Saddled Bearback (BBW Shifter Cowboy Romance) (Bear Ranchers Book 2) Read online

  By the end of the day they were all exhausted, but the werewolf proofing was up and Jamie was happy. Jesse held her hand in his as they surveyed the work.

  “Your cattle should be safe tonight,” he assured her.

  “Thank you so much,” she said turning to him. “You’ve been such a blessing.” She reached up to kiss him but Jesse pulled back a little.

  “Listen, before we go any further, I have to tell you something,” he said, his golden eyes serious.

  She reached up and pulled his face to hers, “You’re a were-bear, I know.” Then she kissed him. He was surprised but he leaned into the kiss after a moment and wrapped his arms around her as she tangled her hands in his hair.

  They stopped kissing and he rubbed the tip of his nose gently against hers. “How did you find out?”

  “Kyle,” she said. “He told me. Said he could smell something on me and that I’d find out sooner or later.”

  “Remind me to thank him later,” Jesse said and kissed her again.

  “Oh, holy shit! She’s eating him alive!” Tyler cried. “Seriously guys get a room!”

  Jamie and Jesse pulled apart and they got into the truck and drove back to the farm house.

  Jamie invited them all in for dinner. They all accepted and insisted on helping to cook. It was the first time the Campbells had entertained company in a long time. They sat around the kitchen table and laughed, joked and ate. Even Ander let his guard down, guffawing as Tyler spun a raunchy tale.

  Jamie noticed though, that Oliver was not joining in like everyone else. He seemed a little sour, watching the were-bears over the rim of his glass. He pretended not to hear Wyatt when the latter asked him to pass the salt. She reached across the table and helped Wyatt.

  It was just his way, Jamie decided. Her cousin was a passive aggressive little shit most of the time. And of course anything that made her and her father happy seemed to make him unhappy, so why would this be different? He sulked until the meal was over and then went up to his room.

  Her father watched him go and shook his head. “He isn’t used to farm life,” he said making an excuse for Oliver. Why couldn’t her father see the little jerk for what he was?

  The evening ended too soon for Jamie, but she was beat. So when Jesse and the gang had helped clear up and walked out of the door, she accepted a rather chaste goodnight kiss from him and watched them drive away.

  That night she slept in the guest room downstairs, her room not being a place she wanted to be in yet, after the accident.

  Next morning Jamie woke to rain pattering on the windows. Dressed, she found her father in the kitchen muttering to himself.

  “If I’d wanted wet feet I would have moved to Canada,” he moaned.

  “We need the rain, dad,” she said.

  “We need the sun too,” he said.

  Jesse arrived just after breakfast and they set about making plans for the day. The cattle had all made it through the night, but they needed the feed taken up to them. Jamie and Jesse were just pulling their ponchos on to go and take care of that when there was a knock on the front door.

  Her father went to open it.

  “Okay, well hopefully we won’t get too wet,” Jamie smiled up at Jesse who planted a quick kiss on the tip of her nose.

  “You know I am an adult,” she said, “You won’t be the first man my father has had to watch me kiss.”

  Jesse pretended to be shocked, “I’m not the first?”

  She looked at him.

  “No really, I’m just a little old fashioned about that sort of thing,” Jesse said. “I feel I should write a letter stating my intensions or something.”

  “And those are?” she asked coyly.

  “Well,” Jesse said pulling her towards him.

  Just then Ander came storming into the kitchen.

  “Jamie!” he yelled.

  Jesse and Jamie jumped apart like two teens caught making out under the bleachers.

  Recovering slightly Jamie turned to her father. “Dad?” she asked.

  He was angry, his face flushed, his nostrils flaring. “What is the meaning of this?”

  He shoved a sheaf of paper in front of her face.

  Jamie took it looking blank. She had no idea what he was handing her. She looked down at the paper in her hands. It was the accounts.

  “Dad?” she said. “These are the accounts aren’t they?”

  “How could you do this?”

  “Do what?”

  “I knew you blamed me for what happened…but sabotage?”

  Jamie felt her knees go weak. She stumbled to the table and sat down. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s just too much!” her father roared. “Joe, please. You deal with her. I’m not sure I can control myself. My own flesh and blood!” he stormed out of the room revealing a small man, grey haired and bespectacled who stood clutching a brief case to his chest.

  “Hello, Jamie,” he said sitting opposite her.

  Jamie stared at him. “Joe,” she said tears building in the back of her throat. “What is going on?”

  Jesse was next to her taking her hand. “You want me to stay?”

  She shook her head. “The cattle need to be fed,” she said, “take my dad’s truck, it’s all loaded.”

  She gave Jesse the keys. He looked at her, his concern etched on his face. She tried to smile but couldn’t.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he promised and left.

  “Right,” Jamie said taking a deep breath and letting it out. Her hands were shaking. “Now tell me what’s going on here.”

  Joe was a very conscientious man. He laid out the facts in front of Jamie in a methodical manner. He walked her through each transaction, through everything step by step. He showed her where the figures almost added up, but didn’t. It was amazing. Jamie could see that. Someone, had gone to great pains to make mistakes, deliberate mistakes, adding things up incorrectly. They had placed orders for all sorts of supplies, adding in things here and there that then never got delivered. Jamie knew she’d been working hard lately, but she would never have gotten things this wrong. Could it all be just some misunderstanding? But as Joe kept on and on, showing her were things were disappearing and coming up short, where a dollar here and a dollar there were missing, Jamie couldn’t think it was a mistake. There were misfiled items, things in the wrong column and Joe had followed the track all the way. As it dawned on Jamie she went cold.

  “I didn’t do this,” she said, hardly able to say the words. “You can’t be serious?”

  Her father had joined them halfway through Joe’s explanation and he sat silent and sullen across from her.

  “Dad I would never steal from you! You raised me better than that!” Jamie said hotly. “You have to believe me. I love you and the farm. I want to see it back like it was, when mom and Andrew were alive, and things were great. Dad please you have to believe me. There is no way I could do anything like this.”

  “All the evidence points to you, dear,” Joe said sadly. “Deposits made to online accounts opened in your name.”

  Jamie sat sadly, feeling the tears run down her cheeks.

  “Just be honest,” her father said. “I can handle the theft, but the lying? That I won’t tolerate.”

  “I am being honest!” Jamie said suddenly angry. “I have always been honest with you, dad!”

  She stood up. “We’re done here!”

  The boom shook the windows.

  Jamie was shocked. They all looked from one to the other, none knowing what to say or where the deafening sound had come from.

  Oliver came running into the room. “Uncle Ander!” He stopped short when he saw Jamie, his mouth open. He stammered looking like a fish on land gasping for breath.

  “What is it Oliver?” Ander asked on his feet too.

  “I think, umm…” he trailed off.

  “Oh no!” Jamie said and ran for the back door, throwing it open. She ran out into the rain. It couldn’t
be. Not again, not someone she cared about.

  The rain was pouring down and Jamie ran around the side of the house. She pelted up the rise towards the field where the cattle were standing in the downpour. She ran and ran, the mud sticking to her boots. She slipped and slid along, drenched and dirty, but she had to get to him. She had to make sure that Jesse was okay. She got up to the field but she couldn’t see him. Her father’s truck wasn’t there. She checked the feed trough. It was full, the cattle happily munching.

  She looked around.

  Another boom, this time closer and she ran in that direction. This path took her downhill. She slid through the mud on her way down a steep embankment, and she saw the taillights of the truck gleaming red in the rain. The truck had overturned and somehow it was on fire.

  “Jesse!” she yelled, running and sliding down the muddy track towards the stricken vehicle. He couldn’t be dead, oh please not dead! She reached the truck and peered inside. He was still belted into the driver’s seat. She didn’t know what to do. The whole under carriage of the truck was a flame.

  Jamie, on her hands and knees, crawled into the cabin of the truck through the broken passenger side window. She grabbed the seatbelt mechanism and pushed the button. She pushed it again, but the belt was jammed, pulled tight around Jesse. It was stuck. She began to cry in frustration, trying to free him.

  “Here take this.”

  Jamie turned and saw her father there in the mud on his hands and knees with her. He was holding out his pocket knife. She took it and began to cut the strap. The truck gave a shudder.

  “Hurry girl!” her father said, fear in his eyes.

  Jamie’s fingers were numb and wet, the knife kept slipping, but she kept on.

  “It’s going to blow!” her father cried and with one heave, pulled her out by her legs.

  “No! Dad! He’ll die!” she screamed but her father dragged her out and away from the truck. Then he went around to the driver’s side and reached in to the cabin. He pulled and the truck exploded.

  Jamie woke up with rain on her face. Where was she? Why was she outside? There was a ringing in her ears that was really starting to annoy her. Swaying she sat up blinking. Something was on fire she could smell the smoke. It was close. She stared at a bright light until some neurons, not currently misfiring, managed to produce some coherent thought.

  That was when she started to scream. Her father was in there. The man she had loved her whole life, and he was helping the man she had just fallen in love with. How could the universe be so cruel as to put them both in danger at the same time? How could this be happening?

  She crawled and slid and slipped around the burning vehicle tears and rain stinging her eyes.

  Jamie couldn’t even get close. The fire was burning to brightly.

  “Daddy!” she screamed.

  “Jamie!”

  The voice was her father’s and she turned to see him sitting in the mud a little way off. He was cradling something.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said as she crawled towards him. “I’m so sorry.”

  She looked from her father’s mud covered face to the thing he was holding. It was Jesse. He was covered in blood, cuts and bruises, and one side of his face was burnt.

  “I don’t think he’s breathing,” her father said sadly.

  Jamie took Jesse from her father and cried. She held him while her father wrapped his arms around her.

  After a while sirens filled the air and soon other people arrived. A fire truck and an ambulance showed up too, called by little Joe the accountant who looked sad in his rain drenched suit.

  A paramedic spoke to her but Jamie didn’t hear him.

  “Ma’am I have to check him,” he said indicating Jesse.

  Her father drew her back as the paramedic knelt down. He checked for a pulse and suddenly began to work with determination. He called his colleague over and together they put an IV into Jesse’s arm, and a tube down his throat. Then they loaded him onto a gurney.

  “But he’s dead!” Jamie wailed.

  The paramedic shook his head, “No ma’am, he’s very much alive, but needs to go to hospital immediately.”

  “Go with him,” her father said. “Go, I’m fine.”

  Jamie climbed into the back of the ambulance where a paramedic took one look at her and began to check her.

  By the time they reached the hospital Jamie was calmer. Jesse was breathing on his own and the paramedic was marveling at his healing powers. Suddenly Jamie panicked. What if they found out that Jesse was a were-bear? What would happen then?

  “It’s okay,” the other paramedic said quietly, turning golden eyes on her. Jamie relaxed. “I know what to do with him.”

  Once Jesse was peacefully asleep in a private room in the hospital, Jamie called her dad to fetch her.

  “Will he be okay?” he asked as she slid into the passenger seat of her own Ford, which her father had clearly borrowed.

  “He’ll make a full recovery,” Jamie said. She was so tired but there was something she had to tell him. “Listen dad, you have to believe me, I didn’t do those things to the accounts. I wouldn’t know how. That’s complicated stuff and I’m not smart or devious enough. You have to believe me.”

  Her father held her hand for a moment but didn’t say anything.

  It was a quiet ride home and Jaime dozed part of the way, too tired to stay awake. When they got home Oliver was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a sandwich and someone was sitting across from him. He glanced up when Jamie and her father entered the room. Suddenly he looked nervous. His eyes darted from them to the girl sitting opposite him. She had a blue hoodie on and her dark hair spilled out from under it.

  “You!” Jamie said bearing down on the girl all tiredness forgotten. “I know you. I’ve seen you hanging around.”

  “Observant huh?” the girl said, tilting her head to one side, “You want a medal?”

  Jamie set her jaw. She turned on Oliver screaming.

  “How dare you bring her into this house!? She’s a werewolf! How dare you? After everything they’ve done to us?!”

  “Jamie, please!” her father said, but Jamie was on Oliver pelting him with her fists. He was trying to ward her off.

  “Get off me!” he yelled. Jamie looked into his scared grey eyes, the eyes begging her not to think, not to notice anything. There was after all only one other person with access to the accounts, to the supply ordering and the deliveries. There was only one person here who could be so devious and has the means to pull it off.

  All the pieces slotted into place in her mind creating one big picture. And then she turned and looked at the werewolf, those cold eyes, that jaw. She wanted to spill the beans. Jamie could just see it. She was dying to rub Jamie’s nose in what she and Oliver had done

  “We’ve been such fools, dad,” she said letting Oliver go. “Such idiots. Who has been helping out with the admin since mom died? Who has been here to receive the deliveries? It’s not me, I’ve been with you, out in the fields. But it has been someone now hasn’t it?” she looked at Oliver.