CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Calvin~
The door to the cabin opened and light spilled over the snow. About damned time. Prescott gruffly told Amber to lock up. The door shut. The dead bolt snicked as she followed orders. The barrel bolts slotted into place with two audible clunks. Prescott tramped away. The bastard looked up at the sky and began to whistle.
The porch light went out. Calvin relaxed. At least, whatever had happened in that cabin, Prescott wasn’t spending the night with Amber. But now he was following Cal’s fucking prints all through the trees and around the cabin. That was what came of flaunting your fucking bear.
Prescott held his shotgun like a soldier. Easily. Casually. Like an extension of his body he was ready to employ. Shit. The leafless branches of Cal’s oak tree weren’t going to be much defense against gunfire. The cabin lights blinked out – Cal supposed Amber was off to bed. Did she sleep in her own pink skin? Probably not. He remembered white cotton peeking out of the enveloping hotel robe. Maybe she was just a quick-change sort of a gal.
Prescott continued to follow Cal’s prints through the trees. But he traced them only to the stream before giving up and going inside his own house. Who said that the Bascoms weren’t lucky? Cal wriggled more firmly into his notch. The lights went back on in Amber’s cabin. Maybe she couldn’t sleep. He strained his ears and heard only the faintest rustling.
Her phone chirped. It was loud in the cold silence. She answered almost at once and the murmur of her voice was a pleasant hum in the night air. Probably talking to Prescott, he thought gloomily. Like a pair of junior high steadies. Shit. Had he ever been that young or that innocent? If he had, it was a long time and many women ago.
The cloudless sky was studded with stars. He had forgotten how lovely the night sky was. Once he had known all the constellations. When they had come into their bears, he and Luther had camped out in all seasons and spent many nights studying the stars and talking about the future.
They had defied all the rules and taken bear together. Romping in the woods like the idiot adolescents they were. It had been their secret vice, hidden even from Pat and Zeke. Probably this was where his primal longing for an earthy, full-bodied woman came from. A longing that deserved to be squelched like any other primitive streak. Bear lust had no place in the modern world he wanted to inhabit.
Maybe little Amber had as little wish as he did to hook up with a throwback. Maybe she was actively looking for a man who was not a bear. And who was he to blame her? This damned genetic curse was as senseless as it was disruptive to a normal modern life. He didn’t want to be at the mercy of bestial urges.
What he needed was a woman whose sophistication and polish would turn his veneer of civilization into the real thing. A woman who would help him suppress his primitive side. Who would teach their children how to live in the modern world. A world that had no room for atavistic, bestial bear shifters.
The skies twinkled down at him and mocked his pretense of sophistication. He was going to have to brush up on astronomy. Kenny Luther and Lucy Brenda were going to be asking questions down the road. So were Patrick’s three girls. Hard to believe that between them, Zeke, Pat and Laura had eight babies. They almost made him believe that he could catch hold of the brass ring and have it all: loving wife and beautiful children.
Only did Jenna really love Zeke? Did Heather truly love Pat? Or was the money the real attraction? He knew Zeke and Pat were convinced that they were loved. But how could a man be sure he hadn’t been married for his money? If Luther had lived, would he have brought home a buxom bride who looked like Jenna and Heather and Amber? Like Mom? Would Luther have joined Pat and Zeke in taking a risk on loving a woman the way Dad had loved Mom?
Any normal man, left a widower in his prime, would at least have gone looking for some female companionship. But not Freddie Bascom. Dad lived as celibate and sexually austere a life as if he expected his Brenda to return from that ill-fated trip to town. Hell, back when Dad still lived in the old house, sometimes Calvin would open the back door half-expecting to see Mom stirring a vat of chili, while the scent of cumin hung in the air like love.
And if the truth were told, sometimes he would catch a glimpse of his larger than life twin out of the corner of his eye. It had never seemed quite plausible that big, brawny, tough Luther Bascom could be dead. How could anything snuff out so much vibrancy? He’d give his right arm for just ten minutes with his brother.
So he was in no position to fault Freddie for clinging to his lost wife. Dad and Mom had been soul mates. Clearly, obviously, joyfully in love. Was there ever a happier home than theirs before that car accident took Mom and Bethany from them? Earlier, when Zeke and Patrick had lost their own mother, Mom and Dad had just rolled them into the fabric of their blithe home life. But Brenda’s death was like moving permanently from color into black and white.
He swallowed hard on the lump in his throat. Yawned fit to split his face. Shook his head to dispel the aura of melancholy he had allowed to envelop him. Dead was dead. Life was loss. A fellow had to make rules if he wanted to survive in a hard and cruel world.
Cal stared out over the trees, noting the plumes of smoke rising from the Diegos’ chimney and Amber’s stovepipe. A warmer breeze blew impishly down from the mountains ruffling his fur and bringing the scent of cattle and horses. The silence was split by the sudden screech of a hunting owl. And then like a heavy blanket the quiet fell back over the night.
He drifted. A woman with a shape like a rutting bear’s fantasy ministered to his every desire with passionate tenderness. Two children with his brother’s eyes chased each other through the rooms of his childhood home. Just as he was settling into contentment and his lover was whispering sweet nothings, a crack like thunder blasted his dream and his dream woman into fragments.
He slipped sideways, and before he could plummet to the ground, snatched at the branch above. Damn. He had been caught napping. Was the noise that had woken him real or part of his dream? Another crack split the air and then another. The warm, dry Chinook wind had come roaring over the mountains warming the winter air and lulling him to sleep.
Icicles were falling like missiles from the eaves of the Diegos’ house and Amber’s cabin. Smacking hard against brick and stone. Piercing the snow, as his dream had pierced his heart. By sunrise, a foot of snow would be gone and it would feel like spring. But the wind brought only the illusion of warmer weather. In the flicker of an eyelash the temperature would plunge again, and plants roused from dormancy would freeze and die.
Fickle as a woman. As fleeting as happiness. He and his damn fool heart had better remember that.