Babysitter Bear Read online

  Paula broke into a grin. "I think you're right. We did pull the sled up the hill, after all."

  "Nooooo, me!" Lissy wailed. She flopped over the side of the sled and was clearly determined to make herself as heavy as possible.

  "You can pull us up afterward," Dan said, sharing a grin with Paula.

  "Noooo!"

  Overhearing them, a nearby mom thrust out a purple sled. "If you need another, do you two want to use this one? We pulled it all the way back up here, but I think she's done for the day." She nodded to a child younger than Lissy, maybe four or five.

  Dan had actually been joking ... mostly. But Paula took the sled and raised her eyebrows at him. "How long has it been since you rode on one of these?" she asked him, holding it up.

  It was purple, flimsy plastic, about four feet long. "I don't think it's big enough, is it?" he asked dubiously.

  "I've ridden down this hill with the kids about ten thousand times, so they can definitely take my weight, at least." Her smile faltered. "I mean, I know you were kidding. I just—"

  "I wasn't entirely kidding." Dan took the sled. "Man, it's been ages since I've been on one of these."

  "Whereas I am a certified expert by this point," Paula said, her warm grin popping out again. "First you lay it on the snow."

  "Thanks, I got that part." Dan laid the sled down. He felt weirdly self-conscious. True, there were parents here and there on the hill who were sledding too, but most of them had toddlers in the sled with them.

  "I can do it with you," Paula offered. The warmth in her smile had lit a spark that was growing rapidly into a flame. "If you need an expert."

  "I think I could really use that," he said, slightly breathless. The look in her eyes made it feel like something was filling up his chest, pressing out the air.

  Paula crouched down on the snow. She was wearing snowpants, leg-hugging pink ones peeking out from under the coat. They were caked with snow.

  "Okay, let's see," she said. "With the kids I'd sit in the back with them in front, but it'll probably work better with you behind me."

  Dan climbed into the sled. At this point he could hardly have stopped if he'd wanted to. He had to bend his knees up; he couldn't quite stretch out his legs. It didn't seem possible that there was room for Paula. But a minute later she piled in between his legs.

  Up until this point the anticipation was mostly theoretical. Now suddenly she was here, her body pressed against his. The two of them were crammed into the little sled. Even with several layers of winter gear between them, he was about as intensely aware of her as it was possible to be.

  "Race you, kid," Paula told Lissy, who was stretched out on her belly in the orange sled.

  Lissy of course needed no encouragement to immediately kick off and glide down the hill with a squeal.

  "That's cheating!" Paula called after her. She tipped her head back to grin at Dan, cheeks pink, eyes bright. "I think our honor is at stake."

  "Honor," he said faintly. "Yeah."

  If the plan here wasn't to fall instantly in love, he had made a tactical error.

  "Hey guys!" Sandy yelled, tramping back up the hill at a dead run. "Are you sledding too?"

  "Trying to," Dan said. "How do we—hmmm." It was hard to concentrate on the practical problem of getting the sled moving from the flat part of the hill when he had the even more distracting matter of Paula in his lap.

  "Maybe we can—let's see." Paula squirmed a bit and got a leg out.

  She pushed with her foot on one side, and Dan pushed with his good hand on the other side. After a little bit of wobbling, they got the sled moving. Gravity caught it, and they began to slide faster.

  It actually was exhilarating, even if the sled was really too heavy with two adults in it to go terribly fast. But they moved down the hill at a brisk clip, the wind in their faces and snow flying up from under the sled.

  Between living mostly in cities or bigger towns, and not having spent a whole lot of his childhood in parts of the country with severe winters, Dan had only been sledding a few times in his childhood. He had nearly forgotten the out-of-control feeling of the ground flying past, the sled virtually unsteerable, taking its passengers where it was going to go.

  "There's a big pile of snow at the bottom of the hill," Paula yelled over her shoulder. "By now it's packed down like a ski jump. Lean to the side or we'll hit it."

  Dan leaned, but Paula leaned too, and abruptly there was the feeling of gravity turning topsy-turvy as the overloaded sled lost its balance. Paula gave a short yelp, and they both tumbled into the loose snow at the bottom of the hill. Dan tried to curl around her to protect her, thrusting his arm awkwardly out to the side to make sure not to bruise anyone with the clamp end.

  At least they weren't moving too fast. They ended up tangled together, half buried in snow, with the sled on top of them. Paula was laughing helplessly, and Dan realized that he was too.

  "You folks okay?" a male voice called out to them.

  "We're fine!" Dan yelled back when he got enough breath back from laughing. "Nothing bruised but my pride!"

  "We didn't hit the ski jump," Paula pointed out between uncontrollable giggles.

  "I think it hit us instead."

  The sled wasn't covering them completely, but it was over their heads, trapping them in strangely violet-tinted light. Dan became aware that, in the position they were in, her face was only a few inches from his.

  Her hat was askew, snow plastered on her hair and even her eyelashes. Her cheeks were flushed with more than cold, with a bright red spot on each one. The faintly purple-tinged light made her eyes look like pools, the deep blue of the sky just after sunset.

  The same inevitability that had pulled him toward her from the first moment he saw her tugged on him now, drawing them together like opposite poles of a magnet until their lips clicked together.

  It was a fast kiss, barely more than a quick peck, a brush of her cold lips on his. But there was nothing at all chaste about it. Her lips were half open, and he got just the slightest taste of her, a hint of searing warmth in brilliant contrast to her wind-chilled lips.

  "Oh, my gosh," Paula murmured, staring into his eyes.

  A weight hit their legs.

  "Pull me up again!" Lissy cried from somewhere very close. Way too close.

  Paula took a deep breath. "Rain check," she whispered, and rolled away from him.

  Dan removed the sled from his face, and looked up to see Paula already on her feet, caked in snow, holding a hand down. She helped pull him up—providing opposite-side leverage, mostly, since she wasn't big enough or heavy enough to get him to his feet all on her own.

  They had just a moment to stare at each other with a combination of breathless amazement at their own daring and anticipation. Their hands were still clasped together. He could taste her lips.

  And then Lissy tugged at Paula's hand, and the Rugers arrived, en masse. They had picked up Ben and Tessa along the way. It was the first time Dan had seen the Keegans' daughter as a little girl instead of a baby dragon. She was absolutely adorable, a chubby toddler about Mina's age with her mother's light brown skin tone and a pair of huge dark eyes underneath a fluffy pink and white hat with a pompom on top. Combined with a matching pink and white snowsuit, it made her look like a peppermint candy.

  "Well, that's just about the cutest thing I've ever seen," Paula said, tweaking the pompom on top of Skye's hat.

  "Her Grandma Loretta sent it. And you two look soaked," Tessa said, grinning. "There's cocoa by the bonfire. We were just going to head over there and get some."

  The kids ran on ahead, and Dan found himself hanging back with Ben and Tessa. Tessa was trying to pull down Skye's little hat to cover as much of her head as possible.

  "We're hoping," Ben said under his breath, "that if she shifts, the snowsuit is puffy enough to hide her until we can get her to shift back."

  "Is it likely?" Dan had never really appreciated the challenges of raising a shifter child i
n a human world. He hadn't been around other shifters much as a kid. Most of the other kids in his various group homes had been human.

  "She's ... sort of learning that we don't want her doing it in public. I think." Tessa hoisted Skye against her shoulder. "Ben and Gaby are lucky that Mina isn't shifting yet. And Sandy isn't a shifter at all."

  "Mina might not be either," Ben said. "Children of a shifter and a human parent don't always inherit the shifter side of their heritage."

  Dan couldn't help himself: his mind went straight to the idea of having kids with Paula. Adorable little children with Paula's huge blue eyes. Whether they were bear cubs or normal human children, he knew that he and Paula would love them just the same. He loved her kids already—even Austin, with his prickly standoffishness. Austin reminded Dan of himself at that age, in a lot of ways.

  "Dan!" came a high-pitched cry, and Lissy barreled into his legs. She looked up at him from under her frog hat. "We're getting cocoa! Don't you want some?"

  "Coming," he said with a grin. "Where's the sled?"

  "I don't know." She pulled on his leg. "Come on!"

  Dan looked around and saw that Paula was returning the sled. He took Lissy's mittened hand, and she settled in happily beside him.

  It was weird how much they already felt like his kids, in a way. He could feel his bear's protective urges extending to cover Paula and her family, and the Ruger kids too, and Skye in her puffy little peppermint-drop snowsuit.

  Anyone messes with these people, they're gonna have to mess with me first.

  They joined the others at the bonfire. Dan's city childhood might have had a few sledding hills, but it had been notably lacking in outdoor bonfires, so this fascinated him: a big firepit full of giant crackling lumps of wood. He had vaguely pictured neatly arranged logs, but this was more like a big pile of stumps and other debris. He could feel the wash of heat even from a distance. It had melted the snow back to bare gravel around the firepit.

  "Where do they get the wood for the fire?" he asked Derek and Gaby, while they waited in the cocoa line.

  Derek shrugged and looked at Gaby, who also shrugged. Paula rejoined them just then. "What are we talking about?" she asked.

  "Dan was just wondering where the wood for the bonfire comes from," Gaby said.

  "It's not that important," Dan said, embarrassed. "I was just curious. I like knowing how things work."

  Paula smiled and leaned her shoulder close to his. It seemed that he could feel the heat of her body even through their coats.

  "I think it's farm trash, mostly," she said. "Farmers clearing land or ripping out stumps cut them up and bring the bigger, cleaner pieces out here for the town to use in the winter bonfires." She took a deep breath. "Mmm. Smell that woodsmoke. There's nothing else quite like it."

  To Dan, it just smelled like smoke, but she was right that there was a sweet, campfirey quality to it.

  They reached the front of the line and picked up cocoa parceled out into little paper cups. Each cup was topped with whipped cream and little colorful sprinkles, and the cocoa underneath was rich and chocolatey and piping hot, with just a hint of peppermint.

  "Oh, that's nice." Paula half closed her eyes. "There's nothing like hot chocolate in the wintertime. Especially outside."

  They wandered over toward the skate pond. Like the sledding hill, the skate pond had a hastily erected rental booth, and a short line of kids and parents standing in line to pick through the available sizes of skates.

  "You have to get here early to get skates in your actual size," Paula explained. "A lot of people bring their own, but we just don't go skating enough to be worth buying them for the kids as they outgrow them. Do you skate?"

  Dan shook his head. "Couple of times when I was a kid, a really long time ago. I don't really know how."

  "Okay, we are definitely doing it." Paula dug in her pocket. "I just need a few bucks for the skate rental. Kids? You want to go skating?"

  Dan was expecting Austin to grumble and wander off, but instead the teenager looked interested, the first time Dan had seen him interested in anything. Dan had been prepared to beg off and just watch from the side, but now he thought that this might be a good opportunity to bond with Paula's kids.

  "Okay, I'll do it, but you'll have to show me how."

  Since most of the skaters out on the pond were kids, they actually had more trouble finding skates that fit Lissy from the remaining options than pairs for the adults.

  "Here, she can borrow Sandy's," Gaby said, coming up beside them with a pair of skates dangling by their laces. "He's firmly stuck to the sledding hill right now. And I think their feet are probably close enough to the same size. They're about the same height."

  Lissy plunked down and began lacing up the borrowed skates. Austin was already out on the skate pond with a pair of adult-sized skates. Out on the ice, the awkward teenager was abruptly graceful, spinning around and weaving in and out of the younger skaters. He neatly cornered at the edges of the small pond and whipped back around.

  "He's really good at that," Dan said, as he crouched to change out of his boots. He wasn't looking forward to doing this with an audience. Although he could do it, tying laces was one of the trickier things to do with the metal clamps. He usually just left his boots laced up and pulled them off without untying them.

  "I know. When he was younger, I actually would drive the kids over to the skate rink in Archerville, but ..." Paula frowned, jerking at her laces with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. It was adorable. "I don't know what happened, I guess I got busy and he stopped acting like he wanted to do it, and I was having to buy new skates every few months because his feet were growing so fast, and we just stopped. I ought to ask him if he'd appreciate starting up again."

  "Mom!" Lissy called. She had stopped at the edge of the ice. "Hold my hands!"

  "Oh come on, you haven't forgotten how to do this. It hasn't been that long since last winter." Paula turned to Dan, who was still struggling with his laces. "Can I give you a hand?"

  His automatic urge was to say no. He knew he could get it; it would just take longer than it would have with two hands.

  Right after losing his arm, he had been stubbornly and angrily determined to do everything on his own. And he had in fact learned how to do just about any everyday activity that way.

  But he had mellowed a little since then. He knew he could do it. That was the important part.

  He didn't have to prove himself to Paula.

  "Yeah, sure," he said, and let go.

  Paula didn't make a big deal about it, just crouched and matter-of-factly began pulling the laces tight.

  "Mom!" Lissy wailed from the edge of the ice.

  "I'm coming! Keep your shirt on!"

  "I got it, Mom," Austin called, and glided up to the edge of the ice, stopping with a flourish. "Come on, nerdbus. Give me your hands."

  "Noooo, you'll make me fall," Lissy complained, but she let her brother pull her out onto the ice. He was gentle with her, Dan noticed. Austin skated slowly backward with both his hands wrapped around hers while Lissy got her balance, then let go of one hand, and the brother and sister gradually picked up speed, skating side by side.

  "There, you're done." Paula stood up and tottered on her skates. She held out a hand. "Ready to go?"

  "Not really," Dan admitted, but he took her hand. They both set their skates on the ice.

  "If you've done it before, I think it's sort of like riding a bicycle. You probably aren't going to lose the knack."

  She was right. He wobbled slightly at first, but he could feel his innate shifter reflexes starting to pick up on the variations in his balance. Shifters were, in general, good at learning new physical tasks quickly, especially something like this, where it was mainly just a matter of leaning into the way the skates moved under his feet.

  "Wow, I knew you'd be a natural." Paula let go of his hand and skated a slow circle around him. "Come on, last one to the other side of the
pond is a rotten egg."

  "I don't want to run over a toddler," Dan fretted, skating slowly, but with increased confidence, as he got the hang of it.

  Paula, meanwhile, had reached the other side, turned around and skated back with greater speed as she, too, settled into her balance on skates. "Team skating event!" she said, and took his hand.

  They skated together, finding their rhythm. It was astonishingly fun, working with her as a team like this. They anticipated changes of direction by reading the changes in each other's body language, settling into perfect teamwork.

  It was like—sex was the first thing that came to mind, and it was, in a way; good sex was about understanding your partner's needs from their verbal and nonverbal signals. But it was something different too. It was like working with his squad in the field, the way that a good team seemed to connect with something almost like telepathy.

  Except in this case it was charged with the intense, intoxicating awareness of Paula's presence: her scent, her sparkling eyes, her laughter.

  He could have stayed out here forever, and he was so lost in Paula that he didn't notice, until she pulled him to a stop, that the sun was going down. The skating pond was emptying out; they were among the few skaters left on the pond. At the edge of the ice, Austin was helping Lissy take off her skates.

  "This was amazing." Paula was laughing, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright. "I haven't had this much fun ice skating in years. You really are a natural."

  Dan laughed too. "I had a good teacher."

  Tired and a little sore, they skated hand in hand to the edge of the ice and stomped into their cold, half-frozen boots. They deposited their skates back at the rental booth and wandered over toward the bonfire, a warm spark of light in the gathering blue dusk.

  "Oh, look!" Paula said, holding out a hand.

  A snowflake spiraled down into the palm of her glove. It was followed by another, and another. Abruptly the cheerful chatter and laughter around the bonfire grew quiet as everyone noticed.

  Dan knew he would remember that moment for the rest of his life. It was absolutely magical, the sudden hush and sense of shared wonder as everyone in the park, from small children to old people, were captivated together by the whirling snowflakes that had come on them out of the dark.