A Catamount Christmas, Paranormal Romance (Catamount Lion Shifters Book 5)

by J. H. Croix

  As she made her way downstairs, she hoped for a busy day. She could use something to keep her mind off Max and to make her feel halfway normal. Once she pushed through the door into the deli, she was swept up.

  Becky glanced over from the register where a line wound from the counter to the aisles. “Oh, thank God you’re here! It’s been nuts since we opened. I forgot today was the Harvest Fest.”

  Roxanne glanced through the aisles to Main Street, which was filled with people milling about on the town green. Leaves fluttered in the air, creating a festive atmosphere. She’d been so absorbed in thinking about Max she’d tuned out the low hum of conversation from the street. She caught Becky’s eyes and grinned. “Me too. Well, I’m here now.”

  She snagged an apron off a hook on the wall and strode to Becky’s side. “You want me to spell you here, or help Joey over there?”

  Becky handed change over to the customer waiting at the front of the line before glancing to Roxanne. “If you don’t mind taking over here, I’ll help him.”

  “Not a problem,” Roxanne replied, slipping in front of the register when Becky stepped away and headed to a counter towards the back where Joey was busy preparing various breakfast orders.

  The hours flew by. Roxanne served so many coffees, she was practically dizzy from spinning back and forth between the register to espresso machine. Meanwhile, Joey and Becky admirably worked like mad, making sandwich after sandwich for the rush of customers coming in from the chilly autumn morning. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, winter was blowing in as the leaves blew loose from the trees. Catamount had an annual gathering, simply named the Harvest Fest, for local farmers to sell off the last of their harvest in anticipation of winter. The event brought hordes of locals and tourists to the area.

  By the time closing rolled around, she was exhausted. She leaned against the counter and rolled her head from side to side to ease the tension. Joey turned on the dishwasher and strolled to the front of the deli. Becky had already taken off a few minutes prior.

  “I’ll be in first thing tomorrow, okay?” Joey asked as he ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair.

  Roxanne tossed a weary smile his way. “Perfect. Thanks for working your butt off today.”

  Joey shrugged. “No problem. It’s what you pay me to do.”

  “So true. But not everyone works as hard as you do, so thanks anyway. Now get outta here.”

  Joey threw a grin over his shoulder as he headed past the counter. He was all arms and legs and seemed to grow an inch by the day. She turned and watched him walk down the aisle, his lanky form casting a long shadow in the darkened store. The bell chimed as he left. She heard footsteps approach the door again and the distinct sound of the lock clicking in place. The footsteps moved in her direction, and she saw Diane corner the center aisle and make her way toward the deli.

  “Hey there. You look as tired as I feel. Crazy day, huh?” Diane asked with a weary smile.

  “Oh yeah. No complaints though. I just wish I’d remembered what day it was. I’d have come down earlier.”

  Diane reached her and hitched one hip on the counter beside Roxanne. A gleam entered her eyes. “Any reason you spaced it?”

  Roxanne knew Diane was referring to Max’s sudden reappearance in her world. She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Maybe so.” She eyed the floor, visually counting the hardwood slats. She glanced to Diane and summoned her nerve. She was tossed and turned by Max and didn’t know which way was up. She could use some advice, and she trusted Diane completely. “We had dinner last night. He, uh, said he never stopped missing me and he wants a chance again. I don’t even know what to think.”

  Diane angled her head to the side. “Well, thinking won’t do you much good. How do you feel?”

  Roxanne threw her hands up. “Half-crazy! How do you think I feel? You know how I was about him back then. I was all kinds of crazy in love. But we were just seventeen. How can I trust anything I felt back then? Then he shows up out of the blue, and it’s like my heart’s boomeranged back in time.”

  Diane’s eyes crinkled with her soft smile. “Sweetie, we’re all half crazy when we’re seventeen, but it doesn’t mean what you felt wasn’t real. Did he say anything about what happened?”

  “Oh yeah. To make a long story short, his mom got them the hell out of here because she was afraid Wallace Peyton had something to do with Max’s dad’s accident. I guess his father found out Wallace was embezzling from the mill. That was back when Wallace was mayor and threw his weight around town left and right. I gotta say, I was relieved he was arrested after that whole smuggling mess, but it’s been nice not having to deal with the cocky Peyton’s anymore. You’d think they were the only founding family in this whole damn town.”

  Diane rolled her eyes and chuckled. “Yeah, that’s been a nice side benefit to the Peyton’s getting knocked off their pedestal. Anyway, back to Max. Are you serious?!” she asked, her eyes wide. “If that really happened, no wonder his mom dragged them out of here as fast as she did. Honestly, even if she was just worried about it, the way Wallace was back then, anyone else would’ve done the same thing.”

  “I know. It makes the whole thing make more sense. Max said he was just so shocked about everything, he wasn’t thinking clearly. It’s not that that’s got me all mixed up, it’s just trying to figure out what’s real now. Maybe he’s all caught up in nostalgia, maybe I am. I mean, he walked through that door,” she paused to gesture to the front of the store “and it’s like a tornado in my life. I was all settled down. I didn’t have any personal drama in my life, and I was totally good with that. I don’t need this, but here he is anyway and I don’t know what the hell to do about it!”

  Diane was quiet for a long moment and then she leaned over and gave Roxanne a quick hug. “Just because things were good the way they were doesn’t mean change isn’t good. Maybe Max came out of nowhere, but you wouldn’t be all stirred up like this if he didn’t matter. Maybe you should try to stop thinking so damn hard and just play it by ear.”

  “Play it by ear?” Roxanne asked, anxiety knotting in her chest and clenching her gut. She felt like she was spinning inside, emotions rolling in circles and throwing her off balance. “I don’t like to play things by ear. I like to plan and know what’s going to happen. I like to be in control, dammit!”

  Diane arched a brow. “You are most definitely your mother’s daughter through and through. She liked to run everything. Thing is, that’s not always how things go. If you ask me, I’ve been wondering when you might actually notice a man. It’s kind of overdue. The way I see it, if Max still makes you sit up and take notice, then you might want to pay attention. If it’s just nostalgia, it’ll wear off pretty fast. If I was a betting woman, I’d bet against nostalgia though.”

  “Did you forget how much I hate getting advice?” Roxanne asked, exasperated with Diane’s encouragement to ‘play it by ear.’

  “Definitely not, but I’m almost old enough to be your mother, so I get to give it,” Diane offered with a wide smile.

  Roxanne rolled her eyes and laughed before sobering quickly. “I’m not too good at playing anything by ear.” She had to swallow against the tightness in her throat as she considered Max and the tidal wave of emotion he’d brought into her life.

  8

  Max stood on the porch at his childhood home and watched while a swarm of high school kids, boys and girls alike, spread around the yard. Hank had gone above and beyond in his recruiting for a yard clean up crew. He’d called Max late yesterday to report he’d meet him at the house this morning. The kids showed up in batches after Hank and immediately got to work under his direction, raking leaves, pulling up clusters of weeds, clearing out brush everywhere, and basically working like mad. Hank helped coach several of the sports teams at the high school. Between him and his wife, they’d rounded up close to twenty kids. Hank seemed to view this as another coaching job and had immediately stepped in to direct the action after he clarified from
Max what he wanted done.

  Max took a long swallow of the coffee he’d picked up at Roxanne’s Country Store this morning. He’d been disappointed to find she was tied up out back with a delivery when he stopped by, but he’d happily gotten his coffee before driving to meet Hank here. He stepped off the porch and strode across the yard to Hank’s side.

  “You outdid yourself today. Thanks for rounding these kids up,” Max said when he reached Hank.

  Hank flashed a grin and adjusted his worn Red Sox baseball cap. “Once I mentioned you were paying, it was a stampede,” he replied with a chuckle.

  “They’ll have this place cleaned up way faster than I could’ve, that’s for sure.”

  As he scanned the yard, he could now see his mother’s old flowerbeds, stripped bare of piled up brush and weeds. The pattern of the slate walkways meandering about the yard was becoming visible again. Hank called out something to a group of boys yanking on a cluster of vines and turned back to Max. “I pulled up the old file on your father’s accident. I wasn’t the Chief of Police back then, but I was on the force. I don’t think they even assigned an investigator. My guess is that was Wallace pulling strings. Catamount police have always covered River Run because the town isn’t much more than its mill.”

  Max took another gulp of coffee and forced himself to breathe slowly. He’d believed he’d gotten beyond the loss of his father, but the past year had cast that into question. He supposed it was mostly because ever since he’d found out about his mother’s suspicions, he wanted answers. If his father’s death was something more than a random accident, he wanted to know. “Anything of note in there?” he finally asked.

  Hank turned to face Max, his eyes considering. “Hard to say. It’s a basic accident report. How much did your mother tell you about the accident?”

  Max realized Hank might be trying to shield him from the details. “I think she told me everything she knew. She waited until I was little older and then saved her suspicions about Wallace until she got sick. As for what I know about the accident itself, she told me a piece of equipment failed and he was pulled into the rollers. That’s it.” Paper mills like the one his father worked at had massive rollers that flattened and compressed large swathes of pulp into paper. Accidents such as his father’s weren’t uncommon in paper mills, even in the modern era.

  Hank nodded slowly. “That’s what the report said. The detail missing is which equipment failed and how something like that caused him to get caught in the rollers. Funny how when you read about an accident, you notice what’s missing if you’re looking. I’m not holding it against whoever responded to the accident, but it seems like an obvious question. I’ve got a list of employees who were present at the time of the accident and plan to follow up with all of them. Fifteen years seems like a long time, but it’s not too much in the big scheme. Everyone who was there is still alive today. I’m thinking if your father suspected Wallace was embezzling, it’s likely others did too. River Run Mill closed down about five years after that, but almost everyone is still around.”

  Max absorbed Hank’s words. “It sounds like you think you have a few ways to look into this?”

  Hank nodded firmly, his confidence clear. “Definitely. In this case, time is our friend. Until last year when Wallace finally got arrested for his role in the smuggling ring, not many people would’ve felt comfortable trying to stand up to him. Now he’s behind bars. It’s not like he had much goodwill to coast on anyway. Founding family or not, shifters were damn sick of him throwing his weight around. His sons were just as bad. You heard Callen died, right?”

  Max nodded. “Yeah, saw that on the news. Didn’t realize it was all tangled up in the smuggling mess here.”

  Hank shook his head ruefully. “I’m damn relieved that’s over, but it cast a pall over Catamount, especially shifters. The Peyton name is hardly spoken around here anymore. With that, we might get somewhere if anyone knows anything about your dad’s accident.”

  A bracing gust of wind blew a pile of leaves in a swirl. Max took a deep breath of the chilly air and looked out over the yard, recalling autumns gone by when he’d help his father clean up before the snow came. He glanced back to Hank. “Thanks for looking into this. I know you don’t have to.”

  Hank looked at him for a long moment. “Of course. Far as I’m concerned, there’s no question I’d look into it.” He paused when two boys passed by, their arms filled with vines bunched together. “Good work on those. Those vines don’t make it easy,” he commented. They boys grinned and kept walking to the area Max had identified for a burn pile. They tossed the brush on the pile and immediately headed back to the corner of the yard where they’d been working.

  Hours later, Max watched Hank’s truck pull away in the fading light. The kids had largely finished the job in one day. Max slowly walked around the perimeter of the yard. The stone wall was completely cleared of the overgrown bushes and weeds. The entire area was cleared of leaves. His mother had loved gardening and the yard was scattered with flowerbeds with slate walkways weaving through them. There were no flowers now and hadn’t been for years, but at least he could see where they should be. When he reached the cluster of trees where his old tree house had been, he glanced up. He’d helped a few kids tear down the last remnants of the tree house. There was nothing left anymore except his memories. He spun to look at the house. The ivy had been torn down, along with the vines creeping along the porches. The dangling shutters were neatly stacked on the back porch.

  He walked up the steps and turned to look toward the mountains. The sun had fallen below the horizon within the last hour, leaving a watercolor sky behind as darkness slowly took over. His lion rumbled inside. He’d become so accustomed to rarely shifting, he hadn’t shifted since he’d been back home. Aside from everything else he’d had to adjust to when they moved abruptly away from Catamount, he’d had to learn that the secrecy protecting shifters was nearly absolute outside of Catamount. For fifteen years, he’d had to shackle his lion inside and learn to live with it because it wasn’t safe to shift outside of the wilderness. Just now, his lion nearly roared to be free. In the safety of Catamount and along the edges of the mountains, Max shifted and let his lion run free for the first time in years.

  Power surged through him in an intense wave. Fur rippled across his skin and he leapt off the porch, bounding into the woods behind the house. He traversed through the foothills, moving with sureness and swiftness. Fifteen years may have passed, but his lion clearly remembered these woods and mountains. He wove through the trees in the darkening forest until he was climbing higher and higher, the ground becoming rocky. The release of letting his lion run free echoed deep within him. He savored the strength and power of every leap. He ran until he crested a mountain ridge. He paused, standing tall and proud on the ridge and looked out over the valley behind him.

  Catamount was tucked into a valley in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Its lights glittered in the darkness. A half moon was rising beyond another mountain ridge. He stretched before leaping forward once again and weaving back down the mountainside into the forest. By the time he reached the yard, he’d only just started to tire. It was fully dark with the stars bright above. He shifted back into human form once he reached the house and quickly tugged on his clothing. A pounding need to see Roxy beat within him. Well acquainted with navigating the thin lines between his human and lion self, he knew shifting into lion form brought him closer to the primal side of himself. Right now, his need to see Roxy went beyond primal and teetered on frantic.

  He climbed into his car and drove quickly to town, hoping to find her at the store. He realized he was speeding when he flew past the police station and tapped his brakes to ease up. Coming to a jerking stop across the street from the store, he leapt out and kicked the door shut behind him. The lights were off in the front of the store, but he could see the lights on in the back where the deli was. He circled around the old home and went to the back door. Standing in fr
ont of it, his chest tightened. He must’ve stood here in the darkness a few hundred times that year they were dating. This was where he dropped her off and picked her up. He mentally shook himself. Even though his lion was about ready to pound the door down, he needed to get a hold of himself. Roxanne had made it clear she needed time, and he had to respect that.

  He took a slow breath and knocked on the door. After a few moments, he heard footsteps coming down the short hall from the kitchen. The door opened and Roxanne stood there. The light from the hall illuminated her in the darkness from outside. Her eyes widened when she saw him.

  “Hey, I couldn’t figure out who would be knocking on this door. I should’ve guessed it was you,” she said by way of greeting.

  “Yup, it’s me. I, uh, needed to see you.” His words came out rough. He shackled the urge to step through the door and yank her into his arms.

  Her eyes coasted over him. Her hair was in its usual knot, held in place by a pen with a bright pink ball on its end. The frivolous touch made him smile because he knew Roxanne likely hadn’t even noticed the small detail. She’d just grabbed the first pen around when she tied her hair up and out of the way. She wore an apron over a fitted blue t-shirt and jeans. Because of Roxanne, he’d always considered aprons sexy. On her, the apron unintentionally accentuated her generous breasts. His body tightened as he looked at her, longing coursing through him. She appeared to be considering something, but then she stepped back and gestured for him to come inside. He followed her into the hall, relieved she hadn’t turned him away.

  “You’re welcome to hang out in the kitchen while I make pastries. I have to get them prepped for tomorrow morning.”