by Zoe Chant
She started putting on her coat.
Alec punched the wall with one big fist. His eyes gleamed. "I can't turn it on and off. You get all of me or none of me. If this is how you want it, then don't bother coming back."
"Oh my God, this is the most ridiculous conversation ever," she snapped. "If you don't want me back, that's fine! I don't think I want to come back anyway!"
"Your choice, then," he growled.
"Oh gosh, now I get a choice! How magnanimous of you!" She stamped into her boots.
She was mad enough to spit nails, but she happened to look back as she opened the door. Alec was standing at the bottom of the stairs. He no longer looked angry. His shoulders were hunched, and he looked like the most miserable person she'd ever seen.
As soon as he noticed her looking, though, he straightened his shoulders and set his face in lines of stone. And wasn't that just Alec all over, she thought furiously as she slammed the door behind her. Perish the thought anyone should see him acting human or having emotions or—
She almost ran into someone on the porch.
"Whoa!" he said in a laughing voice, catching her by the shoulders. He was as tall as Alec, but rangier, with sun-streaked light brown hair falling to his shoulders, brushing the collar of his jacket. The resemblance to Remy in his face was very strong. Alec had mentioned that Remy's brother Cody lived in the main house with him. This must be him.
"Please get out of my way," she said with tense politeness.
He stepped aside, but kept a hand on her shoulder. "I can see you've been talking to Alec," he said, smiling. "You have the look. The 'I am about to die of frustration' look."
Some of her anger dissolved, and she had to stifle a laugh. "I guess it's not just me, then."
"No, trust me, my cousin is the most infuriating person alive." He held out a hand. "Cody Hayes."
She shook it. "Charmian Russell. I'm Saffron's midwife. I came up to do a home visit, but she wasn't here."
"Yeah, we all went into town for the day. All except Alec." He pointed across the yard, where a truck was parked in front of the smaller house. Lamplight gleamed in the windows. "Axl and Tara are back, but Saffron and Remy decided to spend the night in town. Treat themselves to a motel room, enjoy not being in that little trailer for a change. They won't be back 'til morning."
"Oh no, what a shame," she said, with an inward sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted right now was to stay on the Circle B any longer than she had to. "I mean, good for them, of course. My fault for coming up without calling ahead."
"Driving home tonight?" Cody asked as she began to brush the snow off her car.
"Planning on it."
"The road can be tricky in the dark."
"I'll be fine," she said, a little more snappily than she intended. Great, another guy who didn't think women could drive in the snow. Did Saffron and Tara have to put up with this too? Although ... come to think of it, Remy usually drove Saffron to her appointments. And Saffron didn't seem like someone who scared easily.
Maybe she shouldn't be quite so cavalier about it.
"Just be careful," Cody said. "Especially on that first big turn, coming down. Take it slow. You might want to chain up; it was pretty slippery when we drove in."
"That might not be a bad idea," she admitted.
She hauled the tire chains out of the Jeep. Cody came down the steps and helped her lay them out. She drove the Jeep onto the chains and he secured the front ones while she got the back tires.
"Thank you," she said, standing up and dusting the snow off her gloves. See, Alec? I can accept help, and I can even be polite about it!
"No worries," Cody said, and winked at her. "I don't think Alec would ever forgive any of us if something happened to you on the way home."
Charmian frowned at him. "Excuse me? What makes you think Alec and I—er, what makes you think Alec would care?"
Cody gave her a smile with a trace of apology in it. "You smell like sex and Alec. I know you didn't come up just to see Saffron."
Oh God. At least her dark skin helped hide the flaming blush heating her cheeks. She had forgotten about shifters' keen sense of smell.
"It may have been a mistake," she admitted.
Cody leaned on her car, smiling at her through the gathering dusk. "I really hope not. My cousin needs somebody to settle him down. He's been lonely and unhappy for a really long time. I think we all would love to see him find someone, if only because it would make him a lot easier to live with."
At this, she had to laugh. "That's going to take a miracle."
But right on the heels of those words came a hard, visceral memory of Alec's gentle kisses on her neck, the soft way he'd looked at her.
The hurt in his eyes as she'd walked out the door.
Those two things exist side by side in him, the strong alpha bear and the gentle lover. How can anyone find a middle ground between them?
Cody spoke up again, as snowflakes settled on his hair and collar. "When Alec loves, he loves completely, without reservation. It's going to take a strong woman to handle it."
"I don't know if I can be that woman," Charmian admitted.
"I think you can. I think you are that strong."
His words echoed in her ears as she drove out of the Circle B yard. They were right about the condition of the road, and she was glad Cody had suggested chains. She crept carefully down the steep places, and stopped at the main road to take the chains off, wrestling with their cold, heavy bulk in the wet snow.
She tried not to think about Alec, back there in that big house. Was he thinking about her now? Was he angry? Unhappy?
Had she been right or wrong to storm off?
I think you are that strong, Cody had said.
Was she? She'd always thought of herself as strong enough to handle anything life threw her way. She'd coped with emergency calls in terrible weather; she'd had the lives of women and newborn babies literally in her hands as she dealt with difficult deliveries.
But nothing had challenged her like realizing that a bear as strong and forceful as Alec was in love with her.
One thing I do know. I can't do this alone, Alec. It's going to take a lot of compromise from you and from me in order to work. I don't know if I'm up for it, and I really don't know if you're up for it.
It's going to be a team effort, and I don't know if either one of us knows how to be a team.
Chapter Eight
Over the next couple of days following Charmian's departure, Alec had the feeling that everyone else on the ranch was tiptoeing around him, waiting for him to explode.
The thing that surprised him as much as anyone else was that he didn't. His bear was on edge, restless, but it wasn't the usual anger that he spent so much of his time suppressing. Instead, it felt like he was in a holding pattern, waiting for something.
Waiting for a change.
But whether the change was supposed to come from him or from Charmian, he wasn't sure.
He knew that he owed her an apology. But alphas don't apologize. And anyway, she owed him one, too. He hadn't been trying to control her; he had only wanted to protect her. And he thought, as she'd left, that he'd seen cracks in her wall of anger, as if she had actually realized it at the last minute.
If so, it didn't seem to be enough to prompt her to call him.
And he could also see where she was coming from. He hadn't explained to her properly about shifters, about the all-or-nothing nature of a shifter's mating urge. And, as much as he hated to admit it, she had a point: he couldn't follow her around constantly to protect her from everything, not without putting both of their lives on hold. He had to trust that she was strong enough and sensible enough to handle trouble on her own, or know when to call on him for help.
And that was the part he kept getting stuck on, because he sensed some of his own stiff pride in Charmian. It was one of the things that had drawn his bear to her in the first place. And he knew from his own experience that it was the sort
of unyielding pride that made asking for anything difficult.
How can my animal trust you, Charmian, if you won't admit when you need help?
How can you trust me, if I can't be clear-eyed about when you need it and when you don't ...
"Look at that wind blow," Cody remarked, coming into the shop with a cup of coffee in hand. Alec jerked; he had the windmill blade clamped into a vice to work on smoothing its edges, but instead he was staring blankly out the window at the swirling snow, with an endless parade of thoughts about Charmian marching through his head. Country music murmured from the radio on the windowsill, between bursts of static.
"Gonna blow drifts across the road," Alec said, running his thumb over the edge of the windmill blade. "All the roads in the county are going to be a mess. Pastures are gonna drift in, too."
"Actually, the wind is doing us a favor," Cody said, leaning a hip on the edge of Alec's workbench. "It's clearing the snow off the pastures so the cattle can move around more easily and even browse if they want to. I talked to Gannon this morning and he said the bulls in the upper pasture are doing fine. So far, the pregnant heifers seem to be weathering it without trouble; I've just been making sure to give them extra grain rations. As long as the bad weather ends before they start dropping their calves, I think we're in the clear."
Alec grunted acknowledgement and turned the windmill blade around on the lathe.
"Still working on that thing, huh? Have you tested your new design yet? This storm'd be a perfect opportunity to stress-test it, with all the wind."
"Don't want to rush into it," Alec muttered. He turned the blade again.
"Yeah, but there's only so much you can fix in the shop. At some point you gotta go out there and see if she'll spin."
Alec fixed his cousin with a glare. "Are we still talking about the windmill?"
"What else would we be talking about?" Cody asked innocently. He tugged down the end of the blade with a callused finger and let it spring back up. "Nice and bendy. You know, I think that's the problem with most of your designs so far. They're too rigid. Snap off as soon as a storm comes along. Make it so they can flex and bend, and they'll weather the storm just fine."
"Okay, now I know we're not talking about the windmill anymore."
"Your words, cousin, not mine." Cody smiled lopsidedly at him. "Anyway, I came in to give you a heads-up that I'm gonna head out and check on the livestock before it gets dark. Probably take one of the horses and check the far pastures. In case things get too blizzardy, I wanted you to know where I was going to be."
Alec looked up from the windmill blade. "Want me to come?"
"Only if you want to. I'll have Gannon with me for the far stretches, and I don't anticipate problems. I'll come back if the weather gets too bad."
"I'll finish this up, then."
Cody nodded, and left.
On the radio, an announcer came on with the forecast. "More snow on the way, folks. It's already coming down hard at Spring Meadow, and heading out to the Wildcat Forks area. Stay off the roads if you can, especially after dark."
Stay off the roads. What were the odds Charmian would be doing that? Not likely, if there was somewhere she wanted to go.
Alec chewed on his lip.
He knew he was only being stubborn. But she hadn't called him, either. He wasn't the only stubborn one around here.
And yet, she'd come all the way up to the ranch the other day, not knowing what kind of reception she'd get.
Because she was curious, and interested in him. Because she was willing to go that far to get what she wanted.
Because he mattered to her.
She'd come all the way up to the ranch. For him.
Is she out there somewhere thinking I don't care?
Charmian had proven to him how important he was to her. Now he needed to do the same thing.
I couldn't let you in because I care too much. But that's cowardice. I may have soaked up a lot of toxic shit from my dad, but one thing I think he was right about: an alpha can't be a coward. And whatever else I am, I try to be a good alpha.
And, more than anything, he wanted to be a good mate for her.
Now he just had to prove it.
Prove to himself that he was the man Charmian hoped he could be.
He left the windmill blade clamped in the vise and went into the living room. Flipping through the phone book, he found the clinic's number, and called it.
***
With the weather so awful, Charmian had worked a half-day at the clinic and then gone home, forwarding the phones to her cell. She was a little nervous about one of her clients, Mary Lambert, who was eight and a half months along and had been showing signs at their last appointment that she might go into labor early.
Fortunately Mary was a mother of three and was an old hand at having babies by now. She'd had her second two children at home, under Charmian's care, and was planning to do the current baby the same way. The roads were bad enough that Charmian didn't like it; she would have preferred to have Mary at the clinic, where medical care was available if needed. But she couldn't expect a working farm wife and mother of three children to pack up and stay in town just on the off chance that she might go into labor sometime in the next two weeks.
The weather app on her phone showed massive yellow and red bands of precipitation sweeping into the Pinerock County area, so Charmian decided to forego a jog this afternoon. Instead, she opened a package of cookies, popped a movie in the DVD player, and curled up on the couch with Bucket.
She couldn't help thinking that her dog really wasn't who she wanted to be curled up with. What was Alec up to on the ranch? With the storm coming in, he was probably busy with the animals.
He hadn't called her back ... but communication was a two-way street. Her mind kept wandering away from the movie, and her gaze drifted to her phone plugged into its charger on the end table. She wasn't angry anymore. But she also wondered if it was a bad idea to capitulate and call Alec before he manned up enough to do it himself.
I can see how we could get stuck in an infinite holding pattern this way ...
Wait, did he even have her number in the first place? That could be a problem.
The phone rang. Charmian jumped, dislodging the dog, who gave her a reproachful look.
The call was coming from the clinic's forwarded phone number, which made her nervous. "Mary?" she asked.
"No, I'm not Mary."
That deep, rumbling voice made something in her insides melt. "Alec," she said, and it came out on a sigh. Sternly she pulled herself together. Come on, woman! Don't turn into a quivering puddle.
"So, I was wondering if you're ..." He hesitated in a way that was almost shy, which made a little more of her insides disintegrate. He seemed like such a big gruff bear, but these little peeks at his soft underbelly were her undoing.
"Free?" she suggested, when he didn't complete the sentence. Available? Horny?
"Yeah," he said, sounding relieved. "I don't know if you wanted to get together this afternoon and ... do something, maybe? We could have dinner in town."
Charmian realized she'd broken into a huge grin. "Alec Tanner, are you asking me out on a date?"
".... Yeah," he said, and she could hear an answering smile in his voice. "Yeah, I kinda think I am. Are you up for it?"
Well, it wasn't an apology. But on the other hand, he'd taken the step of calling her first and she knew how hard that must have been for him, so she could meet him halfway. "I'd love to, but the weather's awful. Are you sure you don't mind coming into town?"
Was there the slightest hesitation, or did she imagine it? "That's not a problem. My cousin's handling things on the ranch, so I can drive down and pick you up at the clinic, if you want."
"Actually, I'm at home today. Why don't you come by my place and we can make plans—if that's not too much of a drive?"
She gave him directions. He promised to be by in about an hour, and then they both lingered. It seemed that he did
n't want to hang up any more than she did.
"I'm looking forward to seeing you, Alec."
"Me too," he said softly. "You, I mean."
"Drive safe."
After hanging up, she sat on the couch for a moment while the DVD played unheeded in the background. Then she started noticing the papers scattered on the coffee table ... the dog hair all over the carpet ... the unwatered plant that had died a tragic death in the window, which she had meant to throw away for the last three months ...
"Oh Lord, Charmian," she muttered, jumping to her feet. Bucket burrowed into the body-warm afghan she'd abandoned. "This guy is a neat freak. What's he going to think when he sees the sty I live in?" She really wasn't that terrible of a housekeeper, but compared to Alec's place, it didn't make the best impression.
Outside the windows, the promised snowfall had begun falling in earnest, heavy flakes skittering down from low skies. Maybe, if she could get the mess into shape, they might stay in. She had steaks in the freezer and a bag of locally grown potatoes that a client had given her. Staying inside while the snow fell, cooking a leisurely dinner with Alec ... lighting some candles just in case the power went out ...
She could make a fire in the fireplace, even. She almost never bothered with it when it was just her, but now she could imagine Alec in front of the fire, with firelight dancing gold and orange on his toned muscles.
Oh, that sounded nice.
She was in the middle of a hasty cleaning frenzy—dumping old newspapers in the trash, hastily scrubbing the day's worth of dishes in the sink—when her phone rang again. She grabbed for it with a soapy hand.
"Alec?"
"No, it's Mary."
"Oh," Charmian said. She tucked the phone into the crook of her shoulder and hastily dried her hands. "How are you, Mary? I hope everything is all right?"
"Depends on your exact definition of all right," Mary said. She sounded a little breathless, and Charmian's stomach sank. Oh no. Not now.
"Are you in labor, Mary?"
"Afraid I am," Mary confessed. "I was having light contractions yesterday, but they went away. And I had false labor with Emma, so I figured the same thing was happening again. But today, they're back, and they're strong. I think this is it."
