Smoke (Bearpaw Ridge Firefighters Book 7)

by Ophelia Sexton

But I can look, can’t I? she thought wistfully. And he smells good…

  She realized she was staring at him and felt her face go hot. She hastily dropped her gaze.

  Tyler spoke. “Uh, it’ll probably be a while before I come back—I’m gonna stop by the hardware store and have Bill Hawkins cut an extra set of house keys. So take your time in the shower—you’ll have the place all to yourself.”

  Mary realized that he was trying to spare her any awkwardness that his presence in the house might cause.

  Who would have guessed that Tyler Swanson, of all people, would’ve grown up to become such a nice guy?

  Her wolf had already sensed that, of course, or she’d never have agreed to rent a room from him.

  “Which reminds me—” Tyler broke into her thoughts. He ducked into his bedroom and emerged a few seconds later with a folded T-shirt and a flannel robe that smelled strongly of laundry detergent and underneath that, faintly of him.

  He draped the robe and T-shirt over the pile of fabric in her arms, before turning to go.

  “I figured you might want something clean to wear after your shower,” he said over his shoulder as he strode rapidly down the hall towards the front door.

  If Mary didn’t know better, she might have thought he was fleeing the scene of a crime.

  * * *

  Mary. Standing wet and naked under the shower, her golden hair dark with moisture and draped heavily over her bare shoulders and back.

  The mental picture struck Tyler like a fist in his stomach. And sent most of the blood in his body barreling southward.

  His mouth went dry, and his cock hardened. All he could think about was tearing off his clothes and joining her in that shower.

  Maybe she’d let him. He’d seen the way she looked at him—he’d seen that look on other women before.

  But maybe she’d call him a creep, rip his balls off, and storm out his house. And he wouldn’t blame her for doing it.

  Tyler wasn’t going to chance making a move too early, so he took the only route of escape left to him. Because if he didn’t leave the house right now, his bear was going to ruin everything.

  He slammed the front door behind him and stood on his porch, breathing deeply of the not-quite-cool-enough air, trying to patch up his shredded composure.

  His inner bear had ripped through his self-control like a wild grizzly ripping through the side of a tent, and that had thrown him seriously off-balance right when he needed to play it cool.

  You let me handle this, he told his bear. And I promise that someday, we’ll get to take that shower with Mary. And lick every drop of water off her skin afterwards…

  And just like that, his control over his emotions shredded again, and raw need surged through him.

  She is our mate, his bear said.

  “What the fuck?” Tyler said out loud.

  Sure, he’d had a crush on Mary way back when, and he’d never quite gotten over her. And she was even more attractive now.

  But…he had a life—and a thriving construction company—back in Portland.

  Why the hell would he want to move back here, where the locals had made it clear that he was still tarred by the brush of his youthful stupidity?

  Tyler told himself that his reaction to Mary was purely physical, just a resurfacing of his old high school crush on her.

  He wanted to date her—hell, he wanted to do a lot more than that, wanted to feel her moving against him, wanted to see her flushed with need, wanted to smell her desire…Okay, that train of thought is way too distracting.

  And I can’t start anything more serious than a fling, because I’m only going to stay in Bearpaw Ridge until Dad’s affairs are settled and I know that Mom is going to be okay on her own.

  Chapter 4 – Unlikely Savior

  Tyler saw the apprehension on Malia Jacobsen’s face as soon as she opened the apartment door and saw him standing there in his fire department T-shirt.

  Despite the fact that it was barely 5:30 a.m., Mrs. Jacobsen was already dressed. Her blue eyes were shadowed with exhaustion.

  Of course Mary’s mom would’ve already heard about the fire—Bearpaw Ridge was a small town, and someone would have called her.

  She must have been going crazy for the past hour or two without a way to contact her daughter directly. Mary’s cellphone, along with pretty much everything else she owned, had burned up inside her house.

  And now, here he was, standing at her door like the Angel of Death come to deliver bad news.

  Shit. I should have told Mary to phone her from my place.

  “Mary’s okay,” he blurted. “She lost her cellphone in the fire. She said that you had some of her stuff, and I offered to come pick it up.”

  “Oh, thank God!” Mrs. Jacobsen swayed, and she clutched the doorframe to support herself.

  She was a tall, attractive wolf shifter with frosted blonde hair in a short, stylish cut and with bright blue eyes.

  Her expression quickly changed from relief to puzzlement. But before she could ask, Dr. Derek Jacobsen came up behind her.

  He was a lean, sandy-haired wolf shifter in his fifties, with smile lines carved deeply around his mouth and crow’s-feet radiating from the corners of his eyes. He smelled of soap and coffee and looked just as tired as his mate.

  He was also Bearpaw Ridge’s only doctor, and he’d known Tyler since Tyler was just a kid. Dr. Jacobsen had always been kind to him, even when everyone else in town had hated his guts.

  “Where is she?” Dr. Jacobsen demanded brusquely. “And no offense, but why on earth are you here?”

  He’s a nice guy who’s worried to death right now, Tyler reminded himself and stomped hard on his first impulse to fire back a snarky reply.

  “Because she escaped the house in her pajamas, and I didn’t want to make her walk all the way over here in her fuzzy slippers,” Tyler said instead.

  Malia leaned forward and sniffed. “You smell like her.” Her tone was puzzled rather than accusatory.

  “I, uh, helped her get out of the house,” Tyler said, reluctantly, and saw Mrs. Jacobsen’s eyes widen.

  “You saved her, didn’t you?” she asked. “You saved my daughter!”

  Tyler shrugged and shifted uncomfortably under the gratitude that suddenly radiated from her.

  Mrs. Jacobsen hadn’t liked him much back in the day, and he couldn’t blame her. His younger self had been an all-around asshole.

  My cousin Ash was right, Tyler admitted to himself.

  Joining the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department as a volunteer seemed to be the ticket to getting some respect in his hometown for as long as he stayed around.

  “Just doing my job,” he muttered.

  “Thank you!” To his astonishment, Mrs. Jacobsen flung herself at him and hugged him hard. “I was so worried—”

  Her voice broke, and Tyler smelled tears.

  “Mary’s okay,” he assured Mrs. Jacobsen, patting her back and shoulders. “She’s pretty shaken up and her house is gone, but she wasn’t injured.”

  “Where is she now?” Dr. Jacobsen demanded. “Why didn’t she call us?”

  Tyler bristled at the doctor’s accusatory tone, which stirred up all kinds of memories.

  He’s in shock. They’re both in shock, he reminded himself.

  “She’s renting a room from me until she figures out what to do about her house,” he said as calmly as he could.

  “You? She’s staying with you?” Malia pushed away from Tyler and stared at him with the mixture of disbelief and suspicion that he remembered all too well.

  Back then, he’d deserved those looks and the whispers behind his back. The old Tyler, the kid who spent years rebelling against his dad’s impossible expectations and constant criticism, had worked hard to stir up trouble.

  Because if he couldn’t be the perfect son, then he sure as hell would be the worst disappointment he could possibly be to his dad.

  Man, I was such a stupid little shit back then.

 
If it hadn’t been for his Aunt Elle’s intervention, Tyler probably would have ended up in prison after his high school graduation.

  Instead, he’d been sent away to live with his Grandpa Rob and Grandma Betty Schaeffer in Portland. They were Ordinaries, and concealing his shifter nature had been hard at first, but Grandpa Rob had been stern but fair with him in a way that Dad had never managed.

  Tyler took a deep breath. “I have a spare room in the house I’m renting. It’s pretty close to the police station, so Mary thought it would work for her until she has a chance to rebuild her house.”

  And that was the moment when he decided that he’d be the one to help her. Even if it meant staying in Bearpaw Ridge a few months longer.

  Eddie’s doing a pretty good job so far managing Schaeffer Construction in my absence, Tyler told himself. Eddie Schaeffer was his cousin on his mother’s side and had recently earned his general contractor’s license. He was a stand-up guy, smart, responsible, and ambitious.

  The kind of guy that Dad always wanted me to be.

  Tyler continued, “If you have a pad of paper and a pen handy, I’ll write down the house number. You can use that to call Mary until she has a chance to replace her phone.”

  “We’ve got a spare cellphone around here somewhere. It’s old, but it still works.” Mrs. Jacobsen turned and rushed away.

  Dr. Jacobsen remained where he was, frowning. “I still don’t see why she decided to stay with you. She should have called on the pack for help. Why didn’t she?”

  His sharp gaze challenged Tyler.

  Funny how easy it was for all the years in Portland to slip away and for Tyler to feel like his eighteen-year-old loser self again instead of the grown man who successfully led a multimillion-dollar construction firm and who commanded respect from his construction crews and his site foremen.

  I’m not that little punk anymore. And I’m not gonna go off on one of the few grownups who were nice to me when I was growing up.

  Tyler shrugged. “I guess you can ask her when you talk to her,” he replied, as mildly as he could.

  Then Mrs. Jacobsen was back with a notepad printed with a pharmaceutical company logo and a ballpoint pen. She thrust them at Tyler.

  “Did Mary say what she needed?” Mrs. Jacobsen sounded a little breathless.

  “Everything, I think,” Tyler answered soberly as he wrote down the landline number to his house and added his cellphone number just in case. “The only things we managed to salvage were her photo albums and her laptop. And she’ll probably need a spare power cable for that, if you have any extras lying around.”

  He handed to notepad back to Mrs. Jacobsen. She took it but covered his hand with her own cold one.

  With a sideways look at her mate, she said, “Thank you for taking care of our girl, Tyler.”

  Dr. Jacobsen looked unhappy, but he sounded sincere when he said, “Yes, thank you, Tyler. Will you ask Mary to phone us as soon as she can?”

  “We’re worried sick about her,” added Mrs. Jacobsen.

  “Of course,” Tyler assured them.

  “Let me go pack that phone and some things for her.”

  Mrs. Jacobsen rushed away again, leaving Tyler and Dr. Jacobsen standing and looking awkwardly at each other. Tyler noticed that they hadn’t asked him to come in, so he stayed put on the landing.

  “Uh, so how are you doing, Tyler?” Dr. Jacobsen asked finally. “What have you been up to?”

  Oh, the usual. Stealing cars and vandalizing the school. Tyler clamped down on the impulse to actually speak those words out loud.

  “I’m the head of Schaeffer Construction in Portland,” he replied politely. “We’re currently building a new wing for the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital. It’s been keeping us pretty busy.”

  Dr. Jacobsen’s sandy brows shot up in surprise. “Doernbecher?”

  Of course he’d know that name; he’s a doctor.

  “I thought you were rebuilding your parents’ house?” Dr. Jacobsen added.

  “That too,” Tyler said. “That’s a hands-on project, which is why I moved back here temporarily. I’m managing the hospital project remotely—my Ordinary cousin Eddie Schaeffer is the project manager on site, and he’s been doing a great job so far.”

  “I see. That’s…impressive. I had no idea.”

  Tyler could see the wheels turning in Dr. Jacobsen’s head as he adjusted to the idea that the town’s screw-up had made something of himself instead of ending up in prison like most people had predicted.

  “How about you?” Tyler asked. “How are things?”

  Dr. Jacobsen sighed. “About the same as always. I’d like to retire in a few years, but you know how it is. I don’t think I’ll find a shifter to take my place here, maybe not even an Ordinary physician.”

  They talked for a while longer, mostly about the challenges Dr. Jacobsen faced in a town where he was the only doctor and the nearest hospital was located a 40-minute drive away in Salmon. Not to mention that over half of Bearpaw Ridge’s population were shifters of one sort or another, and that secret could only be shared sparingly with non-shifters, or Ordinaries, as they were called.

  When Mrs. Jacobsen returned with a duffel bag bulging with clothing and toiletries, Tyler took them and left with the promise that he would ask Mary to call them the moment he returned to the house.

  Why the hell do I care what they think, anyway? Tyler asked himself on his way to where he’d parked his truck.

  Their attitude was the same shit he’d been dealing with all his life. Maybe I should try again to convince Mom to move to Portland.

  But then he’d have to give up any chance of ever dating Mary, because he knew damned well that wolf shifters stuck together in their home territory, and Bearpaw Ridge had been Jacobsen pack territory for nearly 150 years.

  The Jacobsens and the Swansons had been among the first white settlers in the area, and in the decades since then, the two clans had mostly lived in peaceful accord.

  And like all the Swansons, Tyler was stubborn.

  I’m not leaving while I still have a chance with Mary.

  * * *

  As soon as Tyler left, Mary went into the bathroom and stripped off her filthy pajamas.

  As she luxuriated in the rush of warm water that washed away the taint of smoke and stink of panic, she found herself thinking over her impulsive decision to become roommates with Tyler Swanson.

  She remembered him from their high school days as a tall, gangly, sullen boy who was constantly getting into trouble. Her parents and everyone else had called him the bad apple in the Swanson family barrel and had predicted that he’d end up going to prison someday.

  Sure, Tyler had acted like he was constantly angry at everyone and everything, and he had gotten into so much trouble.

  But he’d never hurt or bullied any of his classmates, though. And the pranks and vandalism that made all the grown-ups mad and disappointed his father had made him the stuff of legend around the high school.

  Then, right after graduation, Tyler had just disappeared. Uncle Bill had complained about Tyler’s aunt, Elle Swanson, sticking her nose where it didn’t belong, and other pack members had muttered about Tyler coming to a bad end somewhere.

  Uncle Bill had predicted that Tyler would probably find the wrong crowd to hang out with and get mixed up in drugs or something.

  And then Mary hadn’t heard anything about Tyler, good or bad, for years. Not until his father died in February, and Tyler returned to Bearpaw Ridge for the memorial service.

  Tongues had been wagging when he decided to stay to rebuild the family home. Half the pack, led by Uncle Bill, were sure that Tyler would be nothing but trouble.

  Mary had been of the opinion that anyone who volunteered as a firefighter and cared for his widowed mother couldn’t be all bad. Maybe Tyler had turned out okay, after all.

  But after the first heated discussion over the monthly pack dinner, Mary had stopped trying to argue. It was apparent to her that
some members of the pack, her uncle and boss Bill Jacobsen included, were having a hard time letting go of their various grudges against Tyler.

  Now she realized that Tyler had grown into a dangerously attractive man and a successful one too, if the gossip was true.

  He had saved her life a couple of hours ago. And then he’d offered her a clean, air-conditioned refuge where she could retreat and lick her wounds.

  Even with the image of her destroyed house freshly seared into her mind’s eye, she couldn’t really believe that she’d just lost everything except her life and a few photos. Right now, she just felt numb and utterly exhausted.

  Well, maybe not quite numb.

  Even after soap and hot water, she could still feel Tyler’s touch lingering against her skin.

  And the way he had looked at her with those warm green-gold eyes, as if he completely understood the enormity of her loss…

  Uh-oh. Not again. I can’t fall for another bear shifter, not after Evan.

  She’d dated wolf shifters all her life, starting in high school and continuing on through community college and the police academy, but she’d never seemed to click with any of them. Most of them were nice guys, and she enjoyed spending time with them, but somehow, they had never bonded in the way that she knew was essential for a true mating.

  After a string of relationship failures, including a divorce after a failed mating, Mary had sworn off serious relationships.

  A few months after her divorce, she’d started a sporadic, casual “friends with benefits” relationship with Evan Swanson, one of the many Swanson bear shifters she’d grown up with.

  He’d asked her out while he was between relationships, and his notorious commitment phobia had led her to think that he was safe from any messy emotional entanglements.

  Evan had been the best lover she ever had—enthusiastic, focused on her pleasure, and big in every way that mattered. He’d shared his body and his friendship with her, but never his heart or soul.

  So of course she’d fallen in love with him, even knowing that any hint that she wanted a real relationship with him would send him running.

  She had worked hard to hide the truth from him, knowing that he’d never be able to give her more than a friendship with sex thrown in. But still, somewhere buried deep inside her, she had nurtured the hope that in time, his feelings for her might change.