I’d been on the run through a small town in Southern Louisiana when I’d stumbled across Beatrix’s Buxom Beauties. The sign in the window read that she arranged long distance marriages and I’d rushed right in. Beatrix turned out to be a seventy-year old woman who didn’t get many calls. She’d been more than willing to talk to me all about her latest bachelor.
Matt was a rancher from Wyoming who needed a wife to settle some family issue, but he was open to love. It’d taken Beatrix a while to find someone young enough for him, but she’d finally settled on a woman named Maggie. Maggie was a few years older than Matt, but she loved the country and had once owned a cow.
Beatrix was also ready to retire. I had twenty thousand dollars in my bag that I’d stolen from my ex when I’d left. I offered her half to replace Maggie. She’d given me a plane ticket and instructions on which bus to take once I’d reached Cheyenne and sent me on my way.
It had been dumb lucky to show up there when I did. As I was leaving, the real Maggie appeared to get her plane ticket. I’m not sure what excuse Beatrix gave her; I didn’t stick around to find out. It felt a little like fate. I’d walked into the perfect situation, at the perfect moment. Perhaps it was a sign that my luck was about to change.
I’d tossed the plane ticket in the nearest dumpster and had gotten on a bus right away. The trip was longer and harder that way, but it wouldn’t leave a trace.
I turned away from my reflection and went back to my seat. There wasn’t time enough to spend in any bus bathroom that would make me look more like Maggie Stevens, excited bride to be. I hugged my knees to my chest and settled in. Maggie, or not, I was about to land in Matt Long’s lap.
CHAPTER 2: Leila
“Good luck out there.”
I nodded to the bus driver. “Thanks. Have a good one.”
He drove back the way we’d come and slowly disappeared from sight. I looked around at the town and took in a refreshing breath of crystal clean air. It was fresh, but ice cold and I immediately started shivering, but the air was cleaner than anything I’d smelled in the past two days. By far.
The bus stop was in the middle of a tiny town, surrounded on one side by mountains and the other by a rolling river. Tall pines grew up around the place like a comforting blanket. I instantly felt safer than I had in longer than I could remember.
A woman walking down the street cast me a strange sideways glance and hurried past. I shrugged and looked around a bit more, after remembering that I was supposed to be meeting my new fiancée.
I spent the next couple of hours walking up and down Landing, going into stores, and asking around. No one would tell me anything. In fact, the town was so secretive, you would think that it was running from a dangerous ex., instead of the other way around. I was about to give up and rent a motel room for the night when a woman drove by in a pickup truck and stopped for me.
“You lost?” She tossed her blonde hair over her shoulder and sent a sweet smile my way.
“Do you know who Matt Long is?”
Her eyes narrowed and she blew out a sigh. “Unfortunately. You looking for him?”
Worry edged its way into my stomach. “Yeah. Should I not be?”
She pushed open the passenger side door and motioned for me to get in. “I’ll take you to his cabin. There’s no reason for you to be standing out there in the cold.”
I climbed in and held out my hand to her. “Maggie. Thanks for the lift.”
“I’m Elizabeth. I saw you making your way around town. The townsfolk can be pretty closed off to newcomers.”
I stared out of the window as she drove towards the mountain. “Yeah, I noticed. It was nice to see your friendly face.”
“I was new here not too long ago. I definitely understand. So, why are you looking for Matt?”
I looked back over at her and tried not to feel threatened by the question. Living with my ex had taught me to be distrustful of even the simplest of questions. “We... have some business to take care of.”
She laughed. “You sound like you’ll fit right in here. Maybe you can get the giant stick out of Matt’s ass while you’re at it. He’s been a big bear lately.”
“Why?”
“Just natural for him, I guess. The family’s been going through some changes and he’s been locked away in his cabin for months. Probably up there ranting and raving.” She looked over at me and rolled her eyes. “I’m sure he’s a nice guy, under all the broody bullshit, but I haven’t had the privilege of witnessing it yet.”
I sighed. As long as Matt wasn’t a hands on kind of guy, like my ex, we would be fine for as long as I needed to stay there. It did suck that he was apparently a cranky hermit. Maybe, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, I’d hoped for a kind, generous, handsome guy to welcome me to my new home. Reality check.
I couldn’t make sense of why a cranky hermit would invite some strange woman into his home. It did explain why he hadn’t been there to pick me up, though.
Elizabeth dropped me off at the end of the driveway with a good luck and a promise to get together later if I was still in town. I waved her away and made my way to the front door.
“Here goes nothing.” I blew out a breath and knocked on the heavy wooden door.
CHAPTER 3: Leila
A loud roar sounded from inside the cabin before the door flew open to reveal a huge bear, easily the largest bear I’d ever seen, standing on its hind legs. It growled and stared down at me through two beautiful, glowing, golden eyes. Its dark brown fur was ruffled and messy, and it looked dirty and unkempt even for a wild animal. The creature might have been in worse shape than even me.
I took a deep breath in and then blew it out slowly while putting my hands on my hips. “You’re shitting me.”
The bear took a step closer and huffed, sending little tendrils of spit flying at me.
I reached up and swatted its nose before stepping around it and letting myself into the house. “I don’t appreciate being spit on, you big idiot. I should’ve known something was up when Elizabeth called you a bear. Just my luck. Just my freaking luck. Run from a gator and end up with a bear. What are the chances?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
I turned around, remembering too late that, of course, once he’d shifted back he’d be naked. Standing in front of me was a lot of really, really hot naked human male flesh. My body immediately responded to his well-built, large, muscular frame, raw lust building in me so fast that my cheeks turned red. “Maggie. And you’re Matt Long, I’m guessing. Matt very Long.” Did I just say that out loud?
He growled and grabbed a faded cowboy hat from the hook on the door beside him to cover his junk with. “Why are you in my fucking house?”
“Because you signed up for a wife. Voila, here I am.” I waved my arms down the length of my body in a gesture meant to imply that this is what one gets when one orders a wife sight unseen. “I’m going to take a shower now. It’s been a long couple of days and I need to get washed up.”
He blocked the way into the only other room in the small place. “No way in hell. I signed up for that shit nearly eight months ago. No one told me they were sending me something.”
“Something? I’m a person, not a thing. Check your email, buddy. Now, I’m going to be using that shower. Unless you want to pull out your little bear claws and try to stop me.”
He let me pass, finally, and I breathed out a sigh of relief. That’d been my test to find out if he was going to be anything like my ex. I was still trembling from my act of false bravado, but it seemed like this Matt guy, despite the grumpiness, was cut from a different cloth than my ex. Thank god. Otherwise, I might’ve found myself with deep bear claw gashes across my back.
CHAPTER 4: Matt
What the fuck just happened? And who just walked into my house?
I stared after her, unable to take my eyes off of the way her ass filled out those fortunate jeans. She smelled slightly of sweat and something worse, but under that, I could smell
a sweet vanilla scent that had called my bear right to the surface even before she’d knocked on my front door.
Maggie? Jesus. What had I done?
I opened up the laptop I hadn’t touched in months and jabbed at the little keys until my email opened. Sure enough, Beatrix had sent me several emails about my new bride arriving. Beatrix, the same woman who couldn’t find me a single damn woman under the age of fifty when I desperately needed one to claim the family ranch as my inheritance. Beatrix, the woman who I’d trusted to help me through the loophole in my father’s damned will.
I slammed the laptop closed and threw it across the cabin. “Shit!”
The last thing I wanted was a bride. I wanted to be left alone. I didn’t need a woman sniffing around my place, complicating things. Why can’t people just leave me the hell alone? I couldn’t say it enough. Can’t a man suffer in peace?
I paced around my cabin, waiting to hear the shower shut off. She’d been in there for too damn long. I hadn’t even used the thing in months. I swam in the creek behind the cabin to clean off. I doubted there was even soap in there.
She hadn’t been afraid of me. At all. She was all human and she’d had the audacity to slap me on the nose, like I was some toy poodle. And to top that off, my bear hadn’t even minded. The wild beast had been insane and uncontrollable for months, yet when a little human woman shows up, bear practically just rolls over on his back and presents his belly to her.
I yanked the fridge door open and glared into it. Nothing. I’d been living mostly as bear, so I ate in the woods. There wasn’t even a single morsel of food in the place. Good. She couldn’t stay if there wasn’t any food. Not that I was going to allow her to stay anyway. I’d pay for her ticket back home and wash my hands of her. I hadn’t signed any contract. I didn’t have to keep her.
She walked out of the bathroom at that moment, wearing nothing but a too-small towel. Her long legs were still damp and tiny droplets of moisture clung to her smooth, creamy skin. Her hips tugged the towel apart at the side and revealed even more leg to my hungry eyes. Her dark, damp hair hung down past her shoulders, curling around her chest in ringlets, drawing my attention to the plump orbs being pushed up by the towel.
Clean and fresh, she had my bear coming to the surface. I could feel the fur pushing to erupt on my arms and chest and I had to grit my teeth and fight to keep the change from happening. Her smell was intoxicating. Her sweet vanilla-like natural aroma called to my bear in a way unlike anything I’d ever experienced. What the hell was happening to me?
She cocked her hip to the side and stared at me, a pink tinge creeping up over her face. “You didn’t put clothes on.”
I looked down and spotted my dick proudly standing at attention in front of me. With a frustrated growl, I went ahead and shifted, letting my bear take control of me. I was more comfortable as a bear lately anyway and with a scantily clad woman in my home, I figured it was time to take off into the woods again. Bear growled something at me, but I ignored him. I huffed at her and moved to the door.
“Oh, no you don’t.” She blocked the doorway and wagged her finger at me. “We should talk. I’m supposed to be engaged to you. You can’t just leave.”
I growled low in my throat and used my nose to nudge her away from the door. Only, my bear didn’t seem to want to leave her. He kept his head next to her, breathing in her scent.
She actually giggled and rubbed the top of my head. “You’re cute like this. Much better than a mean old gator. Your fur is soft, too. Like a puppy I had once when I was little.”
First off, cute? Lady, a 400 pound grizzly is not cute. Second, neither of us liked being compared to a dog, so we growled. Loud. Like a bear.
She rubbed behind my ears and grinned at me. “Okay, no dog references. Got it.”
I rubbed against her side again, enjoying the way I felt in her presence. Calm. Soothed. Damned if my bear was putty in her hands. He grunted happily when she rubbed us and was almost as bad as a puppy.
“You’re sweeter as a bear. Much sexier as a man, though. I’d like it if you changed back so we could talk.”
My body acted on its own accord. Within a blink of an eye, I was man again, kneeling at her feet, with my face buried against her stomach. Her hands were still in my hair, pulling softly through the messy strands. I looked up at her and my heart started racing. I finally cued into what my bear was chanting and froze. Over and over bear was saying it.
Mate.
Running out on her wasn’t my finest moment, but, I don’t know, I just freaked out. I was bear again before I even stepped paw off my porch. I ran deep into the woods, despite my bear’s will protesting, and vowed to stay away until the human woman left.
I didn’t need a woman. I didn’t want a woman. Most of all, I didn’t think I could be with a woman. I’d become more beast than man.
Hell, I wasn’t sure she’d even be safe with me.
CHAPTER 5: Leila
It hadn’t taken me long to run the man off, that was for sure. I certainly had a gift where the opposite sex was concerned. I got dressed in one of his flannel shirts and the same jeans I’d arrived in before searching his cabin for food. He had absolutely nothing. I found his truck keys sitting under a few weeks of mail on the counter, though. If he wasn’t going to stay home and talk to me, I’d just have to figure some things out on my own.
Mostly, I needed to get away from his scent for a while. My heart was beating like I’d just run a marathon, and my downstairs hadn’t dried since I laid eyes on him. Weird. I was reminded of whisperings I’d heard about similar reactions.
While with my ex, Steven, I’d learned lots of things that had, at the time, made my head swim. Like the fact that shifters even existed at all. I didn’t realize there were so many different types, either. But I had learned a thing or two about them, none the less. Steven and his family were alligators and they were as mean as the day was long. There was no sense of humanity in them that I’d ever seen.
They’d talked as though all other shifters were pussies compared to gators, and I’d been around enough to know that not all shifters were like Steven and his family. It was the only reason I hadn’t run screaming when Matt opened the door.
I’d also heard a little about shifter mates. Women had once in a while whispered about shifters having true mates, others who they were fated to pair up with. Mates found one another through fate. The reaction between mates was sometimes, but not always, supposed to be instantaneous. Attraction like no other and ‘love at first sight’ was the phrase many women had used. A mated pairing was highly regarded and respected amongst shifters. I had thought it was a load of crap at the time.
After meeting Matt, I wasn’t so sure. Something definitely took over my psyche today. While stroking Matt’s bear’s fur, I had experienced a warmth and serenity unlike any I’d ever felt before. I was enveloped in an indescribable feeling of safety and comfort, enough to want to curl up beside his bear and sleep. That was his bear; when he was man, I wanted to jump his bones. One large one, especially.
Matt hadn’t reacted to me the same way, though. There were no sweet murmurings or holding each other. In fact, he’d run out of there so fast, it was almost as though his ass was on fire. Definitely not ‘love at first sight’.
I tied his shirt at the waist so it didn’t look ridiculous on me and then hurried through the cold to his truck. I had my own money and I needed a few things if I was going to set up camp in his cabin. And, I was definitely going to set up camp. Beatrix had done me a giant favor, sending me to Matt Long. I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.
Main Street in Landing didn’t have a whole lot of options when it came to clothes, but I managed to find a little country western store that sold jeans, boots, and such. I bought some clothes from an older woman who just kept giving me dirty looks, and changed into a pair of clean jeans in a bathroom inside a little general store.
I bought canned goods and a few jugs of water, along with mul
tiple bags of candy and chips to snack on before going back to Matt’s cabin.
Matt was still gone when I got back, so I put my stuff away in his dusty cabinets and went in search of entertainment. When I found none, I just made myself at home in the middle of his bed and stuffed my face with a bag of gummy bears before falling asleep.
I woke up to a huge grizzly bear head hovering over me. My heart leapt into my throat and my body entered fight or flight mode before remembering that I was staying in the cabin belonging to a bear. “You gave me a damn heart attack! What are you doing?”
After a few seconds of his huffing and grunting, I reached up and caught his massive snout in my hands. “I don’t speak bear. Turn back and we can talk.”
Almost immediately, I had a very human, very naked, Matt kneeling beside me. I sat up so I had a leg on either side of him, his face was still in my hands. “Hi.”
He looked up at me, through golden eyes, and grunted. His brown hair hung down to his shoulders, and he was bearded. I got the impression he hadn’t worried about personal grooming for some time. He was at least a half foot over six feet tall and wide with thick, corded muscle. The man would’ve caused a riot of lust in any red-blooded woman, but the way my body was reacting had me wondering again about the whole fated mates thing.
His face looked almost innocent, despite the full beard, as he gazed up at me. He just stared at me, unmoving and eerily calm.
I stroked his cheeks and smiled. “You get tired of playing in the woods?”
With a shake of his head, he frowned and scooted away from me. “You’re in my bed.”
I grinned at him and nodded. “Our bed. Didn’t you hear? We’re getting hitched.”
CHAPTER 6: Matt
Rancher Bear Complete Series: PLUS NEW BONUS BOOK: Rancher Bears' Merry Christmas Page 6