"And then he met Jessica?" Steffi asked.
"I tried to talk to him about why Jessica might not be a good match for him. He became very angry with me…and that was the last time we talked. The next thing I knew, he and your sister were living in Anchorage."
She said Anchorage as if it were the ends of the earth.
Steffi had actually visited Anchorage a few times after Jessica and Patrick moved there and thought it was a really nice city…in the summertime.
As a Californian, she hadn't been brave enough to try visiting Alaska for Christmas. Which was fine, because Jessica and Patrick always came down to the Bay Area for the holidays.
"They made a good couple," Steffi said, feeling defensive on Jessica's behalf.
Margaret had obviously thought that Jessica hadn't been good enough for her son. But why? Most parents would have been thrilled to have a doctor in the family, especially one as beautiful and as charming as Jessica.
"I'm sure they did." Margaret gazed out over the meadow beyond the patio. The lush green grass was dotted with yellow and white flowers. "I can't tell you how much I regret the fact that my stubborn pride kept me from attending the wedding. And from being there when my granddaughter was born."
She smiled sadly at Olivia, who now wore a considerable portion of her milkshake on her chin and chubby cheeks.
"Have you been down to the bakery yet? My daughter Hannah works as Annabeth's cashier and barista, and she was thrilled when she heard she was an aunt."
"I'll make sure to stop by," Steffi promised.
Olivia shrieked happily and threw a half-gnawed French fry down to Royce, who gobbled it up and sat looking up at the baby expectantly, his tongue hanging out and his jaws parted in a doggy smile.
"Are you sure you don't need help with the baby? I'd be happy to take care of her if you get overwhelmed," Margaret said, pulling a wet wipe out of the container that Steffi had brought with her and reaching over to swipe at Olivia's face. "Seeing how you don't have any children of your own."
"Oh, I'm fine, thanks," Steffi answered. "The first few days were a little rough, but I think I've gotten the hang of it now."
"But don't you think Olivia would be safer out at Grizzly Creek Ranch, with her kin to watch out for her?" Margaret pressed.
Didn't we already have this conversation? Apparently Margaret had her fair share of Swanson stubbornness too, if only by osmosis.
"Actually, I think we're better off in town," Steffi said frankly. "I don't know if you noticed, but Annabeth's apartment has a security system. And the police department is on alert…and according to Annabeth, the station is just around the corner from the apartment."
Margaret looked like she wanted to argue with Steffi. Steffi decided to head the older woman off at the pass…something she had a lot of experience doing with her own mother.
"Look, now that I have a car, thanks to you, I can bring Olivia out to the ranch for a visit on Monday."
Margaret brightened at this suggestion, so Steffi added, "We can come by every day, if you like."
"I would like that very much," Margaret said. "And it would give the rest of the family a chance to meet Olivia. There are a lot of Swansons in this county—my late husband's ancestors were among the first settlers in this area, and they've spread out."
"Are you going to be at Elle's dinner tomorrow?" asked Steffi. "And I was wondering—how are you related to her? Through your husband?"
"Oh no, dear. Elle's my older sister. She met Ashton Swanson and they got married. Then she introduced me to Ashton's brother Ryan, and we hit it off right away."
"But you're a widow?" Steffi asked delicately. She took another bite of her burger.
"We both are, Elle and me. Her Ashton was killed in a terrible car accident while she was pregnant with her youngest boy. My Ryan was a military man, US Army. He was on a tour of duty in Iraq when he was killed by a roadside bomb. Patrick was a college freshman when it happened. He was devastated by his father's death. So was I," she finished simply.
"I'm so sorry," Steffi said.
"It's been over ten years now, and it still feels like yesterday." Margaret straightened her shoulders. "But let's talk about something more cheerful. Is Olivia walking yet?"
They spent the rest of the meal talking about Olivia. Margaret offered pieces of advice based on her own experience raising three children, and Steffi told Margaret about Olivia's birth and her own recent experiences in "baby boot camp," as Jessica had named it.
After lunch, Steffi drove Margaret to her house on the Grizzly Creek Ranch.
Following directions, she turned off the highway about twenty minutes out of town. From there, she bumped up a narrow dirt-and-gravel road that wound through grass-and-sagebrush-covered hills for another mile or so, until they reached a cluster of six houses set on either side of the unpaved road.
The biggest house was a grand Victorian, painted a cheery yellow, with gingerbread eaves and beautiful bay windows fronted by colorful flowerbeds and a big crabapple tree.
The other houses were more modest and ranged in building style from Victorian to a modern log cabin with huge floor-to-ceiling picture windows and a wide deck.
Steffi slowed the car when she reached the Victorian, but Margaret motioned her to keep going. "This is where Elle and her boys live," she explained. "That big yellow house is where Sunday dinner will be held. I live just on the other side of the hill."
Following the road around the base of the indicated hill, Steffi found another cluster of houses. The biggest house here was another Victorian, this one painted a dark green with brick-red trim. It was in the Queen Anne style, with a wide, white-columned porch and a small tower with a sharply pointed slate roof like a steeple attached to one corner of the house.
"Here we are," Margaret said.
Steffi pulled up in front of a wide stone walkway that led from the road up to the house. "That's a beautiful house."
She loved Victorians and felt lucky to live near San Francisco, where there were so many beautifully restored houses.
"Come inside," urged Margaret. "I'll make you a cup of tea."
"Maybe just a quick visit?" Steffi looked over her shoulder at the car seat. "I want to put Olivia down for her nap soon."
* * *
The inside of the house was as beautiful as the outside, with beautifully maintained hardwood floors and antique furniture in the parlor and living room. The rest of the rooms had more modern furniture, and the large kitchen had been completely modernized, but the house still held a lot of charm.
Seated in the living room with a cup of tea and a stunning view out the bay windows of rolling hills that climbed to rugged mountain peaks in the distance, Steffi said, "I can't thank you enough for the loan of the Forester. I don't think the rental car I had in mind would have done very well on that road."
Margaret, seated across from her, gave Steffi a conspiratorial smile over the rim of her own tea cup. "Don't thank me. Thank my nephew Evan when you see him at dinner tomorrow night. He's the one who called to tell me that you'd lost your car in the fire, and he's the one who suggested that I loan you Patrick's old car."
"What?" Steffi asked in disbelief.
Evan had done this for her? She tried to suppress the pleased smile bubbling up from her chest.
Stop that, she told herself. He did it for Olivia.
Margaret noticed anyway and chuckled.
"He didn't want me to tell you," she confided. "So tell me, is it true? Did you really turn him down for a date?"
Steffi stared at her, horrified. "How did you know about that?"
"Small town, my dear. Small town. So it's true?"
Steffi nodded, feeling apprehensive. Would Evan's aunt take his side and be angry with her because she didn't want to date him?
But Margaret surprised her. "Good for you!" she chortled. "It's about time someone said no to that boy. He's gotten too cocky for his own good."
"He was very nice to me," Steffi said,
instinctively leaping to Evan's defense.
"Oh, I'm sure he was. I've known him since he was a baby, and he's always been a kind and thoughtful young man. He just likes playing the field a little too much, if you know what I mean. And with his looks, well, I think women let him get away with a lot of bad behavior."
Steffi thought of Mary and wondered how it felt to date someone you loved, knowing that they didn't feel the same way about you as you did them.
She finished her tea and looked over at Olivia, who was lying on the couch next to her, playing with plastic shapes strung on a big loop of wire. Her niece was beginning to droop a little, and Royce was already asleep, sprawled on the rug, his head next to Steffi's feet.
"We'd better get going," she said regretfully. "See you tomorrow at dinner."
Margaret rose from her armchair at the same time that Steffi climbed her feet.
She walked Steffi to the door, then gave her a hug, followed by a fond kiss on the head for Olivia and a scratch behind the ears for Royce.
"Thank you so much for coming all the way out to Bearpaw Ridge and for bringing Olivia to me. I'll see you tomorrow, dear."
Chapter 10
"Yep, it sounds like Steffi's your fated mate, all right," Dane said that night, when Evan had finished telling him about his conversation with Mary and his bear's strange behavior since the fire.
This was not what Evan had wanted to hear when he had arrived at Mark's house on the ranch to watch the NBA finals.
Despite all evidence to the contrary, Evan had continued to nurse the fervent hope that Mary had been joking last night when she suggested that Steffi might be his fated mate.
Mary did have an evil sense of humor, after all—it was one of the things he had always liked about her.
Evan narrowed his eyes suspiciously at his brother. Dane's expression was carefully bland.
Is he in on the joke?
It wasn't really Dane's style, but then again, Evan knew he often drove his oldest brother to distraction. This could be revenge.
Evan turned to Mark. "He's joking, right?"
"It seems like poetic justice to me," Mark said, in his best lawyer-in-the-courtroom voice.
His tone was solemn, but his hazel eyes were alight with suppressed laughter as he pushed back his recliner.
"I mean, think about it," Mark continued. "My little brother, the commitment-phobe, the womanizer who's left a trail of broken hearts across three states—"
"Two," interrupted Evan, seizing on the detail in an effort to battle his mounting dismay. "Two states…Idaho and Montana."
"Fine, two states." Mark waved his hand dismissively. "But based on your own testimony, you've panicked and run from every single woman you’ve ever dated when she asked for any kind of commitment. And now, your fated mate not only lives about a thousand miles away, but she doesn't even want to date you while she's in town."
Dane snorted.
Mark raised his bottle of beer and tipped it in Evan's direction. "This, little brother, is most definitely poetic justice."
"Thanks a fucking lot." Evan dropped his head into his hands and groaned. "Shit. What am I going to do now?"
Mark just laughed at him, the bastard.
But Dane took pity on him. "Well, you're going to see Steffi at Sunday dinner tomorrow. Try asking her out again."
"How?"
Dane shrugged.
Mark said, "C'mon, Evan. If there's anything that you're really good at, it's asking women out. You'll think of something."
"You weren't a total asshole to her, were you?" Dane inquired darkly.
He was seated in the home theater's other recliner. Evan was seated on the couch between the two recliners and had propped his sock-clad feet on the coffee table.
The home theater they were sitting in had once been the house's formal parlor. It now held the biggest flat-screen TV on the market, supplemented with a top-of-the-line surround sound system.
Mark and Caitlyn loved watching action movies, and they often invited Dane and Evan to join them.
Caitlyn didn't enjoy Sports Night, though, so she'd left the house right after dinner to go hang out with Annabeth at Dane's place.
Evan's two sisters-in-law were currently working their way through six seasons of a popular British costume drama. Caitlyn had once mentioned that the sports broadcast year-round on satellite TV meant that she and Annabeth had plenty of opportunities to binge-watch series that their mates had little or no interest in seeing.
"I wasn't an asshole at all!" Evan protested. "I took her shopping. And out to lunch! That's pretty much the opposite of asshole!"
"So technically, you've already been on a date," Mark drawled. "Now you need to ask yourself why she didn't want to go out on a second date."
He was definitely having too much fun with Evan's dilemma.
"What?" Evan asked incredulously. "A shopping trip doesn't count as a date! There was no kissing! It's not a real date unless there's kissing." He drew an indignant breath. "She shook my hand when we said goodbye!"
No woman had ever done that before on a date. He always got a least one kiss from his dates, and usually that kiss led to more. Much more.
And Steffi had already kissed him once. So why hadn't she wanted to repeat the experience? He could swear that she had enjoyed it as much as he had…
"Shook your hand?" Dane asked, and now Evan could see the tiniest hint of a smirk around his brother's mouth. "You do know you're never going to convince her to mate you if you don't at least kiss her again, right?"
Evan bit back a retort defending his dating prowess. Instead, he groaned.
"But I don't want a mate. I like my life just the way it is!"
"Too late," said Dane. Then his smirk blossomed into a full-blown grin. "Speaking of poetic justice, Mom is going to flip out if she ends up with another Ordinary daughter-in-law."
Evan groaned again. "That's what Mary said. Right before she sent me to sleep in the guest bedroom."
Chapter 11
Afterwards, Steffi thought that Sunday dinner at Elle Swanson's house had been going so well, before all hell broke loose at the dining table and her world was turned upside down.
The evening had started off pleasantly enough. Thanks to her visit to the Grizzly Creek Ranch the day before, Steffi knew exactly where she needed to go.
When she reached the front door of the big yellow-and-white Victorian house, she shifted Olivia to her hip before reaching for the large brass knocker.
The door opened before she touched the knocker, revealing two tall middle-aged women standing in the doorway.
One of the women was Margaret Swanson. She stepped forward and gave Steffi a hug and deposited a fond kiss on Olivia's head.
Steffi had dressed the baby in a cute zoo print dress today, with a wide ruffled headband decorated with a cutout of a teddy bear.
Both Margaret and Elle were wearing nice maxi-dresses, and Steffi was glad she had decided against her original plan of a T-shirt and jeans. While shopping on Friday, she had found a nice halter dress in a bold turquoise and black geometric print with a matching turquoise cardigan and strappy, low-heeled sandals.
"You must be Steffi," said the woman standing next to Margaret. Steffi recognized her from the photo on the ranch's website. "It's so nice to meet you in person after talking to you on the phone. I'm Elle, and this must be little Olivia."
She reached out and stroked the baby's cheek, receiving a happy yelp in reply. "Hello, sweetie. I'm your great-aunt Elle."
Elle glanced up at Steffi with a twinkle in her warm brown eyes. "I was beginning to worry that we'd scared you off by making you think Bearpaw Ridge was filled with kidnappers and arsonists."
Elle had frosted blonde hair cut into a chin-length bob, and Steffi could clearly see her resemblance to her sister Margaret. They had the same noses, and identical dimples appeared in their left cheeks when they smiled.
"Well, it has been a little more adventurous than I expected," Stef
fi said dryly. "But the cute firefighters around here sort of make up for it." She grinned at Elle. "Rumor has it that most of them are related to you."
Elle's twinkle turned into a proud smile. "All my sons volunteer for the fire department whenever they're home," she informed Steffi. "And Thor—he's my second-youngest—is working as a professional firefighter in Denver these days."
She leaned forward to peer at Olivia. The baby made another happy noise and tried to grab Elle's necklace, which consisted of a polished slice of a fossilized ammonite shell on a long gold chain. "How precious! May I hold her?"
"Of course," Steffi said, lifting the baby and placing her in Elle's waiting arms.
"Why don't you come in, dear?" asked Margaret as Elle cooed over the baby. "Everyone's in the living room, having a drink before dinner."
"Thank you so much for inviting me over," Steffi said as she followed the two older women into the foyer.
She unslung Olivia's diaper bag from her shoulder and slid it out of the way next to an antique oak umbrella stand and coat-rack.
"And thank you for letting me bring Royce along," she added. "He's been suffering from a bit of separation anxiety since the fire."
Her dog sniffed interestedly at Margaret and Elle before beginning an investigation of the foyer's baseboards.
"Of course! We love dogs and babies in this house," Elle said as she led the way into the house, still holding Olivia.
Steffi looked around with interest as she passed through the foyer and followed Elle down a carpeted hallway. Everything had been beautifully restored to maintain the look and feel of the old house, and the walls were covered with framed family photographs ranging from sepia antiques to color photos.
She heard voices coming from the other side of a large doorway to her left. Sure enough, that turned out to be the living room.
Steffi let Elle usher her inside and saw that the room was already crowded with Swansons.
The first people she recognized were Dane and Annabeth, who were sitting together on an old-fashioned horsehair sofa. Both of them looked up when Steffi entered, and Annabeth waved. She had her baby son Matthew on her lap and was giving him a bottle. He was big for his age, with a fuzz of dark hair on the crown of his head, and wearing miniature overalls with a bulldozer printed on the front.
Ignite: A Werebear + BBW Paranormal Romance (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 3) Page 10