Happy Howlidays: Shifters in Love Romance Collection (Shifter in Love Book 1)

by V. Vaughn

  “Just to the bathroom, ma’am,” he replied sulkily when he realized he couldn’t get away from her and stay on his front.

  “Well, you started some bleeding. I’ll change your bandages. Any fever?” She laid a hand on his neck. “Open up.” She slid a thermometer into his mouth.

  He growled but shut his lips around the probe. Good. A silent Bascom was a pretty sight.

  “It’s normal. Splendid.” She ripped the dressing off his right butt cheek. Fast was kinder than slow.

  He yelped.

  “You want some painkillers?”

  “I already told you I don’t want any. Ma’am.”

  She ignored his testiness. One thing about cows and horses, they didn’t talk back. “You might have changed your mind.” A night of swelling and discomfort had been known to make strong men weep.

  “Well, I haven’t. Side effects are worse than the pain.”

  He was right. Shifters had unpredictable responses to drugs. “How’re you feeling this beautiful morning?”

  “Like I took a load of buckshot in the ass. Ma’am.”

  She clucked her tongue. “Serves you right, spying on that child.”

  “I. Was. Not. Spying. I was standing guard,” Calvin informed her with all the dignity available to a naked guy lying on his stomach while his bruised and naked ass was being inspected. Which she had to admit wasn’t much.

  And whatever Bascom had thought he was doing last night, he had been spying on Amber Dupré and Lance Prescott*. Up a tree in bear, indeed. She ripped the bandage off his left butt cheek. He yelped even louder.

  “Sorry,” she said absently. “Good color. Wounds are mostly closed.” She grazed his left cheek with a gloved forefinger. Felt her heart thud. Damn the man.

  His backside was as hard as the rest of him. Covered in the same heavy muscle he sported from head to toe. The twin dimples above his buttocks made her mouth water in a most inappropriate way. Down, girlfriend.

  “All done. I’ll just bandage it and then I’ll check out your paws,” She ignored her racing pulse.

  Bascom had landed in a gorse bush. Fortunately in bear. His fur had protected all but his paws. His palms and soles were inflamed but not infected. To be on the safe side, she daubed them with iodine again. He grimaced but kept his jaw locked.

  “You’ll live, Bascom. You can get up long enough to eat. Mrs. Diego said to tell you she’s making your favorite breakfast.”

  “Thank you – ma’am – would you be kind enough to pass me my robe? Rosa Diego and I go back a long way, and it wouldn’t be the first time she’s seen me naked, but she still wouldn’t like it.”

  Had he really been trying his wiles on that respectable, middle-aged cook? Amanda felt obliged to scold him. “She’s old enough to be your mother.”

  “Grandmother. She used to bathe me and my twin when we were babies.”

  Ah. Bascom was yanking her strings. “That was some time ago. Here’s your bathrobe.”

  “Yeah. Thank you – doctor, ma’am.”

  “You are most welcome.” She gave him an assist to preserve his modesty and get him upright without opening his wounds or peeking at his package. He tied the sash tightly, leaving the burning question of whether he waxed his balls unanswered.

  “So how is Amber today?” he asked casually.

  “She and Sgt. Prescott announced their engagement this morning.” And a happier couple she had never met.

  He growled again. And that waxed chest heaved. Testosterone hung in the air like perfume. She gulped down the scent like a witless wonder. Shift. Shift. Shift.

  But she rallied. “Don’t give me that sad face, Bascom. You’re too old for that little girl.” Amber Dupré wasn’t a day over twenty-three. “And you’re too young for a mid-life crisis. Besides, you’re rich enough to get yourself a nice red Ferrari instead.”

  “Maserati.”

  Amanda shook her head. “Bascom, you need to get yourself a real life.”

  *Bear Fate

  5

  Calvin~

  “I should never have called her out,” Dusty said sadly.

  “We’ll get her back,” Calvin promised.

  “Dr. Arutta’s a good woman,” Dusty continued. “You could do worse. And have,” he finished with a wheeze that was probably a laugh.

  Calvin snorted. “You going courting, Dusty?” Taylor was a widower.

  “Me? At my age? And with my sciatica?”

  “Sciatica, my ass,” Calvin straightened up. He tossed the pitchfork into the empty barrow and grabbed the handles. They were feeding the horses.

  “Nothin’ wrong with my ass,” Dusty said. “I ain’t never had no woman picking lead out of my bare nekked ass. But you listen to me, boy. That’s a fine figure of a woman. Puts me in mind of your mama. Rest her soul. Same kind of firecracker.”

  Mom had been a firecracker at that. Won herself a lot of buckles on the rodeo circuit. And a bull-riding husband. Cal nodded agreeably and went back to refilling the wheelbarrow. Dusty supervised Cal’s distribution of the fresh hay.

  “Ain’t no shame in Miss Amber choosing Lance over you, son. Stands to reason if a female could have herself a Marine ’stead of a National Guardsman, she would.” Under Dusty’s faded flannel shirt a Semper Fi tattoo graced his sunken chest, so Cal ignored his needling.

  “Too young for you anyways,” the old man continued. “You’re old enough to be that girl’s daddy.”

  That was one poke too many. “I am not.” Cal was thirty-seven. Amber was twenty-three. He hadn’t been siring babies at fourteen.

  Dusty cackled happily. “Dr. Arutta now, she’s more up to your weight. And you’d be getting a gen-u-wine veteran. Couldn’t do better.”

  “Don’t you think Dr. Arutta is a little old for me?” Cal asked.

  “Nah. Not a day over forty-two. A female like that one – strong and fit, that’s the kind a man needs come winter. You surely must be tired o’ bruising yourself on them scrawny gals in Denver.”

  Calvin didn’t argue with him about Arutta or his preference for a more sophisticated type of woman. Amanda Arutta might be plain as a mud fence, but she had It. And the sexy contralto of a woman of the world – when she wasn’t giving orders. But after the fiasco with Amber, he was swearing off she-bears.

  As it was, his little escapade falling out of that tree had become an often-told joke on the Double B. It was better to take a little ribbing than to add fuel to that particular flame. He went back for another load of hay.

  He figured even in the teeth of a blizzard, Arutta should be okay in bear. Provided she had found a spot to hunker down and wait out the storm. But she would need finding before someone shot her. Not many ranchers or hands would tolerate a grizzly around cattle. Most of the Double B’s thousands of head lived outdoors even in this terrible weather.

  As soon as the wind had dropped, and visibility was restored, the Double B hands would be out looking for strays and hauling food to the cattle. Every man jack of them would have a shotgun handy just in case they needed to put down a dying animal or fend off coyotes.

  Arutta was in serious danger. He had to find her before she got killed.

  “You hear that, Mr. Cal?” Dusty interrupted.

  He listened. “Wind’s died down.”

  “I reckon.” Dusty scuttled down the aisle to the door. “Sun’s coming up. Time to dig out.” He paused. “You going to look for Dr. Arutta?”

  “I am.” Calvin suited up and left Dusty using a small front loader to dig a path from the stable to the barn to retrieve Dakota.

  This morning, the sky was washed clean as if last night’s storm had been his imagination. Gotta love Colorado. The snow was smooth and untouched. If Arutta had passed this way, her tracks had been covered up.

  Which would be good for her temporary safety. Bad for locating her. The forecast called for another band of storm clouds bringing more snow and even higher winds. He had only a few hours to find Arutta during this lull.

&n
bsp; Cows had gathered at the feeding stations, tails pointing into the breeze, patiently waiting for the hay wagons to arrive. In the distance, Calvin could see orange snowmobiles pulling trailers piled with hay. He checked in with the Double B foreman. Gary Evans had had no reports of bear sightings. And no one had seen Dr. Arutta.

  “I’ve got a heifer that could use her attention,” Evans grumbled. “When you find Dr. Arutta, get her over here. Haven’t seen any bear tracks, but it looks like coyotes got to some of the stock this morning. Hell of a time for our vet to go missing. We’re too shorthanded, with Christmas and all, for me too mount a search party and get the stock fed before the storm starts up again. But I’ll tell the boys to keep an eye out.”

  What Evans did not say was that if Arutta had spent the night outdoors, they were looking for a corpse. Between looking for the dead, and tending live cows, there was no choice in Gary’s mind. A harsh judgment, but one that played the probabilities.

  Calvin, however, wasn’t worried that Arutta had perished. Not yet anyway. In grizzly, she could well have survived the night. The question was, where was she? And now that the storm had passed, why was there no sign of her? Something hard clenched in the pit of his stomach. He pushed it away. Stuffed it down deep. This was no time for emotion to cloud his judgment.

  He needed to do a systematic search. The snow had covered Arutta’s trail, but maybe he could pick up some scent. For once, his primitive sense of smell ought to be useful. Last night, the air had been full of she-grizzly all around the snowmobile. He would know it if he smelled it again.

  Every time he came to a ditch or a mound, he poked his broom handle in and sniffed. Found a whole lot of nothing. Which was good. Since the moment Maj. Arutta had first pulled rank on him, they had taken a mutual dislike to one another. But even though he suspected her of trying to seduce his father, he had no wish to see her dead.

  Quite the contrary. Sometimes he had the strangest feelings for this woman. But he was too wily to be caught by any fortune hunter. Too wily to start an affair with any employee. Besides, she was not his type. First off, she was a fricking grizzly.

  He might have had a momentary brainstorm last spring when he had developed a thing for Amber Dupré. But at least Amber was a black bear. Arutta was a big-ass grizzly. Probably outweighed him. No way was he tangling with that man-eater. No matter how delicious she smelled.

  The sun rose higher. The blue sky deepened in color. The surface of the snow melted and hardened in the freezing air. His snowmobile skis found the going easier, but his progress remained slow.

  His broom handle finally found an air pocket, but it was empty now and smelled like it had been that way all night. Calvin climbed back on his vehicle, checked his gas gauge and decided he had just enough fuel left to search a little farther along the creek before he headed back to the house.

  The snow bank beside him exploded. An abominable snowman shook itself hard. Clumps of snow flew, obscuring his windshield. His helmet dripped. Calvin raised his visor and gaped at the enormous grizzly engaging in a wild dance, kicking up great pawfuls of snow and burying her snout in the holes she dug.

  6

  Amanda~

  The sound of an engine roused her just enough to make her open her eyes again. Her limbs felt heavy. Her head ached. Naturally. She had been breathing the same air for hours. She poked at the roof with paws made of lead, breaking through the snow pack. The seductive scent of boar bear flooded her senses.

  Bascom was astride a big orange snowmobile with the Double B logo on the side. In his snowsuit and helmet he looked even more broad-shouldered and burly than usual. And this morning he smelled even better.

  There was absolutely no reason for her to be attracted to this weekend soldier and billionaire player. However, she hadn’t gotten this far in life by lying to herself. The useless, effete son of a bear turned her crank.

  This was the first time she had been in bear in his presence. Desire rose in an unstoppable tide as if his mere presence unleashed her hormones. She had to find her damned trunk bag so she could return to human. Yet while she dug, she was also waggling her ass at Bascom and moaning like a lovesick sow-bear in heat.

  She couldn’t seem to help the unseemly display she was putting on. Sure, she needed to find her outerwear and boots before she could return to the stud or the ranch. But that wasn’t why she was cavorting and raising her rump toward this playboy who was everything her late husband had not been.

  When she found her bag, there was plenty of mounded snow for her to duck behind in order to dress. But privacy was the last thing she desired. The scent of this black bear was too enticing. She continued her brazen, utterly senseless display. And her instinctive vocalizations.

  Her fricking mating vocalizations. Even though she could only see his eyes, Bascom looked astounded by her romping, posturing and mewling. As well he might. They had butted heads ever since she had come to the Double B last spring. And here she was coming on to him like some mindless nymphomaniac.

  Not only had she literally caught him with his pants down back in the spring, but Calvin had some crazy idea that she was pursuing his father. Which was ridiculous. For his age, Dr. Freddie Bascom was still a fine-looking man and had considerable charm. She liked and respected him. Although it had been fun to yank Bascom’s chain, she had no amorous feelings for his father.

  Freddie’s son was a different matter. Even though the damn fool was scraped as clean as a Roman gladiator and drenched himself in cologne, she found his masculinity a powerful draw. Which was flat-out ridiculous. She had a crush on a playboy bear who engaged in pointless grooming rituals and pursued and discarded women as often as he changed his shirts. Skinny women.

  Whenever he was around, Amanda’s heart pounded, her skin prickled and her pussy grew damp. A fine way for the widow of General José Arutta to behave. José had been her soul mate. Her one true love. To be his wife she had defied her clan and scandalized his. Theirs had been an utterly fulfilling marriage which had ended way too soon.

  José had been older than her. Of course, she had expected him to die before her. She wasn’t stupid, or prone to wishful thinking. But she certainly had not expected José to collapse at his desk and die of a heart attack at fifty-two.

  Even after five long years without him, she mourned her mate. Until she had come to Colorado, she had dreamed of her virile, heroic husband and woken damp-eyed and sorrowful.

  Yet as soon as she had clapped eyes and nose on Calvin Bascom he had invaded her dreams. A fricking billionaire playboy with more money than decency. What the heck was her body thinking?

  But out here in the clean snow, it was as if her grizzly instincts could no longer be suppressed. She felt as frisky as if she were coming into season. In fricking December. And yet here she was, tossing her head at Calvin, caterwauling and flirting with him. Acting like a she-bear in estrus.

  When she began to turn back into a woman, she deliberately posed for him, changing before his rounding eyes. He turned red under his helmet and gave her his back while he rummaged in the trunk bag attached to his snowmobile. Wordlessly he handed her the clothes he found. But he couldn’t hide his body’s response to her lures. He stank like a boar bear in rut.

  “Give me my jeans,” she said as if she were asking for sex.

  Not even returning to human in the freezing air had settled her rebellious hormones down. Before his wondering eyes she shimmied into her pants, ignoring the cold air. Only then did she register that her feet were freezing.

  “I need my boots.”

  His mouth opened and closed. Silently he unzipped her trunk bag and retrieved her snow pants. She crammed them on too, waving her naked breasts at him despite the polar temperatures.

  “Here,” Calvin swung her jacket around her naked shoulders. He knelt before her in the snow and carefully wiped snow from her feet before holding her boots for her. “Better?” his voice was thick. He smelled delicious. As aroused as she was. Two stupid, horny jack
asses.

  She didn’t know which of them was the more idiotic. She for running the risk of hypothermia by trying to entice a man she would be better off without. Or him for goggling at a half-frozen woman whose gooseflesh was probably an unattractive shade of blotchy blue.

  When she was shod, Bascom helped her into her sweater. Held her jacket so her arms slid into the armholes. Pulled the hood over her head while she fumbled with the zipper.

  She was shaking uncontrollably. Calvin probably thought that she was shivering. But in truth desire held her in so fierce a grip she couldn’t stop trembling.

  “Here.” He held out a foil-wrapped bar. “It’s not much, but it’s what there is. It’ll help you warm through.”

  She grabbed the energy bar with her gloved hand and tore it open. “Thank you,” she managed.

  “I’ll take you back to your snowmobile. Between us we ought to be able to right it.”

  “What about Dakota?” she asked, her mouth full of the crumbly bar.

  “Safe in the stud barn,” he said. He scanned the bright blue sky, focusing on the dark clouds behind the distant hills. “I’ll tell you later. If we hurry, we should get you home before we have round two.” He pointed to the scudding clouds.

  The wind had picked up while she was dressing. Those dark clouds were moving fast. The snow on the ground formed mini tornadoes that blew in her face until she got her helmet on.

  Calvin wiped snow from his visor. “We should head back.”

  He handed her the helmet and trunk bag she had forgotten. Considering that the latter contained her veterinary kit, she had to be suffering from brain fog. Should she blame that on torpor or arousal?

  She registered Calvin speaking into his mobile phone. “I found Dr. Arutta. Nope. She’s fine. She was wearing her snowmobile suit and she dug into a bank. Pass the word, Gary.” He dialed again. “Dusty? You still at the stable?”

  “Uh huh. Found her in a snowbank. Seems fine. I’m taking her home. You got Dakota yet?” He paused again and laughed. “Talk about locking the barn door. You go home. Leave three men to look after the horses. Tell the others to clear out before the storm hits.”