Laura’s cheerfulness vanished. “I was kind of looking forward to having you to buffer me from Calvin’s latest arm candy.” Calvin was her brother.
Zeke turned to Laura and gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t take it any longer. I’m sick of the squabbling and the nagging. Since I came home, it’s been endless. Clive’s death has just made it worse.” His voice tapered off. “I told you the day the will was read that it would set us all at each other’s throats. Was I right? Or was I right?”
Laura nodded sadly. “I still hoped you’d be here for Christmas.”
“Is Calvin’s girl that bad?” he asked.
“Haven’t you met her?”
Zeke shook his head. “Nope. I’ve stayed away from Cal. He and Pat just want to hash over that blasted will — as if talking about it could fix it.”
Laura grimaced. “Tiffany is another one of Cal’s anorexic models. You know the type. This one is supposed to be an investment banker.” Her voice was dubious. “So far she has given me a couple of books worth of advice on losing weight, and another of fashion advice.”
Zeke looked, really looked, at his cousin. She was four or five years younger than him, and the closest thing he had to a sister. Her Junoesque frame was thick with solid muscle, and her opulent curves fit her six foot body. She had been running the Double B Ranch for the better part of a decade, and she was the strongest woman he knew, which was saying something, since the army was full of fit females.
Today she was dressed for work in heavy flannel-lined jeans and chaps. Her torso was kept warm by a puffy blue parka and a windproof vest. Her ancient cream colored Stetson probably sat over a woolen watch cap. She looked pretty rectangular in her get-up, but it was December in Colorado.
There was two feet of snow on the ground and a brisk wind, and the prospect of more snow. Laura was dressed to get through a hard day of locating stray cattle on horseback and bringing them to shelter. To Zeke’s eye she looked exactly the way a hard working rancher should look. And she always looked beautiful to him.
But his cousin Calvin, Laura’s brother, liked his woman city bred. Cal pretty much ran B & B Oil, even though his Uncle Gilbert was still the CEO. Calvin and Zeke’s twin brother Patrick were the smoothest bears he had ever set eyes on. And he didn’t mean that as a compliment. They shared a baffling taste for stick insects with his father Jeremy. At least it baffled Zeke.
Zeke preferred his women with hips and breasts and a whole lot of love handles for a bear to grab hold of. Women who looked just like Laura. What his father saw in his last three wives, Zeke would never know. Susan, Zara and Diana all looked like clones to him. And he was willing to bet that Jeremy was well on the way to replacing his present wife, Diana, with yet another identical sack of bone and gristle.
And he was also willing to bet Cal’s investment banker was yet another skinny bitch. “Ignore Tiffany,” he advised Laura. “You look the way a woman ought to look. And I know you can sit in the saddle all day and all night if you need to. If you lost weight, you’d just lose muscle.”
Laura snorted. “You know that, and I know that, but the constant little digs and helpful suggestions get to me. And examining my dinner plate! Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t be out looking for stock in this weather on salad and a slice of poached chicken.”
“Is that what Tiffany eats?” Zeke was amused. “I bet Rosa isn’t impressed.” Rosa was the ranch house cook.
Laura laughed. “She’s not. But she brings Tiffany what she asks for, and feeds Cal and me proper meals. It’s really Calvin that’s the problem. He’s brought her home for one thing, and one thing only. Outside of that he doesn’t even want to talk to her. Come supper time he leaves her for me to deal with. And all he and Daddy talk about is the will. I’m dreading Christmas Day.”
“I can’t stay, Laura.” Zeke said apologetically. “I just can’t. If I have to have one more conversation about how to get my fair share of Great-granddaddy Clive’s billions, I will kill someone. I really will.” His big, broad face was lined and drawn.
Laura put her hand on his arm. “Not yourself?” she asked softly.
“Hope not.”
Laura’s pretty face grew grave. “I need you too much,” she said. “You stay in one piece.”
Zeke nodded at her once. Commitment made.
“When’s your leave up?” she asked.
“It’s not. Col. Rivera called me to inform me that my papers are in the mail. Doctors have suggested that I be given a medical discharge. I’m on terminal leave as of last Wednesday.”
“Oh, Zeke, I’m so sorry,” Laura said. “Does your daddy know?”
Zeke shook his dark head. His hair was still cut military short, but the snowflakes drifting slowly down from the grey sky had started it curling anyway. “And I’d prefer if he didn’t know it.”
“I won’t betray your confidence,” she said hurt.
“I know, Lauralee.” Zeke used her childhood name.
Laura looked at her big, tough cousin. If the Rangers were forcing him to retire, he was going to be lost. Since high school when he had gone away to West Point, the army had pretty much replaced Zeke’s dysfunctional family. To her anxious eyes, Zeke looked perfectly fine — big, strong, muscular. But something terrible had happened on his last mission. Not that he had said word one to her — or anyone else — about it.
“Uncle Jeremy has never understood that you’re not like Patrick or Calvin,” Laura told him softly. “You can’t be cooped up in an office all day looking at stock reports. You’d go nuts. Granddaddy Clive had no business trying to manipulate you into working for B & B.” Her face was hurt and angry. “He should never have written all those conditions into his will.”
“Look at what he did to you?” responded Zeke with equal bitterness. “Leaving you only a life interest in the ranch — with a reversion to Nolan and Petal. After sucking up your life to run the Double B. He literally promised the ranch to you — you know he did. And neither Nolan or Petal is a Bascom nor a bear! And neither one has the bittiest idea of how to run it.”
“Nolan and Petal may be Belingtons, but they are Clive’s great-grandchildren the same as the rest of us,” Laura reminded him. “And they only get the ranch if I don’t marry and have a child.”
Zeke swore. “Before you’re thirty-five! As if any marriage or kid you had after that wouldn’t be real. And if Aunt Babs was Edward Bascom’s daughter, I’ll eat my hat.” He lowered the lid of his truck bed secured it and turned to look hard at his cousin. “You know what really pisses me off?”
“What?”
“The Belingtons acting like it’s a done deal that they inherit the Double D. Asking questions — as if they know a Holstein from a Longhorn. Don’t you let that clause or those ninnies stampede you into marrying some two-bit loser. You wait for the right man.”
“I’ll try.” Laura sighed. “You know I’m contesting the will. We’re hoping the judge will remove that provision. Our lawyers say it’s too restrictive and a judge might agree. The worst part is all this wrangling. It’s going to be some weird Christmas, with nobody speaking to anybody.”
“I know, Lauralee. We’re all squealing like feral hogs fighting over a carcass. It’s as bad or worse here. Jeremy hasn’t been any too pleased with me since I refused to join the court challenge. And Pat’s almost as mad.
“But you know how I feel, honey. If Granddaddy Clive wants to try to bribe me from the grave, he can go right ahead. It was his money. But I didn’t dance to his tune while he was alive, and I have no reason to start now.”
Zeke walked toward the driver’s side door and opened it. “I’m with Uncle Gil on this,” he reminded his cousin. “Clive’s money was his to do with as he pleased. And that wicked old reprobate pleased to set us all against each other.”
He turned back to Laura as if he had just thought of something. “You aren’t mad at me, because I wouldn’t join the rest of you?” he asked a little a
nxiously. “I agree that the way the ranch was left was totally unfair to you.”
Laura shook her head. “I understand. You took a stand on principle. And you have lots of those. Don’t you care if you don’t get your inheritance?” she asked.
“Laura, honey, I got news for you,” Zeke told her with amusement in his deep voice. For just a moment his brown eyes sparkled as they had used to. “Living on the interest from a half billion dollar trust fund isn’t any kind of a hardship. My trust fund is plenty. Millions of Americans would bless themselves to get one percent of that every year, free and clear, without lifting a finger.”
“I want mine,” she said emphatically.
“Breeding Quarter Horses is an expensive hobby. I know you spend your money on the stud. And that you want to expand.” Zeke chuckled at her sheepish expression. He bent and kissed her cheek. “Good-bye, and Merry Christmas. I’ll be seeing you in the new year.”
“Have you got your cell with you?” Suddenly she was worried. “There’s a blizzard predicted.”
Zeke shook his head and grinned for the first time. “Not where I’m going.”
“I thought you were going into the foothills, to camp by the river,” Laura said in surprise.
“Nope. I’m heading to Washington State. I’m going to camp up in the mountains. Maybe look up some of those long lost hillbilly cousins of ours in Kittitas County.”
“I think we’re the long lost cousins,” she corrected him. “It was Granddaddy Clive who ran off from Washington State to Colorado.”
CHAPTER TWO
“I hate to send you out again in this weather,” Jack Enright told his cousin Jenna Bascom.
Jenna smiled and held firm. “I appreciate you and Hannah letting me use your house as a way station. If I hadn’t had a safe place to change and a truck to borrow, I wouldn’t have been able to keep the clinic open this week. Or check on my house-bounds.”
“I know we’re not very organized at present,” Jack rumbled as he rubbed the back of the tiny infant on his broad shoulder. He was rewarded by a milky belch and a small body relaxing into deeper sleep. “But you are welcome to spend the next few days here. It’s going to be rough going up mountain — even for a bear.”
Jenna was a tall, robust woman with the dark hair and heavy frame of her bearshifter clan. She shook her head decisively. “I appreciate the offer. But I want to spend the night in my own home — sleep in my own bed. You guys will be all right on your own. Just keep those babies warm and make sure Hannah stays hydrated and eats enough. Nursing triplets is a drain.”
“At least eat before you go,” Jack urged her. “You have quite a hike ahead of you — in the pouring rain. And it’s gotten colder since this morning. And I’ll bet you skipped lunch.”
“If I leave right now, I’ll be at my cabin before dark,” Jenna said without admitting his guess was right. “You go catch forty winks yourself — before Hannah and the triplets wake up and it starts over.”
“Okay, you win.” Jack transferred his son to the crook of his arm and bent to give Jen’s cheek a kiss. “Happy New Year,” he said. “May the new year bring you luck and love.”
“Luck and love,” echoed Jenna. “Now shoo, and let the lady undress.”
Jack grinned at her and went through the mudroom door closing it behind him. Jen stripped off her jeans and sweater and folded them neatly into one of the empty cubes on the wall. She tucked her underthings into tidy rectangles and placed them beneath her sweater. The mirror over the mudroom bench showed her a vigorous, dark haired Amazon with generous breasts and hips and very long legs, but she wasted no time admiring her body.
The wind pushed the outer door open as soon as she turned the knob. Jenna stepped naked into the freezing rain and pulled the door behind her. She checked that the latch had caught before she dropped shivering onto all fours and began to take bear. It took only moments before her soft pink skin grew black and hairy and her face morphed into the long golden muzzle of an American Black.
Abruptly she ceased to notice the cold. The rain that blew under the roof of Jack’s back porch could not penetrate her fur. She lifted her nose to the damp air and breathed in a lungful of good Kittitas mountain air. The smell of wet forest and sodden moss was delicious. The sound of the trees creaking and groaning in the wind urged her to get going.
Yakima Ridge was no distance at all for a healthy bear. She set herself a steady pace, moving through the trees, following the trail her clan used for getting up and down mountain on foot. The rain had been falling for two weeks and the pine needles and moss that covered the ground was squishy underfoot. Her great paws left a line of shallow puddles to mark her passage.
The forest was strangely empty. No squirrels or chipmunks chittered or scampered through the forest floor looking for seeds or insects. No birds sang. The poor things were probably all huddled together waiting for the rain to stop. Her trail was crossed by many broken branches that had torn off trees and crashed to the ground under the weight of rainwater, some no more than twigs, some as large as tree trunks. Jenna stepped easily over them, surefooted and strong.
She loved being in bear, although she didn’t usually have the opportunity to take bear as often as she had this week. Even traveling in this icy rain was delightful. The world smelled so intense when she was in bear. She noticed so much more. She had a much greater sense of physical freedom and connection to nature than she did as a woman.
As a female Black, she only thing she had to be afraid of was lightning. Any other animal she met would either be afraid of her or ignore her. Male Blacks tolerated females at this season. They weren’t interested in mating yet, but they liked knowing there were females using their territories. Mountain cats and wolves would not take on a fully grown bear — too risky and too likely to end in injury or death.
When you were an apex predator you were a safe place in and of yourself. Which was probably why bears could and did sleep anywhere — in the middle of rivers in the summer. On top of the snow in the spring. On sun warmed rocks in the fall. And why their coats were designed to handle the elements.
Jenna noticed that her urgent desire to be home in her cabin had faded. Even in the worst winter rains that anyone could remember, she was enjoying the forest and being in bear. She wanted to turn over the leaf litter and explore the delicious scents she could detect underfoot. She wanted to mark the bare trunks of the ponderosa pines and leave her calling card.
But Mom would be phoning right around supper time and would be worried if her daughter didn’t answer. A crack of thunder made Jenna stretch out her legs as she headed uphill. No sense in being out in a storm. Lightning was likelier to strike a tree than her, but it traveled through the ground once it did, and bears had no immunity. And if a tree fell on her, the tree would win.
The only threat she faced was a human hunter. But even the most determined poacher should be holed up in the warm in this weather. Tracking bear in this deluge would be no fun at all. Besides, her clan kept poachers out of their woods.
Her small cabin was sitting in its clearing, dark and unwelcoming in the murky winter twilight. No light showed at any of the windows. But against the darker grey of the sky, she spotted a pale plume of smoke drifting from the chimney. The power was still out since no lights were on. But at least the wood stove was still alight, even though she had last feed it at five am.
Jenna took human outside her back door. The rain lashed her bare skin as she opened it and stepped into her lean-to. The wind protested as she tried to close it, and it took real exertion for her to get it shut and latched against the storm. She flicked a switch. Nothing. Well, she had already guessed the power hadn’t been restored.
There were towels hanging ready for her on a hook, she wound one around herself and went into the kitchen and out the side door to the well-ventilated generator shed. Automatically she checked the fuel gauge — it was still almost full.
Jenna returned to the warmth of the kitchen and pressed bu
ttons on her control panel. The cabin hummed back to life. The light on the stove blinked on and the microwave display began to flash. The overhead light in the sitting room blazed. She flipped the wall switch and her pot lights came on in the kitchen.
She had left muddy footprints all over the floor. She sighed and went back to the lean-to and opened the glass paneled door she had walked past before. A windowless shower room tiled in pale blue-grey greeted her. She was standing under the warm spray in no time.
The stew she had left simmering on top of the wood stove was tepid, but it had cooked through. She gave it a stir after she stoked the stove, and headed to her bedroom to get dressed. It only took a moment to mop up her footprints and to make the house as tidy as she liked to keep it. A place for everything and everything in its place. Probably a sign that she was turning into a fussy old maid. But she was an old maid, and if she liked neat she could damned well have neat.
Her cell had a long list of calls to return. Some of them from folks she had checked on in person that day. But Jen worked her way conscientiously through the list to make sure that the messages had been sent before she made her visits. Some of her house-bounds were the frail elderly and if there was an emergency they couldn’t wait until morning.
She made a couple of calls to reassure the families of convalescing patients. Another to remind a worried mother how to make a restorative drink for a kid with the runs. A few emails demanded an immediate answer. And there was one from her boss, Dr. Robichaud, to tell her he was staying in Olympia for another few days. He asked her to hold the fort until he got back from his daughter’s.
Well, darn it. She had already been on her own for two weeks, ever since Dr. Robichaud had gone to spend Christmas with his grandkids. And while it was unreasonable to expect him to return to the Ridge when the bridge was still out, it was a lot of responsibility for one nurse practitioner.
But so far the worst she had faced was Hannah Enright’s premature labor and home birth on Christmas night. Triplets were always a tricky proposition, but Hannah had popped hers out with a minimum of fuss. And all three babies were good sized for dates and all breathing well. Which was good, because she had had no way of getting those babies to a hospital and incubators if they had needed medical attention.
Dragon's Pleasure (BBW / Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 3) Page 22