Bear Fate: A Billionaire Oil Bearons Romance (Bear Fursuits Book 8)

by Isadora Montrose

  Her task chair rose six inches when he stood. “Better send it to mine. Rhonda will know. I’m going into Laura’s office to update the breeding stats. Let me know when the Brewsters arrive.”

  His suit and alligator skin boots were explained. He was going to show prospective clients around the stud, to sell them on putting their mares to stud. Owners were always rich – horses were an expensive hobby – and needed to be reassured by the appearance of wealth. And this down-at-heels office sure wasn’t going to do it.

  “I forgot,” Rhonda said. “They called and rescheduled. They won’t be here until three.”

  “Danged clients. Why do they think I specified 1:30? They are going to be tripping over evening stables.”

  “The customer is always right.” Rhonda reminded him.

  “I know.” Calvin’s voice was resigned. “And they are likely to send both their mares here next year when they see last year’s crop of foals. But I don’t know how Laura stands it.”

  “She likes talking horses,” Rhonda said dryly. “I’ll tell Carlos the new time and you can tag team the Brewsters.”

  Calvin grunted and went into Laura’s office. Amber returned to double-checking her data and fixing typos. She thought of a different configuration that made the data easier to understand and made the changes. Color? Just a little to make the chart stand out. She was so absorbed that when Calvin bellowed she deleted an entire line of numbers.

  He stalked into the outer office. “Rhonda, Laura’s going to kill me. I just wiped out six months of breeding records, and I don’t even know how. Is there a backup?”

  Rhonda looked grave. “Sure. On the cloud and on her hard drive. But I don’t know how to access that material.” She hurried into the office and she and Calvin continued an anguished conversation.

  Amber couldn’t see what all the fuss was about if they had two copies. She fixed her mistake and saved her report. Sent it to Rhonda as a read-only file and leaned back to listen to the low-voiced argument. At least Rhonda’s voice was low. Calvin sounded like a bull moose in pain.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Calvin~

  It really was the last straw when Amber casually strolled into Laura’s office with a mug of coffee in each hand and a big smile creating matching dimples. “What’s the problem?” she asked in that overly patient tone she had adopted since lunch. It fucking rubbed his nerves raw.

  “I’ve corrupted Laura’s records,” he retorted. It was an awkward admission. He was unused to being incompetent. But this was no time for Miss Sweetness and Light’s cheeriness.

  She placed his black coffee on the credenza behind him and handed Rhonda the other mug. “Not possible, if Laura has two separate backups.”

  “We can’t seem to get to them,” Rhonda said. “And the files on the laptop are the ones that she worked on last. The copies won’t be as up-to-date.” She literally wrung her hands.

  “Chill.” Amber was still irritatingly patient. “It’s hard to completely wipe data from a laptop. The file has probably not been overwritten yet.”

  “Much you know about it,” Calvin informed her. “Before I noticed what I was doing, I made I don’t know how many changes and saved each one.” This was a right old snafu. And it was all his fault for bungling what should have been straightforward.

  “It will still be there – somewhere. We just need to go through the files until we locate it.” If he wasn’t mistaken Amber was rolling her big, blue eyes exactly like a teenager confronted by the ineptness of her elders. Which wasn’t that odd if you thought about it. What was she? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? By comparison he and Rhonda were Methuselah. His pissy mood worsened.

  “What do you think, Rhonda? Should we let her mess around with Laura’s files? Or should I get Steve to send one of his wizards out from Denver to fix this mess?” He could count on Rhonda to be the voice of reason.

  “Just to recover some recently lost data?” Amber was grinning. “Don’t worry, I’ll find it.”

  “Just so you don’t make it worse,” he growled. He wished he could wipe that know-it-all smirk off her face.

  She slipped into the chair he had vacated. “Do you have a spare external?” she asked.

  Whatever the fuck that was.

  But Rhonda nodded immediately. “Steve insisted. It’s in the supply cupboard.” She looked relieved to have something to do as she headed out of the office.

  Amber raised her brows at him, smirk still in place. “Okay we’ll start by backing up everything on this hard drive. And then we’ll use the external hard drive to transfer the data to another machine before we go looking.”

  External hard drive. Of course. “How long will that take?” he demanded.

  “Depends on how much is on this machine, and how many programs I will have to install in order to read the files,” she said absently as her fingers flew over the keyboard. The screen filled with code. Her lips pursed. “There’s a lot of stuff. Several hours,” she announced. “And then we will be ready to go hunting.”

  His suspicions were aroused. “If you’re such a computer whiz, what the devil are you doing mucking out horses instead of doing IT?”

  “For your information, I like mucking out horses! Besides, I don’t have any formal qualifications. Yet. But if that was a roundabout way of asking if I can do this? I can. This is computer 101. Nothing obscure. Just a bit tedious.”

  Call him a paranoid bastard, but Mary Sunshine aroused all his suspicions. “And just where did you learn so much about computers?”

  She grinned. “You can blame your cousin Zeke. When he married Jenna*, he took over running the internet service for the Ridge. Improved the speed and quality out the wazoo. And then he donated twenty laptops to the library for long-term loans. Between us, Heather and I have pretty much had one at our disposal for the last couple of years.”

  “So you’re self-taught?”

  “Hmm. Hush. Let me focus.”

  Rhonda returned with a bright blue metal rectangle which she had just removed from its little cardboard sleeve. “Here you are.” She set the small external on the desk.

  And then there was nothing to do but remove himself from Laura’s office to contemplate his rearranged perception of little Amber. And track his package on FedEx. Belatedly it occurred to him to contact Steve. His call went to voicemail. Damn. Not that he was looking forward to confessing his blunder to Holden.

  *Bear Skin

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Amber~

  “Hey, Steve, how’s it going?” Amber asked.

  “Just dandy. You gotta come by and see the twins. They need a cuddle from their Aunt Amber.”

  She felt a warmth around her heart. “Do I get to be an aunty?” she asked lightly.

  “Of course. You’re family. Pretty soon the trips will be out of the hospital too, and we’ll have all five of them running amuck. We’ll need all the babysitters we can scrounge up.”

  Steve sounded happier and more relaxed than she had ever known him to be. Obviously having his wife safely delivered had lowered his stress levels. Not that he had seemed tense before, but he was now completely laidback.

  “I’ll look forward to that,” she said. “But I called about something different.”

  “Yeah? Not Prescott by any chance?”

  “Lance? No. I’m trying to recover some lost data on Laura’s laptop. Looks pretty straightforward, but there are some encrypted files. Is that where the backup records are stored?”

  “You’re messing with Laura’s records?” He wasn’t relaxed anymore.

  “Calvin overwrote her data by mistake. I’m just recovering them. I’m transferring the entire hard drive to an external and I’m searching that. But I don’t want to be hacking into unrelated files.”

  “What’s wrong with the backup on the cloud?” he asked.

  “Nothing – except Laura doesn’t backup after every session. Turns out, Calvin overwrote material that is only on this machine.”

  “S
he should be backing up automatically,” Steve said impatiently.

  Amber laughed. “Why didn’t you set it up for her?”

  Steve groaned. “Because it’s such a basic thing that I didn’t see the need to do it for her.” He paused. “Can you handle this, or do you need me to come down?”

  “Well, it would be good to be able to access the data in the cloud and do a point-by-point comparison of the latest files. But I can do that if you give me the password.”

  “Doesn’t Rhonda have it?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “Okay.” Steve rattled off a string of numbers and letters. “That’ll get you into Laura’s account. Then the files are separately password protected.” He read off a second string of numbers and letters. “Read that back to me.”

  Amber did.

  “You sure you can manage?”

  “Except for the fact that the data is vital, it’s no big deal,” she reminded him. “Besides I’m still copying to the external. I’d go do something else in the outer office, except I think Calvin and Rhonda would go into cardiac arrest if I left the laptop unsupervised.”

  Steve chuckled. “Rhonda is in her sixties. Computers are not instinctive to her. And Calvin pays people to do what you’re doing. He never does his own tech support.”

  “I know. But this is so simple. Even I can do it.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Amber. When you get your diploma, I have a job for you.”

  “In Denver? No thanks. I’m a country girl at heart.”

  “I won’t hold you to that.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Amber~

  Rhonda was chatting with the guy from FedEx when Amber came out of the restroom. The administrative assistant told him goodbye and waved her over.

  “It’s for you.” Rhonda’s face was alight with glee.

  Amber eyed the huge box on the counter warily. “For me?” She hadn’t ordered anything. What could it be? There had to be some mistake. “Where’s it from?”

  “Cherry Creek,” Rhonda said smugly. “You’ve gone up in the world.”

  “Who or what the heck is Cherry Creek?”

  “Just the fanciest shopping center in Denver,” Rhonda crowed. “I’ll bet your sister has sent you a present.”

  “Maybe. But it’s not my birthday or anything.” She and Heather weren’t in the habit of giving each other expensive presents for no reason. Of course, now that Heather had married money, maybe she was getting into impulse purchases. And there had been those over-the-top ostrich skin boots at Christmas.

  “Go on. Open it up,” Rhonda urged.

  Amber shook the package. It was moderately heavy. Didn’t rattle or tick. Probably not a bomb or a snake shifter. She took out her penknife and slit the packing tape. There were two more sealed cardboard boxes inside the first one. She pulled them out and stacked them on the counter.

  Rhonda’s eyes were sparkling. “Are you this slow at Christmastime?” the older woman teased.

  “Probably.” She and Heather usually tried to drag out opening their presents, seeing as they only ever had one each. Although last Christmas had been a little different. Heather had gone crazy buying her twin treats.

  Amber slit open the smaller box. Lifted the lid. Took out half a roomful of bubble packing and found a long, slender dark-green box with silver scroll-work on the lid. Opened that. Silver tissue sealed with a silver horseshoe concealed the contents. Underneath was a pair of heavy red leather gloves.

  “Ooh,” squealed Rhonda. “Try them on.”

  There was no price tag. They weren’t even attached by those little plastic doohickeys. On the inside of each wrist there was a discreet leather label stamped with a silver horseshoe and the size. Amber slipped on the right glove, settled her fingers into the thick sheepskin lining. Snugged them down. They fit as if they had been made for her.

  She pressed her gloved hand against her cheek. “They’re so soft. Feel.”

  “Like butter,” Rhonda agreed. “They fit well too. I love that color. It’ll look great with that blue-gray coat of yours.”

  Amber put on the other glove and opened and closed her fists. The gloves followed her movements like another skin. They were beautiful and well made. Snug, warm, but not in the least stiff. Perfect in fact. Way better in every way than the ragged oversized pair in her parka pocket.

  She slipped them off and examined them. On the ridge, lots of hunters tanned their own leather and made their own gear. These were beautifully made. Tough, double-stitched, and gusseted between the fingers. A knitted cuff inside the wrist would keep out the weather. The fell-stitching around the tops would help them last forever. But why on earth had Heather splurged on handmade gloves for Amber to wear to shovel horse apples? A pair from the hardware store would have been good enough.

  “Is there a card or a note?” Amber sifted through the tissue and paper on the counter.

  Rhonda also peered into the empty boxes. Shook her head. “I don’t see one. Maybe there’s one in the other box?”

  “Maybe.” The gloves were gorgeous. She had never seen or felt anything to compare with them. Heather must have spent a small fortune. They were almost too nice to wear to muck out a stall. She took them off carefully and laid them back in their fancy box.

  The other carton contained a boot box. No note. No card. Just a pair of soft, supple, pull-on red boots in a shade to match those pricey gloves. At least these were factory made of some easy-care waterproof fabric that only resembled suede. Heather hadn’t lost her whole mind.

  “Try them on,” begged Rhonda.

  Amber sat down, and pulled them on. Her feet sank into cozy warmth. She stretched out a leg to admire them. They came up to her knees and had laces at the front that tightened to adjust the fit. “Cool,” she said holding out one leg.

  “And just what you need,” Rhonda said happily. “Your sister must have been listening to us this morning.”

  Amber grinned at an image of Heather with radio antenna eavesdropping on Colorado from Washington State. “Or had an angel whisper in her ear. I’ll just call and thank her, right this minute – if you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not, you go right ahead. I’ll go put these boxes in the recycling.”

  Heather took a while to answer her cell, but when she did, she expressed total bewilderment. “I probably should have sent you some, if your old boots are leaking, but I didn’t. I haven’t left the hospital in days. Stella has a respiratory infection.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Heather launched into technical details of what the pediatric pulmonologist had said, versus what the neonatal nurse thought. Moved on to how slowly the antibiotics were working. Amber concentrated hard, hoping to glean something she could use to encourage her despondent sister. But it all seemed to be bad news.

  In the end, Heather comforted her. “Stella’s getting the best of care here. I know that – intellectually. And she will be fine. It’s just so horribly disappointing for us all when we thought we’d be taking the girls home tomorrow. I can’t help feeling scared.”

  “I know. They’ll send them all home soon,” Amber said helplessly. She sure hoped that was true.

  “And then you can come and play auntie.”

  “I’m looking forward to it. I can’t wait to hold them.”

  “Love you, twin.”

  “Love you, more.” They hung up together.

  “Well?” asked Rhonda who had been shamelessly listening in.

  “Stella’s got a cold – at least I think that’s what all that fancy talk meant. It’s settled on her chest, as my Grandma would have said, and she’s sick as a pup – tries to cough but she’s just too tiny.”

  “What about the boots?” prompted Rhonda.

  “Heather doesn’t know a thing about them.” Amber wiggled her toes in the plush fleece lining one last time and sat down regretfully to remove the boots. “If I don’t know who sent them,” she said, “they’ll have to go back. Gloves too.
I can’t keep such expensive gifts from a stranger.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Amber,” Rhonda said. “Aside from the fact that you need them – badly – and that they are a kind and thoughtful gesture, you’ll crush the giver if you send them back. Might even break his heart.”

  Oh, of course. Rhonda meant that Lance had bought them for her. It was just like him. She bent her head admiring the color. “Do you think it’s all right? I mean, they were a pretty expensive purchase.”

  Like out the wazoo expensive. And they weren’t engaged or anything. How could he afford such a lavish gift? If this was Lance’s idea of a going steady token, he needed taking in hand. But, they were so beautiful. She just loved them. She decided that it would be rude to comment on the cost when she thanked him. She snuggled her toes happily into the fleece before putting Laura’s loafers back on.

  Rhonda’s grin widened. “More than all right. You accept them as the considerate gesture they are. You wear them home. They’re fine looking boots and the wind’s turned right around and, without a doubt, that mud has already turned into ice.”

  Now that Rhonda mentioned it, the aluminum siding on the building was rattling in a howling wind. “So fast?”

  “That’s the Chinook for you. You bundle up warm and I’ll see you tomorrow after morning stables to finish up Laura’s backup.”

  “It’s done,” Amber said. “I’m just running an overnight virus scan. But I’ll come back tomorrow to see if that found any malware.”

  Her old boots were gone. Just a muddy puddle on the boot mat showed where they had dripped all afternoon. Probably Rhonda making sure she did not change her mind. Not that it mattered who threw them out. Those tired old things were only fit for a garbage can.

  She crammed her knitted cap over her ears, pulled up her hood, and fastened every snap and zipper. The outer door opened. Lance grinned at her. “I see you’re ready,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Lance~

  “New boots?” he asked, although it was obvious those red ones were just out of the box. “Very sharp.”