Grizzly Flying Home (2 page)

Behind him, the alien war continued, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to focus on the movie any longer. In a last, desperate fit of frustration, he ran after Emily. She already had her hand on the exit door when he made it out of the theater.

“Emily, wait!” he called out. She paused, and turned around. She had pushed the door half-open, and the bright afternoon sunshine was streaming in on her face. Seeing her in the full light of day nearly took Chance’s breath away. She had streaks of mascara on her cheeks where her tears had fallen, and a purple-bluish bruise was already visible on her lower arm. But she was undeniably beautiful.

Her silky brown hair, mussed up from her fight with Scott, still perfectly framed her face. The sun brought out reddish highlights in the dark strands, and made the smooth skin of her face glow. Her green eyes looked like two emeralds, and the sadness in them tore at Chance’s soul. He wanted to go beat Scott up right then and there. What kind of a man would treat an exquisite woman like this as anything less than a princess? Chance shook his head in disgust as he walked up to Emily. Men like Scott didn’t deserve to take up space on this planet. He couldn’t believe that Emily made excuses for Scott’s behavior, and it made his heart ache to know that she was probably going to go straight back to him.

“Look, I just wanted to let you know, if you do need somewhere to stay, I live fifteen minutes outside of town with a bunch of wildfire firefighters. We have a big group there of good people—firefighters and their wives. If you ever need a safe place to stay and don’t feel comfortable calling the cops, call me, okay?”

Chance reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He grabbed a business card with his number on it and handed it to Emily, thankful that he’d had the cards printed up even though it seemed like a waste of time. She took it without a word and nodded.

“Thanks. For everything. I appreciate it. I’m sure I’ll be fine, though.”

She stuck the card in her purse and then walked outside, letting the heavy theater door swing shut behind her.

Chance took in a deep breath and then exhaled, telling himself to let her go. He couldn’t save everyone, especially someone who didn’t want to be saved. He had to let Emily make her own decisions.

Still, as he made his way back to his truck to head back to the hangar, he couldn’t erase the haunting image of her sad, green eyes. She was going to be a hard face to forget.

Emily Wellman cringed as she sat on the floor of her bedroom closet in pitch black darkness. She covered her ears tightly with her palms, but she could still hear the banging on her front door, and the rough sound of Scott’s voice as he screamed. She had texted him to say that she was going to a friend’s house in San Francisco for the week to get some space, but he didn’t seem to have believed that story. He was screaming through her front door that he knew she was in there, although Emily wasn’t sure how he could be so confident. She’d hid her car a mile away in the parking lot of another apartment complex and walked home, just so he wouldn’t see her vehicle and be suspicious. She hadn’t turned on anything in her apartment that gave off light or noise, and yet he was still here, raising a ruckus and about to break down the door.

Emily took several deep breaths and willed for him to go away. She was worried that one of her neighbors was going to call the cops, and that was a mess she didn’t want to deal with. Emily let herself fall backwards so she was lying on her back on the rough carpet of her closet, staring up at the dark ceiling. How had her life come to this?

This was ridiculous, really. She was hiding out like a fugitive in her own apartment, from the man who was supposed to love her and take care of her. And he did take care of her—when he wasn’t in one of his moods. He could be so sweet and loving when he wasn’t being haunted by the demons of his past. He’d had a rough time of it, working on the anti-narcotic task force in Miami. He’d dealt with a lot of violence and gangs during his time on the job, but he’d served proudly until a clash with some gang lords had left him severely injured and dealing with residual pain in his back and legs.

He’d moved to California to start over, which is where Emily had met him through a mutual friend. He was a great guy, until he wasn’t. He sometimes overmedicated with pain meds, and dealt with symptoms of post-traumatic stress. He needed help, but he refused to get it. So, Emily tried her best to be strong for him when he couldn’t be strong for himself. He hadn’t always been violent. It was only within the last few months. Emily was scared, and knew she deserved better. But it was hard for her to completely turn her back on Scott when he had been so sweet to her in the past, and when she knew he had been through so much.

Emily took in a deep breath of relief as she realized that the banging had stopped. She waited, unmoving, for fifteen minutes, just in case he was trying to fake her out. But there was no sound, and she eventually tiptoed to her front door to look through the peephole. No one was there, and the hallway seemed completely quiet. She breathed a silent, relieved prayer of gratitude that the storm was over, at least for the moment.

She moved quietly to her kitchen and dared to turn on the light above the oven on its dimmest setting. Then she threw a pizza in the oven that she had already preheated. She’d been in the process of preparing a quick dinner when Scott had shown up, but she’d stopped when he arrived. She hadn’t wanted to move around at all while he was outside for fear of him hearing her and discovering that she was actually inside. Emily set the timer on the oven, and then opened a bottle of wine. It was a cheap red that she’d grabbed from the sale shelf a few days ago, and it wasn’t the smoothest merlot she’d ever tasted. But she didn’t care. She just wanted something to settle her nerves a little bit.

She poured herself a generous glass in a paper cup, and then slid down to sit on the cold kitchen floor while she drank her wine and waited for her pizza to cook. She leaned back against the smooth, hard surface of her cabinets and closed her eyes. How had her life come to this? She’d had everything together. Big dreams. Big plans. She was going to get her photography business started and settle into a comfortable, happy life doing work she loved. Then she’d eventually find a man and get married, followed by a maybe a kid or two. Life would be full, busy, and happy. But those plans had slowly started to crumble not long after she met Scott. He was so controlling and jealous, and didn’t like for her to go shoot weddings, which had become the bread and butter of her photography business. He was always accusing her of looking for a new guy at the fancy wedding ceremonies she photographed, which was ridiculous. Emily wasn’t looking for another guy, and, even if she had been, she wouldn’t have had time to find one while she was working. Shooting a wedding required every spare ounce of her attention.

At first, Emily thought Scott’s jealousy was sort of endearing. At least he cared about her, right? But as his angry accusations continued, Emily took on fewer weddings and more family photo shoots to try to appease him. This didn’t help, though, and he had grown more ill-tempered instead of less. Emily stopped going out with friends much because she never knew when Scott was going to fly off the handle. Eventually, she moved away from San Francisco to live in Red Valley with him, although she’d insisted on keeping her own apartment, a decision she was incredibly thankful for now. Since he had gone from being just angry and jealous to actually violent in the last few months, she was glad she had the space.

Tears started spilling over Emily’s eyelids despite her efforts to fight them back. She hated crying, even when she was alone. But, lately, all she seemed to do was cry. She had trouble finding much joy in life when she felt like she spent most of her time trying to appease Scott, while in the background her business faded away. Emily knew she should leave him, but she felt guilty. He would have no one to take care of if she left. More tears spilled over as Emily continued to fight her overpowering emotions. She’d never understood girls who refused to leave abusive boyfriends or husbands, until now. It was hard to walk away when you loved someone, and when your whole life had come to revolve around them. Deep down, Emily believed she deserved better. But she wasn’t sure how to get her life back.

She looked up and saw that her purse was on the counter right above her, so she stretched her arm up to grab it and pull it down to the floor with her. She needed a tissue, and she was sure she had one in here somewhere. She wiped at her eyes as she sifted through the mess of lip glosses, pens, hair ties, bobby pins, gum, and lotions. She finally found a package of tissues, and, stuck to the outer wrapper was a business card. Emily’s eyes filled with tears again as she realized it belonged to Chance, the man who had saved her from Scott’s wrath at the movie theater earlier that day.

Emily stared down at the card for a long time, trying to read the print on it through her blurry, tear-filled vision. Chance was a pilot, working for the United States Forest Service. Emily racked her brain, trying to remember if he’d said anymore about what he did. She remembered him talking about wildfire fighters. Did he fly them around to fight forest fires? Emily actually cracked a smile. That sounded like a pretty cool job.

She closed her eyes and tried to conjure up an image of Chance as best she could from her fuzzy memory. She’d been too rattled to pay close attention to his looks, but she remembered him having dark hair and dark eyes. His eyes had flashed with so much anger when he confronted Scott that Emily had felt afraid, even though she’d known the anger wasn’t directed at her. Emily also remembered him being tall and muscular. Obviously, Chance was a big guy if he had so easily taken Scott down. Scott wasn’t exactly a weakling himself. Emily wondered if Chance worked out the same as the firefighters did, even though it seemed like he was more of a pilot than one of the men on the ground actually fighting fires. She smiled again as she imagined having a firefighter for a boyfriend. She’d always romanticized the idea of a fireman to love. What girl hadn’t?

Emily’s smile turned down into a frown. What was she doing, sitting here fantasizing about Chance? She barely knew more about him than his name. Besides, she was technically still dating Scott. Even though that relationship had petered out to not much more than Emily cowering every time she was around Scott, she
was
still in a relationship, and she was no cheater. She had no business sitting here daydreaming about Chance.

The oven beeped, alerting Emily to the fact that her pizza was ready. She started at the sound, then jumped up quickly to silence the noise. She still wasn’t convinced that Scott wouldn’t try to come back around tonight. She turned off the timer and the oven, then grabbed oven mitts to help her remove the hot pizza from the oven.

She left the food to cool for a minute, and started cleaning up the items on the floor that she had pulled from her purse. She replaced everything except Chance’s business card, which she held in her hand and stared at for several long moments. She considered tossing it in the trash. She had no plans to ever call him up begging for help. She’d handled Scott just fine on her own until now, and she wasn’t interested in getting someone else involved—especially when that someone was a man so gorgeous that just the thought of him was enough to make her heart beat faster.

But she couldn’t quite bring herself to throw it away. It was always good to have more friends and connections, right? Emily pulled out her wallet and tucked the business card inside before she could change her mind.

For Chance, the rest of July was spent in a constant frenzy. A combination of unusually high temperatures and lack of rain in Northern California caused wildfire after wildfire. Chance was continuously shuttling the smokejumping crew between fires, and even got called on to help a few other crews who didn’t have a dedicated pilot. August didn’t bring much relief either, with soaring temperatures and a continued drought. But by September, the crews had managed to get things under control at least. The fires were still burning, but new ones weren’t popping up every day. Chance and the Burning Claws Crew got a much needed break, and they chose to celebrate the way they always did—with a barbecue right outside the hangar.

Zach, the second in command of the crew, prided himself on being an expert griller. While the rest of the crew started popping open beer cans and wine coolers, Zach was busy overseeing an impressive assortment of steaks, chicken breasts, hamburgers, and bratwursts. Chance himself wasn’t too bad at grilling, but he had to admit that Zach had some serious skills when it came to managing so many different kinds of meat at the same time without burning or overcooking anything.

Chance looked over the spread of side dishes on the picnic tables, and his stomach growled. In addition to cornbread and salad, there was potato salad, corn on the cob, coleslaw, chips and dip, bacon wrapped asparagus, deviled eggs, a veggie tray, and creamy cucumber salad. And, of course, baked potatoes with all of the fixings. Pretty much any food Chance could have possibly wanted was there on the tables. The smell of the food and the meat being grilled made his mouth water.

“Hurry it up, Zach,” Chance yelled teasingly over toward the grill. “My grandma could grill faster than you. My bear’s hungry, and he’s not gonna be happy until I get some of that meat in my belly.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Zach said. “Everyone loves to complain, but no one else ever volunteers to help grill. Bunch of lazy asses.”

“Hey now,” Trevor said. Trevor was another one of the bear shifters on the crew, and had one of the biggest appetites in the group. “I’ve tried to help you out plenty of times, but you get all possessive about your grill. You’re too anal too let anyone else near it.”

Zach grinned and shrugged. “Want it done right, you gotta do it yourself. Last time I let you help you set a steak on fire.”

“I wanted it well-done,” Trevor answered, laughing.

The women around the picnic tables rolled their eyes, and Charlotte, Ian’s lifemate, spoke up. “Don’t you boys ever give it a rest? Always trying to one-up each other on everything from grilling skills to who can down a can of beer faster. Do you think we’re impressed?”

Ian laughed and planted a kiss on Charlotte’s forehead. “I must have done something to impress you, dear, because you’ve stuck around this long.”

Charlotte rolled her eyes and pushed Ian away, but she couldn’t help cracking a smile and sending a wink in his direction.

“Speaking of beer, is this all we have?” Hunter, another of the bear shifters, asked with a raised eyebrow as he peered into a cooler.

Trevor leaned over to look into the cooler. “Oh, shit. We’ve only got a six pack left. It looks like the rest is all sodas. Who was supposed to be in charge of buying beer?”

“Not me,” Zach said. “I was in charge of meat.”

“I think we forgot to delegate that task to someone,” Hunter said. “But this sucks. We can’t have a proper barbecue without enough beer for everyone.”

Chance jumped up. “I’ll go grab some,” he said. “As long as Zach promises to save me some meat.”

“Better hurry,” Zach said with a grin. “My bear is pretty hungry, too.”

Chance rolled his eyes, already standing and reaching into his pockets to make sure he had his truck keys on him. “Well, if your bear wants beer then he better save me some food. I’ll be back in thirty minutes, guys.”

Chance sprinted to the parking lot and hopped into his truck, then peeled out of the parking lot and headed for Red Valley. He didn’t particularly feel like making the trip into town right now, but the smokejumpers had all been spending so much time in the middle of smoke and fire. They deserved to relax a little bit, and volunteering to be the one to make a beer run seemed like a nice way to show his appreciation for their hard work.

Chance knew that if the guys could read his thoughts they would probably tell him that he had been working hard, too. Although that was true, Chance thought his job was pretty easy compared to theirs. And he had worked much harder when he was flying tourists around back in Alaska. The summer months back home had been a nonstop stream of flights through extremely mountainous areas with incredibly unpredictable weather. Chance was used to the stress of constant flying on high alert.

Chance let out a sigh as he thought of Alaska. He had been able to put thoughts of home on the back burner for the last few months, letting himself be distracted by all the work he needed to do here in California. But things were slowing down, and soon the wildfire season would be over for this year. Chance knew Sawyer would be calling him from Alaska soon, asking if he was finally coming back.

Chance didn’t have a good answer. His heart was torn between his new job and new friends that he loved, and the old friends he had left behind. Chance had never been the spiritual type, but as he pulled into the first corner store on the outskirts of Red Valley, he found himself praying for some sort of sign about what to do. He just needed a nudge in the right direction.

When he pushed open the heavy glass door to the front of the corner store, though, he forgot all about his worries over what his next step should be. As the noisy bell on the door jangled, he found himself face to face with Emily, the girl whose boyfriend he had beaten up in a movie theater a few months before. She looked different today. Instead of a well-coordinated outfit, she was wearing old, black sweatpants and a gray hoodie. Her hair was pulled back in a haphazard bun, and her face didn’t have a spot of makeup on it—although she was sporting a few streaks of dirt across her cheeks. She’d clearly had a rough day. Maybe several rough days, actually. Her shoulders were slumped and her eyes looked tired.

Still, her beauty stopped Chance in his tracks. He had successfully pushed her out of his mind until now, but seeing her again stirred up the same haunting feeling of unrest and desire that he had felt in the movie theater several months earlier. Something about her drew him in, and he found himself staring, despite his best intentions not to. She was carrying a box of cheap beer, and she tilted her head at him with a questioning look. It was only then that he realized he was standing in the doorway, blocking her ability to exit.

“Oh, sorry,” he said, and stepped out of the way. But she didn’t move. She kept looking at him, her eyes full of questions.

“You’re Chance, right? The firefighter?” she asked.

“Yes. Well, I’m not exactly a firefighter. I’m a pilot. I fly a bunch of firefighters around to wildfires.”

“Oh, right,” she said. Then she seemed to remember the way she was dressed, and she glanced down at her clothes. “Sorry, I look a little ridiculous. I thought I was staying in for the night, but then I realized I was out of beer. Friday night’s no fun without a few cheap beers, you know?”

She tried to laugh, but the sound came out sounding empty. She was obviously having a bad night, and Chance felt his cheeks growing hot when he wondered if her scumbag of a boyfriend was the reason.

“You look beautiful,” he said, staring earnestly into her captivating green eyes. She held his gaze for a moment, then looked down at her feet again. Even in the dim, flickering light of the convenience store, it was easy to see the pain in her expression. Chance knew Ian would want to kill him if he randomly brought home a full human, but Chance couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Emily alone. He reached out his hand and used his pointer finger to lift her chin so that she was looking at him again. When his finger made contact with her skin, he felt a thrill of desire run through him, but he forced himself to act normally. As far as he knew, she was still unavailable. Even if the man she was dating was a loser, Chance wasn’t going to make a move on a woman who was taken. That wasn’t his style. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be her friend, and try to cheer her up.

“Why don’t you come back to the base with me? We’re having a barbecue, and there’s plenty of food. My friends are really fun. You don’t have to spend Friday night alone, drinking cheap beers and feeling depressed.”

“I’m not depressed. Just tired,” she said, but there was no conviction in her voice.

“Are you safe?” Chance asked softly.

Emily’s eyes shot up to his, her cheeks instantly red from embarrassment. “Yes. I’m fine. I told you, Scott’s not usually mean. You just saw him on a bad day.”

Chance wanted to tell Emily that no bad day justified a man treating her the way Scott had, but he sensed that Emily just wanted to get out of there at that point. He had a feeling nothing he said was going to change her mind, anyway. She had to decide on her own that she deserved better. No one else could decide for her. All he could do was remind her that she had a safe place to go if she needed it.

“Well, if you change your mind, you’re welcome to stop by. We’ll be hanging out late into the night, I’m sure. The base is a fifteen minute drive from town, straight down Red Valley highway to the east. You can’t miss it.”

Emily nodded. “Thanks, but I think I’m all set for the night. See you around.”

Chance watched as she headed out the door and toward a beat up black sedan. She climbed in and drove off, disappearing into the long shadows of the late afternoon sunset. Chance let out his breath in another frustrated sigh, and then turned his attention back to picking out some beer. He wanted to run after her, following her home and getting in her face to tell her that she was beautiful and kind and should find a man who treated like the special person she was. But he would probably just freak her out if he did that.

Chance grabbed two large cases of beer and set them on the front counter, then pulled out his wallet to pay. The man behind the counter looked up from his newspaper and raised an eyebrow in Chance’s direction.

“Do you know her?” the man asked.

“Who? Emily?” Chance replied.

The man nodded. “Yeah. She comes in here a lot to buy beer. More frequently, lately. But she always looks like she did tonight. Like she’s just heading home to her couch. I worry about her. She doesn’t seem to have any friends. And every now and then she comes in with suspicious bruises on her face and arms. I couldn’t help but overhearing you talk about her boyfriend tonight. Do you think she’s in danger?”

Chance shrugged as he pulled out his credit card. “I don’t know, man. I’m not sure if she’s really going home to be alone, or if he’ll be there, too. But I’ve seen him in action, and he’s not a nice man. I worry about her, too, although I barely know her.”

The man set aside his newspaper to take Chance’s credit card and swipe it. “It’s a shame, really. She’s a beautiful young woman. What’s she doing moping around in a sleepy little town like Red Valley with some loser of a boyfriend?”

Chance frowned. He kind of liked sleepy little towns. But he did see the man’s point. Emily didn’t have much of a future here, if she was going to spend her days alternating between drinking alone and fending off an abusive boyfriend.

The man at the counter handed Chance his receipt, but Chance paused just before shoving the slip of paper in his pocket. He grabbed a pen from a tin on the dusty counter, and quickly wrote his number on the receipt. Then he handed the paper to the clerk.

“My cell number’s on there,” Chance said. “If you ever see Emily and think she’s really in trouble, give me a call, will you?”

The clerk looked down at the sheet of paper. “Sure, okay,” he said, then stuck the paper on a shelf below the counter.

Chance grabbed his cases of beer and headed back out toward his truck. Frustration overwhelmed him. Giving his number to the clerk seemed like such a small, silly thing. But he felt like he at least had to do something. He didn’t want to meddle, but he knew he wasn’t going to sleep well until he knew Emily had gotten rid of her loser boyfriend. He couldn’t explain why he was so concerned about a woman he barely knew. But, deep down, he had a strong feeling that there was something deeper at work between them. Something that smacked of destiny and fated lifemates.

Chance let out a string of curses as he threw the cases of beer on the passenger seat and fired up the engine on his truck. He didn’t want to entertain the idea that Emily might be his lifemate. He had enough on his plate right now, trying to figure out whether he should return to Alaska or not. He didn’t need to add pining over a potential lifemate to the mix, especially when she was dating someone else and didn’t seem to want to talk to him. Besides, if he did decide to go back to Alaska, there was no point in getting involved with someone who lived in California. Chance highly doubted that someone used to the beautiful weather in Northern California would be excited about moving to frigid Alaska.

Chance drove like a bat out of hell to get back to the hangar. He couldn’t stop the swirling confusion in his mind, and he was angry with himself for letting a woman get under his skin the way Emily had. But even as he told himself he needed to forget about her and focus on his own life, he found himself thinking that he wanted Emily to be a part of his life.