Grizzly Love (3 page)

Two. His mother was perfectly capable of taking care of herself. Travis finally took the blinders from his eyes and faced the fact that the people of his clan, and that included the men, deferred to her. Actually, most were kind of scared of his ma. Despite her claims she needed Travis to protect her, he knew she would be fine on her own.

He could leave for a few weeks, and she’d survive. She might bankrupt their savings baking like a madwoman on a mission to feed the town to keep herself occupied, but at least everyone would have a nice layer of fat for the long winter.

Could Travis get hurt, or worse, if he went on this mission? Yes. But he could also die from a stray bullet or if his truck went through the ice when he did the long hauls in the winter over the treacherous ice plains.

He practiced these arguments in his head during the ride home from the meeting. Of course, when he did finally announce his plans—“Hey, Ma, I’m going with the boys to the desert to cut the head off the snake!”—the fine-tuned speeches devolved into—

“No.” His mother didn’t even turn away from the sink where she rinsed some blueberries that would get added to the pie shell sitting on the counter along with some sugar.

“I’m going. They need me.”

“I need you.” She turned and pinned him with her stare. The famous stare. The one that made him squirm and want to agree to anything she said.

It took only a thought of Jess, poor Jess all alone an ocean away, maybe making up with her estranged a-hole of a husband for him to fight the Medusa gaze. “Well, you’ll have to do without me for a little while. The town and the boys need me more.”

She uttered a very unladylike snort. “Oh please. What kind of aid do you think you can give those boys? You have no experience.”

“And why is that, Ma?” he said, not without a little bit of irritation. “I’ll tell you why. Because you won’t let me do anything.”

“To keep you safe.”

“I’m not safe. You’re suffocating me.”

At that, she burst into tears and sobbed about how she tried so hard, and it was all because she loved him. However, Travis was finally wise to her tricks.

“Not working, Ma. Not this time,” he stated as he jogged up the stairs to the second floor and his room.

She switched tactics, resorting to anger instead. “Of all the ungrateful things. I did my best by you, and this is how you would repay me?”

He didn’t even bother replying to her tirade, which led to phase three—implanting self-doubt.

“You don’t have the right skills, baby boy. You’ll just get in their way. This type of thing calls for men of experience, not young boys.”

Experience came from acting, not sitting at home twiddling his thumbs to make his overprotective mother happy. “I’m not a little boy anymore, Ma. I’m twenty-five freaking years old. Old enough to make my own choices and do what’s right. I’m going, and that’s final.”

Travis finished shoveling clothes in his duffel bag while ignoring his mother, who stood only a few feet away with her wooden spoon. It wasn’t easy. Instinct screamed he not turn his back lest she tan his hide.

However, he was a man now, not a cub. And, as a man, it was time he cut the apron strings she insisted on binding him in, starting with this trip.

More like a mission. A real one. Overseas and everything!

“But who will keep you safe?” This time, he spotted the real fear in her. The fear he wouldn’t come home. That he’d leave her all alone, like his dad had.

His voice softened. “It’s all right to be scared, Ma. But you can’t keep me in a safe bubble forever. You have to trust me. Trust the guys I’m going with. You know Brody, Boris, and Gene all have mad skills when it comes to this kind of thing.”

Poor cousin Reid couldn’t go, not with his list of responsibilities. Someone needed to keep Kodiak Point running. The joys of leadership, something Travis most definitely did not crave. He had his hands full enough trying to keep his mother from running his life.

“I’ll miss you,” she said, her expression woebegone.

He relented a little and hugged the woman who’d raised him. He loved his ma, even if she was violently overprotective and scared all his friends—actually, anybody who knew her.

“I’ll miss you too, but it’s time for you to let me go.”

“Promise you’ll come back.”

“I promise.” And he’d do his best to keep it. Travis had plans, and they didn’t include a sandy grave far from home.

“And don’t you go falling for any of those local girls.”

Not likely. Travis already had an eye on a woman, the fantastic Doctor Jess. Sure, she barely seemed to notice he was alive, but he planned to change that on this trip.

Hold on tight because I intend to show you a grizzly kind of love. Grrr.

Right after he figured out how to get rid of her husband.

I wonder if she’d flip if I accidentally murdered him?

He knew the town wouldn’t fault him for it.

While no one had the heart to come out and tell the doc, everyone knew Frederick was a no-good prick. It was no secret that he could have come home years ago, yet chose not to. The absent husband didn’t even have the decency to hide his various infidelities.

It appalled Travis, and many in the clan, that Jess’ husband so cockily betrayed his vows. Worse, Jess had to know about it. In a town this small, gossip spread like wildfire.

As to how everyone knew? Frederick, a prick no one ever met but heard about, was serving with some shifters under the command of Reid’s old rhino sergeant. When it came to their kind, it was a small world, and while they could keep the secret of their existence from humans, juicy gossip such as that about a guy who was avoiding his wife and worse, stepping out on her made the rounds.

So given Frederick’s blatant infidelity, why didn’t she divorce him? It wasn’t because she was weak. On the contrary, the doc was one of the toughest-minded women he knew. And he knew quite a few.

He’d asked Reid one night while drunker than Eli, the town lush.

“The fucker’s cheating on her left and fucking right,” Travis had slurred. “She hasn’t seen him in years. Yet she doesn’t divorce his ass and move on to someone better.” Someone who would worship her.
Like me.

Reid, only nursing his beer and thus still able to speak logically, gave him the reason. “It’s because of what she is. She can’t help it. Red-tailed hawks mate for life. As in, so long as dickhead breathes, she can’t move on, no matter how much she wants to.”

“So I should kill him,” was Travis’ brilliant drunken deduction.

“Fuck yes. And fuck no.”

Drunk or not, Travis could make no sense of the answer. “Hunh?”

“Yes, Frederick needs to die, but you can’t kill him. Well, technically you could, and she’d be a widow, and if you covered your tracks right, I wouldn’t have to judge you or nothing. But she would judge you. For all we know, she loves the cheating son of a bitch. Or she feels honor-bound to him. Or she might just be a woman and get pissy that you decided to change the course of her life without asking.”

Well, someone needed to help her change it. Travis was getting tired of waiting for Frederick to catch some venereal disease and die or to meet the wrong guy in an alley at night and have his corpse found the next morning bled dry.

Surely there was something he could do? And that something wasn’t allowing Jess to confront the prick on her own.

What if they reunited and all was forgiven, or if Frederick took one look at her and realized he’d been an idiot?

Then I’ll go grizzly on his ass.

Really, though, that was one option he really hoped didn’t come to pass. Who knew a grizzly could howl mournfully? Travis grimaced.

Then again, given the jerk’s actions, perhaps he had worse to fear. What if this Frederick dude was a cold and callous bastard who made her cry?

Then maybe I’d have justification to kill him.

As Travis clambered into his truck, he noted it was way too early, or late depending on how you looked at it, to begin his drive to the airstrip. Yet, at the same time, he couldn’t stay in the house and listen to his mother harangue him all night.

It was bad enough that, as he sat behind the wheel of his vehicle, she hollered from the porch. “You get back here right this instant, Travis Eustace Montgomery Huntley Junior!”

Ooh, he was in trouble. She used all his names.

He didn’t care. A light bulb went off in his head as he got an idea. He pulled away from the curb and cranked the music so he wouldn’t hear his mother’s last yodels.

Boris was quieter in his reaction to his presence on his doorstep.

Slam
.

The door just missed his nose. Must have been a draft that shut it. No way would his mentor leave him out in the cold.

He heard muffled voices, and a moment later, the portal swung open again, held by the ever-perfectly-groomed Jan.

As a teenager, he’d kind of lusted after her, but that all changed once Jess came along, and once the snow fox hooked up with his best buddy, the man code applied. “No touching, no looking.”

“Why are you here?” Boris asked, not looking at all pleased. Given he wore only trackpants, while Jan sported a robe, Travis could only assume he’d woken them. Or not, given the flush on Jan’s cheeks.

“I thought we’d get an early start in the morning and carpool.”

“Your mother blew a gasket?” the moose guessed.

“To put it mildly.”

“Of course you can spend the night.” With a pointed look at her husband, Jan ushered Travis to the couch and supplied him with a pillow and blanket. As for his hosts, they slipped out of the house, Jan giggling, while he pretended to rest.

As if he’d sleep.

How could he?

I’m finally going on an adventure.
And by the looks of it, Jess was finally doing something about her relationship status. Hopefully flipping her relationship status to single so he could make his move.

Rawr!

I don’t know if I can do this.

It was one thing to volunteer to go but another to actually realize, thousands of feet above the ocean where they flew—and not using her own wings—that Jess was on her way.

While the rest of the gang from Kodiak Point reclined in their seats, catching some shuteye before they landed and embarked on their mission, she stressed.

In less than a day I’m going to confront my husband, the man who left to serve his country and never came back.
Even when given a choice.

Was there anything more humiliating than for a woman to know that her mate would choose the discomforts of military life and risk his limbs than return, even if just for a visit, to spend time with his wife? The only thing more crushing was the pitying glances and the whispers she couldn’t help but hear that Frederick wasn’t spending his time overseas alone. On the contrary, from what she gleaned, dear Freddy was quite the busy boy.

At first she’d cried. A classic response to infidelity—
Why? What did I do? Why doesn’t he love me?

Then she tried ignoring—
Out of sight, out of mind. Do I really care what he does?

But, now on the cusp of thirty, with her hormones screaming to get some relief, and not just the kind a battery-fueled toy could give her, she was angry. More than angry. She was royally pissed.

How dare he be a coward and hide from me? I am his wife. His mate. He made a choice to marry me before he went to war. The fact that he changed his mind is too bad.

As a red-tailed hawk, Jess didn’t have a choice. Instinct, genes, and tradition made it impossible for her to move on. She’d mated Frederick, for better or worse, and until he died, she was stuck with him. So either she had to convince him it was time to come home—
or kill him.

Honestly, at this point, murdering his sorry ass was looking better all the time.

So we can find a new mate. A vigorous one.
Her bird wasn’t bothered by her callous deduction. It even had a replacement in mind.

Travis.

No. She would not let her mind stray that way—even if her dreams did so almost nightly. It seemed forced abstinence had warped her sense of fidelity and taste in men.

For some reason, perhaps because Travis made sure to visit the emergency room on a regular basis, Jess’ avian side—
Not me, never me—
had taken a shine to the bear. A real shine. One she’d now fought for years, and which only grew worse with time.

Given her loneliness, Jess didn’t know how much longer she could fight the cuddly grizzly’s dimpled and suggestive smiles. Deny the ardent heat in his eyes. Keep herself from mauling his tight, muscled bod.

The insane urge to do bad things with Travis—
bad but oh so good—
was why she sat on this ridiculously long flight, heading to some arid, dangerous place on a hunt for a madman. While theirs wasn’t a military-condoned operation, they would be popping by the base camp where her husband resided. Once there, she would confront Frederick and force him to fulfill his duties as her husband—whether either of them liked it or not.

“Worried about the mission?”

Even without a keen sense of smell, she would have known who dropped into the seat beside her. Sitting by the window, Jess kept her gaze on the clouds drifting below them, wishing she were the one soaring on the air currents. Free.

Instead, she was stuck in a coffin with metal wings.
Ack.
It made her hawk tuck her beak in shame.

“Not worried. Just relaxing my mind. We won’t really have a real sense of the situation until we land and reconnoiter.”

“Reconnoiter.” Travis laughed. “What an awesome word. I know this is supposed to be a serious trip and all, but I have to say, I’m psyched I came along.”

Funny, because Jess really wished Travis hadn’t. His close presence made it so hard to think. But she couldn’t exactly tell him to move because his nearness aroused her—and made her want to join the mile high club.

Instead, she sought to dislodge him using a dirty ploy. “Way I hear it, Betty-Sue isn’t too happy her little boy took off.”

Okay, that was really low.

It wiped the smile from Travis’ face, but his rarely seen glower didn’t make him less appealing. On the contrary, this hint of darkness was sexy.