by J. K Harper
Rescue Bear: Cortez
Silvertip Shifters
J.K. Harper
Contents
RESCUE BEAR
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Also by J.K. Harper
About the Author
RESCUE BEAR
Copyright © 2018 by J.K. Harper
First electronic publication: March 2018
J.K. Harper
www.jkharper.com
Cover design by Jacqueline Sweet
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the copyright owner except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America
Haley Adams used to have what she thought was a good life. Then it imploded in spectacular, awful fashion. After a long time, she's finally ready to get out and live again. Leaving everything behind for a fresh start, she lands in the mountain shifter town of Deep Hollow, home to the Silvertip grizzly bear clan. When she meets impossibly attractive bear shifter Cortez Walker, her life is about to change again. All she needs to do is let go—and trust.
Cortez is a thrill seeker who used to live life on a risky edge. But a terrible accident proved that everything can change in a split second. Haunted by his failure to protect those who needed it, he struggles to find peace again even as he doubts everything he ever thought he did best. Then he meets Haley. Now he faces the biggest risk of all: opening his heart and claiming her as his mate. He's up to the challenge—but first he'll have to prove he can be her rescue bear.
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1
One pivotal scene could alter the course of Haley Adams' entire life. It needed to be the best damn one she'd ever written.
Fingers poised over the keyboard, immersed in the climax of the book in which the heroine was about to rescue the hero after he'd been cold-cocked by the bad guys when he'd come to rescue her, her pulse thrummed wildly. This was it, the magic was about to happen, she could just feel i—
BAM BAM BAM.
“Shit!” Haley whacked her knee on the underside of the table and almost fell out of her chair.
Someone pounded on the front door so loud it sounded like they were planning to bring the thunder right into the house. Her heart joined her pulse, galloping hard enough she was half afraid it might jump out of her chest. She looked at the big grandfather clock in the corner of the living room. Six-thirty in the morning. Who was out there scaring the crap out of her at freaking six-thirty in the morning? Making her lose focus on the book she had to finish, or else she'd lose the tiny toehold she'd fought so hard to gain during this past year of shitasticness?
A-ha. She remembered now. The property manager had told her he would come over today to fix a slow leaking pipe in the upstairs bathroom. Great. She hadn't thought he'd meant this early. Or that he wouldn't call her first to let her know he was on his way. Sighing as real life took over the made-up-but-oh-so-real-feeling one she'd been working on, she took a quick glance down at her clothes.
Oh, fabulous. She was wearing her favorite ratty orange robe over her fleece jammy bottoms, the red ones that had little purple and black penguins sprinkled all over. Better yet, she also had her big old fuzzy moose slippers, complete with antlers and huge eyes, shoved onto her feet. They were her good luck ones that she liked to wear when she was writing.
Basically, she looked like a disheveled madwoman.
Oh, well. She'd met the guy the day she came to town, when he'd shown her the house she would be sitting for a year while the owners, his parents, traveled around the world. He had struck her as polite, professional, and totally uninterested in her. Which was completely fine by her. After she'd had her entire life blown up last year, men were the last thing on her mind. All she cared about right now was working hard to write the best damned book of her career. It was clear all he cared about was making sure any handiwork that needed to be done to his parents' house while they were gone got taken care of. So neither one of them should care about her hair or her unfortunate choice in sleepwear. Plus, it was six-thirty in the morning. What else should she be wearing?
Automatically smoothing her hands over her hair anyway, she frowned harder as she realized it was in a ridiculously messy bun caught at the nape of her neck. Great. But she shrugged as she went to the door. Writers at work looked scruffy and neglected sometimes. Dude would have to deal.
BAM BAM BAM! She jumped again mid-stride as the pounding sounded once more, even louder. It sounded like it could crack the door in two.
So rude. Now she was just plain irritated. "Hold your horses!" As she yanked open the door, she started to say in a pointed voice, "You know, there's a perfectly good doorbell—oh!” She chopped off her words. “You're not the property manager." She stared at the mountain of a man standing outside the door.
Big, huge mountain man with golden-brown eyes and muscles that bulged out even from beneath his tawny shearling jacket. Hoooly shit. He was really, really big. Light brown hair cropped close, a bristly beard that spread over his lower cheekbones and chin that she really wanted to scrape her fingers through to feel the scratch of it, eyes that gazed steadily at her from beneath a tussle of eyebrows. Jeans that fit him well, scuffed up but nice cowboy boots on his feet, a collared blue checked shirt that opened up just enough at his neck to show skin. Did she mention that he was huge? He took up the entire doorway, which was already supersized. Wow. Bear shifters sure did make for big humans.
He stared back at her, seeming just as surprised to see her. A beat up black toolbox he held in one hand bumped gently against his thigh. There was a moment while they both just looked at one another, Haley's mouth open. Finally he shook his head, still looking at her like she was spotted with purple dots. "Not the property manager, no. I'm his brother. Cortez. He had something come up, couldn't make it. Said there's a leaky pipe that needs fixing?" His voice rumbled through her like dark gravel, shuddering through her body and sending sweet chills dancing up and down her skin that had nothing to do with the cold air outside.
Haley finally remembered both her manners and to shut her foolish mouth. She stepped back so he could come in. Focus, she ordered herself. Right. Men were not to be trusted. Not at all. But this one, though, oh, he was kind of interesting. He was big and sexy and smelled really good, all woodsy and manly, but not like fake cheap cologne. No, he smelled like an actual forest, like pine trees and deep, rich earth, with a streak of something wild running beneath it all.
Something wild like a bear shifter.
And here she was, wearing her ratty orange bathrobe with big fuzzy moose slippers on her feet. Great. Damn. She sternly told her inner girl not to care. Her world was all about her for right now, orange bathrobe and all. It had to be.
"Upstairs." She finally found her voice as he headed down the hallway wi
th a quick stride, clearly familiar with the place and maybe in a hurry. "I'm Haley. I'm housesitting for your parents the rest of the year." Okay, stating the obvious. She clamped her lips down tightly so nothing else dumb could slip out.
Cortez stopped and turned back around to her. A slow, curious smile pulled at his lips, his eyes looking at hers with a careful friendliness that also seemed wary. Well, that makes two of us, buddy. Like he'd just thought of it, he reached out a big hand to shake hers. Although Haley had never considered herself to be a tiny woman, like her best friend Pix, she suddenly felt absolutely minuscule next to Cortez.
His hand wrapped around hers, warm and strong and just so darned big. "Sorry. That was rude of me to just barge in without properly meeting you.” Ooh, his voice. Okay. She really liked it. “Hi, Haley. That's a pretty name," he added, almost as if it were an afterthought. But his eyes lingered on hers, like the faint smile on his face.
"Thank you.” His searching gaze made her want to babble. “Actually, I always hated it because there was a girl in school more popular than me whose name was also Haley, and she told me no one was allowed to call me Haley. She was the only one allowed to be called Haley."
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 ho
t.” 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 hands 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?