Dancing Bearback (BBW Shifter Cowboy Western Romance) (Bear Ranchers Book 3)

by Becca Fanning

  “You always put your wallet in your carry on, girlie.” The old man regarded her over the rim of his glass. “Pretty basic tenant of traveling.”

  “Well, I already didn’t, so.” Lila tried to smooth her hair back. She felt a little too drunk for this. “I just need a place to stay.”

  “I ain’t got it.”

  “Do you know somebody who does?”

  “Look, lady, you leave me alone.”

  The bar door swung open. The cold night beyond it pricked at the hot skin of Lila’s cheeks until the door slammed shut again and in walked a trio of young men who looked as out as place as she felt in this tin can of a bar perched at the edge of the world.

  And one of them was looking right at her.

  He, the stranger who now held her transfixed, seemed the same breed as the others. Just another Alaskan fisherman, another pair of broad shoulders toughened by the water and the wild, another regular joining the din. But he looked right at her and kept looking. When he peeled off his snow-damp beanie, his hair looked sleek, black, soft. For a single bizarre moment, she imagined running her fingers through it. He wore a knit sweater and work boots bigger than her forearm. His smile seemed to come easy as breathing.

  Lila couldn’t stop staring. Her thoughts were jumbled and incoherent, as if the stranger at the door had somehow popped her skull open, plucked out her brain, and given it a good shake.

  “Hey, lady, I said—”

  She jolted upright in surprise, smacked her knees into the table, and sent hers and her seat-mate’s beers crashing to the ground.

  The bar stilled around them. Lila saw the bartender sigh and reach for a broom.

  “Aw, goddammit!” the old man snarled. “Now look what you did.”

  Lila glanced at the stranger. He was watching her still, his smile turned bemused, or maybe even mocking. Her belly burned with embarrassment. Distantly, she heard the old man snapping that she owed him a new one, heard the bartender tell him to stop his barking and she’ll get him a new glass once she cleaned this up.

  Before she could think, Lila shrugged on her coat and shouldered her camera bag and blundered out the door.

  It had started snowing since Lila stormed from the local Super 8 to the bar. She jerked on her gloves and stamped blindly down the sidewalk. Only a few blocks away, there was a warm bed and a continental breakfast with her name on it, but without her credit cards, she couldn’t pay, couldn’t check in, couldn’t curl up in her rented bed and pretend this night had never happened.

  Tears stung at the corners of her eyes, and she swiped at them angrily.

  As she walked, Lila stared at the dancing constellations of snow above her, the blue-black clouds beyond them. She wondered how cold it really got on Sitka nights. She wondered if she was just a couple hours away from finding out.

  “Just what the hell are you doing?”

  “Oh my god.” Lila started, whirled around. She stared at the stranger at the bar, uncertainty gathering in her chest. “You followed me? You seriously followed me?”

  “I heard you talking to Mike.” He wandered closer to her, that relentless smile dimpling his cheeks. His skin was a warm, even tan. She wondered if it was wrong to ask where he was from.

  “He's earned a reputation for being the town asshole. So, don’t take it personally.” He clapped his gloved hands together mutely. His gloves were thick, waterproof, and enormous. Looked more like paws than palms. “So what's up?”

  “What do you mean, ‘what's up?’”

  “I mean, I’ve never seen you around here before. I figured you were from out of town.” He scrutinized the black dappled sky. “You seemed so turned around back there that I wanted to see if you needed any help or directions or something.” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

  “No, no. I'm fine. I'm just walking back to my hotel.” Lila pointed vaguely over her shoulder. Her throat felt reedy and thin.

  “My name's Henry,” he offered.

  Lila flicked her stare from his boots up to his eyes. He didn’t look much older than her. Thirty, maybe. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” That smile again. Lila didn't know anyone who could smile so genuinely so often. Smiles like his were supposed to be those rare, tiny acts of real magic, as surprising and delightful as spotting a shooting star. “What's yours?”

  “Lila. Lila Ellis.”

  “Where’re you staying, Lila? I can give you a lift, if you want.”

  She bound her arms over her chest, too mortified to admit the truth all over again. “I don't need help,” she insisted, “I'll just walk.”

  “That’s alright. I respect that.” Henry leaned against the side of the building and sniffed. “But the hotel’s that way.” He pointed back over his shoulder, back the way she’d come.

  Lila bit hard at her lip.

  “Listen, I’m not here to tell you what to do with yourself. I just get the idea that you're drunker than you think, and this isn’t the best place to get lost in the night.” Henry held up his car keys and grinned. He had the most tremendous dimples. “So let me drive you—”

  “I don’t have a goddamn hotel, okay?” Lila held up her camera bag and shook it at him, like he should have somehow known what was inside. “The airport lost my luggage, so all I have is this stupid camera and my stupid passport and nothing—”

  “Hey hey hey,” Henry rushed, like he was calming a startled horse. He stepped toward her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Calm down. You don’t have to cry. You can crash with me for the night.”

  Lila laughed bitterly. “Yeah, okay.”

  “I’m serious. I think you should let me give you a place for the night. Don't worry. I live with the guys I work with. There's lotsa room, and there are no strings attached. It's just...” Henry gestured toward the mountain rising to meet the sky behind them, so close and so huge it seemed to curve inward, over their heads. Lila felt for a moment like she was staring out the top of a snow globe. “It’s not like you can sleep outside, you know?”

  Henry slung off his cap and scratched the back of his head. He looked at the snow, looked at Lila. Like he was trying to make up his mind.

  “Look,” he finally said. “If you let me help you, tomorrow morning I'll take you out on me and my crew's boat. I'll show you all Sitka's secret spots.” Henry offered her his hand. “I'm just doing what I'd do for anyone in a bad spot, Lila.”

  Lila eyed his outstretched hand. “Just tonight. I'll pay you back for your trouble. I’ll get my wallet tomorrow. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Nothing to pay for. No strings,” he reminded her. His hand didn’t move. “What d’you say?”

  She searched his eyes for another excuse, but instead something inside her softened, and her heart rose into her throat. For a moment she stood blinking and bewildered, her words delayed, like her thoughts got all twisted up. Like a cerebral traffic jam.

  Finally she broke her stare, muttered, “Yeah, okay,” and shook his hand. His gloves were warm despite the cold, like he'd just plucked them off a fireplace. “Are those heated gloves? You guys have those?” Lila rubbed at her numb fingers.

  Henry laughed, huge and delighted and real. “Nah. I run hot.” He smiled up at the sky and put his hat back on. “That's why winter's my favorite time of the year. This is my kind of a climate.”

  “This would be a shitty place to live if you didn't.”

  He laughed again, and then he nodded his head behind him. “Let's go get my buddies and my truck, and we'll get you set up.”

  Lila took a deep breath. The air, cold and wet as crystal, made her lungs feel huge and important and alive. Made every fragmented moment something precious, something to hold onto. She looked at Henry's hat and his big snowy boots, and she said, “Okay. Let's go.”

  Henry's house sat halfway up the base of Sitka's mountain, set back in the cusp of the forest, connected to the main road by a thin icy ribbon of gravel driveway. The porch slouched, and the bright green paint was fading, but the
warm yellow light flooding its windows were the most comforting thing Lila had seen in a long time.

  Both Henry’s friends were half-drunk and louder than they realized. Lila only saw their faces, briefly, when they first heaved themselves the truck and Henry pointed at them and said, “That’s Matt, he’s Finn.”

  Matt whistled a low note, cast Henry a meaningful grin, and said, “Holy Moses.” He looked older and distinguished, could even pass for a professor if not for the ponytail and the tattoos on his knuckles.

  Finn, the younger of the two new faces, pushed back his white-blond hair, laughed, and asked her, “Where the hell did you even come from?” His accent surprised her. He sounded vaguely southern.

  “Toronto,” Lila said.

  “Toronto?”

  Matt punched Finn’s shoulder. “Hey, cut that out, you drunk asshole.” The younger man yelped, but he settled in his seat and quieted down without argument.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Matt said.

  Lila nodded. She tried to look neutral, stoic. Whatever the opposite of anxious was.

  She sent the whole ride up memorizing the backs of Matt’s and Finn’s heads, mouthing their names soundlessly, so she wouldn’t forget.

  She was just so unused to other people.

  Places like Sitka comforted her precisely for their solitude. Lila went for the trees and the silence and the subtle constant hum of activity in the vast but near unnoticeable world beyond cities and their crowds—not to meet strange burly men at bars and crash on their couch for the night.

  When the truck stopped, Finn whipped around in his seat to face her. His eyes were the glistening amber of raw honey. “You’re so quiet.”

  “Yeah,” Lila said.

  “Don’t be obnoxious.” Matt cast a look back at her. “Sorry for him.”

  Finn scowled at him. “Don’t you ever apologize for me, Matthias. I stand by everything I ever did.”

  Matt just shook his head and left the car muttering. Finn sat as puffed and bristling as a young tomcat until the older man had reached the house door. “Can you believe him?” he said.

  “Can you just go tell Colt and Sherman to pick up their shit?” Henry glanced at Lila, reddened, and added, “Uh. Their stuff, I mean.”

  “I don’t mind mess,” Lila said.

  “I’m not telling Colt to do nothing. I’m thinking I’ll never speak to him again. Do you know what that bastard did to me?”

  Henry pressed his lips into a firm line. “Later. Get inside and make it look like less of a pit, man, c’mon.”

  Finn groaned and stomped out of the car. A six-foot toddler, pouting all the way to the house.

  Henry buried his face in his hands and groaned, “Oh my god. I am so sorry. He’s such an idiot. I swear he’s not always that bad.”

  “It’s fine. Alcohol, you know. Makes people unlike themselves.” Lila bit at the insides of her lips.

  “Hey. Are you okay?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “No, I mean, really. This is a scary situation you’re in. It’s something worth being nervous about. So if you need a second before you come in and meet everyone else, that’s totally understandable.”

  “Everyone else?” Lila’s stomach dipped. “There’s more of you?”

  “Just two more.” He must have seen her face fall, because he said, “Hey, hey. Lila. It’s alright. You tell me whatever you need, and that’s what I’ll do for you.”

  Lila frowned. “Why?”

  “’Cause.” Henry’s smile was lazy and content. “We’re buddies now.”

  “Already?”

  “Some things move quicker here than they do out there. There’s not much to do out here ’cept talk to people. You get friendly fast.” Henry opened his door and swung a leg out. She stared at the thick silhouette of his thigh and wondered what twenty-first century sea legs looked like. “You ready?”

  Lila took a deep breath, nodded, and followed Henry inside.

  All four of his housemates were poised around their worn kitchen table, trying to look natural and innocuous, like extras in a movie. Two new faces sat at the table. One had the same pale hair as Finn, but he looked young, barely out of high school. The other was a black man roughly her age in a worn Stanford hoodie. He regarded her curiously over the top of his glasses.

  Henry said, “Hey, this is Lila, she’s staying with us for a couple of days,” like it was something she’d done a dozen times. He pointed at the kid. “Lila, that’s Finn’s little brother Colt. Say hi, Colt.”

  Colt stood up from the table and said through his teeth, “Hi.” He gave Lila a single piercing stare and then said to the room as a whole, “Okay. I’ll be in my room.”

  “That’s surprising,” Finn muttered under his breath.

  Matt made a small disapproving sound and shook his head. “You’re antagonizing.”

  Henry brushed Lila’s shoulder to get her attention. She shivered in surprise but tried not to show it. He pointed at the man in the Stanford hoodie and said, “That’s Sherman.”

  “You really went to Stanford?” Lila said, astonished. Stanford had been her dream college. She toured the campus, fell in love, and had her application essay drafted before the end of her junior year. That was before, though. Before everything fell apart.

  “Indeed I did.”

  “Hey, Sherrr-man,” Finn said from across the table, pushing himself up on his elbows, “why don’t you tell Lila what you studied?”

  “C’mon, man,” Henry said. “No one else thinks this is funny.”

  “Tell her, Sherman.”

  He sighed, adjusted his glasses. “I double majored in wildlife conservation and philosophy.”

  “Right! My question is who in the hell gets into goddamn Harvard and studies two of the least useful things known to existence. You catch fish, idiot. You don’t need to know shit about deforestation or existentialism to know how to cast a damn net.”

  Sherman flashed Matt a bleak look. “You better get him to bed, big bear.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere.”

  Lila watched them, utterly fascinated, like a biologist observing a pack’s bizarre social system at work. There was something endearing about their bickering. Something familiar and familial. She smiled despite herself.

  Henry leaned down and murmured, “Hey, let me show you where you can stay.”

  He led her deeper into the belly of the house, past a living room with an ancient CRT television in the corner and a scattering of mismatched couches and chairs shoved where they could fit; up the stairs; down a hall lined with unmarked pine doors; and finally to the room at the end.

  “This,” Henry said softly, like they were in a library, “is my room. I’ll go and get you some clean sheets.”

  Lila lowered her voice to match his. She could hear his housemates maintaining their amiable tension downstairs. “Is this okay? That I’m here?”

  “Of course.” Henry swung open the door and flicked on his lamp. “Sorry. There’s no ceiling light. It’s kinda small.”

  Lila clutched her camera bag to her chest and ventured inside. Everything smelled like Henry, smelled like wood smoke and old pine needles, like brine and a frozen pebbly shore. She could get used to a smell like this.