The Baby Shift- Nebraska Read online

  The Baby Shift: Nebraska

  Shifter Babies Of America 32

  Becca Fanning

  Copyright © 2019 by Becca Fanning

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  8. twenty-seven hours later

  Chapter 9

  10. Eleven months later

  Also by Becca Fanning

  Chapter 1

  But Jeremiah, I can’t leave you here. I can’t be away from you. You know that. Jack York typed into the Microsoft Word document on his old-school 2005 MacBook Pro.

  Outside, the night was cool and clear, the stars visible outside the window in front of his desk, which was clean except for a notebook, pencil, and the laptop above. Jack didn’t like clutter; it disrupted his creative process, he felt.

  A breeze floated through the open window, the slightly smoky September air circulating through the small house. Everything was perfectly quiet, no cars nearby, no shouts of children or dogs. Jack knew he ought to use the quiet to write through the night. He had a chapter due on Monday, and he knew if he turned in late again, his editor would have his head.

  His historical romance, set on the Oregon Trail in the early 19th century, was coming along nicely if a little belatedly. The characters had come to him in one of the most vivid dreams he’d ever had. He’d felt like they were actually present talking to him, telling him their story, and when he woke up, he’d rushed to his laptop, eager to get everything down before it all floated away from his sleepy brain.

  Actually, writing the book, plotting it and fleshing out the rest of the character’s stories hadn’t been quite as easy. But, after a rocky start during which he had briefly considered throwing in the towel and ditching his writing career completely, Jack had found his groove in the book. He was at the climax now, the apex of the conflict that would drive the hero and heroine apart before bringing them back together. It was his favorite part of every book, but at that particular moment, he just couldn’t quite figure out what Cressida should say next…

  Maybe some tea will help, he thought, getting up and walking toward the kettle stationed on the small countertop in his kitchen. His whole house was small, frankly, but then, he didn’t need a lot of space. It was just him and the goldfish his clan had given him last year for his birthday, Nemo and Dory were happily floating around amidst fake castles and a mini-Jacques Cousteau figurine like they didn’t have a care in the world. And they were fish, so they probably didn’t.

  Jack flipped on the kettle and selected a bag of peppermint tea, the really strong stuff you could only find at health food stores that smelled like patchouli and dried human sweat. Maybe the mint will spark some creativity, he thought as he put the bag in the mug and poured just-boiled water on top, watching as it changed color from clear to light green, the exact same color as Jeremiah’s eyes had been the night he’d visited Jack in his dreams.

  That thought sparked something inside Jack, and he rushed back to his desk, typing like a madman when the door banged open, and a woman walked in. Jack practically jumped out of his seat with fright, but when his eyes fixed on her, fear was the last thing on his mind, because this woman was drop-dead, out of this world gorgeous.

  ---

  The day had started out so well. Sadie Stewart had gone for a long walk in Scottsbluff National Park, exploring the remnants of the Oregon Trail and taking copious notes for her thesis on the intersection of race politics and geography on the Oregon Trail. She was nearly ready to start writing what would end up being a 100,000-word examination on the subject, but she knew she couldn’t start her first chapter without a last look at the place where her fascination with the subject had first begun.

  When Sadie was a kid in Gering, Nebraska, she had learned all about the Oregon Trail, but none of her teachers had ever deigned to mention the racism that went hand in hand with it. As the daughter of a Latinx mom and black dad, it had been up to her parents to explain what seemed like such an exciting path where fur traders traveled to new and exciting places had in fact been something rife with racism, sexism and destructive politics that marginalized communities like theirs.

  Sadie had known from that point onward that she would make it her life mission to study the trail, to educate people on its true history. After all, none of her textbooks mentioned what her parents had told her, and when she’d tried to bring it up with her teachers, she’d been admonished for “causing trouble” and “making other children uncomfortable.”

  But after five years as an undergraduate, a two-year master’s program and three years of preliminary Ph.D. research, she was finally ready to tell the world what she’d found, to re-educate them and show them what whitewashed history wasn’t telling them.

  She had not, however, expected to lose track of time to quite the extent that she was now stuck in Scottsbluff for the night. Without anywhere to stay. Or any food.

  While normally, she would have just walked a few miles to her parents’ house in Scottsbluff proper, where they’d moved after Sadie and her sister Emily had flown the coop, Rick and Harriet Stewart were currently vacationing in the southern region of France, their house rented out as an Airbnb to a polka band visiting from New Orleans. And Sadie really, really hated polka.

  Her hotel was all the way near the airport because she figured it would be easier to catch her flight back the next day at the asscrack of dawn if she was within walking distance to the terminal. But she knew for a fact that the last bus to the airport left promptly at 6:05pm, and her AppleWatch told her it was now 6:35.

  So, she was stuck. It was pitch-black outside, the light pollution negligible out here in the middle of nowhere, and her cell phone was rapidly running out of battery. It was getting spooky, the eerie quiet of the park making her spine shiver. Sadie wasn’t afraid of the dark, but nor did she particularly enjoy being stuck in it, alone, without an industrial-strength flashlight at her side.

  And she was lacking in one of those right now, along with basically every other provision that might be remotely useful to a person stuck in the veritable boonies. Her backpack held only a Clif bar, a mostly full water bottle, and a heavy jacket to ward off the evening chill. None of those things would protect her from the elements or work as a shelter.

  Sadie decided that walking was her best bet. Surely she would happen upon a house… eventually? The map app on her phone told her there were at least a few houses nearby, so she started heading toward those, using the light from her phone to guide the way. And then, after fifteen minutes, she saw lights up ahead. Shelter! Warmth! A phone charger!

  She decided to investigate. After all, what was the worst that could happen?

  Chapter 2

  “Can I help you?” Jack asked the woman who was now standing inside his house, looking frantically from left to right.

  “I, uh…Sorry. I meant to knock. Didn’t realize the door was just going to go flying open,” she said, turning back toward the doorway and glancing at the door, which was indeed swinging on its hinges, despite her pushing it closed. The lock didn’t click into place, because the door was as old as the house itself, circa 1920’s. But since it was out in the middle of nowhere and, other than his laptop, Jack had very little worth stealing, he hadn’t quite gotten around to fixing the latch yet. It
was on his to-do list.

  “Yeah, it’s old and just kind of swings this way and that,” Jack said, getting up and walking toward the woman. It was dark inside the cabin, the only light source were the twinkle lights Jack’s sister Marisol had strung around his window the last time she’d visited.

  “This place looks like that cabin Johnny Depp lived in Secret Window. You need decorations. Something to let people know you aren’t a serial killer who buries his women in the cornfields,” were Marisol’s exact words as she’d strung the lights. Jack had tried to explain that he was going for a minimal aesthetic, but his sister wouldn’t hear of it, and after she’d left, he had to admit that the place did look a bit homier with the lights. So, he’d kept them.

  And thanks to those lights, which were a soft yellowy-gold, Jack could now see that the woman standing in the middle of his cabin was beautiful. Like, really really beautiful.

  Her curly black hair was piled into a bun on the top of her head, little spirals of curls escaping and framing her forehead and caressing the back of her neck. She was wearing a loose light blue t-shirt and black leggings, along with bright purple walking shoes and a hot pink backpack.

  The leggings allowed Jack to see that she had the most perfect curved thighs, round and firm up top and tapering down to shapely calves. Her skin was a deep bronzed gold in the soft light, and Jack could tell if he moved in to touch her, which he wouldn’t because they didn’t know each other and that would, therefore, be super creepy, he’d find her smooth as honey poured straight from a jar. She was perfect. Who the hell was she?

  “Um,” she said, looking at Jack like he was maybe a little unstable, “are you a park ranger? Because I seem to find myself stuck in this park with nowhere to go for the night, and my phone is dying and I kind of need a place to crash. Do you have any bunkhouses or anything I could stay in? I’m Sadie, by the way. Sadie Stewart,” she said, sticking her hand out for a shake.

  Sadie. It was an old-school name, one Jack hadn’t heard in a while, but he liked it immediately. In fact, he liked her immediately.

  “I’m…” he muttered, his attention diverted by Sadie’s eyes, pools of dark brown shot through with orange and gold. Those eyes were also still looking at him like he was unstable. Which he probably seemed, because—oh, yeah—she’d been standing in his house for at least five hundred seconds and he’d only said one sentence, and that was about a door.

  “Sorry!” he said, a little louder than necessary. “Yes. I am a park ranger. My name’s Jack. Jack York. And no, we don’t have bunkhouses, but you could probably bed down here for the night.”

  Sadie looked around, her eyes moving from the mug of tea on the desk to the open laptop, the cursor blinking passive-aggressively, like it was pleading for Jack to finish this awkward interaction already and get back to writing because —hello— that chapter wouldn’t write itself!

  “I don’t want to impose. It looks like you’re in the middle of something, and also, if I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t really want to stay in the house of a rando I’ve just met who’s bed is in the same space as the rest of his stuff,” she said, adding “No offense!” at the end.

  Jack shrugged. He realized his way of living was not for everyone. Except for his friend Sam, the rest of his friends lived in normal apartments where the rooms were separated, and the stove had more than two burners. But this lifestyle worked for him. He didn’t need much. Stuff was a distraction from the important things in life. All he needed was a desk, a rudimentary kitchen, and a place to lay his head at night. Everything else was just frivolous.

  “I was just working on my book. But I’d be happy to sleep outside. It’s a nice night, and I have a tent I’ve been meaning to break in. You could sleep here by yourself, no randos around,” he said, attempting a friendly smile to show he came in peace.

  Then Sadie smiled back, and Jack felt inordinately proud of himself for making her do that. Her smile was sunshine and new books and the smell of freshly brewed coffee. It was perfect, and he wanted to see it roughly a thousand and one more times in his life, if not more.

  “What kind of book is it?” she asked, edging closer to the laptop. At this, Jack blushed. He couldn’t help it. He knew there was no shame in writing romance, that in fact, romance novels cornered a quarter of the entire publishing market, that romance was proven to relieve stress and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with sex at the three-quarter mark and a happily ever after at the end, but still, after five books and a sixth one on the way, he still had trouble saying his side-gig.

  “It’s a…romance. Historical. Set on the Oregon Trail,” he said in a rush, hoping that jumbling his words together would dissuade her from inquiring further.

  But no such luck, because Sadie’s eyes lit up and she looked like she was ready to explode with questions. Which she promptly did. “No way! I’m writing my thesis on the Oregon Trail! Well, the racist history of it,” she conceded, shrugging as she took a step further into the room, like the mention of romance had suddenly made her more comfortable being in Jack’s presence. “But I love romances. I just finished Alyssa Cole’s new book and can’t stop squeeing about it. Tell me the love story. I want to hear it.”

  Jack wasn’t expecting Sadie to plop down on his couch and lace her hands in her lap like she was waiting to be enthralled by his tale, but that’s exactly what she did, and really, how could he refuse? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d met anyone, other than his editor and his mom, who wanted to hear about his books. Not even the guys in the clan could stand more than a few minutes’ summary of them before he saw their eyes glaze over. After all, they were all living their own real-life happily ever afters. What need did they have for fictional ones?

  So, Jack told Sadie about his story. He told her about Jeremiah and Cressida, about how Cressida loses her way while traveling with her white family to a new settlement and happens upon a tribe of Native Americans. Jack told her that navigating the relationship between Cressida and one of the tribe’s members was delicate and had taken months of research because he didn’t want to be That Asshole White Writer who navigated the fictional interracial relationship incorrectly, but he felt like he was finally getting into his groove, that the story was finally flowing smoothly, and he could see the ending in his mind’s eye.

  He did not mention that the characters had come to him, fully-formed, in a dream, though, because when he’d tried to explain that to his friends in his adoptive bear clan, they’d told him that was “super weird” and “a little creepy.” And he did not want this girl thinking he was either of those adjectives.

  “Wow,” was all she said when he finished, which surprised Jack, because even though he’d only known Sadie Stewart for approximately fifteen minutes, he could already tell she was a woman of more words rather than fewer. He liked that about her.

  Chapter 3

  Sadie couldn’t help getting sucked into Jack’s story. She loved romance, had ever since her mom had taken her to the section of the library where they kept all the Beverly Jenkins, Lyndsey Sands, and Laura Lee Guhrke books when she was fourteen. Romance novels had been her comfort during those times when it seemed like she’d never get her degree, never get through all the academic red tape, the scholarship and fellowship forms and the countless crappy grad student jobs that had kept her fed and clothed.

  She knew male romance writers existed—hell, she’d devoured J.R. Ward’s back catalogue with gusto when she’d found out about him a few years ago from one of her friends on Twitter, but she also knew they were a rare breed. And here one was, in the flesh, and fine flesh at that, right in front of her.

  Jack was hot. Short blonde hair buzzed close to his head, tan skin from being outside doing whatever it was park rangers did (ranging parks?), and a lean, muscled form in a faded University of Nebraska t-shirt and sweatpants that were just snug enough for her to see that he was sporting a package that would make any heroine swoon.

  She didn’t know
him from Adam, but suddenly, the idea of staying in his tiny cabin for the night didn’t sound quite so weird. Maybe she didn’t have to relegate him to the tent outside after all.

  “So, you like it?” Jack asked, and Sadie looked up and realized she’d been in her head, her gaze fixed on his lips for a solid few minutes.

  “Yes! I love it! It sounds like you’ve done your research. Do you have a sensitivity reader?” She unlaced her hands and tried settling back into the couch. It was old and soft, sucking her into its lumpy cushions but doing nothing to support muscles that were sore from a full day of walking around the park.

  Jack nodded. “Yeah, I have a few beta readers and two sensitivity readers that my editor hooked me up with. They’ve been through the first part of the book, so once I finish this, I’ll send them the next installment. I’m hoping to finish this sometime in April and then get it out by early next year.”

  Sadie nodded, wiggling to try and get into the perfect position. She wasn’t having much luck. God, how old was this thing?

  “Are you okay?” Jack asked, and Sadie looked up to see him watching her with a quizzical expression on his face.

  “Yeah,” she said, grimacing.

  “Because it doesn’t look like it. In fact, you look really uncomfortable.”

  “I’m just sore,” Sadie said, wincing as she felt a charley horse start to form in her calf muscle.

  “From what?” Jack asked, going to the kitchen and fiddling with the kettle.

  “Oh, I’ve been walking around the park all day today, and yesterday I did a big hike back in Oregon before hopping on a plane here. Didn’t have time to stretch.”