Bearly Hanging On (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 6)

by Red, Lynn

  She thought back to Dominic, how he'd relentlessly chased her, refused to let her out of his sight. And how at first, that made her feel wanted, longed-for, all those good things. Shortly thereafter, when he started in with the trying to make her quit her job to stay home and look after King Bela Lugosi Jr's every whim? Thinking about that now made her stomach turn in a totally different way.

  God, I was stupid, she thought. So, so, so stupid. How did I let that happen? How did I fall for that?

  For months afterward, after she finally got the courage to get away from him, Dominic had vanished. It was almost like he had no reason to be in Jamesburg except to haunt her. That had been... well, it was something she'd never forget, that's for sure. It took months for Jenga's surprisingly patient form of psychotherapy to make a dent in that complex. Hell, she was just grateful to get a little mental distance from that - from him. But Ryan was so different it was like a different world.

  Dominic was nothing if not self-absorbed. Yeah, he was gorgeous, rich enough that she was a little embarrassed about it, and great in bed, but after Jamie got past all that, and found his heart - so to speak - there just wasn't much there. Ryan though? Heart as big as any she'd ever seen, even if it was hidden under about a mile of gruffness that could make Oscar the Grouch look chipper.

  Thinking about Ryan with a trashcan shirt made her smile. She gathered the few belongings she carried with her on a daily basis - a handbag, and... yep, that's about it - and headed to the window. With the Ryan-caused daydream still fresh on her mind, Jamie pushed the shutters open and sucked a deep breath of late fall Jamesburg air.

  It was crisp, clean, with just the tiniest bit of fir-scented bite. On her skin, she felt the cool prickle, the delicious kiss of autumn, and as Jamie's wings unfurled from where they were tucked behind her for most of the day, the muscles stretched, longing to move. From where she was on the top of the courthouse, she could usually drop twenty or thirty feet before spreading them out as wide as can be and catching air, blasting off into the sky.

  The gentle early afternoon sun that streamed through the window warmed her wings, and her face, and for a moment she just stood there, absorbing the beautiful radiation that vampires, and bats, are both supposed to hate. She never did understand that one. Heat, okay, heat and humidity were two things that were very unfriendly. But good, honest warmth?

  She shrugged, smiling as she plummeted past the first bank of windows, and then to the second. As she billowed her wings, catching a gust of wind like an exploding parachute, she had just a split second to wave to Professor Duggan who was always, always surprised to see her do that, as evidenced by the bugged-out eyes and puffed-up cheeks. Although it could have been most anything to get that response out of the old hedgehog.

  Every muscle, every nerve in her body flared to life as her wings caught air and lifted her up, up, up into the sky, high above her courthouse office, high above the forest. She reckoned her normal cruising altitude was about two-thousand feet - plenty to stay above most of the animals except the odd albatross or eagle that decided to get grandiose. Every now and then a vulture who had caught a draft would watch her pass, but mostly, up here in her particular part of the heavens, it was just Jamie, alone with her thoughts.

  Of course, right then, her thoughts were about Ryan.

  She threw her gaze to the east, toward West's farm which she could see. Past it, she knew she'd find the odd little compound of Ryan's massively extended "family" but even knowing where it was, the overgrowth was too thick to spot. Still, she knew where she was going, so just swooping around in a general direction would get her there soon enough.

  *

  Cherry pie and a gallon of sweet tea weren't exactly the reaction she was expecting.

  "We've been wonderin' when you were comin' back this way," Boston said as he pulled his chair up and stared down at his slice - which was almost a quarter of the pie - with a very lusty eye. "Moo-maw, bring her another piece, she’s hungry." He reached across the table and grabbed Jamie's slice before dumping it on top of his, and mashing it down with his fork so it just looked like one big mound instead of two.

  "Another one?" Maude asked, calling from the kitchen. "She don't look like she's the sort to eat all that."

  "No, uh, thank you," Jamie said back. Boston urged her on. "I really liked that one though, it was great!"

  "More tea, then?"

  Jamie eyed her still-full mason jar. Just the thought of what all that sugar would do to her guts put the agony of eating a little bit of chocolate to shame.

  "Can you even eat this stuff?" Boston asked. "I knew a bloodsucker once - er... that isn't offensive, is it? I can't keep up."

  Jamie laughed softly. "Nah, bloodsucker’s fine. It's more the intent that upsets me sometimes than the word used, you know? And yeah, I mean, I can eat it. I have a digestive system. It's just really, really not what I want to do if I can help it, if you catch my drift."

  Boston laughed, then took an absolutely massive forkful of pie, crammed it in his mouth, and groaned like he was a cow being fed on by a vampire. "Oh lord, do I ever. Sounds like me and sauerkraut."

  "God almighty, don't you get started with all that. She's a lady, or at least if she ain't, she don't want ta hear about your digestive distress upon eating cabbage!" Maude - Moo-maw - yelled from the kitchen.

  Shortly she reappeared, and hit Boston directly on the back of the head with a fairly hearty thwap from her wooden stirring spoon.

  "What the hell was that for?" he asked, recoiling and rubbing his head, but not perturbed enough not to take another bite of pie.

  "Don't think I'm stupid enough to not know she gave you her pie, you big oaf. I was just offerin' her the pie to be hospitable." The old bear got a wry look on her face, followed by a very funny smirk. "Actually, I do have something for you though."

  Jamie cocked her head a little, wondering what on earth it was she was about to be offered, when Maude grabbed the side of Boston's head. "He's old," she said, "and he's about as dumb as a sack of bricks, but his ticker's good. Go on, he won't miss any! Matter of fact, that might keep him from rubbin' on me at night for a day or so."

  Jamie, surprised at what she'd just heard, snorted, and accidentally blew through the straw in the tea, which she'd been playing with but not drinking from. The laugh became a bubble, and the bubble became a small volcanic eruption, most of which landed directly on Boston's pie.

  Without skipping a beat, he tapped part of the latticed crust with the end of his fork, scooped a bite, and smiled as he chewed.

  "I'm just kidding anyway," Maude said, stroking her mate's grayed hair. "Nothing could stop him from jabbing at me, even if he can't do anything with it once he convinces me to let him try."

  She gave him another whap on the back of the head, and slung her towel over her shoulder, scooting back into the kitchen with Jamie's empty plate. Boston shot her a playful glare and then turned back to Jamie. "I love her more than anything. I'd die if she were gone."

  The sudden gravity took Jamie a little by surprise. Boston just kept chewing. "Everyone should find that someday," he said. "That sounds like a fairly hefty helpin' of co-dependence, to keel over dead if someone left, but—"

  "No," Jamie said, suddenly. "No, I absolutely know what you mean. I, uh," she looked down, aware that she was about to spill more beans than she meant to spill. "I get it."

  Boston smiled, scooping up another bite, this one nothing but tangy, tart, sweet, cherry filling. He pursed his lips and sucked a macerated cherry between them, leaving a red residue on his lips. "He's looking for you," he said in between bites. "But was too bashful to go back to the courthouse, after that scene he made with Danniken."

  "You have officially surprised me, which doesn’t happen very often," Jamie said. "First with the serious talk about your wife and now about Ryan."

  "I've had a lot of years to practice with being unsettling to women," he said, a twinkle in his eye when he looked up. "He don't know what th
e hell to do with himself when it comes to women. Bears almost never do, but that ain't particularly well known. Mating for life means we don't have much of a chance to practice the finer points of finding that mate. We just kinda see 'em and know." He finished the pie and patted his bulging stomach. "Which can be quite a surprise for the mate in question, 'specially if they don't like us right off the bat."

  He coughed. "Er, so to speak."

  "He did come on a little strong," Jamie said, thinking back to that morning at the courthouse. "With the glaring and the jaw clenching and acting like super captain alpha and all that. But here's the thing - it didn't seem like an act. He really, honestly, seemed like he was doing what was in his heart."

  "Always does," Boston said. "It's got him in trouble a time or two or eight. But that's a different sort of thing. It's about time he followed his heart in something that really matters."

  Before Jamie could respond, Maude came back from the kitchen with her own slice of pie, and a disarmingly large cup of coffee. "Won't you stop teasing the poor girl and just tell her one of the four places Ryan might have gone? You know that's why she's here."

  "Well, Moo-maw," he said, "I was waiting until she asked. Seein' how long it took. Unfortunately, she's far too polite for any of that so I thought we may just sit here forever until she moved in. That way, whenever Ryan came back from his little retreat, he'd find her here and there'd be no more issue. Everything would solve itself."

  "Well ain't you just thought a' everything?" Maude chuckled. "Look at Chuck Woollery over here, getting everyone all ready for mating without them even knowing it."

  Maude sat down and took a similar sized bite to those Boston had taken. "Now look, there are three places Ryan goes when he wants to get away."

  "I thought you said four?" Jamie asked.

  "Well, one of them is the back of the house. And I haven't seen him there, so there are three places he might go."

  For the next several minutes, Maude and Boston agreed, disagreed, and debated on the various places that their nephew went when he was getting away. Through the whole thing, Jamie never thought to ask them why he'd gone away if he was sending her all those letters, and evidently, trying to get her attention.

  "Actually," Jamie asked, after the maps had been drawn and directions given. "Are you sure he wants me to find him? I mean, I don't want to intrude if he's off gallivanting around and doing whatever it is bears do when they're trying to get away from it all. Honestly all I’m going on – the only reason I came – is because I got a bunch of, er, kinda naughty poems in the mail. Which, I know, doesn’t seem like romantic courting, but..."

  "That would be a heavy dose of pining after you, and also moping," Boston said. "Lots of moping. Were they limericks? That boy could rattle off a dirty limerick if he were staring down the barrel of a pistol aimed at his head. Matter of fact, I think he’s done just that."

  Jamie tried to stifle a laugh. “I’ll just say that I’m too embarrassed to recite any of them, but, yep, you nailed it.”

  "Oh, he isn't moping, he's just... well, he's Ryan, that's all. Brooding sort of person, he gets to be from time to time. The limericks are how he deals with it, I guess. I told him to take up knitting more seriously, but he never listens."

  Jamie was still chewing her lip, still wondering if she was treading into territory where she wasn't entirely wanted.

  At some point, I'm just going to have to start taking these leaps instead of worrying about them so damn much. At some point I'm going to learn that regret hurts a lot worse than never having done something in the first place and missing the chance forever.

  From the way she looked, Boston and Maude could both easily tell that she had steeled her nerves, she was ready to go looking for someone she might not find.

  Like she could read Jamie's mind, Maude cleared her throat and said, "You know, dear, it's always worth it."

  "What is?" Jamie asked, already knowing the answer.

  "The things you're feeling, the things he's feeling - it's never easy for anyone to admit that it’s the first time they knew something was right. But I bet the first time you saw that ridiculous flannel shirt he never stops wearing, something in your gut told you there was a reason you couldn't look away from him."

  Jamie studied her face, letting her thoughts roll around inside her skull for a moment. When he got all growly with Erik, I wanted to dive across that damn table and start gnawing on those biceps is what she wanted to say. Instead, she just looked down at the floor for a second and offered a smile and a "you're probably right."

  *

  The first place she checked was entirely uncomfortable looking - just a rocky outcropping that overlooked the Greater James River. Jamie could see how it would appeal to someone wanting to get away from civilization, but with the constant spray of river water coming off the rapids underneath the outcropping, she was fairly satisfied with not finding her bear.

  As she beat her wings, casually sweeping and swooping to the next place, which was about thirty miles from the first, and of course, deep in the damn woods, the sky began to thicken and grow heavy. Fat, silver-bottomed clouds and a telltale blue haze on the horizon meant rain was coming, and from the smell in the air, it wasn't going to be a light fall shower.

  In the distance, Jamie could hear the drumbeat of raindrops, and knew that sooner than later, she'd need to find a place to wait out the storm. She didn't mind a little rain shower every now and then, but as dangerous as storms can be when you're on a golf course, it's an even worse idea to be up in the air, bobbing around just waiting to get beaten to death by hail.

  The thought of singed hair and twitching muscles was entertaining enough when it was in a movie, but Jamie decided she'd rather avoid being zapped out of the sky, at least until she got to the bottom of who this mysterious Ryan Drake actually was, and why he'd captured her heart as unflinchingly as he had.

  She dropped her left shoulder and slid down, down, down until she felt spongy forest beneath her feet. The squish of old, wet leaves, the give of ground that wasn't entirely solid, was both familiar to her and still a little unsettling.

  "And... where are you supposed to be?" she asked, double checking the roughly sketched map. "Circled the whole place," she said to herself. And she had - the entire area marked with a red splotch of ink was, according to Maude, the place Ryan had marked out for them the first time he ran off. She said he probably had a den or a cave or something staked out that he rested in, relaxed, let himself think.

  "If I were a bear, where would I go?"

  Jamie crouched under a low-hanging branch and poked around for any sign of ursine life. With a heavy sigh, she realized that even if he were here that there was absolutely no sign of shelter, nothing to see. She lifted off once again, hoping - although with a heavy sense of self-preserving skepticism - that she'd find him at the third place.

  Maude mentioned he had a cave he used from time to time, which sounded both dry and promising, since Jamie hadn't come across one of those yet in her search.

  Then again, it could be nothing. This whole stupid thing could be nothing. She tried to make herself believe that, as though not having to bother with her own feelings would make them vanish like irritating gremlins on the wings of an airplane. Of course, pretending Glenn the "fairy" didn't exist didn't make him any less likely to douse a person with a handful of glitter, so maybe that wasn't always a cure-all.

  As Jamie pitched, to the right this time, a dark spot caught her eye. A hollow – a cave, perhaps? She descended in slow, careful spirals, partially to prolong the disappointment she feared at not finding Ryan, and partially to make sure she didn't run headlong into any unseen rocks or trees. The long shadows of afternoon were being quickly swallowed by the steel gray of a late autumn dusk, and alongside the coming rain, that meant vision was harder than usual to trust.

  Her heel clicked against the soft slate of the cave's entrance as Jamie squinted, letting her eyes adjust to the almost nonexistent
light within. "Hello?" she called. "Anyone in there?"

  Something scurried past her foot, which of course made Jamie squeal and recoil, and then immediately feel like a giant idiot when it turned out to be a tiny possum skirting the edge of the cave opposite where she stood. For a second, the passing thought that maybe she went to high school with that possum crossed her mind, as it often did when she encountered random animals in Jamesburg. It turned out to almost never be the case, though. Almost.

  "Ryan?" she called again.

  "Ryan... Ryan... Ry... Ry..." came the cave's echoing answer. It was an echo she felt not just in her ears, in her head, but in her heart. The hollowness around her was almost oppressive. If not for the fact that just then, rain started pattering against the outside rock face, she would have been entirely upset by the total lack of a bear. As it was, she felt only mostly disappointed instead of completely.

  She gathered her skirt in a bunch around her hips so she could sit, and reclined against the wall nearest the mouth of the cave, watching the rain drip down the rock face and splat against the ground before soaking back into the earth.

  "How do I always do this to myself?" she asked, sort of wishing the possum would come back so at least she wouldn't be talking to herself. "Up come the hopes, and then down they go."

  She sighed, heavily, and nudged a rock with her toe before kicking at it, sending the little stone skittering across the cave floor and out into the woods. She scratched the soft limestone above her head, digging a little notch with her fingernail, and then stretched her legs out in front of herself, and reclined her head against the stone. The cool dampness penetrated to her bones, and shortly, Jamie found herself shivering, but still glad she was dry.

  Outside, the storm started to whip the firs back and forth. "Hell of a storm," she said, to keep herself company. "Good thing I'm not a thousand feet up, that might be just about the worst thing ever."

  "I'm glad too."

  "What the fuck was that?!" Jamie shot to her feet, immediately falling to a low ready position. "Who’s there? Talk, now!"