by Zoe Chant
The Snow Leopard’s Home
Glacier Leopards, #3
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2017
All Rights Reserved
Author’s Note
This book stands alone. However, it’s part of a series about snow leopards who work as rangers at Glacier National Park. If you’d like to read the series in order, the first book is The Snow Leopard’s Mate.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
The Snow Leopard's Home (Glacier Leopards, #3)
A note from Zoe Chant
More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant
Zoe on Audio
If you love Zoe Chant, you’ll also love these books!
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Teri Lowell was trying not to hope.
Hope wouldn’t get her anywhere, she reminded herself. If she let herself picture an ideal future, she was going to be disappointed when it didn’t happen.
Still, she was so anxious to hear what the doctor said, she was fidgeting. The exam table’s paper cover crinkled underneath her as she shifted in place.
Dr. Campbell frowned thoughtfully at his clipboard. He was a kind-faced old man, always cheerful during examinations, friendly with his patients. He’d been the Lowell family doctor for all of Teri’s life, and a while before.
Which was part of the problem.
“Hmmm,” Dr. Campbell sighed. “Well, it looks like you’re doing very well, Teri. No post-concussion symptoms, you’ve been keeping up with your physical therapy, and you’re reporting very little pain anymore.”
Teri nodded firmly. She bit her lip to hold in the too-eager questions: So I’m fine? I can start putting my life together again?
“Still...” Dr. Campbell drew the word out.
No, no, no...
“...you’re not quite up to full strength. A little shaky on stairs and if you walk for too long. So I think you’d better come back in two weeks for another checkup, and until then, keep focusing on your recovery.”
No!
Dr. Campbell smiled as he hammered in the final nail: “It’s good that you have such a strong support system at home.”
“I feel so much better, though.” Teri kept her voice calm and steady. If there was one thing she’d learned from her “strong support system,” it was that getting worked up got you nowhere. “I really need to start living independently again. Plenty of people do it even if they get tired easily.”
“Now, now, let’s not try to rush things,” Dr. Campbell said benevolently. “A car accident of this magnitude is nothing to take lightly, and recovery can take much longer than patients expect.”
He made a few more notes on his clipboard, then looked up with another smile. “Besides, we don’t want to worry your mother, do we? Better to give it another few weeks or a month. I’m sure she’d be more comfortable with that, and it won’t hurt you at all to take it easy.”
Yes, it will. You don’t understand.
But Dr. Campbell would never understand, Teri knew. He’d known her since she was a baby, and she was never going to be a real adult in his eyes.
Any more than she was in her family’s eyes.
Two more weeks. She could take two more weeks. She tried not to think about that another few weeks or a month that Dr. Campbell had casually tossed out.
Instead, she went mechanically through the ritual of checking out, and then stepped outside into the fresh early-spring air. Her sister Lillian was waiting at the car. Teri counted it a victory that she hadn’t insisted on coming inside to “help,” but had been willing to go run errands while Teri was with Dr. Campbell.
Whatever other problems Teri might have, being able to walk on her own again was still an intense relief. She was never, ever taking it for granted again.
“Well?” Lillian demanded. “What did he say?”
Teri considered just saying, None of your business. Or even straight-up lying. But it wouldn’t work. Even if she could convince Lillian she was fine, their mother had started having coffee with Dr. Campbell once a week, “because he’s such an old friend.”
Teri knew that her mother was getting updates on her from the doctor. The one time she’d held back something Dr. Campbell had said, her mother had known within a few days, and Teri still hadn’t heard the end of it.
I’m taking care of you, dear, I need to have all of the information!
I’m better! Teri wanted to yell. I’m twenty-five years old. I can walk around by myself. I don’t need anyone to take care of me!
But her mother and her older sister would never believe that.
“Another appointment in two weeks,” Teri told Lillian, resigned to her fate. “Since I’m still a little shaky on stairs and after longer walks. But he said I was pretty much better.”
“Hmm,” Lillian said doubtfully. “That seems really soon to me.”
Lillian was seven years older than Teri and acted like she was another parent. Since she’d gotten a divorce from her husband and moved back in “to help Mom and Dad around the house,” she’d gotten more and more like their mother.
And one of their mother was already plenty of mother.
“That’s what he said,” Teri told her. “He said I was ‘doing very well.’”
“But you’re still going back in two weeks,” Lillian reminded her.
Teri shrugged, feeling like a sullen teenager. “He doesn’t want to rush.”
Lillian nodded approvingly, already pulling out her phone to call their mother and report. Because she couldn’t wait until they got home to tell her, oh no. It was a gesture of trust for Mom to even let her 32- and 25-year-old daughters go to the doctor’s appointment by themselves.
Teri stepped away from Lillian, not wanting to hear the call.
Instead, she started walking around the perimeter of the parking lot, toward the sidewalk. It was pretty deserted, except for a man who was walking up in her direction, scanning the businesses by the side of the road. As she watched, he frowned, about-faced, and walked the other way, more slowly.
Teri set out in the same direction. These days, whenever she had a chance, she walked. She rarely had the opportunity to do it outside, so she was taking advantage while she could.
Three months ago, Teri’s car had skidded on a patch of ice and gone into a tree. She’d broken seven bones, had needed over a hundred stitches, and gotten a concussion. It was a miracle that someone had happened to be driving by, seen the accident, and called 911 before she died. It was even more of a miracle that none of the damage had been permanent.
You’ll probably always be achy in bad weather, they’d told her at the hospital, but it could have been much, much worse. You’re lucky.
She was lucky. She reminded herself of that every day. She was so lucky to be alive at all.
But recovery had taken months. She’d lost her job, lost her apartment, and had had to spend all of her money on the medical bills—she’d had insurance, but even so, all that time in the hospital had been incredibly, painfully expensive.
Her parents were making payments for her care now, and Teri was both grateful and guilty. They weren’t rich, but they assured her that they could handle it. Her mother pounced on the mail when it came every day, so Teri didn’t even know how much they were spending.
And she was living at home.
Teri had moved out of the house the second she’d graduated from high school. She’d worked part-time during school and saved her money, and had gotten an apartment as soon as she could, because even though she loved her parents, she’d known that her mother would never, ev
er stop treating her like a small child.
It had been glorious. Having her own space, her own life...she’d luxuriated in it.
And now, seven years later, she was back.
She needed to get out. But her mother didn’t want to let her leave. Teri’s car was totaled, so she couldn’t get around town easily. Until a couple of weeks ago, she hadn’t even been able to walk without a cane, and she still got tired quickly. That meant that if she wanted to go anywhere, someone else needed to drive her.
So she couldn’t apply for jobs until her mother agreed to let her start working again. She’d thought about trying to find work online, but her laptop had been in her car with her and had been destroyed. So her only option was the family computer, which was slow...and which her mother kept a strict eye on.
Without a job, she couldn’t afford to move out. She couldn’t offer to pay her own bills. She was completely beholden to her parents. Meaning her mother, because her dad was happy to agree with anything her mother said.
She tried to be grateful. She knew that many people didn’t have a family who’d take care of them full-time like her mother had. She reminded herself of the money they were spending for her. She was lucky.
But it was hard to remember when she was this frustrated. When no one listened to anything she said, and no one was on her side—not her mother, not her sister, not her doctor. Teri rubbed her eyes viciously, chasing away a prickle of tears.
“Are you okay?”
Teri jumped a mile in the air, and then immediately braced herself for a rush of pain. Sudden movement like that was going to hurt.
But nothing happened. She was a little stiff, but that was it. The expectation of pain had been an instinct; for months, everything had hurt. But she was really healing.
“I’m fine,” she said, turning to look at the man who’d spoken.
It was the same man she’d seen walking back and forth earlier. What she hadn’t noticed from a distance was that he was gorgeous.
Tall, incredibly muscular, with sandy-blond hair and eyes that were a surprising silver-gray color, the guy was straight out of a GQ fantasy. Desire rushed through her body, pooling in the pit of her stomach, and Teri wondered faintly if he would mind if she just climbed him like a tree.
Where did that come from? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so viscerally, physically attracted to a man. Forget since the accident, since forever.
“I’m sorry to startle you,” he was saying. “You just looked...upset. Do you need help with anything? Can I do anything for you?”
“No,” she said firmly. “I’m just fine.” Because she was, and she had the pain-free body to prove it.
“Oh. Then I’m very sorry to bother you.”
The novelty of being believed staggered her for a minute. And then she realized that because he believed her, this insanely handsome man was about to turn around and leave.
Thinking of how he’d been walking back and forth earlier, she asked him, “Do you need help with anything? You looked lost.”
He seemed taken aback to have the question turned back on him.
“Well...yes,” he said slowly. “I just moved here a couple months ago, and I guess I still don’t know where everything is.”
New in town. That made sense, because the town was not large and Teri knew she would’ve remembered a man this attractive if she’d ever seen him before. “What’re you looking for?”
“Sam’s Hardware. A coworker of mine said it’s right along this road, but I’ve been up and down it for about ten minutes and I can’t seem to find it.”
Aha. That made sense. “That’s because it’s disguised.”
His eyebrows went up. “Well, no wonder I couldn’t find it, I guess. But that’s a strange kind of business practice.”
“True,” Teri agreed. “It does seem to work for Sam, though.”
“So what sort of secret society do I have to join to learn where it is? Is there a password or a special knock?”
He smiled to show he was joking, and it was so warm, Teri couldn’t look away. What were they talking about again?
Sam’s Hardware. Right. “No, you just have to know. This way.” She glanced back at Lillian—still on the phone—and led the way three more doors down the sidewalk, then held out her hands. “Voila.”
Her new friend looked up at the building, then back at her. “I really hate to be obvious, but that says Gina Rossellini, Chiropractor.”
Teri couldn’t help herself; she started to laugh. “I know. Sam had to expand about ten years back, and he bought the place from Gina, who was leaving town. He was too busy setting up the shop to change the sign at first, and then customers were showing up and he was too busy with business to change the sign, and after a while everyone was so used to it that he didn’t bother. Your coworker probably forgot it even said that when they gave you directions.”
He had a wrinkle in the exact center of his forehead as he considered that. It shouldn’t have made him even more attractive, but it did. “That is either one of the better small-town stories I’ve heard, or you’re a very smooth practical joker.”
“It’s the truth,” Teri said. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”
It came out more emphatic, more sincere, than she’d meant it to. She found herself looking him right in the eyes, caught by the intensity there.
She felt like she needed him to understand. Believe me. I need someone who can hear that I’m telling the truth.
“I believe you,” he said softly.
Teri couldn’t understand the strange upswelling in her chest. She was just giving someone directions. Why did it feel so important?
“There you are.”
Teri spun around, tensing up. Lillian was hurrying along the sidewalk toward her, high heels thudding on the concrete.
“Please don’t wander off like that,” Lillian said severely. “I had no idea where you were, I was worried.”
Teri blushed so hard her face felt like it was bursting into flames. Here she was, talking to a nice, funny, incredibly attractive man—the first new person she’d met outside of a medical facility in months—and Lillian was acting like Teri was a toddler who had run off in the store.
“I was just giving someone directions,” she said. Time to smooth this over and get away before her sister made it worse. “We can go now.”
“Good.” Lillian gave the man a scathing look, as though she suspected him of wanting to kidnap Teri in broad daylight on a public street, and then actually jerked her head at Teri as she turned to leave.
Teri wanted nothing more, in her heart of hearts, than to tell her sister to get lost. That she was being rude and controlling and it needed to stop.
But that wouldn’t get her anything but an argument, out here on the street in front of the gorgeous man, and then a furious lecture on the ride home. And then another furious lecture from her mother after she got there.
She had no independence, and she couldn’t win.
So she followed Lillian. But she couldn’t help turning to give the man a little embarrassed wave as she went. He looked sympathetic rather than disgusted, at least, which was probably the best she could hope for after that.
When she caught up with Lillian—having to run a couple of steps to do so, and delighted to discover that she could—her sister grabbed her arm and leaned close. “That’s one of the Miller boys,” she said in a harsh whisper.
Teri frowned. “So?”
“Didn’t you hear? Oh, I guess you were still—anyway, they’re new in town. They moved here a couple months ago and took jobs at the Park. They’re,” Lillian lowered her voice even more, “shapeshifters.”
Teri blinked. “Oh.”
Everyone in town knew about shapeshifters. Up here in northern Montana, right up against Glacier National Park, there were a lot of them. They liked the wilderness, and they liked to congregate together, so they’d formed a community in the area.
They were supposed to be a secr
et, but in a small town like this, after generations, word got around. People knew which families had shifter blood.
Most people just shook their heads at the weird and amazing things the world had to offer, but Teri’s family had always avoided them. She hadn’t been allowed to play with any kids from shifter families in school, and her parents had always told her that shifters were dangerous—after all, they were wild animals in human form. Who knew what they might do? It wasn’t safe to be around them.
But Teri had always been fascinated by them. What animals could they turn into? What did they do when they were animals? How much time did they spend as people? Did they all live normal lives as people, sleep in beds and eat at the table, or did they ever sleep out in the wild and hunt for food as animals?
She’d seen one, once, years ago. She’d been hiking in the Park—something she’d absolutely loved to do, back before the accident—and she’d looked up and there had been a big grey cat frozen on the hillside. Not a mountain lion, she knew that instinctively. Not any kind of cat native to American mountains. A snow leopard.
They’d stared at each other for a long moment, and then the leopard had bounded away. The moment it had reached the rocks, instead of the bright green grassy patch she’d seen it on, it had completely vanished, invisible against the gray stone.
“Anyway,” Lillian continued, “I was worried sick when I looked up and you were gone! What if you fell? You still have a hard time walking.”
“No, I don’t,” Teri said, exasperated. “I get tired easily, but if I’m tired, I can sit down. I can walk normally. I was just giving him directions.”
That sounded like she needed an excuse. God, she was an adult woman! Even if she’d been flirting with Shapeshifting Miller Brother (she hadn’t even gotten his name), Lillian had no right to give her hell about it like this.
But she couldn’t say that. Because fight. Because lecture in the car. Because lecture after she got home.
Teri got into the passenger side of Lillian’s car with a sigh. I’m lucky, she reminded herself. I’m lucky. I’m lucky.
* * *
Zach watched the woman he’d been laughing with a second ago get hauled away by her...sister? Probably; they looked alike, although the sister was much more made-up, her hair aggressively styled, and had a hard-set, pinched, dissatisfied expression on her face.