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

  “I’m serious. I think you should let me give you a place for the night. Don't worry. I live with the guys I work with. There's lotsa room, and there are no strings attached. It's just...” Henry gestured toward the mountain rising to meet the sky behind them, so close and so huge it seemed to curve inward, over their heads. Lila felt for a moment like she was staring out the top of a snow globe. “It’s not like you can sleep outside, you know?”

  Henry slung off his cap and scratched the back of his head. He looked at the snow, looked at Lila. Like he was trying to make up his mind.

  “Look,” he finally said. “If you let me help you, tomorrow morning I'll take you out on me and my crew's boat. I'll show you all Sitka's secret spots.” Henry offered her his hand. “I'm just doing what I'd do for anyone in a bad spot, Lila.”

  Lila eyed his outstretched hand. “Just tonight. I'll pay you back for your trouble. I’ll get my wallet tomorrow. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Nothing to pay for. No strings,” he reminded her. His hand didn’t move. “What d’you say?”

  She searched his eyes for another excuse, but instead something inside her softened, and her heart rose into her throat. For a moment she stood blinking and bewildered, her words delayed, like her thoughts got all twisted up. Like a cerebral traffic jam.

  Finally she broke her stare, muttered, “Yeah, okay,” and shook his hand. His gloves were warm despite the cold, like he'd just plucked them off a fireplace. “Are those heated gloves? You guys have those?” Lila rubbed at her numb fingers.

  Henry laughed, huge and delighted and real. “Nah. I run hot.” He smiled up at the sky and put his hat back on. “That's why winter's my favorite time of the year. This is my kind of a climate.”

  “This would be a shitty place to live if you didn't.”

  He laughed again, and then he nodded his head behind him. “Let's go get my buddies and my truck, and we'll get you set up.”

  Lila took a deep breath. The air, cold and wet as crystal, made her lungs feel huge and important and alive. Made every fragmented moment something precious, something to hold onto. She looked at Henry's hat and his big snowy boots, and she said, “Okay. Let's go.”

  Henry's house sat halfway up the base of Sitka's mountain, set back in the cusp of the forest, connected to the main road by a thin icy ribbon of gravel driveway. The porch slouched, and the bright green paint was fading, but the warm yellow light flooding its windows were the most comforting thing Lila had seen in a long time.

  Both Henry’s friends were half-drunk and louder than they realized. Lila only saw their faces, briefly, when they first heaved themselves the truck and Henry pointed at them and said, “That’s Matt, he’s Finn.”

  Matt whistled a low note, cast Henry a meaningful grin, and said, “Holy Moses.” He looked older and distinguished, could even pass for a professor if not for the ponytail and the tattoos on his knuckles.

  Finn, the younger of the two new faces, pushed back his white-blond hair, laughed, and asked her, “Where the hell did you even come from?” His accent surprised her. He sounded vaguely southern.

  “Toronto,” Lila said.

  “Toronto?”

  Matt punched Finn’s shoulder. “Hey, cut that out, you drunk asshole.” The younger man yelped, but he settled in his seat and quieted down without argument.

  “You’re a long way from home,” Matt said.

  Lila nodded. She tried to look neutral, stoic. Whatever the opposite of anxious was.

  She sent the whole ride up memorizing the backs of Matt’s and Finn’s heads, mouthing their names soundlessly, so she wouldn’t forget.

  She was just so unused to other people.

  Places like Sitka comforted her precisely for their solitude. Lila went for the trees and the silence and the subtle constant hum of activity in the vast but near unnoticeable world beyond cities and their crowds—not to meet strange burly men at bars and crash on their couch for the night.

  When the truck stopped, Finn whipped around in his seat to face her. His eyes were the glistening amber of raw honey. “You’re so quiet.”

  “Yeah,” Lila said.

  “Don’t be obnoxious.” Matt cast a look back at her. “Sorry for him.”

  Finn scowled at him. “Don’t you ever apologize for me, Matthias. I stand by everything I ever did.”

  Matt just shook his head and left the car muttering. Finn sat as puffed and bristling as a young tomcat until the older man had reached the house door. “Can you believe him?” he said.

  “Can you just go tell Colt and Sherman to pick up their shit?” Henry glanced at Lila, reddened, and added, “Uh. Their stuff, I mean.”

  “I don’t mind mess,” Lila said.

  “I’m not telling Colt to do nothing. I’m thinking I’ll never speak to him again. Do you know what that bastard did to me?”

  Henry pressed his lips into a firm line. “Later. Get inside and make it look like less of a pit, man, c’mon.”

  Finn groaned and stomped out of the car. A six-foot toddler, pouting all the way to the house.

  Henry buried his face in his hands and groaned, “Oh my god. I am so sorry. He’s such an idiot. I swear he’s not always that bad.”

  “It’s fine. Alcohol, you know. Makes people unlike themselves.” Lila bit at the insides of her lips.

  “Hey. Are you okay?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “No, I mean, really. This is a scary situation you’re in. It’s something worth being nervous about. So if you need a second before you come in and meet everyone else, that’s totally understandable.”

  “Everyone else?” Lila’s stomach dipped. “There’s more of you?”

  “Just two more.” He must have seen her face fall, because he said, “Hey, hey. Lila. It’s alright. You tell me whatever you need, and that’s what I’ll do for you.”

  Lila frowned. “Why?”

  “’Cause.” Henry’s smile was lazy and content. “We’re buddies now.”

  “Already?”

  “Some things move quicker here than they do out there. There’s not much to do out here ’cept talk to people. You get friendly fast.” Henry opened his door and swung a leg out. She stared at the thick silhouette of his thigh and wondered what twenty-first century sea legs looked like. “You ready?”

  Lila took a deep breath, nodded, and followed Henry inside.

  All four of his housemates were poised around their worn kitchen table, trying to look natural and innocuous, like extras in a movie. Two new faces sat at the table. One had the same pale hair as Finn, but he looked young, barely out of high school. The other was a black man roughly her age in a worn Stanford hoodie. He regarded her curiously over the top of his glasses.

  Henry said, “Hey, this is Lila, she’s staying with us for a couple of days,” like it was something she’d done a dozen times. He pointed at the kid. “Lila, that’s Finn’s little brother Colt. Say hi, Colt.”

  Colt stood up from the table and said through his teeth, “Hi.” He gave Lila a single piercing stare and then said to the room as a whole, “Okay. I’ll be in my room.”

  “That’s surprising,” Finn muttered under his breath.

  Matt made a small disapproving sound and shook his head. “You’re antagonizing.”

  Henry brushed Lila’s shoulder to get her attention. She shivered in surprise but tried not to show it. He pointed at the man in the Stanford hoodie and said, “That’s Sherman.”

  “You really went to Stanford?” Lila said, astonished. Stanford had been her dream college. She toured the campus, fell in love, and had her application essay drafted before the end of her junior year. That was before, though. Before everything fell apart.

  “Indeed I did.”

  “Hey, Sherrr-man,” Finn said from across the table, pushing himself up on his elbows, “why don’t you tell Lila what you studied?”

  “C’mon, man,” Henry said. “No one else thinks this is funny.”

  “Tell her, Sherm
an.”

  He sighed, adjusted his glasses. “I double majored in wildlife conservation and philosophy.”

  “Right! My question is who in the hell gets into goddamn Harvard and studies two of the least useful things known to existence. You catch fish, idiot. You don’t need to know shit about deforestation or existentialism to know how to cast a damn net.”

  Sherman flashed Matt a bleak look. “You better get him to bed, big bear.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere.”

  Lila watched them, utterly fascinated, like a biologist observing a pack’s bizarre social system at work. There was something endearing about their bickering. Something familiar and familial. She smiled despite herself.

  Henry leaned down and murmured, “Hey, let me show you where you can stay.”

  He led her deeper into the belly of the house, past a living room with an ancient CRT television in the corner and a scattering of mismatched couches and chairs shoved where they could fit; up the stairs; down a hall lined with unmarked pine doors; and finally to the room at the end.

  “This,” Henry said softly, like they were in a library, “is my room. I’ll go and get you some clean sheets.”

  Lila lowered her voice to match his. She could hear his housemates maintaining their amiable tension downstairs. “Is this okay? That I’m here?”

  “Of course.” Henry swung open the door and flicked on his lamp. “Sorry. There’s no ceiling light. It’s kinda small.”

  Lila clutched her camera bag to her chest and ventured inside. Everything smelled like Henry, smelled like wood smoke and old pine needles, like brine and a frozen pebbly shore. She could get used to a smell like this.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, and he shut the door behind himself.

  Henry’s room was small and bare. A desk sat on one side of the door, his dresser on the other. His bed was against the far wall, the blankets rumpled and unmade, a small mountain of dirty clothes collecting on one side of his bed. Next to them was a small, tightly shut door. The ceiling sloped downward toward the head of his bed. The roof’s gentle decline made the room seem cozy, like a cave scooped out of the side of a mountain.

  Lila set her camera on the desk. She eased off her boots, stripped off her parka. Then, trying not to think about germs and sweat and dead skin cells, she went over to the bed. She pulled the blankets and pillows off, tossed them on the ground.

  She had the sheets half off when Henry let himself back in and said, “Aw, Lila, you don’t have to do that. I can take care of it.”

  “I’m just helping.” Lila balled up the old sheets and tossed them with the rest of his laundry.

  He stood holding his clean flannel sheets, looking embarrassed and uncertain. “Sorry. I don’t have a laundry basket.”

  “I’d be amazed if any of you had a laundry basket.”

  Henry went to the other side of the bed. With wordless agreement, they stretched the fitted sheet over the mattress together. Lila dared glances at Henry’s chest, at the distracted look in his eye.

  “What else are you doing in Sitka?”

  Lila paused. “What?”

  Henry tossed her the other end of the top sheet to straighten it out. “I mean, it’s two days after Christmas, and you flew to the other side of the continent to this little nowhere-town to take pictures of whales? Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “You’re not spending the holidays with your family?”

  Lila grabbed a pillow and tugged the old cover off. She fumbled to get a new one on.

  “Lila?”

  “My parents are dead,” she said, like she was reciting an old speech. “I’m an only child. I have an uncle I never really met. My only living grandparent is in a home in Florida, and he doesn’t remember who I am anymore. So, no. I’m not.”

  “I’m sorry. Shit. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “I mean, it’s fine. I’m fine. It sucks, but.” Lila shrugged and set the pillow on the bed. “It is what it is. It’s been like this for years. I’m used to it.”

  “Well, maybe it’s a good thing you lost your luggage, then.” When Lila frowned at him, Henry looked down at his socks. “It means you get to spend New Year’s with us. We know how to throw a mean party.”

  “I’m not staying more than tonight.”

  “You’re welcome to reconsider.” Henry grabbed an armful of dirty laundry. “Sorry. I’ll clear it all out in the morning.”

  “It’s your room.”

  “I know, but.” Henry shrugged, carefully maneuvered his way out the door, to keep himself from dropping anything. “I want you to be comfortable. I’ll be downstairs in the living room if you need anything. That little door’s my bathroom, and you should use it. The hall one’s vile.”

  Lila smiled at her toes.

  “You can grab any old shirt out of the dresser for something to sleep in. They’re all clean, I swear.”

  “Thanks, Henry.” She looked up at him, at his wilting bundle of laundry, his messy adorable hair. “This means a lot.”

  “No worries. You’d do the same for me.”

  Lila flushed, self-conscious and delighted all at once. She looked anywhere but at Henry.

  He continued, “Better be ready to get up bright and early tomorrow, though. You came a long way to take some pictures, so we’re not wasting a second.”

  She and Henry got an early start the next morning. Lila’s body was still firmly set to Toronto time, so she was up well before the sun, already awake and dressed when Henry—bleary, yawning, eyes still gluey with sleep—knocked lightly on the door to wake her.

  “Guess I don’t need to tell you to get up, huh?” He smiled. Everything about him was already so blissfully and impossibly familiar. Like she’d always known the shape of his shoulders, had seen him lean into a doorframe and look her over a hundred times before. “You drink coffee?”

  Lila nodded. Her cheeks felt warm and golden. “I love coffee,” she said.

  They ate breakfast, guzzled coffee, and went out the door before the rest of the house even began to stir. “We get lazy in the winter,” Henry explained as they got in his truck. “There’s not a lot of work, so we start, y’know, hibernating. Resting up.”

  The morning was still a milky, pre-dawn gray when Lila and Henry reached the base of the mountain, closer to downtown Sitka. The air tasted cool and salty as the churning dark water all around them. They started at the harbor, where the wind had the edge of a blunt knife. Boats huddled in their stalls like eggs in a carton.

  Henry stopped at a little sailboat at the end of the dock. Its belly was bright orange, its deck slippery and snowy, but otherwise immaculate. She wondered how their house would look if the men could keep it as nicely as Henry kept his boat.

  “This is Lucy.” Henry patted the side of the boat like it was a dog. He nodded at the worn cursive name inscribed along the bow. “Me and Matt sailed her all the way up from Seattle one summer just to get her here. She’s a determined old lady. And she’s gonna get us out to those whales of yours.” He took hold of the rigging and hopped onboard in one clean, fluid motion. “Let’s get a move on.”

  Lila looked up at the sailboat bobbing up and down in the dark water. The deck was level with her collarbone. She grabbed Henry’s hand and lifted her foot uncertainly, even though she had no hope of reaching the edge of the boat. “I don’t know how you expect me to do this.”