Ski Bear (Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (Rescue Bears Book 5) (3 page)

She got back to the bakery with plenty of time for the delivery truck to arrive and unload all of her pantry goods. When they were done unloading, Maisie was left with a bakery full of ingredients and two days to whip them up into delicious baked goods.

3

A
s Zach was leading the group of human tourists back to the front door of the lodge, a curvy redhead with trendy red lipstick and a snow-white parka passed him on her way to the parking lot. He stopped in his tracks and stared as she walked past.

Holy-moly. Who was that?

He stood still as a statue, watching the woman walk to her car. One of the tourists bumped his arm and asked him what was wrong.

“Nothing. Let’s get back inside.”

He took the group into the lodge and they all went their own ways. He stopped at the reception desk. The human front desk attendant Kelly knew everyone who came in and out of the lodge. Maybe she would know who that woman was.

“Hi, Kelly,” he said hesitantly.

“Hi, Zach. How were this morning’s lessons?”

“Fine. Thanks for asking, Kelly. I was wondering…” He stopped, feeling suddenly bashful.

“Yes?”

“There was a redheaded woman who just came out of the lobby on the way to the parking lot. Do you have any idea who that was?”

“Of course! That’s my daughter Maisie. Isn’t she beautiful?”

“Beautiful,” Zach said with a rumble in his throat.

He’d been instantly attracted to the curvy redhead and wanted to know everything about her. He’d only caught a brief scent of her, but it was mixed with the scents of the human tourists. He wanted nothing more than to get a chance to sniff her again.

“I’m glad you agree, Zach,” Kelly said.

“I didn’t know you had a daughter, Kelly.”

“Oh yes. Maisie grew up here on Fate Mountain, but she’s been gone a long time.”

“Doing what?”

“She went to culinary school in Seattle, then she went to work in Paris at some of the finest bakeries in Europe.”

“She bakes pastries?” Zach asked, feeling even more attracted to this woman by the second. Curvy and a pastry chef—that was a double whammy of sex appeal as far as Zach was concerned.

“She does. And she’s starting her own bakery here in town. It’s on Main Street. Opening in just a few days. Levi said Juliet is craving sweets, so it’s coming just in time.”

“How can I meet her?” Zach said, becoming impatient.

There was something about that woman that made Zach’s senses ramp up to high alert. He had to see her again…like now.

“I’ve been trying to convince her to join Mate.com, but she says she’s too busy.”

“She isn’t on Mate.com?” Zach asked, still a bit stunned from the encounter with the curvy redhead.

“No. I’m afraid not, Zach.”

“She has to sign up,” he said definitively.

“I can always pester her again. But that girl goes her own way. I’ve never been able to tell her what to do.”

“Sounds like a handful,” Zach said, imagining the handfuls he’d like to grab of her curvy little body.

He was so deep in his imagination that he began to stiffen, until he remembered he was in the lobby of the lodge, surrounded by his own clients, talking to her mother. He had another ski lesson in just a few minutes and couldn’t afford to be hard when he met them. That just wouldn’t be professional, and Zach had made a commitment to become a more mature bear.

He growled at himself and pushed away from the front desk, forcing himself to think of really boring, non-sexy things. Walking over to the next group, he put on a bright smile and greeted them. It was a family of humans and they all wanted lessons, including a cute little five-year-old girl.

Some ski instructors might get bogged down by kids, but not Zach. He loved kids. He always wanted them to have a good time. The mom got up from the couch near the fire and introduced the family. There were two teenage boys and the five-year-old girl. He shook all their hands with a smile.

“We’re going to have a really awesome time today, guys,” he said brightly.

He was so honestly enthusiastic that even the teenagers seemed to be excited about the day of ski lessons.

“You’re Zach Rayner, aren’t you?” said one of the teenagers.

“I am,” he said, leading the family out to the lesson area around the side of the lodge.

“You were in the X-Games before the war,” the kid said.

“That’s right,” Zach said proudly.

He often thought of his time in the Games with nostalgia. His time in the Games had been some of the most fun and carefree of his life. Unfortunately, after the war, they’d separated shifter players from human players on all sports teams because shifters playing against humans was essentially unfair. He didn’t mind much, since he had no intention of going back on tour. He wanted to stay on Fate Mountain with the rest of his crew.

Fate Mountain had become a place where shifters of all kinds started to gather after the war. His crew all settled there too. It was a great place to live and start a family, with plenty of pristine wilderness for their inner animals to roam.

Because shifters had played an essential role in bringing the war to an end, the government had given shifter soldiers generous veterans benefit packages and had passed the Shifter Equality Act. That had led to a lot of new shifter businesses on Fate Mountain.

Now that the government had changed their tune about shifters, it seemed like the entire society had changed overnight. While it was once a serious danger to date a human woman, now it seemed like the new in thing to do.

Women’s magazines and early morning talk shows all talked about how male shifters were the best men to date. There were blogs about dating and mating with shifters, and human women were now flocking to find out about the super sexy men who’d suddenly become national heroes.

Since male shifters outnumbered females five to one, being able to openly date and mate with human women was a major boon for the shifter community. It seemed like people were matching up right and left. Everyone but Zach. He frowned but tried not to show it to his clients.

He took the family out to the lesson area and began to go through some basic moves. He watched them practice and gently corrected their technique. When the little girl figured out how to stop herself, Zach gave the kid a high five. Her mom smiled at him gratefully. That made Zach feel good.

No matter how much he loved teaching people to ski, he was having a hard time focusing today. Maisie Green’s curvy figure was imprinted on his brain. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, no matter how hard he tried. Zach usually didn’t get distracted when he was in the middle of participating in or teaching sports, but today he couldn’t keep his mind from wandering.

It annoyed him and intrigued him at the same time. He’d had his share of girls, mostly human. But this girl was different. He could feel it in his bones. The more he thought about her, the more convinced he became that Maisie Green was his fated mate.

As the teenage boys were taking their first real slope, Zach was distracted, imagining going over to the bakery and claiming her right then and there. One of the kids lost control and went barreling toward the little girl.

Zach snapped out of his daydream and snatched the girl out of the way of her older brother. The teenager went zooming past, totally out of control. Zach cursed at himself. His lack of focus almost got the sweet little kid hurt. The teenager slid to a stop and fell on his ass.

The mother grabbed her daughter out of his hands and the family decided to call it a day.
Crap.
He’d really screwed up. They were supposed to go for another hour and then take the older kids up the ski lift to take some longer slopes. He tried to apologize to the mom, but she just brushed him off and told him that it wasn’t his fault.

Zach couldn’t help but feel that it was his fault. He hadn’t been paying attention. If he had been, he would have told the teenager to correct the angle of his skis and it would have prevented the fallout.

Without anything to do for the rest of the day, Zach went back to his cabin, feeling crabbier than he had in a long time. He turned on the TV to the sports channel he always left it on and went to the kitchen for a bottle of beer.

So much for being a responsible adult
.

He slumped down on the couch and opened his beer, getting ready to watch a game of hockey. Why was he so turned inside out by a woman he’d only seen briefly? He hadn’t even really picked up her scent.

Zach had a thing with women. They loved him. He used to be a male stripper for bachelorette parties as a side job. The ladies went crazy for him. Even when he wasn’t stripping down to his thong and doing stage tricks, he never had a problem finding a dance partner. Not a single one of those women had ever turned his head. Not like this.

He took out his phone and opened up his Mate.com app. There weren’t any new matches since the last time he’d checked that morning. Growling, he put the phone away. Kelly said Maisie wasn’t on Mate.com. If she was his fated mate, then there would be no way of getting matched with her until she did. His only other option was a full frontal assault. He could go down to the bakery and take a good long sniff.

He felt his body stir, pressing against the zipper of his jeans. Zach took a swig of beer, wondering how much more of this he could take. Maybe Corey was right. Maybe this whole mating thing was too much drama. He’d already had a bad lesson after seeing that woman. He couldn’t even imagine what kind of trouble she could get him into if she was his mate.

Drama or not, he still wanted a mate. He wasn’t in the habit of confronting human women at their places of business, and he wasn’t about to start now. Not when he was determined to be the new and improved Zach Rayner, the mature polar bear with his own home.

Zach sighed, his shoulders slumping. Part of him wanted to be the old Zach. Old Zach would have just gone down there and found out. Instead, he took another sip of beer and loosened the tightness in his pants.

4

M
aisie pushed her measuring cup into the deep vat of flour. When she had the right amount, she dumped it into a large mixing bowl and began adding the other ingredients. Maisie had a talent for delicate sweet pastries, but it was the bread that kept the doors open in a small bakery like this one.

She’d studied her craft and skills for a long time. Now she was putting those skills to the test. It was the first time she’d done everything on her own. In a lot of ways, she felt like she was winging it.

Flipping on the blender, she watched the mixer hook swirl through the dough. It was a beautiful sight. But bread baking was an early morning task and a lonely one. Most people weren’t up this early. Maisie walked over to the counter and took a sip of hot coffee from her Thermos. She’d need a lot of it to adapt to the new time zone.

She might just be out of sorts, but Maisie had a deep sense of longing in her chest that she could barely recognize. As she sipped her morning coffee, she tried to understand what it was. That’s when she pulled her smartphone out of her purse and started to navigate to that silly dating site her mother had been pestering her about.

What was it called?

She remembered now. Mate.com. Those shifters definitely wanted their fated mates. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that you belonged with someone? Humans didn’t have that kind of thing. She clicked on the button to download the app onto her phone. When she opened it, the app wanted her to answer a bunch of questions to match her with her mate.

Maisie answered a few questions and then got stumped. She had work to do. She didn’t have time to sit around answering absurd questions. She went back to whip the filling for her macaroons.

“If you were a vegetable, what kind would you be?” she said aloud.

How was that supposed to find her best match? She rolled her eyes and continued working. As the bread dough rose, she went back to her phone and looked at the question that had stumped her. The choices of vegetables were: corn, squash, sugar pea, cucumber, and celery.

What the heck?

She sighed and thought about it for a minute. She loved sweet things so she chose sugar pea. It made as much sense as anything else. The rest of the questions only took her a few more moments and then the screen started to load her matches. Maisie tapped her foot, thinking of all the things she had to do that morning.

The screen loaded and the faces of sexy shifter men filled her phone. They definitely were tasty. A fated mate was supposed to be a one hundred percent match. She scrolled down the screen and came to the profile of a man named Zach who was supposed to be her fated mate. She wondered if that was part of the gimmick. Everyone gets one. Then she looked closer. He looked somehow familiar.

She recognized him from the lodge the day before. He’s been walking toward the front door when she was leaving. That sexy blond that seemed to tower above the rest of the men. It wasn’t just that he was tall. He also had an air about him that made him seem grander than the rest.

Maisie had felt as if she’d somehow known that man when she’d first seen him. Now this website was telling her that he was her fated mate.

Maisie had to admit to herself that there was something to this whole fate thing. She’d seen him right after talking to her mother about signing up for Mate.com. The very next morning, she was matched with him on the same website.

It couldn't just be a coincidence. Could it?

Maisie had grown up on Fate Mountain and strange things had happened all the time. There was a reason the town and the mountain had been named that. The Native Americans who lived there considered it a secret place. It was called
Ta-máh-no-us La mon’-ti
by the Chinook tribe, which roughly translated as Magic Mountain.

Maisie thought of herself a rationalist, but she wasn't completely unmoved by the supernatural. She'd grown up in the world after shifters had announced their presence. If shifters could exist, maybe fate could too.

The aching in her chest began to intensify as she looked at Zach's picture. She felt she had to meet him, but part of her was still hesitant. This website could just be using clever marketing tactics to keep people coming back for more.