Target: BillionBear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (3 page)

“That’s it. I quit for the year,” Iron Sculpture Man complained, though he alone didn’t have any wind problems.

“I guess it’s time,” Sock Doll Lady said, heaving herself to her feet. “See you all next Easter! And remember what I said about needle size, if you do get some yarn!”

Kesley forced some cheer into her voice as she bade farewells while packing up everything. She felt like chucking the whole lot in the dumpster, along with the idea of “love.”

She slammed the trunk of the VW and started the drive back to Upson Downs, her throat getting that tight lumpy feeling. “This is just a pity party, table for one,” she said out loud.

She had a good life—a safe life in a shifter community. Yeah, they sometimes joked that they were rejecto shifters. No alphas among them, none of the strong, cool predators. In the last few generations, the few alpha shifters born in Upson Downs had all moved somewhere else in the big world. After all, when you know you can turn into a dire wolf, or a lion, or a dragon, who is going to hassle you? But the hedgehogs and the hamsters and roosters and deer and the bat much preferred a safe, quiet existence. But without an alpha, they could get squabbly. And as the economy ground down small towns, many town projects didn’t get done.

She eased down the hill and parked behind Rosens’ grocery. Tiny spats of rain stung her face, carried on a cold wind whooshing up the valley off the sea. She scurried under the awning of the store, head bent—and promptly ran into someone.

“Awk!” A warm shoulder gave, and Kesley jumped back as a woman staggered, dropping a clipboard. At once pieces of paper loosened, and began whirling wildly in the wind.

“Oh my God, I am so sorry!” Kesley yelled, and frantically began stamping on the papers.

The woman also stamped, snatching up the now-footprinted paper. Two or three other people helped, gathering the escaping strays, and brought them back. Kesley stayed where she was with flapping paper under each foot as she bent to grab them. They were pretty much ruined.

She shuffled them together, and began to glance at the top one out of sheer habit when a hand snatched them away, and Kesley looked up into the stylish face of a vaguely familiar woman—maybe forties, dark brown hair cut short in a no-nonsense style. Her clothes practical but understated in dark blue and tan, relieved by a fine silver scarf.

“I am so sorry,” Kesley repeated.

“It’s all right,” the woman said breathlessly, as she crammed the papers, messy as they were, under the clip on her clipboard. “I didn’t expect it to start to rain, or I would have started tomorrow. But while you’re here, can I take five minutes of your time or less?”

That was usually the point at which Kesley excused herself, because in her opinion nothing good ever happened past that: it was either a recruiting spiel for some group she did not want to join, or a hard sell for handouts. Maybe both. But she felt she owed the woman for practically knocking her into the street, and certainly for ruining whatever it was she had collected on the clipboard.

“Well, I do have to fetch groceries . . .” she said weakly.

“This will only take a moment, maybe less,” the woman said. “My name is Marlo Evans, and I’m doing a human interest story for NPR.”

“Okay,” Kesley said, and then she had it: the unfamiliar woman walking on Main Street.

Kesley caught herself looking for that tall, striking man. Not in sight. Disappointment warred with relief as the woman went on. “I’m following up on some social media discussions by some tourists passing down the coast of California, corroborated by some locals.” She paused expectantly. “And with whom am I speaking?”

“Kesley.”

“Kesley . . .?”

“Enkel.” 

“Thank you, Kesley. How long have you lived here?”

“All my life.”

At least this stupid conversation was easy so far.

The woman had worked a fresh paper to the top of her pile, and stood with her back to the wind. “So there is some suggestion of a new religious movement, or a nature movement, centered on animals, somewhere in these mountains, with the celebrants living nude. They worship a mythos about animal spirits  . . . that take human form. Do you know anything about that?”

Red flag! Kesley opened her mouth to deny ever having heard any such thing, but she remembered that stupid flyer that Dwayne Senior, Chick’s dad, had put together: the town joke against peepers.

But how had that ‘taken human form’ gotten mixed in?

Kesley said, “Oh!” She forced a laugh. “I was confused by the animal spirits. I don’t know where you got that idea, but I can explain the nudes. That was just a Halloween gag. Started by a bunch of students for an excuse to go sky-clad. On the mountains. Getting close to nature.”

Marlo leafed through her papers, then shook her head. “I have a report here from someone who saw older people as well.”

“I think there was a professor, or something,” Kesley lied wildly, and waved her hand up and down Main Street. “As you can see, no nude bodies here! And the only animal around is the parrot down the street at the Primrose Hotel. A pet. People do have pets. Like anywhere else.” Aware she was babbling, she shut her teeth with a click.

“Thank you. Drat! I dropped my pen. If I could just get your . . . James?” Marlo called over her shoulder.

As Marlo dug through her purse for a pen, from around the corner stepped that man.

Kesley froze, every nerve alive. He stood about thirty feet away, his broad back to them as he gazed out at the gray ocean between the V of the palisades, his hands holding a camera. Kesley blinked as her heart thumped against her ribs.

He was even taller than she’d first thought. Bigger. More  . . .
everything
. Dark hair curled over his collar in back, and the wind rippled through his dark jacket, drawing subtle attention to the line of his shoulder blades bracketing a long, strong back that ended in narrow hips in slacks.

The world hummed around Kesley, as if a hive of hidden bees were about to swarm.

Click went the camera, and the man began to turn. Kesley glimpsed sharp cheekbones emphasized by a long, jagged scar, a straight nose, entrancingly curved, severe lips, a frowning brow over . . .

She never noticed anyone’s eye color unless they were practically in arm’s reach, but it was as if the distance between her and the tall man somehow shortened in a heartbeat. His greeny-brown gaze turning, turning—

Deep inside her, for the first time in her life, her raccoon unfurled—

Oh,
hell
, no! The universe was
not
going to do this to her: she was not going to deal with any guy belonging to Red Flag Woman. Either he was with her as in relationship, which meant he was totally off limits, or he was working for her, and that put him just as off limits.

Sorry, universe, try again
.

She faced away before their eyes could meet, because every cell in her body had flared with the conviction that if eyes met eyes, there would be no turning back.

She retreated, muttering, “Sorry I can’t help you. I gotta get my groceries. Everyone is waiting at home.”

And she escaped inside.

* * *

At first annoyed at being pulled away from contemplation of the endless ocean under the cloudy sky, Jameson Worth Danbridge III turned, then stilled, his nerves sparking to hyper-alertness. At arm’s length beyond Marlo, a woman stood poised to walk away, light and shadow highlighting tantalizing curves, waving chestnut hair tangling in the wind, an appealing round face, soft lips parted—

She is the one.
That internal voice spoke, the one he’d heard twice since waking up in the hospital. It always upset him, the way it came with a sense of urgency, as if he was supposed to do something, or go somewhere.

Or maybe he was just crazy.

And what did that mean, anyway? ‘One’
what?

Angry, frustrated, he frowned across the intervening space, searching instinctively for her eyes, as if he would find an answer there—but the woman paled and spun away, her quick words to Marlo lost on the rising wind. She vanished inside the grocery.

Of course she’d taken one look at his scar and ran. Business as usual. He knew intellectually that he didn’t care, but his heartbeat thrummed in his head, a distant drum beat. He hated that fractured not-quite match between body and mind, partial memory and current sensory input.

He still wasn’t sure this NPR masquerade was a good idea, but Marlo had promised he needn’t do any actual work. She would take care of the interviews and any investigative follow-up. For him, staying out of his brother’s crosshairs and trying to recover his missing memory was first priority.

He glanced at the ocean. Gray sky, gray sea, both restlessly moving. Somewhere, sometime, he had looked out on a similar vista. But not here. The smells weren’t right. He couldn’t define how . . . and that, too, was business as usual.

He turned his back on the Pacific. “Who was that woman?” he asked Marlo.

“You didn’t get her picture?”

“I was trying to shoot the ocean. I’m still getting used to this thing.” He indicated the complicated camera Marlo had found for this expedition. “When I turned around, she was already leaving.”

Marlo continued wrestling with her papers. “She’s a dead end, in any case. Kary, Chelsea, Carley—one of those impossible eighties names—says the cult was just a bunch of college students.”

“Then we’re done here?” he asked.

Marlo pressed the crackling papers against her chest with the clipboard as she studied him, her brown eyes earnest. “James? Are you in discomfort?”

“No. I like this place, actually. It’s quiet. But I don’t want to stand in the rain if it’s about to storm.”

Marlo sighed. “I wanted to get one more interview, but tomorrow is another day. I promised your stepmother that I’d keep you from overdoing.” The car was parked right on the street behind them. They got in, and as Jameson had hoped, Marlo began to fuss with her papers. “I really ought to have brought my recorder and tablet,” she muttered. “But people sometimes freeze up when you stick a recorder in their face, whereas taking notes is less intimidating? Anyway, I’m almost certain that what Kayleigh Somebody said directly contradicts the first interview I took this morning . . . I hope it didn’t blow away in the wind, damn it. Maybe I should get a binder if this place is going to be full of hurricane winds.”

Jameson half-listened, his gaze remaining on the door to the grocery. A man and a child came out, and bent into the wind with their tote bags of groceries. A woman—but too tall, too thin. Not
her
.

“Why don’t we return to the motel, where I can lay these out?” Marlo said.

Jameson had been doing the driving, part of his therapy. He started up the car, and made a business of turning on lights, windshield wipers, and checking around. Come on, mystery woman, how long does it take to shop in a tiny store?

Ah, there she was, nearly obscured by two hefty bags of food, but he recognized that tossing chestnut hair, and the extravagant line of her hips as the wind pressed her cargo pants and her bulky coat against her.

Jameson put the car in reverse as Marlo tucked the clipboard into her shoulder bag and engaged her seatbelt. When the woman reappeared, driving in a battered VW, Jameson waited until she left the parking lot and started driving uphill.

Internally he counted before pulling in at a discreet distance. As he did, he became aware that the movements were familiar. Not driving. That was neutral. He knew he had been driving a long time. The realization was that he knew how to follow someone.

He stayed well back, as the VW maneuvered uphill, then turned left.

Marlo had been scrolling through her email on her cell. She glanced up. “Isn’t our motel down the other way?”

“I wanted to get a better sense of the town, before the rain gets heavy.” Jameson felt a pulse of guilt when he turned left. He ought not to be following the woman. He knew that kind of behavior was wrong, unless he was following a . . .

There was the blank hole in his memory again.

I won’t do anything
, he promised the woman in the VW.
I just want to see you again, to find out what kind of ‘one’ my crazy voice seems to think you are
.

“There doesn’t seem much to this town,” Marlo commented, frowning through the rain-streaked side window. “But go ahead. Showing interest in our project is good.”

He didn’t tell her that he had no interest in her undercover search for whatever-it-was. He was just glad to be away from Tranquil Breezes, even if that disturbing voice, or delusion, or whatever it was, seemed to have come with him. Walking around in the sea breeze was a great improvement on being flat on his back in a hospital bed with broken bones, a slashed face, and no memory of how he’d gotten there. His mind was already so much clearer.

Right now, his interest was in that woman, so he stayed with the VW, slowing whenever its taillights flashed, until it made a sharp left into a tiny dirt road leading to the top of the hill. That sense of wrongdoing sharpened so much he forced himself to drive on by, and made his way around some meandering curves past occasional half-hidden houses.