Baby It's Cold Out Bear Holiday Bundle

by T. S. Joyce

  I Can’t Even King Suite Cabin.

  I’m Allergic To Morning People corner room Cabin. That one faced away from the sunrise. She was grinning like a fool reading these.

  And the cabins looked nice! With log walls, and each had a different layout. This was going to be awesome! Whoever was running this lodge had a sense of humor. She liked it.

  She checked for the confirmation email, which was sitting in her inbox, and then opened up her favorite airline page. She booked a discounted flight, thanks to her build-up of airline miles from her days of fun and not just sitting in her apartment with her pet plant, Cornelius.

  Cornelius wasn’t even a fancy plant, or she would’ve killed him a year ago. She was terrible at keeping things alive. It was a weed she dug out of the landscaping downstairs and put in a pot.

  With a mushy smile, she leaned over and snuggled her nose into the yellow dandelion flower then spritzed it with the spray bottle labeled Cornelius’s Love Juice.

  “I’ll miss you so much, my little baby-weed, but mommy’s gotta drink beer and play in the snow and get away from this Valentine’s Day-obsessed world for a little while. I know you’ll be fine without me. Do you know how I know? Because I dug you out of a crack in the concrete, and this pot is like the Ritz Carlton for you. I could give you no attention for a month, and you would still be here every morning, smiling up at me. My tough little booger-bear. You are my real valentine, Cornelius.” Ava leaned down and cupped her ear to the plant. “What’s that? You want to go, too? Okay, if you really want to. It wouldn’t be much of a vacation without you.”

  This. This was why she would be single forever.

  Her flight was leaving in the morning. Her entire body humming with giddiness, she skipped excitedly into her room to find the perfect UnValentine’s Day snow outfits for her trip.

  This year, February 14th was going to be one she would never forget.

  Chapter Two

  “Brock Nathanial Evans!” Gran groused from the dining room.

  Oh, Lord, here it went. He was leaned on the counter, pen poised over the reservations book. He pinched the bridge of his nose to ward off the headache that definitely had come from drinking too much last night. His party days were behind him, but last night, he’d been frustrated and stressed with everything that was happening at the inn, and he’d let his dumb friends peer-pressure him.

  Drinking gave him stupid ideas, like the one Gran was probably squawking about right now.

  “Nelda just called and said you changed everything on the website. How do I use a computer?” The ratta-tat-tat of her poking laptop buttons sounded loudly from the next room over. “Brock, how do you work this contraption? Nelda said it’s all outrageous, and you have made a mockery of the lodge.”

  “Gran, the problem is, I turn into a website genius when I’m drinking. I don’t remember how to change it back now.”

  She poked her head through the open doorway, looking like an angry ostrich with glasses. “That’s your own fault for letting that buffoon, Lance, hang out here with you. He always brings out the worst in you. Why don’t you just drink some more so you can remember how to fix the website?”

  “Because I don’t feel good, Gran. You’re supposed to tell me to stop drinking, not drink more.”

  “Oh, pooh. You never drink. A few more sips won’t hurt you. Your grandfather had a glass of good whiskey before bed every night, and he lived to be seventy-two.”

  “I mean, I’m pretty sure there is a picture of me shot-gunning a beer on the front porch of the inn as the main page of the website now, so are you sure drinking doesn’t hurt me?” Brock arched his eyebrows at her.

  Gran snorted and then composed her face to something more severe. She didn’t say anything, though, just stood there trying not to smile.

  “It’s not funny,” Brock assured her. “I renamed all the rooms on there, too, and I’ve been trying all morning to fix it, but I’m locked out of the page.”

  “I’ll fix it! Just show me how to use the computer.”

  “No. You haven’t even figured out how to enter the password to get past the main screen. You aren’t touching the website.”

  “Nelda sounded so scandalized. She’s probably in town telling all her friends what a disaster we are over here.”

  “Well, she would be right,” Brock muttered, frowning at the nearly empty page in the reservations book. Gran still insisted he write all the information in the book instead of in the computer because she liked a paper trail of reservation records. “We only have three people checking in today.”

  “And two who are already staying here. Which reminds me, I need to get to cooking. They’ll be hungry for lunch soon.”

  “I think they all went into town, so don’t waste your time.”

  Gran pushed her glasses farther up her nose. “It’s never a waste of time to cook,” she said softly. “Food is what brings people together.”

  “Well, apparently, last night, I advertised for an UnValentine’s Day here at the inn.”

  Gran’s bushy brows drew down. “A what?”

  “I put out a call for anyone who is single to come here and drink beer and eat food and escape the pressure of Valentine’s Day.”

  “You need a girlfriend.” Gran turned and walked back into the dining room. Ratta-tat-tat-tat. “A girlfriend would keep you busy, and you wouldn’t do stupid things. People don’t celebrate UnValentine’s Days. It’s a holiday of love. You should advertise for couples. Roses and champagne waiting for them when they get here. Romantic excursion pamphlets laid out on the counter. You should make a safe place for people to be romantic.”

  Brock rolled his eyes to the ceiling and prayed for patience. “And what about a safe place for people who don’t have romance?”

  “They can have the other days of the year.”

  Brock shook his head and wrote down the last reservation information into the book. Gran didn’t get it. She’d been married from age eighteen until just a few years ago to the same man. She’d been showered with affection. For people who couldn’t find that love story? Things could get lonely and overwhelming.

  Not that he was lonely. No. Nope, nope, nope. He didn’t care about relationships or romance or any of that. He was a man’s man. Tough. Unaffected by the fairer sex. No hearts and love letters for him. Nope.

  Next on the list: Ava Dennis, from Longview, Texas. Not a shifter. Good. Gran wouldn’t get her panties in a twist then. He still booked shifters and thought it was stupid the inn even asked, but Gran always threw a fit when they came here. He loved that old coot, but she was stubborn as a mule, and stuck in her ways.

  “It’s really coming down out there,” she called.

  “Yeah.” He scratched his jawline and stared out the picture windows out front. The snow was coming down hard, and visibility was rough. “It’s probably why we have so few reservations this week. The weather is supposed to be bad until Thursday.”

  A charcoal gray minivan with rental plates swerved into the small parking lot, skidding this way and that as the driver aimed for the row of parking spots right in front of the porch. The van was coming in way too fast, and he hadn’t made it out to de-ice the lot yet.

  “No!” he yelled, rushing for the door, like he could stop what happened next.

  She eeeerked the brakes and skidded to a stop, but only after slamming into one of the Visitor Parking signs.

  He yanked the door open and called out, “Are you okay?”

  Gripping the wheel was a woman, maybe early thirties, short, dark, bobbed hair and brown eyes staring right at the sign that was now leaning back at a forty-five degree angle. Her pink lip gloss matched her mittens, her beanie, and her blushing cheeks. Yep, that was definitely a blush. He’d never seen anyone turn that shade of fuchsia.

  The woman shoved open the door and stood in a rush, nearly busted it on the ice but caught the open door.

  “I’m so sorry,” she uttered to him, her soft brown eyes round as full m
oons. She was holding a potted plant in one hand, and the little yellow flower peeked just over the corner where the door met the car by the windshield.

  “Is that a dandelion weed?” he asked, utterly baffled by this off-roading pink-clad hellion.

  “This is Cornelius. And I’m Ava.”

  “Ava Dennis?” he asked, leaning against the porch railing and trying to stifle his smile. “Well, Ava, I don’t think I’m ever going to forget the look of terror on your face as you went drifting toward my parking sign.

  “I’ll pay for it.” She hugged her weed closer. “Maybe I should just go back to the rock I climbed out from. It was goot to meet you. Good. I meant good, not goot. You’re the model who was drinking a beer in the picture.” She inhaled fast and deep. “You are good at shot-gunning. Okay. Back to my hole, I go. I’m so sorry. Just call me with the damage.”

  Her eyes looked different as she rambled on. They were changing. He watched the cute girl fluster herself right into revealing what she was. Shit. Her eyes turned from chocolate brown to gold, then settled into a light green that seemed to glow from the pupils out.

  Shifter.

  He gestured to her face. “It’s okay. Your eyes…”

  “Shit,” she whispered, ducking her gaze to the snow near her boots.

  “Doesn’t bother me. I was just letting you know.”

  “I lied. On the paperwork.”

  Brock gave her a sympathetic smile. “You super-lied.”

  “It’s just…it’s just…I wanted to come to the UnValentine’s Day party. If I tell anyone I’m a shifter, they deny my applications, and I didn’t want to be denied. I wanted an escape…from…”

  “Valentine’s Day?”

  Eyes still on the ground, she nodded stiffly once.

  Aw, shit. They’d had the hotel torn up by shifters before, and even though the weretiger couple had paid for all the damage, Gran still felt burned. And this one had already caused property damage minute one at the inn.

  His sigh steamed in front of his face. “I’m Brock,” he introduced himself, jogging down the stairs. They were slick, but he wore boots with heavy rubber soles etched with thick tread. The snow crunched through the three inches that had fallen already, and he yanked open the back door and hauled out a bright pink suitcase. “Let me guess. Favorite color?”

  Her cheeks turned even brighter pink, and he could see the appeal of the color. Damn, she was cute. Shifter eyes and all.

  “Pink is number one,” she muttered. “Then purple, green, blue, yellow…orange…teal…”

  When he chuckled, she twitched her gaze to him then back down at her weed. “I’m sorry for lying.”

  Brock closed the back door and hoisted her suitcase to his hip so he didn’t drag it through the snow. “It wasn’t my choice to put that question on the reservation paperwork. So long as you don’t Change on the property, makes no difference to me.”

  “Right. No Changing.”

  Brock turned to find her looking worriedly at the woods beside the inn. “Please tell me you Changed recently,” he muttered.

  “What’s recent to you might not be recent to me. It’s really a vague word that—”

  “When?”

  Her voice dipped to almost nothing, and she canted her head and looked at him directly with those unsettling eyes. “That’s personal.”

  “Oh.” He felt awful. “I’m sorry. I don’t know much about your kind.”

  Her empty smile was automatic. “My kind,” she repeated. How many times had she given that same hollow smile to idiots like him who didn’t know how to say the right words?

  She studied him, her long, dark lashes brushing her cheeks when she looked at his boots. She walked around the car and showed him her snow boots, holding one leg out and pointing her toe. They were fur-lined and made of dark brown leather. “We’re wearing the same brand. We kind of match.”

  There it was—the out. She was offering him a way to ease the tension he’d caused. That was nice of her. Okay, he was paying attention. She was short but curvy. Gorgeous curves actually. Fuck, her hips were stretching her leggings just right, and she wasn’t a flat-chested woman by any means. Most weretigers were built lean. Maybe a wolf? Or a small brown bear. Those were dangerous, especially the females. But…she didn’t look dangerous now. She let her boot fall back to the snow and held the potted weed right in front of her like a little shield. “I won’t cause any trouble. If you saw me Changed, you would probably laugh, and I wouldn’t even blame you. Everyone does. Just trust me when I say everyone here is perfectly safe.” She frowned at the sign she’d rammed into. “Unless I’m driving, apparently.”

  He huffed a surprised laugh and set the suitcase gently in the snow, took a few steps toward her and closed the gap between them. Then he offered his hand. “Let’s start over. I’m Brock.”

  “Nice to meet you, cute guy drinking beer on the picture,” she said with a shake of his hand. Her palm was so warm. Felt feverish. A shifter trait? He held it a couple seconds too long, staring into her unnaturally green eyes. They were so vibrant, like moss.

  She released his hand and laughed a nervous sound. “Don’t worry.” She waved her hands at her eyes and looked down again. “They change color when I’m afraid. And I definitely didn’t mean to come barreling into an icy parking lot or expose myself as a mother-freaking liar first thing here. They’ll go back to normal soon.”

  “Normal? You mean to a normal human color?”

  The woman shrugged and didn’t answer.

  “Right. This way, Mrs. Dennis.”

  “Oh, it’s Miss. Or just Ava. I’m not married.”

  “Oh?” Brock asked innocently as he picked up her suitcase. “And you’re avoiding Valentine’s Day, so let me guess…”

  “I’m single and really bad at the mingle…part…of dating.” Under her breath, she whispered, “Worst poet in the universe, just shoot me.”

  To ease her embarrassment, he said, “Well, I’m also single and eat all the pringles. Because I don’t have a lady. So I can eat them all, and no one will complain about me not sharing.”

  She let off the most adorable giggle in the entire world. Like…it was so cute, he stopped on the stairs and nearly went off balance with her giant suitcase just so he could look at her smile while she made that sound. It was like a bell.

  “You’re just as bad a poet as me,” she said through that heart-stopping smile. She had a nose piercing. Two of them. Two tiny hoops were in the left side of her nose, and she had multiple jeweled studs in her ears, too.

  “Are my eyes still crazy?” she asked, the smile slipping from her face.

  Oh shit, he was staring. “No. They’re brown again.” He gestured to her nose with his free hand. “I like those. The piercings. I’ve never seen two on one side before.”

  Her cheeks went all pink again. She was a blusher and probably showed every emotion on her face. He liked that.

  “Um, thank you. It’s a small town feel here. There’s probably not a lot of people who look like me.”

  “No, not many. None, actually.” He cleared his throat. God, she was pretty. “Are there lots of…you…in Texas?”

  “How do you know I’m from Texas?”

  “I just wrote down your reservation information.” He winced and offered a self-deprecating smile. “That’s probably creepy.”

  “Little bit.” She swiped snow off the stair she was standing on with the toe of her boot. “I moved from Aurora, Colorado to Texas, thinking I would find more people like me a few years ago. Or maybe fit in a little better? My animal isn’t exactly snow-friendly.”

  “And did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you fit in?”

  She scrunched up her nose and shook her head slightly. “I just showed up to an UnValentine’s Day weekend with my pet plant. I think you can guess how the move went.”

  He laughed again. She was funny. But cute funny. The kind where she didn’t take herself too seriously.
That’s the type of humor that he liked.

  Wait, no liking anything about her. Danger, man. Back away slowly from this one. She’s an animal. A shifter. She dates her own kind. Brock cleared his throat and made his way up the rest of the stairs and into the inn, making sure not to look back at her. He had a job to do.

  She was here at his inn to escape Valentine’s Day, and that was what he was going to do—give her an escape.

  Chapter Three

  The bellboy was a magnificent human specimen.

  Ava puffed air out of her cheeks as she followed him. He was tall and broad in the shoulders, trim in the waist. He wore a textured dark gray sweater with the top two buttons undone and a white shirt under it. His dark-wash jeans hung just right off his waist and rode low enough that she could see his leather belt underneath. The bottom of his jeans rested half in and half out of his heavy boots, like he’d spent time making them look just right.

  The way his body filled out the clothes and how he dressed weren’t even the best parts. His face belonged on a demigod. He had dark hair that was gelled back slightly, but not with the shiny stuff. It just looked like it had dried that way, but she could smell the product he’d used. His eyes were a piercing blue that danced easily, like he was naturally happy. She’d never seen a more chiseled jawline or a better combo of mostly pepper but a little bit of salt in his short beard. He smelled like good aftershave. That had to be the best part of being a shifter, the heightened sense of smell around a man like Brock. He was yummy.

  But he’d called shifters ‘your kind’ though, so she had to stay detached. He seemed to be doing the same. He’d been friendly with his conversation, but then his eyes had gone dead and he’d taken on a professional tone.

  Brock set her suitcase in front of the check-in counter and made his way to the other side, began typing away on the computer. “You already paid online, and I have your card information for incidentals.” Aka if she went shifter and wrecked the room.

  “Got it,” she murmured. “If I raid the mini-bar, I’m definitely getting charged.”