Alpha Rancher Bear: BWWM Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Bears of Pinerock County Book 3) (2 page)

"Are you entirely sure—" Alec began.

"Go!" Saffron said.

The near presence of the little human was so intensely distracting that Alec could barely think.

As soon as he'd walked into the clinic, he'd become somehow aware of her, as if the intoxicating scent of her had permeated the air. Alec's bear was always alert and restless, as befitted an alpha's animal, but it had come to attention inside him as soon as Charmian came in sight. And what it wanted was—impossible.

His bear thought that this pretty little human, with her medium-brown skin and pixie face and short, squiggly hair, was his mate.

Right now, her presence on the other side of the table made him tingle all over, his skin prickling and his bear so restless that he thought surely she must be able to glimpse his animal in his eyes. Charmian, he noticed, had a little crinkle between her brows when she concentrated. Her melting dark-brown eyes were very bright. He felt as if he could fall into them, and tried to pull himself back—

Dimly, as if from a long distance away, he heard Saffron say, "Go!"

It didn't even sink in until a moment later. He was too focused on Charmian's eyes. And then his hand slammed into the table and he came back from wherever he'd just gone and stared at his hand pressed to the table by her strong brown fingers.

"I won?" Charmian said in disbelief. "I mean, I won!" Her instant of triumph turned bitter, and she scowled, the temporary softness in her eyes hardening like winter-frozen ice. Alec felt an unexpected pang of regret. "You
let
me win, you ass."

"I was—"
Distracted by your beauty. Driven half out of my mind by your scent.
No, honesty didn't lead anywhere good. And her hand was still resting on top of his. He shook his head angrily, leaving the sentence unfinished. Yanking his hand free of her grip, he stood up. "Saffron, I'll pick you up after your appointment."

"Uh, okay?" Saffron said, but she was already talking to his back. Alec paused only long enough to grab his coat and hat before stomping outside.

He put on the coat in the parking lot, and stood for a few minutes in the lightly swirling snow, gulping bracing breaths of the cold winter air.

She's your mate,
Alec's bear snarled at him.

No,
he thought back.
I'm not interested in a mate.

That's not how it works. The decision isn't yours to make.

Yeah? Watch me, bear.

His bear subsided into snarly silence, sulking.

***

He ran some errands, picking up items from the hardware store and a few groceries. Everything in the town's small shopping district was so close together that it didn't take long, and he ended up back at the clinic a few minutes before the end of Saffron's appointment.

Going in would mean seeing Charmian again. Like an alcoholic confronted with a bottle, he found himself almost powerless to resist that siren call. Just to see her again—to touch her—

His helplessness in the face of his overwhelming attraction sent a knife-stab of some emotion through him. It wasn't fear, not quite, but it was a loss of control that he couldn't handle. He mastered himself and his bear with an effort, and leaned against his truck in the lightly falling snow, hands shoved in his pockets, until Saffron came out.

"Wow, did you wake up on the wrong side of the den this morning or what?" Saffron asked him, clambering up to the passenger seat of the truck.

"Is that any way to talk to your alpha?"

Saffron wrinkled her nose. "I'm a fox shifter, not a bear. I love being an
adopted
part of your clan, Alec, and I love you, don't get me wrong, but I'm still going to tell you when you're being a jerk. And you were kind of a jerk to my midwife back there."

His brain suffered an odd kind of glitch at the words
I love you
. Like a truck hitting a speedbump. He knew she meant it in a family kind of way, of course, but ...

Somehow he'd just never quite understood what all the new mates turning up around the Circle B Ranch actually
meant
. It meant that his clan, his family, was getting bigger. It meant kids. It meant pregnant women telling him they loved him in his truck while snow piled up on the windshield.

The idea of incorporating a mate into that rapidly widening circle of people he cared about was too much. He was having enough trouble dealing with ... with all of
this
. Maybe if he stayed away from Charmian, and she stayed away from him, the problem would go away.

You wish,
his bear grumbled.

"Uh, the light's green," Saffron said.

"Right." He turned onto the highway heading back to the ranch.

They drove in silence for a few minutes before Saffron cleared her throat. "Look, Alec, I'm sorry if I was out of line back there. It's just, I could tell you really upset Charmian when you left like that. She was weird and distant all through our appointment. I like her a lot, is the thing, and even if I didn't, I need to have a good working relationship with her for the rest of my pregnancy. It's not like Pinerock County has midwives to spare."

She was giving him a hopeful look with her big blue eyes.

"And?" Alec said after a moment. "What am I supposed to do about it?"

"Apologize to her!" Saffron said. "You were really rude, and I understand it's basically just
you
, we all understand that, but
she
doesn't know that."

"I haven't done anything to apologize for! And anyway," he said, staring straight ahead through the lightly fogged windshield as the wipers brushed snowflakes away, "alphas don't apologize. It's a sign of weakness."

Saffron banged her head lightly against the back of the seat. "I'm sorry, I forgot you're still living in the 19th century."

"I'm
not
," Alec snapped, more sharply than he intended. "Things have changed a lot. I don't run the clan the way my dad and grandfather did. But you can't change things too much or you end up with anarchy, like your clan, with no defenses when people like Creed come along."

Saffron fell silent at the reminder of her clan's evil alpha, who had dominated their town for generations until her mate, Remy, set her free. And Alec clenched his jaw. He hadn't meant to bring up bad memories for her.

Damn it, for years and years, it had been just him and the other bears on the ranch. The other
male
bears. They hadn't had any of these complications. Why had he ever said yes to letting his brother Axl bring a mate home? That's what had started the whole thing. Now—

Now he couldn't get Charmian's face out of his head. Couldn't stop thinking about her brown eyes, even when they were snapping with anger at him.

Just let it go. You'll forget about her, and things will go back to how they were before.

Even without the disgruntled rumbling of his bear, he wasn't quite sure if he believed himself.

"Oh, damn!" Saffron said suddenly.

"Is something wrong?" Alec asked, jolted out of his thoughts. "It's not the baby, is it?"

"No, Alec, stop worrying about that." She patted down the pockets of her coat. "I left my gloves in Charmian's office. I guess I put them down somewhere. At least, I hope they didn't fall out in the parking lot."

They were already on the winding road heading up into the hills. "Do you want me to turn around?" Alec asked, not relishing the idea.

"No, there's no point in retracing a half-hour drive just to get a pair of gloves. There are plenty of gloves at the ranch. They're a pair Tara made me for Christmas, though, so I'd like to get them back." She pulled out her phone. "Hang on, I'll call Charmian and ask her if she's seen them."

No, don't call Charmian
... He squashed that line of thinking. Going out of his way to avoid the fiery little midwife would be ridiculous behavior unbecoming an alpha. He should just act normal around her. That would be fine. He could do it.

""Charmian, hi, it's Saffron. I think I left a pair of gloves in your office. They're green knit gloves with white bobbles on the cuffs. Keep an eye out, would you?"

Saffron hung up without waiting for a reply. "Voicemail," she reported to Alec. "She said she was thinking about closing the clinic after my appointment, if no one else came in. She must have gone home."

Home
. Alec's rebellious brain, or possibly his rebellious bear, conjured an image for him of what Charmian's house might be like. It would be a cute little house, probably. Pocket-sized, like her.

And there's absolutely no reason why I should care.

Why was she having so much trouble getting that blue-eyed jerk out of her head, anyway?

After Saffron left, Charmian caught herself peeking out the window, catching a glimpse of the long-limbed figure leaning against his truck, with snowflakes swirling down to settle on his shoulders. Didn't even have the decency to come inside. She shook her head and turned away, firmly setting herself to the task of tidying up the clinic before leaving for the day.

The snow was coming down harder when she came out. The weather report was forecasting snow all week, a big storm system rolling in off the Plains. They hadn't had a lot of really cold winters lately, not like the ones Charmian remembered from when she was a kid, when the snow piled in drifts taller than she was. These days, big blizzards were rare, and snow was almost as much of a treat as it was a pain in the ass.

Still, she was grateful for the four-wheel drive in her Jeep. She also had chains in the back, along with a first-aid kit, road flares, and a blanket. She'd grown up around here—not in Pinerock County itself, but in the next county over. Her dad had been a country veterinarian. He'd since sold his practice and moved to Florida with her mom, but she had grown up traveling all over the tri-county area with her dad, visiting the ranches and getting to know the back country.

So a little winter weather didn't scare her. Still, it might be worse tomorrow. She stopped by the grocery store to make sure she had enough staples to last for a few days just in case she got snowed in, along with a six-pack of her favorite beer. In the checkout line she chatted with the clerk, whose sister's baby Charmian had just recently delivered. One thing about being the daughter of the vet
and
the county midwife: she probably knew two-thirds of the people in the county. In fact, it was a little surprising that she'd managed to go her whole life without running into Tall, Dark, and Grouchy before, although she had seen Saffron's husband Remy around town, even before Saffron started coming into the clinic.

He's probably one of those rural weirdos who doesn't ever come down from the mountains. Just a grouchy old hermit. Not the first rude person you've run into, Charmian, and he won't be the last. Stop obsessing on it.

But she couldn't seem to shake him out of her head. As she got into her Jeep, she got a flash of Alec lounging on his truck, his big body somehow exuding powerful sex appeal even bundled in a coat. She clenched her teeth and put the Jeep in gear, but she kept seeing those piercing blue eyes boring into her soul; she kept feeling the warmth and strength of his hand on hers.

I'd love to see what else those hands can do ...

Aargh.

At least, once she turned off the highway, she had the drive to distract her. Charmian's house wasn't in the absolute middle of nowhere, but she was in a little maze of roads that generally only got plowed when the county had finished clearing the bigger thoroughfares, unless one of the locals got to it first. She discovered, in fact, when she got home that one of the neighbors had plowed out her driveway. She'd have to be sure and find out which one it was, and drop off a bottle of wine at his door.

She had to smile to herself about living in a place where so many of her neighbors had snowplow attachments for their trucks that it could have been any one of half a dozen people.

"Honey, I'm home!" she called, opening the door.

There was a pattering of toenails on tile and Bucket launched himself at her legs. Charmian set down her grocery bags and sat on the floor to pick up the little bundle of scruff in her arms. Bucket was a wiry-haired mutt who had been left at her dad's veterinary office years ago, literally in a bucket, hence the name. Charmian had seen the damp and shivering puppy when he was brought in, and it was love at first sight. She'd always preferred big dogs and never thought she'd give her heart away to a creature that was probably ten pounds soaking wet, but she liked to say that Bucket had the heart and soul of a much bigger dog. He even liked to go jogging with her. By now Charmian's neighbors had become used to the sight of the small woman running along the back-country roads, with an even tinier ball of fluff bouncing intently along at her heels.

She let him out into the fenced yard and went to put her groceries away. Munching on a granola bar, she filled some bottles with water just in case the power went out, and checked her supply of candles in a kitchen drawer. Power outages were relatively common here in the winter, and had become a minor inconvenience rather than a major headache for her by now, but part of what made them that way was making sure to take care of preparations beforehand.

Right now, the snow seemed to be slacking off. If the forecast was right they'd be in for a dumping over the next few days, though.

Saffron lived somewhere up in the mountains. Had she and Alec made it home okay?

"Which I'm only wondering," she said aloud, "because I'm worried about my client, obviously."

Vigorous scratching from the back door provided a convenient distraction just as her thoughts started to wander in the direction of blue eyes and big warm hands again. She let in Bucket, who came bouncing into the kitchen, his long wiry coat covered with snow.

"Did you have a nice time?" she asked the dog, giving him a biscuit from the dog-shaped cookie jar on the counter. "Tell you what. Mama's got a whole afternoon to herself and plenty of daylight, so I think I'm going to gear up and go skiing. Not something you can come along for, I'm afraid."

As she went to get her ski gear together, she firmly put all thoughts of Alec out of her mind. Exercise, she thought with determination. Exercise was exactly what she needed to take her mind off him.

And if he happened to drive Saffron to the clinic for her next appointment ... well ... that wouldn't be a
bad
thing, would it?

She plugged her phone into its charger before taking off, and checked her voicemail by habit. One new one. She usually had her phone in her purse when she was driving, so she hadn't noticed it come in. As soon as she heard Saffron's voice, she winced. She liked Saffron, but this family was
haunting
her; there was no other explanation.

Green gloves. Hmm. That sounded familiar. She'd brought a satchel of papers and books home with her from the clinic, and she opened it up. Yep. There they were. Saffron must have left them lying around somewhere, and Charmian had packed them up along with her things.

I could go up there, take them back to her ...

As if Alec would be happy to see her at all. He'd left without even saying goodbye.

Well, she thought, putting the gloves back on top of the things in the satchel, she didn't need to go today. She'd see how busy tomorrow turned out to be, and find out if Saffron was able to come in herself and pick them up. And if not, then ...
then
maybe she'd think about going up there.

Right now, the ski trails were calling her name. Skiing was the only thing on her mind.

Certainly not a big handsome man with blue eyes.

Not in the slightest.