Sheriff Bear: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (Bears of Pinerock County Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

  He found a safety pin in the sewing kit in the kitchen junk drawer. Watching her hike up the shirt, holding the tails under her chin, and pin the skirt over the round little curve of her belly was a show all its own. He caught a pink-and-black flash of her underwear.

  "I told Sammie when I talked to her last night that we'd stop by today and pick up my things," she said as she worked on getting the skirt to stay up. "Because changing into something other than yesterday's underwear would be nice."

  "Sounds like a plan. I wanted to feed you a good farm breakfast first, though."

  "Is that what's cooking? It smells amazing."

  "Home smoked bacon. No preservatives or steroids. Can't beat that."

  Tara grinned and took a seat at the table. "You guys make your own bacon too? You're bears of many talents, I can see."

  "No, the bacon comes from a neighbor down in the valley who has a small organic hog farm. We get ham from her, too. We trade for our Angus steak and hamburger. Tried raising pigs for awhile, but it just wasn't worth the hassle for us."

  "I stand corrected. Can I do anything to help?"

  "You're a guest." Axl opened the oven and put the leftover biscuits from last night inside to warm up. "You can sit there and relax and get ready to eat."

  She looked around curiously, examining the kitchen decor. Axl had lived in this house all his life, and everything was as familiar as the backs of his own hands, from the massive cookstove to the handmade shelves his grandfather had put up. Seeing it through her unjaded eyes made him appreciate it in a way he never had before. It was a warm and inviting place, facing east to catch the sun. Most of the embellishments had been put up by his mom, the yellow-checked curtains and blue glass ornaments on the windowsill. He and Alec hadn't really messed with anything. Actually, in a way they'd fallen into a kind of holding pattern after their parents' deaths, keeping the ranch and the farmhouse exactly the same as it had always been.

  Maybe what they needed most around here was someone to shake things up.

  "Where is everyone?" Tara asked.

  "Probably took the truck to the upper pasture." When she looked confused, he explained, "In the summer we move most of the stock to pastures higher in the mountains, so they don't overgraze down here. Gannon, the hired man I told you about yesterday, stays up there with them full-time to keep an eye on things. I heard the truck start up this morning, so I figure Alec and Cody ran up there to take some feed and see how things are."

  "Truck?" she said. "I thought you used horses."

  "For getting to the more inaccessible areas, yeah. You can't really beat a horse for getting around in rough pastures like these we have around here. But the truck's much faster, and better for hauling things."

  "So ranching has moved into the modern era?"

  He laughed. "Kicking and screaming in some cases, but more than you'd think. Actually, little family operations like ours, that still raise the calves to selling age and use horses for riding range, are a vanishing breed. Though the current fashion for locally grown organic food is helping keep us going. What did you think of the roast last night?"

  "It was great," she said. "Maybe the best I've ever had."

  "See? You can't beat fresh and local."

  He scooped out eggs and bacon onto a plate, and passed it to her along with a warm biscuit and a dish of fresh butter. "Eggs are from the chickens, and the butter is courtesy of Bossy. Speaking of Bossy's contributions to the household, you want a glass of milk with that? It's nothing like the milk you get in the store. Once you've had it fresh and unpasteurized, you won't want to go back."

  "Evangelist," she accused, laughing, but she dug into her eggs. "Sure, hit me. Is there anything in this breakfast that isn't from your farm, or one in the area?"

  "The flour in the biscuits. Though you can even get local flour if you want it; there are wheat fields south of here."

  "Wow," she said through a mouthful of eggs. "We used to get things fresh from the market, but of course that's not the same as seeing the actual place where it's grown."

  She ended up having another helping and finishing all the biscuits. "It's amazing. I haven't had this much appetite in ages. I usually feel self-conscious about eating this kind of thing."

  "What kind of thing?" Having finished his own heaping plate, Axl was making a fresh pot of coffee.

  "Oh, you know—bacon and eggs." She gestured down at herself. "People can be judgy when they see a girl who looks like me eating anything that isn't a celery stick."

  "As far as I'm concerned, you look amazing, and I love a girl who knows how to eat."

  To prove it, he put an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. She giggled, snuggling in.

  "I feel so good today. I don't know if it's part of the whole claiming thing, or just knowing that Dick can't get me here. But it's almost like I know everything will work out, even though all our problems are still out there."

  "Me too." Axl kissed the top of her head.

  "I guess we need to figure out what to do next. Do you have to go to work today?"

  "I could take a personal day," he said. "But I wasn't planning on it. I'd like to go down and use the computers at the office. For starters, I can pull up some mug shots and you see if you can identify the men who've been after you. And you can get your things from Sammie's place."

  Tara smiled wanly. "I guess it would be nice to have more than one pair of underwear."

  "There's the spirit."

  Outside, the threatened rain had begun falling. Tara went into the living room with her hands wrapped around her cup of coffee, and peered out the rain-streaked window. A few cows were visible as small black dots on the hills. "How do the animals manage in this weather?" she asked.

  Axl put his arms around her from behind, and she leaned back against him. "It doesn't hurt animals to get wet. They just keep doing what they normally do."

  "Even when the rain is falling, it's pretty here," she said dreamily.

  "Especially when the rain is falling. It's good for the grass, and I like the way it makes everything smell."

  The pasture was a bright jewel green in the falling rain. From here, the windmill was visible up on the rise above the house, turning slowly in the gusts of wind that had accompanied the clouds.

  "What is the deal with that windmill, anyway? Do you make your own electricity too?"

  Axl laughed. "That's one of Alec's projects. He's a tinkerer—always coming up with improvements around the place. We get a lot of power outages because we're so far out of town, especially in the winter. So he thought we could supply our own power. It wasn't a completely outrageous idea. A long time ago, back before they ran power lines out here in the '30s, there used to be a windmill to pump water for the animals."

  "Does it work?"

  "It's still a work in progress. He did get it to the point where he could charge car batteries, or run a light bulb. He was pretty excited last winter when there was a big ice storm and the power to the ranch was out for three days."

  "His big moment?"

  "Yeah, except the same ice storm also took down the power lines from the windmill to the house, and broke off one of the spinning blades. We were too busy keeping the stock alive to fix it. And that's kinda where the project stalled out. Now he's making noises about installing a water wheel in the river."

  He didn't intend to have a little wistfulness slip into his voice, but it was there anyway.

  Tara tipped her head back against his chest and looked up at him sadly. "I don't want to come between you and your brother, Axl."

  "You won't," Axl said firmly. "At least, you won't if my brother can just see past his stupid pride and figure out that you're exactly what this family needs, and not a threat to it."

  "What if he doesn't?"

  He looked away. "We'll figure that out when we get there."

  Tara squeezed his hand, and held it. Axl sighed and dropped his head to rest in her hair, closing his eyes as he breathed in her scent
for a long moment.

  "Well," he said at last, "as much as I'd love to drag you right off into the shower with me, I think we'd better get to town before the rain turns the road to soup."

  "You mean the road can get worse?" Tara asked. She followed him back to the kitchen, where he put their cups in the sink.

  "Sorry to break it to you, but when we drove up here last night, the road was pretty good. A little muddy because we'd had some rain the night before, but darn close to as good as it gets."

  "Ouch," she said. "Good to have warning, I guess."

  Axl picked up his sheriff's gun belt and went into what they called the mud room, really more like a little shed between the kitchen door and outside, where they kept rain boots and other outdoor gear. Hopefully there was something that would fit Tara.

  She put on her shoes and then waited while he looked through the rain gear. She was nervous about something, he realized—nervous enough she was twisting her hands in her skirt as she stood watching him.

  Here it comes, Axl thought. She was a city girl. Here was when she realized she'd made a mistake, that she'd realized she couldn't handle the isolation and difficulty of being a bear shifter's mate.

  "Axl ..." she began. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you."

  Rather than looking at her, he focused on looking through the various boots in the mud room, trying to find ones that would even remotely fit her. "Yeah?" he said, head down.

  "Can I see your bear?"

  Axl looked up in surprise. "Huh?"

  "Your bear," she said, a blush coloring her cheeks. "I don't know if it's rude to ask, so I'm sorry if I've broken any cultural taboos. But I've never seen shifting before, except on TV."

  He dreaded to think what kind of TV shows she'd been watching. Shifter characters on TV were usually either villains or comic relief, and everything about them was exaggerated for effect. "Are you talking like the shifters in My Neighbor the Bear or True Life Shifter Adventures?"

  "Yeah," she admitted, her flush getting redder.

  "Those are just TV shows. Those aren't really bear shifter actors, and I bet they don't have a single shifter on the writing staff either."

  "So it doesn't really ..." She hesitated, then moved her hand in a fluttering way, like someone miming snowfall in a game of charades. "Glow, and make smoke, and all of that?"

  Axl winced. "No, that's just special effects. Let's go outside and I'll show you. First put these on—you'll probably have to wear them over your shoes like galoshes."

  He gave her a pair of size thirteen rain boots and a yellow slicker that was going to fit her like a tent. Then he opened the door. Outside, rain fell steadily from a low gray sky.

  Axl began to unbutton his shirt. Tara looked confused. "Easier on my wardrobe if I don't have to tear my way out of it," he explained.

  "You can't shift with your clothes on? In My Neighbor the Bear—"

  "That's a sitcom. They're trying to keep it suitable for network TV."

  He stripped everything off, neatly folding it by habit. Tara's eyes followed him appreciatively.

  Back in the old days, traditional shifters in their own clan enclaves went around nude all the time, he'd heard. When he was a kid, he and his brother and cousins didn't regularly start wearing clothing until they started school. Even now, there was something freeing about stripping down to his bare skin, like he was getting back to a part of himself he'd been cut off from.

  And her admiring look didn't hurt at all.

  With his clothes off, he walked naked into the rain. Mud squished between his toes. It was good to feel the smooth ripple of his muscles under the skin, the water running down his back.

  He allowed his human mind to recede and his bear to come forward.

  By now, after so many years, it was nearly effortless. This time there wasn't even as much of a difference as normal. His bear eyes didn't perceive colors as acutely as his human ones, but the rain-soaked world was already shades of gray anyway. Sounds got sharper and smells more acute. He could smell Tara as if she was standing close enough to touch him.

  He turned around and saw her watching him, eyes round, from the doorway. He pictured himself through her eyes, the bear standing before her in the rain. Even for a grizzly, he was huge, his shoulders humped with muscle. His shaggy fur was almost as blond as his head hair, though right now it was probably dark with the water running off his back.

  He looked and scented for any signs of distress or fear. But there was none. Instead she seemed fascinated, her blue eyes full of wonder.

  "Come here," she said, holding out her hands.

  Axl pricked his ears forward. He hadn't realized it would be so different to hear her voice in this form. His more acute grizzly hearing could pick up nuances and undertones he hadn't heard as a human. Her simple words were music to him now.

  It was also strange to have her be so small. Even when he was a man, she was small compared to him, but now she seemed downright tiny. Her wide hips and curvy body that he'd appreciated in human form now seemed so fragile that he could have broken her in half with a touch.

  But his mate had called him, so he came.

  She held out her hands, palms up, into the rain. Axl put his huge bear nose into them. Tara let him smell her, rather as he'd shown her how to greet the dogs yesterday. Then she cautiously petted the side of his face.

  "Amazing," she said. "It's not you, but it is you. I think I'd be able to recognize you even as a bear."

  He shifted, and suddenly her palm was resting against the side of his face. She jerked in surprise, but didn't take her hand away.

  "It is me," he said, raising his own hand to cover hers. "As a bear, I mean."

  "I know," she said, smiling. "Come on in here and get dry."

  He ducked into the mud room. His hair was dripping. He pulled down one of the towels they kept hanging on hooks to dry off with.

  "What does it feel like?" Tara asked.

  "That's hard to explain. It's something I've been doing so long that it's just normal for me. Like trying to explain what it feels like when you move your arm or your leg."

  "Is it really that straightforward?"

  "It is." He started dressing before he could succumb to the urge to pull her to him, because he had a feeling that would result in spending the whole day in bed.

  Tara tied up the hanging tails of the plaid shirt, leaving the ends to dangle stylishly over the front of the skirt, hiding the pin. Then, with a small, resigned sigh, she pulled on the rain slicker. It hung over her like a big yellow sack, hiding her curvy shape.

  That red hair was pretty memorable, though, dyed or not. Axl's eyes fell on an assortment of hats hanging from hooks in the mud room. He took down a floppy-brimmed rain hat and gave it to her.

  Tara looked aghast. "Are you serious? I thought I was making a pretty big concession with the rain ... tent, but this looks like something Gilligan would wear."

  "Would anyone in your family think you'd be caught dead in it?"

  "Of course not."

  "Well, then." He held it out.

  Tara sighed. She plunked the hat on her head, then tucked as much of the hair as possible under it. "How do I look?"

  "Like a really adorable Gilligan."

  She stuck out her tongue at him.

  "C'mon." He opened the door for her.

  As they trekked through the muddy yard to the Chevy, Tara looked up at the mountains, misty in the rain with their tops hidden in clouds. "One of these days, I'd love to see the rest of your family's ranch," she said, a little shyly.

  His heart flipped over. "And I'd love to show it to you." He opened the car door. "Right now, though, we need to see what we can do about those guys after you."

  His bear knew what it wanted to do to anyone who hurt their mate. Violently. With extreme prejudice.

  Settle, boy. Settle.

  Chapter Eight: Tara

  This time, the drive back to town seemed to fly by, despite the rain making the r
oad muddy and the light flat and gray. Perhaps it was only that Tara had plenty to occupy her mind. It seemed as if years had passed since Axl had driven her up to the ranch the previous night. So much had changed.

  She kept raising her hand to touch the mark on her neck. It didn't hurt, although sometimes she felt a silvery little twinge when her fingertips brushed it. Already it seemed to have healed much more than the scratches on her legs, as if the touch of a bear shifter's teeth carried some small part of their magic along.

  One of those times, with her fingertips resting against it, she looked up and saw Axl looking over at her, watching her touch his mark. His eyes were dark with arousal.

  "That's a good look on you," he said huskily.

  "What is?" she asked, raising a hand to tap the brim of her hat. "The Gilligan hat and a tent-sized raincoat?"

  A little smile flickered on his lips and he looked back at the road. "You know what I'm talking about."

  Yes. She did. She touched the mark again; she couldn't seem to stop herself.

  She'd never thought that being claimed by anyone would be something she'd want. But it didn't mean she was his property. He wouldn't give her orders, and she didn't think he'd stop her if she tried to leave, though he'd certainly want to.

  But the mark was a tangible symbol of an unspoken contract between them. It meant that no matter who came for her, he'd defend her. No matter what happened, he would be on her side.

  She blinked and looked up when the cruiser pulled to a stop. She'd expected Marge's Diner, but instead it was a much newer building, low and gray with PINEROCK COUNTY SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT printed above the door.

  In spite of her trust for Axl and her soul-deep conviction he wouldn't betray her, her heart lurched into her throat. "I thought we were going to get my things from Sammie," she said, trying to stay calm.

  "I wanted to get the ball rolling on some searches of the nationwide law enforcement databases first. And I'd like you to take a look at some mug shots."

  Tara was already shaking her head. The only thing that kept her from reaching for the door handle was the fact that she was right in front of the sheriff's office, and running from the sheriff's car wouldn't exactly proclaim her innocence to the world. "That's going to be official, isn't it? Won't you have to enter my information and everything? They'll find me!"