Bear Pause (BBW / Bear Shifter Romance): A Billionaire Oil Bearons Romance (Bear Fursuits Book 6) (8 page)

“Lauralee,” Zeke sounded angry and worried. “That idea is twice as bad. No kind of man would agree to make a baby and walk away.”

Laura laughed cynically. “I’m guessing quite a few will be happy to do it for money. And that’s what I called to ask you about.”

“I don’t know any gigolos,” he said in his meanest voice. Since Zeke had spent his entire adult life as an officer in the US Army, he could do mean.

“Not a gigolo, but a guy we just hired here. He gave you as a reference.”

“Oh. Who is he?” Zeke barked.

“Steven Kenneth Holden. Says he was a sergeant, and that he served in Special Forces with you.”

Major Bascom’s laugh boomed in her ear. “If it’s the Holden I think it is, he didn’t say ‘with’ he said ‘under’, Lauralee.”

“That’s right, that’s what he said,” she confirmed. “Carlos hired him three weeks ago. Is he trustworthy?”

“Sure.”

Laura let out the breath she hadn’t intended to hold. “Okay.”

“But I don’t know what the hell Holden is doing in Success,” Zeke mused. “He resigned two, three years ago. Guy’s a whiz with computers. He should have had no trouble getting a job in IT.”

“He says he grew up on a farm in Idaho. Daddy says he knows horses and he certainly seems to be a hard worker. You know how fussy Carlos is. Anyway, Carlos let him have Ramon’s cabin, and Rosa is feeding him twice a day in her own kitchen, and once in ours, so I guess he passed the tight-bed test.”

Zeke chuckled. “If it’s the same guy, and it sure sounds like it is, I’m not surprised he’s got Rosa eating out of his hand. Sergeant Holden is pretty much a charmer.”

“Cuts a swathe through women, huh?” Laura said merrily, as if his words didn’t make her heart sink. “A lover in every town?”

Zeke’s laugh rumbled down the line. “I admit we had some adventures, Laura, and Holden didn’t have any trouble leaving the bar with the prettiest girl. But he’s a good guy to have at your back.” He cleared his throat. “Um, you do realize he’s one of us?”

“What do you mean, one of us? A Green Beret?”

“No, no. He’s the same as you and me,” Zeke said obliquely.

“Oh.”

“You weren’t thinking of asking Holden to marry you?” Zeke blurted. “Bad idea.”

“Because of the b-e-a-r thing?”

“No, because of the decent guy thing.”

* * *

Steve roused himself from the cot in the tack room where he had been dozing for the last hour. He checked the blurry monitor. Like all the rest of the crappy security systems at the stud, it was an antique.

Laura and Carlos had a high-end breeding operation here. But the millions of dollars of horses and equipment were protected by a set of cameras that would have been sub-par outside a rundown gas station. He hadn’t liked the setup even before he and Lance had found the holes in the barn roof. Not that there were even crappy cameras monitoring the barn.

Every night one of the hands was delegated to spend the night in the tack room to keep an eye on the mares who were due. Once an hour they were supposed to rouse themselves and look at the monitor, and then check on the horses personally if there was trouble. Which would have made more sense if the feed had been crisp, instead of a jerky black and white smudge.

Right now, the grainy footage showed him that of the three mares who were due to foal, two were lying down, presumably still fast asleep. The third, Bright Star of Fortune, was standing up gazing blankly into the distance. Steve hauled himself up and went to see why Star had gotten to her feet. Mares often stood up because it was more comfortable than lying down with a belly full of almost term foal. But standing was also how they gave birth.

By the time he got to her stall, Star was crowning. She acknowledged Steve but seemed to be in no distress. Her foal’s nose was barely visible and it would probably be born in the next few minutes. After just seven labors, he was certainly no expert. His instructions were to call Carlos to help with any birth. But the mare seemed to be handling her labor just fine.

He decided to summon the Boss. Rosa had hinted strongly at breakfast that she thought Carlos should be spending tonight sleeping in his own bed. Since he cherished Rosa Diego’s good opinion, he followed his inclinations and called Laura. He was just holding the foal’s sharp front hooves clear of the mare, as Dr. Freddie had shown him to, when he heard her boots thumping on the concrete floors of the aisle.

“How’s she doing?” Laura asked quietly.

Steve grinned at her. She was as excited as he was. “Fine,” he said. “Star doesn’t need either one of us, not really.”

As Laura shrugged off her parka to give him a hand, he saw that she had dressed in a hurry. She hadn’t bothered with a bra under her shirt. Well, he was a trained observer. And what he observed was that she had the finest pair he ever hoped to see. Which he had certainly suspected, but was nice to have confirmed.

She stood at his elbow, smelling of ripe woman and bear. As if he had brought her into season. As he was hoping he had. With the staff she was friendly but not familiar. She treated him no differently than she treated Cory or Lance or any of the others. Whereas, he wanted her to respond to him as he always did to her. Like a bear to her mate.

As she bent to examine Star, her hair fell forward and brushed his cheek and just like that his cock sprang to attention.

“Darn it,” she said, and scooped her fall of soft curls up into a ponytail on top of her head. She rummaged in the pocket of her jeans and found a linty hair elastic and turned the ponytail into a bun. “Sorry about that, Steve.”

What could he say? He didn’t mind being touched by her. But it was clear she was not the type to hit on an employee. Or to recognize her own arousal. Besides they had work to do. He grunted.

“Nearly there,” she crooned to the mare.

Star looked back as if she wondered what was taking her baby so long. She didn’t appear to be concerned. Her birth canal visibly contracted and the foal was born on a gush of fluid. Steve caught it and helped it to the ground. Star turned around and began to nibble at the sack still enclosing the foal.

“Let her do it,” Laura said. “It’s better for her if she eats as much of the afterbirth as she wants.”

“I’ll go wash my hands and get the disinfectant to clean them up,” Steve said.

“Okay. Bring a pitchfork. I want to clear this old straw out.”

“I’m on it.” Steve went whistling for the wheelbarrow full of essentials that he had placed at the end of the aisle for dealing with the cleanup that was routine after the birth of a foal. He felt like a pro after dealing with foal number eight.

Together he and Laura dipped the foal’s umbilicus and swabbed Star’s udder before letting the baby suckle. Laura moved mama and baby to one side of the roomy foaling stall while he dealt with the soiled straw and sloshed some more disinfectant around. They repeated the process on the other side, and then Laura told him to bring Star her post-delivery rations.

Laura was still gazing misty-eyed at the mare and nursing foal when he returned with the special feed. “Look how strong he is,” she exclaimed.

The colt’s spindly legs were marginally less wobbly than they had been when he had first tried to use them. He was now standing under his mother suckling lustily. Like his dam, he had a bright white blotch on his forehead. But he was a less dark brown than she was. Steve felt a tenderness towards both animals that still surprised him. The first time he had been asked to forgo a night’s sleep he had resented it. But each birth had turned out to be a special event.

“She’s of my breeding, did you know?” Laura said.

“I did.” Steve leaned against the stall wall and enjoyed the loveliness of both the Boss and the horses. “Beautiful.”

“She is. And the colt is out of my Guardian of Colorado.” Pride and joy mingled in her voice. “What shall we call him?”

“Surely you have a name all picked out and ready for the stud book?” he teased.

She nodded. “Of course. I meant his real name. The one he’ll answer to for the rest of his life.”

“I thought their stud book names were the real ones.”

“Oh, no,” she looked at him her blue eyes glistening in the dim light that was all that was permitted in the foaling stall. Horses were nocturnal deliverers and strong lights could panic mares in labor. “A horse’s real name is the one he knows.”

Steve thought. “With that mark, he ought to be called ‘Star’, but I guess that name’s taken.”

“Yeah,” her voice was soft and sultry. Probably his imagination.

“He’s a strong little cuss. How about ‘Atlas’?”

“How about ‘Hero’?” she suggested.

Those blue eyes were looking right at him, so he did what he had been wanting to do from the first moment he set eyes on her. He kissed her. A soft kiss. Just the barest brushing of lips on lips. But her mouth opened under his like a flower to the sun and he deepened the kiss and pulled her hard against his chest.

CHAPTER NINE

The dusty, delivery truck drove down the unlit country road. Its scarred white sides appeared to have been repainted to cover a name, which just added to its nondescript appearance. Its high beams were on. When the driver spotted a fragment of pale cloth waving from the barbed wire fence, he slowed to a crawl before continuing down for another mile down the single lane road. He made a U-turn where the road widened just enough to permit it. He parked at an angle to the fence sporting the rag. The headlights illuminated rag, fence and field.

The driver and his passenger got out of the cab and scanned the empty road. The driver pulled the hood of his gray sweatshirt up and tightened the cord to conceal his face. His companion tugged his red ball cap lower on his forehead. He shone a powerful flashlight out into the dark field.

The grass had been eaten low, but the cattle were mostly asleep. A few of the cows raised curious heads as the light disturbed them. The men did not speak. They went back to the truck where other hands had raised the rear door and tossed out great plastic wrapped rolls of hay. This was followed by a four-foot length of fence. Two fence posts supported six one-by-two strips. A man wearing camo was joined by another wearing a dirty brown Stetson. They carefully carried the fence section to the verge and laid it flat.

Camo retrieved long wire cutters from the truck. He motioned impatiently to the others who moved away. He stood well back of the barbed wire, holding the wire cutters at the end of their long handles. He snipped six times. Lethal wire whistled through the air and curved back into tangled coils.

He circled the mess and cut the wires on the other side just as prudently. Red Cap and Stetson pulled heavy padded gloves over the ones they were already wearing. They balled up the wire, treating it with the respect its inch-long twisted prongs inspired. They carefully handed it up to the hands waiting for it on the back of the truck.

Camo and Sweatshirt rolled the bales of hay through the newly created gap in the fence, towards the sleepy cattle. They sliced the protective plastic and broke up the hay so the cows could get at it. By the time they got back to the gap, Red Cap and Stetson had set the new section of fence upright. Sweatshirt took the flashlight and played the beam over the stock pond. There was still plenty of water.

Red Cap got a couple of cordless drills from the truck. The four men dry-fit their section into the gap created by cutting the barbed wire out. The doubled fence posts looked a little odd, but the new section fit with about a half inch to spare on either side. Perfect. They laid it flat again and set about adding hinges.

When they screwed the hinges onto the original fence posts, the new gate swung freely. Camo got a pry bar and levered the wooden strips off both sides to reveal six tight rows of barbed wire on the gate. Sweatshirt added a latch. They fastened the gate. All four men stood back to admire their work.

Sweatshirt turned down the high beams. The others got back into the vehicle and it drove quietly into the night. The deputy in the county car passed it as he went to make his patrol through the Double B. The men in the truck held their breath, but they were given no signal to halt.

CHAPTER TEN

Steve braced himself against the back wall of the stall. He savored the sweetness of Laura’s mouth. It was the softest, tenderest kiss he had ever shared with a woman. The rightness of her was a tide of satisfaction surging in his blood, yet her tentative response made him realize he had to get this right. Whatever else Laura Bascom was, she was no female version of Grandpappy Clive.

He pulled back his questing tongue and nibbled gently at her lower lip instead, enjoying the softness of her bosom pressing into the hardness of his pecs. Her nipples were hard beads telling him she was either cold or turned on. He hoped it was the latter, but he wanted to take no chances. He trailed kisses to her earlobes and nuzzled behind her ear seeking the elemental fragrance he knew lurked there.

She pushed gently at his chest and he let her go at once. Even in the dim lighting, he could tell she was beet red.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said in a tight voice.

He brushed the side of her face. “Don’t you?” he whispered.

“I don’t do things like this.” Her voice was tremulous.

“Like what?” he teased.

“Inappropriate things – like taking advantage of an employee,” she said huskily.

“Hmm. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

She pointed at the video camera. “It’s all on tape,” she said.

“So it is. I guess I’ve compromised us both.” He smiled down into her embarrassed face. “But I’m not sorry I kissed you.”

She swallowed hard. “Anyone could see that footage.”

He doubted anyone would bother to waste time going over it, since nothing bad had happened. Who wanted to watch while a foal was given an enema to help it expel the tarry residue from its gut? But Laura was plainly embarrassed and worried.

“Why don’t we go discuss this in the tack room?” he said. “No camera in there.”

He thought she looked scared for just a second. But she nodded and headed briskly for the little room. Steve sauntered after her admiring her from the back. Laura filled out her jeans better than any woman he had ever met. She stopped in the doorway and he looked over her shoulder at the cot with its rumpled blanket.