Sugar, Spice, and Shifters: A Touch of Holiday Magic

by Élianne Adams

  “Thank you, sir,” she replied to her old boss, looking him straight in the eye with her trademark fearless gaze. “I look forward to arriving in DC with a bang, as well. They've already sent me a case file to start working on before I head out there.” An enormous case file that would eat up all her free time before she left in just over a month, as soon as the holidays were over.

  “As they should,” he said. “Smart people to get you going already. You'll be missed here, Lia,” he said abruptly, giving her a kind smile. Joe was nowhere near retirement yet, at barely a decade older than her, but he'd acted as a wise mentor to her for the duration of her job with him. His confidence in her filled her with gratitude.

  “And not just by the firm,” he added, almost reluctantly.

  Lia kept her cool expression, although she knew what he was about to say. Joe had known Connor for years. They all skied together, and Joe and Connor both enjoyed fly fishing during the summer months. She was sure they shared a lot of man-talk, whatever that might be, although of course Joe had no idea about Connor's true nature. No humans knew about shifters. It made for a huge advantage in the legal world, especially since wolf shifters could literally sniff out lies and read a person's character much more easily and quickly than any human ever could.

  But all Joe said was, “This just means I'll have to be the one who keeps whupping his ass on the slopes now. Since you're the best skier of the three of us.” He tipped his head in appreciation of that fact.

  She couldn't help but let a little, more genuine smile of her own slip through. So she was kind of competitive. Okay, very competitive. Yes, she was a better skier than either her soon-to-be-former boss or her mate, even though they'd both grown up here and skied at the expert-only resort in the even more remote town of Silverton. But Lia liked to be the best at everything.

  Should be no best between mates. Should be only together, her wolf murmured in her head, lifting her head briefly to raise a slightly curled lip. Then she put her head down again, back still firmly to Lia.

  Struggling to keep the upbeat expression on her face, she said to Joe, “I'll be back to visit as often as I can, you know. So I'll be sure to keep you both on your toes at least a few times this winter.”

  Joe snorted. “When you visit here, missy, you and Connor will be so wrapped up in each other you won't have time for the slopes. Can't believe you guys have been married for five years already. Still act like newlyweds.”

  Lia swallowed past the sudden little lump in her throat. Joe had no way of knowing, of course, that there'd been a marked chill between her and Connor for the past month or so.

  “Well,” she said in brisk tones, glancing around the courtroom for an escape hatch. Thank god, there was one. “I need to catch defending counsel and work something out. See you back at the office?”

  “You know it, kid,” Joe said affectionately, making her sputter a tiny laugh despite herself. Their personal joke over the years was that he called her “kid” all the time, even though anyone else in the local legal world who dared to do something like that would likely get their head snapped off and served to them for dinner.

  “Thanks.” She gave him a half smile good-bye and quickly veered off to finish up her job for the day.

  She wanted her new job. Badly. Nothing was going to change her mind. Not a really cool boss who had turned into a friend, not the mountains her wolf loved to run in, and not even the one person in the world who had the power to break her like no one else could.

  No, not even Connor could change her mind.

  Inside, her wolf let out the smallest, quietest howl she could, ears drooping. Lia clamped down hard on the inside of her cheek, shushed her wolf as sternly as she could, and kept moving forward.

  — — —

  Connor stopped at the store on the way home. His wolf curled his nose in disdain as they passed the packaged meat aisle—why humans resorted to such bland, boring meals when one could be hunting down a fresh kill instead completely mystified his wolf—but Connor just chuckled to himself. It was an old back and forth between his sides. He wasn't here for meat, anyway. He needed a few sundry items.

  Most importantly, he needed flowers. Sure, it might be a little cheesy to pick them up at the grocery store, but the flowers here were actually really nice, not to mention the florist had closed a few hours ago. Connor glanced at his watch.

  “Damn,” he muttered, walking faster and trying to dodge shopping carts. It was a quarter till eight. He and Lia had long been accustomed to one another's long, irregular hours, but he wanted to hear about her day and spend some good time with her this evening. This had been a big day for her last case in Durango, he knew. Joe had texted him earlier that his pet wolf—a joke that hit a little close to home, but Joe would never know that, so Connor and Lia always played along—had nailed it as usual, but Connor loved hearing about Lia's trials straight from her.

  Mate, his wolf thought, thinking longingly of Lia in her wolf form, all sleek blonde like the golden color of her human hair. All power and grace and unstoppable focus, just like her human side. All his.

  Feeling a bit uplifted as he thought of her, Connor picked out a sumptuous bouquet of lilies with petals streaked soft orange and creamy white, her favorites. Hmm. Maybe he'd even get a bottle of champagne to celebrate her good day in court. They really hadn't seen much of one another lately, and time was running out.

  His lips pressed together at that thought. No. Not the time to go there. They had one month left together. He planned to make the most of it. Well, what he could with his schedule. His wolf gave him a tail flick at that idea, and Connor ruefully nodded to himself. The clinic had begun to eat so much of his time he hadn't even gone on a run as his wolf in weeks.

  Lia hadn't gone on a run in over a month. Worse, nor had they done more than share a quick kiss some mornings or late in the evenings, depending on who was coming or going. It was no way for a man to live with his wife. Or a wolf to live with his mate. Tonight, we'll change that, he thought, firming his resolve to not be too exhausted to make love to his own mate. His wolf perked up at the thought, urging him to move faster and get home to her.

  Connor was almost to his car, feeling lighter than he had all day as he carefully picked his way through the icy lot, when his phone burbled at him from his pocket. He had to juggle the flowers and the bag he held before he could get to it and swipe the screen with his finger. He smiled when he saw Lia's gorgeous face grinning up from next to her text message, but the words flattened him.

  Staying at office late to keep going over new case file. Trial was great today! Kicked them hard. Don't wait up. Love you.

  Something cold and heavy slipped over Connor. His wolf grumbled something about needing to see his mate, now, but Connor ignored it. Lia would be so consumed in her file that she wouldn't be too excited to see him if he decided to swing by her office. Not when she had so much riding on this new job.

  “We both do,” he said aloud, thinking about the rapidly growing pile of bills sitting on his office desk. The knowledge that his mate was going to carry the burden of those bills weighed just as heavily on him, adding to the overall stress of the entire damned situation. Connor was a thoroughly modern guy, but the thought of his mate bailing him out because he was a softy when it came to his patients rankled. He'd applied for all the grants he could, and the latest rejection had arrived just yesterday. Even so, he couldn't start to turn away those who couldn't pay. Not even if it meant Lia not only was leaving to pursue her own goals, she would be funding his dream as well.

  Damn it to hell, this was supposed to be the festive season. The season of parties, laughter, tinkling sleigh bells and all that. Not a season of bleak sadness about everything in his life. Even his mate. Especially his mate.

  His wolf whined insistently in his head, blasting Connor's mind with happy images of Lia. Lia laughing, Lia playing, Lia hunting with him. Just Lia.

  Closing his eyes for a moment, he opened them with a sigh
. He had to let her go for all the complicated reasons there were. But that didn't mean he had to let go of her today. Or that they had to stay as frozen with each other as the winter weather. Slowly formulating a vague plan, he drove home with a faint flicker of hope that he could remind his mate why they were mates in the first place. It might not be much, but it was enough for a desperate wolf to hang onto, at least for now.

  TWO

  Wind slapped Lia's cheeks as she neatly whipped around a small cluster of trees, cutting ahead of Connor. He yelled something but it was muffled under his full face helmet. Grinning, she sped ahead, enjoying the flex and curve of her body as she sank into each turn. Sure, she'd miss tele-skiing back east. But for the moment, she could enjoy the heck out of the sensation of flying, the powder-covered mountain, the bright blue skies and cold sunshine of this early December day.

  And a weekday to boot. Never in her life had she skipped out on a work day, but her last day at Joe's office had come and gone, complete with a really sweet going away party. And, of course, a guarantee from Joe that if she should ever decide to come back to the wild west, her job would be waiting for her. They'd both laughed, knowing that would never happen. But it was nice of him to say. Fine, she was going to miss Joe and the firm. She knew the new place in DC would be cutthroat and there would be no real friends there. That was par for the course on her ambitious trajectory, though. If she wanted to get ahead, she had to play the game with the same ruthless calculation as her coworkers, only better.

  But taking one morning off just because she could turned out to be a sweet, sweet thing indeed. She'd set aside the new case file after staying up till midnight taking notes. Connor had been in bed by then, his tiny little snores that she always found so adorable coming and going with each deep breath he took. She'd been tempted to try to wake him when she finally slipped under the covers, but she knew she was too tired anyway.

  It was like they were a middle-aged couple with three kids, for god's sake. Not young, successful professionals with no kids on the horizon, still possessing the stamina to work fifteen-hour or more days, and no duties to their pack other than basic adherence to pack laws and perfunctory appearances at some gatherings. They should be getting it on like the wild things they supposedly were.

  Cubs, her wolf thought with longing, picturing some of the pack's cubs rolling and tumbling with cute little wolf squeals and mock growls as they played. Lia sighed. Yes, she wanted kids. One day. Maybe in a decade or two. Wolf shifters lived far, far longer than humans, and aged with corresponding slowness. She had a long time left to bear children.

  Wolf cubs, her wolf thought, puzzled. Not bears.

  Lia laughed and bobbled a bit, which allowed Connor to zip in front of her on the next turn. She admired his form as they flew down the mountain, the cold air stinging but bracing. Lean and graceful, her mate could still make her breath catch when she looked at him. Even if the last time he had touched her with any real sort of passion was too long ago.

  Problem, her wolf thought.

  Yes. It was a problem, and one both Lia and Connor were perfectly aware of. Shifters enjoyed sex, and a lot of it. Going too long without sex was actually quite detrimental to their well-being. Feeling her own tenseness just increase every day, she got it. Totally.

  The situation wouldn't be helped one bit when she left.

  When he'd mentioned yesterday the idea of hitting the slopes today, she'd brushed it off at first.

  “I've got too much to do,” she said, giving him a regretful but distracted smile from the little office in their house they shared, although usually neither one occupied it since they were at their job sites more often. But until she left for the east coast, she'd claimed the room as hers to spread out the files she brought back from her old office at Joe's firm.

  “It might be one of the last times you get to go skiing for months,” he'd countered, leaning up against the doorframe, studying her with his arms folded across his chest.

  Connor was your typical guy next door, albeit a really attractive one. Dark hair he kept short but not severely so, a sexy little scruff of a beard she'd always loved to feel scratching against her skin, eyes the color of a rich cognac that really were windows into his soul. She'd always been able to read his eyes and know what was going on his head and heart. He had an open face, across which his emotions could be easily read.

  She loved him, no question about it. But loving someone, she'd discovered over the past few years, was a far cry from being able to successfully and happily make the relationship work. Even for wolf shifter mates.

  Is easy, her wolf had huffed inside, pushing to the surface. Mate is mine. Love him. The end.

  Lia had laughed a bit at that. Her wolf side picked up on her human expressions the same way her human side picked up on her wolf's instincts. Connor had brightened at her laugh, smiling with such hope it leapt over to her as well. His excitement swept over her like a clean, fresh breeze, making her realize something. He was right. Time to carpe diem and all that. Or at least carpe the skiing, for a few hours.

  Shushing down the steep mountainside, which they had almost to themselves since they were just coming back into the resort from the backcountry tele-skiing area, she let her eyes linger on his form as he gracefully took the turns ahead of her. Each move was almost choreographed in its easy mastery of the sport. She might be a better skier than her mate, but that didn't mean she didn't appreciate his own skills at it. They'd met on the slopes, after all. She'd come to Durango for the winter wedding of a law school friend who'd grown up here and was an avid skier. There'd been a small group of the younger members of the wedding party who gathered at the resort several days before the actual wedding to ski and celebrate the soon-to-be-newlyweds.

  Connor, who'd been a classmate and friend of the bride's from the local college, had taken one look at Lia and that was it. She'd been caught up in those shimmering light brown eyes, that gentle smile, and the lightning strike that was one wolf shifter mate meeting its other half.

  As the wind whistled past her now, she smiled at the memory, relaxing more and more into the day's unstructured fun. It had all started right here. She'd first met her Connor only a few slopes away. His easy laugh, his natural kindness, his patient devotion to her, had all come into her life here.

  Hmm. Maybe they should have gone skiing sooner. She'd missed this, but what with preparing for her last case with Joe and poring over the file from DC, not to mention making all the little decisions one had to do when moving across the whole darned country, every weekend she'd possibly had a day free, Connor of course had an emergency at the clinic. She softened, though, as she pictured Connor at his work. He was so dedicated to the local residents who had the least resources. No, she didn't want his passion to break their bank accounts, and she sometimes despaired of his ever learning to say a gentle no to yet another destitute patient, but she really did love the big-heartedness that was a huge part of his character. His endlessly generous heart had been one the things she admired most about him, from when she'd first met him until now.

  Very quietly, she sometimes wished her own heart was as big.

  Although he'd talked to the Black Mesa Wolf Pack's healer, the alpha's mate, Otsana, about apprenticing with her, he'd been so strongly pulled to help the legions of humans who needed medical care instead that Otsana had told him to follow his heart into the work that satisfied him. She wasn't going to stop being the pack's healer anytime soon, at any rate. Besides, healing shifters was very different, since shifters mostly healed on their own. It took a major injury, or more likely a host of injuries, to require the skills of a shifter healer.

  Ahead of her, Connor bent low into a turn, slicing it sharply in a show-off move. Lia laughed, the sound of it carrying over the wind-tossed day to the ears of her mate. He whooped in response, sassing her with a little ass wiggle. This time, Lia almost choked on her laughter. She hadn't seen this side of Connor in some time. Not since she'd found out about the DC p
osition and started to focus her entire being on nabbing it.

  Her pulse quickened just a bit. Hmm. Connor had been pretty eager about this day. She'd chalked it up to his being excited for a chance to strap on their skis, in what was only their third day on the slopes so far this long, deeply snowy season, but just maybe her mate had had something else in mind. Feeling her smile pull up her lips into a rare outright grin, she curled into the turn almost as tightly to be sure she stayed right on his tail.

  Has no tail right now. Her wolf peered out her eyes, which were safely hidden behind her goggles, eager just at the thought of Connor. She always liked it here, even though she didn't fully understand why people would do such a thing as slide down a mountainside. That it was fun, though, she did indeed understand.

  Fun is good, her wolf thought, excitement in her voice.

  Yes. Wolves enjoyed fun and play quite a bit more than most adult humans did. Herself included, Lia knew. She couldn't help that, though. If she wanted to be a nationally known attorney, she had to put fun and games on the back burner. Even with a longer life span, she wanted to get immersed in the human legal world now. Shifters who interacted closely with humans had to be careful since they aged much more slowly than their human friends and coworkers. One day, Lia would have to give up human law altogether, or else be called a witch and burned at the stake for all she knew. But for now, she wanted to soak in every aspect of it. She loved it, regardless of the crushing schedule that was only about to get worse in DC.

  Fun is good, her wolf insisted again, urging Lia to fly faster downhill. Fully giving in to the moment, Lia complied. After all, she had to catch her mate. He definitely, she decided, had something up his sleeve. And the part of her that had been missing his touch really wanted to find out what that might be.

  She caught up to Connor as they slipped back onto the groomed slopes of the resort. They slowed their pace as they neared the buildings at the bottom of the hill, which were spitting out more skiers. Sliding into an expert stop just before the little island of plastic deck chairs randomly set out on the snow in front of the small cafe in the main building, where people lounged with drinks in hand as they idly watched others skiing down the slopes, Lia took off her helmet and ruffled her hand through her hair. “Do you want—”