She smiled and got up to go to the kitchen. “I’m changing it to winter. Christmas. Snowstorm. Do you want some water? The popcorn is making me thirsty. I love the kind you got. It’s just perfect.”

  “Buttery and salty.”

  “Right.”

  “Yeah, sure on the water, upper righthand cupboard for the glasses.”

  She brought two down and filled them with water, then carried them to the coffee table. “If I get an idea while we’re watching the movie—”

  “You’ll want to write it down?”

  “Uh, yeah. Will it disturb you if I work on the story while we’re watching the movie?”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Yeah, sure, but only if it doesn’t bother you. My folks hate it when I try to work on my story while we are watching a movie. I tried having a light on so I could write by hand instead, and my dad didn’t like the light on because it caused a glare on the TV. No tapping on the keyboard on my computer either because that bothered them. So either watch the story with them, or don’t.”

  “It’s fine with me any way you want to do it.”

  She sighed. “You’re losing your dark and brooding persona.”

  He chuckled. “I’ll just frown the whole time while you’re typing away.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “What psychic powers do I have?” He really didn’t believe in people having them. He wondered if she did or this was just all fantasy for her.

  “You can read other people’s minds.”

  “Hmm, that could be interesting. And you?”

  “My heroine can also. So she’s disturbed when he begins to speak to her in her mind.”

  “Okay, that would be spooky, but of course, psychics aren’t real.”

  She smiled. “Go ahead and start the movie.”

  He began the movie, and for a while, she just watched the show with him, smiling and laughing and seeming to enjoy it. He hadn’t done this with a woman since he was a teen. But then she opened her laptop up and began to type.

  He didn’t think it would bother him. Sure, their cougar ears were more sensitive to sound than a human’s, so tapping the keys at a rapid pace did catch his attention, but he didn’t think it would matter. But then he realized he wanted her to enjoy the movie with him. He glanced at her and he saw that she was watching the show and typing without looking at her monitor. Okay, that worked. He wondered how much she could absorb from the movie while she wrote her story though. He noticed when there was a particularly important scene playing in the movie, she paused her typing.

  He couldn’t write a book and watch TV at the same time. Hell, he couldn’t walk and text people at the same time without making a ton of mistakes.

  Halfway through the movie, she set her laptop on the coffee table and pulled a green and black plaid blanket off the arm of the sofa and over her lap. She looked cozy and comfy on the couch, like a sleepy big cat. In that moment, he had the strangest urge to pull her into his arms and cuddle with her.

  “More popcorn?” He had to keep his dark and moody image for her, if it helped her with her writing.

  She shook her head.

  He poured the rest of the bag in his bowl and finished it off. When the movie ended, she yawned, stretched, just like a tired cat, and glanced out the window. “I left the kitchen light on. No light still.”

  “Why don’t you sleep in the guest bedroom then.”

  “Thanks. I never thought I would end up at the main house and not the cabin for my first night here. Thanks for the popcorn and cocoa too.”

  “You’re welcome. Thanks for the German chocolate cake. It really hit the spot.” He turned off the TV. “Bathroom’s down the hall. I have one in the master bedroom suite also, so no worries about taking your time in the bathroom, if you need to.”

  “Thanks.”

  He heard a banging sound outside and he wondered what he hadn’t battened down, particularly since nothing had been making that noise all along while the wind was whistling away. “I’ve got to go check that out.” He grabbed his parka.

  “Did you need any company?”

  He smiled this time. “No, you stay warm. I’ll be but a minute.” He hoped.

  He went outside to see what was banging in the wind and realized the door to his storage unit had blown open. That was a surprise. He normally locked it. He tried to recall the last time he’d been out there. Earlier, looking for a hammer and nails to hang some stuff in the house, and then again when he had the snowblower out.

  He trudged through the blowing snow to reach the storage unit and saw something out of the corner of his eye.

  It moved too fast for him to see what it was and then he was struck from behind, hard, and Emerson thought of the last mission he was on, right before he fell into a blanket of cold, wet snow, and blacked out.

  Chapter 3

  While waiting for Emerson to return to the house, Jessie was doing a sketch of Emerson on her sketchpad when she had an idea for her story, so she tucked her sketchpad back in her backpack and opened her laptop and began typing on her manuscript again. She had been writing for some time, really getting somewhere with a scene—excited about the hero and heroine hooking up, him in protective mode, staying with her, and his brother, who was a deputy sheriff, giving him a hard time—when she realized Emerson hadn’t returned to the house yet. She hoped he hadn’t gotten disoriented in the blizzard and lost his way, though she didn’t really think he could have. Not as a cougar and being from here.

  She got up from the couch and set her laptop on the coffee table, and then went to look out the window. The banging sound had stopped. Where was Emerson? She couldn’t see him anywhere.

  She pulled on her parka, hat, scarf, Mukluks, and gloves and went outside in the howling wind, the snow still blowing in her eyes. She squinted, wishing she had her ski goggles with her—though she never had figured she would need them on a trip up here—and started moving through the snow. In the snowdrifts near the large shed, she saw a body lying face down in the snow, wearing all black and partly covered by snow. “Emerson?”

  Her heart racing, she hurried toward him, her only thought being that she had to go to his aid, and she was praying he wasn’t hurt too bad. No way would he be lying in the snow if he hadn’t been injured.

  She reached him and tried to revive him, shaking him. “Emerson! Emerson, wake up!” He seemed to be out cold. She tried to move him, but couldn’t. He was too heavy and the snow was too deep. “Emerson!” If he had a sled in the storage unit, maybe she could roll him onto it and pull him to the house. She opened the shed door and inside, the building had been trashed. Everything was thrown everywhere. She couldn’t imagine the shed was usually like that.

  She didn’t see a sled but then she heard Emerson groan and she hurried back to see to him. “Emerson!”

  His eyelids fluttered open and she saw his dark brown eyes staring up at her. He appeared to be disoriented.

  “Come on. Let’s get you into the house. What happened?”

  He struggled to sit up and she had to help him.

  “Do you need to see a doctor?” He seemed so out of it but the cougar shifters avoided doctors when they could, just because they healed twice as fast as humans.

  “Slugged.” He used her strength to get to his feet. He was still wobbly and she placed her arm around his waist and tried to move him toward the house. “Bear.”

  “A bear hit you?” She’d thought maybe something like a tree limb had broken loose and hit him and then the wind carried it away or it had been buried in the snow. She hadn’t considered that coming to Emerson’s rescue could mean tangling with a bear! Wait! She immediately thought of Nina’s dream or vision that said Jessie was chasing off two bears in the snow. No way would she run off after a bear or two. Though, come to think of it, she would have done anything to fend a bear off to protect Emerson. Then again, Nina had said Jessie would be in her cougar coat and Jessie was definitely not stripping and shifting to try and find bears in this storm. “Or a tree branch hit you?” She thought he was kind of out of it and could be mistaken.

  “A bear. I think.”

  She glanced around, but didn’t see any sign of a bear, but the mention of one had her moving Emerson more quickly through the snow to the house. “You didn’t have food in your storage shed, did you?”

  He grimaced. “No.”

  “The shed looks like it was trashed. A bear could have done that. Do you need a doctor?” He hadn’t answered her the first time she’d asked, and she was afraid he wasn’t quite catching what she was saying.

  “No. I don’t think so. I just have a horrible headache. He bashed me good.”

  “A black bear? A grizzly?” She figured if it had been a grizzly, Emerson would have been dead.

  “I don’t know. I just saw something move in my peripheral vision and when I turned, he, it struck me on the back and side of the head, and I was out.”

  “That’s not good.”

  It seemed to take her forever to get Emerson to the house through the blowing snow and with struggling to keep him on his feet. He was staggering like a drunk. She really was thinking she should take him to the hospital to get him checked out, though she wasn’t sure it would be safe to drive in these conditions. Especially since she wasn’t used to driving in a blizzard up here.

  “Did he bite you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s good.” She finally got him to the house and opened the door, then helped him inside where she could see better. Even with their cougar vision, having a little extra light helped her to see his injuries. She kept her arm around him until she reached the couch. He slumped onto it. He was such a virile man that he looked like he could tackle a bear and win so she was surprised to see how out of it he was.

  Blood was trickling down his face and she realized the bear had actually clawed his cheek and the right side of his temple. “I’ll be right back.” She returned to the door and shut and locked it. If a bear was prowling around here still, she sure didn’t want it getting inside the house where there was food and injuring Emerson further and tackling her too. She shivered involuntarily.

  She carefully pulled the black knit hat off his head. He had claw marks across the back of his head also and was bleeding. “I’ve got to get some antiseptics and bandages. Where do you keep them?”

  “The guest bathroom down the hall.” He leaned against the cushions on the couch and closed his eyes. “And I’ve got antibiotics in there.”

  She raised a brow at him. Most people didn’t have antibiotics on hand unless they were taking them for some kind of infection.

  “Ear infection,” he said.

  She wondered about that and slapped his parka-padded shoulder softly. “Don’t go to sleep on me.” But then she wondered about the wound on his arm. It wasn’t that old. It was still healing, which meant he must have been shot fairly recently. She’d seen gunshot wounds before and she knew that’s just what it was. She wondered who had injured him—and when and where.

  He smiled a little at her and she figured women he didn’t know, didn’t tell him what to do very often.

  She headed for the kitchen first and grabbed some paper towels off a roll for him to press against the wounds until she could find the bandages. She returned to the living room and held the paper towels against his cheek and head. “Can you hold them there to stop the bleeding while I get the bandages?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Make sure you’re holding enough pressure against the wounds.” Then she strode off to get his first aid kit. She hadn’t wanted to take off his parka because he might be chilled from lying in the snow, dead to the world for the time he was out there. Whenever she was writing in the zone, time sailed by, so she wasn’t sure when he had gone out to check on the noise exactly. She wished she’d found him sooner, but if she had, she might have been attacked too and wouldn’t have been any help to him.

  She rummaged through all the bathroom cabinets and found the one with a first aid kit and hurried back to the living room with it. “Do you need to be warmed up?”

  He gave her a predatory smile.

  He couldn’t be that bad off if he was going to take her comment in a sexy way, for which she was glad. But the bear’s wicked claws could have infected him and that had her worried. After she took care of him, she was going to call whoever the doctor on call was in Yuma Town for tonight. She carefully wiped his wounds with an antiseptic, and before she covered them with bandages, she took pictures of the wounds. It was harder to see the wounds on his scalp where the hair covered it. Then she covered his wounds with a couple of clean paper towels.

  “Hold these in place.” She hated to make him do it himself, but she needed her hands free. “I need to make a Zoom call to one of our doctors in Yuma Town.”

  He arched a brow.

  “Yuma Town is cougar run.”

  “That’s a great deal, but you’re from Loveland.”

  “It is. My sister and her family live there.” Jessie called the clinic and was transferred to speak with Dr. Kate. “Hey, this is Jessie. The cougar who runs the Whispering Pines Resort on Lake Superior was attacked by a bear. I figure it wasn’t a grizzly or it would have killed him. I’m going to get on Zoom, if we can do that, and I’ll show you the claw marks close up. I’m sending you pictures also.” Jessie wanted to take a picture of his wound on his arm too and ask Kate what that was from, to verify it!

  “Okay. Are you all right?” Kate asked Jessie.

  “Yeah, I was inside his house when he was attacked. He was unconscious at first, but as a cougar he’ll heal faster. I disinfected the wounds and applied pressure to stop the bleeding.” Jessie removed the paper towels Emerson was using to apply pressure to his wounds and held up her laptop so Kate could see the wounds.

  Kate said, “They look like the bleeding has stopped. They’re nasty gouges, but it doesn’t look like he needs stitches. Where are you again? Could you bring him here?”

  “No, we’re in Minnesota in the middle of a raging snowstorm up on the North Shore of Lake Superior. It would be more dangerous for me to try and drive him there, or anywhere, really. And it’s way too far to drive. It took me sixteen hours to drive here and driving in these conditions would take even longer. He would know these roads better than me in any event.”

  He shook his head.

  “Okay, he hasn’t been here long and doesn’t know them either that well. But he shouldn’t be driving anyway.”

  Kate cleared her throat. “All right. Shine a light in his eyes. Let me see if they react to the light.”

  “Okay.” Jessie hoped he didn’t have a bad concussion. She turned her phone light on, shined them in his eyes, and saw both pupils react.

  “Is he confused?” Kate asked.

  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. What’s your name, Emerson?”

  Kate smiled. So did Emerson. Jessie frowned. Yes, she goofed by telling him his name if he couldn’t remember it, but she still didn’t know his full name. Did he?

  “Your full name? Your address? Do you know where you are?” Jessie asked, flustered, not giving him a chance to answer any of the questions before she asked another.

  “I’m the recent owner of Whispering Pines Resort. My Uncle Paul Merriweather owned it before that and willed it to me. I don’t know the actual address off-hand. I am thirty-five, six-feet tall, have a heart-shaped birthmark on my left thigh”—he gave her a little wink—"and I’m a cougar. You’re Jessie Whittington and you brought me in out of the snowy cold. Thanks. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “And your full name is?” Jessie wasn’t giving up on learning what his name was, now that she had a good reason to learn of it.

  “Emerson.”

  Jessie scoffed.

  Kate got back to the business at hand. “Are you feeling dizzy? Try and stand up.”

  Though Jessie wanted to reach out and help him stand, just a natural instinct, she didn’t, knowing Kate had to evaluate how bad off he really was. Jessie would have to take him to a hospital, no matter the road conditions, if Kate determined he needed to have his head checked out. Then maybe Jessie would learn what his whole name was.

  He struggled to get up, but he stood and didn’t collapse. He didn’t look like he was perfectly normal, and Jessie was ready to grab him if he started to fall.

  “Are you experiencing any nausea?” Kate asked.

  “No,” he said.

  Jessie thought he answered Kate too quickly, like if he said the word fast enough, Kate wouldn’t realize he was feeling worse than he was letting on.

  “Do you have any ringing in the ears?” Kate asked.

  “No. Can I sit down?” Emerson looked ready to collapse if she didn’t say yes.

  “Yeah, sure, sorry,” Kate said. “Are you having double vision or blurry vision?”

  He sat down, but kind of collapsed, not like he was perfectly fine. “No, though I swear I thought there were two bears initially, but then the one that hit me hadn’t struck me yet. I mean, I glimpsed the one, but the paw struck me from behind, so two bears? Or it just moved so quickly, it didn’t register until I came to.”

  Jessie was thinking she would need to stay with him overnight, even if her electricity came back on. She definitely didn’t want to go outside in the dark again and walk all the way to her cabin if there was a bear, or two, out there. And Emerson couldn’t walk her to her cabin, not in his condition.

  “Hmm. Are you having any loss of smell?” Kate asked.

  Emerson took a deep breath. At least he was making an attempt to prove he was all right. “I smell a she-cat nearby.” He cast Jessie a small smile.

  She smiled back. She couldn’t help herself. He could be cute, when he wasn’t being all gruff and tough.

  “If you aren’t feeling sick to your stomach and you eat something, see if you taste it. Do you have a headache?” Kate asked him.

  “Yeah. Some of that might be from the claw marks and the bleeding though.”

  “Sure. Okay, so, if the headache gets worse or doesn’t go away, you end up with significant nausea or repeatedly vomit, you become weak, disoriented, experience numbness, and/or slurred speech, you’ll need to see a doctor. You can feel some symptoms for several weeks before getting better, but if things go downhill fast, you need to have some tests run at a hospital,” Kate said, all official business-like.