Silvertip Shifters Boxset Bks 1-4

by J. K Harper

  Finally, Cortez stopped waiting. He shrugged and looked away, back over the deep wilderness in front of them. She sensed hurt in him. And distance. "Come on, pretty Haley. You probably have to get back down to work. And I'm actually supposed to meet up with a friend and do some work on my house this afternoon."

  He stood up, reaching down a hand to pull her up. She took it and tried to smile at him, but he quickly let go and started to walk back down the trail to the lodge, leaving her to follow his stiff back. She did, quiet as she tried to process everything. All the details. The only details she really cared about were the things he was telling himself inside his head. What he felt in his heart. Details she would never, ever share with anyone else. She knew everyone had to know about what he'd just told her. His family, his clan, probably everyone who lived here knew about what happened. But it still felt like he'd given her a gift: the darkest thing about himself that he believed. He'd shared something hard and painful because he trusted her with it, even if he didn't trust himself anymore.

  Something inside Haley, maybe resolve, suddenly went strong as steel. She jogged slightly to keep up with his long-legged stride. Cortez might not know it, but she trusted him and, in a totally crazy way, she wanted to protect him. Not that he'd think a big bear shifter like himself needed any protection from a small human like herself. But he did, and she would.

  No matter what.

  6

  Haley stretched her arms overhead and leaned back, closing her eyes as her back cracked. Oh, that felt good. The sounds of the Mountain Muffin in mid-afternoon were relatively quiet, matching her mood.

  "You done with your dishes?" a friendly voice above her head asked.

  Haley jerked, snapping her eyes open. Maddy, the owner of the bakery, stood beside her, smiling as she refilled Haley's bottomless coffee mug. She carried a gray plastic bin under one arm, which had a small collection of dirty dishes in it. Haley blinked, looking around. "Oh. Yes, thanks."

  Maddy plucked up the small dish which had held the cinnamon roll Haley had treated herself to earlier. "Here you go. We have to fuel the creative genius brainstorming, right?" Maddy looked hopeful. She knew Haley was a writer and loved the thought that she was writing a book in Maddy's bakery.

  “The creative genius part comes in the morning, actually. I'm here in the afternoon to do things like answer emails and stuff like that." Or totally freak out about her future and sometimes lose herself into the void of social media's cute kitten videos in an attempt to distract herself from the possibility that all her hopes and dreams would be crushed as Justin had assured her they would be. "You know. The usual business end of things." She sighed.

  Maddy nodded as she headed back behind the counter. “I definitely do know the business end of things. It's the tough stuff most people don't want to think about when they imagine the joys of being self-employed.”

  Haley laughed nervously, but she swallowed hard. She'd glanced at her bank account this morning and nearly had heart failure. If this book tanked...she'd be tanked too. The thought made her queasy.

  As she fussed around with stuff on her website, adjusting the placement of photos and text so they were just so, internally thanking smart people out there who had created drop and drag websites for people like her who were totally clueless about coding, her thoughts drifted again to sexy, intriguing, heartstring-tugging Cortez. After their walk out to the beautiful spot in the mountains the other day, when they got back to the lodge Jessie was still there but ready to take Grant to town for his swim lesson at the local school's indoor pool. So Haley had gone back with Jessie, after a somewhat awkward and brief goodbye with Cortez. He'd watched as they drove away, and she turned around to wave at him. She was pretty sure she caught the flash of a smile as he casually waved back. Yeah, he was fascinating. So strong, so big. But she knew that deep down, he was also so hurting.

  She nonchalantly asked Jessie about him on the way back, but all she really got was that Cortez was a great guy, always tried hard but often seem to have run of bad luck or maybe bad decisions. But he always bounced back. Jessie didn't seem super concerned about him. It sounded like no one here was.

  So the other day when Jessie had been here working at the bakery, and Abby had stopped by while in town running some errands, Haley had oh-so-offhandedly asked them about Cortez. She could tell right away from the probing look Abby gave her that Abby had a feeling why Haley was asking. Even so, and even though Haley had already been able to tell that Abby sort of big sistered Cortez, Abby hadn't seemed very worried about him either. Maybe Haley was wrong? Maybe it was just her writer brain seeing too much deep internal angst and pain in Cortez, and she just wanted to do some silly girl thing like rescue him or something.

  But she couldn't shake the feeling that Cortez was hiding a loss deeper than the loss of the friends he'd mentioned. Neither Abby nor Jessie had brought that up, although when Haley carefully inquired, their faces had drawn tight with sympathy. They'd simply said it was one of those sad, shocking events that had affected the town the same way as when Riley's mate had died, though this was somewhat different since Cortez's buddies from his search and rescue team were human. Then, to her surprise, Abby added that the other difference was that they hadn't died.

  “Wait—I thought they did die?” Haley was nonplussed.

  Abby shook her head. “No, but it was still really bad. Tim is in a coma, and the doctors aren't sure he'll ever regain consciousness. Scott lost a leg. They're both in Denver at the hospital. Scott is staying at a rehab center there to get tons of physical therapy every day. He's had a really hard time with the whole thing. Like everyone else on the team, he lived for adventure and having fun outside, being really physical. Now he has to learn how to just walk all over again. The search and rescue team, it's called a SAR team, is made up of both shifters and humans, and they're all really tight. Worked hard together, partied hard together.” Her smile was sympathetic as well as concerned. “It was a devastating blow for everyone. There's still a SAR team of course, with some additional members now to make up for the loss, but they've all changed since then. And Cortez isn't on the team anymore. By his choice,” she added quickly as Haley made a sound of dismay. “He's worried he'll let them down again by missing signs of another avalanche or something else that could go wrong. But that's part of the risk they take when they go out to save people.” Abby shrugged, but her face was still filled with compassion. “He didn't do anything wrong, Haley. But he believes he did, which is almost worse.”

  After Abby had left, Haley mulled the story over in her mind, stunned and aching for him. Cortez hadn't told her all the details because it was hard for him to think about them. To relive them. That, she understood completely. It now made sense too, what he'd said about his buddies never being able to have fun again, to enjoy life again. For extremely active guys like them, they may as well have died. Her heart clenched with compassion for him. Cortez was carrying around a lot of pain over the event. While his family and friends knew that, she was still sure they didn't know how deep it went.

  But she understood that completely. None of her friends or family truly knew just how deep her own emotional scars went. They thought she was dealing and would be okay. She hid the worst of it from them, because frankly, she didn't want to relive the shit she'd been through either. Sighing hard, she forced her thoughts away from the old ugly memories.

  Instead, she easily called up another image of Cortez's eyes. His face crinkled up into a smile, that golden stubble on his cheeks that she insanely longed to rub her cheek against, danced through her mind. Even as she thought about him, her phone dinged with a text. Heat shot through her body when she saw the message.

  Hi Haley it's Cortez. I'm sorry our lunch the other day ended like that. I know you're working hard and I bet you're at the mountain muffin cuz Jessie says you're there every afternoon so I was wondering if you have a break soon. I'm down here in town and I really want to show you something that I'm working on.
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  Her entire body tingled and a smile blazed across her face. Quickly she typed back, Yes.

  When?

  I could use a break pretty soon actually.

  Like in five minutes?

  She laughed. Yes.

  Okay. I'll come get you.

  Before she could answer, she saw the dots bouncing that indicated he was typing something else. She waited.

  Thank you for not being scared of me. Thank you for being okay with it. With me telling you that stuff.

  The smile on her face was so huge she thought her cheeks might break. Bouncing dots again. Then another text flashed.

  Fuck, that was probably a dumb thing to say. You can ignore this if you want to. I hope you don't. You're really pretty and you smell nice and you have a big heart and I like that. I'll see you in five minutes. I'll be the big guy.

  Her breath caught. Oh, my god, he was amazing. She quickly texted back, I can't wait, I'll be ready.

  She was glad Jessie was busy with customers, because she knew she was smiling so hard she probably looked crazy and Jessie would ask what was going on. She wasn't ready to talk about this yet when she wasn't quite sure herself what it was.

  As she slid her laptop into its carrying case and shoved it into the little daypack she wore to walk between the house and the bakery, her phone chimed with an incoming email. Still smiling, she grabbed her phone to check it.

  Instantly, her stomach lurched and the smile fell off her face. Her ex, Justin.

  Hello, Haley. Have you missed me? I've been thinking about you. You have something I want. And I'm coming to get it.

  Her entire body began to tremble. Hand shaking so badly it took her two tries, she wrote back, Leave me alone. Don't contact me again. Then she darkened the screen and shoved the phone into her pocket. She stood up and pulled on her jacket, mind staggering. No. She wouldn't let him get to her. He was just being cruel and petty, trying to scare her. Justin was the past. He couldn't touch her anymore. He didn't know where she was anyway. He was fucking with her mind, which was what he liked to do. She knew better than to respond. If he tried again, she'd ignore it.

  Swallowing hard, pushing her fleece hat hard down her head as she headed toward the door to wait for Cortez, Haley tried to focus on the now. On the heart of this sweet, welcoming little town, the amazing community, the most intriguing guy she'd ever met.

  But inside, something dark, scared, and hopeless taunted her, trying to crawl up from the ugly shadows and swallow her whole.

  7

  Cortez looked over at Haley as he pulled his truck up in front of his partially built cabin and killed the engine, watching for her reaction. She didn't disappoint. A smile ripped across her face as she looked at the half built skeleton of what would eventually be his home. It was nice to see because she'd seemed oddly distracted when he picked her up from the bakery.

  "Cortez! Oh, I can see what it will look like, it's going to be gorgeous. You're doing this yourself? By hand?" She looked at him like he walked on water. His chest swelled with pride.

  "Yeah. Though to be fair, a good friend of mine has helped me out a lot. I couldn't have done it without him. Oh, and Riley bangs a few nails now and then too. Sometimes Quentin and Slade help, when they're in the mood."

  "Slade?"

  "Another brother. He's out of town right now. There's a bunch of us."

  Haley sighed with delight as she looked at his cabin. Yeah, she liked it. And he liked that. There wasn't much to it yet, but the parts that he had finished gave an idea of what it would look like eventually. It would be a sweet little pad in the woods, far away enough from both town and the Silvertip Lodge that he'd have his own space, yet close enough that he could easily head up there to do a tour. As the youngest sibling in a rowdy clan of bear shifters who were always up in each other's shit, Cortez hadn't been blessed with a lot of alone time in his life. He was pretty social, he did like being around others, but as he'd gotten older he started to realize how nice it was to have a private space he could just breathe in when necessary. Especially after the accident. The problem was, the cabin wasn't coming along as fast as it should. That was all his fault. He'd been slacking on everything, even to the point that Beckett was pissed at him for blowing off meets to work on it.

  He didn't want to think about that right now. Instead, he wanted to focus on Haley. He really wanted to impress her.

  Cortez reached over her to the glove compartment, feeling the heat from her body and that sweet smell of hers that turned him on so much as he leaned across her. At the slight hitch in her breath, he thought she might like this closeness as much as he did. Allowing a cocky grin to slip over his face, he opened the glove compartment, pulled out a sheaf of papers, and sat back in his seat. He crinkled the sheets open, Haley watching curiously. The open papers revealed the cabin plans. She let out a delighted breath.

  "Oh, wow. It's going to be so cute."

  Cortez turned his head and gave her a dubious glance. "Cute? Woman, you take that back. This is a man cabin. There's nothing cute about it."

  She laughed, the sound of it spilling through the cab of the truck. It made him want to thread his fingers through her golden hair, touch the back of her neck, stroke her cheek and see if it was as soft as it really looked. He forced his eyes back down to the paper, then held it up in front of them so they could see the actual building over the top of it. "Okay. It's got stairs going up to the front door since it's built kind of into the hillside, which I did on purpose because I wanted to try to catch some of the view through those trees behind us."

  Haley turned to look through the back window of the cab. "Whoa, that is pretty." It wasn't nearly as good as the views from the lodge, but it definitely wasn't half bad for this little parcel tucked back up in the woods like he wanted.

  "You can see how the deck will wrap around the cabin." Haley turned her attention back to the page. "It'll have a loft upstairs, which is where I'll sleep. There'll also be a basement area where I'll store all my man toys."

  Haley bubbled over again with a laugh. "Man toys? What are those?"

  "My outdoor gear. Skis, snowshoes, backpacking and hiking stuff. Just my personal gear. Everything for the clients is kept up at the lodge. Come on," he said, opening his door and getting out of the truck. He was excited to see her reaction to it up close. "You can see what's built so far."

  Haley got out of the truck and hurried ahead of him. It reminded him of how she raced ahead to see the view the other day at lunch. He liked showing her stuff. She seemed really interested, plus he just liked to share things with her. He wanted to share things that meant so much to him with this woman. Damn, she made his insides squeeze up and flip over all funny in a way that felt damn good.

  Haley stopped and pointed to the left side of the structure. "What's that little thing? Some sort of shed? But it's all fancy, with a window and a real door."

  Cortez came up beside her. "It's my temporary small man cave until the big man cave gets built. I built the shed about five years ago, way before I could start building the actual cabin. It's insulated, has a little wood stove, and a bed and stuff. Sometimes I stay in there when I want to get away from things. When I just need a break."

  She nodded, a tendril of hair fluttering against her cheek. He couldn't help reaching out to gently brush it aside. Her face dimpled as a smile flashed over it so quick he almost missed it. She curved her head toward him, into his light touch. Pressed gently against his hand, like she liked feeling it there. "I understand that. Sometimes I need a safe space to run to, too."

  She cut herself off as if she'd said too much, nervously shifting on her feet, and leaned slightly away from him. He frowned but forced himself not to press. Yet. If she wanted him to know her history, she'd tell him.

  "There's nothing special in there, just a cot with an air mattress on it. I'd show you the inside of the actual cabin but there's not much in there either." He laughed and Haley laughed with him, the mingled sound of it gently bou
ncing around the little glade. Since the cabin was just basically the basement floor and the bare bones of the sides, there wasn't even an inside to look at.

  “I want to see it anyway,” she said. Her smile dazzled brighter than the sun. Whoa, she was so pretty.

  Cortez made a grand gesture toward the non-front door, starting to say, "After you, then—"

  A horrifying scream burst out from the woods, not immediately nearby but not too far away, shattering the still air. An unearthly screeching, sounding like a possessed ghost being murdered. A mountain lion. It was followed almost immediately by another shriek, this one laced with warning snarls. Haley started so violently she almost tripped over her feet, her breath whooshing out of her in a gasp. She grabbed at Cortez's arm instinctively, her eyes wildly searching the forest surrounding them. Another call from the forest, loud and mocking, vicious in its intent.

  A strange shifter screamed out there, threatening him. Threatening Haley. Cortez's response was instant and completely uncontrolled. His bear clawed to the surface. Cortez swung his head to look at Haley, desperation bubbling through his voice. "Haley.”

  She swung her head to look at him, the whites of her eyes showing. His bear's protective rage shimmered through his voice. “I can't stop the change. Don't be scared. I won't ever hurt you. The door's unlocked," he managed to growl out, jerking his head at the door to the small shed/man cave just before his feral side took over.

  His bear burst out of him, flinging him into his enormous grizzly shape. Instantly, Cortez charged toward the woods on his four powerful paws, seeking the danger that called. He roared back into the trees, defending his place. His home. Defending Haley. His huge, heavy legs thundered over the ground as he charged up the hill, blasting through huge drifts of snow as he bellowed his defiance and anger at some strange shifter getting much too close.