Chapter One: Axl

 

 

It was days like this that made Sheriff Axl Tanner glad to be alive. Last night's rain had washed the world clean, and now a brilliant sun shining from a clear blue sky brought out the vivid green in the woods along the highway. He rolled down the window of his patrol car, a 4WD Chevy Tahoe, and let the warm wind blow into the cab.

He'd spent the morning at the Sheriff's Department office in Spring Meadow, the county seat. What was intended to be a quick run in and out had turned into a few hours of hours of filling out paperwork, equipment requisitions, and incident reports, while the beautiful morning marched on outside the window without him.

Like most bear shifters, Axl was an outdoorsy guy, the sort of guy who was happiest working with his hands and being out in the sunshine and fresh air. Unfortunately, the down side of that was letting paperwork pile up until he had to do it all at once.

But finally he was out, waving a cheerful goodbye to Kitty, the department receptionist and dispatcher. As soon as he got out on the road, he felt his mood lift. Maybe he'd drive up to Wildcat Forks for lunch. He hadn't been to Marge's Diner in awhile.

Keeping law and order in Pinerock County wasn't a demanding job, most of the time. Not like a bigger, more populated area would have been. The whole population of the county was in a scattering of small towns and ranches, spaced out along rural highways with big blocks of forest in between.

It was perfect bear-shifter country. Axl's clan certainly thought so. And most people knew better than to mess with bear shifters, or with a place they called their own.

Axl signaled and turned off the highway into downtown Wildcat Forks—well, what passed for downtown, anyway. There wasn't much to the town, just a few small businesses scattered along the two crossing highways that gave the place its name. He drove past the big new Shell complex and pulled into the tiny one-pump service station across the street to fill up the Tahoe.

The station's one small service bay was open, the garage door cranked open to let in the breeze. Axl clearly wasn't the only one enjoying the nice weather. There was no vehicle in the service bay, so the mechanic/owner, "Big Bob" Johnson, was lounging on a chair in front of it. Although a newspaper was folded on his knee, mostly he was just watching the world go by. He lifted a hand in a laconic wave when Axl pulled in.

"Morning, Bob," Axl said, unfolding his tall body from behind the wheel of the truck. Even the big SUV was a little cramped for a guy his size.

"Mornin', Sheriff," the mechanic returned. "Check the oil for you, top off the wiper fluid an' that?"

"Sure," Axl agreed. "Don't mind if you do."

He leaned against the Chevy while Bob, at his own speed, moseyed around and poked under the hood. Axl could easily have done all of it, but it was no skin off his nose to give Bob a little business.

A couple of women went past, walking dogs on leashes. The women waved to Axl, who waved back, and both of them smiled flirtatiously at him, which he returned with a smile that was friendly but (he hoped) not too encouraging. There was no flicker of interest from his bear.

"Most eligible bachelor in Pinerock County," Axl's brother Alec had teased him the previous night, over dinner at the ranch they'd inherited from their dad. Alec himself was a confirmed bachelor; he swore up and down that no woman was putting a rope around this wild bear.

Axl had shrugged. The amount of female attention he'd gotten since winning the Pinerock County sheriff's election was downright embarrassing. Big, buff, blond-haired, and handsome, Axl had never had trouble getting dates, unlike his grumpy, reclusive brother. Axl thought most of Alec's "confirmed bachelor" plan came down to basically having declared sour grapes on the whole dating business.

But while a night out at the local bar and an even wilder night between the sheets may have satisfied Axl when he was younger, it wasn't what he wanted now. He was ready to settle down. Unfortunately his bear wasn't—or, at least, it was turning out to be the choosiest damn bear he could've been saddled with. Women all over the county might be throwing themselves at him, but his bear wasn't interested in any of them.

Maybe you need to move to a place with more than six single women, then, dumbass.

But he didn't want to leave Pinerock County. This place was in his blood. He'd been born here, and grew up in the ranch house he now shared with his brother. He knew every rock, tree, and muddy backbend of the meandering Pinerock River ... well, okay, maybe not every rock and tree, but pretty damn close. He and Alec and their cousins had tramped all over the county when they were kids, hunting and fishing, sometimes as bears and sometimes as gangly teenage boys.

He'd always thought he'd raise his own children here. He'd looked forward to showing them his favorite fishing holes, teaching them to ride horses and to shift gears on the old farm truck.

And it's never gonna happen if that picky bear of mine doesn't settle down and choose a mate already.

"Where you off to?" Big Bob asked lazily, wiping the Chevy's dipstick on a greasy rag stuck through the strap of his overalls. "Got any big cases you're workin' on?"

"Just the usual," Axl said. "A cattle thief here, some petty vandalism over there. Couple of bar fights. Right now, the most urgent thing on my agenda is lunch. I haven't had Sammie's world-famous meatloaf in awhile."

"You meet the new waitress yet?" Bob asked. "Redhead. Real bombshell."

Axl felt his bear stir in interest. Well, that was different.

"Nope," he said. "Didn't know she had one. What happened to Peg?"

"Peg quit, oh, must be couple months back now. Got married and moved over to Harville. Guess you ain't been by in awhile."

"I'm behind on the gossip, for sure." Axl pulled out his wallet. "What do I owe you?"

Bob shook his head. "On the house. Good to see you Tanner boys around. And you know what they say, right?"

"What?" Axl asked.

Bob winked and touched his nose. "Bears are good luck."

Axl snorted and climbed into the Chevy. That old superstition.

But it was better than most of the alternatives. Some places were a lot better for shifters than others, and Pinerock County was one of the best. Axl had heard of places where shifters were hated, feared, and even attacked.

Here, their human neighbors were proud of the bear shifters in their midst. When Axl had run for sheriff, the normally independent and apathetic ranch-country voters had turned out in record numbers. Everyone said having a bear-shifter sheriff was the best thing that could have happened to the county.

Axl thought it was ridiculous, but hey, if being considered good luck meant a few less drunken good ol' boys taking swings at him when he tried to break up fights at the local bars, he'd take it.

Marge's Diner was only a couple of blocks from the gas station. He could've walked it easily, but that would've meant leaving his patrol car blocking Bob's one gas pump. Axl parked in the gravel lot, beside a pair of mud-crusted pickups and a logging truck. He left his wide-brimmed sheriff's hat on the passenger seat of the SUV, adjusted his belt, and went in.

He hadn't been to Marge's in months, but the place hadn't changed a bit. Like it ever would. There was still the same old black-and-white linoleum that was probably older than Sammie Jo, the daughter of the original Marge, who'd taken over running the place when her ma retired to Florida; there were still the same cracked Formica countertops, the same smell of frying grease. The walls were tiled with antique license plates, most of them from the '40s and '50s, salvaged over the years from the now-defunct Wildcat Forks wrecking yard.

The handful of customers looked up and nodded to him. Axl took his usual table near the door, and looked around for Sammie Jo.

Instead his eye was caught by a fast-moving head of bright red hair. The hair got his attention, but once he'd seen her, he couldn't look away.

Bob had called the new waitress a bombshell. But even that hardly did her justice. It wasn't beauty so much as a raw, smoking sex appeal. The way she filled that uniform: the generous curves of her breasts, the swell of her behind, the shapely legs showing beneath her knee-length skirt—

As she bent over to refill a customer's coffee cup, causing the skirt to tighten across the perfect curve of her ass, Axl felt his pants getting a little tighter.

And his bear stirred, in a way it hadn't for anyone in a long time.

The redhead looked up, across the room, and met his eyes. She started to smile. Then her smile froze.

Axl had frozen, too.

Because he'd seen that face before. In fact, he'd been looking at it just this morning, while sorting through the mountains of paperwork marching relentlessly over his desk. That pretty face had been on a fax from the FBI warning local law enforcement to be on the lookout for a wanted fugitive who might be in the area.

May be considered dangerous, the fax had read.

While he stared at the redhead and she stared back at him—or rather, at the sheriff's uniform, probably—his bear woke up fully, stretched, and announced, Her.

What? Axl thought.

Her, his bear repeated. That one. Mine. Ours.

Great. It just figured. His super-picky bear had finally found a mate ... and she was a wanted felon.