by V. Vaughn
Except that she was no longer certain where the stable block was. The snow had deadened the scent of horses and manure that should have made a beacon for her to home in on. She couldn’t see past her muzzle. Gradually, it became obvious that if this weather kept up, she was going to die out here, in her bear suit. Which was more than a disaster, it was a total fail.
Job one for any shifter was keeping your talent on lockdown. That went double here in Success, Colorado, where the bear-shifting Bascoms had turned keeping a low profile into an art form. Even though she had been living cheek by jowl with the family for over six months, she had only ever seen Calvin take bear. And hadn’t he turned that into a total fubar?
The snow collapsed beneath her. Shift and damnation. She had her hairy ass in a crack and there was no one but her to get it out again. She dug out of the shoulder-high drift with her front paws, just managing to retain her grip on the bag in her mouth.
She couldn’t count on that weekend warrior Laura had left in charge over Christmas. Capt. Calvin Bascom of the Colorado National Guard was nothing but a handsome waste of space. A black bear who wished he wasn’t. Even if it crossed Calvin’s bear-phobic brain that she was in her grizzly morph, he sure as heck wasn’t going leave his warm bed to rescue her.
Bascom might be a good-sized black bear, but he despised himself for being a shifter. That boy was one conflicted son of a bear. Handsome as sin, and twice as beefy as any business executive had any business being. But he was practically paralyzed by self-loathing.
His sister, Laura Bascom Holden, who owned both the ranch and the stud, thought the sun shone out of her big brother, but it was hard to see why. Calvin Bascom had inherited his position as CEO of the family’s oil business, and his personal life was a disgrace. He was a notorious womanizer and love-’em-and-leave-’em bachelor. Even for a black bear he was no kind of a bear at all.
But as Calvin was taking Laura’s place while she was away, there was no one to save Amanda’s ass, except old Dusty Taylor. She just hoped that the stable hand didn’t wander out into the blizzard. He was as skinny as a shovel handle and probably considerably more brittle. She hoped he stayed in the relative safety of the stable block.
While she pondered her options, she forged ahead. By shaking her head every few steps, she could keep her snout and head mostly clear. Her eyelashes, however, were full of ice, further reducing her vision. And her paws were crammed with great gobs of snow. As her body heat melted it, the snow between the pads formed hard, icy balls that made walking painful.
She soon gave up pausing to clean her feet with teeth and tongue. After two steps they were as bad as before. And she risked losing her trunk bag with its precious burden of her snowsuit, boots and veterinary bag. Gritting her teeth, she plodded forward, determined to endure. Eventually any storm, no matter how severe, blew itself out.
For all she knew, she could be walking in circles. Which was what disoriented people did. Sniffing hopefully, she took another step forward. She tumbled through the snow cover and rolled down a slope, unable to stop. The naked and prickly branches of an assortment of dormant vegetation broke her descent. She figured she had rolled into a dry ditch.
Breathless and winded, she evaluated her options. Gradually she realized that there was snow all around her. The mini-avalanche had buried her completely. Was that bad or good?
She had air. That meant she was inside an air pocket created by the snow. The brush growing from the gravel sides of the ditch were supporting a frail roof of snow. The air in her snowy cavern was fresh. The slight humidity was probably due to her breath dampening the dry Colorado air.
She could not see anything, and she dared not move much lest the snow collapse and really bury her alive. Of course, she was probably powerful enough to dig herself out – once she untangled from the gorse and burrs anchoring her to the brush.
Probably. And then what? More wandering in the blizzard?
At least she was warmer now. In the enclosed space, her breath made a fog that her eyes and nose could feel. She nibbled on the ice balls on one forepaw and cleared the toes and claws on that side. That felt better. And she had had a drink from the ice and snow.
She cleaned up each foot in turn, dislodging snow from the roof and walls in the process. Through the cracks she had inadvertently created, the icy wind whipped snow into her face, stinging her eyes. Careful, Arutta.
Somewhere along the line, she had lost the black trunk bag she had been carrying in her mouth. Returning to human was no longer an option. Naked, Amanda would risk certain death from hypothermia.
Her ultra-conservative family would curse her for being found nude and frozen. José’s family loved her, but even they would be utterly horrified. And grieved. She herself had no desire to die. For the time being, staying in grizzly made sense.
Given her situation, she was not going to find and recover Dakota tonight. Her job was to stay alive until the blizzard was over and she could return to the Double B or the Quarter Horse Stud as a fully clothed veterinarian.
Accordingly, she buried her nose in her paws and curled up in as tight a ball as 700-plus pounds of hairy grizzly she-bear could manage, and concentrated on conserving energy. She closed her eyes against the darkness and let nature take its course. Gradually her breathing became almost imperceptible. Her heart rate slowed to a few beats a minute.
Amanda drifted off into a sleep so deep, she didn’t even dream of wholly unsuitable black bears.
3
Calvin~
Arutta’s overturned snowmobile had been here long enough to be cold. It appeared undamaged, and yet Arutta who was a big, powerful Amazon had not righted it. She hadn’t dematerialized. Where the heck was she?
Calvin got out his flashlight. Great wallowing tracks showed where Arutta had tried and failed to lift the vehicle on her own. More disturbingly, however, snow had already drifted over and mostly obliterated the neat pile of clothes and the helmet she had left exposed on top of the snowmobile. Right where the trunk bag should have been strapped down.
There was no sign of Arutta’s outerwear. Presumably she had taken her heavy boots and coat, and snow pants, and left behind her indoor garments. Either she had gone snow crazy or she had shifted into grizzly. Shift on a fricking buttered stick.
What had possessed the woman to flaunt her bear? This was what happened when you hired shifters. When Great Granddaddy Clive had been alive and running the ranch, he had hired veterans but drawn the line at animals.
Cal just hoped no one shot her. In Success, Colorado, everyone had a rifle and not much tolerance for bears. Which was why the Bascoms kept theirs a closely guarded secret.
Calvin shook the snow out of her clothes and crammed them into his own trunk bag. He would have liked to follow the prints she had left behind when she took bear. But she had gone cross-country, presumably carrying the trunk bag in her mouth. Making a beeline for the stables.
Snow was already filling the tracks he could see. In the dark, following her trail on the snowmobile made no sense. Abandoning his snowmobile made even less. He would stay on the road. He had to hope that Arutta had made it to the stud.
But although the stable block was lit up like a Christmas tree on the outside, there were no bear prints anywhere in the undisturbed snow. And he didn’t think there had been time to totally obliterate them. Calvin drove right up to the side entrance, dismounted, and went inside.
It was like walking into a steam bath. The heat and scent of forty-odd horses immediately dropped over him. The familiar smell was steadying. The warmth a problem. He began to strip off his snowsuit before he soaked it with sweat.
“You find her?” Dusty appeared in the aisle. His weathered face was creased with worry and he looked his age and then some.
“No,” Calvin said briefly. Dusty Taylor might be an old friend and a long-time employee, but he was not privy to the secret that the Bascoms were bear shifters. Certainly, he did not know that Dr. Arutta was a grizzly. And C
alvin planned to keep it that way. “Any sign of Dakota?”
“Nope. He’s clean gone. I can’t figure it out.” Dusty led the way to Dakota’s empty stall. The door was hanging open, the straw was soiled, and the manger empty. Plainly the horse had been there earlier. A thousand-pound horse did not just vanish.
“He was right here when I did my rounds at 2200 hours,” Dusty said plaintively.
“Did you look at the earlier video footage?” Calvin asked.
Dusty stared wild-eyed. “I never thought,” quavered the old man. “I don’t know when I’ve been more shook up.”
Calvin placed a calming hand on Dusty’s shoulder and squeezed lightly. “Let’s go look.”
“I can’t figure how anyone could have crept in here without all the horses making a fuss,” Dusty mourned.
This was true. Calvin’s entry into the stable had been unusual only because it was night. He was a known quantity. The horses had responded to his presence and familiar scent with brief wakefulness and a few noses stuck over their stall doors. Then they had placidly closed their eyes again.
If someone had helped himself to Laura’s gelding, without producing the kind of noise that would have woken a dead man, let alone Dusty, it had to have been an inside job.
On his fricking watch.
Laura had left him in charge of the Bascom Quarter Horse Stud over the Christmas holidays. She and her husband Steve and their infant twins had gone to Illinois to spend the season with Steve’s family. The Stud foreman, Carlos Diego, was spending the holidays with his son’s family in Phoenix. Calvin’s father had joined Laura and Steve in Illinois for the twins’ first Christmas.
Calvin had once again abandoned his plans to spend a few weeks in Corfu so Laura would have someone to look after her business, and supervise the skeleton staff. At this time of the year, no foaling was expected. Laura had figured that her brother and Arutta could handle any problems. She hadn’t anticipated rustling.
Yet, it made little sense that it was Dakota who had been taken. Laura loved that gelding. She had bred the gelding herself. She had raised him from a foal. Had trained him herself. Rode him whenever she could. But because he was neutered, he was of limited value to others.
If someone had stolen a mare carrying a foal sired by one of Laura’s championship stallions, or the stallions themselves, that would make sense. They were worth the big bucks. Dakota? Not so much. He was a good cow horse. Maybe even a great one. But his value was about the same as a new car. And cars were way easier to steal.
Was ransom the motive? Or revenge? Last year the stud had had trouble with a disgruntled employee who had played some nasty tricks before he was caught. But that saboteur was in jail now*. Whatever was going on, plainly it was Calvin’s job to get the horse back.
In the tack room, a row of monitors displayed video from the dozens of cameras installed in the barn. Laura’s husband, Steve Holden, was a security expert. He had installed top-of-the-line equipment after the stables were targeted by the troublemaker.
Footage from earlier in the evening showed Dakota in his stall. Eating. Turning around restlessly. Dozing. Eating some more. Eventually sleeping. And then there he was nibbling and lipping at the latches on the door. Calvin zoomed in.
The crafty animal had figured out that the catch was not fully engaged and had unfastened it completely. For a while that achievement had satisfied Dakota, and he had slept again. But the next time he woke, his manger was still empty and he butted the door wide open and wandered out.
Dusty burst out laughing. “Will you look at that.”
It was funny. And terrifying. Cal tracked the big horse through the aisles as Dakota searched for hay and found none in the immaculate stables. The emergency supply was behind locked doors. Eventually the horse gave up and went straight out the swinging exterior doors into lightly falling snow.
“I’ll be buggered,” Dusty croaked. “He’s run off all by his self.”
“Looks like it. Think he’s headed for the barn?” Calvin asked. A horse would be able to smell the hay stored there. Anyway Dakota knew the barn was where the food was stored.
“Could be,” Dusty said hoarsely. His voice was permanently coarsened by decades of smoking. “I sure hope so. Snowing as hard as it is, ain’t no night for man nor beast. Nor woman neither.”
Calvin repressed an urge to immediately go looking for Dakota and Arutta. First things first. “Let’s take a look at the barn cameras.”
“Why jus’ look at that horse,” chortled Dusty.
They could clearly see Dakota picking his way through the snowdrifts en route to the barn. The falling snow glittered. Dakota made his way unerringly to the big swinging doors, which answered the pressure of his shoulder by opening inward.
“If that don’t beat all,” Dusty said admiringly.
Calvin ignored the Dakota-cheering-section and flipped to the camera in the barn. Dakota was standing over a partially unrolled bale of hay, asleep on his feet. Breathing steadily. The picture of equine contentment.
“Looks like our runaway got lucky,” Cal told Dusty. “I wonder if the storm has let up enough to get him back?”
“I’ll go check.” Dusty scuttled off. He returned with snow in his hair and plastered to his puffy vest. “She’s still blowing hard, Mr. Calvin. I couldn’t even see the barn from the rear doors.”
“He’ll have to wait until the snow stops,” Calvin decided. “You stay indoors.” There were ropes that connected the stable block to the barn, but stronger men than he and Dusty, going shorter distances, had gotten lost in Colorado blizzards before.
Calvin tried to raise Arutta on her mobile phone. He wasn’t surprised that he couldn’t. Even if she had the phone in her trunk bag, she wouldn’t be able to answer it in bear. No need to panic.
“We’ll hope Dr. Arutta found shelter,” he said to Dusty. “I’ll go look for her as soon as the wind drops.”
“I guess I shouldn’t have gone off half-cocked and called her,” Dusty replied sorrowfully. “I clean forgot she’s not used to snow.”
They both knew that being out in a blizzard was a recipe for disaster. But neither pointed out the obvious. Cal squeezed Dusty’s shoulder. “She was on call tonight,” he pointed out. “And the weather got worse just like that.” Cal snapped his fingers.
“Allus does,” Dusty mourned. “But until you’ve met a Colorado winter, you don’t believe how fast it can go from snowfall to total whiteout.”
*Bear Pause
4
Amanda~
The faint sound of her phone ringing made her open both eyes although there was still nothing to see. She was groggy. Her head ached dully. She was thirsty. Nevertheless, sleep pulled at her. Only the insistent summons of her mobile prevented her from returning to torpor.
The ringing stopped. She needed to change her posture and create an air hole. She found the energy to lick some snow to ease the dryness in her mouth. Yawned. Wriggled a bit. Dislodged enough snow that a blast of freezing air poured over, her filling her lungs and clearing her brain.
She drifted somewhere between sleep and daydreaming, her mind dragging her back to the night Calvin Bascom had taken a load of buckshot in his black bear ass. That incident had truly been the purest comedy gold.
In the aftermath, in order to keep Calvin’s bear shifting a secret, both his sister and dad had appealed to Amanda to remove the half a pound of lead lodged in his hairy backside. She had reluctantly agreed. But when she brought her veterinary bag into his room, she found a bare-naked man, not a bear.
She had managed well enough, cleaning his wounds and picking out the pellets. As she recalled, the damn fool was pretty much as sleek as a boy. Real men did not wax their chests. That rule had to go double for bears. All the same, Bascom had exuded a powerful masculine aroma that made it hard for her to ignore her attraction.
The next morning, she had informed Dr. Freddie that he could take over his son’s care. But, after a night in the stable
block dealing with multiple mares in early labor, Freddie had pleaded exhaustion. She had agreed to check Calvin’s wounds.
When she entered his bedroom, her patient was sleeping on his stomach. The sight of him had made her mouth dry up and her pussy damp. She was way too old and sensible for any such reaction to a man, let alone some weekend warrior. Her José had been worth twelve of Bascom. Twenty.
Not that Calvin Bascom wasn’t a handsome sonuvabitch, even though he seemed to have bathed in depilatory. Anyway you shook it, that was just plain wrong for a bear. Even a black bear. Bascom plainly had more money than sense. And spent way too much time in the salon.
She had squelched her arousal and flipped on the bedroom lights. “How’s my patient today?”
Bascom lifted his head out of his pillows. “I am not your patient,” he growled.
He looked even better with his hair in a tangle and his heavy jaw unshaven. But then Amanda had always known she preferred her men natural. She was just that kind of a gal.
She snickered. “I beg to differ, Captain. I’m a large animal vet. You are a large animal.” She yanked his covers down to his knees so she could look at her handiwork.
Bascom yelped and grabbed at the sheet. She kept her grip on the hem, and bent over his bandaged butt. The scent of unwashed bear shifter should have been rank in her sensitive nostrils. But Bascom smelled good to her grizzly nose.
Shift.
Not that it mattered, Amanda Arutta was a couple of decades too old and several pounds too round for this playboy bear who liked his women young, fashionable, and skinny. She was healthy. José had found her attractive. A supermodel she was not. Anyway, no smart woman wanted to be a bauble on any rich man’s rope.
“Leave it,” she snapped keeping his backside exposed. “You been walking around, Bascom?”
“Just to the bathroom.”
“Just to the bathroom, ma’am,” she corrected, poking at the wounds on the back of one brawny thigh. At least he didn’t shave his damned legs. She outranked him, and it was time he acknowledged that.
