A Pinerock Bear Christmas (Bears of Pinerock County Book 6) Read online

  From up the hill, as they drove down toward the cluster of ranch houses, it looked like a fairyland vision of a North Pole Christmas village. As they drove into the yard, she started noticing the tackier elements of the displays, such as the much larger than life-size glowing Santa in front of Tara and Axl's house, or the giant light-up snowman on the roof of Remy and Saffron's cottage.

  Every house, and even the barns, dribbled sparkly colored lights, glowing icicles, and other signs of festive holiday cheer. The lights on Alec and Charmian's house were blinking rhythmically. Daisy thought at first it was just her eyes, on account of the truck's jolting. But when they parked in front of Remy and Saffron's house and Remy opened his door, the strains of "Deck the Halls" rolled into the truck cab, and she realized that Alec's lights were cycling in time to the music that was blasting from a stereo on his porch. (If "blasting" was a word that could be applied to Christmas carols. Though, in this case, she thought it probably could.)

  "What in the hell!" Remy burst out. "He waited 'til we were away from the ranch to turn that on!" He stared at the cycling lights on Alec's house for a moment, fists lodged firmly on his hips. "Always gotta beat the rest of us, huh? He knew if I saw it sooner, I'd have a chance to figure out how he did it. Saffron, honey, there's still a lot of Christmas Eve left, right?"

  "The entire evening, dear," Saffron said patiently, helping Daisy unbuckle Fern's carrier.

  "Right. If he thinks I can't reverse engineer his light display in another—" He glanced at the clock in the truck. "—seven hours, he's got another think coming. Hell, I'll work on it all the way up to Christmas morning if I gotta."

  "Knock yourself out, dear," Saffron said. She picked up Daisy's overnight bag and gave Remy a kiss on the cheek. "We're going over to the main house. Don't work too hard. Give us a shout if you need someone to hold a ladder for you."

  They left Remy studying his own light display critically, and walked across the yard as the booming strains of "Deck the Halls" reached the end of the final verse and cycled back to the beginning again. A winding path lined with glowing candy canes and knee-high light-up snowflakes led up to the porch of the main ranch house.

  "They aren't really angry at each other, are they?" Daisy asked anxiously.

  "Oh, heavens, no. I look upon it as a blessing. It keeps them out from underfoot. And they all have fun planning their displays in advance and trying to keep them secret from each other."

  The last words were shouted over the teeth-rattling music booming from the speakers. Saffron didn't bother going up on the porch; instead she went to the kitchen entrance and let herself in without knocking. Daisy followed shyly. She didn't spend enough time on the main part of the ranch to quite have gotten used to casually going in and out of other people's houses the way the other bears' mates did.

  The kitchen was brightly lit and filled with spicy, nose-tickling baking smells. Alec turned around from the stove. Daisy choked on a laugh at the sight of the Circle B clan's big, intense, dark-haired alpha wearing a holiday apron (it had appliquéd gingham reindeer on it) and red-and-green checked oven mitts, holding a baking tray with gingerbread cookies on it.

  "Welcome, Daisy. Merry Christmas," he said with his usual quiet dignity. "Like the lights?"

  The music was less deafening inside, through the thick walls of the ranch house—more like a festive background accompaniment to the cheerful holiday atmosphere than its dominant component.

  "It's really amazing," Daisy said with total honesty.

  "Remy's out there trying to figure out how you did it so he can set his up the same way," Saffron reported. She shrugged out of her coat and leaned back into the kitchen entryway to hang it on a peg by the door.

  "He can try all he likes. I've been working on this since August."

  "I figured you had, but don't sell my mate short." Saffron held out her hand for Daisy's coat. "Remy's not good with animals like the rest of you, but his specialty is working with machines. Just you wait. I wouldn't be surprised if we look out there in an hour or two and our house is blinking like anything."

  Alec gave her a wry smile as he turned the cookies out onto a cooling rack. "He can certainly try. Daisy, have some eggnog if you like. There's spiked and unspiked."

  "I'll take the unspiked, please. I'm still breast-feeding Fern."

  She looked around for glasses, but Saffron shooed her into the living room. "Go, go, sit! I'll fetch it for you. Want a drink, Tara?" she called.

  "Oh, please!" Redheaded Tara was down on the floor with the kids, Saffron's Baz and her own Lexie, helping them set up a toddler-level model train set. Toy track snaked all over the room. Daisy had to step over it carefully, trying to find a place to put her sock feet. "Deck the Halls" was somewhat louder in here, since it was playing right outside the door.

  "I take it that means you want the kind with booze," Saffron called from the kitchen.

  "Yes, booze. Booze, please. All the booze. Any booze."

  Daisy moved aside some cardboard train boxes so she could sit on the couch and take Fern out of her carrier. The inside of the ranch house was almost as glittery as the outside, although the tinsel was carefully hung out of the reach of small fingers and there was a baby fence around the densely decorated Christmas tree that dominated one end of the room.

  "Hi?" she ventured, since Tara didn't seem to have noticed her.

  "Oh! Daisy! Hi!" Tara sat back on her heels and flipped her ponytail over her shoulder. "Look what Uncle Alec got for the kids. Of course, you'll also notice good ol' Uncle Alec is hiding out in the kitchen and not helping put it together."

  "It's lovely," Daisy said, settling a drowsing Fern against her shoulder. "We had one just like it when I was a kid."

  Tara broke out in a wide grin. "You did? Me too! I used to set it up all over the floor of our condo. Train track on the windowsill, track in the bathroom—no, honey, don't throw that at your cousin!" She swooped in to rescue one of the chunky wooden train cars from Lexie, replacing it with a squishy rubber toy in a swift, well-practiced maneuver.

  Saffron came in from the kitchen with glasses of eggnog, handing one to Daisy and the other to Tara, who took it with the look of a woman clutching at a life preserver. "Oh, Tara, by the way," Saffron said, "it looks like Axl is back. I just saw his truck pull up outside."

  Tara's exasperated, burned-out-mom look vanished in an instant; she shed weariness and annoyance like a discarded coat, and delighted love blazed up from inside. She scrambled to her feet and set the eggnog glass on the mantelpiece to keep it out of the kids' reach. "Could you two watch the kids for awhile?" she asked over her shoulder as she hurried out of the room.

  "Happy to," Saffron said. Just then Baz noticed that his mom had come in, and spread his arms with a squeal of delight. Saffron swooped in to pick him up and hug him.

  "Is there any sign of Gannon out there?" Daisy asked.

  Saffron looked up from hugging her son. "I saw someone with Axl. I only caught a glimpse, though. Maybe that was him?"

  "Oh. I have to go look." She started to get up, then hesitated, Fern cradled in her arms.

  "Leave her here," Saffron suggested. She peeled herself off Baz and held out an arm.

  Daisy transferred the baby, left her eggnog glass on the mantel with Tara's, and hurried into the kitchen. It was empty now. She stamped into her snow boots in the entryway and peeked out into the yard.

  The lights were still brilliant, "Deck the Halls" still boomed from the porch, and a small cluster of men had gathered at the sheriff's vehicle parked in the falling snow. Very aware of her lack of coat, Daisy hurried through the snow, hands tucked under her arms. She didn't see anyone her heart immediately recognized as Gannon, but all the men were wearing coats, and there were four of them. If Cody was still on his farm, then one of them had to be Gannon.

  "I can't believe you out-crazied us on the decorations this year, Alec," Axl was saying as Daisy got close; he was easy to recognize even in the falling snow by his wide-b
rimmed sheriff's hat. "Not for long, though. That's all I've got to say about it."

  "Go for it," Alec said, sounding cheerful. He was bareheaded, and snowflakes settled on his dark hair and the shoulders of the sheepskin coat carelessly thrown over his plaid shirt. "You've got about seven or eight hours 'til midnight, I reckon."

  "Is there some rule that we have to stop putting up decorations at midnight?" one of the others retorted. Remy: Daisy recognized his voice.

  "Yeah, a rule Alec made up, so the rest of us would lose," Axl said.

  Axl, Alec, and Remy were all accounted for. Which meant the other one had to be—

  But then he turned his head so the light fell across his face, and disappointment bottomed out Daisy's stomach. He was a stranger, handsome and blond-haired, but not at all the person she'd hoped to see.

  She stopped, standing coatless in the snow with her shoulders hunched up, and suddenly felt very miserable and alone.

  The whole clan was here, but Gannon was out there somewhere in the snow.

  It was the stranger who noticed her; the others were too busy arguing about Christmas lights to pay much attention to their surroundings. "Ma'am?" he said, approaching her through the snow. "Are you okay? You look cold."

  "I'm fine." She tried to straighten out of her shivering hunch, and then was startled when he pulled his arms out of his coatsleeves and draped the big, warm coat over her shoulders.

  He did remind her of Gannon a little bit, even though he was younger and didn't really look much like him. There was something about him, maybe something about the way he stood, or the shyly diffident way he didn't quite look at her, like Gannon was with people he didn't know very well. Strength combined with gentleness.

  "Are you from one of the wild mountain clans?" she asked him, only after the words were out of her mouth realizing that he might not be a shifter at all. But she thought he was. Something about him screamed "shifter" to her. Anyway, he was already nodding.

  "Yes, ma'am. I am. Are you—" He hesitated. "Are you Gannon's mate?"

  Her heart clenched. "How do you know?"

  "I can smell him on you, a little bit." He smiled then, shy and crooked. "I'm not supposed to say things like that to people, am I? People think it's weird."

  "I don't think it's weird." Daisy smiled at him through her chattering teeth. "Yes, I'm Gannon's mate, Daisy. I came out here thinking you might be him."

  "No, I'm just me." He flushed a little; the tip of his nose was already pink in the cold. "I'm called Jaron."

  Daisy broke into a smile. "So you're Jaron! Gannon talks about you. He's very proud of you. You're the young man from his clan who wanted to be a cop."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said with a grin. "Sheriff Tanner invited me up for Christmas, since I don't have anyone else to spend it with. I've never celebrated Christmas before."

  "Really?" she said in surprise. "Don't the wild clans do it?"

  "Maybe some of 'em. We weren't really big on human holidays."

  "Oh, well, come on inside, then!" She tugged on his arm. Her worry for Gannon wasn't forgotten, but her natural friendliness and hospitality asserted itself; she couldn't just leave a guest standing out in the snow. "We'll have to introduce you to some Christmas traditions. Starting with eggnog. And ... how are you at putting together model train sets?"

  "Model train sets?" he repeated, baffled.

  "Never mind." She smiled. "We'll teach you."

  Chapter Four

  Gloria had never seen anything quite like the drive up to her new friends' ranch. The woods were full of snow, weighing down the branches of the trees and kicking up a white cloud around Charmian's Jeep. The road twisted and turned, going up such steep hills that she didn't know how they could possibly make it to the top, but Charmian fearlessly gunned the engine and somehow, they made it every time.

  Crystal didn't seem in the least concerned, leaning forward from the backseat to banter playfully with Charmian in the driver's seat, or ask Gloria questions about herself. Gloria had always thought that people in the north part of the country would be standoffish and cool, from what she'd heard, but so far, everyone was turning out to be just as friendly as the folks back home.

  "Your boyfriend cheated on you?" Crystal said sympathetically. "That's awful!"

  "Yeah, well, I kicked his cheating tail all the way down the street. Or at least, I pelted him with records." This got curious looks from both of the other women. Gloria tried to smile past the lump in her throat. "He always loved his vintage record collection more than me, so I threw them one by one out of the third-floor apartment window, like Frisbees. You should have seen him running around in the street, trying to catch them all! I even managed to bounce a few off his head."

  "Good for you," Charmian remarked with a fierce smile. "From the sound of things, he had it coming."

  "I really thought he was going to be 'the one,' but I guess I just have terrible taste in men. Or maybe there really isn't someone out there for everybody." Gloria twisted her hands in her lap. "That's probably just a myth."

  "Hon, if you'd asked me about that a few years ago, I would've agreed with you a hundred percent," Charmian said over her shoulder. "But that was before I met Alec. I had to wait a long time and kiss a lot of frogs to find my cranky prince, but it was more than worth it in the end."

  "Same here," Crystal said, raising her hand. "I must've dated every single guy in St. Louis—and a few who, as it turned out, weren't. Then I came out here to fix up my old family farm and bam, lightning struck the minute I looked into Cody's eyes."

  "You're both lucky," Gloria said quietly. "I hope there's someone out there for me."

  "My advice to you is, don't spend the holiday worrying about it," Charmian told her. "Just relax and enjoy yourself. You're not going to be meeting any single guys on the Circle B—they're all comfortably taken. So you can just kick back and have a nice family Christmas ... even if it's not your family, you're still very welcome."

  Crystal turned to Charmian. "Oh ... do you think we ought to tell her about the—the thing?"

  "Thing?" Charmian asked.

  "You know, the—thing." Crystal touched her hand to her neck, brushing the fingers just above the collarbone. This made no sense to Gloria, but it seemed to make the penny drop for Charmian.

  "Oh, that thing."

  "Thing?" Gloria asked. Now she was nervous.

  "It's not that big of a deal," Charmian said. "I should've told you back in town, but I just didn't think of it. You probably won't be able to make it through the holiday without this coming up at least once. So—you know about shifters, right?"

  "Sure, I've seen them on TV—" Gloria began. "Wait, are you shifters?"

  "Not us," Crystal said. "We're as human as you are. But a lot of the people you're going to meet on the ranch will be shifters." She gestured between herself and Charmian. "Both our husbands are shifters, and their family as well."

  "I hope that doesn't make you uncomfortable," Charmian said. Her tone seemed to imply It had better not make you uncomfortable, or I'll make you even more uncomfortable. "They're great guys; well, girls, in Saffron's case. And the kids are shifters too."

  "Oh, no, it doesn't bother me at all! I've just never met any shifters before. Well, nobody I knew was a shifter, anyway." Gloria smiled. "I'm looking forward to it."

  "Well, I'm glad you're looking forward to it, because—oh—" Charmian downshifted as the Jeep's wheels began to slide on a steep hill with a switchback in the middle. Gloria caught a brief, dizzying glimpse of the ground dropping off steeply on the other side of a handmade wooden railing before the tires caught and the Jeep accelerated up the hill.

  "I hate that curve," Charmian muttered as they leveled out. Gloria unclenched her white-knuckled grip on the seat. "Don't ever tell Alec. He's twitchy as heck about that place already. I don't want him to know how much it bothers me. But I always feel like I'm taking my life in my hands on that part of the driveway in the winter."

  "Would it b
e possible to straighten out that stretch of the road?" Crystal asked. "I keep wondering about that, since Cody and I have been making improvements to our farm road. There used to be a really steep part when I first moved out there, that bit right on the other side of the creek, and we flattened it out with the neighbors' backhoe. Maybe you could do something like that here. Move the driveway away from the cliff, at least."

  "Cliff?" Gloria said faintly, but just then they drove into something that looked like a Christmas theme park, with a snow-covered cow pasture on the far side.

  "Good Lord," Crystal said. "I haven't seen the final displays yet this year. This is ... something else, all right."

  The sky was completely dark now, but there was no darkness here, not when every inch of every house was lit up with blue and silver, red and gold, green and purple. Long multi-colored shadows stretched across the white fields in every direction, and when Gloria stepped out of Charmian's Jeep, she discovered there was music as well. "Deck the Halls" boomed at her from the porch of the biggest house; the lights blinked on and off in sync to it.

  She would never forget this moment, she thought, staring around her at the houses blazing with lights, the cattle leaning over the pasture fence like props from a Nativity scene that had come to life and wandered off, the snow settling gently over everything. It was like a scene from a movie, or a page from a Christmas calendar.

  Both Charmian and Crystal seemed much less enchanted. "I told Alec he could deafen everyone until I got home, and not a moment longer," Charmian announced at the top of her lungs over the blaring carol, marching up the steps onto the porch. The music cut out suddenly, leaving Gloria's ears ringing.

  The door slammed open a moment later. "Dammit, woman," growled the enormous man looming in the doorway. "How am I supposed to—"

  "—prove how much more manly you are than everyone on the ranch without blowing our eardrums out? I have no idea, Alec. All I know is, I have been listening to Christmas music 24/7 in every single business in town for the last two months, on every station on the radio, and in every room of the clinic. I enjoy the holiday, I truly do—Oh, hi, Daisy!" she added abruptly, shifting to a much more cheerful tone and leaning around Alec to wave into the brightly lit room behind him. "And I don't mind carols playing quietly. Playing 'Deck the Halls' on a constant loop—"