Knox (BBW Bear Shifter Moonshiner Romance) (120 Proof Honey)

by Becca Fanning

  Jamie nodded. “Okay.” She grabbed her saddle and bridle and quickly got Thorin ready for the ride. Jesse did the same, but he shot glances at her and each time she caught him he would smile at her. It was a really nice smile, warm and open. Jamie found herself relaxing a bit. Anyway snakes were part of life on a ranch. She couldn’t prove to her father that she was more than capable of running the farm if she lost it over a little thing like that. So she pulled herself together. She was having to do a lot of that lately.

  The ride out to the cattle was pleasant enough. The rain eased up to the point where it was just a constant fine mist, but the clouds overhead were dark and heavy suggesting strongly that more rain was imminent.

  Jamie had secured the cattle in a field closer to the house than they had been all week. The other fields were closer to the river and the woodland at the foot of the mountains, and she had no desire to lose any cows when the river burst its banks. That was a certainty. This much rain and more to follow, flash floods were practically a given. Luckily the top field was green and much higher than the others so the cattle should be safe.

  “You were right to bring them up here,” Jesse said as though reading her thoughts. “That creek is just about ready to burst free.”

  “I know,” she said smiling. It was great to have someone agree with her for a change. Oliver never agreed about anything. And her father, fair minded man that he was, always gave him as much chance to have his say as she had.

  “Now I like the rain as much as the next man,” Jesse said, “But it’s getting a little torrential out here.”

  And it was. The rain was coming down now, the drops bigger and hitting harder. They rode back to the barn and after Jesse checked for more snakes, they rubbed the horses down.

  Jesse had an ease with the animals. It was as though he had known them all his life. They responded to his touch in a way that they didn’t even respond to Jamie, and she had trained Thorin herself. It was great to see Shadowfax happy again. The horse hadn’t been the same since Andrew died. Jamie cursed herself for thinking about him. Her eyes welled up with tears and she tried to keep her back to Jesse so he wouldn’t see.

  “I reckon your brother must have been a really good guy,” Jesse said gently.

  “I’m sorry?” Jamie said wiping her eyes on her sweater sleeve.

  “This horse misses him,” Jesse said. “You know, there’s nothing wrong with missing people when they’re gone.”

  Jamie nodded. “Yeah.” She bit her lip. The day was proving trying. What with the rain that made her think of her mother, the snake and now Jesse being so nice…

  “How did you know about it?” she asked.

  Jesse shrugged, “Was on the news. The circumstances were…hard to forget.” He put a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  Jamie shook her head. Then her face crumpled up and she burst into tears. She hadn’t meant to, and heaven knew she didn’t want to cry all the time, but her heart was so full of sadness. Jesse wrapped his big arms around her, and held her while Jamie thought of her mother and her brother.

  After a while the tears dried up on their own and she pulled away from him. Jesse seemed totally unfazed by this, as though girls he’d only just met cried on his shoulder all the time. He looked at her with concern and then smiled.

  “It’ll be better now,” he said with certainty. “So show me the way to the kitchen and I will make you the best cup of coffee you have ever tasted.”

  They made their way over to the house. Jamie could hear her father’s raised voice from across the drive.

  They burst into the house through the back door and stepped into the light and warmth of the kitchen, dripping two puddles on the tiles.

  “Dad, what’s wrong?” Jamie said taking her poncho off and hanging it on a hook by the door with hardly a glance.

  Jesse did the same but stood a little back.

  Ander Campbell his face red, turned and looked at his daughter.

  “It’s the accounts, they don’t add up,” he said halting in his pacing for a moment. “I thought you said you went through them last night?”

  “We did,” Jamie said looking to Oliver for confirmation as he sat at the large wooden table.

  He and his uncle had clearly been going over the bills and receipts for the farm. The table top was covered with paper and her dad’s laptop was open and almost buried in the mess.

  “I think an error has crept in. I know I tripled checked my numbers,” Oliver said. Her heart was pounding. This sort of thing never happened when her mother and Andrew were alive.

  “Wait, what do you mean?” Jamie asked wondering how her mother would handle this. She had always kept the most precise books Jamie had ever seen. Every cent that came in or went out of the farm account was carefully watched and recorded. There were never any discrepancies.

  “I’ve got Joe coming over,” her father said gruffly, “If anyone can find out what happened, its him.”

  Oliver leaned back in his chair, “Are you sure you need to involve him Uncle? We can get to the bottom of it all ourselves. It’s probably just an error, like I said.”

  Jamie couldn’t believe it but she agreed with Oliver. “Dad it’s probably just a mistake. You know things have been a little difficult,” she stopped speaking seeing her father’s face.

  “Joe is coming this afternoon and he will find the error or whatever it is. I have never had a problem with the accounts, and I’m not going to start now. These things start off small and then grow really big, really fast,” he said turning to face Jamie. “Your mother always… she was the one…” He turned on his heel and stormed from the room.

  Jamie let him go. Her father wasn’t one to grieve in public. Her eyes settled on Oliver who lounged on a kitchen chair.

  “Well, if you want to help Jamie you can pull up a chair,” he said. His condescending tone made Jamie’s blood boil.

  She ignored him and stormed back out into the rain.

  In the end Jesse convinced Jamie to get into his truck and go into town with him, instead of mashing her cousin’s face into the wood of the kitchen table. They stopped at the Lemon Drop Café and had a coffee and a piece of pie each. Jamie had to admit that she felt a lot better now.

  “I guess it’s just one of those days,” she said. “Sorry that it’s your first with us. They aren’t all like this.”

  Jesse shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  They were seated at a small table in the back of the café. It was a quaint place with just about every flat surface covered in frills and doilies, and everything was lemon and white. The décor had never been Jamie’s taste so she’d never come in, thinking it would all be too girly even for her. But there was no denying that the pie was just out of this world.

  “Hey! What you doing here?” a voice called across the room.

  Jesse turned. Then he stood up with an expansive gesture saying, “Bro!”

  A man, who was the spitting image of Jesse, except that he had a goatee, walked up to their table and clapped Jesse in a bear hug.

  “Don’t you have a job?” the man asked.

  “Don’t you?” Jesse asked.

  The other man shrugged. “Sure, but you know, it’s raining.”

  Jesse laughed. “Hey Ty, this is my new boss’s daughter, Jamie. Jamie this is my little brother Tyler.”

  Jamie smiled and shook his hand.

  “Wasting no time I see,” Tyler said with a very naughty and suggestive grin on his face.

  “Now Ty, it ain’t like that,” Jesse said but with the air of one who knows how this is going to go regardless of what he says.

  “Yeah I know, it never is,” Tyler said smiling. Jamie looked up at him.

  “We only just met, you know,” she said.

  Then Jesse reached over to another table and pulled a chair across.

  “Have a seat bro. Have some pie,” Jesse said then he turned to her, “You don’t mind if my bro joins us do you?”

  Jamie shook her head. �
�No! The more the merrier.”

  So Tyler sat down and ordered himself a huge piece of apple pie. Jesse insisted on getting Jamie another piece of chocolate pecan, even though she said she was full.

  “You can never be too full for pie,” Tyler said. “It’s a Crowe brother thing, you know us being Crowes. We love our pie.”

  “I can see that,” she said smiling.

  For the next hour Jamie forgot her troubles. The Crowe brothers were a non-stop comedy act, feeding each other punchlines and laughing heartily at each other’s jokes. They were a ray of sunshine in her cloudy and dreary world.

  The afternoon wore on and eventually it began to get dark. By then Jamie had added a lemon meringue and a few mouthfuls of Jesse’s cherry pie, to her list of pies consumed, and she was feeling like she really needed to undo the top button of her jeans and find somewhere to lie down.

  They stood up and began to walk to the door. As they got there it jangled and a girl came in. She was wearing a dark blue hoodie pulled up over her head to keep the rain off. She was thin and lithe looking, with long black hair that hung in damp threads down to her waist. For a moment Jamie and this girl were face to face. Jamie looked into the hood and saw eyes that flashed at her, a mouth that scowled and a shiver ran down her spine. The girl looked very familiar, but in that moment Jamie couldn’t place her. She turned and watched the girl walk through the Lemon Drop and out the side door into the dripping garden.

  Suddenly Jesse was at her side. “Everything okay?”

  “I think so,” Jamie said. “I thought I recognized someone. That’s all.”

  She looked back over her shoulder. So did Jesse. The girl was standing in the rain watching them. She looked from Jamie to Jesse and then the girl pulled back her lips in a snarl. Jamie couldn’t believe it. She blinked and the girl was gone.

  “Did you see that?” she asked but Jesse was already steering her out of the door.

  Outside Jamie stopped walking and turned to look back over her shoulder, letting the rain begin to soak into her clothes.

  “Come on, you’ll drown in this,” Jesse said trying to steer her into his truck.

  “You did see that girl right?” Jamie asked not moving. “I mean I’m not having hallucinations brought on by too much pie?”

  “No such thing,” Tyler said. Jamie hadn’t noticed him come up behind her. “You can never have too much pie.”

  “She’s just a girl,” Jesse said holding the door of his truck open for her. “We see her around every now and then. She doesn’t like us much is all.”

  “Oh,” Jamie said and she climbed into the passenger seat.

  “You need a ride Tyler?” Jesse asked hugging his brother.

  Tyler shook his head. “Nah, I’m just down the street.”

  Jesse nodded and went round to the driver’s side and climbed in. Tyler waited in the rain and waved to them as they pulled out into the road. Then as they drove off he walked casually down the sidewalk, as though it was a clear and warm summer’s evening.

  Jesse shook his head and then shrugged. “Never could get that boy to come in out of the rain.”

  Back at the ranch Jesse let Jamie out of the truck. They hadn’t really spoken much on the way and in a way she was glad of that. It was really nice to spend time with Jesse. He was no effort at all and silence with him felt, not uncomfortable, like something to be eradicated, but more like something they could happily share.

  He had wished her a good night and then driven off, his taillights disappearing in the rain.

  Jamie had gone inside to find her father sitting with a glass of whiskey in front of the fire in the living room. It had been ages since he’d made a fire.

  “Where were you?” Ander asked, sipping the golden liquid. “I came down and Oliver said you’d left.”

  “Sorry dad,” Jamie said sitting on the arm of his chair and taking the glass from him. She sipped it letting the fire slide down her throat. “I just had to get out for a bit.”

  Her father nodded and put his hand on her knee. “I miss them so much.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  They sat in silence watching the flames dance in the grate.

  “Did Joe come?” Jamie asked.

  Her father nodded. “Yeah, but he’s taken everything with him. Says it’ll take some time to go through it all. You know, accountant for ‘its gonna cost you.’”

  Then he took the glass back from Jamie. “Get your own,” he said not unkindly.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said and kissed his cheek. “I love you, dad.”

  “I love you too Juniper-berry,” he said calling her the name he had used when she was a child.

  On the way up the stairs Jamie met Oliver coming down. He was dressed in good jeans, a nice shirt and smelled like a perfume factory.

  “You going out?” Jamie asked.

  Oliver bristled.

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yeah. I am. I have a date,” Oliver said and swept passed her.

  “That’s nice,” Jamie said and walked up the stairs to the landing.

  Oliver was a little more than she could deal with right now. Feeling down about her situation, Jamie brushed her teeth and her long brown hair that hung down her back, straight as a ruler. Her mother had always praised her for her hair, how it shone and fell in a curtain around her. She’d always thought it dull, but her mother had loved it.

  Jamie pulled her pajamas on and got into bed. She stared up at her ceiling. The house had been built over a hundred years ago, and had passed from generation to generation, down to her father. It was old and she could feel the weight of all those Campbells looking down on her. It was oppressive.

  Even though her father didn’t want to talk to her about it, Jamie knew the farm was in trouble. The months since her brother and mother had died had been tough. The rains had come late, making feed hard to come by. The market had taken a dive, and things just always seemed to cost more and more, and yet you could never seem to make enough.

  It was like the farm was a giant hole that they just kept shoveling their hopes, dreams and blood into and nothing went right.

  Jamie let her eyes trace her ceiling to her light fitting above her bed. She knew her father thought she was insane to want this big heavy thing hanging above her bed. But tracing its lines with her eyes had been something she had done since a child, and it had always calmed her down. So when he had proposed to replace it in the living room, Jamie had insisted it go to her room, and he had obliged.

  Now her eyes roamed over it, tracing each wrought iron spiral and curve. Each spike and dish that used to hold a candle before electricity took all the beauty out of the world. Jamie felt the panic subside. They would be fine. It would all work out. She just needed some sleep. Trace the lines, watch them flow and drift off, it was a ritual and Jamie let it engulf her and carry her off to sleep.

  The howl was far away but startling in its clarity. Jamie sat up in bed, noting that the room was dark now. Her father must have turned the light off for her.

  It came again and this time it was closer. Jamie got up and went to her window.

  The cattle.