Hired Bear

(Bears of Pinerock County #5)

by Zoe Chant

Copyright Zoe Chant 2017

All Rights Reserved

If you enjoy this book, the first three books in the Bears of Pinerock County series are now available on Amazon in a convenient boxed set, free on Kindle Unlimited!

Table of Contents

1. Crystal

2. Cody

3. Crystal

4. Cody

5. Crystal

6. Cody

7. Crystal

8. Cody

9. Crystal

10. Cody

11. Crystal

12. Cody

13. Crystal

Epilogue: One year later

A note from Zoe Chant

1. Crystal

This couldn't be the right place. Could it?

Crystal Martinez stared in dismay through the windshield of her small, practical, fuel-efficient Honda Fit, which she was now realizing was as unsuited to the rural road on which she'd found herself as a herd of cattle on a college campus.

At least, she'd thought this road was bad. Now that she saw the turnoff for the family farm, she realized the potholes on the narrow gravel road were nowhere near as rough as roads around here could get. The turnoff was nothing more than a pair of tire ruts, exactly one truck wide, overgrown with grass and wildflowers. The ruts twisted off into the trees, and low-hanging branches quickly hid it from sight.

But this was definitely the turnoff for the old Martinez family farm. There was the rusty mailbox, nailed to the top of a 55-gallon barrel, just like her dad had described it when he used to talk about the farm years ago. All the paint had peeled off the barrel, and there were a few bullet holes. She had imagined how it would look, but the reality was even worse.

And she hadn't even seen the farm yet.

What was she going to do, though, get a couple miles from the farm, wimp out at the road, and turn around and drive all the way back to St. Louis? Back to her lonely apartment, back to the mountain of debt that was burying her family, without even getting a single glimpse of the farm that might be their salvation.

As if.

Swallowing, she turned off the gravel road onto the tire ruts.

The Fit wallowed on the ruts and scraped past tree branches. Maybe I should be glad I have such a tiny car, Crystal thought, cringing as she felt the car's underside grinding on a rock. No way anything bigger could've made it up this road without cutting back some of the brush.

As she crawled along, she searched her own memories for any hint of familiarity, but found nothing. She'd only been four years old when the family was last here, and even then, her parents didn't live on the farm full-time; they just came out in the summers to visit with her grandparents. Then Grandpa and Dad had argued, and her family stopped coming out from St. Louis in the summers, and that was the last she'd seen of the family farm for 25 years.

And now, here she was.

"They say you can't go home again," she murmured aloud. "Guess I'm about to find out if that's true or not—oh, crud!"

She slammed on the brakes and stopped inches from a fallen tree trunk, almost hidden in the grass overgrowing the old driveway. No way she was getting her car over that. It looked like she'd be walking from here.

She sighed, got her jacket and a bottle of water out of the backseat, and locked the car—city girl habits, she thought, wryly amused with herself. What, did she think a deer was going to steal the car, or a bear was going to break into the trunk and take her luggage? It looked like no one had been down this road since her grandfather died, 15 years ago.

She started walking. The afternoon was warm, and she got tired of carrying the jacket, so she left it draped over a bush; she'd have to come back this way, after all. It was the quiet that she found the hardest to get used to. Except for those summers on the farm as a small child, she had been a city girl all her life. She'd grown up in St. Louis, went to school in Chicago, and then moved back to St. Louis to help out Mom when her dad got sick. Her entire life, she'd had the sound of traffic and car horns and neighbors' chatter as a constant soundtrack in the background.

But the only sounds here were the murmur of the wind in the trees and an occasional distant bird call. A small, bright yellow bird swooped across the driveway in front of her, making her jump. Her first thought was to pull out her phone and look up what kind it was, but then she remembered that she'd lost cell service shortly after she drove through that last little town where she'd turned off the highway. She'd made her way up here on her phone's saved GPS data.

Maybe I could get a bird book and learn the kinds of birds. That might be fun.

No, no. She reminded herself firmly that she was only going to be here for a few days. Just long enough to find out for herself the truth of the stories her dad had told her during the last days of his illness. She'd taken off two weeks from work (two days of which were already gone, eaten up by her cross-country drive), so she had just a little over a week and a half to search the farm, find out once and for all whether there was anything to be found, and then go back to her regular life in St. Louis and list the farm with a realtor.

Her mother had made it clear that she had absolutely no interest in keeping the farm. Selling it would pay off Dad's medical bills, and right now, with the family teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, that was the most important thing. And Crystal agreed. The farm might have been passed from Grandpa to Dad, and then down to her, but she didn't want to live on it. Crystal Martinez, rancher? The idea was absurd! She had an English degree and worked in a bookstore. It didn't even look like there was a Barnes & Noble in the whole county. Or a library. Or any sort of culture, or anything fun to do.

Still, she had to admit that she was enjoying the walk. She'd always really liked taking walks and going for day hikes in Illinois and Missouri's state parks. This was just like hiking in a park except that she was the only person here, which was kind of exciting.

A crash somewhere off in the brush made her flinch. Okay, that was the wrong kind of exciting. It was probably just a rabbit. Still, she knew there were bears and mountain lions in these woods. And some of them were shifters, from stories she remembered her dad telling her. These were shifter mountains.

Well, I guess I'd rather meet a shifter bear than a real bear. A brief thrill ran through her; she couldn't quite say where it came from.

The driveway, such as it was, came to a small creek. There was no bridge, just a series of logs placed crossways, so the fast-flowing water could run between them. Crystal hopped from log to log, and thought about the inadvisability of trying to drive her car over that. Grandpa, you could really have afforded to invest in a little bit of infrastructure ...

On the other side of the creek, the trail went up a short hill, and then suddenly Crystal walked out of the trees into the old farmyard.

The whole time, she'd been waiting for anything on the journey to give her a sense of recognition, but when it hit, it hit hard. She did remember this place, even if she hadn't been here since she was a small child. It hadn't looked quite like this, of course. Everything was overgrown; she could barely see the old fences in the long grass, and there were small trees growing all over the old pasture. The barn's roof sagged alarmingly, and what had probably once been a garden in front of the farmhouse was now a riot of wildflowers and raspberry bushes.

But the overall shape of the place was familiar. She recognized the way the mountains rose behind the farm, the march of the trees up the foothills. The house and the barn, overgrown and run down as they were, had imprinted themselves on her heart somehow.

She wasn't expecting to feel, in a tiny corner of her soul, as if she'd come home.

Quickly she got a grip on herself. She was only here for a couple of weeks. She had a mission and a plan. And right now, as much as she wanted to explore, the sun was dipping low behind the mountains. There was nowhere to spend the night out here. She had just enough time to walk back to her car before dusk—and she really didn't want to walk through those woods in the dark.

Tomorrow, she could come back with a metal detector and get to work.

She had to tear herself away from her first view of the farm, but reminding herself of all the bears, mountain lions, and God knew what else in the woods got her moving. As she walked briskly back the way she'd come, she was already making plans. With less than two weeks ahead of her, she needed to make every day count. Hopefully that last little town had a halfway decent motel. And she was going to need some other stuff, like a weedwacker and probably camping equipment unless she planned to drive back to the motel every day—

—oh right, and a chainsaw, she thought grimly as she came in view of her car in the long evening shadows and remembered why her car was sitting in the middle of the driveway.

Of course, she had absolutely no idea how to use a chainsaw. But she'd bet the neighbors did. There had been another turnoff a couple of miles back the way she'd come from, and it looked well used. The ranch next door to her family farm, it appeared, was still in operation. She hoped she could stop by that ranch and ask if one of the hired hands would be able to cut the tree out of the way for her. Maybe she could hire someone to do a little clean up around the farm while she was treasure hunting. Having the brush cut and the pasture cleared would make it easier to sell the place.

Yes, she told herself, climbing into the car with a steely sense of purpose locked securely over the fear underneath. That was a good plan.

Pretty much her only plan at this point.

She tried not to think about what would happen if the farm didn't end up being the solution to her family's debt problems. It had to be. Even if there wasn't a treasure, there was a house and a barn and a good chunk of land. Selling the farm would be her family's salvation.

Even if it was already tugging on a tiny corner of her soul ...

Be strong, she told herself. All her life, she'd felt as if she was searching for something just beyond her reach. It would be the cruelest twist of fate if she'd managed to find it here, only to have it torn away.

No. There was nothing for her here, only an old piece of family history. And in two weeks, she'd be out of here, back to—

—a cold, empty bed in a one-bedroom apartment—

—back to her real life in St. Louis.

2. Cody

"Did you hear someone's moving into the old Martinez place? Denny down at the feed store said they're looking to hire somebody to do some work around the place."

"Unless it's a curvy brunette," Cody grunted, handing a sack of feed down from the truck bed into his brother Remy's powerful, tattooed arms, "I've got plenty of my own work already."

Remy grinned up at him, a flash of white teeth in his suntanned face. "What if I tell you it is a curvy brunette?"

"Uh-huh." Cody swiped at the sweat trickling down from under his hat. "Do I look like I was born yesterday, little brother?"

"Your loss," Remy said with a shrug, tossing the feed sack into the shed. "Denny talked to her yesterday. Said she was hoping someone from the neighboring ranch—that'd be us, big bro—might like to come out and lend her a hand. And I'm thinking ... cute unattached chick, and you're the only unmated guy on the ranch these days ..."

"Don't remind me." Cody loved his brother and cousins, but it had been hard, watching the ranch fill up with mates and kids. Remy and his mate Saffron's son Baz had celebrated his first birthday this past spring, and Tara and Axl's little Lexie was crawling everywhere.

For most of his life, even-tempered Cody had been the clan peacemaker, keeping his volatile fellow grizzly shifters from ripping each other apart in dominance fights. But these days, everyone had settled down, even grouchy Alec, the clan alpha. There were no more fights except the regular bickering, and between five grizzly shifters and four mates, they had more than enough hands to help out with work around the ranch.

Sometimes I feel like they don't really need me anymore ...

"Hey, if you want one of us old married guys to head over and help out the brand-new, unmated woman in the neighborhood, it's no skin off my paws, believe me."

Cody snorted and tossed two sacks of feed over the side of the truck. Remy caught them easily, one in each of his arms. "You keep saying that. Maybe she doesn't have a shifter mate, but she could still have a human boyfriend."

Remy shook his head. "Denny said she's up there all alone. No ring, either."

"You have got to be kidding me. Is the whole town trying to matchmake me now?" He picked up the last two sacks of feed, gripping one in each powerful hand, and hopped down off the truck's tailgate. There were advantages to being a grizzly shifter when it came to getting work done around the farm.

"Look, man." Remy rested an elbow on the wall of the truck bed, his smiling face turning serious. "I know you're struggling with this single thing, now that the rest of us have paired off. And don't try to pretend like you aren't. As you're fond of reminding me, I am your little brother, which means I've known you my whole life. You might be able to put on a brave face for everyone else, but I can tell when you're unhappy."

Cody tried to squash his surge of irritation at his family's meddling. "Look, I know you're trying to help, man. But you can't matchmake a shifter. I shouldn't have to tell you that. Meeting your fated mate—it's like a lightning strike. It either happens or it doesn't."

"Well, yeah, but if you want to get struck by lightning, it helps to go stand out in a lot of rainstorms." Cody made a face, and Remy laughed. "Okay, maybe that's a terrible analogy. But seriously, how are you ever going to meet your mate if all you do is stay up here on the ranch and never talk to anyone?"

"Maybe there just isn't anyone out there for me."

"You'll never know if you don't try." Remy gave him a shove. "Look, I'll take care of the afternoon feeding and check the water troughs. Why don't you go take a shower and drive over to the Martinez place? You've still got plenty of time to get in some good brush-clearing before evening. Sweating in the sun, flexing your muscles under that shirt, all those things guaranteed to get a second look from curvy brunettes."

"This is ridiculous," Cody grumbled. "I would've expected it from the women, but not from you, bro. I feel betrayed."

"Get moving. That brush isn't going to clear itself."

Cody flipped him off and went to put on a clean shirt. A shower probably wasn't necessary ... He sniffed his armpit. Okay, fine. It was definitely necessary.

Like it mattered. What were the odds, after all this time, that his fated mate was going to move in next door?

He stopped by his trailer to get clean clothes and then tramped up the steps of Axl and Tara's house. Over the last couple of years, as the Circle B bear clan had expanded to include new mates and cubs, the living arrangements on the ranch had been shuffled and reshuffled and shuffled again. What was currently Axl and Tara's house had, at one point, been shared by Remy and Cody as their bachelor pad, while Axl and his brother Alec had lived in the bigger ranch house across the yard. Now Alec and his mate Charmian had the big house, Axl and Tara had the smaller one, and Remy and Saffron had their very own tidy little house halfway between the two original houses, all of them arranged in a semicircle around the ranch's communal yard. (The ranch's hired man Gannon and his mate Daisy lived back in the hills, preferring to maintain their privacy rather than living as the rest of the clan did, with everyone else constantly underfoot.)

The trailer where Cody was currently living had been brought in by Remy and Saffron to live in while their new house was being built. He didn't need much space, and every last one of his clan-siblings had been adamant that Cody was welcome to use the better bathroom facilities and kitchen space in any of their houses anytime he wanted. They'd also offered to help him build a house of his own, but he'd insisted that there was no need to go to the trouble. What was he going to do with himself, rattling around in a big empty house all on his own? He spent most of his time out on the range working with the cattle anyway.

It still felt a little weird to knock on the door of the house that had been his for most of his adult life. He didn't begrudge Axl and Tara the use of the house in the slightest. Obviously a family with a mate and cubs needed the space more than Cody did. Still, there was a part of him that got a slight twinge, like the distant ache of a mostly-healed broken bone, at the reminder that he was a guest, even if a welcome guest, in the place where he'd once lived.

There was no answer, so he cautiously opened the door and called, "Tara?" Axl would be at work. As the sheriff of Pinerock County, he was gone more than he was here. Tara worked from home, running her family's business from her home office.

"She's running some errands in town, so I'm watching the kids," Saffron's cheerful voice called from the kitchen. "Oh, no—Baz—Cody, catch him!"

Cody reached down a casual arm and scooped up his nephew as the fuzzy little bear cub waddled quickly for freedom. Baz had started shifting early, and he was much faster as a bear than as a human toddler. He'd just learned how to walk on two legs, but he was already skilled at getting around on four.

"You're hell on wheels, aren't you?" Cody told the cub, who squirmed unhappily, trying to get down. Cody set down his bundle of clean clothes on the nearest chair so he could hold out the cub at arm's length to get a better look at him. "Saffron, is his fur turning red?"

Saffron came in from the kitchen with Axl and Tara's baby daughter Lexie cuddled against her chest. "Sure is. It just started happening in the last few days. I guess it's not a big surprise; I'm a fox shifter, after all. Still, I've never seen a red grizzly, have you?"

"Well, at least we won't have any trouble telling him apart from the rest of the family once he gets his full size." Cody pushed the door shut with his foot, so he could set the bear cub on the floor. "I'm just here to use your shower, if that's okay. Er, Tara and Axl's shower, I mean."

Saffron gave him a quick peck on the cheek, switching Lexie to her other arm. The little girl stared at Cody with wide, intense blue eyes. She was named after her uncle Alec—Lexie was short for Alexandra—and already it seemed that the name had been somewhat prophetic. Unlike active, friendly Baz, Lexie seemed to take more after her uncle in temperament. She was solemn, quiet, and often seemed to be trying to suss out the actions of the adults around her.

"I wish you wouldn't act so shy about it," Saffron said. "You know you're always welcome in any of our houses. We're all clan, and this was your house first anyway."

"I know, but I still don't want to impose. Everyone needs a little privacy in their den, especially with cubs."

"Family is never an imposition," Saffron said firmly. "Remember, I grew up in a shifter town. I'm used to everyone being all up in everyone else's business all the time."

She'd also had to deal with a dysfunctional clan and an abusive alpha who had tried to force her to marry him. It amazed Cody that she'd come out of it as kind and friendly as she was. But Remy had probably helped with that. Cody's brother, despite his intimidating appearance with a buzz cut and tattoos, was the kindest, sweetest soul that Cody had ever met. He was an adoring father and obviously worshipped the ground that his mate walked on.

As he headed for the bathroom, Cody thought, I wish I knew if that kind of happiness is out there for me.

3. Crystal

Well, Crystal thought, it was a good thing she hadn't managed to find a hired man to help around the place yet, because she was a sweaty, unpleasant mess.

She had been in Pinerock County for two nights now (and at the back of her head, she couldn't help being aware of her ticking clock, measuring off her allotted two weeks of farm exploration). Yesterday she hadn't even managed to make it back to the farm at all. She'd ended up running all over this stupid rural county and its tiny little towns, trying to find the things she needed (camping supplies, cleaning supplies, etc.) and wishing desperately that she'd shopped for them back in St. Louis. At least she had the metal detector already, a nice expensive one that she'd borrowed from a coworker who liked to go hunting for old coins as a hobby. She was pretty sure she'd never have found a store in this whole county that had one of those.

She had looked at some chainsaws, but decided it wouldn't be a good idea to buy one until she figured out whether she could find someone else to clear the road for her. On that front, though, all she'd managed to do was talk to the owner of the feed store in the nearest town, to see if he could put in a word for her with the local ranchers—and then completely forgot about it, until bright and early the next morning, her Fit jolted up to the downed tree across the driveway.

"For crapsakes!" Looked like she'd be carrying all those bags in the backseat up to the house by hand.

She took the cleaning supplies in the first trip. This was her first opportunity to look at the house, and she was hoping to get it livable enough to spend a few nights sleeping there, to save herself the hassle of driving back and forth to town every day.

In the crisp morning sunshine, the old farm felt more abandoned and empty than it had two days ago, when she'd seen it in the warm golden haze of late afternoon. Now, as she walked through the long grass toward the door with shopping bags of detergent and scrub brushes and mousetraps dangling from her hands, the thought occurred to her that she had no idea what she was going to find inside. There could be bears or foxes denning in the house. Maybe vagrants had found it and used it as a crash pad in the years since it was last occupied.

The porch creaked underfoot when she stepped onto it. The downstairs windows had been boarded over, making her add a hammer and nail-puller to her mental list of supplies. There was an old-fashioned rocking chair beside the door, weatherbeaten and timeworn, and a small pile of weathered firewood that had been there so long that moss and a few tiny tree saplings had started to grow up from the cracks.

The door was still firmly locked, which gave her an optimistic feeling. There hadn't been any intruders, of either the two- or four-legged variety.

There were three keys on the key ring her father had left her. With a little jiggling, the lock yielded to the first one she tried. The hinges creaked faintly as she opened the door, and a stifling, musty smell wafted out. Not surprising, if the house had been locked up for 15 years.

The darkness inside the house also made her realize belatedly that another thing she should've brought from town was a flashlight.

"Hello?" she called into the dusty, waiting silence.

She thought she heard something tiny skitter away, but there were no thumps or growls, nothing to indicate the house had become occupied by anything more alarming than a few field mice during the years it had been vacant. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that most of the furniture was still in the house: big, heavy, durable pieces, possibly handmade. The old-fashioned wallpaper was peeling and cracking.

It was going to take a lot of work to get this place nice again, but it didn't look impossible—

What am I thinking? I'm not going to live here! I'm staying here as long as it takes to figure out whether my grandfather left a buried treasure on this property, and then I'm hitting the road, selling this place, and, assuming there is no treasure, using the cash to pay off my family's medical bills.

That's all.

Before she could do anything, though, she needed light. Experimentally she flipped the switch beside the door, but as she'd suspected, the power had long since been shut off. In the absence of a flashlight, prying the plywood off the windows would have to do, and for that, she'd better hope the barn had a hammer or a nail puller or something along those lines.

She left the shopping bags in the doorway and walked through the long grass toward the barn. She felt bolder now, and didn't even hesitate before unlocking the padlock on the barn door from another of the keys on the key ring. The barn door was large and wide, and she had to struggle to swing it open through the weeds.

Light shafted down into the barn from high, unglazed windows, open to the sky. It looked like the furniture in the house wasn't the only thing that had been left behind; a bunch of farm equipment was still here, too. She peeked under a tarp covering the biggest item and discovered that it was a tractor, beat-up and well-used-looking. There were several pieces of equipment on wheels with big blades and large poky bits that she guessed was for tilling, seeding, haying, and that kind of thing. Smaller pieces of machinery leaned against the walls. The rototiller she recognized, and there was another, similar-sized thing with handles and blades that she hoped was for cutting brush. There were also a bunch of hand tools—hoes, axes, and, aha, a hammer and a nail puller.

As she was getting those, something on a shelf above them caught her eye. Crystal stood on tiptoe and took down an old-fashioned kerosene lantern draped in cobwebs. When she tilted it, fuel sloshed inside. There was a box of matches on the shelf beside it.

She might not have a flashlight, but this would work just fine. Grandpa had been a prepared kind of guy.

With the lantern in one hand and the tools in the other, she looked around the barn. The sheer enormity of her task pressed down on her. There were so many places where something of value might be hidden. Two weeks wasn't enough time to search. Two years might not be enough time.

Especially since I have no idea if there's anything here at all ...

But she had to start somewhere. The house seemed like a reasonable place, since she needed to clean it up anyway.

And so she spent the first part of the day housecleaning. Another thing she hadn't thought about was the lack of water; the house had a fully functional bathroom, but nothing happened when she turned on the taps. However, she found an old-fashioned hand-operated pump in the backyard, the tall green kind with a long handle that had to be pumped up and down, and filled some buckets that she brought over from the barn.

The main thing the house needed was airing out, anyway. Once she got the plywood off the downstairs windows, she opened all the windows, upstairs and down, to let the breeze and sunlight start clearing out the mustiness. The upstairs was divided into several bedrooms. Perfect for a large family, she thought, and then, Oh no, here I go again. I'm not staying. This is only temporary. A few days and I'm gone.

The roof didn't leak, so everything inside the house was dry, but all the bedding would need to be aired and probably washed before it could be used. She dragged as much of the furniture as she could move out onto the porch, and draped mattresses and bedding over the porch railing and anywhere else she could find to drape them on.

The kitchen was the worst disaster. Squirrels had gotten into the cabinets, and they'd torn up or carried off anything that wasn't in a can or a jar. Everything that was in a can or jar was 15 years old, which meant some of it was bulging or leaking suspiciously, and the rest just needed to be tossed.

What am I DOING? she asked herself helplessly as she moved from cabinet to cabinet, putting old jars and cans into a couple of buckets that she'd pressed into service as trash bins. Her tied-back hair was coming out of its ponytail, and her jeans were dusty and covered in cobwebs. I'm just going to be camping here for a few days—aren't I? All I really need is a place to roll out my nice new sleeping bag. It doesn't matter if the kitchen is clean. I can heat up cans of soup in the yard over a campfire.

I'm wasting valuable time that I should be spending metal-detecting around the barn and out in the pasture.

But she'd need to walk all the way back to her car to get the metal detector. It seemed like less effort to just keep working on getting the house cleaned up. Tomorrow she could start bright and early on the metal detecting—

Wait ... what was that?

Crystal set down the clanking bucket half full of old, leaking cans, and pulled back the dusty lace curtain fluttering in the breeze coming in through the kitchen window. She thought she'd heard an engine.

She had heard an engine.

There was a truck pulling around the corner of the house.

It was the sort of truck that might as well have had "farm truck" written all over it: dented and scraped, its red paint half hidden under a layer of dust and mud. The windows were rolled down and she could hear the tinny thumping of classic rock.

Who on Earth ... and how did they get here?

The kitchen door opened into the backyard, where the hand pump was located. She hurried down the steps, dusting off her hands and trying to pat the cobwebs out of her hair, as the truck stopped beside a small woodshed and the engine died. The driver's door creaked slightly as it opened, and a lanky guy in jeans, a plaid shirt, and mud-splattered boots stepped down.

"Ma'am, I'm sorry to bother you, but I thought I'd drive up and see if you could use a hand ..." he began, but then his voice died; he just stared at her.

Crystal stopped in her tracks.

He was ... electric. There was no other word for it.

She'd never seen anyone like him before. Certainly not in the city where she had spent most of her life. He exuded raw sex appeal and masculinity. Powerful shoulders strained against his shirt; the sleeves were rolled up to reveal strong, suntanned forearms. His hair was light brown, bleached almost blond by the sun in erratic streaks, and long enough to be pulled back in a ponytail.

His face ... she almost had to push herself to look into his face; it felt like staring into the sun. He was deeply tanned, with crinkles around the eyes from smiling or squinting, though he wasn't smiling right now. His eyes were a light blue-gray, like the sky on a clear winter day, and focused on her as if she was the most amazing, most important thing in the world.

She had never had anyone look at her like that before.

Certainly not a total stranger when she was standing in front of him covered in dust and cobwebs.

Which might be why he was staring like that, come to think of it.

Except she knew it wasn't, because she could feel it too, the electric sense of connection that had happened as soon as he'd stepped out of his truck. There was a current between them, something almost palpable that quivered in the air.

Crystal cleared her throat and held out her hand. "Hi. I'm Crystal Martinez."

He seemed to shake himself back to reality. "Uh ... Cody. Cody Hayes." Now he did smile, making those fine lines around his eyes crinkle up just as she'd imagined. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I was just ... I—Anyway, I'm your neighbor on the next spread."

His hand engulfed hers, warm and strong and slightly rough from work calluses. She'd never realized that a handshake could be erotic, but she'd never shaken hands with someone who looked like that before, either. This close, she could see all the faint sun-freckles grazing his skin, the wisps of nearly-blond hair curling down around his face, the dusting of stubble on his cheek. His shirt was unbuttoned on the top two buttons, giving her a glimpse of chest hair that was light brown verging on blond.

She wanted to touch it. She wanted to touch him.

Heck, what she really wanted was to have him bend her over against the truck, right here and right now—pull down her jeans and pound into her from behind, covering her with that muscular body—

Her powerful response to him astonished her. And from the way he was still holding her hand, looking into her eyes, she was pretty sure she feeling was mutual.

What the heck is happening?

Cody released her hand and took a step back, catching his breath on a short inhale. "Right," he said, almost to himself. "So, I drove over to see if you needed any help up here, ma'am—uh, Ms. Martinez."

"Call me Crystal," she said, slightly out of breath herself. She was damp inside her jeans. Just a handshake and her panties were soaked right through. She tried to snap herself out of it and concentrate on the business at hand. "Um, how did you get here? I mean—obviously you drove. But how? There's a tree down across the road, and my car is blocking it anyway."

"Oh," he said, and grinned, wide and breathtaking, a flash of white teeth in his tanned face. Crystal's heart skipped a beat and her panties dampened a trifle further. "I drove directly over. There's an old road between our ranch and your farm. Nobody's used it in a long time, since there hasn't been anyone living out here since—say, you said your name's Martinez. Any relation to old Cal Martinez?"

"He was my grandfather." Her heart lurched in a way that, for once, had nothing to do with Cody's eyes or his handshake or her acute awareness of his firm, muscled body almost close enough to touch— "Did you know my grandfather?"

"Not very well. I was just a teenager when he died. But he was friends with my folks. We used to come over and help with the haying in the fall." He glanced around. "Place looked pretty different then."

"I bet it did." She looked where he was looking, and tried to see what he must be seeing: the pasture in hay, with sheep or cattle grazing where now there was nothing but young saplings growing up and turning the pasture back into forest.

"Were you close?" Cody asked. "You and your grandpa."

"I never really knew him at all. We used to come out here for family vacations when I was really small, but then my dad and Grandpa had a fight, and we stopped coming. This is the first time I've been back since I was, I don't know, three or four."

"Long time."

"Yeah. So ..." She took a deep breath and sidled a step away from him, providing enough distance to get her brain back online. "What I could really use—" Is you between my legs, riding me like a—No! "—is someone to help out with the work around the property that I don't know how to do. There's a tree down across the driveway, like I mentioned, and I need to get it cut out of the way so I can drive up to the yard instead of having to carry everything. That kind of thing."

"Sure, happy to. Do you have a chainsaw around the place? I could go back over to our spread and get one."

"No, I don't think—well ..." She hesitated. "There might be one in the barn. There's a ton of stuff there. It all came with the place. I've hardly had time to look through it yet."

"That barn there?" Cody asked, jerking his thumb at the structure, and Crystal nodded. "Well, let's go take a look."

He matched his long strides to her shorter ones, so she didn't even have to strain to keep up, a courtesy that Crystal added to her rapidly growing List of Reasons to Ride This Man Like a Frigging Racehorse. "So, you just got into town a few days ago, then?" he asked, and she wrenched her mind back from watching the play of muscles under his shirt.

"Yeah, today is actually my first full day out here. I got into cleaning up the house and trying to make it livable again, and I haven't gotten much else done yet. Anyway, here we are."

She wrestled the barn door open again. Cody gave a low whistle as he looked around.

"I know, right? It looks like all my grandpa's tools and machinery are still here. Everything has just been sitting here since he died, but I guess machines don't go bad, do they?"

"Not really," Cody said. He made a beeline for the row of smaller machines against the wall, the rototiller and so forth. "The engines might need some tuning after sitting without being used for so long. Gasoline can settle out and clog stuff up, especially the mixed gas that you use in a two-cycle engine—" He must have sensed her eyes glazing over. "Sorry. The point is, they might need a little work, but I can easily do that, if you want me to."

"Yes, please," she said eagerly. "I'll pay you, of course. You can just tell me what a fair price is."

Cody looked slightly started at this, as if he hadn't even expected to be paid. Of course she wasn't going to expect him to do the work for free; what did he think of her? "Yeah, sure, but we can talk about that later," he said. "Aha, here we go."

He took down a chainsaw from a shelf between two studs on the wall, while Crystal thought about how laid back these rural people were. In the city, nobody would even so much as mow your lawn without agreeing on a price and possibly signing a contract beforehand.

Cody shook a small gas can that he'd found on the floor underneath the chainsaw's shelf; it sloshed. "See any tools around here anywhere?"

"How about this?" she asked, freeing a large metal toolbox from its prison of dusty spider webs. It was heavy enough that she had to pick it up with both hands.

"Perfect. Let's get some light."

She followed him to the patch of sunlight just inside the door, and watched while he unscrewed the side panel on the chainsaw and poked at what was inside. "This is in really good shape," he remarked. "Your grandpa took care of his tools."

Crystal tried not to preen. It wasn't even a compliment directed at her. But she could tell already that she wanted Cody to think well of her.

"You could go over to the house while I get this running," he went on. "No need to stay unless you want to. It might take a few minutes."

"That's okay. I needed a break from cleaning anyway. It's no bother."

It was Cody she found herself watching, as he worked on the machine: the downcast fringe of his light-brown eyelashes, the way he bit his lower lip when he was concentrating on something, leaving a light imprint of his teeth in his lip's fullness.

She wouldn't mind an imprint of those teeth in her skin ...

What's happening to me? She couldn't remember having such a powerful, visceral response to anyone before. Maybe it was just that it had been way too long since her last date ...

But it didn't feel that way. This felt like something different, something primal, as if her hindbrain had taken one look at him and gone, Yes. That one.

"There we go," Cody said, looking up and flashing her a smile. It was too fast for her to jerk her gaze away and pretend she hadn't been staring at him, so instead their eyes met with a quick, electric connection. The moment held long enough for his smile to begin to fade; his eyes darkened with stirrings of arousal before he wrenched his gaze away. "Right, yeah—I'm just gonna see if it'll start, if you want to step back a little? It's going to be loud."

She stood back. The chainsaw had a pull handle, and Cody gave it an effortless wrench with one strong arm. The engine coughed into life. Cody experimentally squeezed the handle and it revved shrilly. Crystal had to resist the urge to cover her ears.

"Perfect," Cody called over the noise of the machine. He hit a button on the handle and the engine died; her ears rang in the sudden silence. "I can just run down the road and get that cut for you. Want to show me where?"

"Sure. Yes. I'd love to."

She hurried to close the front and back doors of the house, leaving the windows open to let the wind carry out the last traces of mustiness. Cody pulled the truck around to the front of the house, detouring around the collapsing poles of what had probably once been some kind of fence or trellis.

"Looks like there was a nice garden here, back in the day," he remarked as she climbed up to the truck's passenger seat. "I remember old man Martinez, your grandpa, used to grow beans and tomatoes out here. Some fruit trees back of the barn, too."

"Really?" She twisted around in the seat, looking out the back window. It just looked like trees to her.

"Apples and cherries, if I remember right. I can help you look for 'em later, if you want me too."

"Yeah, I'd love to." She pointed ahead, toward the break in the trees where the little hill dropped down to the creek. "That way. You'll have to drive through a creek. That'll be okay for the truck, won't it?"

Cody laughed. "Sure. No problem at all."

She liked his laugh. She liked his smile. Damn it! Why did she have to meet him here, of all places? Why couldn't he have been a customer in the bookstore, or a barista fetching her coffee order at the neighborhood coffee shop she liked?

You know why. She couldn't imagine Cody in the city, with his mud-splattered boots and that wide-shouldered, powerful build that came not from working out in the gym, but from a lifetime of laboring with his hands.

You're not staying, she reminded herself. You know that, right? Two weeks, down to less than a week and a half by now, and she'd be headed back to St. Louis, back to her real life.

But there was no reason why she couldn't have some fun while she was here, right?

4. Cody

She was his mate.

She was his mate.

Remy was going to be telling him I-told-you-so until the end of time, and he didn't even care.

He wasn't sure if it was just the mate-bond making her seem perfect, or if she really was perfect, not that it mattered much. She was the perfect height, the perfect amount of curvy. Her dark ponytail flipped in the perfect way. Even the smudge of dirt on her dusky cheek drew his attention to her full lips and accentuated the perfection there.

She was cute and beautiful and amazing and he got, oh how he got, why Remy had been willing to fight a whole shifter biker gang for Saffron, why Gannon had challenged a much bigger alpha grizzly in a fight he couldn't possibly win for Daisy. He would have fought a thousand alphas if Crystal's life was in danger.

Crystal. Even her name was perfect. It sounded small and delicate and lovely, but with rugged toughness underneath. Like her.

"Have you lived here for long?" Crystal asked, as he drove through the small creek at the base of the hill. "Oh, wait, you said you knew my grandfather, so you must've lived out here all your life, or at least most of it."

"All my life," Cody confirmed. "We've owned the place next door for generations. My cousin Alec owns it now."

"Do you like it?" she asked, giving him a sultry look from those long-lashed eyes.

"I love it," he said wholeheartedly. "Ranching is my life."

But even as he said it, he wasn't sure if it was true anymore. His entire life had been devoted to the ranch, but now ...

Now, a part of his life belonged to her. And maybe all of it, soon.

"What about you?" he asked. "This must be a big change for you, moving back here."

"Moving?" Her quick look was wide-eyed. "Oh, no. I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression. I'm not fixing up the ranch to move into it. I'm fixing it up to sell."

"Sell?" he repeated, thinking for an instant that he'd heard wrong.

"Yes, I'm only here for two weeks and then I'm headed back to Missouri. I live in St. Louis."

Cody's bear, which had been curled contentedly in his chest, basking in the presence of their mate, woke with a gruff snort. Leaving? What? No, she can't!

Settle down, you big idiot, Cody retorted. She hardly knows us yet. She just got here. And she's human, so I don't know even know whether she feels the mate bond at all.

But she definitely felt something. He could see it in her heated gaze, smell it in the faint tang of arousal on her skin.

So he pushed down the burgeoning panic, most (but not all) of it coming from his bear, and asked, "What do you do in St. Louis?"

"I work in a bookstore. I'm the assistant manager."

A bookstore. Well ... there were little businesses all over, right? There was a used bookstore over in Spring Meadow. Tara and Saffron liked to take trips down there. Maybe she could work there. Or maybe clerking at the gas station in Wildcat Forks would be almost the same thing ...

Stupid, stupid, he accused himself. It's not the same thing at all. But anyway, she just got here. She doesn't even know the place yet. We've got two weeks to show her that she has something to stay for. We can do that, right?

A glimmer of sunlight alerted him to something ahead in the overgrown driveway, and a minute later he pulled to a stop in front of Crystal's little car. He almost wanted to laugh, looking at it. Out in the boonies like this, everyone drove trucks or Jeeps or Subarus. No wonder she'd worried his truck couldn't make it through the creek, if this was what she was used to driving. This little thing didn't even look like it could make it up the hill.

"You drove all the way out here in that?"

"I'm hearing judgment. That's definitely judgment."

"No, not at all," Cody said quickly. "Hey, I bet that car is great for running you around in town. It's just, out like this, you need something that's got some ground clearance."

"It's not like I'm going to buy a new car for a two-week trip." And there it was again, the reminder that she wasn't here for long. Cody wondered if it was only his own hopes that made it sound like there was regret in her tone. "Anyway, you're gonna cut the tree out of the way, right?"

"Right." He opened his truck door and hopped down. As he got the chainsaw out of the back, he said over his shoulder, "Sorry to just leave you hanging. I hope you won't be bored."

"No," she said, sounding slightly choked as she watched him casually sling the chainsaw out of the back of the truck one-handed. "No, I'm sure I won't be bored at all."

He decided to take her at her word. "Well, stay back there by the truck so you won't be in any danger."

He revved the machine and got to work sawing the log out of the way. It was a hot day; his shirt was quickly drenched with sweat, clinging to his skin. He looked up to make sure Crystal was staying back. She was leaning against the truck, and her gaze on him was hot enough to scorch.

She feels the bond. His bear was smug.

We can't be sure of that. But the way she was looking at him made him think his bear was right.

He needed to talk to one of his cousins' human mates. Tara or Charmian or Daisy could tell him if they'd felt the bond immediately or if they had needed some time. It was a subject that he'd never even thought to broach with them before. Of course, when he didn't have a mate of his own, it was also a subject he'd never had much desire to dwell on.

Things were different now.

What happens to us if our mate leaves? His bear was plaintive.

Nothing. We aren't going to lose our mate.

But she wants to leave.

Cody gritted his teeth and bit the chainsaw into the log, sending up a shower of sawdust. Nothing was as single-minded as a bear once it got fixated on something.

Even if she did leave, though—even if the worst came to pass and he couldn't convince her to stay—there was another option.

He could go with her.

He'd never been able to imagine himself living anywhere other than here. Even when he'd left to take some college courses in agribusiness, he'd known all along that he was coming back. And it had still been difficult.

Could he live in the city?

If our mate is there, it's home. But even his bear sounded uncertain.

"There we go." He swiped the back of his hand across his sweaty forehead and put the chainsaw back in the bed of the truck. He'd cut the log into segments, each about a foot and a half long. "Want to help me load these?"

"In the truck bed, you mean?" But she gamely picked one up. Oh yes, city girl Crystal had all the makings of a rancher. She would love it here, he just knew it; all he had to do was show her.

"Yeah, no sense letting perfectly good firewood go to waste. I can split it up for you."

"What, for the ranch house, you mean? Oh, that's so kind of you. It'll be a great benefit for the new owners."

Cody tried not to let the mention of her all-too-imminent departure puncture his pleasure at working side by side with his mate. He enjoyed her voluptuous curves as she bent to pick up each piece of cut wood. When they'd loaded it into the truck bed, Crystal leaned on the side of the truck and wiped her forehead.

"The day's really getting too hot to work outside. I should've done it the other way around, started with the yard work in the morning and then cleaned the house in the afternoon. Not to mention that, after cleaning all day, I'm bushed now. And starving." She turned to him with a smile. "Cody, have you had lunch yet? Want to show me where the good restaurants are?"

He'd had a sandwich back at the ranch, but he was already hungry again. Anyway, even if he'd just had a seven-course meal, he wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to have lunch with his mate. "I could sure eat. Trouble is, we don't really have a lot of five-star eateries around here. Nothing like what you're used to in St. Louis, I'm sure. Actually, the only restaurants in the nearest twenty miles are Marge's Diner in Wildcat Forks, and the Boss Hog, but that's a biker bar on the highway."

"Wildcat Forks is the little town at the crossroads, right?" Cody nodded, and she grinned. "I'm staying in the motel there. I had dinner last night at the diner you're talking about. It's a nice place; I like it."

"They have great burgers, and pretty good meatloaf on Thursdays."

"I could really use a burger right now."

"I'll buy," Cody offered. "Let me welcome you to Pinerock County with one of Marge's famous burgers."

"I will absolutely take you up on that." She had dimples, he noticed. There was nothing about her that wasn't perfect. Just being this close to her made him yearn to reach out and stroke her skin with his fingertips, find out if it was as soft as it looked ...

"And you can tell me about my grandfather," she went on, and Cody jolted out of his brief fantasy. "I'm sure you must have some stories about this place when it was still a working farm."

"I didn't know your grandpa very well," Cody protested. "I was just a teenager when he died. Don't want you to be disappointed or anything."

Dimples again. "Tell you what. I promise not to be disappointed if you'll tell me what you remember."

Dazzled by her smile, by the intoxicating presence of his mate, what else could he say? "Of course I will."

5. Crystal

Over burgers at the diner, with their knees tantalizingly close together under the plastic table, Cody told her what he recalled of the old Martinez farm. It sounded like her grandfather had been quite a character, Crystal thought, which certainly fit with a guy who had supposedly hidden a fortune somewhere around his property.

She wished she dared tell Cody the truth about why she was asking so many questions. She knew he thought it was just curiosity about an elderly relative she'd hardly met. And it was that; she was fascinated by his stories of a man she only remembered as a large, imposing presence who'd argued with her father a lot.

But she also hoped to get an idea of what her grandfather might have considered a suitable hiding place, and for that matter, what sort of thing might be hidden in it. At this point, she had no idea what she was looking for: a stash of old coins, a safe with money in it, some sort of valuable antique item. Her father hadn't known; all he knew was that his father had hinted at some kind of valuable inheritance, but never told him what it was.

And listening to Cody's stories, even while she was laughing as he told her about the time their two families almost ended up in a feud over one of her grandfather's cattle who strayed onto the Circle B and got mixed up with their stock, she couldn't help thinking that not a single one of Cody's stories about her grandfather even hinted that anyone else in town thought he had a treasure buried on his land.

There might not be anything at all.

In which case I have to sell the farm; I have no choice. Otherwise my dad's medical bills will bankrupt the whole family.

She hadn't realized she would feel so conflicted about it. Before she'd driven out here, she thought it would be pretty easy. She'd either find a treasure, or she wouldn't. At the end of her allotted two weeks, she'd find a real estate agent to list the farm for her, and she would head back to St. Louis.

But she hadn't expected the sense of instant connection that hit her as soon as she set foot on the farm. Nowhere she'd lived had ever made her feel that way before. She'd always considered herself a city girl to the core, but as soon as she saw the farm, she felt as if she'd come home.

And so far, the deprivation of living in a rural county hadn't bothered her nearly as much as she thought it would. She was used to being able to see concerts and symphonies, to buy food from all around the world right down the street from her apartment. But she liked the little diner; she liked the solitude and the sound of birdsongs.

And leaving would mean leaving Cody ...

We've only just met, she thought desperately, as he gave her a smile that made her stomach do loops and flips. This is ridiculous! What am I supposed to do, rearrange my whole life for a guy I've only known for a couple of hours?

But she'd dated a lot of guys in the urban dating scene, and not a single one of them gave her that sense of instant connection that she'd felt with Cody. Back at the truck, she'd had to struggle not to just climb onto him. Even now, every time his knee brushed hers, it was like a jolt of electricity went through her, a little thrill that shot straight to the heat between her legs.

I'm sitting here having a burger with this guy, and I'm getting more turned on than I've ever been. What's wrong with me?

Maybe this was what it was like when you found The One.

And if he is The One, how can I even think about going back to St. Louis without him?

She realized suddenly that the conversation at the table had fallen into a lull; Cody had wrapped up an anecdote about her grandfather and she hadn't moved to fill the gap. She'd been too busy staring at Cody, lost in his blue-gray eyes and distracted by her urge to reach across the table and touch the rough dusting of stubble catching the light slanting through the window.

"Sorry," Cody said, and Crystal forced herself back to reality. "You must be getting bored, listening to me ramble."

"No," she said quickly. "I'm not bored in the slightest. I'm the one who asked you, remember? I hope I'm not boring you, making you talk about the Martinez farm all day."

"Not at all. I love this place. This whole county, I mean. After living here all my life, there's hardly a part of it that's not full of memories. Heck, right here in this diner is where my cousin Axl met his ma—er, his wife, Tara. She was working here as a waitress."

Cody hesitated as if he was thinking about saying something else, but before he could get around to it, the waitress bustled over to refill their Cokes. As she turned to go, she said, "Just kiss already! Watchin' you from the counter, it's like slow torture."

"Thanks, Sammie Jo!" Cody called after her. A blush climbed his face under the suntan.

Crystal could feel her cheeks getting hot, too. "Is this what living in a small town is like?"

"All the time," Cody sighed. He glanced around the diner, where the early dinner crowd were starting to trickle in—mostly farmers in workboots or elderly couples. "As much as I love small-town life, it can be hard to get privacy sometimes."

"You know," Crystal said, her heart hammering, "we could go somewhere more private."

Cody turned his summer-storm eyes on her. "Got somewhere in mind?"

"Well, I have this motel room right around the corner ..."

Cody's eyes dilated, going dark with lust. Even through her own growing arousal, Crystal was fascinated; she'd never seen that happen to anyone before.

"Yes," he said hoarsely. "Yes ... I'd like that."

Cody threw a handful of bills on the table, and escorted her out with a hand lightly touching her elbow. Just that light touch on her skin was enough to make her knees wobbly.

She'd never had it this bad for anyone, especially not someone she'd barely met. But just like the family farm felt like home, Cody didn't feel like a stranger. On some deep level, she felt as if she'd always known him, as if their souls had twinned when they'd been born and they were only now finding their way back to each other.

By the time they got to the parking lot, the heat between them had grown unbearable, a quivering untapped well of energy seeking a release. When she turned to look up at him, the intensity of his gaze made her gasp. With her lips already parted, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world for Cody to lean down and for her to stretch up. Their mouths came together like a circuit closing.

She lost all sense of time. When she surfaced from the kiss, it was to find Cody gazing into her eyes as if mesmerized, one hand on her face and the other resting just above the swell of her hip.

"Motel?" he breathed, staring into her face like he wanted to memorize every line.

"Motel."

***

The Stumble On Inn was right around the corner, an L-shaped strip of a dozen doors, their green paint peeling and faded. As far as Crystal had been able to tell, she was the only guest.

They were kissing as they tumbled through the door, their hands all over each other's bodies. Cody kicked the door shut, and they stumbled to the bed and collapsed on top of the freshly fixed sheets.

Just kissing him with all their clothes on already had Crystal so aroused she thought she might lose control and go straight over the edge the moment he touched her inner thighs. She couldn't imagine what having their clothes off was going to be like—and at the same time, she wanted him all over her, needed him all over her. Her entire body quivered with raw desire.

Cody pushed his knee between her legs, and she opened for him, grinding against his thigh as they rolled together on the bed. She struggled to unbutton his shirt while they writhed together and finally gave up, giving it a tremendous yank that parted it in front, revealing his T-shirt-clad chest and sending buttons scattering across the bed.

"Sorry!" she gasped against his mouth.

"Don't care!" was his indistinct answer.

Now she could get his hands on the hard planes of his chest. His hands were under her T-shirt, fumbling with her bra clasp. He managed to undo it; now the bra was flopping loose on her chest. She untangled herself from Cody long enough to sit up, kneeling beside him, and quickly stripped the T-shirt over her head. The bra followed it an instant later, flung across the room.

"You're gorgeous," Cody whispered. He reached up to cup her breasts in his hands, stroking his thumbs over her nipples and sending little electric zings through her.

No one had ever said that to her before. She liked her body, but a lot of guys weren't into that kind of thing—the little rolls over the top of her jeans, the gentle curve of her tummy. She wasn't supermodel-thin and was never going to be.

But Cody was looking at her with eyes dark with lust, and something softer, deeper, as if he'd been waiting his whole life for this moment.

She didn't know what was happening between them, but one thing she did know: if he kept just lying there looking at her, especially with the way he was rubbing her nipples, she was going to go out of her mind from frustrated arousal.

Swinging a leg over him, she straddled his waist. Cody's hips involuntarily bucked and she felt the graze of his erection, straining at his jeans. She grinned, rubbing her wet sex against him through the fabric of her soaked underwear and jeans.

"Watch it, woman," Cody growled. He took hold of her around the waist. "What are you trying to do, drive me out of my mind?"

"I'm hoping that's what you're gonna do to me." She writhed, rubbing on him. "But you've got too many clothes on."

His lips parted in a wild grin, and he lifted her and rolled over in one smooth motion, so she was pressed down to the bed with Cody on top of her. "Drive you out of your mind? Like this?" he asked in a voice that was rough with need, nipping at her collarbone and the hollow at the base of her neck. "Like this?" He took one of her nipples in his mouth, laving it with his tongue while he ground slow circles with his hips, his erection brushing her thigh on each downstroke.

"Like that," she gasped, hips rising to meet his next thrust. Ineffectually clumsy as lust rose in her, she struggled with his T-shirt, trying to strip it off, trying to touch him everywhere. Their hips were moving in sync now, even though they hadn't experienced union yet. "I need you—need all of you—oh—"

Cody moved his attention to her other breast before finally sitting up and peeling off the T-shirt and the ripped plaid shirt over it, flinging them aside. He undid his jeans one-handed and lifted his hips to slide them down. The boxers went after them.

And now he was naked on top of her, and he was glorious. All the promise she'd sensed under his clothes was fulfilled in him. He wasn't overly bulky; instead he had the lean muscle of a man who'd gotten it from hard work rather than working out. His body hair was the same light, gold-dusted brown as the rest of his hair, trailing in a fine line down his flat, hard belly to the nest of curls framing his massive, fully erect cock.

He was huge. She caught her breath at the sight of it. One part of her couldn't help thinking Is that going to FIT? but most of the rest of her was already on fire with the anticipation of how his thickness and girth would stretch her inner walls, the heat as he'd slide in—

She groaned and wriggled her hips in wordless need. Cody still took his time taking her pants off, sliding them down one leg at a time. He kissed her inner thigh and nuzzled against the damp crotch of her panties.

In a small, distant part of her mind, she was glad she'd worn the black silk ones today. It was as if she'd known she'd be meeting someone who was worth the good underwear.

Cody probed at her mound with his tongue through the fabric of her panties. Her hips lifted and she groaned again. Cody mouthed at her throbbing clit and finally, finally pulled down her panties as she gasped in reaction.

She was so aroused that just the brush of the air on her clit sent a hot quiver through her. When he pressed a finger into her, then two, she arched her head back and gripped two fistfuls of the sheet.

"How much longer do you think I can hold out, Cody Hayes?" she gasped.

He dipped his tongue briefly between her folds, a quick lap that made her shudder, and then, at last, he was leaning over her and guiding himself into her and—ah—

He went in slow, aware of his size and careful not to hurt her. He needn't have worried; she was so wet and open that she took him all, down to the base, tilting her hips up instinctively to give him better access.

"Okay?" he murmured, bent over her with his face pressed into her sweat-damp neck.

"Oh God," was the only response she could manage. She pushed her hips against his, the inner pressure singing down every nerve ending.

He started to move, slowly, the fullness of his cock gliding against her soaking wet inner walls. It was amazing. It was like no sex she'd ever had before. Her entire body was an endless hum of pleasure, tingling down to her fingertips.

Vaguely she was aware of Cody nuzzling against her neck. His teeth brushed her skin lightly, sharp little zings on her incredibly sensitive nerves.

His thrusts sped up, and her hips moved to keep pace, snapping back to meet him each time he bore down. She couldn't have stopped now if she'd wanted to. He pounded into her and she met him every time, rising waves of pleasure lapping through her, mounting to impossible heights.

"Cody—" she gasped, and she heard him call out her name in a rough cry of passion as her head arched back and she came in a lightning flare of sensation. Cody's body bucked and heat filled her as her shudders of orgasm brought him to his own climax.

They pulsed together through the aftershocks and collapsed in a sweaty, sated heap on the bed.

As her ability for rational thought started to trickle back, Crystal kissed him lightly on the corner of his mouth and murmured, "You're heavy."

"Sorry." He rolled off her, and with a little regret, she felt him slip out of her as he softened.

"Wow," she murmured, gazing up at the water-stained motel ceiling. It seemed like a sudden shame that their first time hadn't happened somewhere more, well, magical. The way she felt right now, though, it didn't matter if they'd had sex in the back of his pickup truck. She felt almost high, her head swimming and her body utterly limp with fulfilled pleasure.

She could never imagine being more content than she was at this moment.

6. Cody

The urge to claim his mate had been almost overwhelming, his teeth hovering over her neck, on the verge of leaving a claiming mark. But he had resisted. And now that he'd come down from the sex high, Cody was glad he'd waited. She was human; she didn't know what a mate bond meant.

As he lay beside his mate on the motel bed, the sweat drying on both their bodies, he wondered how to explain. She probably knew about shifters; most humans did. But she didn't know that he was a shifter. And even humans who knew about them had a lot of misconceptions. The only shifters most of them had ever seen had been characters on TV shows, where shifting was just a special effect.

How could he tell her in a way she could understand and accept?

He needed to talk to the rest of his clan, he decided. Three of the other four bears in his clan were mated to humans. They would surely have good advice for how to explain the situation to Crystal without confusing her or scaring her off. Of the various humans on the ranch, he got along particularly well with Tara. She was friendly and easy to talk to, and she was always there, since she worked from her home office. Charmian spent a lot of time away at her midwife job, and Daisy was usually back up in the hills at Gannon's cabin, so Tara and Saffron were the mates that he knew best. And Saffron was a fellow shifter, so she wouldn't be much help in this particular case. She and Tara were close, though, having become best friends as the only two moms among the Circle B mates, so far.

Yes. That was a good plan. He'd talk to Tara and ask her how Axl had told her about shifters and fated mates.

When he sat up, Crystal stirred beside him. She rolled over and yawned. "Wow," she murmured. "I think I almost fell asleep there. Sorry."

"You never need to apologize to me." He stroked a lock of sex-tousled hair away from the perfect curve of her cheek. "Asleep or awake, you're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

She smiled sleepily, but then it morphed into a slight frown. "Let's not get too carried away here, buddy. You've only just met me, after all. You haven't seen me when I'm tired and cranky, or before my first cup of coffee in the morning."

"It doesn't matter. I don't think you could ever look less beautiful to me than you do right now."

"Mm-hm. Let's just wait to make that kind of declaration until you've had to deal with PMS Crystal." She yawned again, stretched, and sat up, swinging her legs off the bed. Cody couldn't help drinking in every move, every luscious curve of her. "As wonderful as this was, and as much as I hate to make you think I don't want to lie here and cuddle until midnight, all I was doing just then was thinking about more things I need to buy for the farm. I should go hit some stores before everything starts to close, so I can make a bright and early start at the farm in the morning. Er, have you seen my underwear?"

Cody retrieved her panties from the foot of the bed and handed them to her.

"Thanks. Do I smell? I do, don't I?" She sniffed her armpit. "I could take a quick shower, I guess. Or ... no ... maybe if I just don't stand too close to people—"

"You smell wonderful." Cody kissed her bare shoulder. "Want a guide? Let me know what you need, and I can show you where to buy it."

"Don't you have to get back to your ranch?" she asked, reaching for her discarded jeans. "I mean, out here, 'til the cows come home' has a pretty literal meaning, and your cows are going to be coming home anytime, aren't they?"

Cody had to laugh. "I'm not the only person on the ranch. There are other people to handle the chores. But ... you're right. They don't know where I am, and I do have responsibilities up there."

And also down here. But until he had that talk with her about fated mates, he couldn't explain why he needed to stick so close to her. Being parted from her was going to feel like having a part of his soul torn away, even though she was just a few miles away; he could sense it already. But ...

But for now, she had her life and he had his.

A life he'd give up in an instant if she asked him to. But he couldn't explain that to her, not yet. One thing he did know, from getting to know his clan brothers' human mates, was that humans had very particular ideas about how relationships were supposed to grow and develop. Being willing to change your entire life for a person you had just met wasn't how humans thought a relationship was supposed to work.

Above all, he didn't want to give her any cause for uncertainty or concern.

So, for now, he let himself be content with a long, lingering goodbye kiss at the door of her motel room. As their lips parted, Crystal looked up at him with big, anxious brown eyes. "Are you sure you don't mind me running off like this? It's nothing to do with you. And definitely nothing to do with today. Today was amazing. It's just ..."

"It's just that you have things to do. I get that." He brushed his hand across her cheek. "I'll see you bright and early at the farm tomorrow, how does that sound?"

"It sounds like the best thing ever. In fact, how about I bring breakfast? I can have Marge package up a couple of breakfasts to go at the diner—what are you grinning about?"

"I know the diner is called Marge's, but her name's actually Sammie Jo. And don't ask me about the story behind it. I think there was a Marge at one point, but Sammie Jo's been the face of the operation since I was a kid."

"Fine." She gave a playful little tug on his ponytail. "I'll have Sammie Jo box us up two breakfasts. Ham and eggs sound good?"

"Tell her I want my usual. She'll know what that means."

"Amazing," she murmured. "Small towns." She kissed him again, and Cody's hands drifted to cup her generous buttocks. "Mmmm. Yes. I'd better go or I'll never get out of here."

"Would that really be so terrible?"

"If I want to make it to the town that actually has stores before all of them close, yes."

"That's Spring Meadow, the county seat. My cousin Axl runs the sheriff's office there."

"Are you related to literally everyone in the county, Cody?"

"I'll have to introduce you around. If you want me to." He kissed her again, a light brush of his lips on the corner of her mouth. "We should have a barbecue up at the ranch. You can put faces to all of these names I keep dropping."

They're going to want to meet my mate. But that was part of the whole thing he didn't quite know how to talk about yet.

And now she was frowning. "Cody, I'd like to meet your friends, but this is starting to sound awfully like meeting your family, you know, in the 'this relationship is serious' kind of way, and I don't want you to think—I mean, I have to go back to St. Louis at the end of all of this, you know that."

"Shhh." He brushed her cheek with his fingertips. "I know you're leaving in two weeks—"

"More like a week and a half—"

"But that's still a week and a half." He rested his cheek against hers, bowing his head so he could breathe in the smell of her. "Let's just enjoy it and not think about the future too much."

Crystal sighed gustily against his neck. "Not think about the future. Good luck with that. Sometimes it seems like all I do is think about the future."

"Well, maybe it's time to just live day to day for a while. Settle into the natural rhythms of the world. The sun comes up, the stock needs to be fed, the sun goes down. It's simple."

Another sigh, so sad that he yearned to lift the weight of the world off her shoulders and carry it for her. "Nothing's ever that simple. But thank you."

Cody kissed her neck. "You better get going or everything will be closed."

"Yes. I should." She peeled herself away, very slowly, with a certain amount of kissing and light, affectionate touches along the way. "Remind me again why I'm not just spending the rest of the day in bed with you and having sex about four more times?"

A heat and tightening in his groin made his cock's opinion known. Down, boy. "Because you're responsible, and I'm responsible, and we both have responsibilities elsewhere."

"Oh right." She grinned, gave his hand a tight squeeze, and then turned to lock the motel door behind them. "Ah, well. Until tomorrow."

"What do you want me to bring?" Cody asked as they walked back to their vehicles; he'd just parked beside hers in an empty space, figuring nobody was going to mind. "I saw a brush-cutter in the barn."

"Is that what that is? I know there's a rototiller. My mom's parents in Illinois have a garden, so I'm familiar with those."

"Everything that's been stored in the barn is probably going to need some work to get it running properly. How about I just bring some tools over in the morning? I can do an inventory, see what you have and if any parts are needed for repairs."

"That would be awesome. Thank you so much. And, uh ..." She hesitated by her car. A blush deepened the slightly dusky tone of her skin. "We haven't really talked about me paying you for the work yet. This doesn't really feel like the right time, after we ... uh ..."

"Don't worry about it," Cody said quickly. "We can settle up later. Right now, let's just focus on getting your farm in good shape again."

Crystal took a deep, relieved breath. "Yes. That's a good plan." She turned to unlock the car door, then turned back to him. "Oh, I almost forgot. Do you have a bird book I could borrow, back at your ranch? I want to learn some of the local birds."

"Sure," Cody said, his heart lifting. "I'll bring one over in the morning."

Her answering smile was brilliant, and it kept him warm and light as he got into his truck and waved to her out the window.

She liked it here; he could tell. Some part of her heart yearned for this place just like his did.

Of course it does. We're mates. We're meant to be compatible, the only people in the world for each other.

On some level, she loved it here. She had to. She wouldn't be his true, fated mate if she didn't.

***

Cody never got tired of the view of the Circle B as he drove into the ranch yard. It was late afternoon, the sun slanting long and golden across the mountains behind the ranch. The hills were dotted with grazing cattle. He drove into the circle formed by the three ranch houses, with the barns on the far side, and parked in front of his trailer.

For all of his life, everything he'd needed had been here. He'd never even imagined there might be anything he would ever want that wasn't here.

Could he leave, if Crystal wanted to?

Yes, he decided. A life with her was worth it, no matter where it took him.

But he hoped he could find a way to change her mind. He hoped it was a choice he wouldn't be forced to make.

"Cody!" Saffron called, waving from the porch of the house she and Remy shared as he got out of the truck. "Yoo-hoo! We made extra meatloaf! Do you want to eat over here with us, or have me bring a plate across?"

"No need to put yourself to any trouble."

Saffron made a sound like "pfft" and went back into the house, with a squirming Baz tucked under her arm like a toddler-sized football.

Cody got out of the truck and went into the trailer to change. One thing about living around a bunch of shifters: if he didn't want them to know he'd just had sex that afternoon, he'd better get cleaned up a little bit. The fact that his shirt was missing most of its buttons was probably a dead giveaway as well.

He heard the door of the trailer bang while he was in the trailer's cramped shower, so he made sure to cover up as much as possible with a towel and his wrinkled shirt before cautiously poking his head out, but there was no one else there now. Saffron had come and gone, leaving a foil-covered plate on the table with a sticky note that had a smiley face scribbled on it in marker.

Cody sighed and got a clean shirt out of the closet. He knew the others meant well, and he appreciated it, but it still made him feel a little bit like a guest in his own home. For years, the bachelors of the Circle B had split the cooking duties among themselves. Now Saffron and Tara usually took turns cooking for him and bringing food across the yard. The one thing that was still refreshingly the same was that Alec, the clan alpha, made breakfast for everyone on most mornings, inviting the whole clan—or at least anyone who was available—up to the big ranch house for home-grown eggs, home-smoked ham, pancakes, and bread fresh from the oven in the old-fashioned cookstove.

He had to grin to himself; when Crystal had offered to pick up breakfast from Marge's Diner, he hadn't thought to warn her how much food was involved in one of Marge's "usuals" for the Circle B Ranch boys. Farmers ate a lot. Shifters ate a lot. Put the two together, and you needed enough food for a small army.

He ate alone, sitting on the trailer's steps and watching life on the ranch go on around him. Tara came out on the porch of the house she shared with Axl and had a hollered conversation across the yard with Alec, mostly having to do with whether Alec's mate Charmian could pick up a few things on her way home from work, since Axl was going to be working an evening shift at the sheriff's station and she was almost out of diapers, which she'd forgotten to pick up while she was in town earlier that day.

"Call her yourself, woman!" Alec bellowed back. He was fixing one of the posts on the front porch of the big ranch house, and didn't even pause in his hammering to fire his answer back in Tara's direction. "I'm not your answering service!"

"I'm trying to be courteous to you as the alpha, you big ox, but if you want me to just go over your head and make decisions, I can happily do that—"

Tara and Alec really liked each other, though any newcomer might think the exact opposite. But Cody knew better. He'd watched them advance from a cautious truce to a truly sibling-like tendency to give each other shit. Theirs was a hard-won affection, and all the more genuine for it.

Tara had been the first mate to come live on the ranch; in fact, she was probably the first human ever to live there. Cody still remembered vividly how Alec and Axl had ended up in a dominance battle over her. They'd nearly killed each other that day. As a traditional alpha, following in his father's footsteps, Alec had resisted change coming to the Circle B with everything in him.

But mating with Charmian had mellowed him out more than Cody would ever have believed possible. Now he could usually be found playing with the new cubs or playfully responding in kind to Tara's good-natured teasing. Charmian's scruffy little dog Bucket was lying beside him right now, head on his paws, watching Alec work on the porch railing while waiting for his mistress to come home.

Through the open window of Remy and Saffron's house, the sound of the family's quiet voices and little Baz's high-pitched giggle could be heard. The cattle lowed softly to each other in the pasture.

This was home. It had always been home.

But no matter what happened with Crystal, things were going to change. Whether he went to live with her in St. Louis—which everything in his soul rebelled against—or brought her to live here with him, and built her a house with his own hands, like Remy and the rest of the clan had built a house for Saffron, it would all be different ...

He lost himself temporarily in pleasant thoughts of planning out the location of each room, deciding how many bedrooms they'd need for the future children they'd have, locating the kitchen to receive the warmest morning sun. He didn't know what kind of things Crystal liked yet, but he wanted to give all of them to her. She'd mentioned birds, so maybe they could have a bird feeder in front of the living room window, where she could watch the birds whenever she liked.

But chasing on the heels of that daydream came another thought: Crystal's family farm.

It was really just a stone's throw away from the Circle B, with the old road connecting them. On the Martinez farm, they wouldn't actually be any farther away than Gannon and Daisy, who were technically still on Tanner-Hayes land, back up in the hills at Gannon's cabin.

And the main part of the ranch was getting a little crowded. It was nice to have everyone close together, but there were times when Cody really enjoyed the solitude of taking a horse out to one of the back pastures to check on the stock. Just him, the sunshine, and the creak of his horse's harness. And the families on the ranch just kept growing. Tara and Saffron already had their cubs, and he wouldn't be surprised if more would be coming along anytime. Pretty soon it was going to be a whole little village up here. Adding another entire household might crowd the ranch yard to the point where people were going to start tripping over each other.

He liked Crystal's family farm. It wasn't home yet, but, if Crystal was living there, it might start to feel that way.

His bear liked the idea too.

Don't get ahead of yourself, he scolded. First things first. Crystal didn't know about fated mates yet. She hadn't decided if she was going to stay.

He needed to get Tara's take on this. She was sensible and discreet. She wouldn't go telling the entire clan about his business if he asked her not to. And, if Axl was still in town, this would be a good time to talk to her.

He left his plate in the sink of the trailer's tiny kitchen to wash and return to Saffron later, and walked across the yard in the soft golden glow of the setting sun. The sound of an engine made him look over his shoulder. Charmian's Jeep was just driving into the yard. Alec, who was bent over sanding the repaired porch post, stood up and watched her park. Even from here, Cody could see his body language relax, his serious demeanor giving way to something brighter. Charmian got out of the Jeep and Alec trotted down the steps with the tail-wagging dog beside him.

Charmian sprang into his arms and he buried his face in her neck, lifting her entirely off the ground—she was a good foot shorter than any of the uniformly tall Pinerock bear shifters.

He could have that.

Would have that, he hoped.

Charmian wiggled an arm free of Alec's embrace and waved to Cody. "Hey! Are you going over to Tara and Axl's?"

"Sure am," he agreed, changing his direction and loping over to them instead. "Want me to take something over for her?"

"Yeah, I have some stuff in the back. Alec ... erk ... put me down!"

"Didn't hear the magic word." Alec's eyes danced with humor. It was hard to believe this was the quiet, serious alpha Cody had known all his life.

"Put me down, you overgrown—no, that's probably not it." Now Charmian's eyes were sparkling too. "How about this?" She closed her mouth over his, planting a kiss on him that was so heated Cody felt his ears turning pink.

When she finally peeled her lips off his, Alec gazed at her with a dazed expression and then lowered her carefully to the ground. "Yeah," he said weakly. "That'll do."

Charmian grinned and turned back to the Jeep. "So Tara texted me a shopping list. I brought diapers and a new laser cartridge for her home office printer. Here you go—and thanks!"

"Glad to help," Cody told her. He crossed the yard with the bags in his hand and a bounce in his step. Thanks, Charmian. Now he had a plausible, non-Crystal-related excuse to talk to Tara.

He mounted the steps to Tara's porch and knocked.

"Come in!" Tara said, popping up unexpectedly in the open window beside the door and making him jump. "Sorry," she added, stifling a smile at his reaction. "I was just doing some light work on my laptop by the window. I've put Lexie down for the evening, so come in quietly, please."

He did so, also taking care to wipe his feet in front of the door. The house had been redecorated since he and Remy used to live here, and now the old-fashioned pieces of furniture, most of them built by his and Remy's parents and grandparents, were mixed with Tara's things from the city, assorted expensive-looking antiques and art pieces. Cody didn't know much about art or interior decorating, but to his eye, the whole thing worked a lot better than he would have expected. Everything harmonized—was that the right word? But then, Tara had a good eye for that kind of thing.

"You might hear some babbling and cooing," Tara said, patting the baby monitor beside her. She was curled up on a couch under the window, one of the new pieces with a brocade cover. "She's learning to fall asleep by herself now. It works pretty well as long as you under no circumstances interact with her after she's been left alone. Would you like coffee?"

"Sure. Uh, I brought—" He held out the bags.

"Ah! Thank you. I thought I heard Charmian's voice out there." She hopped up from the couch. "I'll grab you a cup of coffee as soon as I put this away."

"It's okay. I know where everything is."

He was in the kitchen, stirring a little creamer into his coffee, when she came back from stowing the supplies he'd brought, the baby monitor in one hand. She set it on the counter and accepted the cup of coffee he handed her: a dash of cream and one packet of calorie-free sweetener, just like he knew she preferred.

"Thanks for bringing the things over from Charmian." She smiled. "How'd your day as a hired man on someone else's ranch go?"

Oh right, the family grapevine. Of course everyone knew about it.

"It went pretty well." Understatement of the year. "I'll be over there again tomorrow. Uh ... can I ask you a personal question?"

Tara's blue eyes sparkled. "Sure. We're all family here. I gotta warn you, if it's anything personal about me and Axl, I might need to have him—"

"Not like that," he said hastily, blushing. "Well, it is about you and Axl, but mainly I just wanted to ask—how did you know that he was your mate? Speaking as a human, I mean." As he asked the question, his eye was drawn to the little crescent-moon scar of the claiming mark on her neck, half hidden under the waterfall cascade of her red hair. "What did you feel?"

Her smile quirked up at the side. "If you'll recall, he was arresting me at the time, so what I felt was mainly annoyance."

He was so used to Tara living here, as one of the family, that it was very strange to remember she'd been a fugitive at the time, and Axl, as the county sheriff, had been trying to bring her in. "Wow. I actually did forget."

"It was quite a sight, too. I'd taken off my skirt to run through the woods, so he caught me halfway up a fence I was trying to climb over, wearing nothing from the waist down except my panties and shoes. Since he's a gentleman, he gave me his shirt to wrap around my waist, except I'd thrown a cup of coffee on him earlier, so I got to march through downtown Wildcat Forks with a wet shirt draped over my legs."

Cody stared at her. "Uh ... wow. Okay, I don't think I've ever heard quite that much of the story before."

"Few people have," she said dryly. "As you can see, Axl and I didn't get off to the most promising start."

"No kidding." He hadn't realized how lucky he and Crystal had been. They might have some things to work out, but at least he hadn't had to deal with having his mate on the opposite side of the law. "So .. how did he explain things to you? About being a shifter, and fated mates, and all of that."

"Well, he just told me. I guess after you've had to explain to someone that you're a wanted fugitive, framed for a crime you didn't commit and pursued by your father's homicidal business partner, everything else doesn't seem to matter as much."

"So you took it okay?"

Tara looked thoughtful as she sipped from her coffee cup. "I guess it didn't seem entirely real until he shifted for me. That helped a lot. I realized I wasn't afraid of him as a bear; I couldn't imagine him ever harming me. That goes along with being his mate, I think. And of course, it helps that he's just about the sexiest thing I'd ever seen. Still is, come to think of it."

Cody had a bad feeling he was blushing again, especially when Tara reached out and squeezed his arm.

"And are you going to tell me why you're so curious about it all of a sudden?"

"Can't a guy be curious about things?"

"Yes, but I have a feeling this is more than idle curiosity. Have you found her, Cody—the woman you've been hoping to find for so long?"

"I ... think so," he said, hedging.

"If you aren't sure, then she's not. That's one thing I know about shifters. You always know."

Cody had to look away from her affectionate, knowing expression. "Okay, yeah, I'm sure. I knew it the moment I saw her, and my bear knew too. But ... look ... we're still working out some things, so if you could keep it to yourself, I'd really appreciate it."

"I won't breathe a word," she promised. "But you might want to stay away from Gannon for awhile. That guy knows stuff without being told. So far, he's guessed every single time one of us is pregnant before we were sure ourselves, and I think he'll take one look at you and figure out you've found your mate."

"Hmm. Thanks for the warning." She had a point. People tended to underestimate big, quiet Gannon, because he stumbled over words a little bit and spent most of his time in the company of animals—or, lately, his sweet, gentle mate Daisy. But Cody thought it was because Gannon spent so much time as a bear that he was so intuitive at picking up on nonverbal cues from people around him.

"So who is it? Remy said there's a single woman on the Martinez place. Is it her?"

"For a city girl, you sure have picked up the basics of small town life in a hurry."

"Like, never let a good piece of gossip escape unspread?" Tara laughed. "If you think that doesn't happen in the circles I grew up in, then you obviously know nothing about New York high society."

"Nope, you're definitely right about that."

"Oh, Cody." She set her coffee cup down so she could give him a hug. "I'm sorry you and your mate are having problems. You'll work it out, you'll see. If Axl and I could find a happy ending, so can you."

Cody had always thought of humans as relatively soft and small, especially ones like Tara and Daisy who weren't very physical people to begin with, but her arms were surprisingly strong. She'd been learning to work around the farm, not to mention hauling a baby around everywhere. That had to pack some muscle on a person.

Thinking about kids gave him a strange feeling in his chest. Crystal and I could have cubs of our own. Beautiful cubs, with her brown eyes and my lighter-colored hair ...

... If she wants kids. I don't even know that much about her.

"It's not so much that we're having problems," he told Tara as he let her go. "Actually, we're getting along great so far. But I've only just met her, and she doesn't want to stay in Pinerock County."

"Neither did I, when I first got here. This was the last place in the world I wanted to be. And now I can't imagine myself living anywhere else."

"What changed your mind?" he asked hopefully.

"What do you think changed my mind?"

"... Ah."

"You're a great guy, Cody. And I think I understand what you were trying to ask me earlier. Yes, humans do feel the mate bond. We might not recognize it for what it is, the way you do, but we definitely feel it. Just ask any of us. Well," she added, "not Charmian, because I expect she'll deny it to her dying day. It's not scientific enough for her. But she'd walk through fire for Alec, and I can guarantee you she's felt like that since the day she met him, because I've felt that way about Axl, even if I tried to deny it at first. I have one piece of advice for you, though."

He gave her a questioning look.

"Tell her everything. Tell her about being a shifter, if she doesn't already know. Tell her about the mate bond."

"I don't want to scare her away."

"You won't. Oh, it might take her a little while to get used to having her world turned around—trust me—but she's going to be feeling it and not knowing what she's feeling. Let her know what she's found in you. If the two of you really are meant to be, I think she'll have a change of heart about staying."

"I'm afraid I'll mess it up," Cody admitted. "Say the wrong thing."

"You won't. Or, I guess I should say ..." Her smile turned impish. "Sometimes you will. Lord knows Axl has an amazing case of foot-in-mouth disease. But even when things don't go well, you learn to see past it. That's what having a mate means." Her smile faded to something a little sadder. "And I can see you don't believe me. Well, some things you just have to find out for yourself."

She walked him to the door, one arm wrapped around his waist in a sisterly kind of way. As Cody reached for the doorknob, he remembered something he'd almost forgotten. "Do you and Axl have a bird book?"

"Bird book?"

"Yeah, you know, a field guide for birds? I think I remember seeing one up at the big house. Alec is into that kind of thing. I could go ask him."

"No, we might have one here." She stretched on tiptoe, running her finger along the spines of the books on the shelves lining the living room. Books were a necessity up here, especially in the winter, with patchy TV reception and the only internet available through the unreliable satellite uplink Tara had insisted on when she'd moved here.

In the main ranch house, where Alec and Charmian now lived, the books were neatly arranged according to Alec's preference for order over chaos. Here, however, spy thrillers and mystery novels were freely mixed with books on livestock diseases and well pump repair. After some searching, Tara gave a little "Aha!" and pulled down a slightly dog-eared book with a cardinal on the cover. "Here you go," she said, passing it to Cody. "Why, did you see a new kind of bird in the pasture?"

"No." He felt his face go slightly pink. "Crystal mentioned she wanted to learn some of the birds around here. I told her I'd bring her a book on birds if I could. I don't know much of what she likes yet, so this seemed like the least I could do."

Tara's expression softened. "Cody, I think you and Crystal are going to be just fine."

7. Crystal

Normally Crystal hated getting up early, but the next morning she was up with the dawn. The diner was already open, catering to the early-morning farmer crowd. Marge—or, no, Sammie Jo, Crystal reminded herself—happily brought her two plastic bags containing several takeout containers of food. Puzzled, she accepted them.

"Are you sure this is the right order? I only wanted two breakfasts."

"No, you wanted one regular breakfast and one Circle B Special," Sammie Jo said cheerfully. "Those boys can eat."

"Apparently so," Crystal murmured. It looked like she had enough food here to feed an entire Boy Scout troop. Or at least half of one.

By now she was getting used to the drive out to the farm from Wildcat Forks. The road no longer seemed quite so rough (she knew exactly where to detour around the worst potholes) and this time, thanks to Cody and his chainsaw, she was able to drive right up to the farmhouse.

Although she'd forgotten about the creek. She stopped the little car on the far side of it, thought about just parking there and walking the rest of the way—but, no, if she did get stuck, Cody would be along soon and could help her out. And giving up on driving to her own house, without even giving it a try, was just too embarrassing.

... My house? When did I start thinking of it as my house? I mean my grandfather's old house, on the farm I'm going to sell.

She clenched her teeth, put the car in gear, and crept across the creek, rocking and jolting over the logs. That part was all right. The short but steep hill on the other side was where she almost lost it; her tires started to spin out, and there was one terrifying instant when she thought the car might be about to roll over backward and realized there were worse things that could happen to her than getting stuck, but in a fit of panic she stamped on the accelerator and the car lurched forward and skidded into the farmhouse yard.

Crystal blew out her breath, carefully peeled her fingers off the steering wheel, and checked to make sure that breakfast hadn't been upended in a big pile in the rear seat. Luckily Sammie Jo had tied the tops of the bags, and everything was still where it should be.

She followed the trail of crushed-down weeds where Cody had driven his truck yesterday, and parked behind the house. As she got out, she looked back at the overgrown disaster of the front yard. People who lived in rural places like this all seemed to have trucks or Jeeps or other four-wheel-drive vehicles. She was starting to see why. If she lived out here, she'd need—

But I don't live here. I live in St. Louis. I don't need a truck.

The growl of a big engine distracted her from her thoughts. A moment later, Cody drove into the yard, waving at her from the open window of his truck.

"Nice timing!" she called. "I just got here."

Cody stepped down, hesitated only briefly, then closed the distance between them with his long strides and swept her into a kiss that left her weak-kneed and breathless.

"Okay," she gasped. "Wow. Uh, hello to you too. I brought breakfast."

"I brought you something too." He handed her a book. "This way you can learn all about the birds here."

"You remembered!" she exclaimed, flattered.

They sat on the back porch steps and ate in the morning sun. Cody was wearing a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top few buttons unbuttoned. It looked almost new, with crisp creases on the sleeves, not like the well-worn plaid shirt he'd been wearing yesterday. It also looked like he'd taken the time to scrape the mud off his boots.

Crystal was flattered—he'd dressed up for her!—and, at the same time, not quite sure how to tell him that she didn't mind a man with some stains on his shirt from hard work. What was important was what was under the shirt, and as she'd seen yesterday, what was under the shirt was very nice indeed.

And she was leaving in less than two weeks. She needed to stop doing this to herself ... to both of them.

But just being close to him filled her with a deep, aching heat. Good thing the bedding was still airing out, or she'd be tempted to drag him off to the bedroom right this minute.

Come to think of it, she'd never made love in a meadow, and there was a perfectly lovely meadow right in front of them ...

Crystal cleared her throat and tried to wrench her mind to more practical things than Cody bearing her down in the grass, Cody's rippling muscles in the morning sun, Cody biting at her neck as he pressed into her willing heat—aargh.

"So," she said brightly, clamping her thighs together. "What do you want to do first?" Me, for example. No! Stop! "I was thinking I'd like to get some of this long grass and brush cut back, so it's easier to get around. Especially in front of the house."

"Sounds good," Cody said with his usual easy cheer. "I brought some tools for working on the equipment in the barn, and a can of gas from home. Gasoline that's been sitting around for this many years isn't good for their engines. I can go see about getting the brush cutter running, and then start clearing around the house and barn."

Crystal's imagination served up a vivid image of Cody with his shirt off, wrestling the big brush cutter with the long handles that she'd seen in the barn, sweat running down between his shoulder blades—"Yes," she said, a touch breathless. "Yes, that sounds like a good plan. I'll ... uh ... I'll work on cleaning up the house while you do that."

Cody gave her another kiss and helped her gather up the trash from breakfast. He really had eaten all of that food; she was impressed. He hesitated, like there was something else he was thinking about saying, but then he turned away, and got a gas can and toolbox from the back of the truck. After clapping an honest-to-God cowboy hat onto his head, he headed off to the barn, whistling.

As soon as he vanished into the barn, Crystal opened her car door and got the metal detector out of the backseat.

She hadn't expected to feel so guilty about hiding this from Cody. Maybe if she told him about her treasure hunt, he could help her. Two people could search the farm more efficiently than one ...

No. It's my family's secret, not mine to share.

Cody was hot, and funny, and amazing, and great in bed. But she'd only just met him. She hardly knew him yet.

Instead she took the metal detector into the house. Under the pretext of cleaning, she moved the furniture and scanned the floor and walls in each room. The metal detector kept getting a lot of false positives off nails and other metal items around the house, raising her hope each time and then leaving her disappointed when she tapped at the floor and found it just as solid in that location as everywhere else.

I don't want to tear the house apart!

Grandpa, if you did leave us something, why couldn't you have just told somebody instead of dropping vague hints?

As she started on the bedrooms, the drone of an engine started up, coming in through the open windows. Crystal put down the metal detector and went to look out. Cody was working with the brush cutter along the fence just outside the barn. It was built something like a rototiller, with long handles that he was gripping, and cutting blades at the other end. A spray of leaves and sawdust showered around him.

He hadn't taken his shirt off, but she was still captivated, watching him work. He used the brush cutter with seeming effortlessness, as if it hardly weighed anything. Despite his generally lean build, she'd already realized that he was incredibly strong.

From the upstairs window, she wasn't quite close enough to really enjoy the play of muscles under his shirt. Instead she found herself captivated by the easy grace in his movements. It was a kind of grace that she associated with big cats, with wild predators—but there was nothing inhuman about him. He was simply gorgeous. More gorgeous than she had known a human being could be.

Cody paused, as if he'd sensed her watching him. He tipped his hat back and looked up at the window. Under the hat's shadow, his smile flashed briefly.

Crystal waved.

Cody touched his hat brim and got back to work.

***

In late morning, dusty and cobwebby and no closer to figuring out whether her grandfather had hidden a treasure somewhere in the house or property, Crystal tucked the metal detector away in a closet and got a bottle of water and Thermos of cold lemonade she'd stashed in the kitchen. Then she went to find Cody. It wasn't hard; all she had to do was follow the on-again, off-again sound of the brush cutter.

She was amazed at what he'd already accomplished. He'd trimmed back the brush and small trees that had grown up between the barn and the house, and he'd mowed the grass and wildflowers, so the yard actually looked like a yard again, instead of a small piece of forest that just didn't happen to be as tall as the rest of it. He'd also cut the brush around the barn. The garden had been left to its wild tangle of weeds and perennials, but he had mowed carefully around it, so now she could see that there was, indeed, a wooden fence around it, partly fallen down, and some old trellises that might have supported flowering vines or maybe even grapes.

The sound of the brush cutter was now coming from behind the barn. Crystal went around the corner, stepping carefully through fragrant, fresh-cut grass.

She found Cody on his knees, tinkering with the engine as it idled. He glanced up before she announced herself, and she got the feeling again that there was some kind of preternatural connection between them, as if he could sense her.

"Hi, beautiful." He flipped a switch and the engine died. The sudden silence rang in her ears. The only sounds were the whisper of the wind and birdsongs in the woods. She still couldn't get used to how quiet it was here.

Straightening up, Cody brushed off his hands and gave her a crooked smile. That was all it took; she rushed into his arms and stretched on tiptoe to meet his lips with hers. Cody's hands settled on her waist. He was hot, his shirt sticking to his back, and smelled like grass clippings and engine exhaust and the faint, spicy fragrance of clean male sweat.

When she had her mouth available for talking again, Crystal said, "I thought you might be thirsty, so I brought you something to drink. There's still no electricity at the house, which means no refrigeration, but it should be cool."

"Sounds amazing." He unscrewed the lid on the Thermos and tipped back his head to drink deeply. Crystal's gaze was drawn to his throat, glistening with sweat. She couldn't stop staring at the way it flexed as he swallowed, at the sun-bleached curls of hair where his collarbones met the top of his pecs before it vanished under his sweat-damp shirt—

"Ah, that's good." He lowered the Thermos with a sigh, and she wrenched her gaze back up to his face. "Want some?"

"Sure." She took the Thermos from his hand and raised it to her mouth, where his lips had been a moment before. He was right, it was good, cold and sweet.

"I have something that's not better, exactly, but might be just as good," Cody said. "There's a cooler in the truck with lunch. My sister-in-law packed it for us."

Crystal's stomach growled, making her laugh. "That sounds great. I thought a big farmer breakfast would do it for me all day, but I'm starving."

"Country air and exercise. You'll never work up an appetite like the one you get on a farm." He grinned at her. "Before we do that, though, I wanted to look at something. I notice you've got the car in the yard today. Did you have any trouble driving it up?"

"A little," she admitted. So much for wanting to sound like an experienced rural driver; she realized it would be foolish to lie about it. "I got across the creek okay, but I almost couldn't get up that last little hill right on this side of it."

"Yeah, I was a little worried you might have problems in such a small car. You mind if we walk over and take a look? I was thinking I might be able to do something about it."

They walked across the fresh-cut grass, passing back and forth the bottle of water and the Thermos. Her shoes crunched on woody fragments from where he'd whacked back the brush along the fence.

"You know, you're lucky to have a creek on the property," Cody said.

"It didn't feel lucky when I was trying to drive through it yesterday."

"Ha, yeah, that part's not so great. But that creek is probably how your grandpa was able to keep this place operating after the other ranches on this side of the mountain shut down."

"What happened to the other ones?" she asked before taking another deep drink from the water bottle. The day was getting hot, and she'd worked up a sweat in the house.

"Not enough water. Used to be springs and streams all over these mountains, but as the weather's gotten drier, and dams have diverted some of the rivers, it's gotten harder to make a living out here. Can't run stock without water. That's why a lot of the old ranches in these mountains are selling their land off for logging now."

"Does your ranch have that problem?" She was very aware of his presence, the warmth of his fingers as he took the water bottle back.

"No, we've got a river that goes right through the edge of our land, and plenty of little springs. We're lucky. Your grandpa was lucky too. This is a good piece of land here."

They stopped at the top of the little hill, looking down at the creek purling along between its banks. From up here Crystal could see how shallow it was, no more than six inches deep in most places. The logs that made up the "bridge" were half buried in sand, deposited between and around them by past seasons' floods.

"Gotta say, I'm impressed you drove up here in that little car," Cody said.

"I was afraid you'd laugh at me if I said I had trouble," she admitted. "I thought you'd just tell me to get a big truck instead."

"Sure, most people out here have trucks, and I guess you're figuring out why. But there's no reason why I can't make the road easier for the car you've got."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean there's no reason not to smooth down the grade a little so it's shallower and easier to drive."

Crystal scuffed her toe in the dirt of the old driveway. Under the overgrown grass, mashed down by her car's tires, it was hard-packed.

"That sounds like an awful lot of work," she said. "How would you do it? Like ... dig up some of the dirt, or something?"

"What, by hand?" Cody laughed. "No, ma'am. We don't have a bulldozer on the ranch, but the Spilworths up the road a ways have one, and it wouldn't be too much trouble to get the use of it for a day. While I'm at it, I could widen out that driveway for you, just take the 'dozer out to the road with the blade down and scrape back all those little trees."

"But ..." She looked at him, wide-eyed, and then at the trees in front of them. "Don't you need a permit for that?"

"How far out to the road is your land?"

"All the way, I think."

"Then nope. All I need is for you to tell me it's okay."

"Wow," she murmured. In the city, she could only imagine how many building codes and permit applications would be involved in something as simple as putting up a garden shed, let alone taking a bulldozer and just moving an inconvenient hill out of the way. "I ... uh ... isn't that a lot of trouble for you? All I wanted you to do was cut some brush. I don't mean for you to have to spend the entire week doing major infrastructure work on my family's farm."

"If you don't want me to—"

"No, it's not that," she protested, turning to him. "I just don't want to cause a huge hassle for you."

"No hassle at all. I've got the time, and I'd love to do a little dirt-moving with the 'dozer. I'd feel better about it if you weren't having to take your life in your hands every time you drive up that hill."

"It's not that bad," she said, laughing. Still, she remembered the feeling that the car was about to flip over backwards on her. It would be very nice to not have to deal with that. "But thank you. That's really—"

Cody curled a finger under her chin, tipping her face up. Her stomach flipped as she found herself looking into his blue-gray eyes from very close.

"... neighborly of you," she finished in a murmur. Although the feelings she was having right now weren't neighborly in the slightest.

"It's my pleasure," he murmured, in a voice that seemed to rumble through her as she stood with his hand touching her face. His other hand had settled on her hip.

He wasn't wearing a T-shirt under the denim shirt today, and when she began to unbutton it, his bare chest was revealed button by button. Her breathing began to quicken, especially when his hands slid under the loose tails of her blouse and she felt his rough, callused fingertips stroking up her spine.

All she had to do was take a step closer to press her body against the lean, muscular length of his big frame. She kissed his neck and collarbone, reveling in the tang of salt on her lips.

They undressed each other by the side of the road, where the grass had grown long and soft, filled with fragrant wildflowers. At the motel, she'd regretted not having a more romantic setting for the first time they'd made love. But she couldn't have asked for a more beautiful place than this. The only background music they needed was the gentle murmuring of the creek in the background and the wind fluttering the leaves overhead, and the sun-warmed grass was soft under them. She felt the tiniest bit exposed, making love out of doors, but they were so remote that there was no chance anyone would come along and bother them. As far as she could tell, no one had been to this place in the entire time the property had been unoccupied.

Cody laid her back in the grass. At the motel, their lovemaking had been fast and urgent. This time it was gentle and slow. There was no hurry. He kissed her skin, every inch of it. His skilled tongue and fingers coaxed a first spine-tingling orgasm out of her before he slid into her, filling her with his heat.

When at last he came, she came again, arching under him, their bodies melding in a white-hot union.

Cody rolled off her into the grass, and they lay together, letting their breathing settle and the sweat dry on their bodies.

"I've never had sex out of doors before," Crystal said, pushing herself up on her elbow.

"Like it?"

"Yes, although ..." She flinched, and flicked off an ant that was crawling on her arm. "There are a few—how should I put this?—a few bugs in the system. I think I've got bits of grass in places I don't really want grass. Too bad the shower at the house isn't working yet."

Cody laughed and sat up. "I know someone who might be able to do something about that for you. I've had a little experience with plumbing."

"Okay, cutting my grass is one thing, but you don't need to work on my plumbing too." His grin turned playfully lascivious. She poked him in the arm. "You know what I mean."

"I can at least take a look at it. In fact, I want to get back to the house anyway, because I don't know about you, but I am starving."

Crystal scrambled to her feet, gathering up her clothes, and in a fit of playfulness she cried, "Race you!"

It turned out not to be much of a race. Barefoot, she slowed down instantly once she got into the freshly mown stubble, jabbed her foot on something, and hopped on one leg, cursing. Cody loped up behind her with his clothes and boots tucked into the crook of his arm, stopped, and started getting dressed lazily while watching her.

"Admiring the view, huh?" she asked, straightening up from rubbing her foot.

"Just a little bit." His smile faded, turning serious. "You probably shouldn't walk around the house barefoot 'til we get it cleaned up. There might be broken glass or rusty nails hidden in the grass."

She sighed and stepped into her underwear. "You're right. There's just so much to do ... I've barely scratched the surface of it so far."

"Well," Cody said, "you've got help. You don't have to do it alone."

She smiled at him, as his boyish grin caught at her heart and sparked a new surge of heat between her legs. And she tried not to think about St. Louis—tried to forget that in a little over a week, she needed to do the responsible thing, put all of this behind her, and get back to her real life in the city.

8. Cody

The next few days flew by, and somehow there never seemed to be a chance to bring up the topic of shifters. They were always too busy.

Cody rented the Spilworths' bulldozer for a day. Crystal watched from a safe distance, her eyes wide and her face shining with admiration, as he used the machine's big blade to push dirt out of the way on the farm side of the creek, making a road cut right through the little hill. After he was done, he and Crystal walked together hand-in-hand down the new, much smoother and more gradual slope, with banks of earth on either side. The air smelled of wet clay. At the bottom of the driveway, muddy water swirled around the logs.

"You really ought to have a bridge over that. It'll be safer, and you won't have to worry about being stuck here in case of a flood."

Crystal looked up at him, her mouth shaping a small "o". "Cody Hayes, are you offering to build me a bridge?"

"Just a little bridge. I might have to bring some of my family over here to give me a hand. Would you have a problem with that?"

"Of course I don't have a problem with it." She threw her arms around his neck. "You're offering to build me a bridge. This is incredible."

He sank into her kiss and managed to forget his dilemma for a moment, but it came back later, as he was driving back to the Circle B down the old road between the two properties, which was getting increasingly well worn.

He didn't know why he was dragging his feet on telling her about the shifter thing. Every time they made love, his bear yearned to claim her, but he still hadn't. It felt as if bringing up the topic would break the spell they seemed to be under. Even as the days ticked down toward her departure, they seemed to exist in their own little world.

She'd gotten the electricity hooked back up again, so the house had power now. Cody had helped her get the well pump running. It was getting quite comfortable now that they had a working refrigerator and lights and running water.

He hadn't spent the night yet, although it was all he could do not to throw a couple of suitcases in his truck and move over, or maybe just drag his trailer down the connecting road and set up housekeeping in the Martinez yard. But that definitely fell under the heading of "things that need to wait until we discuss the mate issue."

I should be wanting to take her home to my den, not move into hers.

But that was the problem. The Circle B didn't really feel like his den anymore. It wasn't that anyone meant to crowd him out. He knew that if he talked to anyone on the ranch, they'd be shocked and hurt that he felt like an outsider. They would insist that they wanted him to stay.

But he needed somewhere that felt like his. And for the first time, he felt as if he'd found it. All his life, he'd worked on the family ranch and loved it. But he hadn't felt the kind of proprietary pride that he'd felt when he looked at the road that he had made.

For all the farm work he'd done all his life, he had never taken a piece of unfamiliar property and made it feel like his own. It was his grandparents and great-grandparents who had done that work on the Circle B. Cody and his brother and cousins had grown up surrounded by signs of their family's hard work. It was other hands that had built the houses and the fences, and even though Cody had been helping to maintain them ever since he was big enough to hold a hammer, he'd never done anything without asking Alec first. Alec was the alpha and the ranch's legal owner; he was the one who made the decisions. It was just how things worked.

But this was different. When he'd talked about it with Crystal, it had felt like they were making the decision together.

The realization had begun to creep over him that even if Crystal decided to stay, he wasn't sure if he wanted her to move onto the Circle B with him.

Alec will always be my alpha. I don't want to run my own clan. But I can see why Gannon prefers to live back in the woods with Daisy.

Sometimes you just want a place that feels like yours.

***

Building a bridge from scratch was something else he'd never done. It wasn't particularly challenging, just a lot of hard work.

Cody was worried that Crystal might be bored while he worked on the bridge, but she seemed to be completely content on the farm. He caught glimpses of her in the pasture or around the barn occasionally. Hard to tell what she was doing; she just seemed to be puttering around. But whatever she was up to, it made her happy, so that made him happy.

He worked on it by himself at first. He was reluctant to ask Alec—spending any time in close proximity to his alpha right now seemed like a bad idea, because he didn't want to have a conversation with Alec about leaving the ranch until he was sure, and he didn't trust himself not to blurt it out. Axl was busy with his sheriff job, and Remy was currently working as a mechanic at an auto repair place out on the highway.

But that left one Circle B bear available. When Cody got to the point on the project where he'd trimmed all the lumber and was ready to wrestle the bridge supports into position—two long, massive logs that would support the crosspieces—he wasn't going to be able to do it without help. That evening, he drove up to Gannon and Daisy's cabin to see if Gannon could come over the next day.

The cabin where Gannon and Daisy lived had been the first permanent structure on the Circle B. It was a short drive up the mountain, perched on the edge of a cliff with a gorgeous view of the entire valley. When he got there, the sun was just setting, and a fire was crackling in the firepit in front of the cabin. Daisy, her hair a cloud of golden curls, waved to him as he parked, and leaned over to flip a steak on a grill over the fire.

"We made extras for you," she told him as he approached the fire. Gannon emerged from the cabin, stretched, and strolled over to join them.

"How'd you know I was coming?"

Gannon just smiled his quiet smile, wrinkling the old scar that creased his face from just below his right eye to the opposite jaw. Daisy reached up to catch one of her mate's big hands and pressed her cheek against it. "You know Gannon," she said. "He just knows stuff."

"I was going to lecture you two on getting a phone installed up here, again, but maybe I don't need to." Cody sat on one of the camp chairs around the fire, stretching his long legs out. "At least you always know when someone's coming to visit. It would save a trip when somebody just has a simple question to ask you, though."

"You got a question?" Gannon rumbled.

"Yeah, I'm doing some work on the Martinez place and I wondered if I could get your help tomorrow, dragging some logs into place. It'd be a lot easier with two."

Daisy tipped her head back and looked up at her mate. Gannon smiled again, and Cody recalled how he'd almost never seen the man smile for the entire past decade they'd known each other. All of his clan-brothers' mates had brought changes into their lives, always for the better.

"Sure," Gannon said. "Happy to help."

"Now grab a plate and have a steak," Daisy laughed. "At least, if you want it rare, which from what I know of you guys is the way you all like them."

"What's the point of eating meat if all you can taste is charcoal?" Cody bantered back.

But as he picked up a plate from the stack sitting on a stump beside the fire, he remembered Tara's warning about Gannon's intuition. As Daisy had said, Gannon knew stuff.

He couldn't warn Gannon not to say anything without admitting Crystal was his mate, though. And he didn't want to run around telling the entire ranch before he was able to tell her. Asking Tara for advice was bad enough.

The best he could hope for was that Gannon either wouldn't pick up on it, or would notice but would consider that it wasn't his business and wouldn't say anything. The last one was pretty likely, he thought. Gannon wasn't the kind of person who pried into other people's business.

So he resolved not to worry about it, and to tell Crystal at the earliest possible opportunity.

***

The morning dawned sunny and warm. They'd had a run of great weather lately. Cody knew it was going to break at some point, but so far, he couldn't have asked for a week of better weather for working outside.

To Cody's surprise, Crystal wasn't around this time when he arrived at the farm. She'd been getting there earlier every day than he had. Well, maybe she'd had some errands to run in town. He got to work setting up the winch mounted on the back of his truck for cranking the logs into place.

Gannon came out of the woods a few minutes later, brushing leaves out of his hair and straightening his chest-baring leather vest. There was a satchel slung over his shoulder, the strap adjusted somewhat too long. He'd obviously come over from the Circle B as a bear, carrying his clothing with him.

They settled quickly into an easy working rhythm, and already had the first log into place when Crystal drove up and parked behind the work zone.

"I guess I didn't think about this problem," Cody called over to her as she got out of her car. "You're not going to be able to drive up to the house until we finish this part of it."

"How long is it going to take?"

"Not long. I think with the two of us, we'll have the bridge drivable by evening, or tomorrow at the latest."

"Two?" Crystal asked, and then she saw Gannon. "Oh, hi!"

"This is Gannon," Cody said. "Hired man on our ranch. He's helping out for the day. Gannon, meet Crystal Martinez. She owns this farm."

Crystal shook hands with Gannon. Cody noticed her taking in his appearance curiously, especially the leather vest and the scar on his face. She didn't ask any awkward questions, though, just smiled and said, "Hi. Nice to meet you. Any friend of Cody's is a friend of mine."

"Of course I am," Gannon rumbled in his deep voice, and Cody cast a quick look at him, but he didn't say anything else, just went back to winding the chain around the next log.

"I'll get out of your way, then," Crystal told them. "I'm just going to take some things up to the house, if that's okay?"

Cody was surprised when she came back from her car with a suitcase in one hand and a large reusable grocery bag in the other. "What's all that?"

"I'm moving in," she told him, smiling. "I'm tired of driving back and forth to the motel every night. And I finally got the house nice and livable. I've got electricity, I've got water, and I got the bedroom put back together last night." She gave him a smile which seemed somehow uncharacteristically hesitant.

Cody had a sudden, intense vision of what the two of them might be able to accomplish in that bedroom. By the time he could get his tongue working again, Crystal had already turned away. She hopped across the creek on a couple of flat rocks (they'd removed the logs to make room for the bridge) and trotted up the new, flatter driveway, her round hips rolling invitingly. Cody had to wrench his gaze away.

"She's nice," Gannon said.

"Yeah," Cody agreed. He waited for Gannon to say anything else, but the big guy just went back to securing the chain.

Come on, man. Give me a hint here. Do you or do you not know that she's my mate?

He didn't want to be the one to tell Gannon and open that can of worms if Gannon didn't already know. And he couldn't tell.

Well, it wouldn't matter if Crystal spent the rest of the morning at the house, which was what she'd been doing lately.

However, no such luck. A couple of hours later, after he and Gannon had gotten the main logs into position and had begun hammering the crosspieces, Crystal's voice called down from the top of the driveway, "Hey, Cody, look! I found some friends of yours!"

Cody looked up to see Crystal walking down the driveway with most of the female component of the clan. Somehow she'd picked up Tara, Saffron, and Daisy. The two moms had their kids with them; Saffron was carrying Baz and Tara had Lexie slung in a carrier on her back. Daisy and Crystal were carrying a cooler between them.

"What's all this?" Cody asked, as Gannon took a break from working to lope over and kiss his mate.

"We drove over to feed you hard-working menfolks," Tara said cheerfully. "Do you want to take a break now, or wait for later?"

"As if any of these boys ever turns down the opportunity to eat," Saffron put in.

Soon they had the cooler open and the picnic lunch spread out on the creek bank. To Cody's relief, Crystal seemed to be getting along great with the other Circle B women. The kids were a good icebreaker; all the adults were kept busy trying to keep Baz from toddling too close to the creek. Also, nobody had mentioned the "m" word yet, and Baz hadn't turned into a bear.

But there was no way Crystal was going to be able to socialize on the Circle B without knowing most of the people there were shifters. She'd constantly be in danger of finding out in the worst possible way.

Just tell her! Cody screamed at himself, inwardly. His bear stirred long enough to give an exasperated grunt of agreement. From the bear's perspective, all this human nonsense about who knew or didn't know was ridiculous. And Cody knew he was being ridiculous. She almost certainly would have heard of shifters already; most humans knew.

But a lot of people didn't react well. Like most shifters, he'd had the experience of other moms refusing to let their children play with him. In Pinerock County, most people were pretty laid back about it, but shifters tended to live in rural areas, so most people were used to it. Who knew how someone from the city was going to feel about it?

Just tell her! It'll be worse if she finds out by accident!

"So, Crystal," Saffron was saying. "What are your plans for the ranch? It looks like you've done a lot of work around the place already. Are you going to live here?"

"I have a job back in St. Louis," Crystal said. "Mainly we're fixing the place up to sell."

But she sounded wistful as she said it. Cody and his bear both pricked up their ears.

"Awww, you're leaving?" Daisy said.

Tara gave Cody a very pointed look.

"Of course she's not leaving," Gannon said. "She's Cody's mate."

Cody stopped with a forkful of potato salad halfway to his mouth.

"Mate?" Crystal said.

It might have been possible to laugh it off as a figure of speech if everyone in the group hadn't stopped eating in one shared moment of paralysis. Tara winced, Gannon looked puzzled, and the other two girls just looked thoroughly confused.

Daisy was the first to break into a smile. "What? She's your mate? Congratulations! Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because," Cody said, glaring at Gannon, "it was a secret."

"Remind me not to tell you any of my secrets," Tara told Gannon.

The big man's face fell. "I'm good at keeping secrets," he muttered. "I just didn't know it was a secret."

Tara's expression immediately crumpled. "Gannon, I'm sorry. I was teasing you. I do that with Alec and Axl all the time. I forget that not everyone knows when I'm joking." She put an arm around him, pulling him into a sideways hug. He looked startled; people didn't hug him much.

Daisy hugged her mate from the other side. "We know you didn't mean any harm. But why is it a secret?"

"I have no idea what's happening," Crystal said plaintively. "I feel like the last person to understand the in-joke. Will someone tell me what's going on?"

"Wait a minute," Saffron said, looking at Cody with a frown. "If she doesn't know that, does she know about the, uh, the rest of it? Does she know about claiming?"

"Claiming?" Crystal said, her eyes wide.

Cody stood up quickly. Now that the cat had not just left the bag but hurtled out of it at supersonic speed, he needed to get this under control as fast as possible, before Crystal ended up jumping to some very unfortunate conclusions.

Idiot, his bear grumbled at him. Told you so.

I know! Trust me, I know!

"Crystal, can we talk for a minute?" he said, taking her hand.

At least she didn't pull away; she let him pull her to her feet. She looked confused, not angry.

"Back soon, folks!" Cody said over his shoulder, as he hustled Crystal away from the group and up the driveway. Behind him, he heard a hushed babble of conversation break out, and sighed. His every decision was going to be dissected in detail by the time he got back; he could tell.

"Sorry," he said, squeezing Crystal's hand.

"No need to apologize, I'm not mad." She sounded frustrated, though. "I just feel like there's an in-joke and nobody's explaining it to me. Look, I understand you don't want these people to know we're seeing each other, though obviously they've figured it out—"

"What?" he said in shock, and stopped walking, spinning her around to face him. "What on earth gave you the idea I didn't want them to know?"

Crystal stared back at him, looking equally baffled. "Well, for starters, you didn't introduce me to your hired man as a—a girlfriend or anything, just as the owner of the property. And I get that, I mean, we haven't talked about our relationship at all yet, and we both know I'm leaving soon, and I'm the one who got weird about being introduced to your family, so—" She took a deep breath and seemed to pull herself together. "So really, thinking of myself as your girlfriend is just—mmpphhh!"

Cody shut her up in the only way he could think of. He tangled his hands in her hair and kissed her with all the urgency of his desperate need to reassure her.

Oh, Crystal. You're so much more than just a girlfriend. You're my future, my heart, my soul, my everything.

Which she'd already know if you'd just tell her, his bear pointed out. She's not one of our herd of cattle, you know. Humans, for some reason, need to talk about things, and they get upset if you don't—

Yes, thank you, asshole, Cody retorted with the small part of his brain still capable of rational thought with Crystal's tongue in his mouth. Now shut up and let me kiss our mate.

9. Crystal

Crystal relaxed into Cody's kiss, sinking into the heat of the passion that his touch never failed to arouse in her.

It was such a vast relief that he wasn't ashamed of his relationship with her. She'd just assumed, when she drove up and he was acting so much cooler than usual—but no, there was something else. Something that was making him act strange; something he hadn't told her yet.

"So what's really wrong?" she asked, stroking her hand down his sweat-damp neck.

"C'mon." He curled his hand in hers. "Let's make sure we aren't going to have any interruptions."

They walked through the yard. The sounds of the creek and the voices of Cody's family had faded; now there was only birdsong.

"That's a robin!" Crystal said, cocking her head to the side. "I identified that one in the book yesterday."

Cody chuckled. "You're getting good at that."

They rounded the corner of the barn and he paused. She could have kicked herself. There were several plots of dirt where she'd been metal-detecting earlier and had dug up things which had turned out to be nails and, in one case, a silver button off a coat or dress. She'd forgotten to fill them back in.

"What are those for?" he asked, curious.

"We can talk about that later." With the barn between them and any chance of being observed or interrupted by his family, she turned him around and rested her hands at his waist, looking into his eyes. "You're here to answer my questions right now. What did she mean, claim?"

Cody sighed. "Yeah. So. I'm sorry for not talking about this earlier; I just couldn't figure out how to bring it up. How do you feel about ... shifters?"

"Shifters?" she asked, looking up into his face with his arms laced gently around her waist. "Why? Oh ..." Suddenly a bunch of different puzzle pieces snapped into place. "Are you a shifter?"

Cody dropped his gaze away from hers.

"Really? Oh my gosh! That's amazing!" She bounced on tiptoe and kissed him. "Really? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm starting to wonder myself," he murmured. His blue-gray eyes searched hers as if looking for condemnation, but found none. "You're okay with that?"

"I'm more than okay with it! Cody, my mom's a shifter. I didn't inherit the tendency, but I grew up knowing it might have been a possibility for me. I've just never gotten to be around any shifters other than Mom and her parents. She doesn't have a lot of close family, so I didn't grow up in the culture."

Cody broke into a slow grin, like the sun coming up. "I can't believe it. I never guessed. What's her animal type?"

"Garter snake. She doesn't shift much. She and my grandparents love to garden, though. They always say it's the shifter in them that makes them want to spend time outdoors, with grass and plants all around them, burrowing in the dirt."

Cody glanced over at the holes beside the barn. "Is that what you were doing there? Getting in touch with your shifter side?"

"No ... that's something else." Not wanting to open that can of worms quite yet, she led him around to the back of the barn where there was a pile of old fence rails they could sit on. "But tell me about it! What do you turn into? How many of your family are shifters? Wait—are all of them?"

"Of the ones you've met, just Saffron and Gannon. Oh, and Baz. We think Lexie probably is, but she hasn't shifted yet." He shook his head. "I can't believe I've been so worried and your family were shifters all along. Wow."

"So what are you all?"

"Bears," Cody said. "Most of us are bears. The only one who's not is Saffron. She's a fox."

Crystal's mouth dropped open. "You're a bear! Oh gosh. I want to see! Can I see?"

Cody hesitated, and then began to smile. "Why not? My bear agrees. He wants to meet you."

"He talks to you?"

Cody nodded. "My bear knew we were meant for each other, you and I, from the moment we saw you."

We. It sounded so odd and yet so right. Her mother sometimes talked that way, too. "Well, tell him I want to meet him too," she said, and when he smiled brilliantly, she knew she'd said the right thing.

Cody hopped down off the fence rail and shed his clothes one piece at a time, baring the ruggedly gorgeous body she'd already come to love so much. This time he stripped out the tie holding his hair back in its ponytail, something he hadn't done before when they were making love, and it swung forward around his jaw and brushed across his shoulders.

Wow. Crystal had never realized that she had a thing for guys with longer hair—maybe she never had, before Cody—but she was definitely going to have to get him to let his hair down more often. Literally.

The boxers came off last, and he turned and strolled away from her, lean muscles rippling, out of the shadow of the barn into the sunlight of the fields. He turned around and grinned; she wondered if she was visibly drooling. The sun caught his hair and turned it the color of molten honey.

And then he started to lean forward, but it wasn't human hands, but bear paws, that hit the recently clipped grass.

Crystal's breath snagged somewhere between her throat and chest.

She'd seen Mom shift, so she knew it was virtually instantaneous, but somehow the process looked different on a snake. She hadn't expected it to be so seamless or so effortless for something as large as a bear, but it was a fluid and instant transition. Now the hair that gleamed in the sunlight was a grizzly's fur; the rippling muscles were massive, moving smoothly beneath the bear's pelt as he raised his head and turned toward her. His fur was light brown with gold highlights, the same color as his hair in human form.

There was something a little hesitant about him, as if he wasn't sure how she would react.

Crystal walked forward, the recently mown grass crisp beneath her feet, and held out her hand. "You're beautiful," she said quietly. "You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

It was hard to appreciate how big he was from a distance; the closer she got, the more enormous he seemed. She didn't think ordinary bears ever got this big. She was on eye level with the shaggy hump of his shoulder.

But when he swung his massive head to look at her, and touched his nose to her hand, she could see that it was still Cody. The bear's eyes were brown, but she thought she could catch subtle hints of blue and gray. And perhaps more importantly, she knew him. She would know him anywhere, recognize him anywhere, in whatever shape.

"So beautiful," she whispered, and buried her hands in the long fur on either side of his face.

He shifted without warning, and suddenly, instead of holding the bear's face in her hands, she was cupping Cody's strong jawline, his stubble rough under her palms. He was very close and very naked; her heart sped up, especially when he put his arms around her and pulled her close.

"Your family's right on the other side of that barn, you know," Crystal pointed out, but she allowed him to sample her lips.

"They'll give us privacy," he murmured, nibbling at the corner of her mouth.

"Awfully sure of that, are you?"

"Anyway, shifters aren't as worried about being naked as humans are. We're naked whenever we shift, after all."

"Yes, but most of your in-laws are human, and somehow I don't think anyone's gonna be happy to come around the corner and find us making love in a field. And," she added, gasping as he nipped lightly at her neck, "that's what's gonna happen if you don't—oh!—get some clothes on."

She got a grip on herself and planted her hands on his firm, muscular chest, pushing him away. Cody grinned and resisted for a moment before allowing himself to be gently removed from her person. Hand in hand, they strolled back over to where he'd left his pile of clothing.

"I want a rain check on that lovemaking in the field," Cody said, reaching for his boxers.

A warm shiver went through Crystal's body at the memory of Cody laying her down in the grass, gently exploring her with hands and mouth ... "Yes," she said, drinking him in with her gaze as he leaned over, muscles flexing, to pick up his jeans. "Yes, definitely. Rain check. I hope this doesn't sound stupid, but ..." She trailed off.

Cody raised his rainwater eyes to hers as he buttoned his shirt. "Nothing you say could ever sound stupid to me."

"Don't put that to the test," she teased. "No, it's just that ... I've had boyfriends before. But nothing ever felt like this. You and I—it just feels so right and so perfect."

"You're my mate," Cody said. All the flirtatious playfulness dropped away as he stepped forward to take her in his arms, right there in the shadow of the barn. "Of course it feels right. You are right for me, right and perfect, more right than anyone else could ever be."

Crystal squirmed a little in his arms so she could look up at his face. His hands settled on her waist and she looped her arms lightly over his high, broad shoulders. "Gannon said something about that earlier. I thought it was just a figure of speech, but the way everyone else reacted ... That word has a special meaning for you, doesn't it?"

"All shifters have a fated mate," Cody said. "One person in all the world who's right for us."

"Like ... a soulmate, you mean?"

"Kind of. Your parents didn't tell you about fated mates?"

Crystal shook her head. "Maybe they didn't want to get my hopes up. I'm only half shifter, after all. They wouldn't have wanted me to spend my whole life hoping for a soulmate if there wasn't one out there for me."

"Makes sense." Cody brushed her hair off her neck. As his fingers stroked across the sensitive skin, she shivered in pleasure. "There's one more thing you probably don't know about. You said your mother was the shifter in the family, right? Did she have a scar on her neck?"

"She doesn't, but my grandmother does."

"It's called a claiming mark. Not all shifter clans do it, but most do. It makes the mate bond take hold. Once you've claimed your mate, the bond is permanent and can never be broken."

"It already feels permanent," she murmured, gazing up into his eyes.

"I know, but ... once we take that step, we can never be anywhere but at each other's side. We won't want to be."

She already didn't want to be.

But then the practical side of her personality clamored quietly in the back of her head, reminding her of St. Louis, of her job and parents and friends and life.

Once she made this choice, her future would be set. Her future would be Cody, always and forever.

And she could see already that taking him away from Pinerock County would be unfair. No more time than they'd spent together, she could see how his life was here, in the same way hers was there. Only more so, because she didn't have any strong ties to Missouri in the same way that he was tied to this place. Like many children of farm families, his roots went very deep in the land.

But so do mine. This is where I come from too.

Before she came here, she couldn't have imagined living somewhere that didn't have any decent coffee shops or big bookstores, no nightclubs or concerts, not even reliable cell phone service. The idea of spending two weeks in Pinerock County had made her nervous. She'd thought there was a good chance she would get desperately bored, pack up her metal detector, and head back to the city within a week.

The thing was, though ... she wasn't bored. She actually liked it here. She was starting to learn the names of some of the birds and flowers. The startling thought struck her that maybe, just maybe, she could be happy here—

"There you two are!"

Tara and Daisy came around the corner of the barn, Tara carrying Lexie. Saffron wasn't far behind, and Gannon brought up the rear.

Crystal had to laugh. Leaning close, she whispered to Cody, "So they're gonna give us privacy, right?"

"Hey, I've been wrong before," he whispered back sheepishly.

"We would've just been getting to the good part right about now ..."

This sent both of them into quiet hysterics. Saffron rolled her eyes at them with a smile and set down Baz so he could investigate a butterfly that had landed on the side of the barn. "Care to share the joke?"

"No," Cody said, wiping his eyes. "No, I love you guys, but we really, really do not care to share."

Daisy, with slightly more tact, said, "We're sorry to bother you. It's just that—"

"I wanted to say I'm sorry," Gannon rumbled. "For blurting it out. I didn't know."

"Me too," Saffron said. "None of us knew."

"You have nothing to apologize for." Crystal hesitated, but she reminded herself that these women were part of Cody's family, part of his clan—and that meant in some way, they were part of her family now, too. She went forward and pulled Saffron into a somewhat awkward hug.

Saffron hugged her back enthusiastically. Then Tara pulled her into another hug, and Daisy piled on.

Once Crystal managed to extract herself, she looked up at Gannon—big intimidating mountain of a man—and gave him a tentative hug as well. He patted her back awkwardly.

Looking around, she saw Cody watching with a look of adoration, and she knew she'd done exactly the right thing.

His family meant a lot to him, and having her get along with them meant the world.

Saffron, meanwhile, had gone to scoop up Baz, who had wandered off to play in the piles of dirt from Crystal's earlier digging expeditions. "Gopher problems?" she asked. "You know, we can probably help with that."

"It's not gophers," Crystal said. "It was ... uh ... me."

"You needed some holes dug, you should've said," Cody said with a grin. "I could've helped. These aren't good fence holes, though. They're too close together."

"They're not fence holes." Crystal paused and took a deep breath. She felt as if she was poised on the edge of a precipice.

But ... why not? She'd wanted to keep her grandfather's secret because she didn't want to risk rumors getting around town and bringing hordes of treasure seekers descending on the family homestead.

But she trusted Cody's family not to spread it around. And they might be able to help her. Between all of them, it was possible someone had heard a rumor that might narrow down what she was looking for.

"I'm looking for buried treasure," she blurted out.

She felt stupid just saying it like that, especially when Tara and Saffron both started to smile. But they hesitated, their smiles fading, as they realized that Crystal was serious.

"What makes you think there's something like that here?" Cody asked. He, at least, was taking her seriously; there wasn't a hint of a smile on his face.

"Family rumors," Crystal said. "My father told me while he was ... while he was dying that his father—my grandfather—had said there was a family inheritance that came with the farm. There was something worth a lot of money here. My dad just didn't know what. And neither do I."

She clasped her hands together, looking at them beseechingly. "I hope you don't judge me for this. I swear I'm not a fortune seeker, coming out here to get rich. I don't care about the money for myself. It's just that my father's death left us with a mountain of unpaid medical bills. If I can't find something valuable here, I'm going to have to sell the farm or else my mother will have to declare bankruptcy."

Tara sucked in her breath, started to say something, then turned away, looking thoughtful. Cody squeezed Crystal's arm reassuringly.

"So that's why you've been talking about selling the farm," he said quietly.

It wasn't the only reason, but she decided not to push the entire truth at him right now. Besides, she wasn't sure anymore than it was the truth, not really.

Could she really go back to St. Louis and leave all of this behind? Could she force Cody to abandon these people and this place he obviously cared so much about?

But if we can't get money some other way, I won't have a choice.

"Anyway," she said firmly, "there's a perfectly good lunch spoiling in the sun, so I say we should all finish it up, and then ..."

"And then," Saffron said, "we'll help you look for buried treasure, right?"

Daisy clapped her hands. "That sounds like so much fun! I'd love to!"

"You—what—no!" Crystal protested. "I didn't mean you had to help me look! This is my problem, not yours."

Gannon raised a big finger to point at Cody. "You're his mate. That means your problems are our problems."

"He's right," Tara said. She still looked thoughtful. "I wouldn't mind taking some more of the day off from work."

"And I've got nowhere else to be," Saffron put in. "I was just going to work in the garden this afternoon. It's a gorgeous day. We should take advantage of the beautiful weather."

"The bridge—" Daisy began.

"Can wait a few hours," Tara said, her eyes bright. "We've got a buried treasure to find!"

"You guys ..." Crystal began, overwhelmed. To her embarrassment, tears sprang to her eyes.

Cody put an arm around her and pressed her to his side. He kissed her hair.

"This is what being part of a shifter clan means," he said quietly. "It's how my people—our people—are meant to be. None of us are ever alone."

Crystal wiped at her eyes.

Never alone.

It sounded wonderful.

But ... but what happens when some of us have to leave?

10. Cody

He was so proud of his family. Although it was no surprise that they liked Crystal; of course they welcomed her. She was beautiful and smart, kind and funny. Who wouldn't like her?

But still, as the group prepared to give up their day to help Crystal search her family farm, Cody couldn't help feeling a fierce, devoted love for all of them.

"So you have no idea what we're looking for?" Tara asked, handing Lexie to Daisy, who was taking the first shift watching the kids. Saffron was helping Crystal drag one of the mattresses that had been airing on the porch into the shade of the house for a makeshift play and nap area.

Crystal shook her head, dusting off her hands after depositing the mattress on the grass. "No, I'm afraid I haven't a clue. I have a metal detector; we'll have to take turns with it. Other than that, I don't know what else to suggest. My dad seemed to think Grandpa had something worth a lot of money stashed away somewhere, but it could be anything."

"I expect you've already checked for a bank safe deposit box or that kind of thing," Tara said. Cody gave her a quick, respectful glance; after helping run her family's foundation for years, she was used to dealing with money.

"It would've come up when Mom and I were dealing with Dad's estate," Crystal said. "If 'estate' is really the right word for a small savings account and a farm. There wasn't anything else. Whatever Grandpa had, it's right here, on this farm. If there is anything at all."

"Well, if there is, we'll find it," Saffron said firmly.

They spread out into the sun-drenched fields. Tara and Saffron took the first shift with the metal detector; Cody could hear their friendly bickering as they tried to decide where to start.

Crystal looked up at Cody with a smile and slung a shovel over her shoulder. "I was thinking we could look together," she began, and then her eyes widened and her dusky cheeks darkened further as she looked past him. "Er ... why is he taking his clothes off?"

Cody followed her gaze to Gannon, standing thigh-deep in long weeds just inside the pasture fence and unashamedly stripping. "I expect he's going to shift."

Crystal wrenched her gaze away. "Yes, but why?"

"Bears have an incredibly keen sense of smell, and Gannon is very in tune with his bear side. If there's anything buried on this property, he'll be more likely to find it that way."

"Oh. I ... uh ..." She blushed darker yet as she looked up at him again. "Is that what you are planning to do?"

"Tempting though it is, I think it might be more fun to spend the afternoon on two legs rather than four. After all, as a bear, I can't do this." He dipped down to kiss her.

"I like your logic," she said, breathless and laughing when he finally let her go.

She carried the shovel and Cody picked up the brush cutter. They walked up the field as the sun beat down on them. Cody was glad for his hat shading his head; he glanced at Crystal, next to him. "You doin' okay in this heat? You're not used to working outside; need to remember to stay hydrated."

Crystal held up a bottle of water. "Way ahead of you." She uncapped it and drank deeply, then passed it to Cody. The water was still cool, the mouth of the bottle slightly warm from her lips.

The women's cheerful voices faded behind them. Occasionally Cody caught a glimpse of Gannon at the edge of the trees, a big dark-colored grizzly, working his way methodically back and forth with his head down to the ground.

"There's just so much to search," Crystal said quietly. Cody glanced down at her and saw that she was looking back toward the farm buildings. "I really appreciate your family helping, and maybe someone will get lucky, but if he did bury something out here, we could search forever and not find it."

"You have to consider that he would have wanted it to be found, though," Cody pointed out. "If he hid something here, it would be hidden from casual searchers, not from the family. Do you ever remember anyone saying something that might give you a hint? Something that would have suggested a solution the family could find but no one else could?"

Crystal shook her head. "It would help if I'd even met the guy since I was a tiny child. I still don't know what happened between him and my dad, though if I were going to guess, I'd say it had something to do with Mom."

"Because she was a shifter?"

Crystal nodded. "My parents never really talked about it, but I think it says a lot that our family moved close to her family rather than Dad's."

"I never remember him acting weird towards us," Cody said. "Of course, I didn't know him well, either. He didn't talk much and didn't like strangers around. That's just a pretty typical old rancher for you, though."

She stopped again, turning to look down at the house and outbuildings. They'd come high enough that they could see the whole farm spread out below them. Tara and Saffron, both of whom were dressed in bright-colored blouses, were little splashes of color against the green backdrop.

"What was it like when this place was in full operation?" Crystal asked quietly.

"Not too different from how it is now. The pasture was less overgrown, with cattle grazing on it." Cody hesitated. "You gotta remember, though, the place was already in decline when I knew your grandpa. He was old and in poor health. I never saw your family farm in its prime."

Crystal looked around. Cody looked, too, seeing it for a moment not even as it used to be, but how it could be: the trees behind the barn loaded with apples, the hills covered with grazing cattle and sheep, the outbuildings in good repair. He pictured his own farm truck parked in front of the barn, and a couple of horses grazing in the pasture.

He saw himself with Crystal, picking baskets of fruit to take to the local farmer's market, carrying buckets of grain to feed to flocks of chickens with beautiful-colored feathers, while a little boy and girl (one with sandy curls, one with Crystal's wavy dark hair) scampered along at their side ...

In that instant, it felt like a true vision of their future.

And then he shook himself out of it, and saw again what was really there, the fields swamped in bushes and blackberry canes, the fruit trees nearly lost among young willows and other kinds of trees that had taken over during the many years they were untended. The barn needed a new roof before it would be suitable for livestock. All the fences needed to be checked and probably replaced. He had some doubts about the well pump; it was probably going to need to be replaced soon. And so on, and so forth. When he looked over the farm with the eye of a professional rancher, it was nothing but an endless series of necessary repairs, most of which Crystal probably didn't even know about. She was eager to learn, but she didn't have the years of experience that Cody did.

She needed him. The farm needed him, in a way the Circle B no longer did.

And she hadn't been at all afraid of his bear—

Of course not, his bear rumbled contentedly.

—and, though not a shifter herself, she even came from a shifter family. Her soul yearned for the forest, even if she didn't know it.

"Crystal," he said, her name singing on his tongue, and she turned to him, breaking out of whatever fantasies about those overgrown fields she had been entertaining. "If we can find your grandpa's treasure, pay off your family's debts—"

"Those are some big 'ifs,' you know," she said, smiling.

"I know, but ... if we could do that, do you think you might consider keeping the farm?"

All the world seemed to hang on her answer.

"I ... don't know," she said slowly, and relief rolled through him. True, it wasn't yes, but it wasn't no either. "When I came here, I didn't expect ..." She looked across the fields again, down to the cluster of buildings where Cody's family, marked by their bright splashes of color, worked their way through the expanse of green on their impromptu treasure hunt. "... any of this," she finished, spreading her arms. "Cody, I like it here. No, I love it here." Then, even as his heart leaped with hope, she brought him crashing back to earth. "But I can't stay if it means abandoning my mom to a mountain of debts. It's either the treasure or the farm, and if there is no treasure—"

"Don't think that way," Cody said quickly, taking her hand. They were so close. She wanted to stay; it was just a matter of finding a way. "C'mon, think about your grandpa. What kind of treasure might he have owned?"

"Well, that's the problem, I don't know. The guy was an old rancher. What could he possibly have that was that valuable? If there's one thing I know about you guys, it's that you put everything back into your ranches and farms. He wouldn't have just been sitting on a bunch of money if he could've used it to keep up the farm."

Unfortunately, she was right. Cody couldn't imagine his parents or Alec doing something like that, hiding a bunch of money when they could have used it to pay for improvements to the ranch's infrastructure or fresh breeding stock for the herd.

"So forget about the treasure for a little while." He tugged her gently after him. "This is the nice thing about having a whole clan to help you. My family's searching for it, so you can take a little time off."

"No I can't," she complained, but she allowed herself to be led into the sun-dappled shade of the trees. Cody leaned the brush cutter against a tree, but she stubbornly hung onto the shovel. "It's not fair to let everyone else work while I goof off. And anyway, there's so little time; I have to use every minute of it ..."

"My grandma used to say," Cody said, "that the best way to find something you've lost is to stop looking."

Crystal laughed. "What, so I should just wander around and hope to stumble across it by accident? That's a good strategy, all right."

"No, it's just that sometimes you can get caught up in trying the same thing over and over, even when it doesn't work, and forget about other options."

"The same thing over and over," Crystal murmured. She tipped her head back, her full lips parted. "Like me and the St. Louis dating scene. I tried Craigslist, OKCupid, heck, I even tried speed dating one time. And it turned out, all I had to do was go out to the middle of nowhere and the first unattached guy I met would be my ... soulmate."

She might not be a shifter, but she wore her soul in her eyes anyway. Cody was drawn down as if by magnetism to take her mouth with his, exploring those sweet lips, drawing her to him with a hand at the small of her back. When their lips parted, she rested her head against his chest, and he stroked her hair. The shovel lay forgotten at their feet.

"I don't want to talk about leaving any more," she murmured. "You're right, I've been thinking about nothing but finding that stupid treasure since I got here. I just want to enjoy this day for a few hours, and—"

"Shhh," Cody breathed into her hair.

"I'm sorry, here I go talking about it again—"

"No," he whispered, "just stop talking, and look to your left."

He felt her tense slightly as she turned her head, and then she breathed out a soft "ohhhh" of wonder.

A deer had stepped out of the edge of the woods. Cody often saw them around the ranch while he was out checking on the herds, to the point where he'd almost stopped noticing them, but this time he saw it anew through Crystal's eyes, tinged with her open wonder. It—she—was a beautiful creature, with large liquid eyes and slender, delicate legs. She moved through the dense brush with a light, high-stepping gait as if she was dancing on those tiny hooves.

Cody leaned down so he could whisper into Crystal's ear, "See the fawn?"

The deer paused at the sound of his voice, then took a few more steps, hardly seeming aware of the couple just a few yards away.

"No," Crystal breathed. "Where?"

"Behind her. In the woods."

It was almost invisible with its spotted coat. Then, as the mother deer looked around and saw nothing to alarm her, the baby trotted out of the woods in a quick scurry of steps to catch up with its mother.

A sudden, distant burst of laughter drifted to them on the wind, coming from the yard of the farmhouse. The mother deer swiveled her head around, big ears pointing forward, and with hardly a sound, she and her baby ghosted back into the woods, vanishing like smoke.

Crystal relaxed with a giggle of released tension and delight. "That was amazing," she said softly, staring into the woods where the deer had gone. "It's like they didn't even notice us. I've never been that close to a deer before."

"Animals often recognize shifters as their own kind," Cody said. He, too, kept his voice quiet, though the two deer were probably long gone. It seemed somehow disrespectful to be loud. "Maybe they recognize you too, because of your shifter heritage."

"But you're a bear."

"Doesn't really matter. I'm not hunting right now, and they can tell. I've seen a fox and a rabbit come down to drink from the same spring together, not bothering each other." He brushed a wind-tousled lock of hair away from her cheek. "You have so many wonders to see, Crystal."

"I'm starting to realize that," she murmured. "And I want you to show them to me."

Cody grinned. "Want to start with your first tracking lesson?"

"Oh! I guess—okay?"

With her hand in his, he walked through the tall grass to the place where the deer had stood. The grass was bent down, the ground underneath scuffed by small, pointy hooves.

"You can see that something's been walking here by the way the grass is bent," Cody explained. "The stems bend in the direction she went—see?" He brushed a hand through the grass, parting it with his fingers. "You can't see the actual tracks very well here. If you want to walk back into the woods a little ways, we might find a place where the ground is soft and they'll show up."

"Is it safe?" Crystal asked, glancing at the shade under the trees.

"You're with a bear. What could be safer?"

She smiled and followed him into the edge of the woods. "Oh, there's a path!"

"Deer trail. Look here." Cody knelt and showed her a delicate, cloven hoof-mark in a patch of disturbed earth. "This is what their tracks look like. If you keep your eyes open, you might find them around the barn in the morning, or under the apple trees. Deer love windfall apples."

"Oh right, I forgot I have apple trees. Wow." She looked ahead of them, where the deer path wound in and out of patches of sun and shade. "This is all part of my land too, right? Can we follow this and see where it goes?"

"Sure." Cody's heart lifted at her phrasing. My land, she'd said. She was already thinking of the farm that way, with the loving pride of the born rancher ... or shifter.

She's not a shifter, though? he queried his bear.

No, the bear answered back. We would be able to tell. But there is a lot of shifter in her.

You could have mentioned this before, you know.

Deep, rich amusement from the presence curled in his mind.

Crystal started to take a few steps up the path, then stopped and looked back. Leaf shadows drew patterns on her shoulders. "We won't bother the deer, will we?"

"No, they've probably headed off to find somewhere a little more private."

Together they followed the path through sunlight and shade, pushing their way through thickets where the deer had beaten out little tunnels. Every time they passed a stand of wildflowers or an interesting-looking plant, Crystal asked its name. Cody could only tell her about half of them.

"We'll have to get a flower book too," he told her.

"I'd love to. I want to learn all of them. Oh!" She looked up at a flash of movement as a bird flew between the trees. "That was a bluebird, wasn't it?"

Cody hadn't seen it well enough to tell if it was blue or not, but he agreed readily, "Looked like one to me."

Crystal beamed.

Sunlight showed through the tree trunks ahead. A meadow, Cody thought, but then they pushed through the hanging branches and he found something even more lovely: a hidden glade with a spring in the center.

"Oh," Crystal whispered, staring in wonder.

The spring bubbled up from the base of a jumble of rocks that formed a natural pool. They'd climbed higher in the foothills without really noticing, and now that they'd come out of the trees, the side of the mountain reared above them. The forest changed here, the willows and birches they'd been walking through changing into mostly pine trees as the hillside got steeper. Around the spring, ferns and moss grew thickly, their rich greens a noticeable contrast to the pale greens and dark, dusty pine colors of the drier hillside above.

Cody dipped a hand into the spring. The water was very cold and clear. From the animal tracks around its sandy edge, it was obviously a well-used watering hole for the local wildlife. The spring twisted away into the forest and was lost to sight.

"Can we drink this?" Crystal asked, kneeling beside the water.

"Sure. No better water in the world." Cody flashed a sudden grin. "And I see we're not the first people to have that idea." He reached between two rocks beside the spring and retrieved an old, faded mug with a chip in the rim. A piece of twine had been tied to its handle and then to a fat, gnarly willow beside the pool. Cody dipped it full of water and handed it to Crystal, who took it reverently.

"Do you think my grandfather left this here?"

"I can't think who else would have."

"Oh," she murmured, turning the cup around in her hands as water trickled down her fingers from its wet sides. To her, Cody thought, her grandfather must have been an abstraction, a person she remembered vaguely from early childhood, but perhaps, not quite real.

And now here was this cup, a tangible reminder that he'd found this spring too, that he'd knelt where they were on its sandy edge, and dipped a cup of water to slake his thirst.

Crystal took a cautious sip, then a deeper one, closing her eyes. "I thought the well water was good, but you're right, this is incredible. I don't think I've had better water in my life. You could bottle this and sell it for Perrier prices. Not that I'm going to, of course."

Cody took back the cup and dipped it full for himself. "You know," he said thoughtfully, trying to map the direction they'd come in his head, "I think this might be the headwaters of that creek across your driveway. No wonder the water supply down there is so consistent, even in the driest, hottest part of summer."

"Yeah, I remember what you told me about how water is important for ranching."

"More than just important. It's key to the whole operation. Well, that and good grazing land, which you also have here—thanks to this spring."

"So in a way," Crystal said quietly, trailing her fingers through the water, "this spring is the reason why the farm was able to survive all these years."

"It's probably the reason why it's here in the first place. Whoever picked out this land, your grandpa or his dad or whatever far-back relative bought this place—they would have known that a good, reliable source of water would be necessary for running cattle. This side of the mountain was pretty dry even back then. A lot of the water sources were only seasonal. A spring like this would be a real stroke of luck. Worth its weight in gold."

"I'd rather have the actual gold," Crystal sighed. Then she looked up at the trees rustling in the wind above them. "No, that's not true. I'm glad we found this place. It's absolutely lovely. Do you feel like ..." She hesitated, then looked up at him, a little nervous, like she expected him to laugh at her. "Does it feel to you like this place is special?"

"I know exactly what you mean." He'd felt it ever since they'd stepped into the glade. There was a hushed sense of ... not magic, exactly, in the same way that shifters had their own kind of magic, but a reverent feeling, a little like being in church. It was as if the land itself knew that this spring, this source of water on an arid mountainside, was the reason why this hillside was so lush and green. It was, quite literally, the wellspring from which life on this mountain arose.

"Cody ..." Crystal scrambled to her feet. She touched her fingertips, still wet with spring water, to her neck. "That thing we talked about earlier, claiming your mate. I want you to do it ... here, right here, beside the spring."

His heart seemed to seize in his chest. The very woods were hushed, as if the forest itself hung on his answer.

"Crystal—if I do this, it'll bind us together forever. Where one of us goes, the other will go. There won't be any going back."

She nodded. "That's what I want. Do you?"

He flung himself forward, taking her mouth with his, a silent "yes" more eloquent than words could ever have been.

In the leafy shadows under the willows, they undressed each other with mounting urgency. Cody could smell her eagerness, lending extra intensity to the passion growing inside him. And yet he also wanted to savor every moment of this. The most powerful moment of a shifter's life was the moment they bonded with their mate. There was nothing else like it.

So he tried to memorize it all: the background music of the rustling leaves and burbling spring, the warm bronze of her skin in the sun-dappled shade, the heat of her body writhing against him, the smell of arousal coming off her like a hot tide.

And, in the part of his mind not overwhelmed with desire, he knew that he wanted to make this as special for her as it was for him. He didn't know what mate-bonding felt like to a human, but if this was going to be the best sex of his life, he wanted it to be for her as well. It needed to be a consummation of their bond that she would never forget.

And that was why, though his member throbbed to enter her waiting heat, he dropped to his knees instead. She was like a goddess, his goddess, standing beside the spring, naked to the sun and the breeze. She was his forest goddess and this was the only way he could worship her. He gripped one generous buttock in each hand and nuzzled at the softness of her inner thighs, teasing her by lapping delicately at her folds before burying one finger in her, then two.

Oh, she was so open, so wet. Even without having forged the full bond between them, he could feel her arousal and need, echoes traveling back and forth between them, her desire building on his own.

She clasped her hands in his hair. Her tiny moans drove him onward, encouraging him as he found her small hot nub and worked it lightly.

"Cody—!" she gasped, and then her body jerked and stiffened as she came with a hard thrust of her hips, pulsing around his fingers.

His engorged cock was quivering on the edge now, her scent unendurably good. He had to hold down his own desire along with the powerful urge of his bear to rise up and claim his mate. As her aftershocks began to fade, he struggled to his feet, and was startled when she turned around and pressed her enticing, round backside against him.

"Like this," she whispered, looking at him over her shoulder.

She didn't have to ask twice. As she spread her legs and opened up for him, he slid into her eager heat. She was so wet and ready that there was no resistance. She took him entirely, leaning forward to brace her hands against the rocks. Her hair tickled his nose, driving him made with her scent. The soft nape of her neck was right there. He bent forward, lips brushing across her neck, then dragging his teeth over it. Each time he did, her whole body jerked in an electric reaction.

Instinct told him to wait, to hold it down, to keep the beast within him contained until they both teetered on the edge of their shared climax. And then—then he unleashed it, gave her the bite that a shifter could give only once in his lifetime, and she cried out desperately as they both gave in to the wave that crashed across them.

The others were right. He'd never felt anything like it. They both felt the orgasm sweep across them. It was impossible to tell where his pleasure ended and hers began. It went on and on, endlessly, until finally the wave began to recede and he became aware of the sand under his bare feet, the press of her buttocks against him, the wind cooling the sweat on his back.

"Oh ... my ..." she whispered. Her legs wobbled, and Cody pulled out of her carefully, kissing her neck beneath the fresh half-moon of the bite mark, and helped her sit down shakily beside the spring. Her rib cage heaved with her breathing as she came down from the high, lips parted and eyes half closed. He could look at her like this forever, beautiful and rapt in her pleasure, with the taste of her salt still on his tongue.

Cody sat down beside her and, after another long moment, she opened her eyes. Her pupils were still blown. "I didn't know sex could feel like that. Is it, uh ... always going to be like that?"

"Not quite. But it'll always be good. I promise you, I'll always make sure that it's good for you." He reached out gently to wipe at a trickle of blood on her collarbone, though the wound was already closing. "How does that feel? Does it hurt?"

"It hurts a little, but in a good kind of way." Crystal twisted as she tried to look down at it. Of course, she couldn't see her own neck. "What's it look like?"

"Here. See for yourself."

He steered her to the edge of the pool. She bent over the gently rippling water, and Cody held back her mass of sex-tousled dark hair as he leaned over with her, deliciously conscious of her naked body against him and the smell of sex that lingered about her.

"Hmmm." She touched beneath the bite mark with her fingertips.

"It'll be healed by tomorrow," Cody said. "And if you don't like how it looks, you can probably cover it with makeup." Although, come to think of it, none of the Circle B ranch women did that. They all wore their claiming mark proudly.

And Crystal looked similarly startled at the idea. "Of course I won't do that. It's just something new, that's all. Actually, I like it." She turned her head to kiss him lightly on the corner of his mouth. "Will it change me in any other way?"

"You'll be more aware of me, and I'll be more aware of you." It was already working; he could feel the opening of the channels between them. They wouldn't be able to read each other's minds or anything of the sort; at least, he'd never heard anything about that. But there was still a sense of her presence that he hadn't had before. He would need to ask Alec whether—

Alec.

What was Alec going to say?

Thinking of his alpha was like a bucket of cold water dashed over him. Alec had mellowed out a lot over the last couple of years—he was no longer the cold, stern alpha who had fought Axl over Tara—but he still didn't like the other bears on the ranch making important decisions without consulting him.

For his entire life, Cody had been the peacemaker, the one who smiled and got along with everyone. He wasn't a rebel. He'd always assumed that if he ever did find his mate, he would do everything properly. He'd bring her back to the ranch, present her to Alec, get his alpha's blessing ...

Instead, he'd been stumbling through this, making mistake after mistake. He hadn't even thought about it, but with the impromptu lunch gathering at the bridge, he'd introduced her to almost everyone on the ranch except Alec. And now he'd put his claiming mark on her.

"What's wrong?" Crystal asked, looking up at him with wide, anxious eyes.

The idea of lying to her didn't even cross his mind. He didn't think he could lie to this woman, not anymore. "Just trying to figure out how I'm going to explain this to my alpha."

"Your alpha. That's right, if you're a shifter, you have an alpha, don't you? Who is your alpha?"

"My cousin Alec." Cody smiled at her with a confidence he didn't entirely feel. "Don't worry, it shouldn't be that big a deal. I'm the last one on the ranch who hadn't found my mate yet. Everyone but me has been expecting it."

"What do you mean, everyone but you?"

"I mean ..." He brushed his thumb across the corner of her full lips. "They all kept telling me to be patient, but I didn't think I'd find this. Have this. I was starting to doubt there was someone out there for me."

"I felt the same. It seemed like I'd dated half of St. Louis, but every prince turned out to be a frog." She put her bare arms around his neck, her body pressing wonderfully against his. "I never thought I'd find my prince on a ranch, of all places."

Cody luxuriated in a long kiss before coming up for air with a regretful sigh. "You know, as much as I've enjoyed this, I should probably be getting back to work on that bridge. Gannon and I can get the rest of the crosspieces into place today, and it should be ready for you to use after a little finishwork tomorrow."

"I guess not being stuck on the farm is a good thing." She smiled playfully. "You know, though ... before we put our clothes back on ... I was thinking about trying for a personal best."

"Personal best?"

"Yeah, you know, how many times you can make me come in one day?"

"Oh God," he murmured, as she laid him back on the soft moss beside the spring, and lowered her luscious, curvy body on top of his.

11. Crystal

The bite mark on her neck healed overnight, as Cody had told her it would. By the following morning, it looked like it had been healing for weeks; nothing was left but a small, slightly tender scar.

It had felt a bit strange in the beginning to have a new scar, but as she got used to looking in the mirror and seeing that pink mark on her neck, she felt nothing but pride. She kept having to stop and pull back her hair so she could look at it. No matter where Cody went, a part of him would always stay with her like this.

And Cody was right, she could sense him now, in an odd kind of way. It wasn't like she could tell how far away he was or what he was doing. There was just a faint sense of Codyness, especially when she touched her fingers to the claiming mark. And there was a yearning that went with it. Having him farther away than she could touch or see was too far. She wanted him with her always.

She thought she probably should have been having second thoughts about the mate bonding, but in truth, all she felt was a resolute satisfaction.

No matter what decision they made, about what to do with the farm and where to live, they were going to have to make it together. And that was exactly how she wanted it.

In the meantime, she kept herself too busy to think too much about it. Cody still wasn't spending the nights, but he came over early in the morning and left late. Usually, at least one of the ranch women came with him, most often Daisy and Saffron, occasionally Tara or brisk, cheerful, take-charge Charmian. Cody worked in the yard, pruning the fruit trees, cutting brush, finishing the bridge, repairing farm equipment. Crystal kept up her treasure hunt while she also worked on fixing up the house, trying to tell herself the whole time that she was fixing it up for whatever new owners eventually bought it.

But she could only fool herself for so long. It wasn't for the new owners that she'd cleaned up the antique vases she found in the attic and filled them with wildflowers; it wasn't to please some other farm wife that she had polished the old brass cookware until it shone. When Charmian helped her drag the aired-out furniture back indoors, Crystal set it up how she wanted it, arranging every piece just so.

And every day, she walked up to the spring again. It had become her favorite place on the farm. Sitting by the spring in the cool shade, she felt closer to her grandfather than anywhere else on the property. She had a feeling that this had been one of his favorite places, too. There was a big flat rock beside the pool that made a sort of bench, so level and flat that she suspected it wasn't natural; it had been found somewhere else and dragged to the pool for sitting on.

"What should I do?" she whispered out loud. "I don't want to leave. Why did you have to make this so difficult? If you had an inheritance for me, for us, couldn't you just put it in your will like a normal person?"

Nothing answered except the soft whisper of wind in the trees. And yet, she almost felt as if someone might be listening. A breath of wind touched her face, and she closed her eyes.

It was late afternoon. When she listened carefully, she could hear the rumble of a distant engine. Cody had gotten her grandfather's tractor running again, and he was using it to pull stumps along the broken line of the pasture fence so they could string new fencing.

Even if she hadn't been able to hear the tractor, she would have known he was close by, through the bond they now shared.

It was so hard to believe she was going to have to leave tomorrow.

By unspoken consent, she and Cody hadn't spoken of it, instead going through this day as if it was a perfectly normal day. But her two weeks were almost up. As it was, she'd stayed a day longer than she'd intended to. Rather than having a leisurely two-day drive back to St. Louis, she was going to have to drive through the night to make it back in time for work on Monday.

How could two weeks have sped by so quickly? And to think when she first came here, she thought she'd be bored. She had wondered how she could ever fill that much time in this remote place. By all rights, she should be hungering for the city again. She ought to be yearning for a decent cup of coffee, craving her favorite Ethiopian restaurant, looking forward to being able to check her email without having to drive down to Wildcat Forks ...

But she didn't miss any of that. Instead, the idea of leaving this place felt like it would tear her soul in two.

And then there was Cody. She didn't know what to do. She couldn't ask him to leave his ranch and clan.

There's another option, she told herself. She could sell the farm, pay off her family's debts, and move onto the ranch with Cody. That was a perfect solution, wasn't it? She would still have her mate and the rural lifestyle that had turned out to fit her like a totally unexpected glove. She really liked the other ranch women, and she would have them around her every day ...

And she'd have to go through every day working on someone else's ranch, feeling like a guest—a welcome guest, but a guest nonetheless. She'd have to live right next door to her family farm while someone else tended these fields, someone else sat beside this spring.

It would be torment. She'd rather live back in St. Louis, where at least she wouldn't have constant reminders around her every day.

She opened her eyes again at a soft rustling. In front of her, the pool glistened, reflecting the pink-tinged sky, the trees and rocks.

Across from her, a deer had just stepped out of the woods.

Crystal held her breath. Every time she came to the spring, she'd been hoping to see the deer and fawn again. The little cloven hoofprints let her know that they came here regularly. But until now, she hadn't seen a trace of them.

The deer looked around, scenting the wind. It paused for a long moment, then trotted to the water's edge and lowered its head to dip its delicate muzzle into the pool.

Crystal didn't dare move a muscle.

She wasn't positive this was the same deer until a fawn detached itself from the woods and made its gangly way to the water's edge. It waded into the edge of the water with its skinny little legs and leaned down, but its legs were too long and its neck too short to drink the way its mother was doing. So it tried to kneel down, and accidentally dipped its whole head in the water. It came up snorting and sneezing.

Crystal couldn't help herself. A tiny giggle escaped her.

Both the deer jumped. The fawn scampered back into the woods, herded by its alert mother. In a moment, the two of them had faded away as if they'd never been.

Crystal let out her breath in a slow sigh. They had been so close. Her spine tingled with the magic of the encounter. She couldn't get too upset with herself for accidentally laughing at them. Until that moment, it was like they didn't even know she was there, as if they had accepted her completely as part of the scenery.

Maybe next time, I'll manage to be totally quiet.

What am I thinking? Next time? There's not going to be a next time. I'm leaving tomorrow.

She looked up and realized the sun had set behind the mountains. It was always cooler by the spring than out in the pasture, but now a genuine chill began to creep into the air, chasing away the heat of afternoon. If she didn't head back to the farmhouse now, she was going to have to walk back in the dark, and she wasn't quite that familiar with the place yet. It would be embarrassing to get lost in her own woods and make Cody have to track her down.

She wasn't scared, though. Even though there could be bears and mountain lions in the woods, a woman who was mated to a bear shifter needed to fear nothing. The biggest predator on this mountain was her mate, her Cody.

"I want to stay," she said aloud, tears springing to her eyes. "Please, Grandpa, help me. Show me where your treasure is. Give me a way to stay here and keep the farm."

A sudden gust of wind rattled the trees. Realistically Crystal knew it was only the evening temperature change stirring up breezes, like it always did at dusk, but it still raised the fine hairs on her arms. A leaf broke free of the willow hanging over the pool and fluttered down to dimple the surface, swirling around in the current before it was drawn into the rushing outflow.

Another leaf fluttered down beside Crystal, landing lightly on her favorite flat rock. Layers of dead leaves had built up here over the years; she'd had to brush them aside to make herself a nice place to sit. Now she poked at the dead leaf layer, pushing it off the suspiciously smooth top of the rock, and her fingers brushed over a cleft.

Wait ... there was something scratched into the top of the rock.

She pushed more leaves aside. As she she bared the top of the rock, letters were exposed. They looked like they'd been cut with a chisel.

T-R-E—

One letter at a time, she uncovered the inscription.

TREASURE

SPRINGS

"Treasure springs?" she murmured, and Cody's words came back to her, about the ranch being located here because of the spring. Worth its weight in gold, he'd said.

She touched the letters with her fingertips, and a laugh bubbled up in her throat. Oh, the irony.

"This is your treasure, isn't it, Grandpa? The spring is the treasure."

I'd rather have the gold, she'd told Cody. But that wasn't true at all. She wouldn't trade this spring for a hundred gold mines. Without this spring, there would be no farm.

But it meant there was no magic pot of money hidden on the property. No perfect solution that would allow her to pay off her family's bills and keep the farm too.

She was going to have to sell it.

Crystal drew a deep breath past the lump in her throat, and got up off the bench. "Thank you, Grandpa," she said to the darkening woods. "I guess you were trying to show me after all. I just didn't want to hear what you had to say."

Hope wasn't lost, she told herself. There were still options. She would be happy eventually, living on the Circle B or in St. Louis, because her heart was with Cody and her home was wherever he was. Maybe they would be able to sell the farm to someone nice, who would let her come over here sometimes, and sit beside the spring like she used to ...

Her head jerked up at a sudden rustle in the woods.

All her earlier bravado deserted her, and now her head was full of thoughts of bears, mountain lions, enraged deer ...

Crystal groped for something to use as a weapon. The only thing that came to hand was a rock, but she picked it up anyway—

—then relaxed when Cody stepped out of the woods.

"Crystal?" He relaxed, too, when he saw her. "You weren't back at the house. I figured I'd find you up here. It's getting dark."

"I know. Thanks for coming to find me." She dropped the rock, and pointed to the disturbed leaves and the underlying inscription. "I'm glad you did. Come here, I want to show you something."

Cody read the inscription on the rock, squinting to make out the letters in the dusk. "Treasure springs ... wait. The spring—"

"The spring is the treasure. All this time we've been looking for something that doesn't exist. Or, I guess I should say, we already found it, we just didn't know."

"Oh, honey." He pulled her into his arms. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not," Crystal said into his shoulder, slightly muffled. "Like you pointed out, the farm wouldn't even be here if not for the spring. It really is a treasure. Just ... not the kind I hoped for."

But she still wanted to cry. All that work. She'd fallen so completely in love with the farm in just two weeks. She wanted to spend the rest of her life here.

Cody stroked her hair, and she relaxed into his arms and reminded herself that as long as she had him, things would work out, somehow.

"Are you leaving tomorrow?" he murmured against her hair.

"Yes, but only for a little while. I just have to go back to St. Louis, talk to Mom, start the proceedings to sell the farm—"

"You're selling it?" He sounded as crushed as she felt.

He loves it here, too.

"I have to. There's no other option. We need that money. But ... once I get things settled with Mom and get my stuff packed up, I'm coming back."

She felt something pass through him, some powerful emotion, partly from the way he tensed and then sagged very slightly against her, and partly in a way that went beyond normal senses, through the bond they shared. "You're coming back?"

"Of course I'm coming back!" She tipped her head back to look up at him. The sky was still deep blue, with the first stars of evening emerging above the mountains, but it was almost dark under the trees; she couldn't make out his expression. "Cody, I understand how much it means to you, living here. When I let you bite me, I knew what it meant. I don't expect you to move to the city for me. I can live on the Circle B, if your alpha will have me."

"Alec. Yeah." Cody laughed softly and pressed his face to her hair. "There's one conversation I've been ducking. I kept telling myself there was no point in talking to him until I knew what, exactly, I was asking for—whether I'd be telling him I was leaving the ranch, or bringing my mate back with me ..."

"Well, now you know." She pressed herself against him, as if she could burrow into him, and told herself that she would be happy on the Circle B, even if it didn't feel like hers in the same way the farm did. It would come to feel like home, in time.

"Maybe—" Cody began.

"Shhh. Let's not talk about that tonight. All I want to do is go back down to the farmhouse, and make a nice meal; there are those steaks in the freezer that you brought over from the Circle B, and we need to use them up before I go. Let's just have a pleasant evening, and ... stay with me tonight."

"Always," he whispered, brushing his callused fingertips across the side of her face. "Always."

12. Cody

He woke in the gray light of early dawn. It was habit, mostly, that woke him at that hour; he'd been getting up with the sun ever since he could remember. A rancher's day started early.

But as he lay comfortable and drowsy, with Crystal's warm sleeping weight curled against him in her four-poster bed, his mind circled around and around the problems facing them—and an idea came to him.

He knew a way Crystal could keep the farm.

He sat up, careful not to disturb her, and looked down at her face in the growing dawn light. She was so beautiful, her dusky skin flawless. He stroked the backs of his fingers very lightly across her cheek, and even in her sleep, she turned her head in that direction, seeking her mate.

Even though she'd told him she wasn't leaving forever and he believed her, the knowledge that his mate was going away, and the awareness that this was their last day together in the cozy little farmhouse, had hung over their entire evening together. They'd made love again last night in the master bedroom, gentle and slow, and then just wrapped around each other, as if they could soak up enough of each other's skin to get through the long days ahead.

He didn't want to wake her with false hope. Instead, he kissed her gently, the softest brush of his lips, and then got out of bed and collected yesterday's clothes draped on the chair beside the bed.

Her suitcase was open on the floor, half packed. In one of its pockets he found a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen with a motel logo, and he scribbled in large letters: GOT TO RUN AN ERRAND! DON'T LEAVE WITHOUT SAYING GOODBYE! -C

He left this propped on the bedside table, and let himself quietly out of the room.

The sun was not yet up, the windshield of his truck beaded with dew. He wiped it with his shirt sleeve and started the engine. It wasn't quite cool enough at night yet to run the heater ... but it would be getting there before too long. The seasons turned fast in the high mountain country.

Cody drove out of the yard onto the short stretch of old road between their two properties. When he had first driven it to come over and offer to lend a hand to the new neighbor, there had been grass as high as the doors of the truck, and several fallen trees he'd had to use a bear's strength to heave out of the road. Now, between his twice-daily trips and the almost daily visits of the ranch women, it was looking well used.

He drove through the back pasture and let himself into the gate leading to the ranch yard. The sun was just peeking over the edge of the trees in the valley below, gilding the dew on each blade of grass. When he stepped out of the truck and slammed the door, a rooster crowed hopefully, and some of the cattle lowed in the field behind the barn.

It was early enough that it didn't look like the ranch was stirring yet, aside from the animals. Tara and Axl's curtains were drawn; no one moved at Remy and Saffron's place. However, one person was up. Alec was sitting on the front porch of the big ranch house with a cup of coffee, the scruffy little dog curled up beside him. He lifted a hand to Cody in acknowledgement.

Well, it wasn't like he could put off this conversation forever, though he'd have preferred to talk to Tara first. Cody lifted an answering hand, hesitated for just an instant as he considered going into his trailer first under the pretext of ... and that was where it fell apart, because it wasn't like Alec was going to care if Cody went over to talk to him in yesterday's clothes.

Yeah, anything that he did at this point would look like he was dodging his alpha—which would be entirely accurate. Crystal deserved better. Alec did too, for that matter.

Cody loped over with his long, ground-eating stride. As he approached, Alec got up and went into the house, but by the time Cody reached the porch, he'd reappeared with a second cup of coffee. He held it out wordlessly and Cody wrapped his hands around the cup. He took a sip. Strong and black and hot—Alec always did know how to wake up a ranch hand with a good cup of coffee.

They sat side by side on the porch and drank their coffee. The rooster crowed again, and in the pasture, two of the horses whickered to each other.

The horses, Cody thought. He'd been neglecting them lately—neglecting a lot of his responsibilities here. Taking care of the horses had always been, for the most part, his job, and he was attached to them. He wondered what Alec would say if he took a couple of his favorites with him to Crystal's farm. The thought of teaching Crystal to ride gave him a delightful mental image of his beautiful mate on the back of a horse, her hair flowing free in the wind ...

Slow down there, boy. First things first.

"So," Alec drawled, glancing at him. "Hear you found yourself a mate."

"Yeah."

"You put your mark on her?"

"Yep, sure did." Cody just barely managed not to tack on a "sir," although some part of him wanted to.

Even without stirring a hair, Alec was pouring on the alpha dominance this morning. But Cody knew he had to strike the right balance. He had to be polite without being too formal; he had to stand firm without offering a challenge.

He and Alec had never stood on ceremony with each other, even back in the days when a much harder, less relaxed Alec had ruled the ranch with a firm hand.

Of all the bears in the clan, the two of them had worked together most closely. Axl had been busy with his sheriff's responsibilities, Remy away at various jobs in town. Gannon had been a dark and damaged newcomer who spent most of his time in the woods at his cabin. So it was Alec and Cody who had kept the ranch running.

For a long time, they'd been so in sync that few words between them were needed. Alec gave the orders and Cody followed them, but that was understood as the proper way of the world. In general, they both knew their work so well that no orders were needed. Alec did the detail work of running the ranch—kept the books, ordered the feed, and so forth—while Cody supplied willing muscles and a deep love of the livestock. They'd both gone out in all kinds of weather to bring in the cattle, stayed up helping troubled cows deliver their calves, chipped ice out of the stock troughs in -30 windchill ...

And Cody had never wanted it to be any different. He was happy here. He wasn't a dominant personality; unlike some of the others' bears, the bear in him was not a natural alpha.

He had never had the slightest urge to challenge Alec.

But now he was surprised to find that his bear wasn't settling down as it normally did in their alpha's presence. Instead he had the feeling that his bear was backed up against a wall. It wasn't going to pick a fight, but it also wasn't going to back down. That feeling surprised him; he'd never felt it before.

Cody had never liked fighting. But now his bear had found something worth fighting for, and so had he.

"I heard about it from the girls." Alec dumped the cooling dregs of his cup over the edge of the porch, but still held it in his big hands, as if to give him something to do. He turned his cool blue eyes on Cody, and it was all Cody could do not to look down in the face of his alpha's disapproval. But he didn't, and he saw something flash in the depths of Alec's eyes—surprise, maybe. "You should have come to me about it. I shouldn't have had to hear it from them."

"I know," Cody said evenly. "I didn't because I wasn't sure what to tell you. Didn't know what I wanted to ask for. I need your permission to bring my mate to the ranch, but ..." He took a breath. This was the crux of it; this was the truth he'd been skirting around for the last week. "I don't need your permission, or your blessing, to take Crystal as my mate. I'd really like to have it. But I don't need it. That's out of either of our hands."

Alec inclined his head in something that might have been a nod. There was a look in his eyes that Cody had never seen before, at least not directed at him, and he slowly realized that it was respect.

It wasn't that Alec hadn't respected him before. But he had never seen this kind of respect in his alpha's eyes, the acknowledging nod of Alec's bear to his own.

"My mate calmed my bear," Alec said after a moment. "It looks like your mate put some fire in yours. I'd like to meet her."

"You will. In fact, maybe today." Cody finally felt that he could break eye contact without having it look submissive, so he glanced across the yard at Axl and Tara's place. There was now a small curl of smoke coming from the chimney. "I need to look into some things first. Trouble is, she's gonna lose that farm."

"I heard that." Alec set down the empty cup on the step beside him and scratched the ears of the drowsing dog. "Hoping for buried treasure, I heard."

"Yeah."

"You find anything?"

"Nothing that'd help," Cody said.

"Never a good idea to pin all your hopes on a miracle."

"No, but we might get one anyway. I've got an idea. If this goes through, though ..." Cody steadied himself and met Alec's eyes again, one bear to another. It wasn't a challenge; it was simply a declaration of his intention to stand firm, not giving an inch. "I won't be bringing her to live on the ranch with us."

He wasn't quite sure how to take the complete lack of surprise on Alec's face ... or any other emotion. "No?" Alec said, noncommittally.

"No. Her roots are as deep in the land as ours are, and her family's farm is where her heart lives. If we can't manage to keep the farm, we'll ... I'm not sure what we'll do, maybe live on the ranch for a while and look for a place of our own. But ..."

"But you need your own place," Alec said quietly.

There was no disapproval, no anger. Just a calm acceptance.

"Yeah," Cody said. "Don't get me wrong. I love it here. I've never had a moment when I regretted this life. And I don't want to leave the clan, either. You know me, man. I'm not an alpha. I wouldn't be happy running my own clan. But—well, it's like you said. I've spent my life helping you with the ranch, and helping my clan brothers with their lives. It's time to start my life at last, and it isn't here."

He waited, breath held, for an explosion, but all that came was Alec's quiet smile, a little regretful, but mostly accepting.

"Based on how much time those women have been spending over there all week, you may think you never left. In fact, you may want to come over to the ranch now and then for a little peace and quiet."

Cody's pent-up breath burst out in a huff of relieved laughter. "Yeah. I might, at that."

Alec reached out and clapped him on the shoulder, a rare affectionate gesture from the self-contained alpha. "Well, if you ever want to go out riding range like in the old days, just you and me and a couple horses and all that quiet, you just say the word."

Cody raised a hand to clasp his alpha's wrist briefly before letting go. "I think I might like that a lot."

There was the sound of a door opening and closing across the yard. Alec looked across, and from the slight softening in his expression, Cody was not at all surprised to see that Tara had come out onto the porch, with Lexie in a sling across her chest, to empty a basin of waste water over the railing.

Alphas weren't really supposed to have favorites, but Cody knew that Alec had a soft spot a mile wide for Tara. When Tara and Axl named their daughter after him, it had only cemented the bond.

"Looks like that household's up, if you were gonna go over and talk to them," Alec said, shelving the soft look behind his stonefaced alpha facade.

"Yeah. I need to get moving. Crystal's planning to leave today, so there's no time to lose." Cody got to his feet and set his mostly-empty cup on the step. "Thanks for the coffee. And for, uh—everything, I guess."

Alec didn't quite smile, but it was there in his eyes. "I'm glad you found your mate. Go to her, and be happy, wherever your life takes you. You'll always have a place here."

13. Crystal

Waking up in a cold, empty bed was not at all the way Crystal wanted to start her very last morning on the farm.

"Cody?" she called softly, sitting up. His side of the bed was cold, which meant he'd been up for a while.

Maybe he got up to start coffee and make breakfast. That seemed like something he'd do. Except she didn't smell any coffee, or cooking smells ...

She got up and padded to the window, naked and barefoot, and leaned out. His truck had been parked behind the house when they had fallen asleep. Now it was gone.

"What the hell?" she murmured, anger stirring in her chest. "You know I was leaving this morning, you jerk-bear!"

Did he think it would be easier to sneak out the back door, leaving her before she could leave him? But that hardly seemed like him.

Then the note on the bedside table caught her eye, and she sagged with a rush of relief. "Don't leave without saying goodbye," she murmured, picking it up. "Yeah, but saying goodbye would be a lot easier if I knew where you were."

She touched the claiming mark briefly. There was a general sense of Cody, but nothing specific enough to actually locate him.

However, she had a feeling it wasn't going to be hard. There was really only one likely place he'd be.

She put on her last clean T-shirt (the suitcase was going back full of dirty clothes, most of them really dirty, covered with actual dirt and grass clippings) and paused only long enough to grab a piece of toast from the kitchen before she went out into the crisp, fresh morning.

She knew about the road between the two neighboring properties from Cody and the others talking about it, but she'd never had to find it herself. Turned out it wasn't hard; all she had to do was drive along the well-worn ruts of Cody's truck.

It was a pretty little road, not too terribly rough. It wound through a band of woods before emerging in a pasture above a cluster of houses that she assumed—or at least hoped—was the Circle B. This wasn't an empty field like the ones around her farmhouse. There were actual cows here, small scattered clusters of jet-black cattle, lounging around doing whatever cows did. They raised their heads with lazy interest as she drove out of the woods.

Do I just drive through the field? Is that allowed?

The ruts and crushed grass continued on ahead, so she decided to assume she wasn't breaking some unspoken rule of good rural behavior by doing so. She drove very carefully and slowly, since there were actual live cattle wandering about, which was the only thing that kept her from colliding with a gate across the middle of the road where it passed through the fence.

Well, of course you'd need gates to keep the cattle in, she reasoned. She closed it carefully behind her after driving through.

At her farm, it was pretty straightforward to figure out where to park—there was only one house and one barn to deal with—but this place was really more like a compound, a circle of houses and barns, plus one trailer, with a big open yard in the middle and a bunch of trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles scattered around. She didn't see a single small car like hers in the bunch. Once again, the thought of selling the Honda and buying a truck flitted through her mind, but then she reminded herself firmly that there was no point. She wasn't staying on the farm, even though the thought sent a dart of pain through her heart.

And then she noticed that people were waving to her from the porch of one of the smaller houses. That bright red hair was Tara, and ... was that Cody beside her? Yes, it was; her heart did that little flipping-over maneuver that it still performed every time she caught sight of her mate. She parked and got out.

Cody was already trotting down the steps to greet her with a deep kiss. "Mornin'," he said after their lips were no longer locked.

"Morning to you too," she said, tipping back her head to look up at his wide grin, arms wrapped around his back. "You know, I wasn't the happiest camper when I woke up and found you'd left."

The grin faltered. "Sorry about that. I had an important errand I needed to run, and you haven't got a phone hooked up at the farm yet."

Yet. That word sent another little dart of pain through her. Had he forgotten she was going to have to sell it? Well, she sometimes forgot too, at least for minutes at a time.

"Come on up here, you two," Tara called from the porch swing. "I'm breast-feeding. I hope it doesn't bother anybody."

"Not at all," Crystal said, mounting the steps hand in hand with Cody. "Look, I can't stay long. I have to get packed up back at the farm and get on the road."

"Maybe, maybe not." Tara nodded to the rocking chair beside the swing. "Have a seat."

Cody promptly plunked himself into the chair and pulled Crystal into his lap, clasping his arms around her waist.

"I have a feeling I'm missing something," Crystal said as Cody began to slowly and contentedly rock them. "You two look like the cat that swallowed the cream. Uh, did Cody tell you that we found my grandpa's 'treasure' yesterday?"

"He did," Tara said, nodding. "I'm sorry, hon."

"It's all right." Crystal blinked fiercely against the threat of tears. "My grandfather's treasure is water. And I can understand completely. For a farmer, water is the greatest treasure there is. But it's not going to be able to save me from having to sell the farm."

"Hmm," Tara said noncommittally. She rocked the drowsing baby. "Crystal, what do you know about the M&M Foundation?"

"Like the candy?" Crystal asked hesitantly.

"Man, nobody west of the Mississippi has heard of it, have they? It's practically a household name on the East Coast." She gestured to herself. "That's M&M for Max and Maureen, my parents. It's a nonprofit that provides grants to charitable causes."

"Oh, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation?"

"Something like that, yes. My dad made a killing in the stock market back in the eighties and nineties. He decided to use the money to help people. Together, he and I run the foundation and decide where to allocate grants. With me so far?"

"I guess so," Crystal said. "I'm not sure why you're talking to me about it. I mean—" She stopped, and the smallest flutter of hope began to ignite in her chest. "Is it possible that medical bills are the kind of thing your foundation might be able to help with?"

"Not directly," Tara said, and Crystal's hope faded, only to have a spark rekindle when Tara went on, "But even before Cody came to me this morning, I'd been talking with Daisy about a new project. You'd never guess from talking to her, but Daisy's family runs a big publishing empire. She's an heiress."

"Oh, wow. You're right, I never would have guessed." Daisy seemed like the ultimate down-to-earth country girl, fresh-faced and innocent-looking, with a head of golden hair that was made for wearing flower crowns.

"The M&M Foundation can always use new sources of funding, and Daisy and I have been discussing the possibility of investing some of her family's profits into the foundation as a tax write-off." Tara's face grew brilliant and animated as she spoke. It was obvious that she truly enjoyed exploring the ins and outs of the business world. "So we were thinking about setting up a new subsidiary of the foundation. We just hadn't quite figured out what to focus on. We're already doing a lot of work with kids, funding after-school programs and helping build shelters for homeless youth, that kind of thing. Cody suggested that a nonprofit to help families with their medical debts might be just the thing. And it would be exactly the sort of cause that my father would feel strongly about, since my mother passed away from cancer a number of years ago."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Crystal said, covering her mouth with her hand.

A brief shadow of old pain passed through Tara's blue eyes. "It's—well, it's not all right. I'm sure you understand that it'll never be all right. But I was very small and don't remember her well. The point is, I'm sure my father would be all over the idea."

The hope in Crystal's chest had grown into a warm flame, still tentative because it didn't seem real yet. "Tara, I don't know what to say—"

"Don't get too excited," Tara warned her. "There's still an awful lot of work to do. Daisy and I need to get our dads on board, and your mom would need to go through an approval process, although ... if the situation is as dire as you say, I can guarantee you she'll be approved, if I have anything to say about it. And, as one of the people who runs the foundation, I certainly do!"

"It's bad," Crystal said. "She's in danger of losing the house and having to declare bankruptcy."

"Then there's no time to lose. I'll contact Daisy and we can get the process started right away."

Cody hugged Crystal tightly from behind. "Where's all the excitement?" he asked, his voice playful. "I was expecting more delight and less confusion."

"I—I'm just having to adjust," Crystal confessed. "It's too much to take in all at once."

"Then maybe I shouldn't lay the other thing on you quite yet." He kissed her right above the claiming mark, sending a happy shiver through her.

"What? There's more, and you're not going to tell me?" She kicked playfully at him with her heel. Brand-new optimism was starting to settle in under her rib cage, and she felt as light as a feather. "I swear, Cody, if you don't let me know what you're talking about right now—"

"I talked to Alec this morning about me moving off the ranch. It went way better than I was expecting. He's fine with it. So if all of this goes through—"

"Which I'm going to do my best to make sure that it does," Tara said, smiling.

"—then I'm fully prepared to move onto the farm with you."

"I can't believe this." Her voice came out small and breathless. "It's like I'm getting everything I ever wanted. I really don't know what to say. Uh. Thank you seems much too small, but ... thank you?"

"Family helps family," Tara said gently. "And you're Cody's mate, which means you're our family too."

"I keep telling her that." Cody kissed the side of her head. "Maybe eventually she'll believe it."

"It's not that I don't believe it," Crystal protested weakly. "It's just ... it was always just me and Mom and Dad, and then Dad died and it was basically just me and Mom. This is a lot to adjust to—Oh, gosh, Mom. I have to call her and tell her about all of this. And—there's so much to do. I have to call the bookstore and somehow arrange things. I'll be quitting my job, but I want to give them proper notice—and ..." She trailed off, losing steam. "And lots of things," she finished faintly.

Cody rocked her and kissed the top of her head. "Just take it one thing at a time. People are here to help you. It'll be fine."

"You know the other thing you should probably do." Tara tilted her head to indicate the big house across the yard. "You should go introduce yourself to Alec. He lives in that big house, and he's your alpha now. You should get to know him." She smiled. "Don't worry, he doesn't bite. At least not anymore."

"Yeah, that's right!" Cody gently decanted Crystal from his lap so they could both stand up. "C'mon, I'll introduce you."

Crystal wanted him there, but she wasn't sure exactly what made her change her mind—maybe something in the expression on Tara's face, or some glimmer of knowledge from her own diluted shifter ancestry. Whatever it was, she had a strong feeling that there was a right and a wrong way to handle this. She squeezed his hand and pushed him back. "No, I appreciate it, but I think this is something I should do by myself."

"But—" Cody began, and then he hesitated. "You're right. You should. But I'll be right here across the yard if you need me. I'll always be here if you need me."

"I know." She kissed him, gentle and lingering, and then left him on the porch with Tara and walked across the yard.

Charmian was just coming down the steps with a large leather case in her hand, looking crisply put together as usual, when Crystal got there. "Morning," she said cheerfully. "I'd chat, but I'm off to work, and my clients usually can't wait."

"Morning," Crystal greeted her, with a curious glance at the case in Charmian's hand. She realized that no one had ever told her what Charmian did for a living, and she wanted to ask, but didn't want to appear rude. "Um ... is Alec home?"

"He sure is. Just go right in."

In spite of Charmian's invitation, Crystal hesitated on the porch until Charmian had driven away, and then screwed up her courage and knocked on the door.

She had to knock twice before she heard footsteps within. A moment later, the alpha of the Circle B clan opened the door.

Tall, dark-haired Alec was one of the most handsome men she'd ever seen, but in a very distant way. His eyes were a clear blue that made her think of chilly winter skies. All things considered, Crystal thought, trying not to flinch back, she vastly preferred Cody's more approachable good looks, the warm humor in his eyes and his easy grin.

And it wasn't just the cool expression. There was an air of authority around Alec. She might not be a shifter, but she had shifter blood, and she could feel it like the heaviness of the air before an approaching thunderstorm. When Alec turned his chilly blue eyes on her, she felt an instinctive urge to drop her eyes and bow her head, offering submission.

A direct stare in the eyes might be seen as a challenge, and she had absolutely no desire to challenge an alpha predator in his own den.

He still hadn't said anything or smiled.

"Hi," she said, trying to look at him without looking him too directly in the eyes. "I'm Crystal. Uh ... Cody's mate?"

After a silence that probably felt much longer than it actually was, Alec stepped back. "Come in." His voice was quiet and a little gravelly, as if he didn't talk much, though nothing like Gannon's guttural rasp.

Crystal stepped cautiously into the ranch house and looked around. The front door opened onto a long living room with big picture windows looking out on the staggering vista of the mountains rising above the house. It was the first thing that caught the eye; you couldn't not look at it.

A flurry of small toenails clicked on the hardwood floor, and a small, scruffy dog of indeterminate breed trotted up, wagging its stubby tail. Crystal hesitantly reached down to let it sniff her hand.

"Coffee?" Alec said.

"Uh. Yeah. Sure."

"Make yourself at home," he added, and vanished through a door that she assumed led to the kitchen.

She stood in front of the door for a minute, petting the dog to give herself something to do, and then reminded herself that, while Alec might act a little like a bear, he wasn't one. The worst he could possibly do was yell at her. Steeling her spine, she crossed the room, past large pieces of old, comfortable-looking furniture, to stand in front of the window and look out at the pasture. The dog clicked along behind her in the hopes of more petting.

There was a desk in front of the window, with an open account book, a laptop, and a scattering of pens and receipts. Alec had been working when she interrupted him, she realized, doing some kind of farm-related paperwork. Suddenly his gruffness made a little more sense. A lot of people could be surly when they were engrossed in their work and an unexpected visitor knocked on the door.

"Hell of a view, isn't it?"

Alec spoke from behind her. Crystal jumped and looked around.

"Yes," she said sincerely. "I wouldn't trade the view from my farmhouse window for anything, because it's mine, but this ... this is amazing. You could charge money for a view like this. I mean ... not that you would. Because that would be silly. I'm just saying, there are probably world-class ski resorts that can't boast of a view like this."

Alec nodded, and for the first time he smiled, a quiet glimmer of a smile that lent a touch of warmth to his winter-sky eyes. Crystal got the feeling she might have just passed some kind of test.

"Brought your coffee black," he said, holding out one of the two cups he was carrying. "There's sugar and creamer in the kitchen if you want them."

"Black is fine." She usually preferred some sugar in her coffee, but she took a sip anyway, and found that it didn't really need it; Alec made excellent coffee.

In fact, now that she'd gotten past her initial fear, she found the ranch house very homey and comfortable and nice. She felt at home here, in a way she hadn't expected. Although it didn't look the same, it reminded her a little bit of her family's farmhouse. It had the same sort of comfortable lived-in feeling. It was also meticulously tidy; either Alec or Charmian, possibly both of them, was a very careful housekeeper.

But one thing she couldn't help noticing was all the pictures of babies. She recognized Lexie and Baz in a number of them, mainly because of Tara and Saffron, and occasionally other members of the clan, holding them. But there were also a whole lot of other babies. Babies of all colors, babies in mothers' arms and in bassinets and lying on blankets. The pictures of Lexie and Baz dominated the room, and here and there was a family portrait of people who were obviously related to Alec and Cody, but mostly, she couldn't help noticing all the babies.

"You seem to be wondering about the pictures," Alec said, gesturing her to the couch.

"Er ... yes. I don't want to be rude but ... they can't possibly all be yours, are they?"

Alec's sudden grin was startling and breathtaking. For an instant she saw what must have made his mate fall in love with him. "God, no," he said fervently. "No, my mate Charmian is a midwife. She often stays in touch with the new moms after the delivery, to help them adjust to parenthood, and ..." He shrugged. "I think in some way, she considers them hers. Not really, but on a spiritual level."

So that was why Charmian had said that her clients couldn't wait. "Do you two have any children of your own?" She had only seen Baz and Lexie so far, but since Charmian was older than the other bears' mates, she'd thought maybe their kids were teenagers.

Alec shook his head. The dog jumped up beside him on the couch, and he reached out absently with his free hand to fondle its ragged ears. "No, and Charmian's in her early 40s, so we probably won't. Which is just fine with me. The way things are going, it seems like we're going to have all the nieces and nephews we can handle."

Despite his gruff words, Crystal sensed the underlying warmth, and she couldn't help noticing that the photos of Baz and Lexie by far outnumbered any other feature in the room. Also, there were the parts of what looked like a half-finished wooden toy truck spread out on the coffee table. And then there was the gentle way he was petting the little dog. She guessed that no children in the world could ask for a more devoted uncle than Alec, no matter how he tried to put a stern face on it.

"So, Crystal," Alec said, his voice turning serious. "Cody was telling me that you're trying to find a way to keep your family's farm."

"We're trying." She couldn't suppress a smile. "With Tara's help, I think we might have found a way."

"Good." He didn't smile, but his eyes warmed. "At least Cody won't be too far away."

"You're okay with him leaving?"

"I'm his alpha," Alec said. "I knew he wasn't entirely happy here long before he did. There's something deep in him that wants to have his own home, his own den. He's a nester. I think with you and your farm, he's found what he's been looking for all his life." He hesitated. "By the way, do you have shifter heritage?"

"My mom is a shifter. I didn't inherit the tendency. She's a garter snake." She looked at him curiously. "Did Cody tell you that?"

"No, as your alpha, I can tell."

Your alpha. It was still a very odd thought. "But I'm not a shifter myself ... am I?"

"No. You aren't. But I can sense the tendency in you." He looked at her for a long moment with his winter-sky eyes. "Are you sure your family are snake shifters?"

"Yes, of course. I've seen my mom shift. Why?"

"Do you mind if I do something a little personal?"

Crystal's eyebrows rose, but she nodded. Alec leaned close to her and sniffed at her. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck went up. With Cody, it would have been erotic. With Alec, it was ever so slightly eerie, like having a large predator intrude on her personal space. It wasn't even fear she felt, so much as a feeling of overwhelming power. Then he pulled away and got up off the couch.

"Come with me," he said. It was more of a command than a request—not bossy or overbearing, but spoken with the casual assumption that he would be obeyed. And indeed, she was up off the couch before she'd even realized she was moving.

So that's what being an alpha was.

She followed Alec up the narrow, creaking stairs into an upstairs hallway, where she looked curiously around. Up here, the baby pictures stopped; instead there were old family photos in wooden frames. They seemed to be going back in time. The family photos downstairs were recent. Up here, candid color photos gave way to stiff, posed portraits in tones of faded sepia.

"Ah." Alec took one of those down off the wall and handed it to Crystal.

She took the framed picture carefully. This one was very old. It was a tintype of a severe-faced man with a high forehead and sharp, piercing eyes. Even though Crystal knew that he must have died long ago—this picture was over a century old, maybe more like a century and a half—those eyes still seemed to bore into her, as if his personality had been so fierce and dynamic that some vestige of him still lingered in the photo. In a weird way, he seemed to be looking directly at her. It was almost a relief to hand it back to Alec.

"That's my great-great-grandfather," Alec said. "Most of our family are bears, and have always been bears, but family rumor is that he was something else entirely. Something ... other."

"What do you mean, 'other'?" Crystal's gaze followed the photo as Alec hung it back up on the wall. She still couldn't shake the feeling that this long-dead stranger who was no kin of hers had looked at her across the years.

"No one is really sure." Alec wore a trace of a smile, and briefly, she glimpsed the similarity with the man in the old photo. It wasn't really physical; it was more the way they carried themselves, and something about the fierce directness of their gaze. "But there are those who say we have a little dragon in us."

"Dragons are a myth," Crystal said uncertainly. "They aren't real."

"Really? It seems that the human world used to think shifters weren't real either, before we came out of the shadows and revealed ourselves."

"Well, my family definitely aren't dragons. We're garter snakes. I'm pretty darn sure of that."

"You're garter snakes now," Alec said. "But as your alpha, I can sense a certain kinship between my clan and yours—and it's not from the bear side." That quiet little smile quirked the corner of his mouth again. "Your children, yours and Cody's, will be very special indeed, I think."

Epilogue: One year later

"Come on, you guys," Crystal complained. "Cody's not supposed to see me on our wedding day; no one ever said anything about not seeing myself."

"You can see when we're done," Saffron said firmly from behind her.

"Now turn your head to the side," Daisy added.

Crystal sighed and obediently rotated her head, wincing at the little tugs and pulls as the two of them continued doing whatever they were doing to her hair. All she knew was that ribbons and flowers were somehow involved.

The windows of the master bedroom in the old farmhouse were open, letting sweetly hay-scented wind blow inside and ruffle the lacy cascade of her dress. She kept catching snatches of music as classic rock thumped on a stereo outside, along with voices, laughter, and an occasional child's squeal.

"What are they doing out there?" she complained.

"Following your mother's orders, from what I saw when I was out there earlier," Daisy said with a giggle. "Are you sure your mom didn't used to be a drill sergeant? She's got those boys whipped into shape. I'm pretty sure I heard someone say something about a 'flowers and balloons committee'."

"She wasn't a drill sergeant," Crystal said. "It's worse than that. She's a middle school teacher."

"Well, that explains a lot." Saffron stepped back and put her hands on her hips. "Okay, that looks perfect to me. Does it look perfect to you, Daisy?"

"Just a second." Daisy leaned forward and did something in the general vicinity of Crystal's bangs. Crystal arched her brows and tried desperately to look at her own forehead, without any luck. "Okay, that did it! All right, you can look now."

The other two women helped her out of her chair—Daisy very awkwardly, since she was eight months pregnant, her lilac-colored bridesmaid dress cascading over a baby bump that was more of a baby hill. Crystal turned around so she could see herself in the full-length mirror standing against the wall.

And gasped.

This wasn't her. This couldn't be her, this vision in white lace and blue flowers. And it definitely couldn't be the "new" her, the tomboyish farm girl.

Over the last year, she'd undergone a transformation, a sort of beauty-queen makeover in reverse. Gone were the nice office clothes, the hairstylist visits, the regular daily latte. Instead she wore scuffed boots and a braid, had dirt under her fingernails, and drank pots of strong farm coffee the way Cody had taught her to make it.

She'd never been happier in her life.

They had named their farm Treasure Spring Farm, and after a year of hard work, it was nearly unrecognizable as the derelict place that Crystal had first come to know, with all its promise hidden under fifteen years of overgrown bushes and neglect. The barn was in good repair, the fences newly strung, the trees cut back from the edge of the pasture.

And they were just starting to get into livestock. Alec had offered to start them off with a small herd of Black Angus cattle from the Circle B herd—"Call it a wedding present," he'd said, smiling his quiet smile. But Crystal wasn't sure if she wanted to be a cattle rancher. She preferred the idea of starting out with something smaller. So they'd sold some of the Circle B cattle and bought a small flock of sheep. There were also two horses that Cody had brought with him from the Circle B, and even a farm dog, a young border collie that Cody had gotten from a neighbor. Between the sheep, the horses, and a tiny flock of chickens (another present from Alec and the Circle B), the place was starting to feel like a real farm already.

"Just wait 'til we go through our first lambing season," Cody had said, laughing. "After two days of no sleep, looking for a missing sheep in pouring rain that's turning to snow, then you'll feel like a real farmer, and no mistake."

"Goats," Crystal had said dreamily. "We should buy some goats too."

"Let's see how the first season goes with the sheep and take it from there, why don't we?"

They had both wanted to wait for their wedding until they got the farm fixed up. As Crystal had slowly begun to realize, though, farming wasn't a process with definite start and end points. There was always going to be something to do on the farm—they hadn't even started working on the orchard, and while they'd gotten the barn roof replaced and some of the other urgent repairs done, there was still a to-do list as long as her arm.

If they waited until everything was just right, they'd be waiting forever.

And now here she was, on a gloriously sunny summer day, staring into the mirror at a fairy-tale bride in a flowing white dress, her light brown skin suntanned to a duskier shade, her dark hair wound with ribbons and speckled with white and blue flowers.

Tears sprang to her eyes.

"Oh, now, don't start crying!" Saffron protested, stepping between her and the mirror.

"Yes, save it for the ceremony," Daisy said, taking her hand.

The door opened and Tara peeked in. "Are you about ready in here? Oh, my gosh."

"Isn't she gorgeous?" Daisy and Saffron chorused, pulling Crystal around to show off their handiwork.

"You look amazing," Tara told her. "You'll be lucky if Cody doesn't faint dead away when he catches sight of you."

"Luckily he has a whole bunch of strapping guys to catch him and prop him up at the altar," Charmian said from behind her in deadpan tones. "Are you about ready in here?"

Crystal took a deep, steadying breath. "Yes. I'm ready."

With Daisy carrying her train and the rest of the farm women going ahead of her to scout for any wayward menfolk trying to sneak a peek, she descended the stairs into the farm house's living room. Alec and her mother were talking quietly; both of them fell silent as she entered.

"Oh, darling." Her mother came over to give her a careful hug, trying not to knock any lace or flowers askew. "You look absolutely amazing. The most beautiful bride ever. Are you entirely sure about this decision not to hire a photographer? You'll never get to do this day over again, you know—"

"I know," Crystal told her, kissing her mother's cheek. "We both felt very strongly about it. We'll only be able to do it once, like you said, and we only wanted close friends and family here. Just the clan. You must understand, Mom."

"I do understand if you put it that way." Her mother sighed and wiped her eyes. "You may not have inherited my shifting ability, but I've always felt you had a shifter's soul."

Crystal couldn't help thinking how much more relaxed her mother looked, as if she was finally starting to heal from the death of Crystal's father. The foundation's debt relief had been a tremendous weight off both of them. Crystal hadn't even realized how worried her mother had been, and how much of that she'd been hiding from Crystal.

You could never truly get over a loved one's death, but with the debt no longer dragging them both down, they were finally able to move on and heal.

"Come on, Mrs. Martinez," Charmian urged, tugging at her. "We'd better go find our seats. It's almost time."

The rest of the women trickled out with hugs and well-wishes, leaving Crystal with Alec. She turned to him, a little shyly.

Cody had been surprised when Crystal had told him she wanted Alec to give her away. Her father was dead, and she didn't have any close relatives on her dad's side. There were other choices she could have made, but she thought it made sense to give their clan alpha that honor. It was the best way she could think of to help smooth over any potential friction at taking Cody away from his ranch and clan ... even if she hadn't taken him very far away.

Alec smiled at her, a quiet flicker of a smile, and she relaxed a little at the steadfast support in his eyes.

Whatever kind of man Alec used to be, he'd grown into a solid and true alpha, someone who was worthy of his clan's respect. He held out an arm, and Crystal tucked hers into it.

Tara poked her head through the door. Lexie, in an adorable frilly blue dress, was cuddled in her arms, pudgy fists clenched on a basket of rose petals. "Okay guys, showtime. They've got the Wedding March cued up on Remy's stereo, and the flower girl and I are ready to prepare your primrose path. Are you ready?"

Crystal looked up at Alec. His face was solemn as he looked down at her, but his eyes were smiling.

"Ready," she declared firmly.

Tara grinned and left the door open as she departed. A moment later, there was a squeal of speaker feedback and then the first strains of the Wedding March began to play.

Crystal peeked out. She had been adamant about being married in the garden. After all the work she and Cody had put into turning that overgrown, weed-covered mess into a proper vegetable garden, it had become her favorite place on the farm, and she'd spent many long, happy hours weeding and tending the tender little plants.

Now the garden path was lined with flowers, leading to a bower at the far end covered with flowers and balloons. Folding chairs had been set up between the rows of plants in the garden, with wedding guests seated wherever a chair would fit.

And if anyone laughed at the idea of a wedding aisle passing between rows of tomatoes and lettuce ... well, they obviously weren't farmers.

Tara was already walking down the path in slow measured steps, helping Lexie fling petals from her basket. Crystal stepped onto the front porch, Alec lending silent strength and support at her side, and her eyes went directly to Cody, waiting for her at the bower. She'd never seen him dressed up before, especially in a tux. His hair gleamed nearly golden in the sun. Beside him, his best man Remy stood grinning, but she only had eyes for Cody.

His awestruck look at seeing her in her wedding finery was all she'd hoped for and more.

Everything else faded into the background.

She was dimly aware of Alec helping her down the porch steps, and then they were walking, walking, with rose petals crunching softly under her fancy white shoes.

As she walked through the garden toward Cody, with the strains of music filling the summer air, each person she passed smiled at her, and her heart filled up to the brim with love. Here were her friends from St. Louis, who had driven all this way (and probably given that one little motel in Wildcat Forks more business than it normally got in a year). There were her garter-snake-shifter grandparents, who had managed to overcome their nervousness at being surrounded by this many big predator shifters, and her mom, holding a crumpled tissue to her mouth.

She still hadn't discussed the revelations Alec had shared with her a year ago with her family, though she had told Cody about it.

'Your children will be special'—no, that's for the future. It can wait.

She had a feeling, from the flutter in her stomach that seemed to be more than mere nerves, that they were going to find out about those children before next spring. But ... that could wait for later. This was her wedding day.

I'm looking forward to the future, but all I want to think about today ... is today.

Here was Daisy, sitting with Gannon, who had one hand resting on the swell of his mate's pregnant belly. Gannon turned to look at Crystal as she went by with a bride's careful steps, and it seemed that his dark eyes met hers for a moment with warm camaraderie and the knowledge of a shared secret.

I think he knows I'm pregnant. I haven't even told Cody yet. How does he know?

Beside them was Saffron, with Baz in her lap. Charmian was holding an empty seat for Alec, and her eyes sparkled as she looked at Crystal—probably anticipating more little babies to add to all those photos in her house.

Tara reached the end of the aisle and went to sit beside Axl, who quietly took his rose-petal-covered daughter and draped the little girl on his shoulder.

My family, Crystal thought, the words measured out with each step she took. My clan.

My people.

And then she was there, at the bower in the sunshine, and Alec handed her off to Cody with a smile that encompassed both of them before going to sit with Charmian.

The actual ceremony was a blur. She could never say afterwards exactly what had been said. The only thing real in all of it was Cody's face, his gentle blue-gray eyes holding hers, and the pressure of his hand as he slid the ring onto her finger.

And when it got to "You may now kiss the bride," his lips closed over hers and he dipped her backward, and the garden erupted in raucous cheering. She was breathless as Cody set her back on her feet, breathless and laughing helplessly against his mouth.

She had come here looking for treasure. She thought she would find it buried in the ground or hidden in the walls of the old farmhouse. But the treasure she'd found was something she'd never expected—something beyond gold, beyond price, not to be traded for any reward.

She'd found home.

A note from Zoe Chant

Thank you for buying my book! I hope you enjoyed it. If you liked this book, the first three books in the Bears of Pinerock County series are now available on Amazon in a convenient boxed set, free on Kindle Unlimited!

If you’d like to be alerted by email when I release my next book, please click here to be added to my mailing list. If you'd like to contact me, my email is zoechant@yahoo.com. I love hearing from my readers. 

Please consider reviewing Hired Bear, even if you only write a line or two. I appreciate all reviews, whether positive or negative.

Baby Lexie’s name (Alexandra) was suggested by Ene Alexandra and Terry Austin on Facebook; thank you so much for the suggestion! I occasionally post contest opportunities at my Facebook page to reward my loyal readers, so you might get to name a character in one of my books, or even win a cameo in a future book! Follow my Facebook so you don’t miss any of those.

Cover art: © Can Stock Photo Inc.

***

More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant

Ranger Griffin. A lonely reporter in deadly danger + a protective griffin shifter who thinks he’s a monster + a cozy cabin in the snowy woods = on exciting and heartwarming romance!

Bear Cop. (Enforcer Bears # 1). A BBW baker with a troubled past + a protective bear shifter cop with a secret of his own + an accident that leaves them stranded in the wilderness = one untamed romance!

Hunter Bear. (Enforcer Bears # 2). A BBW artist who fears she's lost her muse + a scarred, reclusive bear shifter hunting danger + a mysterious treasure map = one adventurous romance!

Wedding Bear. (Enforcer Bears #3). A curvy librarian in desperate need of a date + a bear shifter in search of a home + the past that's pursuing him = one sweet and steamy small-town romance!

Fighter Bear. (Enforcer Bears #4). A curvy veterinary technician longing for a family + a lonely bear shifter with a wounded heart + a family farm in jeopardy = one exciting rural romance!

Tropical Tiger Spy. (Shifting Sands Resort # 1). A unique shifter in search of her past + a tiger shifter spy on an undercover mission + a shifters-only resort with secrets to hide = a dangerous and thrilling romantic adventure!

Tropical Wounded Wolf. (Shifting Sands Resort # 2). A curvy math teacher on vacation + a wolf shifter who spent years in captivity + an accident that leaves them stranded together in a jungle paradise = one thrilling romance!

Bodyguard Bear. (Protection, Inc. # 1). A BBW witness to a murder + the sexy bear shifter bodyguard sworn to protect her with his life + firefights and fiery passion = one hot thrill ride!

Defender Dragon. (Protection, Inc. # 2). A curvy backpacker who loses a shoe at a ball + a lonely dragon prince facing an arranged marriage to a princess he doesn’t love + magnificent castles and deadly assassins = one thrilling romance!

Protector Panther. (Protection, Inc. # 3). A curvy paramedic who doesn’t know the meaning of fear + a mysterious panther shifter bodyguard with the power to inflict terror + sinister experiments and desperate passion = one heart-pounding romance!

Warrior Wolf. (Protection, Inc. # 4). A runaway dragon princess who wants to experience life outside of castle walls + an ex-gangster werewolf bodyguard with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas + uptown parties, downtown nightclubs, and deadly assassins = one explosive good girl/bad boy romance!

Firefighter Dragon. (Fire & Rescue Shifters # 1). A curvy archaeologist with the find of a lifetime + a firefighter dragon shifter battling his instincts + a priceless artifact coveted by a ruthless rival = one blazing hot romance!

Firefighter Pegasus. (Fire & Rescue Shifters # 2). A curvy pilot wary of flighty men + a firefighter pegasus shifter determined to win her heart + a high speed air race with even higher stakes = one explosive romance!

Firefighter Griffin. (Fire & Rescue Shifters # 3). A curvy single mom burned by love + a unique half-eagle, half-lion shifter firefighter with a wounded soul + the little boy who brings them together = one heart-warming romance!

Royal Guard Lion A curvy American shocked to learn that she's a lost princess + a warrior lion shifter sworn to protect her + a hidden shifter kingdom in desperate need of a leader = a sizzling romance fit for a queen!

Sheriff Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 1). A small-town sheriff + a wrongly accused BBW on the run + deadly enemies and dangerous passions = a sizzling forbidden love!

Bad Boy Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 2). Biker bear on the open road + a BBW runaway-bride hitchhiker + evil motorcycle gang = an unforgettable red-hot road trip!

Alpha Rancher Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 3). A take-charge alpha with commitment issues + a midwife who's not about to give up control of her well-ordered life + a roadside winter disaster = an explosive romance that's about to blow up everything they both thought they wanted!

Mountain Guardian Bear. (Bears of Pinerock County # 4). A mountain man with a tragic past + a curvy amnesiac + two deadly secrets = one explosive romance!

Dancing Bearfoot. A single dad from the city + his daughter's BBW teacher + a surprise snow storm = a steamy story that will melt your heart.

A Pair of Bears. One lonely cat shifter + two sizzling hot bears who want to share + a whole lot of action (in and out of bed) = one wild and sexy adventure!

Bear Watching. A BBW park ranger + a bear shifter smokejumper + a lonely fire-watcher's post = one red-hot fire between the sheets!

The Hawk and her LumBEARjack. A BBW hawk shifter + a lonely bear shifter lumberjack + ice storm = one red-hot weekend!

Bear Down. A BBW biologist + a bear shifter pilot + huddling for warmth in the wilderness = one blazing-hot story!

Bought by the Billionbear. A curvy single woman + a billionaire bear shifter + a bachelorette auction = one broiling-hot story!

And many more!

Zoe on Audio

Kodiak Moment – Audiobook - A workaholic wildlife photographer + a loner bear shifter + Alaskan wilderness = one warming and sensual story.

Hero Bear - Audiobook - A wounded Marine who lost his bear + a BBW physical therapist with a secret + a small town full of gossips = a hot and healing romance!

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Prisoner (Werewolf Marines # 2), by Lia Silver. Werewolf Marine DJ Torres is a born rebel. Genetically engineered assassin Echo was created to be a weapon. When DJ is captured by the agency that made Echo, the two misfits find that they fit together perfectly. A full-length novel.

Partner (Werewolf Marines # 3), by Lia Silver. DJ and Echo’s relationship grows stronger under fire… until they are confronted by a terrible choice. A full-length novel.

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Tiger in the Hot Zone (Shifter Agents # 4) by Lauren Esker. In her search for the truth about shifters, tell-all blogger Peri Moreland has been clashing with tiger shifter and SCB agent Noah Easton for years. Now she and Noah are on the run with an unstoppable assassin after them and a custom-made plague threatening the entire shifter world! A full-length novel.

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And keep reading for a special preview …

If you enjoyed this book … try Bear Watching by Zoe Chant!

A BBW park ranger + a bear shifter smokejumper + a lonely fire-watcher's post = one red-hot fire between the sheets!

Some women would hate being stuck in a remote fire-watch tower, but for curvy Angie Dearborn, it's a peaceful retreat to nurse her broken heart. Love? Who needs it? She's got books, a dog, and the world's most solitary job. And she likes it that way. Until Hudson comes into her life ...

Bear shifter and firefighter Hudson Pierce knows Angie is his destined mate as soon as her touch sets his body and soul aflame. Emotionally wounded Angie doesn't believe they have a future together, but this sexy smokejumper is determined to mend her broken heart and prove to her that their love is possible.

Will it take a real forest fire to ignite their fire?

Preview:

Today Angie had spent the morning watching a bear through the binoculars.

They didn't get bears very often. Usually the largest animals she saw were mule deer. But she'd spotted this bear when she first climbed up to the tower, a tiny dark speck moving across the distant hills. Throughout the morning she watched its lazy start-and-stop rambling. It was clearly having fun, a bear out for a stroll in the sunshine. When the day started to get hot, it wandered down into a cool, shady ravine and she lost sight of it.

She wondered if she should shut Cyclone in the cabin today. If the bear didn't get distracted by anything, its ambling trajectory would eventually bring it fairly close to her location. She wasn't worried about herself; she'd be perfectly safe up in the tower. But she didn't want her dog to get hurt.

The bear was likely to sleep through the hottest part of the day and then resume its trek in the evening, though, so she probably didn't have to worry for a while. Maybe she would forgo her evening walk with Cyclone just to be on the safe side.

It did make her aware of how isolated she was here, and how many things could go wrong. She carried the emergency satellite telephone with her all the time, even shoving its bulk into her knapsack when she went hiking. But what if she did have to deal with a bear? Or fell down the tower's stairs and broke her leg ... or worse?

"You'd fetch help for me, wouldn't you, Lassie?" she called down, leaning over the edge. She was starting to get used to the dizzying drop. Far below her, lying in the tower's shade next to his water bowl, Cyclone looked up and thumped his tail.

Angie grinned. Who needed a boyfriend? The most steady and stable guy in her life had four legs and a tail, but he was still the best friend a girl could ask for.

Men. Who needs 'em. Not me.

She scanned the hills again for the bear, hoping to see it so she knew where it had gone, but the only movement in the hills was a jackrabbit.

After lunch, I'll leave Cyclone in the cabin for the afternoon, she thought. It would be hot and he wouldn't be happy about it, but it was better to be safe than sorry out here in the middle of nowhere.

She was starting to think about coming down for lunch when Cyclone gave a sudden soft woof. He wasn't a barker—she'd never been quite sure if it was a breed trait or simply part of his natural personality, but if Cyclone barked, it meant there was something important to bark at. Thoughts of bears made her heart leap into her throat. She circled the tower's little observation hut, looking out from all sides, the whole time expecting to see a dark shape padding around the cabin.

There was no sign of a bear, but Cyclone was on his feet, tail wagging. Then, to her alarm, he bounded down the path to the cabin.

"Cyclone!" she called, but the dog either didn't hear her or chose to play deaf.

He vanished into the cabin's shadow. To her surprise, Angie heard a voice—a male voice. The words were unintelligible with distance, but the tone was a talking-to-dogs sort of croon.

Not a bear at all, she thought, limp with relief. Just a hiker.

A minute later, the hiker appeared around the corner of the cabin. From here, she could make out nothing more than the flash of a light-colored shirt. "Hello, the tower?" he shouted.

"Up here!" Angie called, and waved.

The hiker climbed the path to the tower in long, easy strides. He must've been out in the sun all day to have hiked here—and there was no other way he could have reached the cabin, because in the rural silence she'd have easily heard a vehicle—but it didn't seem to have dampened his energy. Cyclone bounded along beside him, delighted to have found a new friend.

At the base of the tower, Hiker Guy stopped and looked up at her. Broad shoulders strained at his sweat-dampened shirt. "Well, this is a nice surprise! I didn't realize this old fire tower was staffed anymore."

"They just started again," she called down. "The whole Southwest is a tinderbox right now, and even with all the modern technology we have, we still haven't come up with anything better for some of these remote locations than an actual human being with binoculars."

"Good news for me," he called back.

"How's that?"

"I'm a firefighter. A smokejumper, to be precise. You're up there keeping me and my buddies safe!"

Angie laughed, dangling over the side. "Keeping you out of a job, you mean!"

"Hey, have you ever seen a dry-season wildfire? The fewer we have to fight, the safer we all are." He scratched Cyclone's ears as the dog leaned against his leg, then gave a sudden, fast grin. "Gotta say, though, when I saw your binoculars flash in the sun up there, I was expecting some grizzled old park ranger. I feel like I'm talking to Rapunzel here."

Angie ran a hand through her tousled, curly hair. "Sorry, even if you asked me to let down my hair, it's not long enough to do a whole lot of good. And besides, I was just coming down anyhow."

"That'll save us both some neck strain," he said with another grin.

Angie realized as soon as she set foot on the top step that he was going to have an excellent view of her ... assets on her way down. Well, let him look! She didn't mind.

Her own boldness surprised her. She certainly wasn't looking for a relationship, not after Larry, but she was really having fun talking to him. The loneliness must be getting to me a little bit, after all. It's nice to have company.

"Rapunzel's tower could have used a good set of stairs," Hiker Guy said as she circled around and around on the descending steps. "You have to climb those every day?"

"Twice a day, at least," she said, pausing on one of the landings.

"No wonder you have such great legs."

This made her miss a step.

***

Click to keep reading Bear Watching for free on Kindle Unlimited!

You can also read Bear Watching in a two-book boxed set with Bear Down, another standalone bear shifter romance from Zoe Chant. When their plane goes down in the far north, a wildlife biologist and a hunky bush pilot start their own fire! Click to start reading now!