And, of course, there was the minor detail of the fact that he was a bear shifter. He’d have to explain that to her, but he wasn’t as worried about it as he had been at first. Surely, if destiny had chosen Anna for his lifemate, then she would be accepting of the fact that he was a shifter.
As the skies cleared, Joel knew the boys in the village would soon be plowing the roads, and he began to formulate a plan. He knew that Anna wanted to go to the top of the mountain, and he was going to take her there. He would show her what it felt like to stand on top of the world as he was showing her the best spots for photographs. And then, he would tell her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.
Joel had never been accused of being a hopeless romantic. Romance just wasn’t the sort of thing that a big bear like him thought of that much. But for Anna, he wanted to try. He wanted to sweep her off her feet. He would give her the sun, moon and stars if he could. Since he couldn’t literally do that, he would do the next best thing. He would give her the freedom to look up at those stars from the top of the mountain whenever she wanted. He would make a life with her here on the mountain, where she could finally know what it meant to truly live.
With all of this swirling through his head, Joel got up the morning after the blizzard ended and went to look outside. Heavy snow blanketed everything, but that was alright. Sure, shoveling all of this away so that he could keep working on his remodel would be a pain. But that came with the territory of trying to do something crazy like build onto his cabin in the middle of the winter. For now, he would enjoy the beauty and silence of the world covered in white.
Just then, Anna stepped onto the front porch behind him. He knew she was coming before he even heard her. His bear within him grew excited any time she came within a few feet of him.
He turned around and grinned. “Morning, sexy.”
She gave him a sultry smile in response. She was holding two mugs of coffee, and she handed one to him. “Morning. It’s so beautiful out here, and so quiet.”
But just as she finished speaking, that quiet was interrupted by the loud sound of a humming engine. Anna looked over in surprise at Joel. “What’s that? You said there were no snowmobiles on the mountain.”
Joel laughed. “There aren’t. That, my dear, is the sound of a snowplow. It’s a little earlier than I thought it would be, but I knew it was coming.”
They stood on the porch, sipping their coffee and watching. Sure enough, a little bit later, a snowplow came into view on the road that ran in front of Joel’s cabin. Joel smiled when he saw that his best friend Scott was driving the plow.
“Well, aren’t we in luck,” he told Anna. “You’re about to meet my best friend.”
Anna suddenly looked nervous. “Do you think you he’ll like me?”
“He’ll love you,” Joel said confidently. What he didn’t say was that Scott was going to give Joel a hell of a time about the fact that he’d had a woman in his cabin for the last several days. Scott and Joel gave each other a hard time about everything, the way only two best friends could do. And no matter how innocent the circumstances of Anna ending up in his cabin had been, Joel knew that Scott would make the most of the opportunity to tease him. Besides, things with Anna may have started out innocently enough, but that innocence had long since faded away.
Joel and Anna stood on the porch watching for a few more minutes as Scott cleared off the road in front of the cabin and then plowed the driveway. The plow stopped beside Joel’s truck, which was still nicely blanketed in snow.
Scott jumped out and gave Joel a wave. “Hey, Hot Sauce! Glad to see you made it through the storm. I was just thinking that—”
Scott stopped short when he saw Anna. He looked from Anna to Joel and back again, and then burst out laughing.
“Well, lookee there, Hot Sauce. It looks like you survived the storm just fine.”
Joel gave Scott the best scowl he could muster. “You’re just jealous that you didn’t have a pretty girl to look at for the last two days.”
Scott laughed again. “Does this pretty girl have a name?”
“This is Anna. She got trapped in the blizzard not too far from here. Her SUV is just up the road.”
Recognition flickered in Scott’s eyes. “Oh, you’re the tourist from the diner the other day. I guess you didn’t listen when everyone told you the storm was rolling in.”
Anna shook her head sheepishly. “I learned my lesson, that’s for sure. Luckily, Joel found me and saved me.”
Scott grinned. “And then, he had the hardship of looking at your pretty face the whole blizzard long, huh?”
Anna blushed, and Joel glared at Scott again. “Anna, this is Scott, my best friend. If it wasn’t for the fact that he was just nice enough to plow the road to my place, I’d beat him up for making such ridiculous comments.”
Scott smiled. “I thought you might like to get down to the diner without having to—”
Scott stopped short just in time. Joel knew that he’d been about to say that he’d plowed so that Joel wouldn’t have to shift to get to the Bear Paw Diner.
But that wasn’t something that could be said in front of Anna. No one talked about shifting in front of full humans. Scott awkwardly left his sentence hanging, so Joel jumped in to smooth over the moment.
“Well, I’m glad the way’s clear for my truck now. Poor Anna here has been forced to eat a lot of beans for the last two days. Luckily, I still had that venison in the freezer that you brought me.”
Scott looked relieved that Joel had managed to keep the conversation going after shifting had almost been mentioned. “I’m glad that meat was put to good use. Now, how about you come down to the diner and get some fresh meat to eat?”
Joel smiled. “I will, right after you help me shovel the snow off my cabin so I can keep working on my remodel.”
Scott made a face, but then nodded. Joel had known he wouldn’t refuse. Scott would want to know all about what had gone on with Anna over the last few days, and he knew that if he agreed to help shovel, then Joel would tell him. Anna went back inside to make more coffee and to escape the cold, but Scott and Joel both grabbed shovels and set to work.
Scott didn’t waste any time on getting right to the point. “So, did you have any, shall we say, extracurricular fun during the blizzard?”
Normally, Joel would have made Scott work harder for information like that. But today, he didn’t want to play games. Today, he had bigger news than just that he’d had a little fun on the side during the blizzard.
“She’s my lifemate,” he said without preamble.
Scott dropped his jaw, and nearly dropped his shovel. “Come again?”
“You heard me. The girl’s my lifemate.”
Scott took a few moments to process this information. “Are you sure?”
“Do you think I would tell you that if I wasn’t sure? Yes, I’m sure. I felt the lifemate bond.”
“But…she’s a tourist. And a full human. Have you told her that you’re a shifter?”
“Not yet. I haven’t even told her that she’s my lifemate. I’ve been planning to take her up to the top of the mountain to talk to her about it there. I won’t lie. I’m nervous about it and how she’ll react. But I figure that if she’s my fated lifemate, then she’ll accept who I am.”
“I guess so,” Scott said slowly. “But how do you think the rest of the village will react? And do you really think Anna will be willing to move here to Bear Mountain? I don’t know where she’s from, but she doesn’t seem like the type who’s used to mountain life. Look at how she went out in the middle of the blizzard, even after we warned her not to.”
“There will be a learning curve for her, that’s for sure. But I think she’s already learned her first lesson well. I doubt she’ll be ignoring weather advice from the villagers again anytime soon. She’s actually from California, but she’s been looking to move and start over somewhere. That’s why she came to Pine Springs. She was interested in the to
wn, and I don’t think it’s that big of a jump to go from wanting to move to Pine Springs to deciding to move to Bear Mountain.”
Scott raised an eyebrow at him. “No, not a big jump at all,” he said sarcastically. “The only difference is that one town is completely isolated and full of shifters, while the other one isn’t.”
“Okay, so it is a bit of a difference. But, like I said, I don’t think fate would choose her for my lifemate if she wasn’t going to be interested in moving here. And as for how people in town will react…” Joel shrugged. “I’m sure there will be some who aren’t happy about it. But there’s no law against full humans being here. If Anna accepts me as a shifter and agrees not to go telling everyone in Pine Springs that a bunch of shifters live up on this mountain, then I don’t see what the problem is.”
“I don’t see the problem either,” Scott said. “But you know there will inevitably be some people raising a fuss.”
“That’s alright. They can raise a fuss. Someone’s always raising a fuss about something or other, anyway. At the end of the day, all that matters to me is that I’ve found my lifemate. People can say what they want, but the only one whose opinion matters to me is Anna. If she’s happy with me, then I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
Scott stopped shoveling for a moment and looked over toward the front door of the cabin. “And do you think she’s happy with you?”
Joel grinned and puffed out his chest. “Well, she hasn’t been complaining for the last few days. I think she likes it here. Now all I have to do is see if she still likes it when she realizes just what kind of people live on this mountain.”
“Well, if she’s smart, then she’ll like those people,” Scott said. “Because this mountain is full of people who are loyal, kind, and fierce about the ones they love. Shifters make the best friends and family.”
“Ain’t that the truth. I just hope that Anna can see that truth instead of running away in fear like so many humans would.”
“Like you said, if she’s your lifemate, then she will.”
Joel nodded, and began to shovel with a vengeance. He wanted to believe that Scott was right, but part of him couldn’t help feeling nervous. He’d never wanted anything in his life as badly as he wanted Anna to move here and spend the rest of her days with him. Would she feel the same way? Only time would tell.
And time was ticking. As Joel glanced up at the sunny sky, he knew that within a day, the roads would be cleared and Anna wouldn’t be stuck here anymore. Would she want to stay, even if she wasn’t forced to by impassable roads?
Joel shoveled faster, and told himself that if she was truly his lifemate, then she would. But he couldn’t quite shake the worry that filled him. Bear Mountain wasn’t a place for the faint of heart.
Luckily, he didn’t think that Anna was faint of heart.
Chapter Eleven
Anna watched from the cabin window as Scott and Joel shoveled. It wasn’t easy to see them from this angle, but that was all right. That also meant that it wasn’t easy for them to see her spying on them. She wondered if they were talking about her. Scott had given her quite a funny look when he arrived. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, and she hoped that Scott wasn’t trying to convince Joel that sleeping with her was a bad idea. But even as she had that thought, a little voice in her head asked, What does it matter?
It was a good question. What did it matter? She’d had a bit of fun, but now the blizzard had ended and the roads were being plowed. Within another day or two, she’d be heading back to Pine Springs, and then heading home to California. Her winter break was almost over, and she’d be expected back at school soon. She hadn’t spent as much time as she’d planned in Pine Springs, but she wasn’t complaining about that. Spending time on Bear Mountain had turned out to be the best thing that could’ve happened to her.
The only problem was that she had definitely fallen hard for Joel. It wasn’t going to be easy to leave him, but she knew she had to. They’d had a bit of fun, but he lived here on the mountain in isolation. His was a different world from hers, and she wasn’t sure that he wanted her to be a permanent part of that world. Even if he did, she wasn’t sure that she had what it took to be a permanent part of that world.
Things were different up here, she could tell. She wasn’t sure exactly what the Pine Springs residents had meant when they warned her about the people on Bear Mountain being weird. Weird wasn’t exactly the term she would use for them, but they were definitely different. They were also undeniably a tight-knit community. Even if Joel wanted her here, would the rest of the villagers? Scott had been polite, but he had definitely been surprised that an outsider was in Joel’s cabin.
Anna felt fear rising in her stomach. There were things she wanted so badly. She wanted to start over somewhere, she wanted someone to share life with, and she wanted some kids of her own. But the idea of uprooting everything was scarier than she’d thought, now that it was staring her right in the face.
She couldn’t do it. Even if Joel wanted her to, she didn’t have the guts. She told herself that her students needed her. In her heart, she knew that they would be just fine with another teacher, and that she couldn’t base her whole life around them, no matter how much she cared for them. But they made an easy, comfortable excuse for why she couldn’t start over. She felt like she’d been foolish to ever come out to Pine Springs in the first place. She had a lot of dreams, but in the end that’s all they really were: dreams.
All of these thoughts were still rumbling through Anna’s head when Scott and Joel came back in, laughing and stomping the snow off their boots in the entryway.
“Come on,” Joel called to her. “Let’s go into town. I’m ready for some lunch, and as much as I like the venison we’ve been eating, I’m ready for something else after three days of that.”
Anna gulped. “I…I’m not sure if I should go. The diner seems like a place for locals, and I’m definitely not a local.” She gave a nervous laugh.
The expression on Joel’s face told her that she wasn’t getting out of this. “There’s no law against tourists going to the diner. Don’t worry. No one here bites. Well, Scott might. He never knows how to behave himself. But don’t worry. I’ll keep him in line.”
Joel burst into laughter as Scott punched him. He punched Scott back, and the two of them were soon wrestling on the front porch.
“Men,” Anna said with an eye roll. But she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy as she watched them. What she wouldn’t give to have a good friend. People here seemed to truly value friendships. Nothing felt superficial like it did back home.
When the boys finally settled down, Anna found herself sitting between them in the front seat of Joel’s truck for the short ride to town. The diner was packed. Every parking spot was taken, and Joel had to park in a small snow bank. Luckily, his truck seemed to have no trouble with that.
Anna nervously followed Joel into the diner. The place was loud, with laughter and chatter filling the room. But as Anna stepped in, that laughter and chatter slowly dwindled. Within a few moments, the room was nearly silent, and every eye in the place was looking at her. She pasted a small smile on her face and waved.
“Hi everyone. I’m Anna.”
No one spoke. They all just kept staring.
“Anna is my guest,” Joel said. “She got stuck here on the mountain during the blizzard, and we became friends. I hope you’ll all give her a friendly, Bear Mountain welcome.”
There were a few more moments of silence, then one man in a far corner shrugged. “Hi Anna,” he said. “Sorry you got stuck. But while you’re here, try the ham and cheese melt. It’s to die for.”
Anna’s smile widened a bit. “Thanks.”
The chatter in the room slowly resumed, and Anna let out a sigh of relief. But she still felt nervous as Joel led her and Scott up to the counter. She sat on a barstool and looked at a menu without really seeing it. The owner, Poppy, came up and put a mug of coffee in front of
her without even asking if she wanted one. Anna saw Joel and Poppy exchange a look. They seemed to say something without speaking, but she had no idea what. For a moment, she was afraid Poppy might kick her out.
But then, Poppy smiled warmly at her and asked, “What will it be, dear?”
Anna didn’t feel like she had the mental energy to make a decision right now, so she decided to go with the recommendation the man earlier had given her. “The ham and cheese melt, please.”
Poppy nodded, then looked at Scott and Joel. “The usual?” She asked them. They nodded, and Poppy took off to fill their orders.
As they sat there, Joel reached his hand over and grabbed one of Anna’s hands with his. She noticed that when he did, several people in the room raised eyebrows. But no one said anything. A few people cleared their throats, but that was it. Anna got the feeling that Joel was bucking the system quite a bit by holding hands with an outsider, and she wanted to tell him not to bother for her sake. She’d already decided she was heading back to Pine Springs and then home as soon as the roads were clear. No need for him to jeopardize his standing in the community on her account.
But before she could say anything, he had turned to look at her. “I hope you don’t have any plans for the afternoon, because I have something I want to show you.”
Anna swallowed hard. She had been planning to head back to Pine Springs this afternoon, but she supposed it couldn’t hurt to stay one more night. These last few days had been the best days of her life. She was having a hard time letting go, even though she knew it was what she had to do. She smiled shyly at Joel. “You’re in luck. My social calendar is completely clear this afternoon.”
“Good. You’re gonna love what I have to show you.”
Before Anna could ask him for a hint as to what it was, Poppy was back with a refill for her coffee. Anna half expected the woman to chastise her for ignoring the warnings about the blizzard, but Poppy didn’t seem to hold a grudge. Instead, she leaned over the counter with a twinkle in her eye and spoke to Anna in a conspiratorial tone. “I hope these two boys haven’t been driving you crazy. Lord knows they’re talented at that.”
Rescued on Bear Mountain Page 7