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

by Becca Fanning

  “I’ll be back,” he said, and he shut the door behind himself.

  Henry’s room was small and bare. A desk sat on one side of the door, his dresser on the other. His bed was against the far wall, the blankets rumpled and unmade, a small mountain of dirty clothes collecting on one side of his bed. Next to them was a small, tightly shut door. The ceiling sloped downward toward the head of his bed. The roof’s gentle decline made the room seem cozy, like a cave scooped out of the side of a mountain.

  Lila set her camera on the desk. She eased off her boots, stripped off her parka. Then, trying not to think about germs and sweat and dead skin cells, she went over to the bed. She pulled the blankets and pillows off, tossed them on the ground.

  She had the sheets half off when Henry let himself back in and said, “Aw, Lila, you don’t have to do that. I can take care of it.”

  “I’m just helping.” Lila balled up the old sheets and tossed them with the rest of his laundry.

  He stood holding his clean flannel sheets, looking embarrassed and uncertain. “Sorry. I don’t have a laundry basket.”

  “I’d be amazed if any of you had a laundry basket.”

  Henry went to the other side of the bed. With wordless agreement, they stretched the fitted sheet over the mattress together. Lila dared glances at Henry’s chest, at the distracted look in his eye.

  “What else are you doing in Sitka?”

  Lila paused. “What?”

  Henry tossed her the other end of the top sheet to straighten it out. “I mean, it’s two days after Christmas, and you flew to the other side of the continent to this little nowhere-town to take pictures of whales? Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “You’re not spending the holidays with your family?”

  Lila grabbed a pillow and tugged the old cover off. She fumbled to get a new one on.

  “Lila?”

  “My parents are dead,” she said, like she was reciting an old speech. “I’m an only child. I have an uncle I never really met. My only living grandparent is in a home in Florida, and he doesn’t remember who I am anymore. So, no. I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry. Shit. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I mean, it’s fine. I’m fine. It sucks, but.” Lila shrugged and set the pillow on the bed. “It is what it is. It’s been like this for years. I’m used to it.”

  “Well, maybe it’s a good thing you lost your luggage, then.” When Lila frowned at him, Henry looked down at his socks. “It means you get to spend New Year’s with us. We know how to throw a mean party.”

  “I’m not staying more than tonight.”

  “You’re welcome to reconsider.” Henry grabbed an armful of dirty laundry. “Sorry. I’ll clear it all out in the morning.”

  “It’s your room.”

  “I know, but.” Henry shrugged, carefully maneuvered his way out the door, to keep himself from dropping anything. “I want you to be comfortable. I’ll be downstairs in the living room if you need anything. That little door’s my bathroom, and you should use it. The hall one’s vile.”

  Lila smiled at her toes.

  “You can grab any old shirt out of the dresser for something to sleep in. They’re all clean, I swear.”

  “Thanks, Henry.” She looked up at him, at his wilting bundle of laundry, his messy adorable hair. “This means a lot.”

  “No worries. You’d do the same for me.”

  Lila flushed, self-conscious and delighted all at once. She looked anywhere but at Henry.

  He continued, “Better be ready to get up bright and early tomorrow, though. You came a long way to take some pictures, so we’re not wasting a second.”

  She and Henry got an early start the next morning. Lila’s body was still firmly set to Toronto time, so she was up well before the sun, already awake and dressed when Henry—bleary, yawning, eyes still gluey with sleep—knocked lightly on the door to wake her.

  “Guess I don’t need to tell you to get up, huh?” He smiled. Everything about him was already so blissfully and impossibly familiar. Like she’d always known the shape of his shoulders, had seen him lean into a doorframe and look her over a hundred times before. “You drink coffee?”

  Lila nodded. Her cheeks felt warm and golden. “I love coffee,” she said.

  They ate breakfast, guzzled coffee, and went out the door before the rest of the house even began to stir. “We get lazy in the winter,” Henry explained as they got in his truck. “There’s not a lot of work, so we start, y’know, hibernating. Resting up.”

  The morning was still a milky, pre-dawn gray when Lila and Henry reached the base of the mountain, closer to downtown Sitka. The air tasted cool and salty as the churning dark water all around them. They started at the harbor, where the wind had the edge of a blunt knife. Boats huddled in their stalls like eggs in a carton.

  Henry stopped at a little sailboat at the end of the dock. Its belly was bright orange, its deck slippery and snowy, but otherwise immaculate. She wondered how their house would look if the men could keep it as nicely as Henry kept his boat.

  “This is Lucy.” Henry patted the side of the boat like it was a dog. He nodded at the worn cursive name inscribed along the bow. “Me and Matt sailed her all the way up from Seattle one summer just to get her here. She’s a determined old lady. And she’s gonna get us out to those whales of yours.” He took hold of the rigging and hopped onboard in one clean, fluid motion. “Let’s get a move on.”

  Lila looked up at the sailboat bobbing up and down in the dark water. The deck was level with her collarbone. She grabbed Henry’s hand and lifted her foot uncertainly, even though she had no hope of reaching the edge of the boat. “I don’t know how you expect me to do this.”

  Henry laughed and let her hand go. “Wait, wait. I’ll come back down. I’ll lift you up.”

  “You don’t have to lift me—”

  But before she could finish, Henry had already leapt down, landing heavy enough to make the dock shudder, and hauled her up by her elbows. Lila kicked and shrieked and held her camera bag for dear life.

  “Jesus, Lila! Grab something and pull yourself up.”

  Lila seized the closest rope she saw. She planted her feet on the solid edge of the boat and heaved herself upright. And immediately dropped to her knees, clutching the rope, fixing Henry with a stunned stare.

  “Are you sure you’re a wildlife photographer?” He swung up next to her and settled down, red-cheeked and preening. Like giving her a little scare absolutely delighted him. “Seem awful jumpy for it.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve never had someone try to toss me on a sailboat before.”

  “I didn’t know your legs were that short.”

  Lila let go of a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding in. And then she started laughing. “You’re crazy.” She nudged her shoulder against his arm. “This is crazy.”

  Henry smiled up at the sky. She traced the ridge of his nose, the heavy line of his jaw. She looked at his hands, bare despite the cold. He had fingers so big they looked like they could rip a fish open easy as tearing into a wet envelope.

  “Nah,” he said. “I’ll show you something crazy.”

  Lila adjusted her camera settings while Henry started up the little boat’s motor, freed her jib and sail from their icy covers. She watched him through the viewfinder of her camera as he scuttled up and down the hull, loosening and tightening the rigging with cultivated precision. His eyes were soft and distant, completely absorbed in his work.

  The camera shutter clicked like tiny insect legs.

  Henry jerked his head toward her. “Are you taking pictures of me?”

  “Yeah.” Lila paged through the snapshots and smiled to herself. Imperfect, except for their subject. “A little.”

  “I’m not the wildlife.”

  She lowered her camera. “I know. I take pictures of other stuff too.”

  “Handsome sailors?”

  “No.” Lila watched him make his wa
y back over to her side and settle down beside the tiller. “Just things I don’t want to forget.”

  Henry looked at her, looked at the rosy rim of dawn, and said, “You’d better get a shot of that too, then. It’s gonna be a beaut.”

  They spent the morning on the bay, Sitka’s whales ducking under and around her boat, like curious farm dogs crowding a new visitor. She crawled up and down the length of the boat with no thought but her camera and the next shot. The whales preened for her, flashed their tails and exposed their creamy underbellies as they turned their massive bodies around and around the bright orange edges of the boat. Lila snapped pictures until her battery finally gave out. Then the two of them sat side-by-side, enjoying the quiet and the fact that they had someone to share it with.

  Their empty yowling bellies were the only reason they came back to shore.

  Now, swollen and sleepy from lunch, feeling the time difference weighing on her very bones, Lila found herself daydreaming about beds and sitcoms and naps. About furnaces and places that weren’t currently pelting her with snow.

  Lila gripped her knees with her hands and gasped, “Is it much farther?”

  Henry, a dozen yards ahead of her already, turned to look at her. “You’re all the way back there still? Burning daylight, Ellis.”

  They were halfway up the mountain that flanked the back end of Sitka proper. Henry started them on a trail first—snowy and steep, but manageable—but soon went traipsing off the main path, leading Lila through a labyrinth of trees that he seemed to read like road signs.

  “I really,” she panted, trudging after him, “only came here for the whales.”

  “You wanted Sitka’s secrets too, didn’t you?”

  Lila groaned, lifted her foot up in that absurd half-march she had to use just to clear the top layer of snow, and kept on.

  “Almost there,” Henry said. He sounded so much further ahead than her already. “It’s okay. I’ll carry you back down if you’re beat.”

  Lila snorted. “Sure, carry me on the easy part.”

  She kept her eyes on the ground in front of her and followed the sound of Henry’s heavy clunking boots. Focused on keeping her breath even. Her camera bag felt heavier and heavier with every upward step. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something small, dark, and still. Something that made her pause and frown.

  There was a glove in the snow.

  Lila looked at Henry’s long lean back. He didn’t seem to notice that she’d stopped. She ventured over to the glove and picked it up. It was dry still, even a little warm, as though it had been dropped moments ago. She looked up at the sky—moody and gray, twinkling cascade of snowflakes—and turned the glove over in her hands. The outline of a small orange bear was stamped on the back. It looked like it could belong to Henry. It was big enough, certainly; she could fit almost her whole hand in the palm alone.

  Somewhere up ahead of her, Henry called low and urgent, “Lila! Lila, quick!”

  Lila shoved the glove in her coat pocket and hurried up, wrestling her camera out of its bag as she went.

  She found Henry at the crest of the hill, hunkered down on his belly, looking through the gap of two snowy bushes. When she reached him, breathless and bewildered, he started grinning like crazy.

  “What?” she said.

  “Be real quiet. Get down here.” Henry pointed through the gap of the bushes. “Look.”

  Lila ducked down next to him and took off her lens cap. She tried not to think about the inch or two of air between their shoulders, their hips.

  Then Lila peered through the opening and inhaled sharply.

  Beyond the bushes lay a small round clearing—a brief expanse of nothingness before the forest clustered together again, as though the land itself needed room to pause and breathe—and in the clearing stood a pair of black bears preening in a rare spear of afternoon light. They didn’t seem to notice them. The bears stood together in that impossible bright snowfall, surrounded by trees so tall the bears barely reached their proverbial kneecaps.

  “Oh my god,” Lila whispered.

  Henry just grinned and grinned.

  She hid behind her viewfinder, completely absorbed, her camera shutter clicking like a kind of heartbeat. Through the lens she watched the bears stir as if awoken by something, then lope to opposite ends of the clearing, their breathing loud and excited, and then suddenly they turned at once and charged, rose up on their back legs and collided, mouthed lightly at the soft skin of each other’s throats, fell to all fours, circled around to do it again.

  Then Henry’s mouth was against her ear, his voice as delicate and light as a dandelion seed. “They’re play fighting.”

  Warmth spread through Lila’s belly. She didn’t realize he had stubble. She liked the tickle of it against her earlobe. “Keep telling me stuff,” she whispered back.

  Henry chuckled softly. There was his mouth again, his hot divine breath raising the hairs on her neck. “Why?”

  “I like it,” she told him, and she realized as she said it that it was true.

  She and Henry lay side by side, heads inclined together, him whispering explanations as they watched the bears prance and preen and spar like they were nothing more than young boys in fur suits putting on an elaborate game of pretend.

  After a long immeasurable while, the bears stopped their fighting and trundled into the woods, their movement near-silent except for their rapid wheezing breaths and the husky, low growls they kept making to one another. It almost sounded like laughter.

  Lila didn’t know how long she and Henry had laid there, but her jeans were soaked, her thighs freezing, and somehow she’d pressed the entire line of her body against Henry’s. God, he was warm. She covered her lens again and looked up to see Henry looking at her, his stare soft and sweet.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey, you.”

  Lila studied him. They had never been so close before; if she pushed up even a little on her elbows, they would knock their teeth together. But there was so much to notice up close. So many little details she’d never let herself look for. Like his eyebrows, thick and mannish and expressive, how they drew her stare to his eyes, more amber than brown. Almost golden.

  “You know what I’ve been thinking?” she whispered.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled in amusement, and something deep inside her longed to reach out and touch those perfect little smile lines. “What?”

  Lila glanced up. Her inhibition had fled her, as though it slipped from her pocket somewhere between here and Henry’s boat. It was something about the trees. These trees seemed to stretch up into eternity. Lila didn't think she'd ever seen trees this old. Not in person. These were trees that had seen entire geological ages, trees that outlived the evolution and extinction of countless species.

  “It just seems like Sitka got unstuck from time. Like it’s its own little bubble. Or like its own atmosphere, outside of the whole rest of the world.” She darted her eyes to his. “I guess that’s stupid.”

  “No, it’s not stupid.” Henry’s gaze wandered to her lips, along the curve of her cheek. He reached out, gently, and pushed her mussed black hair behind her ear. “That’s what I like about it. That’s exactly it.”