Riding Bearback (BBW Shifter Cowboy Romance) (Bear Ranchers Book 1)

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  RIDING BEARBACK TITLE PAGE

  Riding Bearback

  Saddle Bears Book I

  by

  Becca Fanning

  RIDING BEARBACK

  Damn cows! Damn them all! Jess Lincoln, her black hair flying free from her ponytail, swore as she ran through the knee high grass. The cow loped out of her way, dodged around a scrubby bush and cantered off in the opposite direction.

  She hadn’t signed up for this, not at all. The property description had said quite clearly that this damnable ranch, in Colo-stupid-rado, had stupid people…what were they called? Oh yes, hands who worked with the cows. No one had said that they would all be gone when she got there, or that the fences were in reprehensible disrepair, or that in the face of an oncoming thunderstorm, the stupid creatures would scatter to the four corners of the state.

  Jess stopped her helter-skelter run and hands on knees began to suck in lung-fulls of air. The stitch in her side was becoming a problem. A cow turned brown, expressive eyes on her and mooed dolefully.

  “Yeeesh, and to you too,” Jess said.

  “That’s not how ya do it!” That was Old Charlie. He had come with the ranch, but since Jess guessed he was at least a thousand years old, he was no use to her. He leaned against the still standing part of the fence and smiled his toothy grin. He was an African American man with a dandelion, powder puff of white hair that stood up like Albert Einstein’s. Jess had known Charlie for five minutes and already he was getting on her nerves.

  She could’ve stayed in New York. It was a big city, with bustling people and cabs. She could have kept her old job at the ad agency, or found a new one since Conrad, her ex, probably still worked there. Actually come to think of it, she could have chosen a lovely tropical island in the Bahamas instead of this cow-infested dust bowl. But then she looked up at the view; the plain stretching out ahead of her to a line of trees, and then the mountains in the distance. All this space, all this land, and she’d bought it for a steal.

  Sighing, Jess turned to look at Old Charlie. “Okay, so how do you suggest I get these dumb creatures back?”

  He shrugged. “You know how to ride a horse?”

  “No,” she said wrinkling her nose.

  “Well then, you’re poked,” he said and shuffled his way back up to the main house.

  “Thank you, oh so much for that,” Jess yelled after him.

  He just waved a wrinkled hand at her and went on his merry way.

  Oh well, nothing for it. She ran around for a while as the clouds rolled in overhead and cows trotted out of her way in a distressingly unconcerned fashion. It was almost as though the beasts knew that she had never so much as petted a cow before.

  Eventually she flopped down in the turf her sides aching, while above her the sky began to boil. Lightning flashed and licked the depths of the clouds turning them bright for an instant before letting them fall dark again. And of course the sun was setting. It was going to rain and get dark all at the same time and she was so far out of her comfort zone, it was on another continent.

  “Hell of a first day,” she said to herself, pulling at a grass stalk. It had such smooth sides. Her fingers ran up it and then, “Ouch!” Jess stared at the red blood welling out of the slice and then something hit it. Something wet and cold crashed into her finger, washing the blood away. More raindrops fell.

  Jess stood up and ran after the cows again, flapping her arms and yelling with more urgency now. Why were the stupid creatures so happy to spend a stormy night out in a field? Couldn’t they see that the sky was angry at something, and planning on hitting the ground with as much lightning as it took to make it sorry? How was she supposed to do this on her own?

  A cow mooed at her and ran towards her. She sidestepped out of its way and in the gloom lost her footing and fell face first into a puddle, drenching her from head to toe.

  “Oh well, thank you so very much!” she yelled after the beast’s retreating back. “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” Each word was accompanied by her fist slapping into the muddy water. And then she began to cry and swear, and as the hopelessness built inside her, scream.

  “Excuse me Ma’am, but you look like you could use a hand.”

  Wiping mud and sodden hair out of her eyes, Jess looked up. The face she saw was long, brown and had huge nostrils. It snorted at her. She looked up again and this time saw the man seated on the horse.

  “It’s the damn cows,” she said in what she thought of as her petulant voice. “They won’t listen. They won’t come in out of the storm.” She was sobbing now and then realizing that she must look awful, she tried to wipe her face. But the rain was doing a good job of washing her from head to toe, and her efforts to not look like a drowned rat were proving futile.

  “Well, we’ll see what can be done,” he said and in one fluid movement he got off the horse’s back.

  All she could see of the man now standing in front of her offering her his hand, was his golden eyes. They almost seemed to glow in the dark.

  “Who are you?” she asked taking his hand. He pulled her to her feet and then helped her onto the horse. “Oh no, I don’t know how to ride one of these,” she said. He might have smiled, she couldn’t tell in the uncertain light and the rain. In a moment he was up behind her, his arms on either side of her holding the reins. “What about the cows?” she asked.

  “The cattle will be just fine,” he said. His voice was smooth and rich and confident. It was the voice of someone who just knew things would work out. The horse ran up to the house where the lights were on and Old Charlie was standing in the doorway.

  Her legs feeling a little weak, and shaking from the cold, Jess found herself deposited on her back porch. Then the stranger on the horse galloped off into the night as lightning sliced the sky.

  “Who was that?” Jess asked.

  Old Charlie just smiled at her and handed her a towel.

  Jess sat on a cardboard box on the floor of what would eventually be her living room. A pool of rainwater settled around her as she dried herself off. Old Charlie collapsed into an armchair. It was one from the apartment she’d live in in New York; a candy striped, overstuffed thing that looked so out of place here in this rustic room. Well, at least it was here.

  She sighed and watched the steam rising from the cup of tea Charlie had made for her. It was awful, the worst tea she’d ever had. “Thanks for the tea, and the towel.” She said smiling.

  Old Charlie nodded his head. “Hell-of-a first day out here,” he said. “And now christened with a storm.”

  “Is that good?”

  He shrugged, “Can’t tell yet.”

  They sat in silence.

  Then Charlie grunted and said, “So what you runnin’ from?”

  “Excuse me?” Jess said. If she was a cat her fur would have been slowly rising. She felt the words form on her tongue…I’m not running…but what she said was, “I guess I’m running from a jerk who made my life horrible.”

  “You married to this jerk?”

  �
�Divorced.”

  “Uh huh, well it’s gonna be ay-okay now,” Charlie smiled. His teeth were dazzlingly white.

  There was a click and the French doors to the back porch opened. Jess looked up as a young man entered the room. He was tall, broad shouldered with dark hair plastered to his head. He dripped in the doorway looking into the room. “Hey there,” he said looking at her. He smiled.

  Jess realized she was sitting with her mouth open.

  “Um…” she said and reached for her tea mug on the floor, hesitated, then tried to grab it again and knocked the contents onto the floor with a tinkling thump. “Oh shit!” she swore and got down on hands and knees using her towel to wipe up the tea. “I just wanted to say, well…um…” she left the sodden towel on the floor now as the tea and her rainwater pool mingled. She stood up and ran her hands over her wet jeans. She was bare foot and her light blue t-shirt had mostly stopped clinging to her. She held out her hand. “I just wanted to thank you for helping me.”

  “It was no problem,” the new guy said taking her hand. He had a hypnotic smile. It played over his lips like he was listening to someone tell the best joke in the world. Jess wished fervently that she could hear that joke too as she gazed into his eyes. They were such a light brown that they really did look golden.

  “I’m Wyatt Wade, by the way,” he said taking his hand back.

  Jess felt awkward and silly and ran her hands down her sodden jeans. God she was behaving like she was in high school again. This man…this man was most certainly trouble.

  “And you are?” he asked.

  She blinked. “I’m Jess Lincoln, sorry for being so rude. I mean this morning I was in New York and now I’m here-- and there were the cows--how did you get them to come in anyway?”

  Wyatt grinned, looking every bit the naughty boy, “Oh, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged, “You might not invite me over again if I tell you my secret.”

  “Oh really?” she cocked her head on one side and then caught herself. Flirting? Really? The ink was barely dry on the damned divorce papers and here she was parading her wet-t-shirted breasts in front of a man she’d literally only just met.

  Just then Charlie coughed. “You two want I should leave the room?”

  “No! Please! What would give you that idea?” Jess said smiling a little too brightly and wishing she hadn’t gotten her towel all full of tea. She could feel the flapping come on. Whenever she got nervous she tended to talk incessantly and flap her hands around like a mildly concussed albatross. She would have to get him out of her house before she did something really stupid, again. “Look it’s getting late, I think, and well I still have to find my bed…” she looked out into the hallway and saw boxes piled up any old how and sighed.

  “Can I help you with anything?” Wyatt asked. “Look I hope you don’t mind my saying, but you seem a little disorganized.” Then seeing the look on her face he held up his hands, one still clutching the towel and said, “I just call it like I see it. You don’t know the first thing about running a ranch like this do you?”

  Jess shook her head. “Not as such,” she said. “But I am a fast learner.”

  Wyatt clicked his tongue. “It doesn’t work like that,” he said shaking his head so his hair flew off his forehead. “Those are good cattle you got there and they can’t wait around for you to figure things out.”

  “So what are you saying?” Jess asked suddenly feeling bone weary. All she wanted to do was slide into a hot bath and then crawl into her bed and sleep until the Second Coming.

  Wyatt sighed.

  ‘What he means,” Charlie piped up from his chair, “Is that you gonna need more help’n just me. You gonna need hands to work, at least while you sort yourself out.” He indicated all the boxes of stuff she had brought with her.

  Jess knew they were right, but did they have to talk about it right now? Why now? Couldn’t it wait until morning, when there wasn’t lightning and thunder outside and she didn’t feel like road kill? Surely after a good night’s sleep she would feel better and all of this would seem less weird and confusing. For a moment she wished that Conrad were here. He always knew how to handle things. Then she caught herself and mentally shook herself. She wasn’t allowed to want Conrad back. She didn’t really want the no good, lying, cheating freak that he was anywhere near her. And frankly, even though Wyatt had a smile that could melt icebergs, and was built like a Roman god, she wanted neither him nor Charlie in her house bothering her right now. Not about her disorganized life and not about her stupid cows.

  “Thank you so much for rescuing me, Mr. Wade,” she said taking the towel from him and walking him to the front door. “But really, I can’t do this now, okay?”

  “But…”

  “No, I really can’t. So please, tomorrow is another day and hopefully the stupid cows will stay put just for one night,” she said opening the door to the pouring rain. “Thank you so much, but good night.” She tried to push him out into the storm.

  “I was just gonna mention that my horse is on the other side of your house,” Wyatt said.

  Jess opened and then shut her mouth.

  “Okay then,” Wyatt said and walked back through the house and out the French doors he’d come in earlier. “Charlie, good luck with her.”

  “I’m gonna need it,” Charlie agreed waving him out.

  Jess couldn’t stand it. Why was she always surrounded by disapproving men? Well she’d show them!

  She made her way upstairs and found her bed behind the third door she opened. It had been dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the floor and was still wrapped in plastic. She had linen somewhere, but finding it now would be too much effort. So she went down the stairs and into the living room. Charlie was gone too. Good, Jess thought as she picked up a box and carried it upstairs.

  She stripped off her wet clothes and remembered she didn’t know where her dry clothes were. Oh well. So she laid a towel from the box on the mattress, wrapped herself in another one, and lay under a bath-sheet with another towel rolled up as a makeshift pillow. Then she lay in the dark, watching the lightning play across the sky and cried herself to sleep.

  Morning happened.

  At first, Jess thought that something was wrong. There was so much birdsong. It was as though every bird in creation had decided, just that morning, to sit outside her window and exercise its vocal chords. This couldn’t be normal. But then she had stuck her head out of her window and the world appeared to be working just fine, only with more music in it than she had heard before.

  She crept downstairs and found a suitcase with some of her clothes in it. They were office attire, all pencil skirts and tailored suits. What had she brought them for? She was a ranch owner. Her life was one of jeans and T-shirts now. Rummaging in another bag produced a creased Tee with Hello Kitty on it, a joke present from her sister, and a pair of cut-off denims that were fraying their way into non-existence. The Tee was too small, stretching over her more than ample bosom. She sighed. Well maybe she could go into town and buy something more suitable, but for now…

  Dressed, she walked into her new kitchen. It was huge and sadly empty. She would have to unpack, but first things first. There was a kettle and a stove so she managed to heat some water to make tea. This cup was infinitely better than the one from last night, and Jess was beginning to feel mostly human when there was a knock on her kitchen door.

  It was a stable door, so she unlocked and opened the top half on the second try. “Yes?”

  “Mornin’,” said Wyatt. He looked as fresh as a daisy, and smelled that fresh too. It was as though he’d had a bath in dew and rubbed himself dry with fresh green grass. Jess sighed.

  “Early isn’t it?” she asked walking back into the kitchen leaving him waiting outside.