Bear This! (A 300 Moons Book) Read online

  Bear This!

  A 300 Moons Book

  Tasha Black

  13th Story Press

  Contents

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  26. Burn This! (SAMPLE)

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  About the Author

  Curse of the Alpha: The Complete Bundle

  One Percent Club

  Copyright © 2016 by 13th Story Press All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  13th Story Press PO Box 506 Swarthmore, PA 19081

  [email protected]

  Cover design 2016 by Sylvia Frost

  http://sfrostcovers.com

  Tasha Black Starter Library

  Packed with steamy shifters, mischievous magic, billionaire superheroes, and plenty of HEAT, the Tasha Black Starter Library is the perfect way to dive into Tasha's unique brand of Romance with Bite!

  Get your FREE books now!

  Bear This!

  Dreamy volunteer firefighter Ethan Chambers is everyone’s hero. But when a familiar young woman with a magical secret arrives at his doorstep can he manage to play the gentleman? Or will this fireman burn for something more?

  Volunteer firefighter Ethan Chambers leads a charmed life. The golden boy high school quarterback is a gorgeous grown up now with a great job, and a hobby that makes him a hero around town. But an unbearable sense of loneliness is making Tarker’s Hollow Fire Department’s favorite guy restless this holiday season.

  Bear shifter Evangeline has escaped captivity in a secret research facility. All she wants is to run a quick errand in the town she called home for one magical year. Then she can try to outrun her dark past. But when a snowstorm of epic proportions hits Tarker’s Hollow, even a she-bear needs a warm place to hole up. Seeking shelter at the public firehouse on Christmas Eve, she winds up snowed in with the man she’s dreamt of since high school.

  Join Ethan and Evangeline for a treasure hunt, a chili cook-off, and a second chance to find love in their own backyard. Just as things seem to be coming together, forces of evil threaten their newfound happiness. Will Evangeline crumble? Or will she be able to bear this challenge?

  Bear This! (A 300 Moons Book) is a steamy standalone paranormal romance!

  To the Black List, the most boisterous band of readers any author ever wrote for!

  And to my family – assuming you’re all still out there when I emerge from my writing cave…

  “Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!”

  - Charles Dickens

  "This is extremely important. Will you please tell Santa that instead of presents this year, I just want my family back.”

  - Kevin McAllister, Home Alone

  Prologue

  Some people said Kate Harkness was a witch.

  Others said she was an angel.

  But to the very special group of foundlings in her care, she was just Mom.

  Mom, with a long ponytail of frizzy yellow hair, smiling so hard that her sunburnt cheeks nearly covered her eyes. Mom, pushing a wheelbarrow or driving the pick-up truck that pulled the hayride at Harkness Farms. Mom, laying down the law when you messed up, and making you want to cry with pride when you had earned her gruff praise.

  Any mom will tell you her children are special, but the kids who came to live at Harkness Farms weren’t exactly your run of the mill orphans. Kate’s children all possessed special gifts. Unique abilities, you might say. Each one had the unlikely power to shift into the form of an animal or magical creature.

  And it was precisely because of these blessings that the children found their way to Kate Harkness. Most shifters didn’t have the power to change until adolescence. But rarely, a child would come into their gift early. And sometimes, this was just too much for even a shifter family to handle.

  But not too much for Kate.

  Bear. Wolf. Tiger. Dog. Butterfly. Dragon. It didn’t matter.

  She made room in her home and her heart for them all.

  To help them, every precocious young shifter brought to Harkness Farms was paid a visit by Gloria Cortez, a witch of no little renown, on the night of their arrival. Although Mrs. Cortez’s role in their everyday lives wasn’t as evident as Kate’s, it was no less important.

  The tiny woman would cradle the child in her warm arms and whisper a sweet song, though none could ever remember the words.

  “Three hundred moons, Kate,” she would say with a crinkly-eyed smile, handing the child off again.

  “And then what, Gloria?” some of the children heard their Mom whisper one night, when they had snuck downstairs to witness the welcome ceremony of a new sibling.

  “And then we wait,” Mrs. Cortez replied. “Magic always has a price. We’ll find it out soon enough.”

  The children all believed that Mrs. Cortez had somehow given them the power to control their animals, to live a normal life among the rest of the world. But whenever they tried to ask Mom about it, she told them they would know well enough when they were older, and set them to work on one farm chore or another.

  Eventually, they stopped asking. And the song was all but forgotten.

  But now is a significant time for the first group of children who came into the care of Kate Harkness all those years ago. The 300th moon is finally upon them. Some memories refuse to stay forgotten forever.

  And some prices won’t remain unpaid.

  1

  Ethan Chambers pulled up in front of the green cedar shake cottage at the edge of Tarker’s Hollow. The December morning was cold and clear, with a taste of coming snow on the wind.

  He hopped out of the car and headed down the path between the tall pines to the house. Ethan had been down the path more than a few times over the last year or so. Although he mostly visited at night, and he usually wasn’t responding in his official fire department capacity.

  He supposed his usual visits were what you might consider a booty call. But not today.

  The house belonged to old Joseph Crow. His granddaughter, Cressida, lived with him. She liked to spend an evening with Ethan now and again. She wasn’t one to settle down and he knew she wasn’t The One. But she knew how to laugh, a quality Ethan found refreshing. The whole town seemed so serious lately.

  He stepped onto the porch and knocked on the door. The scent of a wood fire burning in the stove inside greeted him.

  “Hang on,” a voice called from inside. The door opened after a moment to reveal Mr. Crow. He smiled up at Ethan, his brown eyes crinkling. He had a crescent wrench in his hand.

  “Ethan,” he exclaimed. “Glad you’re here, son. I’m about to have a flood in the basement.”

  “No problem, Mr. Crow,” Ethan replied. “Show me the way.”

  When Eth
an joined the Tarker’s Hollow Fire Department back in high school, he’d been amazed to learn that as a volunteer, he was allowed to take free courses at a local trade school. A few months into his service, he knew why.

  Plenty of older folks were on a fixed budget and afraid to call a contractor when things went wrong around the house. Instead, they would call the fire department when they had a leaky pipe or a broken stair.

  Ethan didn’t mind. He volunteered because he loved his town and wanted to help.

  He followed Mr. Crow through the living room, where a wood stove crackled merrily. A tan sofa faced the fire, a denim patchwork quilt folded neatly on its back. The sofa, a hand-carved rocking chair and a shelf with a couple of knickknacks were all the room contained.

  No sign of Cressida.

  They headed into the kitchen and down the stairs to the basement where a pipe was indeed leaking all over the floor. Thankfully, it was a supply pipe, not the sewer line, and it looked like the water was merely following the pipe. The leak was coming from above.

  “I think it’s your kitchen sink, sir,” he said. “Should be an easy fix.”

  “Great, great,” Joe said affably.

  They headed back up and Ethan went straight to the kitchen sink. He opened the cupboard and quickly found the leak in the connections. He had just settled into a comfortable position on his back to tighten the packing nut when he heard a familiar snicker.

  He peeked out to see a pair of long, tanned legs and slender curves filling out a short nightie. He could picture the twinkling brown eyes and messy blonde hair of the girl who stood over him.

  “You don’t have to make excuses to come here, you know,” Cressida teased.

  “Your grandfather called the station…” he began.

  “I’m kidding. I know,” she laughed.

  “Oh,” Ethan replied. Cressida could leave him feeling off-balance at times.

  “So what are you up to for the holidays?” Cressida asked. “Hanging out at the farm?”

  She sat down on the floor in front of him. He could see her face now. And he could imagine how much of her was exposed in that short nightie.

  “I was going to,” he said, fixing his attention on the pipe to avoid flirting on the job. “But Ed Walker had a heart attack, so I’m going to be on duty at the station instead.”

  “You’re spending Christmas alone at the fire station?” she asked. “That sucks. Can they really make you do that?”

  “They didn’t make me, Cressida,” he said with a smile. “I volunteered.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  “I don’t have kids or anything like the other guys,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got some stuff to do.”

  “You’re a good guy, Ethan Chambers,” Cressida declared.

  He glanced at her, expecting that she was teasing, but she merely nodded at him with a respectful expression.

  He nodded back and finished up with the pipe.

  “Run the water for me?” he asked.

  She hopped up and he caught a glimpse of red satin panties. Damn.

  Then the water was running. No leak.

  He crawled out from under the sink and stretched. When he turned around, Cressida had raised one eyebrow at him appraisingly. Nice.

  Ethan was naturally lean and muscular and he liked working out. Add that to the blue eyes and dirty blond hair an ex had called angelic, and he knew he was easy on the eyes.

  Now that his career as an engineer had taken off there was no scarcity of women sniffing around.

  He figured that was why he liked Cressida. He hadn’t yet found a woman he clicked with. And he wasn’t the type of guy to lead someone on. Cressida might be a little shallow in her admiration of his body, but she had zero interest in taking his name.

  “You have time to hang out?” she asked him, grinning.

  “Sorry, Cress,” he told her. “I’ve got another call.”

  She shrugged and padded out after him as he headed for the living room to find Joe.

  “Hey, Ethan,” Joe cried from his rocking chair in front of the fire. “Any luck?”

  “Oh sure, it’s all taken care of,” Ethan replied. “It was just a loose connection.”

  “What do I owe you?” Joe asked, getting up.

  “Nothing, sir, it was my pleasure,” Ethan assured him, gesturing for the older man not to get up.

  “Nonsense, boy,” Joe admonished him, and headed for the shelf of knickknacks. “You’re always doing one thing or another to help someone else. Now I’m gonna help you.”

  He shuffled over to the shelf and plucked something down.

  Ethan saw it gleam in the light.

  Joe dusted it off carefully on the edge of his plaid flannel shirt and then held it up with a flourish.

  A stone carving of a bear, black as night.

  “Wow,” Ethan said as Joe handed it over.

  The bear was small but had a nice weight - it was an oddly satisfying thing to hold. Ethan found himself running his thumb over the smooth ridge of its back rhythmically.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Did you make it?”

  “No,” Joe shook his head. “My grandfather did. Back when we had plenty of black bears in the woods here.”

  “Oh, wow, I can’t take this,” Ethan said immediately. “It’s an heirloom.”

  He knew he should put it back on the shelf, but he found it strangely difficult to part with for some reason.

  “No, son,” Joe laughed, and clapped him on the shoulder as he led him back toward the door. “You need the bear. It will help you.”

  A warm sense of relief filled Ethan’s chest as he closed his fingers around the smooth stone again.

  “What do you mean, it’ll help me?” he asked as Joe twisted the door knob.

  “You’re lonely, Ethan,” Joe said simply.

  Ethan grimaced.

  It was true.

  It always had been true. He was an only child, and his parents weren’t super warm and fuzzy. He’d spent half his childhood hanging out across the way at Harkness Farms, where Kate Harkness raised a dozen foster kids at a time. He’d soaked in the noisy, happy household, feeling like a sponge softening and expanding in warm water. But he wasn’t a Harkness. His parents still lived in the same pristine colonial, amazed that he chose to spend his time at the Firehouse instead of the country club.

  And now that the Harkness kids his age were grown, he only saw them at the holidays.

  Except this one, apparently.

  Which was probably for the best, because Derek Harkness had brought his new sister-in-law home for the holidays, hoping to set her up with Ethan.

  And they hadn’t hit it off.

  Joe was right - he was lonely.

  The old man was still smiling up at him, so Ethan nodded back and shrugged - no point denying the obvious.

  “Merry Christmas,” Joe said with a wink.

  “Merry Christmas,” Ethan replied. “Thank you for the present.”

  “You deserve it, Ethan,” Joe replied.

  Ethan stepped outside.

  It was beginning to snow.

  2

  Evangeline ran.

  She had been running for so long it was as if her body had forgotten how to rest. She glanced over her shoulder, unable to shake the feeling she was being followed, but finding nothing.

  She’d escaped Hell back in October. Two months later, she was realizing how hard it was to live without a birth certificate or a social security number - without an identity at all.

  I am nobody.

  Evangeline repeated this to herself daily, afraid she would give herself away in her sleep or in a moment of weakness.

  I am nobody. I have no past.

  The problem was that in the last town where she’d crashed, she’d finally had the nerve to spend some of the meager cash her employer paid her for sweeping up the back of the restaurant. She bought a pregnancy test.

  It confirmed what she’d already known. The nightmare was r
eal. She was on the run and now responsible for an innocent life too.

  Evangeline had spent just one of her twenty-two years in the place she thought of as home. No matter what life handed her, she would close her eyes and will herself back to the rag rug in front of the fire at Harkness Farms - the sounds of kids laughing and the smells of good food cooking all around her. Skipping the last, creaky step on her way down to the kitchen, and the twinkly blue-eyed smile of Kate Harkness - the strongest woman Evangeline had ever known. She could still hear Kate’s voice, telling her she was going to hurt herself if she wasn’t careful.

  No one, before or since, had ever cared about what happened to her.

  Evangeline knew at that moment exactly what she needed do.

  So she’d tucked the pregnancy test in her pocket and headed for Tarker’s Hollow like a homing pigeon.

  If she could only get back to Kate. Kate would take the baby. She had to. Kate would give the baby the safe home Evangeline hadn’t been able to hold onto for herself.

  Evangeline didn’t kid herself into thinking Kate would be willing to take her back along with the baby. By now, the farmhouse was probably overflowing with another generation of young shifters. And after what Evangeline had been through, she was sure she wouldn’t be wanted there anyway.

  No, she would have the baby, then take her dark cloud back on the road with her and leave the little one to the life of peaceful pleasures she deserved.

  She…

  Hot tears ran down her cheeks, and Evangeline found herself running into the town just as snow began to fall. It was so beautiful here, the tall trees embracing each other over the street, creating a tunnel of greenery in summer and an arbor of bare branches in the wintertime.

  Evangeline didn’t often get tired. The bear inside her had incredible stamina. But the comforting sight of the familiar town weakened her, and she paused in the town square, taking in the way the rooflines on the Tudor style shops seemed to snuggle together, and watching the pavement turn white under the kiss of the falling snow.