by Zoe Chant
Now that he was actually looking at her, Alec had begun to frown. "You're the midwife who's going to deliver Saffron's baby?"
"Well, eventually, yes. That's what midwife means."
"Look, don't take this the wrong way, but can you actually ... deliver a baby?"
"Sorry?" She stopped, planted her hands on her hips, and stared up at him. She had to tip her head way back. "Did you just imply you don't think I can do my job?"
"Well, no, I didn't exactly mean it like that. It's just, you're so—" He hesitated, seemingly at a loss for words.
"Short?" Charmian suggested. "Small? Tiny?"
"Those, yeah."
"Are you a rancher?" she demanded.
"Yeah, but I don't see what that has to do with—"
"Because you're used to delivering calves, and so you think all babies are two hundred pounds and take four strong guys to wrestle them out of their mom. You've see human babies, right? They're somewhat smaller."
"Yes, I know that, but—"
"Or, if it's my skinny little hips you're thinking about—" At this, he hastily jerked his eyes northward, because they had drifted down. "—you know it's not these hips the baby's going to be popping out of, right?" She smacked her ass to demonstrate. Now he was bright red. She had to fight to keep the grin off her face. Really, people who questioned someone's professional competency were just asking for it .... even very hot people.
"It's a legitimate question." He was scowling now. "Saffron is part of my clan. I need to know she's going to be in good hands. And right now, I'm starting to doubt your hands are the best ones for the job."
Charmian sputtered in disbelief. "What, just because I'm not a strapping six-foot farm wife? That's it. If you don't believe I can handle physical labor, buddy, let's arm wrestle."
This time she caught him totally off guard. "Arm wrestle?"
"Yes, you know how to do it, right?"
"I'm a shifter, ma'am," he countered. "We're stronger than normal humans anyway. And, uh ..." His gaze ran down her body again. All five feet of it.
Oh right. She knew Saffron's mate was a shifter—the presence of bear shifter clans back in the mountains was no secret. But she hadn't really thought it through. Still, now she felt like she couldn't back down. Especially the way he kept staring at her like that. She didn't want him to stop looking at her, but she also felt it wasn't a good idea to let him get away with underestimating her.
"Right here," she said, plunking down into one of the colorful plastic chairs at the table in the waiting area.
Alec stared at her, and at it, and then sat down very carefully across from her.
He was so big he dwarfed the small table and chairs, which were meant for prospective moms and their kids. He made the furniture look extremely flimsy. Charmian was starting to have a bad feeling she might have made a mistake, but backing down from a fight had always been something she was bad at. Backing down meant admitting she was wrong, and she absolutely hated doing that.
"What in the world is going on out here?" Saffron said behind Charmian, in a tone of amused incredulity.
"We're arm wrestling." Charmian set her elbow on the table and opened her hand. "Come on, let's do this."
Alec looked baffled, annoyed, and slightly amused, all at once. He took her hand in his big, warm one, and positioned his elbow near hers. His arm was so much longer than hers that she'd be starting out at a disadvantage even if not for the disparity in their strength, since she had so much farther to move him than he had to move her.
You know you're not going to win this one, right? Charmian's common sense wanted to know. Just checking ...
Those are loser thoughts, brain. Knock it off.
"I don't think you really want to do this," Alec said. His earlier hostility had faded into a subtle amusement, bringing a sparkle to his intense blue eyes. He wasn't quite smiling, but the corners of his mouth twitched.
It was hard not to respond to that sparkle with a smile of her own. She was acutely aware of his masculine presence across the table, intensely conscious of the strength in the big hand gripping her own.
She'd done this kind of thing before, arm-wrestling much bigger men, usually to win bar bets. Nobody expected her to be as strong as she was. Still, she was just an ordinary human, and she knew it was highly unlikely she could win against a shifter her own size, let alone someone as big as Alec.
He was going to mop the floor with her.
"Want me to say 'go'?" Saffron asked, sounding like she was trying very hard not to laugh.
"Sure," Charmian said between gritted teeth.
"Are you entirely sure—" Alec began.
"Go!" Saffron said.
Chapter Three
The near presence of the little human was so intensely distracting that Alec could barely think.
As soon as he'd walked into the clinic, he'd become somehow aware of her, as if the intoxicating scent of her had permeated the air. Alec's bear was always alert and restless, as befitted an alpha's animal, but it had come to attention inside him as soon as Charmian came in sight. And what it wanted was—impossible.
His bear thought that this pretty little human, with her medium-brown skin and pixie face and short, squiggly hair, was his mate.
Right now, her presence on the other side of the table made him tingle all over, his skin prickling and his bear so restless that he thought surely she must be able to glimpse his animal in his eyes. Charmian, he noticed, had a little crinkle between her brows when she concentrated. Her melting dark-brown eyes were very bright. He felt as if he could fall into them, and tried to pull himself back—
Dimly, as if from a long distance away, he heard Saffron say, "Go!"
It didn't even sink in until a moment later. He was too focused on Charmian's eyes. And then his hand slammed into the table and he came back from wherever he'd just gone and stared at his hand pressed to the table by her strong brown fingers.
"I won?" Charmian said in disbelief. "I mean, I won!" Her instant of triumph turned bitter, and she scowled, the temporary softness in her eyes hardening like winter-frozen ice. Alec felt an unexpected pang of regret. "You let me win, you ass."
"I was—" Distracted by your beauty. Driven half out of my mind by your scent. No, honesty didn't lead anywhere good. And her hand was still resting on top of his. He shook his head angrily, leaving the sentence unfinished. Yanking his hand free of her grip, he stood up. "Saffron, I'll pick you up after your appointment."
"Uh, okay?" Saffron said, but she was already talking to his back. Alec paused only long enough to grab his coat and hat before stomping outside.
He put on the coat in the parking lot, and stood for a few minutes in the lightly swirling snow, gulping bracing breaths of the cold winter air.
She's your mate, Alec's bear snarled at him.
No, he thought back. I'm not interested in a mate.
That's not how it works. The decision isn't yours to make.
Yeah? Watch me, bear.
His bear subsided into snarly silence, sulking.
***
He ran some errands, picking up items from the hardware store and a few groceries. Everything in the town's small shopping district was so close together that it didn't take long, and he ended up back at the clinic a few minutes before the end of Saffron's appointment.
Going in would mean seeing Charmian again. Like an alcoholic confronted with a bottle, he found himself almost powerless to resist that siren call. Just to see her again—to touch her—
His helplessness in the face of his overwhelming attraction sent a knife-stab of some emotion through him. It wasn't fear, not quite, but it was a loss of control that he couldn't handle. He mastered himself and his bear with an effort, and leaned against his truck in the lightly falling snow, hands shoved in his pockets, until Saffron came out.
"Wow, did you wake up on the wrong side of the den this morning or what?" Saffron asked him, clambering up to the passenger seat of the truck.
"Is that any way to talk to your alpha?"
Saffron wrinkled her nose. "I'm a fox shifter, not a bear. I love being an adopted part of your clan, Alec, and I love you, don't get me wrong, but I'm still going to tell you when you're being a jerk. And you were kind of a jerk to my midwife back there."
His brain suffered an odd kind of glitch at the words I love you. Like a truck hitting a speedbump. He knew she meant it in a family kind of way, of course, but ...
Somehow he'd just never quite understood what all the new mates turning up around the Circle B Ranch actually meant. It meant that his clan, his family, was getting bigger. It meant kids. It meant pregnant women telling him they loved him in his truck while snow piled up on the windshield.
The idea of incorporating a mate into that rapidly widening circle of people he cared about was too much. He was having enough trouble dealing with ... with all of this. Maybe if he stayed away from Charmian, and she stayed away from him, the problem would go away.
You wish, his bear grumbled.
"Uh, the light's green," Saffron said.
"Right." He turned onto the highway heading back to the ranch.
They drove in silence for a few minutes before Saffron cleared her throat. "Look, Alec, I'm sorry if I was out of line back there. It's just, I could tell you really upset Charmian when you left like that. She was weird and distant all through our appointment. I like her a lot, is the thing, and even if I didn't, I need to have a good working relationship with her for the rest of my pregnancy. It's not like Pinerock County has midwives to spare."
She was giving him a hopeful look with her big blue eyes.
"And?" Alec said after a moment. "What am I supposed to do about it?"
"Apologize to her!" Saffron said. "You were really rude, and I understand it's basically just you, we all understand that, but she doesn't know that."
"I haven't done anything to apologize for! And anyway," he said, staring straight ahead through the lightly fogged windshield as the wipers brushed snowflakes away, "alphas don't apologize. It's a sign of weakness."
Saffron banged her head lightly against the back of the seat. "I'm sorry, I forgot you're still living in the 19th century."
"I'm not," Alec snapped, more sharply than he intended. "Things have changed a lot. I don't run the clan the way my dad and grandfather did. But you can't change things too much or you end up with anarchy, like your clan, with no defenses when people like Creed come along."
Saffron fell silent at the reminder of her clan's evil alpha, who had dominated their town for generations until her mate, Remy, set her free. And Alec clenched his jaw. He hadn't meant to bring up bad memories for her.
Damn it, for years and years, it had been just him and the other bears on the ranch. The other male bears. They hadn't had any of these complications. Why had he ever said yes to letting his brother Axl bring a mate home? That's what had started the whole thing. Now—
Now he couldn't get Charmian's face out of his head. Couldn't stop thinking about her brown eyes, even when they were snapping with anger at him.
Just let it go. You'll forget about her, and things will go back to how they were before.
Even without the disgruntled rumbling of his bear, he wasn't quite sure if he believed himself.
"Oh, damn!" Saffron said suddenly.
"Is something wrong?" Alec asked, jolted out of his thoughts. "It's not the baby, is it?"
"No, Alec, stop worrying about that." She patted down the pockets of her coat. "I left my gloves in Charmian's office. I guess I put them down somewhere. At least, I hope they didn't fall out in the parking lot."
They were already on the winding road heading up into the hills. "Do you want me to turn around?" Alec asked, not relishing the idea.
"No, there's no point in retracing a half-hour drive just to get a pair of gloves. There are plenty of gloves at the ranch. They're a pair Tara made me for Christmas, though, so I'd like to get them back." She pulled out her phone. "Hang on, I'll call Charmian and ask her if she's seen them."
No, don't call Charmian ... He squashed that line of thinking. Going out of his way to avoid the fiery little midwife would be ridiculous behavior unbecoming an alpha. He should just act normal around her. That would be fine. He could do it.
""Charmian, hi, it's Saffron. I think I left a pair of gloves in your office. They're green knit gloves with white bobbles on the cuffs. Keep an eye out, would you?"
Saffron hung up without waiting for a reply. "Voicemail," she reported to Alec. "She said she was thinking about closing the clinic after my appointment, if no one else came in. She must have gone home."
Home. Alec's rebellious brain, or possibly his rebellious bear, conjured an image for him of what Charmian's house might be like. It would be a cute little house, probably. Pocket-sized, like her.
And there's absolutely no reason why I should care.
Chapter Four
Why was she having so much trouble getting that blue-eyed jerk out of her head, anyway?
After Saffron left, Charmian caught herself peeking out the window, catching a glimpse of the long-limbed figure leaning against his truck, with snowflakes swirling down to settle on his shoulders. Didn't even have the decency to come inside. She shook her head and turned away, firmly setting herself to the task of tidying up the clinic before leaving for the day.
The snow was coming down harder when she came out. The weather report was forecasting snow all week, a big storm system rolling in off the Plains. They hadn't had a lot of really cold winters lately, not like the ones Charmian remembered from when she was a kid, when the snow piled in drifts taller than she was. These days, big blizzards were rare, and snow was almost as much of a treat as it was a pain in the ass.
Still, she was grateful for the four-wheel drive in her Jeep. She also had chains in the back, along with a first-aid kit, road flares, and a blanket. She'd grown up around here—not in Pinerock County itself, but in the next county over. Her dad had been a country veterinarian. He'd since sold his practice and moved to Florida with her mom, but she had grown up traveling all over the tri-county area with her dad, visiting the ranches and getting to know the back country.
So a little winter weather didn't scare her. Still, it might be worse tomorrow. She stopped by the grocery store to make sure she had enough staples to last for a few days just in case she got snowed in, along with a six-pack of her favorite beer. In the checkout line she chatted with the clerk, whose sister's baby Charmian had just recently delivered. One thing about being the daughter of the vet and the county midwife: she probably knew two-thirds of the people in the county. In fact, it was a little surprising that she'd managed to go her whole life without running into Tall, Dark, and Grouchy before, although she had seen Saffron's husband Remy around town, even before Saffron started coming into the clinic.
He's probably one of those rural weirdos who doesn't ever come down from the mountains. Just a grouchy old hermit. Not the first rude person you've run into, Charmian, and he won't be the last. Stop obsessing on it.
But she couldn't seem to shake him out of her head. As she got into her Jeep, she got a flash of Alec lounging on his truck, his big body somehow exuding powerful sex appeal even bundled in a coat. She clenched her teeth and put the Jeep in gear, but she kept seeing those piercing blue eyes boring into her soul; she kept feeling the warmth and strength of his hand on hers.
I'd love to see what else those hands can do ...
Aargh.
At least, once she turned off the highway, she had the drive to distract her. Charmian's house wasn't in the absolute middle of nowhere, but she was in a little maze of roads that generally only got plowed when the county had finished clearing the bigger thoroughfares, unless one of the locals got to it first. She discovered, in fact, when she got home that one of the neighbors had plowed out her driveway. She'd have to be sure and find out which one it was, and drop off a bottle of wine at his door.
She had to smile to herself
about living in a place where so many of her neighbors had snowplow attachments for their trucks that it could have been any one of half a dozen people.
"Honey, I'm home!" she called, opening the door.
There was a pattering of toenails on tile and Bucket launched himself at her legs. Charmian set down her grocery bags and sat on the floor to pick up the little bundle of scruff in her arms. Bucket was a wiry-haired mutt who had been left at her dad's veterinary office years ago, literally in a bucket, hence the name. Charmian had seen the damp and shivering puppy when he was brought in, and it was love at first sight. She'd always preferred big dogs and never thought she'd give her heart away to a creature that was probably ten pounds soaking wet, but she liked to say that Bucket had the heart and soul of a much bigger dog. He even liked to go jogging with her. By now Charmian's neighbors had become used to the sight of the small woman running along the back-country roads, with an even tinier ball of fluff bouncing intently along at her heels.
She let him out into the fenced yard and went to put her groceries away. Munching on a granola bar, she filled some bottles with water just in case the power went out, and checked her supply of candles in a kitchen drawer. Power outages were relatively common here in the winter, and had become a minor inconvenience rather than a major headache for her by now, but part of what made them that way was making sure to take care of preparations beforehand.
Right now, the snow seemed to be slacking off. If the forecast was right they'd be in for a dumping over the next few days, though.
Saffron lived somewhere up in the mountains. Had she and Alec made it home okay?
"Which I'm only wondering," she said aloud, "because I'm worried about my client, obviously."
