“Correct.”

  “But you’re in your own home territory now. And if he learns where you are, then someone else could get hurt.”

  “Jessie.”

  “And I hear your uncle isn’t dead either.”

  “But he’s not here.” Emerson was rethinking having Jessie stay here any longer. She could go back with the CSF agents to either Loveland or Yuma Town, out of harm’s way.

  “Right. We need to find your uncle also and make sure he’s protected until this is done,” Flo said.

  “The CSF agents can take Jessie home.”

  “No, they can’t,” Jessie said. “While the guys are here, I’m staying here. If Smith shows his ugly cougar mug around here, you all can take him down.”

  Emerson frowned at her. “If he pulls what he did the last time, he’ll hire someone else to do his dirty work and just watch to make sure it gets done.”

  “And you took care of them, didn’t you?” Jessie said, irritated.

  “All but Smith, yeah.”

  “Well, this time you’ll take care of him too.”

  He appreciated that she thought he and the others could handle this, but she didn’t know how ruthless men like that could be. Not like he could be either. That wasn’t something he wanted to share with her.

  “Staying or leaving?” he asked Leyton.

  “If Jessie is staying, we are too. And we still have a mission we’re here for. To determine who the bears are who broke into your shed and Jessie’s cabin and where your uncle is,” Leyton said.

  “Okay.” Emerson said to Flo, “We’re staying. We’ll resolve this business with the bears and my uncle and then after that, we go to Yuma Town for Christmas.”

  “Good. Then everyone in Yuma town will be ready to take care of you.”

  Emerson smiled. He was used to having a team back him up, but this time he would have a whole town to watch his back? Not to mention he was going to enjoy Christmas with Jessie and her family.

  “Oh, ask Flo if she can discover a phone number for a Robbie Randall in Naples, Florida,” Jessie said.

  Emerson repeated the request to Flo.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Jack said, “We could have found that information out for you.”

  Jessie smiled at him.

  “Thanks, Flo,” Emerson said. Then they finished the call.

  “She’s looking into the situation with Smith,” Emerson told everyone.

  “We’ll definitely be looking for him too,” Leyton said. “Any rogue cougar who murders, or attempts to murder our kind, will meet his end.”

  Jack and Chet agreed.

  “So back to the situation with your aunt’s ghost. Why hasn’t she moved on?” Jessie asked.

  Everyone turned to see what Leyton had to say about it.

  “She doesn’t want her mate to be alone. She wanted to see Emerson return to the resort for good and be there for Paul since Emerson has been the son they never had,” Leyton said. “I imagine she’ll hang around until Paul returns.”

  “Oh,” Jessie said, sounding disappointed.

  Emerson knew why she sounded that way. She was hopeful Uncle Paul would find a mate in Yuma Town.

  The guys all looked at her to see why she would be disappointed about that.

  “Jessie wants to play matchmaker,” Emerson said, smiling.

  “With whom?” Leyton asked, appearing curious.

  “We have any number of single women around Mr. Merriweather’s age who would be just delighted to meet him,” Jessie said.

  The guys all smiled.

  Chet said, “He might not want to be found if he learns that’s what you’re up to.”

  “Nonsense. I imagine he was quite lonely while being here all by himself, no one to talk to at night, no one to snuggle with. Though we do have the problem with this Robbie Randall, if he has taken a fancy to her and she to him.”

  Emerson chuckled.

  “Well, it’s true. I mean, if he’s all the way out in Naples, and we…” She bit her lip and smiled. “Does anyone want lunch?”

  Emerson smiled at her and went into the kitchen with her. He knew what she was going to say. With her family and his split up like that, they were going to have a time seeing everyone, but she probably didn’t want to let on to the others that she was even thinking about that.

  After everyone had grilled cheese and ham sandwiches, Leyton and Chet tried to crack into the code to get into Uncle Paul’s computer, Jessie was writing, and Jack and Emerson checked around the property to see if they could see any sign that the bears had returned. They didn’t see any bear tracks, or human ones either, except for the ones they had made, but then Emerson thought to go down to the shore and just on a hunch, see if anything had happened to Jessie’s stack of rocks. Sure enough, another rock was sitting on top of his.

  Emerson explained to Jack that they figured the bears had stacked a couple of rocks on top of Jessie’s.

  “Okay, so we watch for them out here tonight,” Jack said.

  “It looks like they came down the hillside over there. It’s steep, but the bears can climb. That way they’re not visible from the house or cabins.”

  “A game?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, I think so, to show us they’re harmless.”

  “They hit you and knocked you out. It was bad enough that Jessie had to call Dr. Kate about it.”

  “I’m sure they’re not used to knocking a man out as a bear and didn’t know their own strength. They got what they wanted, I believe and that was for Jessie to stay with me so I can protect her. Now I have you all as backup too. I can imagine they’re trying to maintain a low profile, but they’re still trying to show us they’re not the enemy.”

  Jack shook his head and carefully balanced another rock on top of the stack. “If we had a wildlife movement camera, we could set one up out here. I never thought we would need something like that.”

  “Me either.” That was something Emerson needed to do though. There was no hardware store close to here, so he would have to mail order some security cameras and maybe they would get here before the guys left, and they could help him set them up. He never considered setting up his own wildlife cameras to capture another kind of shifter on it. Emerson used his phone to take a picture of the stack of rocks.

  They returned to the house and he showed Jessie the picture. “The top rock is Jack’s.”

  She laughed.

  Smiling, Jack shrugged. “It’s a challenge.”

  Emerson showed the stack of rocks to the others, to let them know to watch it should anyone come down there to stack any more rocks. Maybe they’d catch them at it.

  “Let’s go for a run tonight,” Jessie said. “If they’re coming down at the same place, we might catch them at it.”

  The guys all agreed.

  “And we’ll catch the sunset.”

  “Stack more rocks?” Leyton asked, as if he’d missed out on the challenge.

  “From the looks of that stack, I doubt you could get one more rock on top before it topples completely over,” Jessie said.

  Emerson agreed with her there. “Any luck on getting into Uncle Paul’s computer?”

  Chet smiled. “Yeah, I just found the password.”

  “You hacked in?” Emerson asked, impressed, since no one else seemed to be able to.

  Chet waved a piece of paper in the air. “It was tucked into a secret panel in the desk.”

  “Ah hell.” Emerson had found it when he was a kid, and he’d forgotten all about it.

  “Did that jog a memory?” Chet asked, typing in the password.

  “Yeah. When I was twelve, I was trying to fix my uncle’s stuck drawer. He’d had some bulky items in there and it jammed the drawer good. My hands were smaller than his, so he asked if I could unstick it. He went out to talk to some guests and I worked on the drawer until I finally managed to get the stuff out of there and open it. That’s when I found the wooden inlaid panel. Of course I’d peeked, but there hadn’t been anything under it, so I just figured it wasn’t a secret hiding place like I thought it was.”

  “He probably didn’t have a computer back then either,” Chet said.

  “He didn’t.” Emerson came over to the desk and sat down. He realized Jack and Jessie had joined them in the office too.

  He clicked on the tab for the email, but he had to sign in and that meant sending a code to his uncle’s phone, which Emerson didn’t have. Then he realized if it did and his uncle was perfectly alive, he would get the code to change the password on his email account and he would know Emerson was trying to get into it. Was that a good or bad thing?

  He didn’t believe the bears knew he realized his uncle wasn’t dead, or at least wasn’t in his coffin. If they were in cahoots with his uncle, would he tell them what was going on? Emerson felt he was playing a chess game but didn’t know all the proper moves.

  Everyone was staring at the computer when it asked Emerson for the phone code.

  “Okay, does anyone know how to change this, like if I’d lost my phone?”

  “I do,” Jessie said, as she switched places with Emerson. “Yes, I’ve lost my phone before, climbing into mines and lost it down the shaft. Pain in the butt. Losing a phone can be the problem with using phone verification for identification then.” She changed the phone number to Emerson’s. “You do realize if your uncle is still monitoring his emails, he’ll see in an email that you changed the phone number for verification purposes.”

  “Yeah, well, he should have left all the information for me since I needed to get access to the resort information and he shouldn’t have made it such a hassle.” Emerson folded his arms.

  She let Emerson sit down to get into his uncle’s emails. Everyone was delighted, expectant, hoping to learn more of what was going on.

  Emerson opened up his uncle’s email to find nothing. Everything had been deleted. Everything. No inbox messages, trash, spam, drafts, sent messages, nothing.

  Leyton laughed. Emerson gave him a dark look. Leyton shrugged. “That’s what I would have done if I had wanted to disappear.”

  Emerson couldn’t believe his uncle would do it. This was a side of him he’d never known. Still, Emerson couldn’t help but admire his uncle for it. He wondered if someone else had told him to do this though.

  There were no links on the tool bar to pages his uncle normally accessed either, like the weather or his emails, or other important sites his uncle accessed regularly accessed, all but the resort website and the online reservations link to all reservations made, including Jessie’s with a special note that said: one sweet, little gal, half off for any stays at the resort. Emerson smiled. He knew his uncle wouldn’t need to make a note of that to himself. He was making it for Emerson so he would know just what the setup was.

  “You’d better honor that,” Jessie said, looking over his shoulder, “I mean when I come up for future visits.”

  Emerson laughed.

  Leyton asked, “Jack, do you want to take a hike through the woods and see if you can see anything?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll go with him to keep him safe,” Chet said and then the two of them put on their parkas, hats, and gloves and left.

  “I’m going to make some inquiries,” Leyton said. I’ll let you know if I discover anything.” Then he left for his cabin.

  “I’m working on the story,” Jessie told Emerson.

  “Okay, I’m updating the website.”

  She smiled. “So you are going to rent out the cabins.”

  “Yeah. Next year. I do want to do some renovations, provide the cabins with Wi-Fi and some other amenities. I need to order the security cameras also.”

  “Okay, sounds good.” Jessie sat down on the couch and opened up her laptop.

  Emerson ordered some security cameras online and decided to get some wildlife ones too and see if he could catch any bears in the act of trespassing.

  That night, Jessie and the guys all went down to the shore to set up a couple of fires near each other and roasted hot dogs, to be followed by s’mores, courtesy of Jessie, who had bought all the fixings with her to share with Emerson’s uncle, if he’d been here. Emerson realized she really had spent some time with his uncle and wished he’d been more like that in recent years. That would change if he could locate him.

  Leyton began taking pictures. “Kate and the others wanted pictures of us, if we did anything fun. In fact, she insisted on it. We don’t share our photos with the outside world, so don’t worry about Smith seeing where you are, Emerson.”

  “After this, we need to build a snowman,” Jessie said.

  Emerson glanced at the other guys who didn’t jump at the chance to agree. They didn’t seem all that interested in making a snowman. He hadn’t made one since he was a kid, and he was all for it.

  Smiling, Leyton was shaking his head.

  “And we’ll take pictures,” Jessie said.

  Emerson figured their families would tell the guys they had to help them build snowmen, once they returned home, if they hadn’t made snowmen yet that winter. “We’ll make the snowman tomorrow. Once Jessie is done with her word count, unless something pressing comes up.”

  “We can do it first thing after breakfast,” Jessie said. “That way if it takes us longer than we plan, we’ll have the time to work on it. I can get my word count done after lunch. Besides—”

  “It will go in the story,” Emerson finished for her, knowing just what she was going to say.

  “Absolutely.”

  “We can do the snow angels later,” she said.

  The guys all smiled at each other.

  “What? You don’t think you should be making snow angels?” Jessie laughed. “Fallen snow angels then.”

  “I can agree with that,” Leyton said.

  Leyton started to stack up some rocks near Jessie’s. Chet had to get in on the act, then all of them were. He was glad the guys were here to protect them and were having some fun at the same time.

  “Hey, so what’s the story of you kidnapping Dr. Kate, Leyton? Speaking of fallen angels,” Emerson said.

  “I was chasing after a rogue cougar and was shot. I had been running as a cougar, so when I broke into the clinic, I had only intended to get some bandages and antiseptic. I didn’t realize the doc was napping in the clinic.”

  “So naturally, you took her hostage.” Chet shook his head. “I keep saying that he didn’t have to take her hostage.”

  Leyton smiled. “It was a good way to get the lady’s attention.”

  “There was a whole manhunt after him too,” Chet said. “Guess who wanted him the worst.”

  “Leyton’s twin brother, Stryker Hill, though they didn’t realize they were brothers,” Jessie said.

  “Yeah, it all worked out for the best though,” Leyton said.

  They watched the sun set, the yellows and purples and pinks reflecting off the water, making it the prettiest sunset ever.

  Emerson wrapped his arms around Jessie as they were seated next to the fire with the others and listened to the lake water lapping at the boulders. The breeze stirred the branches of the trees, but they didn’t hear any other sounds.

  It was beautiful like this, but especially because Jessie was enveloped in his arms. He would never have been down here cooking hot dogs, or enjoying s’mores, stacking rocks, or watching the sun set if it hadn’t been for Jessie.

  Chapter 14

  That night, as Jessie and the men headed up the stairs from the shore to the cabins, she decided to stay with Emerson in his bed. There wasn’t any reason to hold back. They were single, adults, had no other attachments, both wanted this and even if they had sex, it didn’t mean they were committed to each other forevermore. But she wanted it and she was certain he did too.

  “Night, all,” Jessie said to the others as they moved off to their cabin and everyone said their goodnights. She and Emerson headed inside the house.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay with me tonight?” Emerson asked Jessie as they pulled off their hats, gloves, parkas, and boots.

  “About that…yes. I mean, I do.”

  He smiled. “Now you’re talking.”

  “I’ll just take a shower and I’ll join you in a little bit.”

  “Okay, I‘ll keep the bed warm for you.” He looked so happy, like she had given him the best Christmas present ever, but she was hoping he would give her an early Christmas present!

  Once Jessie had showered and dried her hair, she threw on her black top and buffalo red and black plaid pajamas and when she entered the master bedroom, she found Emerson waiting for her in bed. He smiled at her, looking devastatingly handsome, very much like a hungry cougar, hungry for her, his dark brown eyes gazing at her with admiration.

  “Black,” he said, motioning to her shirt, sounding amused that she had been giving him grief about wearing black and she wore it too.

  She smiled. “Yeah, I thought you might like that.”

  “I like anything you wear. It all looks great on you.”

  “Better than hot pink though, right?”

  He smiled again. “You may be surprised to hear this, but I would welcome you in my embrace no matter what you’re wearing.” He pulled the covers aside for her to join him where she had climbed into bed before. As soon as she was in bed, he pulled the covers over her and she slipped into his arms.

  “You don’t think we’re rushing this a bit, do you?” she asked, kissing his bare chest, hoping he wouldn’t want to hold back.

  “Not at all,” he said in a rush. “The whole time you’ve been here, I’ve wanted to give you the time you need to do whatever you need to, but I’ve been enjoying every minute we’ve spent together. Believe me when I say I didn’t expect that at all. I didn’t think I would meet such a fascinating she-cat shortly after I returned home. Tonight, I was going to do anything I could to convince you to stay with me.”

  “Hmm, did I make it too easy for you then?” She smiled at him.