Bearly Christmas

by Becca Fanning

  But they faced audiences that were at best 50 percent against them. Worse, most of the movement against weres competing in any sport was moving underground where it was harder to keep track of them and harder to predict – and stop – attacks.

  If he saw her, he might call security. He wouldn't know who she was or what she wanted. Remembering his kindness on that day five years ago, Cara guessed he would be polite, sign an autograph if asked, and all the while he'd be moving her inexorably to the exit. If he could help it he probably wouldn't even tell her she wasn't supposed to be in the arena itself, especially before the shows.

  It was like getting an electric shock. Until just then it hadn't occurred to her that being where she wasn't supposed to be was anything other than a harmless trespass.

  That wasn't how she wanted to meet even if she hadn't thought of anything clever to say. Before she was face to face with him she'd make sure she was somewhere her face was allowed to be.

  Cara began backing out of the arena, keeping her eyes on Jacob as if she could will him to not look at her.

  Just then she thought she saw someone else in the shadows as she moved toward the exit. Someone moving just as stealthy as she was, but deeper into darkness. Cara blinked after the figure. Whoever it was, now he was moving faster, taking less care to avoid being seen. Any minute now he'd attract Jacob's attention.

  She glanced back at Jacob. He was moving away from her, leading the horse back to the stables, maybe. Now was a good time for her to get out of the arena, rethink her strategy (or think on it altogether).

  She was moving fast, two-thirds of the way back to the chute that would lead her out of the shadowy arena, when she smelled smoke.

  At first she was irritated. Everybody seemed to smoke at rodeos, and if they didn't smoke, they chewed. Smoking around the horses seemed wrong, though. Not that she wanted it around her, either, making her hair and clothes stink. She jogged a couple steps toward the exit.

  Someone shouted from behind her.

  Cara caught her breath. In that instant she knew she didn't smell cigarette smoke.

  The person behind her called again. "You! Stop! What are you doing here?"

  Oh, shit, that was Jacob's voice. She started to run, realized she couldn't run out on him. What if he hadn't smelled it yet?

  She spun around on her heel. "Fire!" she shouted. "Get the horses out!"

  Chapter Two

  Even as she shouted the warning Cara clawed at her cell phone, freeing it from the back pocket of her boot cut bling pocket jeans.

  She never got the chance to key in 911. Jacob shouted something from across the arena. Cara could see him, waving his arms.

  The fire began to spit sparks. The sound of actual flames filled the increasingly smoky air.

  Cara sucked in a breath and started to cough. Her thumb went back to her phone.

  An arm lashed out, caught her across the shoulder. The phone jolted out of her hands. When it hit the dirt, a cowboy boot smashed down on it.

  Cara jerked back away from the cowboy emerging from the chute. He came straight at her, face twisted in fury. His lips were pulled back from his teeth. He spit as he shouted, "Shifter whore!"

  "No, wait!" Cara's hands went up defensively. Girlishly.

  She knew better. After she'd taken her father's horse and come home without it, and after a few more incidents where her father discovered after the fact that Cara wasn't where she was supposed to be, he enrolled her in self defense classes.

  Her girlish defense dropped. She threaded her fingers together, dropped her hands like she gripped a golf club, lined up her shot and followed through.

  She caught the cowboy right on the chin and saw him blink, dazed. She could have run then.

  Except for the horses. Except for Jacob, now heading toward her, not toward the stables.

  Except for the other men who appeared out of the chute. Heading right for Jacob.

  Heading right for her.

  Her hands flashed up. The double grip attack was good for the first strike because no guy expected it. Every time she'd had to defend herself, the guy she was fighting thought she was going to strike much lower.

  Her hands connected with his chin.

  Even with all her strength behind it and the force of the swing, Cara wasn't good enough to knock a guy out. What she could do was distract him, confuse him long enough to get in another blow.

  She aimed for the throat, her fist doubled, and screamed, "Fire! Horses!" even as she drove her fist forward.

  There was just enough time for her to see Jacob dart around the big guy coming at him with a bat. Just enough time to see Jacob's fist sail out as he went past his attacker. His fist caught the other man on the back of the head. Hard enough to stagger him. Hard enough to send him flying forward.

  Jacob was already concentrating on her. He was coming to rescue her.

  She didn't need saving. In that split second she thought, No! Go! Horses! I've got this!

  Right before her attacker's fist connected with her jaw.

  Bright lights exploded in her field of vision. The world turned wrong side out and spun around.

  She dropped to her knees, gagging at the pain in her jaw. Both hands flew up to her face. That was enough to stop her attacker's boot from connecting with her mouth. He hit her hands instead.

  Her eyes streamed tears. She could see just well enough to throw herself back, out of range of the next kick.

  As she landed on her butt in the dirt, she saw Jacob ripple.

  And change.

  She saw the air around him seem to boil. Saw his face twist with savagery.

  The bear pushed through the veneer of humanity. The grizzly roared, up on its back feet. Giant, killing paws with razored talons struck so fast she barely saw him move.

  She screamed. The man who had hit her wavered briefly and fell, one hand pressed against his face.

  His face. Jacob hadn't gone for the throat.

  She let out a breath. There were two other men, both armed with baseball bats. But when she blinked away the pain and could see, the other men were already in custody, held between security guards, ranch hands, cowboys and a pissed off looking sheriff's deputy she didn't know.

  A second sheriff's deputy was screaming into Jacob's face.

  Jacob's mostly human face. The lips were still dark. The canine teeth still looked a little like fangs when his lip curled back. His hands couldn't be that big in human form. Could they?

  She gulped, swallowing convulsively. Abruptly she could hear. The sheriff's deputy was shouting, "I want you out of this town," and Jacob responding, "We're here for the rodeo," and the reply, "I don't give a good damn what you're here for, I want you out."

  Jacob's face was stony as he stalked over to her, faded jeans dusty, pointed, well-used boots kicking the dust. "Mind if I check on the victim?" he snarled back at the cop.

  The deputy bent sharply, plucked his own sage green hat from the ground, and smacked the dust off against his thigh. "I don't give a good damn what you do, either," he snarled. "Take the whore with you."

  With that he was out the chute, his silhouette disappearing quickly toward the arena and the city beyond, before Jacob could react to the last thing he'd said.

  Jacob's hands were gentle on her as he helped her to her feet. Cara instantly tried to pull way.

  "Fire," she said, surprised her voice sounded normal.

  "Yeah, we've got that," Jacob said. He wasn't meeting her eyes. His attention was trained on her jaw. "Turn your head a little." He put one gentle hand on her shoulder and the other on her jaw and manipulated the jaw.

  She stiffened, but the pain wasn't what she expected. Rather than a dislocation or break, it felt sore. Like a bruise.

  Like she'd been hit.

  She raised one hand and rubbed it herself. The pain made her head swim. All right, well, don't get cocky.

  "Hold on there, girl," Jacob Tyrell said, and caught her neatly as she started to topple over. />
  I am not passing out.

  And she didn't, either. Instead she found herself looking up into big, golden eyes. So much time spent wanting this, to be in his arms, to look into those brilliant eyes. His jaw was nearly square, his mouth made for self assured grins. His face was angular. The only thing of the bear she could see within it was the eyes.

  She could stay here forever.

  There was no time.

  "Fire," Cara said.

  This time he listened. Apparently she sounded enough like somebody not planning to pass out. He let go of her, watched her for about three seconds, then nodded to himself at the same time he turned and ran for the stables.

  She was right on his heels.

  The stables were a mass of flame. Horses screamed. Men shouted to each other. From beyond the arena Cara could hear emergency vehicles coming.

  Her attention instantly switched. She focused on the stables. Owen Hutch and a man she didn't recognize were fighting to get a horse out of a stall. The exit was blocked by a fallen beam and the back of the stall catching flame. The horse screamed, its eyes rolling.

  "We can lever that out," Jacob shouted.

  "Can't get through," the other man replied.

  Owen didn't speak but hammered at the stall gate with his shoulder.

  Cara sized it up in a heartbeat. She could slip through the opening in the gate. She could use leverage to open the gate far enough to get the horse out or the men in. It wouldn't require upper body strength.

  She was through the gap before anyone realized she was there. Four male voices shouted.

  She yelled back, "I need something for leverage," and heard Jacob's voice. "Shovel. Wait!" Thick canvas gloves came over the gate to her.

  She ducked, caught them, ducked the horse, said, "Easy, easy," and knew neither she nor the animal was going to listen to that. Then she had the shovel in her protected hands. The heat of the metal was still bad. Cara worked fast, putting the handle through the gate and bending all her strength to it.

  Nothing happened.

  "No!" She shouted.

  Jacob shouted back. "Do that one more time and be ready."

  She didn't bother asking. The horse was more frantic than ever, the fire consuming the hay fast and starting to move out along the wood stall. She bent her back to the lever.

  Jacob hit the gate with everything he had.

  The gate gave. At the same time Jacob darted to one side out of the path of the horse and Cara went to the other.

  The animal was gone in an instant.

  "Go!" Jacob shouted, just as a beam came down.

  Cara screamed. The thing wasn't on fire but it had to weigh hundreds of pounds.

  Before it caught him, he was ursine again. She started back but he scooped her off her feet. The beam glanced off him.

  They were out.

  Two of the stalls burned. None of the horses were injured, and none of the people. Jacob and Cara stood together with Owen Hutch and Eddie Tyrell, making a report. The EMTs checked out Cara's mouth and jaw and told her it would be a good idea to follow up with her doctor but otherwise she didn't even seem to have much smoke inhalation.

  Made sense. The fire hadn't been smoldering and the smoke had vented out the arena. Even so, Eddie, tall, thin, with a brown face meant for the desert, kept asking her if she was all right.

  Jacob kept watching her. Something about his eyes kept her on edge. The eyes were gold, and he was intense. Fiery. Watching her like she was his.

  For the first time, she was afraid of him. At 17 she watched him shift to bear in her defense and fell in love.

  At 22 she almost felt afraid. The power, the violence, the brute strength of the bear left her shaky. He'd held back. He hadn't killed her attacker. He could have. The man would have killed all of them and thought nothing of it.

  The knowledge didn't help.

  She was afraid.

  But when the police finished their questions and the sheriff's deputy finished telling them to get out and the EMT finished with Cara, Jacob came to find her.

  He'd held her briefly before. That didn't seem enough to explain this. But the hunger in his eyes silenced her. He took her hand, helping her down from the open back of the ambulance. He asked with a look if she'd go with him.

  She answered by taking his hand and letting him lead.

  One end of the arena was a mass of fire investigators, firefighters, cowboys and bears, and the random spectator or two not quite convinced the show was canceled for the day. Owen Hutch was there with Mary Beth Chaudett and her father, the CEO of the circuit. From a distance she saw Eddie Tyrell, clan leader in Holden's absence (and now in Colby's).

  They didn't go that way.

  They went in the other direction. Down one of the halls that branched like asterisks off the main stalls in the underground part of the arena. They kept going until they were somewhere the voices didn't echo back to them.

  Somewhere alone.

  He didn't ask then. She knew he would stop if she protested. She had no intention of protesting. Her fear flared up.

  She let it.

  He put one hand on her throat, caressing where she'd been struck, her jaw, the line of her throat, her shoulder, then let his hand drop, caressing her breast through the delicate summer top she wore.

  Her back hit the wall. She reached for him, snaked her arms around his neck, turned her face up to his.

  His mouth was hot, his tongue like cinnamon in her mouth, spicy and hot. He licked into her mouth with the first kiss, then pulled back and kissed her sweetly, his lips on hers, bracketing her mouth. He was hot as the fire that had just stopped burning.

  Under his denim snap-front shirt his chest was thick with muscle, his shoulders broad, the caps of the delts defined like an anatomy chart.

  Just as fast as he had started, he stopped, pulling away from her. He looked a little confused. "I don't usually," he said and left it like that.

  So did she. "I think." She stopped, as if that were the end of the sentence, then said, "I probably should go home."

  "What were you doing here?" He hadn't moved. He wasn't stopping her from going but he wasn't making it easy, either. "Who are you?"

  She started to say her name, not that he hadn't heard it a dozen times during the questioning. Jacob held up a hand. "Come on. You know what I'm asking. What were you even doing at the arena at that hour? Are you a reporter?"

  "Not hardly. I – " I was stalking you. I fell in love with you five years ago and despite other relationships, can't forget you.

  I'm crazy. Probably I should go home now.

  But she didn't say any of that. "We met five years ago," she said and tilted her head, waiting to see if he'd remember.

  Jacob narrowed his honey colored eyes, considered her, then widened his eyes. "You're the girl with the horse!"