Target: BillionBear: BBW Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance

by Chant, Zoe

  The only sounds were the hissing of shrubs and the thunder of feet toiling back up the path and out of sight.

  Elliot shrugged, and shambled back down the path.

  “No takers for the flyers yet,” Elliot said sadly as he set the folder back down on the boulder.

  Kesley batted away another insect as she said to Chick, “Weird, how they always back off from Elliot, even though he’s nude, so he obviously doesn’t have any weapons.”

  “Dad will be bummed.” Chick raised his fingers to count, his glasses flashing. “That makes seven for Elliot and four for me.”

  “So?” Kesley asked, laughing. “You really count?”

  “Sure. Dad worked a long time on making up the cult. Tried to make it sound extra creepy and yet extra boring. And here we’ve had eleven peeper encounters but not a one has taken any flyers.”

  “Back to work!” Penelope shrilled. “Or we’ll be here all night.”

  Kesley sighed. Pen was right—not that Kesley was likely to have anywhere to go.

  Again.

  They called it quits mid-afternoon when the sun and heat were strongest. They pulled on their waiting clothes and trooped up the path to the top of the rise where the cars were parked. It was a relief to fall into the seat of the old VW clunker that Kesley shared with her sister, McKenzi.

  McKenzi landed in the seat next to her, and the old VW shook. It hit Kesley once again how odd it was that McKenzi in her cat form was light as, well, as a cat, but as humans, she and Kenz were a couple of Pillsbury Dough Girls.

  McKenzi nosed the VW behind Elliot’s moped as the group started over the narrow, windy road toward town.

  “So what are you doing tonight, Bandit?” McKenzi asked.

  “First, a good soak with Frankincense and tea to kill the sunburn,” Kesley said. “Then maybe some painting.”

  “Sis, you gotta start dating again.”

  “No.”

  “Seriously. Nick the Dick doesn’t deserve all these months of gloom and doom.”

  Kesley sighed. “What’s the use? You were right. I have the worst luck with men.”

  “No, you just keep falling for the liars and users because you have a good heart, and you want to believe they have good hearts. But there are good guys out there. Like you.”

  Kesley loved her family very much, but lately she’d been thinking that if she heard one more Understanding and Supportive Comment, she was going to either shave her head and take to leather and studs, or join a convent.

  “I’m never dating again. Ever,” Kesley grumped. “I’d totally go off the pill except that I like knowing what day my period will start.”

  “What about Loren Talbert in Overton?” McKenzi said, completely ignoring her. “He’s a nice guy, and he would never turn into a tarantula around you.”

  “If he’s so nice, why don’t you date him?”

  “I did,” McKenzi said, shrugging. “But his idea of relaxing is talking shop. After he unloaded an especially detailed wisdom tooth extraction over French food, I flitted. I mean, I have to respect a guy who loves his work, but that’s just wrong.”

  “So you think I’m desperate enough for root canals over wine and cheese?”

  “He’s an improvement over Nick the Dick.” As they pulled up in front of their the cottages where they lives, McKenzi abruptly got serious. “Listen to big sister, Bandit—”

  “You’re only two years older than I am,” Kesley exclaimed, stung for a moment out of her weariness.

  “But a whole lot more experienced. Because I’m a flitter. I like flitting from guy to guy. But you’re the romantic type who wants to put down roots. And you keep ending up getting hurt by lying flitters like Nick the Tiny Dick who tell you what you want to hear, because you can’t help being romantic.”

  Kesley groaned inwardly as she began to load the back of the VW with her framed artwork. She hated how true those words were. Nick had been dating another woman during their entire relationship—calling Kesley when his girlfriend had to travel for her job. And when she’d found out, he’d said, “So? It’s not like you’re seeing anyone else.”

  Kesley rolled her eyes. “I’m joining a convent. Soon’s I can find one that will let me paint.” She finished stacking her folding easels on top of the art.

  Again McKenzi ignored her. “Hey, on the way back from your art gig, can you stop at Rosens’ and pick up a few things?”

  Kesley sighed. “Give me the list.”

  They more or less shared groceries, finding it easier to use Kesley’s stove for baking, and McKenzi’s slightly less ancient fridge for storage.

  She wiped her hands down her loose, shrouding cargo pants, pulled on her oldest and biggest sweater, which she hoped hid her body, then took the list from McKenzi. Her sister, as usual dressed in tight jeggings and a red clingy top that totally rocked her curves, looked at Kesley’s outfit and sighed, but she said nothing—just flipped up her hand. “Good luck!”

  Kesley drove down the hill and stopped at one of the two red lights in town. As she did, her absent gaze swept past the family buildings, catching on a man and woman walking not-quite-together on the other side of the street.

  Kesley’s eyes caught on the man: tall—wow, he was tall—broad-shouldered.

  The woman held something or other, and turned to one of the shops. The man stepped closer to the sidewalk, and his head tilted up, dark hair falling back off his brow as he lifted a camera to sight on the hill behind Kesley. She tingled all over, instinctively leaning toward the wheel to look closer—

  Toot! Kesley jumped, then noticed old Mrs. Kemp in the car behind her. The light had turned green!

  Kesley blushed, mouthed the word “Sorry” in the rear view mirror, and hastily turned left.

  She drove fast, feeling stupid for having stared at that guy. She was totally off men! Not even for staring purposes!

  It was a relief to get out of town, even if the weather looked like it was going to be cold. The art festival in the main shopping mall parking lot in Overton never did well once the weather turned wintry. McKenzi suspected this might be the last show, which meant they’d call it quits until Easter.

  She parked next to the area marked off by traffic cones and plastic tape for the art festival. Her usual station between the morose iron sculpture guy and the chatty lady who made sock dolls was empty, so she began to set up. She caught herself thinking mentally about that tall, dark-haired guy she’d seen on Main Street—and shut that down hard.

  No guys! It just led to misery.

  She turned to the Sock Doll Lady and determinedly started asking about knitting, which she knew the lady was only too happy to talk about—for hours.

  The afternoon steadily got colder as clouds marched in low from over the ocean five miles away. The artists had to put rocks and cups on their flyers, and check their easels as the wind began to rise.

  Kesley’s mood dropped as low as the iron sculpture guy’s, and even the Sock Doll Lady got less chipper when they all noticed the only two sales were by the woman who did the sad clowns, sad waifs, and the back ends of horses with a vaguely farmland scene behind.

  A gust of wind nearly flattened her easels. It was time to give it up, though she hated to go home without a single sale.

  “That’s it. I quit for the year,” Iron Sculpture Man complained, though he alone didn’t have any wind problems.

  “I guess it’s time,” Sock Doll Lady said, heaving herself to her feet. “See you all next Easter! And remember what I said about needle size, if you do get some yarn!”

  Kesley forced some cheer into her voice as she bade farewells while packing up everything. She felt like chucking the whole lot in the dumpster, along with the idea of “love.”

  She slammed the trunk of the VW and started the drive back to Upson Downs, her throat getting that tight lumpy feeling. “This is just a pity party, table for one,” she said out loud.

  She had a good life—a safe life in a shifter community. Yeah, th
ey sometimes joked that they were rejecto shifters. No alphas among them, none of the strong, cool predators. In the last few generations, the few alpha shifters born in Upson Downs had all moved somewhere else in the big world. After all, when you know you can turn into a dire wolf, or a lion, or a dragon, who is going to hassle you? But the hedgehogs and the hamsters and roosters and deer and the bat much preferred a safe, quiet existence. But without an alpha, they could get squabbly. And as the economy ground down small towns, many town projects didn’t get done.

  She eased down the hill and parked behind Rosens’ grocery. Tiny spats of rain stung her face, carried on a cold wind whooshing up the valley off the sea. She scurried under the awning of the store, head bent—and promptly ran into someone.

  “Awk!” A warm shoulder gave, and Kesley jumped back as a woman staggered, dropping a clipboard. At once pieces of paper loosened, and began whirling wildly in the wind.

  “Oh my God, I am so sorry!” Kesley yelled, and frantically began stamping on the papers.

  The woman also stamped, snatching up the now-footprinted paper. Two or three other people helped, gathering the escaping strays, and brought them back. Kesley stayed where she was with flapping paper under each foot as she bent to grab them. They were pretty much ruined.

  She shuffled them together, and began to glance at the top one out of sheer habit when a hand snatched them away, and Kesley looked up into the stylish face of a vaguely familiar woman—maybe forties, dark brown hair cut short in a no-nonsense style. Her clothes practical but understated in dark blue and tan, relieved by a fine silver scarf.

  “I am so sorry,” Kesley repeated.

  “It’s all right,” the woman said breathlessly, as she crammed the papers, messy as they were, under the clip on her clipboard. “I didn’t expect it to start to rain, or I would have started tomorrow. But while you’re here, can I take five minutes of your time or less?”

  That was usually the point at which Kesley excused herself, because in her opinion nothing good ever happened past that: it was either a recruiting spiel for some group she did not want to join, or a hard sell for handouts. Maybe both. But she felt she owed the woman for practically knocking her into the street, and certainly for ruining whatever it was she had collected on the clipboard.

  “Well, I do have to fetch groceries . . .” she said weakly.

  “This will only take a moment, maybe less,” the woman said. “My name is Marlo Evans, and I’m doing a human interest story for NPR.”

  “Okay,” Kesley said, and then she had it: the unfamiliar woman walking on Main Street.

  Kesley caught herself looking for that tall, striking man. Not in sight. Disappointment warred with relief as the woman went on. “I’m following up on some social media discussions by some tourists passing down the coast of California, corroborated by some locals.” She paused expectantly. “And with whom am I speaking?”

  “Kesley.”

  “Kesley . . .?”

  “Enkel.”

  “Thank you, Kesley. How long have you lived here?”

  “All my life.”

  At least this stupid conversation was easy so far.

  The woman had worked a fresh paper to the top of her pile, and stood with her back to the wind. “So there is some suggestion of a new religious movement, or a nature movement, centered on animals, somewhere in these mountains, with the celebrants living nude. They worship a mythos about animal spirits . . . that take human form. Do you know anything about that?”

  Red flag! Kesley opened her mouth to deny ever having heard any such thing, but she remembered that stupid flyer that Dwayne Senior, Chick’s dad, had put together: the town joke against peepers.

  But how had that ‘taken human form’ gotten mixed in?

  Kesley said, “Oh!” She forced a laugh. “I was confused by the animal spirits. I don’t know where you got that idea, but I can explain the nudes. That was just a Halloween gag. Started by a bunch of students for an excuse to go sky-clad. On the mountains. Getting close to nature.”

  Marlo leafed through her papers, then shook her head. “I have a report here from someone who saw older people as well.”

  “I think there was a professor, or something,” Kesley lied wildly, and waved her hand up and down Main Street. “As you can see, no nude bodies here! And the only animal around is the parrot down the street at the Primrose Hotel. A pet. People do have pets. Like anywhere else.” Aware she was babbling, she shut her teeth with a click.

  “Thank you. Drat! I dropped my pen. If I could just get your . . . James?” Marlo called over her shoulder.

  As Marlo dug through her purse for a pen, from around the corner stepped that man.

  Kesley froze, every nerve alive. He stood about thirty feet away, his broad back to them as he gazed out at the gray ocean between the V of the palisades, his hands holding a camera. Kesley blinked as her heart thumped against her ribs.

  He was even taller than she’d first thought. Bigger. More . . . everything. Dark hair curled over his collar in back, and the wind rippled through his dark jacket, drawing subtle attention to the line of his shoulder blades bracketing a long, strong back that ended in narrow hips in slacks.

  The world hummed around Kesley, as if a hive of hidden bees were about to swarm.

  Click went the camera, and the man began to turn. Kesley glimpsed sharp cheekbones emphasized by a long, jagged scar, a straight nose, entrancingly curved, severe lips, a frowning brow over . . .

  She never noticed anyone’s eye color unless they were practically in arm’s reach, but it was as if the distance between her and the tall man somehow shortened in a heartbeat. His greeny-brown gaze turning, turning—

  Deep inside her, for the first time in her life, her raccoon unfurled—

  Oh, hell, no! The universe was not going to do this to her: she was not going to deal with any guy belonging to Red Flag Woman. Either he was with her as in relationship, which meant he was totally off limits, or he was working for her, and that put him just as off limits.

  Sorry, universe, try again.

  She faced away before their eyes could meet, because every cell in her body had flared with the conviction that if eyes met eyes, there would be no turning back.

  She retreated, muttering, “Sorry I can’t help you. I gotta get my groceries. Everyone is waiting at home.”

  And she escaped inside.

  * * *

  At first annoyed at being pulled away from contemplation of the endless ocean under the cloudy sky, Jameson Worth Danbridge III turned, then stilled, his nerves sparking to hyper-alertness. At arm’s length beyond Marlo, a woman stood poised to walk away, light and shadow highlighting tantalizing curves, waving chestnut hair tangling in the wind, an appealing round face, soft lips parted—

  She is the one. That internal voice spoke, the one he’d heard twice since waking up in the hospital. It always upset him, the way it came with a sense of urgency, as if he was supposed to do something, or go somewhere.

  Or maybe he was just crazy.

  And what did that mean, anyway? ‘One’ what?

  Angry, frustrated, he frowned across the intervening space, searching instinctively for her eyes, as if he would find an answer there—but the woman paled and spun away, her quick words to Marlo lost on the rising wind. She vanished inside the grocery.

  Of course she’d taken one look at his scar and ran. Business as usual. He knew intellectually that he didn’t care, but his heartbeat thrummed in his head, a distant drum beat. He hated that fractured not-quite match between body and mind, partial memory and current sensory input.

  He still wasn’t sure this NPR masquerade was a good idea, but Marlo had promised he needn’t do any actual work. She would take care of the interviews and any investigative follow-up. For him, staying out of his brother’s crosshairs and trying to recover his missing memory was first priority.

  He glanced at the ocean. Gray sky, gray sea, both restlessly moving. Somewhere, sometime, he had lo
oked out on a similar vista. But not here. The smells weren’t right. He couldn’t define how . . . and that, too, was business as usual.

  He turned his back on the Pacific. “Who was that woman?” he asked Marlo.

  “You didn’t get her picture?”

  “I was trying to shoot the ocean. I’m still getting used to this thing.” He indicated the complicated camera Marlo had found for this expedition. “When I turned around, she was already leaving.”

  Marlo continued wrestling with her papers. “She’s a dead end, in any case. Kary, Chelsea, Carley—one of those impossible eighties names—says the cult was just a bunch of college students.”

  “Then we’re done here?” he asked.

  Marlo pressed the crackling papers against her chest with the clipboard as she studied him, her brown eyes earnest. “James? Are you in discomfort?”

  “No. I like this place, actually. It’s quiet. But I don’t want to stand in the rain if it’s about to storm.”

  Marlo sighed. “I wanted to get one more interview, but tomorrow is another day. I promised your stepmother that I’d keep you from overdoing.” The car was parked right on the street behind them. They got in, and as Jameson had hoped, Marlo began to fuss with her papers. “I really ought to have brought my recorder and tablet,” she muttered. “But people sometimes freeze up when you stick a recorder in their face, whereas taking notes is less intimidating? Anyway, I’m almost certain that what Kayleigh Somebody said directly contradicts the first interview I took this morning . . . I hope it didn’t blow away in the wind, damn it. Maybe I should get a binder if this place is going to be full of hurricane winds.”

  Jameson half-listened, his gaze remaining on the door to the grocery. A man and a child came out, and bent into the wind with their tote bags of groceries. A woman—but too tall, too thin. Not her.

  “Why don’t we return to the motel, where I can lay these out?” Marlo said.

  Jameson had been doing the driving, part of his therapy. He started up the car, and made a business of turning on lights, windshield wipers, and checking around. Come on, mystery woman, how long does it take to shop in a tiny store?