And run he did. He let his long bear legs stretch out as he raced through the forest. His bear paws easily ran over the surface of the snow, and it didn’t matter to him that he couldn’t see in front of him due to the blizzard. He knew this forest well, and his sense of smell was sharper than his eyesight when he was in bear form.
Besides, he knew exactly where he was going. He’d made this trek thousands of times in his lifetime. He was going to his favorite spot—the spot that he was pretty sure no one else on the mountain knew existed. It had always been his special place, and he needed his own special place now more than ever.
After about fifteen minutes of running, he came to a small cave that was well hidden in an unassuming grove of pine trees. He slid into the opening of the cave and followed a narrow tunnel until it opened into a much larger cave. Here, in the heart of Bear Mountain, he had discovered a hot spring.
He’d been only nine years old when he discovered it, but even then he’d known better than to tell anyone else. He’d never even told his best friend, Scott. Scott would kill him if he knew that, but Scott would never know.
This place was Joel’s.
Well, his and his lifemate’s, whoever she might be. He’d sworn to himself that when he finally found his lifemate, he would share this place with her. He’d thought he would find her much sooner than now, but life had a way of not always going the way he planned.
That was alright. Joel had rolled with the punches. He’d made his own way in the world, and made a success of himself. It had been a lot of work, but building his business up had been worth it. Now, he was financially independent. He had worked hard to reach that point, but he had reached it. He was ready to support a lifemate and a handful of cubs.
The only hitch remaining in his plan was finding that lifemate and having cubs with her.
At this thought, his bear roared within him. Joel grimaced in annoyance. He shifted back into human form, now that he was in the warmth of the cave. But even in human form, he knew the roaring within him would continue.
He didn’t understand why his bear was so determined to convince him that Anna was his lifemate. It was the most ridiculous notion his inner beast had ever come up with. But for some reason, it wouldn’t go away.
Joel had always thought that his inner beast couldn’t possibly be wrong when it came to love. That’s why he’d passed over dating many of the beautiful women in the village. He hadn’t felt anything for them, so he hadn’t wanted to waste his time with them. For a while, he’d thought that maybe he was being too picky. Or perhaps he was out of touch with his inner bear, and wasn’t realizing that some woman in the village was meant to be his lifemate. He’d forced himself to date around, but no matter how many girls he dated, he never felt that spark that he was supposed to feel.
Why the hell was he feeling it now? He’d thought that he just needed to grow and mature a bit, and he’d figure out who in the village was his. Was it actually possible that it wasn’t someone in the village?
“No!” he exclaimed to the steaming room as he climbed into the spring. “Even if it is someone from the outside, it’s not Anna. I’m not fated to be with a city girl like her.”
As Joel said this, he realized that he still didn’t know where Anna was from. He was assuming it was the city—but she hadn’t said and he hadn’t asked her.
And he wasn’t going to ask her. He wasn’t going to talk to her any more than absolutely necessary.
As Joel’s body slipped into the steaming hot water, he closed his eyes and tried to relax. He tried to let the cares of the day slip away. But even the soothing hot water wasn’t helping as much as it normally did. Usually, this place could relax him no matter what. But today, he felt restless. He didn’t want to think about the fact that he had a pretty good idea where that restlessness was coming from.
“I am not mating with Anna,” he said through gritted teeth. “I don’t care how beautiful she is, or how much she makes me feel like I’ve never seen a woman before now. I am not mating with her.”
Even as he said the words, he knew he was in trouble. How was he going to spend the next couple of days in his cabin cooped up with Anna and not go completely crazy? For the thousandth time, he cursed her for being foolish enough to go up to the mountaintop with a blizzard coming.
And then, a disturbing thought crossed his mind. What if the problem wasn’t so much that Anna was foolish? What if the problem was that destiny had contrived to force Anna into his life? Joel had heard some pretty wild stories in his time about the ways that shifters had met their fated lifemates. Shifters believed that everyone was assigned a fated mate from the moment of birth. Like most shifters, Joel had always believed that destiny was working behind the scenes to make him cross paths with and fall in love with the woman he was meant for.
This belief had been what had kept his bear patient during all these years of being alone. How could he now think that the fact that Anna had been forced into his life meant nothing? Especially when she was driving his inner bear so crazy?
With a frustrated grunt, Joel tried to turn his thoughts to other things. He thought about his business and the jobs he was already lining up for the spring and summer. He thought about the remodel on his cabin, and how difficult it had been to work on it with the abnormally heavy snows the mountain had gotten this year. He didn’t mind the cold so much, but he couldn’t work on the remodel when everything was covered in snow. He had to shovel it away, and this year it seemed he couldn’t shovel fast enough to get things cleared before the next snowstorm came. He was hoping that this trend wouldn’t continue in the last few months of winter.
Joel even tried to distract himself from Anna by thinking about his plans to buy a fishing boat with his best friend Scott. The fishing down in Snowshoe Lake was tremendous in the summertime, but Joel hadn’t ever bought a boat because he was always too busy working to fish.
He had sworn that this year would be a different. He’d made enough money now that he could afford to take a few weekends off. Scott had shown interest in going fishing with him, and they figured that sharing a boat made more sense than each of them getting their own. Odds were good they’d be going together every time they fished.
But no matter how much Joel tried to think of other things, his mind always came back to Anna. He wondered what she was doing right now, alone in his cabin. Probably looking at her camera.
Joel chuckled before he could catch himself. He couldn’t help but notice how adorable Anna was when she looked at her camera, scrunching up her face to try to see the pictures on that tiny screen.
She’d come to the right place if she wanted to take photographs. A blizzard wasn’t the right time, but if she came when it wasn’t snowing like crazy, the scenery on Bear Mountain couldn’t be beat. In fact, Joel was always surprised by how few people drove up to Bear Mountain.
Not that he was complaining. He didn’t want a bunch of tourists crawling all over his mountain. But he knew a lot of photographers visited Pine Springs for the amazing scenery. The road up Bear Mountain had purposefully been built all the way to the top in an effort by earlier villagers to bring in tourist dollars. One of the shifters had once had the bright idea to lure people up to the top of the mountain by making a road which would make the trek easy.
Joel had been too young to remember all of this, but he’d been told that there were quite a few fights about whether to build the road. Many of the villagers hadn’t wanted to attract tourists. They felt that if tourists were always crawling on the mountain, then someone would inevitably figure out that everyone who lived on the mountain was a shifter. Others said that as long as no one shifted in front of anyone, there wouldn’t be a problem. The mountain was huge, so all the shifters had to do was avoid shifting in the village or too close to the road.
In the end, the road had been built, but it hadn’t mattered. The people of Pine Springs spent so much time warning tourists not to visit Bear Mountain that no one ever came. The roa
d had been a wasted effort.
Or, at least, the road hadn’t accomplished its intended goal. But Joel did think that it was pretty awesome that he could drive his truck all the way to the top of the mountain. True, he could always go up there through the forest in bear form. But he enjoyed driving his truck sometimes, and there was nothing in the world quite like revving up the engine and driving to what felt to him like the top of the world.
Unbidden, the thought popped into Joel’s head that driving Anna up to the top of the world would be an amazing experience. He tried to push away the thought, but he couldn’t help imagining for just a moment what it would feel like to head up that mountain road with Anna in the passenger seat beside him.
Joel let out a growl of frustration, and stood to leave the hot spring. This place wasn’t doing anything to make him forget about Anna. It was only making him think about how ready he was for a lifemate.
Just not a lifemate named Anna.
The light that filtered through the cracks in the top of the cave was going dim anyway, and Joel figured it was time to head back to his cabin. This day had felt long, and he was ready for a good night’s sleep. Besides, he’d been soaking long enough. He glanced down at his fingers, which had turned to raisins, and then he smiled. What was he so worried about, really? The next two or three days were going to be tough. But after that, Anna would be gone. Once she was no longer in his cabin, or anywhere nearby, she’d be easy enough to forget, wouldn’t she?
Or would his bear refuse to give up on her now that he’d seen her, even when she was out of sight?
With another growl, Joel began to shift back into his bear form. Just make it through the next two days, he told himself. That’s all you have to do.
But even as he said these words to himself, he worried that Anna had infiltrated herself into the fibers of his heart much more than he wanted to admit. Was he going to be able to untangle himself from her before it was too late?
He had to. He had no other choice. With a roar, his bear started running home.
Chapter Eight
The blizzard wasn’t slowing down at all when Joel finally returned to his cabin. The snow was falling just as heavily, and the temperature seemed to have dropped a few more degrees. But none of this surprised Joel. Blizzards on the mountain usually got worse before they got better. What did surprise Joel was that his keen sense of smell picked up the scent of food as he approached the cabin—food that smelled like a lot more than just cold canned beans and hot sauce.
Joel found himself quickening his pace as his curiosity got the best of him. Had Anna cooked something? But there was nothing in his cabin to cook other than beans. And he’d never thought beans smelled that good before.
He stomped the snow off his boots as he stepped onto his back porch, and quickly stripped off his winter gear so that he could go inside without bringing in buckets of snow with him. He breathed in deeply again, and thought he recognized the smell of venison. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? There was no way that Anna had gone out hunting for a deer in this weather. Even if she did know how to shoot a gun, which he highly doubted, his guns were all locked away—and he was pretty sure she didn’t have one hiding in that small camera bag of hers. Besides, there weren’t any deer out in this weather. They were all hiding from the heavy snow. And yet, when Joel stepped inside the warm cabin, the smell was unmistakable. Anna had somehow cooked up some deer meat.
Joel looked at the table, and was surprised to see that Anna had set out two place settings. Her back was to him as she stood at the stove, stirring furiously. She didn’t turn around as he entered, but she must’ve heard him, because she called over her shoulder, “You’re just in time. Dinner will be ready in about two minutes.”
“Dinner?” Joel asked in a confused tone.
“Yes, dinner. You told me to help myself to whatever food was in the cabin, so I did. Did you know you had a bunch of venison in the freezer? And also a bunch of potatoes in one of your lower cupboards. I had to cut a bunch of eyes off of them, but they were still good. Oh, and I found a six pack of beer.”
Joel could’ve slapped himself. He’d completely forgotten about the venison in his freezer. He hadn’t been hunting this year because he’d been too busy with his remodel. But Scott had, and had given him some deer meat. Since Joel rarely cooked, he’d put it in the freezer, and then completely forgotten it was there. That was probably a good thing, because if what he smelled right now was any indication of how that venison would taste, then Anna had done a much better job of cooking than he ever could have.
He’d forgotten about the beer, too. He’d bought himself a six pack so that he’d have a reward after a hard day of working on the remodel, but lately he hadn’t been able to do much because of the weather. He’d forgotten about the beer stuffed away in the back of his fridge, but apparently, Anna had taken a full inventory of his kitchen. He winced at the thought, and wondered what else she might have found. Hopefully no rotting food—he wasn’t always the best at remembering to clean out his cupboards.
Anna glanced back at him. “Sit,” she commanded.
Joel sat, too surprised by all of this to actually say anything. That was okay. Anna was talking enough for both of them.
“I found a bunch of spices in your cupboard as well,” she said. “They’re probably not that fresh, but I had to make do. This isn’t the best weather for going to the grocery store, you know?”
She gave a sheepish laugh, then started scooping the food onto plates. Joel stared in amazement when she set a plate of food in front of him. She’d roasted the venison with the potatoes, and she’d also heated up some seasoned beans on the stovetop. Everything smelled and looked delicious. It almost looked like something Joel would have been able to order at the Bear Paw Diner.
“Wow,” he couldn’t help but say. “This all looks amazing.”
Anna beamed as she sat down across from him. “Thanks. It took a while to defrost that venison without a microwave. I had to use the cold water method, and I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough time to cook everything before you got back. But luckily you weren’t kidding when you said you wouldn’t be back until nightfall, and I had time to finish a delicious venison dinner.”
“It does look delicious,” Joel said slowly. “But why are you doing this? We didn’t exactly end things on the best of terms when I left earlier.”
“I know, and that’s my fault. I’m sorry. You saved my life, and the best I could do was repay you with a bunch of rude, nosy comments. I wasn’t trying to be obnoxious, I promise. It’s just that sometimes my mouth gets the better of me.”
This amused Joel. “Sometimes?” he teased.
“Okay, most times. In any case, I just wanted to say I was sorry. I didn’t really know the best way to do that, but when I found all this food I thought that making you a nice dinner would be a good start.”
Joel stared down at the food. Part of him wanted to make a defensive, sarcastic comment. But he thought better of it and decided not to be a jerk. It wasn’t Anna’s fault that his inner bear’s turmoil was frustrating him. That was his own issue, and he didn’t need to drag Anna into it.
“Well, thank you,” he said, trying to sound gracious. “I have to admit that it will be nice not to have to eat cold canned beans for several meals straight. Although, this meal is missing one thing, you know?”
Anna gave him a slight frown. “What’s that?”
Joel grinned, then stood and walked over to the kitchen. He came back with a giant bottle of hot sauce.
Anna’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious. You’re going to ruin my good cooking with a bunch of hot sauce?”
Joel winked. “Not ruin. Improve. Don’t take it as a dig against your cooking. I even put hot sauce on Poppy’s cooking, and I will defend her cooking abilities to the death. But to me, a meal isn’t a meal if it’s not drenched in hot sauce.”
Anna shook her head at him slowly. “Alright, then. I must not be the
only one who thinks you’re a total weirdo.”
Joel laughed. “Didn’t the people in Pine Springs warn you that we were all a bunch of weirdos up on this mountain?”
Anna cracked a smile. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “But somehow I don’t think it’s because you’re all drenching every meal in hot sauce. I’m willing to bet you’re the only weirdo up here that does that.”
Joel grinned again. “You’re probably right. Some of the other villagers like hot sauce, but no one as much as me. In fact, my nickname in the village is ‘hot sauce bear.’”
“Bear?” Anna asked.
Too late, Joel realized that he’d just said something that referred to his shifter nature. He started to panic, but before he could work up too much of a sweat, Anna was talking again.
“Oh, I guess that makes sense. You are built a bit like a bear. Then again, all the men on this mountain are, at least from what I saw in the diner. You guys are all big and muscular.”
Relief flooded Joel. “Yeah, we are all a bit bigger up here. It’s the fresh mountain air.”
Anna squinted at him. “I think you’re the biggest one of all.”
When she looked at him and said these words, Joel felt a funny fluttering feeling in his stomach. He liked the fact that she’d noticed that he was the biggest bear of all, but he didn’t like himself for noticing. He didn’t like the way her words made him feel a bit too pleased. To cover over his awkward feelings of discomfort, he quickly looked down at his food.
“Well,” he said in a gruff voice. “Hot sauce or not, we should start eating before this gets cold.”
Anna didn’t seem to notice the internal war he was fighting. She smiled at him, and that smile did nothing to ease the growing desire within him.
Rescued on Bear Mountain Page 5