by Zoe Chant
"No hassle at all. I've got the time, and I'd love to do a little dirt-moving with the 'dozer. I'd feel better about it if you weren't having to take your life in your hands every time you drive up that hill."
"It's not that bad," she said, laughing. Still, she remembered the feeling that the car was about to flip over backwards on her. It would be very nice to not have to deal with that. "But thank you. That's really—"
Cody curled a finger under her chin, tipping her face up. Her stomach flipped as she found herself looking into his blue-gray eyes from very close.
"... neighborly of you," she finished in a murmur. Although the feelings she was having right now weren't neighborly in the slightest.
"It's my pleasure," he murmured, in a voice that seemed to rumble through her as she stood with his hand touching her face. His other hand had settled on her hip.
He wasn't wearing a T-shirt under the denim shirt today, and when she began to unbutton it, his bare chest was revealed button by button. Her breathing began to quicken, especially when his hands slid under the loose tails of her blouse and she felt his rough, callused fingertips stroking up her spine.
All she had to do was take a step closer to press her body against the lean, muscular length of his big frame. She kissed his neck and collarbone, reveling in the tang of salt on her lips.
They undressed each other by the side of the road, where the grass had grown long and soft, filled with fragrant wildflowers. At the motel, she'd regretted not having a more romantic setting for the first time they'd made love. But she couldn't have asked for a more beautiful place than this. The only background music they needed was the gentle murmuring of the creek in the background and the wind fluttering the leaves overhead, and the sun-warmed grass was soft under them. She felt the tiniest bit exposed, making love out of doors, but they were so remote that there was no chance anyone would come along and bother them. As far as she could tell, no one had been to this place in the entire time the property had been unoccupied.
Cody laid her back in the grass. At the motel, their lovemaking had been fast and urgent. This time it was gentle and slow. There was no hurry. He kissed her skin, every inch of it. His skilled tongue and fingers coaxed a first spine-tingling orgasm out of her before he slid into her, filling her with his heat.
When at last he came, she came again, arching under him, their bodies melding in a white-hot union.
Cody rolled off her into the grass, and they lay together, letting their breathing settle and the sweat dry on their bodies.
"I've never had sex out of doors before," Crystal said, pushing herself up on her elbow.
"Like it?"
"Yes, although ..." She flinched, and flicked off an ant that was crawling on her arm. "There are a few—how should I put this?—a few bugs in the system. I think I've got bits of grass in places I don't really want grass. Too bad the shower at the house isn't working yet."
Cody laughed and sat up. "I know someone who might be able to do something about that for you. I've had a little experience with plumbing."
"Okay, cutting my grass is one thing, but you don't need to work on my plumbing too." His grin turned playfully lascivious. She poked him in the arm. "You know what I mean."
"I can at least take a look at it. In fact, I want to get back to the house anyway, because I don't know about you, but I am starving."
Crystal scrambled to her feet, gathering up her clothes, and in a fit of playfulness she cried, "Race you!"
It turned out not to be much of a race. Barefoot, she slowed down instantly once she got into the freshly mown stubble, jabbed her foot on something, and hopped on one leg, cursing. Cody loped up behind her with his clothes and boots tucked into the crook of his arm, stopped, and started getting dressed lazily while watching her.
"Admiring the view, huh?" she asked, straightening up from rubbing her foot.
"Just a little bit." His smile faded, turning serious. "You probably shouldn't walk around the house barefoot 'til we get it cleaned up. There might be broken glass or rusty nails hidden in the grass."
She sighed and stepped into her underwear. "You're right. There's just so much to do ... I've barely scratched the surface of it so far."
"Well," Cody said, "you've got help. You don't have to do it alone."
She smiled at him, as his boyish grin caught at her heart and sparked a new surge of heat between her legs. And she tried not to think about St. Louis—tried to forget that in a little over a week, she needed to do the responsible thing, put all of this behind her, and get back to her real life in the city.
8. Cody
The next few days flew by, and somehow there never seemed to be a chance to bring up the topic of shifters. They were always too busy.
Cody rented the Spilworths' bulldozer for a day. Crystal watched from a safe distance, her eyes wide and her face shining with admiration, as he used the machine's big blade to push dirt out of the way on the farm side of the creek, making a road cut right through the little hill. After he was done, he and Crystal walked together hand-in-hand down the new, much smoother and more gradual slope, with banks of earth on either side. The air smelled of wet clay. At the bottom of the driveway, muddy water swirled around the logs.
"You really ought to have a bridge over that. It'll be safer, and you won't have to worry about being stuck here in case of a flood."
Crystal looked up at him, her mouth shaping a small "o". "Cody Hayes, are you offering to build me a bridge?"
"Just a little bridge. I might have to bring some of my family over here to give me a hand. Would you have a problem with that?"
"Of course I don't have a problem with it." She threw her arms around his neck. "You're offering to build me a bridge. This is incredible."
He sank into her kiss and managed to forget his dilemma for a moment, but it came back later, as he was driving back to the Circle B down the old road between the two properties, which was getting increasingly well worn.
He didn't know why he was dragging his feet on telling her about the shifter thing. Every time they made love, his bear yearned to claim her, but he still hadn't. It felt as if bringing up the topic would break the spell they seemed to be under. Even as the days ticked down toward her departure, they seemed to exist in their own little world.
She'd gotten the electricity hooked back up again, so the house had power now. Cody had helped her get the well pump running. It was getting quite comfortable now that they had a working refrigerator and lights and running water.
He hadn't spent the night yet, although it was all he could do not to throw a couple of suitcases in his truck and move over, or maybe just drag his trailer down the connecting road and set up housekeeping in the Martinez yard. But that definitely fell under the heading of "things that need to wait until we discuss the mate issue."
I should be wanting to take her home to my den, not move into hers.
But that was the problem. The Circle B didn't really feel like his den anymore. It wasn't that anyone meant to crowd him out. He knew that if he talked to anyone on the ranch, they'd be shocked and hurt that he felt like an outsider. They would insist that they wanted him to stay.
But he needed somewhere that felt like his. And for the first time, he felt as if he'd found it. All his life, he'd worked on the family ranch and loved it. But he hadn't felt the kind of proprietary pride that he'd felt when he looked at the road that he had made.
For all the farm work he'd done all his life, he had never taken a piece of unfamiliar property and made it feel like his own. It was his grandparents and great-grandparents who had done that work on the Circle B. Cody and his brother and cousins had grown up surrounded by signs of their family's hard work. It was other hands that had built the houses and the fences, and even though Cody had been helping to maintain them ever since he was big enough to hold a hammer, he'd never done anything without asking Alec first. Alec was the alpha and the ranch's legal owner; he was the one who made the decisions. It was just
how things worked.
But this was different. When he'd talked about it with Crystal, it had felt like they were making the decision together.
The realization had begun to creep over him that even if Crystal decided to stay, he wasn't sure if he wanted her to move onto the Circle B with him.
Alec will always be my alpha. I don't want to run my own clan. But I can see why Gannon prefers to live back in the woods with Daisy.
Sometimes you just want a place that feels like yours.
***
Building a bridge from scratch was something else he'd never done. It wasn't particularly challenging, just a lot of hard work.
Cody was worried that Crystal might be bored while he worked on the bridge, but she seemed to be completely content on the farm. He caught glimpses of her in the pasture or around the barn occasionally. Hard to tell what she was doing; she just seemed to be puttering around. But whatever she was up to, it made her happy, so that made him happy.
He worked on it by himself at first. He was reluctant to ask Alec—spending any time in close proximity to his alpha right now seemed like a bad idea, because he didn't want to have a conversation with Alec about leaving the ranch until he was sure, and he didn't trust himself not to blurt it out. Axl was busy with his sheriff job, and Remy was currently working as a mechanic at an auto repair place out on the highway.
But that left one Circle B bear available. When Cody got to the point on the project where he'd trimmed all the lumber and was ready to wrestle the bridge supports into position—two long, massive logs that would support the crosspieces—he wasn't going to be able to do it without help. That evening, he drove up to Gannon and Daisy's cabin to see if Gannon could come over the next day.
The cabin where Gannon and Daisy lived had been the first permanent structure on the Circle B. It was a short drive up the mountain, perched on the edge of a cliff with a gorgeous view of the entire valley. When he got there, the sun was just setting, and a fire was crackling in the firepit in front of the cabin. Daisy, her hair a cloud of golden curls, waved to him as he parked, and leaned over to flip a steak on a grill over the fire.
"We made extras for you," she told him as he approached the fire. Gannon emerged from the cabin, stretched, and strolled over to join them.
"How'd you know I was coming?"
Gannon just smiled his quiet smile, wrinkling the old scar that creased his face from just below his right eye to the opposite jaw. Daisy reached up to catch one of her mate's big hands and pressed her cheek against it. "You know Gannon," she said. "He just knows stuff."
"I was going to lecture you two on getting a phone installed up here, again, but maybe I don't need to." Cody sat on one of the camp chairs around the fire, stretching his long legs out. "At least you always know when someone's coming to visit. It would save a trip when somebody just has a simple question to ask you, though."
"You got a question?" Gannon rumbled.
"Yeah, I'm doing some work on the Martinez place and I wondered if I could get your help tomorrow, dragging some logs into place. It'd be a lot easier with two."
Daisy tipped her head back and looked up at her mate. Gannon smiled again, and Cody recalled how he'd almost never seen the man smile for the entire past decade they'd known each other. All of his clan-brothers' mates had brought changes into their lives, always for the better.
"Sure," Gannon said. "Happy to help."
"Now grab a plate and have a steak," Daisy laughed. "At least, if you want it rare, which from what I know of you guys is the way you all like them."
"What's the point of eating meat if all you can taste is charcoal?" Cody bantered back.
But as he picked up a plate from the stack sitting on a stump beside the fire, he remembered Tara's warning about Gannon's intuition. As Daisy had said, Gannon knew stuff.
He couldn't warn Gannon not to say anything without admitting Crystal was his mate, though. And he didn't want to run around telling the entire ranch before he was able to tell her. Asking Tara for advice was bad enough.
The best he could hope for was that Gannon either wouldn't pick up on it, or would notice but would consider that it wasn't his business and wouldn't say anything. The last one was pretty likely, he thought. Gannon wasn't the kind of person who pried into other people's business.
So he resolved not to worry about it, and to tell Crystal at the earliest possible opportunity.
***
The morning dawned sunny and warm. They'd had a run of great weather lately. Cody knew it was going to break at some point, but so far, he couldn't have asked for a week of better weather for working outside.
To Cody's surprise, Crystal wasn't around this time when he arrived at the farm. She'd been getting there earlier every day than he had. Well, maybe she'd had some errands to run in town. He got to work setting up the winch mounted on the back of his truck for cranking the logs into place.
Gannon came out of the woods a few minutes later, brushing leaves out of his hair and straightening his chest-baring leather vest. There was a satchel slung over his shoulder, the strap adjusted somewhat too long. He'd obviously come over from the Circle B as a bear, carrying his clothing with him.
They settled quickly into an easy working rhythm, and already had the first log into place when Crystal drove up and parked behind the work zone.
"I guess I didn't think about this problem," Cody called over to her as she got out of her car. "You're not going to be able to drive up to the house until we finish this part of it."
"How long is it going to take?"
"Not long. I think with the two of us, we'll have the bridge drivable by evening, or tomorrow at the latest."
"Two?" Crystal asked, and then she saw Gannon. "Oh, hi!"
"This is Gannon," Cody said. "Hired man on our ranch. He's helping out for the day. Gannon, meet Crystal Martinez. She owns this farm."
Crystal shook hands with Gannon. Cody noticed her taking in his appearance curiously, especially the leather vest and the scar on his face. She didn't ask any awkward questions, though, just smiled and said, "Hi. Nice to meet you. Any friend of Cody's is a friend of mine."
"Of course I am," Gannon rumbled in his deep voice, and Cody cast a quick look at him, but he didn't say anything else, just went back to winding the chain around the next log.
"I'll get out of your way, then," Crystal told them. "I'm just going to take some things up to the house, if that's okay?"
Cody was surprised when she came back from her car with a suitcase in one hand and a large reusable grocery bag in the other. "What's all that?"
"I'm moving in," she told him, smiling. "I'm tired of driving back and forth to the motel every night. And I finally got the house nice and livable. I've got electricity, I've got water, and I got the bedroom put back together last night." She gave him a smile which seemed somehow uncharacteristically hesitant.
Cody had a sudden, intense vision of what the two of them might be able to accomplish in that bedroom. By the time he could get his tongue working again, Crystal had already turned away. She hopped across the creek on a couple of flat rocks (they'd removed the logs to make room for the bridge) and trotted up the new, flatter driveway, her round hips rolling invitingly. Cody had to wrench his gaze away.
"She's nice," Gannon said.
"Yeah," Cody agreed. He waited for Gannon to say anything else, but the big guy just went back to securing the chain.
Come on, man. Give me a hint here. Do you or do you not know that she's my mate?
He didn't want to be the one to tell Gannon and open that can of worms if Gannon didn't already know. And he couldn't tell.
Well, it wouldn't matter if Crystal spent the rest of the morning at the house, which was what she'd been doing lately.
However, no such luck. A couple of hours later, after he and Gannon had gotten the main logs into position and had begun hammering the crosspieces, Crystal's voice called down from the top of the driveway, "Hey, Cody, look! I found some f
riends of yours!"
Cody looked up to see Crystal walking down the driveway with most of the female component of the clan. Somehow she'd picked up Tara, Saffron, and Daisy. The two moms had their kids with them; Saffron was carrying Baz and Tara had Lexie slung in a carrier on her back. Daisy and Crystal were carrying a cooler between them.
"What's all this?" Cody asked, as Gannon took a break from working to lope over and kiss his mate.
"We drove over to feed you hard-working menfolks," Tara said cheerfully. "Do you want to take a break now, or wait for later?"
"As if any of these boys ever turns down the opportunity to eat," Saffron put in.
Soon they had the cooler open and the picnic lunch spread out on the creek bank. To Cody's relief, Crystal seemed to be getting along great with the other Circle B women. The kids were a good icebreaker; all the adults were kept busy trying to keep Baz from toddling too close to the creek. Also, nobody had mentioned the "m" word yet, and Baz hadn't turned into a bear.
But there was no way Crystal was going to be able to socialize on the Circle B without knowing most of the people there were shifters. She'd constantly be in danger of finding out in the worst possible way.
Just tell her! Cody screamed at himself, inwardly. His bear stirred long enough to give an exasperated grunt of agreement. From the bear's perspective, all this human nonsense about who knew or didn't know was ridiculous. And Cody knew he was being ridiculous. She almost certainly would have heard of shifters already; most humans knew.
But a lot of people didn't react well. Like most shifters, he'd had the experience of other moms refusing to let their children play with him. In Pinerock County, most people were pretty laid back about it, but shifters tended to live in rural areas, so most people were used to it. Who knew how someone from the city was going to feel about it?
Just tell her! It'll be worse if she finds out by accident!
"So, Crystal," Saffron was saying. "What are your plans for the ranch? It looks like you've done a lot of work around the place already. Are you going to live here?"
