Jessie was so glad she could call on her like this. Both Kate and Dr. William Rugel made cougar house calls if they needed help. For that matter, so did their veterinarian, Vanessa Vanderbilt, since they were half cougar, after all.

  “I’m okay, Doc,” Emerson said.

  “Oh, and also, about the claw marks. If you see red streaks near the wounds or begin running a fever, I know we fight infection faster than humans, but—” Kate started to say.

  “He has antibiotics for an ear infection,” Jessie said, sounding like she didn’t believe him. She told Kate what his prescription was for.

  “That should do the trick. What about a history of concussions? Sometimes repeat concussions can be bad news,” Kate said.

  Emerson glanced at Jessie and she had the sneaking suspicion he’d had them before, and she guessed he wasn’t going to ‘fess up.

  “No, nothing major.”

  Nothing major? Jessie didn’t believe him.

  “Are you all right with watching him?” Kate asked Jessie and she got the distinct impression Kate figured the same—the cougar had had concussions before, and they hadn’t been minor.

  “Yes.” Jessie was thinking she needed one of their veterinarian’s tranquilizer darts to knock him out if she needed, and take him to a hospital if he took a turn for the worse, because she imagined it was the only way he would go along with the plan. Then again, tranquilizing him when he had this condition probably wouldn’t be a good idea either. And if she knocked him out, she would never be able to move him.

  “Let me know if you have any further trouble,” Kate said.

  Jessie thought Kate was saying that to her and not to the stubborn cat of steel. He probably had never admitted he ever hurt, except maybe as a young boy. She was surprised he had even gone in to get antibiotics for an ear infection. She glanced at the wound on his arm. Or had it been for a bullet wound? That sounded much more plausible.

  “I’m going to end this meeting now, but I’m serious. If Emerson starts to feel poorly, call me,” Kate said.

  “Thanks, I will.”

  They ended the session and Jessie eyed Emerson warily. “No major concussions?”

  He shrugged.

  “And you don’t remember your last name? Or is it your first?”

  He smiled.

  Jessie was serious. What if she had to take him to a hospital in the middle of the night? She hadn’t a clue where the closest one would even be. And she would probably have to fill out his insurance paperwork for him. Though then she could learn his name. “And you’re really not nauseous?”

  He let out his breath. “Fix me a bowl of ice cream, hot fudge sauce on top, skip the cherry. I’ll see if I can hold it down and if I can taste it.”

  She frowned. “Are you warmed up now?” She couldn’t imagine eating anything frosty after being in what felt like a freezer outside for some time.

  “I’m hot, sitting in the heated house wearing my parka.”

  “I’ll bandage your head and then help you out of your parka. Are you sure you’re not feeling feverish?” He was looking a little rosy-cheeked, not ghostly like earlier. “And are you sure you want to eat ice cream?” Or anything else for that matter. She didn’t want to mention that she didn’t want to have to clean up after him if he threw up! She would probably end up getting sick herself. She was a writer, not a nurse!

  “Yeah.” He began to pull off his parka before she bandaged his head. She tsked.

  She helped him out of his parka because he was frowning something awful, and she figured his head was hurting. Then she bandaged his wounds. He looked like he had been in a war zone. “Do you really want ice cream?” She couldn’t imagine eating anything cold right now.

  “Yeah. You can fix some for yourself too, if you would like.”

  “During a blizzard, nah.”

  “Ice cream is good no matter what time of year it is. I should have had it on my cake, but I forgot about it.”

  “All right”—she shook her head—”one hot fudge sundae coming up.” If it made him feel better, that was all that mattered.

  She pulled the ice cream out of the freezer and the hot fudge topping out of the fridge. “Should we report to the authorities that a bear attacked you?”

  “No. I was thinking about it. Bears would be hibernating right now, wouldn’t they?”

  “Uh, yeah, in these conditions, sure. Though I’ve read where they will come out of hibernation if they’re old, disoriented, or sick, and they can be dangerous to both humans and themselves while searching for food.” She put some of the hot fudge in a saucepan and put it on a burner to warm up.

  “What if there is another reason?”

  She finished heating the hot fudge and figured there was enough for two sundaes. She made up two sundaes and brought them into the living room. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like crap.”

  “You didn’t tell Kate that.”

  He smiled. “I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Figures. So what other reason could there be that a bear would be tearing up your shed and injuring you?” She sat on the couch with him to eat her cold ice cream. The hot fudge was a really great touch though. She knew she shouldn’t be having it too, but it sure was good.

  “Someone like us.”

  “A cougar shifter?” She frowned at him. She hadn’t smelled a cougar, other than them. “Or did you smell the bear?”

  “Uh, come to think of it, I didn’t smell him at all. The wind might have carried his scent away from me.”

  “But wouldn’t it have left his scent on you?” Now that she thought of it, she didn’t remember smelling the bear’s scent on him. She leaned over close to take a deep breath and smell his wounds. He smiled at her as if he thought she was getting up close and personal for some other reason. Even though she had cleaned the claw marks with antiseptic and they were covered up in gauze, with her superior sense of smell, she should be able to tell if a bear’s scent was on him. She didn’t smell anything. No human scent either, nothing.

  “He should have left his scent on you.”

  Emerson arched a brow. “Yeah. I agree. I figured I wasn’t smelling things like I should because of the injuries.” He gave a heavy sigh. “I thought you were just getting close so you could smell me.”

  She smiled. “You wish. Hmm, this is good. I’ll need to run again if I keep eating all this fun stuff. Does it make you feel any better?”

  “Yeah. It does.”

  She reached out and put her hand on his forehead. He was still feeling cool. She was glad for that.

  “I’m fine. I told you I was. Aren’t you glad you had a sundae too?”

  “Yeah.” Once she finished eating her sundae, she got up and looked outside to see if she could see any sign of the bear. Or bears. “So what would cause claw marks like that but not leave a scent?”

  “A shifter wearing hunter’s concealment,” he said, and she wondered if he’d ever seen bear shifters up here!

  Chapter 4

  “A bear shifter? Hmm, maybe. One of our doctors ran into a wolf shifter in town. I mean, literally ran into him. We had heard they existed, but no one had seen any out there. I’ve never heard of bear shifters,” Jessie said to Emerson in the toasty warm house.

  “I’ve…uh, met a wolf shifter before. But I’ve never met any bear shifters either. Was the wolf okay?” Emerson immediately thought of Condor but didn’t want to mention him. But if the bear had been one…hell, what did it want? He couldn’t imagine his uncle having any enemies. If anyone knew who Emerson had been and that he was here, plenty of them would want him dead. Smith was on the top of his list because he knew Emerson would be gunning for him as soon as he could. Another attempt at ambushing him? But this time using bear shifters? But the bear could have easily killed him and it hadn’t.

  “Yeah. The wolf shifter returned home, right as rain,” she said.

  “That’s good.” He let out his breath. “A bear shifter. Okay, so let’s say there’s such a thing. It wouldn’t be like a real bear, foraging for food then. And if it tore up my shed, the same thing. It wouldn’t be a rampaging bear, searching for something to eat. He would have to have been looking for something else.”

  “Hmm, okay.” She carried their empty ice cream bowls into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher. “Right. So then what? Like a robber searching for something and you got in his way?”

  “Yeah, but what? And in the storage shed?”

  “I can’t imagine your uncle would have had anything in there that a robber would want. In the house, maybe. But not in the shed.” Jessie frowned. “The announcement of his death was probably in the paper, right? Thieves have been known to break into residences while there’s a funeral going on.”

  “That’s true, but the funeral was a couple of days ago. Your vehicle is here. Mine’s in the garage, but if there’s a renter here, the thief would have to consider that the new owner would have to be here also. With the lights on in my house, they knew I was home.” He figured with the electricity out, the generator on in just the main house, and the blizzard going on, the bear, or whatever it was, figured he could break into the storage shed without anybody being the wiser. Except Emerson heard the banging noise of the open shed door and the wind catching it. Why wouldn’t the person have made sure the door hadn’t banged like that? It didn’t make any sense.

  Jessie grabbed up a notebook and began writing some notes. “Is there anything here that belongs to you that someone might want to steal? I’m adding all this to my story. Not about shifters, but that the bad guys had tried to break in. Nothing like a real story to jumpstart my muse.”

  He wondered just what else she would include in her story that was happening in real time. “There’s nothing in the shed that I can imagine would be worth anything.”

  She crossed the floor and peeked out the window and peered into the dark. “And the lights were on in the house because you had the generator—” She hesitated to say anything further.

  “What? Do you think someone cut the power to the resort?” He tried to get up from the couch. He hated feeling this woozy. It was one thing to be injured on a mission—that was inevitable, but to be here where it should have been safe? That was another story.

  “Where’s the circuit breaker?” She had her hand on his shoulder in an instant and made him sit back down. “Stay. You’re not going anywhere.”

  He couldn’t believe she had enough strength to force him back onto the couch, though his arm wound hadn’t healed all the way, either, which was the reason for him taking the antibiotics, not for an ear infection. He hadn’t wanted to mention he’d been shot on his last mission or that his team had been set up. Smith didn’t know Emerson’s real name or where he lived now. Everyone had worked under aliases, so this probably had nothing to do with him, though a nagging worry still plagued Emerson. What if he had hired these men to come after him? But then again, they didn’t kill him.

  “The circuit breaker is outside. And you’re not going out there.” There was no way he wanted her out there if the bear was there. He still believed there might have been two of them, which, if they were shifters, would make more sense.

  “The bear, or whatever it was, won’t be hanging around. If I can check on the circuit breaker box, I can see if it’s okay. And turn it back on. Then we can shut off the generator,” she said adamantly.

  “I’m going. I figured the electricity going out had to be due to the snowstorm.” Which made sense. But now he wasn’t so sure.

  She placed her hands on her hips, her brow furrowed. “Do I have to tie you up or what? You are not going. After the injury you suffered and after you were in the cold for however long you were, you should stay right here.”

  He smiled. There was a lot more to little Miss Jessie than he had first suspected. Tie him up? Now that sounded interesting. Not that he would ever be tied up willingly, even for fun. But the image came to mind of her trying and it amused him. “Do you know how to shoot a gun?”

  “Uh, I’m a writer. I don’t shoot guns. My characters do though.”

  He wasn’t surprised. “You should. Just to add realism to the story. Okay, then that decides it. You’re not going out there by yourself. I’m not going to risk you heading out there alone if the bears attack again.” He might feel like shit, but he would never forgive himself if something bad happened to her because he didn’t do the job that needed to be done and he sent a defenseless guest out to do it.

  She let out her breath in exasperation. “You do know you’re going to go in the book like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Stubborn to the max.”

  “That’s me.” And he didn’t think that was a bad thing. He stood up and walked into the kitchen and brought out a gun from behind the jar of sugar.

  She bundled up and then brought his parka to him. He was amused she was taking her role as his caregiver so seriously and making sure he was thoroughly dressed, at the very least. He pulled on his snow boots.

  “Is that your uncle’s gun?”

  “One of mine. He has some too.” He hadn’t meant to let it slip that he had several.

  “Some?”

  He set the gun on the counter and then began pulling on his parka. She zipped it up for him, whether he needed help or not. He smiled down at her, not minding being babied a bit. That hadn’t happened to him since he was a little boy.

  “Can you wear your hat?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He figured it would hurt but if they had trouble outside, a hat was some protection from the elements, and it probably had protected him some when the bear attacked him.

  She hurried to get his hat, gloves, and found his scarf on the clothes tree and got it for him. She handed him his hat. He grimaced when he pulled it on. It hurt.

  “What about a video security camera?” she asked. “We could check it out to see if it captured anything.”

  “I thought about that too. But my uncle didn’t have any. He said he’d never had any trouble the whole time he’d lived here, and he wasn’t about to buy something he didn’t need. That’s something I need to do too. Add some video security.”

  He hated that she felt she had to go outside with him in the blizzard, but he knew she was too worried about his well-being not to. After handing him his gloves, she wrapped the scarf around his neck and he leaned down and kissed her mouth, appearing to shock her as her eyes widened in surprise, yet, when she smiled a little, he figured she was pleased.

  She kissed him back, and he wondered if she’d add this to her story also. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and kiss her until tomorrow. She was warm and sweet, the taste of vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sundae adding to her sweetness. He hadn’t kissed a woman like this in forever.

  Knowing this wasn’t the time for this, if ever, he finally broke off the kiss. “Thanks for saving my life out there. It’s a damn good thing I didn’t refund your money for the cabin rental.” He was trying to let on that he kissed her for saving him, but he took a little too much liberty to show that was all there was to it. He was truly intrigued with her.

  “It’s a good thing that I didn’t take the refund.” She cast him a wicked smile, and he thought she was telling him the kiss was the reason she felt that way and not because she could have saved his life. “Are you ready to go outside then and we can check the circuit breaker box?”

  “Yeah. We stick close together.” He got the gun, really wishing she’d stay safe inside the house. If she could shoot a weapon, that would be a different story. He never made the mistake of thinking a woman wasn’t capable of defending herself though—not after the first time a woman tackled him in combat training and threw him on his back. That had been an eye-opener and game-changer for him.

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said.

  He didn’t want her to get clawed by a bear, even if she could write about it in her new book—if she survived a bear attack. He could just imagine what Dr. Kate would say if he had to call her about Jessie’s injury next.

  “Where did you learn to shoot?” Jessie asked.

  “The army.” Which was true. Black Ops came later.

  He grabbed a flashlight for her to carry and they both had their cell phones with them. They left the house and he locked the door, then trudged out into the snow with her.

  “Special Forces?” she asked.

  “Ranger.”

  “I knew it. I’ll have to add that to the book.”

  He was smelling the air, though it was blowing so hard, it would be difficult to tell where smells were coming from, but he didn’t get a whiff of any sign of bears out here, just his scent and Jessie’s. Maybe the wind had carried the bears’ scents off, but Jessie was right. She hadn’t smelled any bear scent on him and neither had he. He was sure the bear’s claws or paws would have left their scent, just like he left his on Jessie when he kissed her and vice versa.

  He couldn’t believe he’d done that. Then again, he’d wanted to ever since she’d made the hot fudge sundae for him and had one with him. He’d been feeling somewhat revived and he was being truthful when he said he was thankful to her for saving his keister outside in the snow. Calling a cougar doctor for him really could have been a lifesaver also.

  Though he hadn’t been much interested in reading books of late, he wanted to read hers, to see what she was writing—particularly about him.

  He listened to sounds too, but all he heard was the wind blowing through the branches of the trees and the waves hitting the shore down below.

  They were close to the overhang of the house, and they finally reached the circuit breaker box. It took him a few minutes to break it open because it was frozen shut, which made him think no one had messed with it during the snowstorm. He used his phone to flash the light into the box, but all the switches were on, none of them having tripped. The storm had caused the power outage.