Three months later

Ryan lay amidst the trash in the penthouse room of the lodge. He knew it would have cost any normal person a small fortune to have stayed here as long as he had, but he wasn’t another person. He was one of the owners of the lodge, and that meant he could stay here as long as he wanted. At least if his brothers allowed it, which they did.

He groaned as his phone vibrated and then rang again. It would be Ryder, certainly, and Ryan knew he couldn’t say anything he hadn’t already said to him, about trying to get back out there in the world, about there being more to life than snowboarding, about there being time to come back next year.

But he didn’t understand what it was like to have your body be fine when everyone in the world thought it was broken. Shortly after the accident, he’d recovered beyond what anyone had anticipated when they’d sent him home. But then, as a bear shifter with extraordinary reparative powers, he’d healed beyond even what his shifter brothers had expected of him.

All he had to do was lay low for a winter, wait out the X Games and come back next year. And hope no one wondered why a person with a traumatic brain injury was suddenly competing again. The fall he’d taken should have killed him. A one in a million hit on the side of the half-pipe that had knocked him out and left him bleeding.

He couldn’t imagine what it had been like for those at home watching. Had Kylie been watching? He turned over on his side as the phone went silent. A minute later it beeped with a voicemail.

Kylie had been by to visit, just like everyone else, and he’d turned them all away as best as he could. His brothers, of course, had keys to his room, and they used them liberally, when they worried that he wasn’t going out for food or taking care of himself. The upside was he sometimes got to see his newborn nephews. They were the only lights in a somewhat dark life.

He grabbed the remote and pushed himself into a sitting position against the headboard. Winter. The X Games had happened without him. They were playing recaps of the guy who took the gold in half pipe.

They’d given Ryan a nod, a half-hearted memorial that only served to further piss him off. He slammed his fist into the pillow. He should have been up there on that podium, enjoying the roar of the crowd, showing Kylie he was still top dog in the world where he belonged. She seemed to think he was ready to just settle down, some easy target for a lonely girl in a small town, but he wasn’t.

He was Ryan Hart, Olympic champion at the top of his game.

Except, he realized as he noted the chip wrappers and empty pizza boxes around him, he wasn’t anymore.

The thought made frustration well up in him again. It was her fault, she had come into his mind just before he dropped into the pipe, and he hadn’t been thinking straight, hadn’t been in the right mindset. No, he couldn’t blame her. It was his fault for running away from his bear, which wanted her with everything in him, and for ignoring the feelings growing between them.

A memory rose to mind. Her eyes, welling with tears, as she stood with her friends and watched him escorted into the lodge with his head bandaged, looking wounded and out of it. And he had been out of it. All of the dreams, all of the hopes of the past months that had sustained him since coming back to Bearstone Park to deal with his father’s death, all of it was gone, melted away like a snowflake falling on hot breath.

The door shook with an aggressive knock, and he rolled away to keep his back to the door. If his brothers meant to barge in, he didn’t mean to reward them for it. He deserved his space. He was an adult. Even if he was the youngest of the brothers, he didn’t need them trying to father him. He’d been taking care of himself for a long time. Ryder had left home for college, Riley had followed not long after, and Ryan had been left alone with an absentee father, no mother, and only mountains for a home.

He longed to go out on them and snowboard again, but his brothers warned him against it. Said that someone with his injuries couldn’t go out and risk pulling off tricks like he did. And what was the point of being on the mountain if he wasn’t free to do as he liked? What was he supposed to do, ride the bunny hills by himself?

He grumbled as the lock jiggled. A key turned in the door.

Damn.

Someone was coming in. Probably Riley, who would complain about the mess but try to clean it up. Or maybe Ryder, who would tell him he needed to pull himself up by his bootstraps. But none of them understood what it was like to have your life changed in a thoughtless moment.

According to the press, it would take him months to recover. By the time he would be able to get back to competing, no one would expect him to risk it.

But he would. And he wouldn’t care if they called him careless or ignorant. Heck, that could be good for publicity. There was no reason why he shouldn’t get back out there and do what he did best. His body was fine.

“Make sure you’re clothed, because naked or not, I’m coming in,” a voice said. “Not that I’d mind if you were naked.”

His eyes shot open. It couldn’t be. She didn’t have a key. His brothers wouldn’t dare.

But the door opened and he turned to look over his shoulder at the small figure silhouetted in the doorway. When she came into the light of the room, she took his breath away, the way she always did, though he’d tried hard to deny it.

Her thick, blond hair was soft and wispy around her heart-shaped face. Her stubborn chin was lifted, and her large, blue-gray eyes were flashing as she looked him over. Her small arms were folded in front of her ample chest, and the puffy coat she wore only accentuated her curvy figure. She wore skinny jeans tucked into boots and she had gorgeous, curvy legs.

To others she was probably of average or slightly below average height at around 5’5”. To Ryan, she seemed tiny.

That didn’t stop him from thinking about what it would be like to press her body up against his, feel those lush curves against his hard muscles.

She was even hot when she was pissed. And she was definitely pissed now, as she surveyed the mess that was his room, and then the mess that was his person. She eyed his head, which was no longer bandaged, and then moved her gaze down the rest of him.

He knew what she saw. Light blond hair that was mussed and had grown a little too long and was now curling around his ears and forehead. Skin that was still naturally tan despite a lack of sun exposure. A grumpy, belligerent face with features that women had always liked. Commentators liked to say that he should have been on a runway rather than in a half-pipe. In fact, his agent had tried to console him with the fact that there were offers on the table if he wanted to model sportswear. Or even go into other modeling, if he was willing to lose the muscular look.

But he wasn’t. Muscles helped him traverse the mountains in bear form, helped him tear up the park in human form. Muscles were essential and non-negotiable. And he liked the way Kylie was eyeing them now. He gave her a sardonic wink and lazily flexed a bicep.

She flushed, as she always did around him, but then she gave him a look of disgust and bent to start picking up trash. He didn’t know why everyone who came in here bothered. He was just going to throw stuff back over it all over again. The floor should be messed up, just like his life was.

He flopped onto his back and gave her a bored glare, trying to ignore the way his body responded to her being the room. It was hard not to look at her pretty rear every time she bent over to pick something else up.

“So, they sent you in as a last defense? Why?” he asked.

She stood slowly, raising to her full, not very intimidating height. She let out a sigh. “Because you’re refusing to get out there and live again, and it’s bothering them.”

“Right,” he said, gingerly putting his hands behind his head, because it still ached a little if he moved too quickly. He should probably see a shifter specific doctor again soon, make sure things were still healing. Sometimes it hurt when he regenerated too fast. He’d broken a femur once when snowboarding, and even though he’d healed faster than even the shifter doctor had expected, his leg had been sort of sore for a few months after, almost like it was bruised or traumatized by the rapid recovery.

Alpha powers were rare with shifters, but even more rare with bears. He wasn’t sure if he was the only one in his family with one, but he suspected as much. Unless you could call Riley’s Hollywood good looks or Ryder’s super smarts with business alpha powers.

But he didn’t know. The Bear Council had been shocked by his ability, but warned him that they would be watching, making sure he didn’t threaten the discovery of bear society.

So he was trapped in the cabin, awaiting the pity calls of family and friends, including this small, obnoxious woman that he wanted with his body but in no other way. He needed a fighter for a mate, an athlete, someone up for every adventure. Not a coddled teacher who also did floral arrangements on the side.

She’d come onto him from the moment she’d met him, but he’d known it was a bad idea. She’d always be waiting at home while he was up in the mountains. She seemed the type that never did anything outdoors. And she was small, such that he felt sometimes that if they mated, he would crush her or something. And he was still holding out for a bear shifter mate. Someone sturdy, someone who could regenerate. Someone who wouldn’t die easily, like his mom had.

Not that you could control such things, not that his mom wasn’t a strong woman. But just that maybe he’d have a chance of being with a mate longer if she was tall and strong and hopefully a bear.

Kylie was none of those things. She was a scrapper, that was for sure. She had a lot of mental fortitude. She had to because her job involved dealing with kids, and she owned a business, even if she wasn’t very involved in it. He got the feeling that she didn’t really need to work. Leslie had said something about her inheriting money. No, just having money? He scratched his head. He couldn’t remember.

“That’s right,” she said. “Scratch your head, act clueless, stay there in bed all day being depressed. Let them win.”

He sat up slightly, shocked by the harshness of her tone. “Let who win?”

“The voices in your head that say it’s over. The dark thoughts. The feeling that life is pointless.”

He sat up even further, eyes locked on her in an intense glare. How did she know how it felt? “Don’t act like you know me,” he said. “You don’t. Just because you follow me around.”

She stopped and sighed. Then she rolled her eyes and pulled one of her boots off and set a small foot on the bed. “Look, I get that you’re not interested in me. I’m at peace with that. I was when you moved away. I gave it my best shot and we didn’t work. But that’s not why I’m here.”

He looked down at her foot and then up at her face. “What do you mean? Why else would you be here?” His ego was slightly pricked at her being fine with there being nothing between them. And why else would she have gotten the key from his brothers? He folded his arms, preparing to be as stubborn as he’d been since the day he was born.

She rolled down her sock and put her leg up for him to see.

He blinked. Once, then twice. He’d been wrong. She was stronger than he could have possibly thought.