutes before he got up to get coffee for Tiffany"s crew.