Silvertip Shifters Boxset Bks 1-4

by J. K Harper

  He tipped his head to the side, still studying her. “What did you do?"

  Haley shrugged, somewhat self-consciously pulling her robe tight around her as if to shield the memory of nasty Haley, with whom she unfortunately had gone to school all the way through junior high. "There was nothing I could do about it. She was top of the heap, I was bottom of the heap. I tried once to speak up about it, but her little girl gang jumped me after school and slapped me around."

  Now Cortez's eyebrows rose up, practically brushing his sandy golden brown hair. “Slapped you around? So they beat you up? But girl style?"

  Haley couldn't help the snort that slipped out. “Girl style? What's that supposed to mean?"

  Cortez leaned back against the wall, grinning. He lightly kicked the heel of one booted foot up behind him. "You know. Like a regular fight, but girl style. Slapping and pulling hair and stupid shit like that."

  Haley's mouth dropped open again. Just before she snapped out an outraged protest, she noticed that while his words were challenging, there was a devilish little glint in his eyes. She narrowed her eyes back at him, but then her mouth smiled as she found a comeback. “Oh, I could show you girl style, but you'd end up knocked off your feet and all embarrassed because you'd lose all your street cred with the guys since a girl took you down." Teasing him back felt right. It felt comfortable.

  Now Cortez laughed. Really laughed. Head thrown back, a deep, booming laugh rolling out of him and echoing around the room. Whoa, that kind of gave her the shivers. Trouble, Haley thought as she drank up every last detail about him. He was sexy. She could notice that, couldn't she? Didn't mean she would do anything about it. She'd just look at him and enjoy doing it. That was all.

  "Haley,” he finally said, laughter still teasing the corners of his mouth, “I don't have to worry about street cred with the guys. They all know I can wipe the floor with their sorry little asses."

  Haley could definitely picture that. Then again, this was a shifter town, so… "I bet most of the guys around here are your size, though. And just as strong. And sort of—brawly. Right?"

  Now Cortez folded his arms in front of him and studied her more critically, the teasing grin slipping off his face. "Uh-huh. So you know we're shifters."

  Haley nodded, her fingers picking at the frayed end of her robe. "Yes, but I take it I'm not the only human in Deep Hollow who knows about you all."

  In the very hallway they stood in, a large framed photo that seemed to be a family group of grizzly bears hung on the wall. Six adults and two adorable little cubs. No normal human family would have photos like that on the wall. Then again, Haley's housesitting gig hadn't landed in her lap from a normal human family.

  The Walkers were bona fide grizzly bear shifters, every last one of them. Elodie and Oberon Walker, the parents and owners of this house, had decided it was time for them to go have some worldwide adventure. They'd taken off to travel around the planet for an entire year, and in fact had left months ago. Their grown sons had apparently gotten their hands—their paws?—too full to keep watching over the place themselves, so Elodie placed an ad seeking a full-time sitter while they continued their worldwide adventure. It was a third honeymoon, she had confided in Haley with a girlish giggle during their Skype chat. Haley had swallowed at that. Bear shifters lived longer than humans. Quite a bit longer.

  And Cortez here was one of them.

  His gaze seemed to drink her up as well. She could almost feel the warm caress of it on her skin. Dang it. "Yeah,” he said, “but they all grew up here. They've known about shifters their whole lives, just like their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents before them. But you're not from Deep Hollow. So how'd you find out about shifters, Haley the mysterious house-sitter?"

  Haley giggled, then tried to swallow it. She hated it when girls giggled, but she couldn't seem to help it around big, burly Cortez. Big sexy bear shifter, big sexy guy. "I'd tell you, but I can't just give away all my secrets at once, can I?"

  She prayed that the Walkers, Cortez's parents, had not yet made true on their excited promise that they would tell everyone in town she was an author who wrote romance books. They were thrilled to have a real live writer staying in their house. But while she was proud of her work, she might die on the spot if Mr. Hottie Forest-Smelling McSexypants here wanted to read one with all the kissing and sex in it. Well, her one and only book at the moment, which wasn't even finished yet, let alone published. But Cortez just grinned back at her, shaking his head.

  "I guess you can't," he agreed in a soft voice that rubbed over Haley's nerves like sweet, dark velvet. "Even so, I'm gonna find out some of your secrets, Haley. I have a feeling they might be worth it."

  Silence spilled over them, but it wasn't awkward. It was close, warm, nice. Safe. That was new.

  But safe didn't exist. That was one hard truth she understood. Carefully directing the conversation to more neutral ground, she said, “Do you know which bathroom it is? With the leaky pipe.”

  “Sure do. The guest one on the second floor.” A cocky little grin now as he slowly pushed himself off the wall, bringing his alluring woodsy scent much too close to her. “So, pretty Haley. You need someone to show you around town? I know all the fun stuff to do. Adventures on the mountain, or parties in town. Whatever tickles your funnybone. What do you like to do?”

  Taking a small step back from him, because that insanely sexy smell was going to her head and she couldn't be dumb, Haley nodded toward the desk she'd set up in the corner of the living room to be her workspace. “I like to write. I have to write, actually.” She was babbling again, but she couldn't stop. “It's my work. My only work, the only work I know how to do. I write all the time, and it takes up a lot of time. About sixty hours a week, including all the marketing and management details. Well, there's no marketing yet. It's not published yet. But it will be. And then I'll have to work even harder.” Whoa, stop, enough info. She snapped her lips shut and pasted on a smile.

  Those sexy, thick eyebrows raised again. “Sixty hours a week? Shit, that's crazy. So all you do is sit at the computer all day? Come on, pretty Haley, there's not much fun in that. Where's your entertainment?” He slid a slow, easy grin at her. Careless, clueless grin.

  The smile fell off her face like it had been slapped away. Utterly stung with something that hurt from way deep down, something that had nothing to do with this man because he wasn't that man, the one who had hurt her, but this hurt like crazy anyway for who knew what reason, Haley snapped back without thinking. “I have a perfectly active imagination and can entertain myself just fine with my stories, thank you very much.”

  A sudden smile burst over Cortez's features, lighting him up. “Uh-huh. Right. Mom said you write romance novels. Guess those are pretty entertaining. I hear they can be kind of hot.” He winked at her. It was charming, cute, inviting. He was kind of hot.

  Haley froze, little zips and zings of mixed embarrassment and some sort of wild attraction thing flickering through her body as he flashed another grin at her, then turned to go upstairs. She watched his sexy butt in those jeans as he climbed the stairs, her mind stuttering. Oh, my god, he really knew she wrote romance novels? And she just said they kept her entertained? Like, as in, physically entertained?

  Haley never turned red from embarrassment. Instead, when she was on the spot or shocked about something, her mind usually froze up so she couldn't think of anything to say. No snappy comebacks from her. Great. Outed as someone who enjoyed the sexy times in her own books and unable to zing him back.

  Mind still blank, she returned to her desk and plopped back down in the comfy office chair she'd hauled all the way out here from Boston, dismantled in the back of her car for the journey. She couldn't work without it. Then she stared at her manuscript open on the computer, paying way more attention to the sounds of banging upstairs. She imagined that big bear shifter up there with a hammer, pounding the errant pipe into submission. All she could think about were how big his han
ds were. Big hands. Really big hands. Which meant he also had a big—?

  Nope. Stop. Stop right now. Her thoughts were confusing. He was confusing. Oh my god, she was losing her mind over a guy she didn't even know. What was wrong with her?

  Scrubbing her hands over her face, she shoved away the direction of her thoughts and focused on her irritation. She was still pissed at how he'd brushed off her work ethic like it was nothing. She'd always been a hard worker. Always. And for the past several months she'd been working even harder than ever before, stretching her limits almost to the breaking point, learning something new, doing everything herself because she had to. Frowning at the screen, she stabbed out a few words with the keyboard, but they made no sense. Glaring, she highlighted and deleted them. Great. Now she couldn't even work because she was so mad at that big, galumphing, irreverent jokester of a bear up there, banging around her peaceful sanctuary and breaking her concentration.

  Darned big, loud, nice, good-smelling bear shifter of a man.

  By the time he jogged back down the stairs fifteen minutes later, Haley hadn't written a single word. She was ready to wring his big, distracting neck. Springing up from her chair as he strode to the front door, she marched after him. “You know,” she blurted out to his bristly face, his warm eyes, the overall bigness of him as he turned in surprise toward her, “I don't have time to play while I'm here. That's not why I came here and took this amazing house-sitting opportunity.” Passion exploded through her chest, making the words come faster. Why did she even care what he thought? But she did. “I work really hard! I have to. I have to support myself, I'm my sole support, and I'm building something from the ground up again because I have no choice.”

  He stared at her. Words tumbled and spilled from some place she hadn't realized still ached so much. “This is what I choose to do. It's my choice to work as hard as I do, and I like it. Life isn't all about parties and having fun, Cortez Walker.” She said his whole name for effect as she pointed at him, then popped her fists on her hips, breathing hard, still frowning at him.

  Feeling almost naked like she'd just shared something so deep with this guy, and she didn't even know him.

  He stood still, just looking back at her. Face now expressionless. She waited for a cocky response. Or defensive anger at her sudden crazy girl act. Instead, something so shadowed and troubled dropped over his face that her breathing hitched. “Yeah,” he finally said in a low voice. “Yeah, I do know that. Really well, in fact. Which is why I think having as much fun as we can before we die is so important. Because one day, without any notice, it's all over.”

  Wait, what? Haley's lower lip fell away from her upper one. Oh, shit. She'd said something without knowing, and it had zinged him. But zinged the wrong way. The air between them was heavy and dark, like his voice. Behind her, the grandfather clock quietly ticked.

  “No second chances to have fun, pretty Haley.” His voice got softer, but still just as serious. “This life is your one and only shot, and there are no guarantees how long it will be. So.” He cleared his throat and seemed to shake off the odd flash of darkness. “See you around town, maybe. Hope you get all the work done today that you need to. If that's what you want to do.” A small twist to his lips that passed for a casual good-bye, then he was out the door, gently closing it, his steps quick on the stairs and then gone.

  Gone, just like that. Leaving her with cryptic words. Words that made her suspect Cortez Walker might have just as much of a dark past as she did, one that was just as painful.

  2

  Cortez watched the clients as they stalked away from him, all graceful and panther-y like panthers supposedly were. Fucking panthers, his ass. He quietly snorted so they couldn't hear him. They'd said they were panthers from back east somewhere, nothing at all like the mountain lion shifters who lived here in Colorado. Yeah, whatever. Same damn things, but these two were insistent on being called panthers, like they were some kind of big cat royalty. And he'd pissed the hell out of them this morning by being an hour late. An entire hour. Fuck.

  Quentin would kill him when he found out. Hell, Cortez was angry enough at himself about it. He'd been so late, when here he'd thought he'd be early, even be able to get in a little paperwork before the clients showed. But they'd been waiting for him at the lodge, tapping their feet as they sat by the roaring fire inside the main building, angrily drinking fancy coffees that Abby, Quentin's mate, had made for them. Gratis, of course, since their day had been upended by his being late.

  Cortez the perpetually late, the irresponsible youngest of the family. Your basic screw up, if anyone asked his brothers. Awesome. He'd pasted on his best game face, apologizing and explaining that he'd forgotten he told them 7:30 am, he thought he'd kept it at the usual 8:30 am. But no problem, he'd add an extra hour to their Winter Wonderland Sleigh Adventure (cheesy name, but he was trying to collect customers with every hook he could use since he desperately needed the business) and all would be well. Right?

  Oh, fuck, no. Nope. Too damned bad for him, they had to leave early today to catch their flight out of Durango, which was why they'd set the meet time an hour earlier. So he'd had to cart around pissy, snooty panther shifters all morning, showing them the “secret” spots up on the mountain with the most spectacular views of the snow-covered San Juan mountains sprawling out in every direction, perfect for pictures and snuggling under the blankets in the back of the sleigh while he sat up front, holding the long reins on the horses as they trotted and jingled through the snow.

  Better yet, the horses who pulled the sleigh, Paxton the sweet gray mare and King Lear the grumpy sorrel gelding, who Cortez was sure was perpetually grumpy because he'd only been gelded a few years ago and probably remembered his stallion days with frustrated longing, had today of all days decided they didn't like the smell of big cat shifters. Even more fucking great. They'd been snorting, prancing, eye-rolling snots the entire time, sometimes lunging forward in their harnesses when one of the panthers had screeched with laughter at something the other said. He'd had a hell of a time controlling them while trying to pass off their behavior as high spirits due to the especially cold day.

  Fucking panther shifters. Cortez decided he hated them. They needed to get their stuck-up asses back to Florida or wherever and never come back here again. Not that he could actually say something like that, ever. No, he had to grit his teeth and pull out his Cortez-the-bumbling-good-natured-bear-shifter schtick for these clients. The Silvertip Lodge belonged to his parents. It was one of the premiere shifter-only destinations in the whole country, beloved for its down-homey mountain feel and the fact that it was utterly secure. Shifters could roam around the hundreds of acres in their animal forms all day if they wanted to, and that was a huge draw. So not only would he never do anything to endanger the impressive business his parents had built up over the years from a start of absolute nothing, but his cash flow was close to nonexistent right now.

  And the pissed off panthers hadn't even tipped him. Miserly jerks.

  Fuck his life, sometimes. Fucking fried shit on a shingle. He didn't even know what the hell that meant, but it usually summed up bad moments pretty well. He sighed and rolled his shoulders, trying to shake off the tense irritation. He'd been prone to irritation and snapping for months now. Even though he knew why, it was getting old. Really old.

  The only thing keeping him going at this particular second was the pretty smile and careful, solemn eyes of that Haley girl the other morning, the house-sitter. He'd been so damn taken with her soft skin, her big green eyes, that wild mop of hair gathered into some kind of messy ponytail thing on her head, and her laugh. Her laugh was just so—pretty. So open. He'd spent longer minutes talking to her, teasing her, just to hear her voice. She was super cute. Even with that ridiculous orange bathrobe—orange, for crissakes, but she actually looked good in it—and the enormous fuzzy moose slippers on her feet. He wanted to—kiss her or something. Take her out. Show her around, like he'd offered. And she'd gone
and gotten all huffy on him, defending her crazy work hours like they were all she had.

  Cortez could tell her about work hours. About how work wasn't the only thing in life. About how life was about having fun, about enjoying it before it was over. Fuming, wishing he was having fun right now, he savagely locked the runners on the sleigh before turning to unhook the horses, who were still skittish. Which was ridiculous because they'd been raised up here at the lodge, like all the horses they had, so they'd be used to shifters from birth. Something had crawled up their butts today, and they'd just decided to react to the panthers.

  Damn, he needed to get a handle on his temper today. He could feel his bear rumbling and snorting beneath the surface, driving his anger while also feeding off it. That was no good. Not at all.

  “Hey!” a cheerful voice called out behind him.

  Turning, he saw Abby walking over to him, a steaming mug of something in her hand. “I brought you some hot cocoa. And I tossed a slug of whiskey in it.” Her voice was sympathetic as she handed him the hot drink. “Figured you might need a little pick-me-up after those two.”

  “You mean to give me strength for when Quentin finds out what an asshole I was today.” Cortez took the drink with a grunt as a thank you, forcing out a lopsided grin. Abby was really cool. He had no gripe with her. She was a wolf shifter, from the insular wolf-only Black Mesa pack on the other side of the mountain, but she fit into the Silvertip bear clan like she'd been born to it. She also managed to keep Quentin from getting too riled up when his youngest brother pissed him off. Again.

  Abby gave him another compassionate smile, then reached out to stroke King Lear's neck. The gelding had settled down now, looking like an innocent pussycat who'd never shy at anything.