Bear With Me: Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (4 page)

“Well, come on up here, then. You can set up next to me tonight. There’s no point in keeping on walking now.”

She held the flashlight steady to light up the slope for him. It wasn’t an accident that the light also illuminated him. Jamie got a good look at the lost hiker as he made his way up the bank, though his face was still in shadow.

He was dressed suitably for a summer hike in the mountains, in lightweight trousers and sturdy shoes. Jamie approved. She’d seen far too many people decide to go out into the wilderness in just shorts and flip-flops. This guy might have gotten lost, but at least he wasn’t stupid. The pack on his back was a good sign, too, big enough for a longish trip without being overloaded.

Maybe this guy wasn’t a total idiot, after all.

Then he reached the top of the slope and stood in front of Jamie and whatever she was about to say vanished from her lips. She was suddenly extra glad he wasn’t a complete hopeless case, because holy crap, it was
him
.

The guy from the wedding.

His eyes caught the light of the lantern, a deep brown with shining flecks of gold. His skin was deeply tanned, and his dark hair curled around his face. She remembered that. She remembered how the tan went all the way down.

Sudden, burning desire struck Jamie like lightning. She remembered
that
, too.

He was at least a head taller than her. Taller than she remembered—but she’d been wearing heels at the wedding. In her hiking boots, Jamie only came up to the middle of his chest. She imagined—no, remembered—leaning against him, pressing her fingers against the muscles of his chest, feeling the heat of his body...

* * *

MARK

Mark had been daydreaming. No guesses about who, or what. And while he was daydreaming, evening had drawn in, so make that … Night-dreaming?

Or just … Regular dreaming.

Either way, he was stuck.

Mark squinted at the map. In the growing darkness it was hard to tell which squiggly lines were the track, or the river, or ... were they called contour lines? He sighed and stuffed the folded paper back in his pocket.

He should have guessed something like this would happen. Back home he never needed maps or trails to know where he was, or where he was going, so he’d never learned to read them. He knew his own mountains like the back of his paw. After all, his family had lived there for generations.

All of which was no use now that he was exploring a strange mountain range a thousand miles from home.

At least that distance had one advantage. He didn’t want to chance his family poking their noses in to what was going to be the most important event in his life.

Had it only been a week? He could hardly believe it. One week since Tom’s wedding. Hell, he and Kes were still on their honeymoon—their last vacation before the baby was due.

One week, and it had been simultaneously the most exciting and terrifying time of his life. He’d found his mate—well, he
thought
he’d found his mate—he might have found his mate…

…And, if he’d gotten all this right, he was about to find her again. And this time, he wouldn’t be a complete fool and mess it all up. He’d searched for her desperately at the post-wedding brunch, but it soon became obvious she wasn’t there. At least it had been easy enough to find out who she was: Jamie Sullivan, an old friend of Kes’s from school. The only redheaded bridesmaid.

Mark had kicked himself when he’d realized that. All the messing around with shoes, and he could have just asked who the woman with the beautiful red-gold hair was.

And once he knew her name, tracking her down had been—well, not easy, but manageable. The maid of honor—Lynda, was her name?—had seemed almost gleeful when she told him the name of the conservation center where Jamie worked. And, maybe she hadn’t been there when Mark made the trip, but then Tom’s new mother-in-law had remembered that “that very nice Sullivan girl” did field work in the summers. It had taken her a few more days to remember
where
Jamie did field work, but she’d sent Mark’s aunt a link to the conservation center’s wildlife projects page and Aunt Lou had sent it on to him, and Mark had packed his bags the moment he found the site on a map.

So, here he was.

He wasn’t completely naïve. He knew that, even if Jamie was his mate, they might not have anything in common other than the mate bond. She might not want anything to do with him. Maybe—and the thought had occurred to him more than once—maybe that had something to do with how hard she was to find. But if that was the case, he wanted to hear it from her.

In the meantime…

In the meantime, it looked like he was going to spend his vacation stumbling around in circles. At least until he was far enough into the wilderness that he could shift without risking any hikers catching sight of him. Mark’s bear senses were a lot stronger than his human ones, and he was going to need his bear’s sense of smell in particular to—har, har—get his bearings, let alone find Jamie.

Plus, in human form, he was about to trip over his own feet.

Suddenly, something squawked in the darkness above his head, and then he
did
trip over.

Mark swore softly and dusted off his hands as he stood up. Night had well and truly fallen now. And of course his flashlight was stuffed right at the bottom of his pack. He hadn’t thought he would need it until he unpacked to set up camp.

Well, that clearly wasn’t going to happen. He would have to find a quiet patch of ground somewhere and shift. His thick bear pelt was better insulation against the cool night air than any number of sleeping bags.

Of course, that meant being able to
find
a quiet patch of ground. He wasn’t sure how far away he was from the trail, and he didn’t want to wake up to a troop of Scouts poking him with a stick and screaming.

Mark blinked, willing his eyes to adjust better to the darkness. The sky was full of stars, glimmering brilliantly this far from the city. Beside him, the river was a coiling black ribbon. If not for the subtle glimmer of starlight on its surface, it would have been invisible in the shadows.

He’d found the river after he realized he had no idea how to read the map he’d brought, on the basis that if the end of the river was in the foothills of the mountains, the start of it would be somewhere deep in the wilderness.

Maybe when he told Tom about this trip, he could swing that as “navigating by the land”.

Craaaaaaawk!

Mark ducked as something swooped past his head. Time to move on. He wasn’t worried about whatever-it-was flapping around hurting him—he was big enough to deal with most wild creatures. But he didn’t want to distress any creatures that could sense the bear in him.

Too late.

Mark had a split-second impression of huge wings beating in front of his face. He jumped backwards in shock. His foot slipped on a slippery river-stone and he fell heavily, scraping the side of his face on something sharp.

He swore out loud and slapped his hand to his face. It came away sticky.

“Okay, bird! Calm down, I’m leaving already!”

Maybe he should just go ahead and shift here and now. He could leave his pack and clothes by the side of the river and pick them up in the morning. He was probably far enough from the track now that no helpful hiker would find it and raise a missing person alarm.

Mark put his head down and charged blindly forward into the night. He started unbuttoning his shirt, ready to shrug it and his pack off as he transformed.

“Hello?”

Mark froze. There was someone else here in the forest. Someone who had heard him. And he had been about to shift!

He quickly flexed his fingers. Fingers, not claws—good. The only thing worse than someone seeing him as a giant bear with his human clothes scattered on the ground around him, would be someone getting a glimpse of him half-transformed. If there were local shifters in this area, the last thing they needed was for someone to start spreading rumors of half-human, half-animal creatures roaming the hills.

“Is there someone out there?” the voice called again. It was a woman, her voice tinged with uncertainty. Inside him, Mark’s bear twitched its nose, suddenly interested.

Mark concentrated, sifting through the various scents on the night air. Usually he wouldn’t be able to do this in human form, but he was so close to almost-shifting, his senses were more sensitive.

Apart from him, this woman was the only human-smelling thing in a few miles. And she smelled … Familiar.

He shook his head. The important thing was not to scare her. Mark wasn’t stupid; he knew that any woman would feel wary at meeting a strange man out in the middle of nowhere. Especially one as big as he was.

Mark cleared his throat. There wasn’t much he could do about his size, or, well, the fact that he was probably bleeding all over his face. But at least he could sound friendly.

“Hello?” he shouted, in the direction the woman’s scent was coming from. “Is there someone there?”

Following the woman’s voice, Mark walked farther upriver, until he caught sight of an electric light shining through the darkness. The woman was standing at the top of a rocky slope, pointing a flashlight down towards the river. Squinting, Mark could just make her out.

His heart began to pound as his eyes focused on her. A sudden wild rush of energy filled his veins, as though he’d stepped on a live wire.

Jamie.

His entire body ached to be near her. He wanted to see her, to kiss her face, to discover her inch by inch again. To
touch
her. Run his hands across her body, and hold her close. He wanted to run straight to her—he could easily have bounded up the slope, even with the pack on his back—

What was wrong with him? He couldn’t go racing towards her. She’d think he was some sort of crazy axe murderer. Even if she recognized him, she’d think he was a psycho.

And he couldn’t run off, either, even though that might be the best idea, given how crazy his body was acting. Running off into the darkness would freak her out just as much as running towards her.

He forced himself to walk slowly, one foot after the other. When he reached the woman, he saw that her face was flushed, as though she was the one whose heart was racing like she’d just run a mile.

“Hi,” Mark said, his voice rough.

Her eyes were just as he remembered, the vivid grey-blue of glacier meltwater. Around them, her long, pale eyelashes flicked up like delicate fern fronds. Mark’s whole body ached to take another step forward and take her in his arms.

Mark had spent a lot of time rehearsing what he would say when he found the woman he thought was his mate again. Now that she was standing right in front of him, he couldn’t remember any of it.

His eyes wandered further, soaking in every inch he could see of her. Under her blush, her face was thickly freckled, a constellation of dots from the tip of her nose to her earlobes. Her hair, a strawberry blonde that reminded him of sunsets and firelight, was pulled back into a simple ponytail, but a few strands had escaped to fall across her face. Her scruffy, unkempt look was miles away from how she’d looked at the wedding. And she was all the more perfect for it.

Mark bit back a sudden impulse to tuck the stray strands of hair behind one of those freckled ears. He cleared his throat.

“I … I’ve got your shoe,” he said. “I mean—oh, shit—that makes me sound like a complete freak, doesn’t it…”

He snapped his mouth shut before he could explain the reason he had the shoe with him. “I wanted to be able to smell it and track you by the smell” probably wasn’t the most romantic pick-up line.

“Great,” she said, sounding as stunned as he felt. “Thanks. I was missing that. Shoe. Um.”

There was a pause. Mark tried to think of something to say, but no words were making it past his internal shrieks.

Don’t explain why you have her shoe. Don’t do it. DON’T DO IT.

“I—” he started, and then stopped as Jamie raised one hand and poked him in the chest.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said quickly. “Just … Testing. Huh. You’re really … Real, aren’t you. And really here.”

She poked him again. “Yep. Here you are. Um.”

Mark found his tongue again. “My name’s Mark. Mark Visser.”

“You’re related to Tom!” She sounded as though some final puzzle piece had slotted into place. “I’m Jamie. Jamie Sullivan.”

She took a deep breath.

“So, uh … How are things?”

“Great!” said Mark with forced brightness.
Great—and very strange.

“It, uh, it sounds like you had a bit of a run-in with the condors back there…?”

“Condors?” Mark frowned. He knew condors were big, ugly carrion-eaters with weird naked heads. He hadn’t thought there were any in this area, though. “Is that what they were?”

“There’s a breeding pair nested on the cliff by the river,” Jamie said. Her voice, which had been strangely breathy, became steadier as she repeated what was obviously a well-rehearsed script. “It’s part of a breeding program to restore the species to the mountains here. Coco and Louie are the first birds we’ve released who’ve paired off, so we’re asking people to please stay clear of the area while they establish their nest.”