by Zoe Chant
Damn it. He didn’t need anyone making fun of him for getting googly-eyed over a woman. And frankly, he didn’t need to get googly-eyed over a woman in the first place. This was a professional step up for him, one that he needed after getting such a late start in the game.
Most people got into environmental science as twenty-two-year-olds, not after ten years in the Marines and three years in an accelerated college program. The Glacier research project was a big win for him, and he wasn’t about to screw it up because of the way his gonads were responding to one woman.
A woman who could probably be a professional asset, at that, if he didn’t totally alienate her by asking her out seventeen times after she’d already said no.
But she smells so good, his lion purred.
And I don’t need any input from you, Ken added firmly.
***
Well. Lynn had not been prepared for that.
She’d been expecting some grizzled, take-no-advice, high-and-mighty jerk, not that…man.
Ken, Cal had said. Ken Turner.
With the warm auburn hair only barely touched with grey, and the tawny golden eyes that had seemed to take her all in at a glance. Eyes with laugh lines at the corners, lines that deepened when he smiled at her.
Which had been a lot.
He smelled good, too, her lynx thought wistfully.
Stop it. Lynn firmly reminded her lynx—and herself—that he was probably just one of those natural charmers. Anyone with a face like that must be; he looked like one of those classic movie stars, the ones who just got better-looking as they aged. He must have women falling all over him, wherever he traveled for his field research.
And he must be used to taking advantage of that. After all, he’d asked her out to dinner after knowing her for approximately four minutes.
And Lynn had said no, because she didn’t date.
She’d accepted a long time ago that she was happiest alone. All of the serious connections in her life had eventually fallen away. Her family…well, the less said about that, the better. And most men didn’t understand her need to be independent, to spend most of her time out in the wilderness that was her first love.
Or they understood that too well. When she was younger, some men had thought that that made Lynn a perfect candidate for a casual hookup, nothing serious. Those were the charmers, the ones who wanted a string of girls.
So she didn’t trust charming, handsome men who wanted a date right away. Falling for that was a one-way ticket to disappointment.
Right?
Even though there was a little niggling thought at the back of her mind: what would dinner with Ken Turner, environmental scientist, formerly of the Marine Corps, have been like? Most environmental scientists she’d met were eggheads, people who’d spent most of their lives in school, not former military.
And most of them didn’t smile at her like the sun was coming up right before their eyes.
He probably does that to everyone, she said to herself.
I don’t think so, her lynx purred. I think that was just for us.
What is wrong with you? Lynn thought incredulously. The last time her lynx had shown interest in a man was…oh, yes, never. Usually Lynn’s shifter side was only interested in hunting, sunning herself on rocks, napping, and more hunting. She barely paid attention to people who weren’t family.
Maybe he could become family.
No, Lynn told her lynx, as sternly as she could manage when she was essentially talking to herself. He could not.
Her family had enough complications. The last thing they needed was a sweet-talking, movie-star-looking, sunlight-bright-smiling environmental scientist waltzing in. And then, no doubt about it, waltzing right out, and leaving them hurting more than before.
And I don’t want to hear any more about it.
Her lynx just purred.
***
Lynn was up the next day at four-thirty. She lived in an old house she’d inherited from her grandmother, on the edge of town, out beyond where the houses clustered together, edging into the territory that was mostly trees, with the occasional cabin or isolated home. She and her sister had inherited it together, but Stella lived off with her boyfriend and daughter a few towns over, so Lynn had the whole, big, rambling place to herself.
Sometimes she thought about trying to sell it, if she could get Stella’s permission, and get herself something more suited to a single woman living alone. Cleaning the whole place was a hell of a pain, if nothing else, and she really only used about three rooms.
But somehow she could never bring herself to do it. She reasoned that it would be hard to find a buyer, out here in the middle of nowhere. Particularly for a house that hadn’t been repaired in quite some time.
Really, though, it was because she loved the place too much to let it go. She pretended it was convenience, if anyone asked. But she didn’t think she’d ever give up her grandmother’s beloved home.
The house was dark when she got up, but as she got ready and got in her car to drive out to Glacier, the early summer dawn was beginning, the sky lightening. She watched the light filter through the trees, and as she pulled in to the visitor’s center, the first rays burst over the horizon to light up…
…Ken Turner’s hair, flaring auburn in the dawn sun as he waited by his car, alone in the parking lot.
Lynn frowned at him, although he surely couldn’t see her face through the window from several yards away. It just seemed unfair that the very dawn was conspiring to light him up like a sign from above: Here is a handsome man!
I know, Lynn told the universe, and maybe slammed her car door unnecessarily hard as she got out.
She didn’t think of herself as susceptible to attractive men. She was even proud of it. But somehow Ken was so handsome that it was making her weak in the knees just to look at him.
And that was making her irritated at herself.
He walked over to meet her. “Good morning,” he said, still smiling that cheerful smile.
“Good morning.” Lynn was shooting for pleasant and landed hard at cordially polite. That was better than breathless, though, right? “How about you tell me something about the sort of research you want to be doing, and we can head over to an area that might help you out?”
A little abrupt, maybe, but five in the morning was a good excuse.
“Sure thing.” Ken settled himself casually against Lynn’s car, leaning on the roof, but too far away for him to be looming over her personal space. Which was good.
“I’m checking out the flora and fauna in old-growth versus reforested territory,” he said. “GeoSync understands that the way logging has gone around here, what with changes in regulations over the decades, there are areas that were logged a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, ten years ago, one year ago…and areas that have never been logged at all, particularly within the Park itself. We’re looking to get some comparison data to see what sort of ecology arises after different spans of time.”
“Well,” Lynn had to admit, “that sounds like a useful project.”
“We think so.” Were his eyes actually sparkling, or was that just the dawn light? “I have all the official logging records that we could get, but…your knowledge of local history and land use could be really helpful to me.”
“I suppose so.” Lynn felt a bit grudging about it, because on the one hand, it seemed likely that he was just looking to spend some more time with her.
But on the other hand…he was right. She would know more about the various local logging projects, legitimate and illegitimate, that had gone on in the areas around Glacier Park. She knew every area that had been logged during her lifetime, and quite a few that had been cleared out long before she was born.
And it was a worthy project.
“Let’s get going,” she told him. “You can follow me in your truck.”
He smiled cheerfully. “Great.”
It didn’t seem right that he was so happy this early in the morning. An
d the temptation to smile back at him was strong. Lynn watched as he jogged over to his truck, took a shaky breath, and got into her own car.
The drive wasn’t too long, but it dead-ended eventually. The road took a sharp turn, heading over towards civilization, but their way was further into the forest. Lynn got out of her car and waited while Ken grabbed a backpack and carrying case that must all be full of his equipment. He gave her another one of those infuriatingly bright smiles when he was ready.
Lynn tried hard not to melt, and barely succeeded—instead, she jerked her head toward the faint trail and started forward without a word.
As she walked, though, she realized she was trying too hard to be professional instead of girlish. She’d overshot, and come out the other side into rude.
Normally, she was happy to chat a bit, to learn where a client was from, what had brought them to Glacier, what sort of hiking and wilderness experience they’d had in the past. It was gratifying to realize that someone had come from far away, or that they’d spent time in a different mountain range, and to talk about what they’d expected to see here in the Rockies, and what was surprising to them.
Lynn was still fairly sure that Ken knew he was handsome, and that he was probably used to women responding to it. But that didn’t mean she had to sink down to a level she wasn’t proud of. She could still be polite and friendly, for God’s sake.
It wasn’t like he was so beautiful he’d strike her speechless if she looked at him for more than half a second.
So she slowed her pace a bit. She’d been striding ahead on the narrow path, and Ken had been following behind, even though he was clearly in excellent shape, and even burdened with his equipment, could have paced or outstripped her with those long legs.
But he’d stayed politely behind. Lynn regretted her terseness once again.
“Not too much further,” she said as they drew level with one another.
He nodded amiably. “No problem.”
“Can I carry anything?” she offered belatedly.
But he just smiled and shook his head. “I got it. But thanks.”
They emerged from the heavy trees they’d been walking through into a clearing, and Lynn was saved from having to think up a response as they crested a hilltop, looking out over the expanses of the mountains.
The sun was still low, and it lit the snow-capped peaks a fiery pink and gold, casting long shadows throughout the valleys and setting the landscape into a blaze of dramatic contrast. Lynn had seen it a thousand times, and it still stole her breath and left her chest aching.
She looked over at Ken. His eyes were locked on the horizon, his own chest rising in a long inhale as he took it in.
“Well,” he said after a long, long moment. “That’s really something.”
Lynn felt a burst of pride for the place where she’d grown up. “I think so every time I see it.”
She waited while he looked his fill, and when he seemed to blink back to the moment, she pointed out to the north. “We’ll be heading over there. It’s never been logged, so I figure you can take your baseline information there, and then compare it to places that have been.”
“Great,” he said. His voice still had a hush to it, even though he was looking at her now, rather than the gorgeous Glacier vista.
They started off, and this time Ken kept pace with her.
“Have you lived here all your life?” he asked after a minute.
“I have,” Lynn said. “Never wanted to be anywhere else.”
“I can understand why. I’ve traveled a lot of places, but that view is enough to floor anybody.”
Lynn could only agree.
***
Ken was more and more certain that Lynn was a shifter. Back in Cal’s office, he’d thought so, but seeing her out here, in her element, he was sure of it. Despite her short, stocky form, she moved with a fluid grace and strength that he associated with other shifters. More than once, he saw her head tilt at forest noises that were faint enough that he thought a normal human would’ve barely heard them, if at all.
If they’d been anywhere else, he might’ve thought he was imagining it. Shifters were a rare, closely-guarded secret in most of the world. All-shifter military groups like Ken’s old Marine unit were absolutely top secret. But Cal had told him that the area around Glacier Park was unusually full of shifters. That their existence was an open secret around here, and there were several packs running through these forests, living in their human forms in town.
And Ken was almost sure Lynn was one of them.
He was wild with curiosity about what her other form was. Part of it was plain nosiness, but also, he just wanted to see her shift, wanted to witness that grace and power in its natural form.
Of course, it would’ve been an unbearably rude, intimate invasion of privacy to ask, so he was going to have to live in suspense. Until and unless they got closer.
Which he would’ve given long odds earlier this morning, given her short answers and mild annoyance whenever he talked. Now, though, she seemed to be softening a bit.
He didn’t know what he’d done to rub her the wrong way. It was unusual for women to dislike him—Ken knew he had decent looks, and he’d spent most of his teenagehood in a concerted effort to learn to be charming. His efforts had paid off, and he could usually make someone laugh within a few minutes of meeting them.
He hadn’t made Lynn laugh yet.
And in fact, she overall seemed to be a very serious person. Even now that she was—maybe—warming up to him. The friendlier attitude had come across in softer, more sincere statements, not in smiles or jokes.
Ken resolved to make her laugh at least once while he was here. It didn’t have to be a gateway to anything else, he reminded himself. He doubted this woman was the sort to enjoy a casual fling of the type Ken was used to.
He’d just…appreciate seeing her laugh. That was all, and that was surely enough.
Another fifteen minutes of good hard hiking brought them down off the ridge they’d been on into a relatively flat forested area. Ken was silently impressed with Lynn’s speed and stamina. He could keep up with her, but if he’d been a human man, even one in good shape, he’d probably have had a hard time.
“I’d say this is the best place for you to start,” Lynn told him, no sign of strain in her breathing. “As far as I know, no one’s logged it, not ever. And we’re outside the official bounds of Glacier Park, so you’re not likely to find much tourist detritus. No settlements ever established near here, either.”
Ken looked around. The woodlands were still dim, as the dawn slowly filtered down through the treetops to the forest floor. The trees were enormous, old growth, the canopy thick. They could’ve been a thousand miles from any civilization, alone in the silence of the woods.
“Thank you,” he told her. “I’ll get started here. And let me show you the map GeoSync gave me, with their understanding of the logging history. Maybe you can point out where is best to go next.”
Lynn nodded. “Let’s see it.”
Ken dug through his pack until he found the folded paper, and spread it out on a rock for Lynn to see.
She glanced at it, a frown appearing between her eyebrows. Ken was struck once again by the delicate beauty of her features, the way her eyebrows arched over those beautiful topaz-colored eyes.
“Well, this is wrong.”
He dragged his attention back to his job. The map, right. He raised an eyebrow. “Wrong?”
She nodded, putting a finger down on the shaded areas. “These are supposed to have been logged a hundred years ago and never since? Absolutely not. There’s been logging done there in the last ten years.”
Her hands were strong and capable, nails cut practically short, no polish. He bet she had calluses. He wondered what those calluses would feel like—
Job. Right. Doing his job. She was looking at him with a challenging expression, probably expecting him to argue that his information was better than hers. Well, s
he was about to be surprised, then. “You’re telling me my company was wrong?” He put a hand to his heart in mock-shock. “Surely not. Please excuse me. I must go have the vapors.”
Her expression changed. “Most people are more confident in their employers than that,” she said, sounding cautious.
Ken grinned. “Oh, I know they did the best they could. But logging information isn’t always centralized or easy to come by, particularly if the land isn’t protected or owned by the government. The research guys would’ve done their best, but even they told me that I’d have to consult with the locals to try and confirm their information.”
And he’d been planning on asking the rangers, but this was…much better. Much, much better. Ken pictured all the time they could spend poring over the map together, heads bent, standing close—
Down, boy.
“Well, I can’t confirm…” She squinted down at the map. “Somewhere between forty and sixty percent of this. I’ll have to make you a better map, I guess.”
“No need to go to that much effort,” he hastened to say. “I’ll get a map, you can run down what you know, and I’ll shade it all in myself. I can manage it, I promise. I got an A in coloring in the lines in kindergarten.”
She frowned at him. “You won’t know how precise to be.”
“We’ll work on it together,” he proposed. “I won’t make you do all this work yourself. I know you’re already going outside of your normal schedule to meet up with me.”
“True.” Blunt and to the point. Ken didn’t know why he found it so charming that she wasn’t making any effort to spare his feelings, but he absolutely did. “Speaking of—” She glanced at her watch. “I have to get going soon.”
Ken suppressed an automatic protest. “Tomorrow morning?” he tried. “Same time?”
She nodded. “That should work.”
“I’ll overnight out here, so just meet me…” He glanced around. “That rock looks like a good spot, don’t you think? Nice architecture, good ventilation, free parking.”
That got him a look that was—well, probably more bemused than amused, but Ken felt like he was making progress. “All right.”
