Even though Ginger had been living on powdered doughnuts from 7/11 and microwave burritos, she hadn’t lost the natural curves she’d developed the instant she’d hit puberty. Having a curvier figure than what was most popular for women these days, knowing that Brock knew exactly what her size was seemed a little bit embarrassing.
“Where can I try these on?” she asked about the pants.
“There’s a fitting room right through there,” he said, pointing at a curtain-covered doorway. She took the pants and the jacket and went into the fitting room where she kicked off her new hiking boots and old pants. She slipped on the new pants that hugged her curves perfectly and stepped back into her hiking boots. When she had the boots laced up, she slid into the jacket and zipped it up.
She looked at herself in the mirror. She was not only hundred percent warmer, she was also more comfortable, and felt ready to make her trek out into the wilderness.
She slid open the curtain and found Brock standing in the shop with his hands on his hips. He stared at her with the strangest expression on his face. She couldn’t tell if he was checking her out or if he was annoyed as hell to be talking to her at all. Considering that he was probably the hottest man she’d spoken with in ages, his unreadable expression was particularly unsettling.
“Much better,” he said. “You’re going to need a better sleeping bag, some gloves, and hat. I have everything else. You can borrow a hiking backpack and carry your share of the gear. We’re going to have to share a tent up there. It will be too heavy to carry two. I hope you’re going to be all right with that.”
She looked at Brock’s rugged, handsome face and nodded her head “yes,” perhaps with slightly too much vigor. Brock frowned and turned away.
“Good,” he said, with his back to her. “I have my gear already packed. We’ll pack up the rest of the gear we need and get moving. Daylight’s burning. We’ll only make it halfway up before sunset. You ready for this?” he asked her.
“I sure hope so.” Under her breath, she said, “Because this is my only hope.”
Brock began packing a second hiking backpack and had it ready for her to slip over her shoulders in only a few moments. “We’ll drive up to the trailhead and then we’ll be on foot from there. Let’s get moving.”
Brock lifted his own backpack and led her out to his pickup truck, where he put both backpacks in the back seat and climbed behind the wheel. Ginger got in beside him and strapped on her seatbelt, butterflies flapping inside her stomach.
“So, Ginger, did your parents name you that because your hair is so red?”
Ginger rolled her eyes. That wasn’t the first time anyone had ever made that connection and it definitely wouldn’t be the last. Ginger was definitely a ginger. She had kinky carrot red hair, milky pale skin, and a swath of freckles that covered almost every square inch of her body.
“Ha ha ha,” she said softly, looking out the window as the truck bumped down the gravel road. “Why is your name Brock?”
“I have no idea. It rhymes with rock. Maybe that’s what my parents were going for.”
“Are you a rock?”
“I have no idea. Everyone expects me to be.”
Ginger gazed over at the handsome man driving the truck. He had revealed something of his himself to her, and she wasn’t sure how to react. Her heart went out to him. Something seemed to be weighing on him, like there was a great deal of pressure coming down on him from every side.
“What do you mean?” she asked, wanting it to know more about this man that made her tingle all over.
“Yesterday I became the leader of my bear clan.”
Ginger had no idea that Brock was a bear shifter. Considering his height, rugged handsome features, and the sheer power of his presence, she should have known.
Ginger had met shifters before and they all had something in common with their animal form even when they were humans. Brock definitely had something in common with a bear. She could see it in his eyes and the shape of his face and nose. There was something powerful and feral about it. It called out to her and made her want to get closer to it, to feel its wild nature consuming her and drowning out all of the blackness in her life.
“And you don’t want to be the leader of your bear clan?” she asked.
“I do, I suppose. I knew I would be since I was a kid. My dad wants to step down now, so the responsibility falls on to me. But there are things that come along with that responsibility that I’m not sure I’m ready for.” He glanced over at her, his eyes bright. He gave her in assessing look that confused her and made her look away.
“What kind of responsibilities?” She asked.
“It’s nothing. Just shifter traditions.”
“Is there something you’d rather be doing?”
Brock pulled off the highway onto a narrow gravel road and continued along it until he’d parked deep in the forest. “I’d rather be doing this,” he said pulling the backpacks out of the backseat. He helped Ginger strap on her backpack and then pulled on his own.
“This?”
“Taking tours out into the wilderness. That’s all I really want to do. That’s part of the reason I accepted this job. I need to clear my head. Get away from town for a while before I make any decisions about the future.” He continued to look at her like he was inspecting her in some way, and his expression gave her a warm flooding feeling in her stomach that went lower and tingled between her legs. Ginger looked away and bit her lip, confused why Brock was having such an effect on her.
He closed the truck doors and shoved his keys in his pocket. “Let’s go,” he said, charging up the trailhead and into the forest beyond.
Chapter Six
Brock’s inner bear wouldn’t shut up. From the moment he’d laid eyes on the curvy, freckled redhead, his bear had started going off. Part of him thought it was some kind of bear clan conspiracy to get him to settle down with a mate on the very day that he had taken his place as the clan leader. Considering no one had any kind of power over his inner bear, that was a completely paranoid thought.
However, it was far too big of a coincidence that his inner bear roared inside his head, telling him that Ginger was his mate. What he had told her about wanting to get away from town was true, but part of him wanted to get away from her as well. All the pressure his family and clan put on him was nothing compared to the pressure of the bear inside of him growling and roaring to mate with the curvy little human.
Brock wasn’t ready to mate, especially with a mysterious, disheveled woman who he’d never met before. She might be the cutest little thing he’d seen in ages, but he was too suspicious of everything going on around him to take any of it very seriously. He couldn’t even take his bear seriously.
What he needs was some time out in the woods. Once he came back into town, he knew he’d have a clearer picture of what to do next. The fact that he was going out into the wilderness with a woman his bear claimed was his fated mate was just an added bit of confusion for him at an already confusing time in his life.
Since everyone, including his inner nature, wanted to pair him up, he might as well spend some time getting to know this girl. She seemed sweet and determined. He admired those qualities. If anyone was going to be his mate, he was glad that she appeared to be the kind of woman he could fall for.
Not that he was ready to fall for her. Far from it. He was determined to prove to his inner bear that he was not ready for mating, and he could take his own sweet time finding someone to settle down with, eventually.
As they made their way into the backcountry, he had to stop far too often to wait for Ginger to catch her breath. It was a hard trek for even the most seasoned hikers to make. Ginger didn’t seem out of shape, or unhealthy, she just seemed unprepared for such a hard hike in the wilderness. She leaned against a moss covered boulder, panting. The rain forest of the southern Alaska was green and damp, not the kind of thing that most people thought of when they thought of Alaska.
Even in
the fall, the emerald rain forest grew up under a thick canopy of lush greenery. Ferns and vines crawled up the hillsides and wide-trunked Sitka pine dominated the forest. This was Brock’s home. It was the place that made him feel most comfortable in the world. A few miles up from here was a river where salmon ran every year. It was one of his favorite places for fly-fishing, a solitary activity he enjoyed doing for days at a time.
He handed Ginger a canteen of water, which she accepted gratefully, chugging it down into her pumping chest.
“Take it easy there, tiger,” he said, pulling the canteen away from her. “Pace yourself.”
“My lungs are so raw, and my legs are already starting to feel numb,” she panted.
“Are you going to make it?”
“Of course I am. I just need to, pace myself, like you said.”
“Are you ready to start walking again?”
“Yeah, I’m ready.” She wiped the sweat from her brow and pushed away from the boulder.
Brock glanced over his shoulder at Ginger as she followed him up the trail, trying to keep pace with his long strides. He slowed slightly, trying to make it easier for her. As the trail narrowed and became rockier, he scrambled up first and then reached out to her to help her up the rock face.
She slipped her hand into his and a spark of sensation flooded his senses. Even after half a day of grabbing branches and rocks, Ginger’s hands were smooth and soft. His inner bear roared that he wanted those hands all over Brock’s body. He had to quiet the urge roaring within him if he wanted to retain his sanity for the rest of this trek.
Even if he agreed that Ginger was his mate and he wanted her to be his, there was the little issue of Ginger’s feelings about the whole matter. She was a human, and therefore would not understand shifter mating instinct.
When a shifter like Brock encountered his fated mate, the beast within did not hesitate to scream that fact inside a shifter’s mind. Right now Brock’s inner beast was doing the bear version of screaming, which sounded more like a strangled, panicked roar. He could feel the beast pacing around inside his mind, bumping up against the edges of his thoughts, and generally making a nuisance of himself.
Brock was generally on good terms with his inner bear. He let him out regularly, at least once a day, especially when he spent time alone in the woods. As a grizzly bear, he was an apex predator and could roam the wilds at night without much fear of anyone or anything.
He had never known his inner bear to behave in such a manner. Unlike Brock’s brother Keaton, Brock was in control of himself, and generally behaved in a socially acceptable manner. His inner bear was just as well behaved, even though he preferred to spend his time alone. To have his grizzly clawing at the back of his eyes was disconcerting to say the least.
The longer he listened to his grizzly roar, the more he wanted to just take the little woman right then and there. Everywhere he looked as he walked up the trail he saw new places where he could bend her over, pulled down her pants, and thrust himself into her warm center. He put his hand to his forehead and shook his head, trying to drown out the visions his bear was projecting inside his mind.
Pulling that kind of a start with a woman like Ginger was never going to happen. If he was going to do this mating thing, he was going to have to do it right. First, he had to figure out if he wanted to do it at all. If Ginger went away and never came back, this would be his only chance to ever be with his fated mate. He could mate with someone else, but it would never be the same.
If he wanted what his parents had, this was his one and only chance before she went back to wherever she’d come from. The parts of himself fought violently inside his head as he walked up the trail.
The purpose of this journey had been to clear his mind, not to become more confused than ever. Even with Ginger several paces behind him, he could smell her sweet scent. He could hear the sound of her breathing and her footfalls on the trail behind him. Ridiculous little things like that were exciting him so intensely that he had to readjust himself inside his pants as if he was some kind of teenage boy.
Chapter Seven
Ginger pushed herself harder with every step. She could tell that Brock had adjusted his pace to accommodate her. She was embarrassed that she was so out of shape, and so ill prepared to tackle the trek into the backcountry she had come to Alaska to do. Unfortunately, there had been no time to train or prepare for anything. She had been kicked out of her father’s condo just the day before. The day before that, she had attended her father’s funeral.
It hadn’t really been much of a funeral, so much as Ginger taking her father’s ashes from the crematorium and carrying them back home. She had packed them all the way up to Alaska to fulfill his dying wish that she would spread his ashes on his old land. If nothing else, she intended to give that one last thing to her dad.
After her mom had left when she was a little girl, her father had been the only one there for her. Unlike a lot of single dads, he had been a good one. He’d always been there for her in every way, and was the one who had first recognized her musical talent. He bought her first violin and arranged her first music lessons. He had encouraged her to go to the Conservatory and had begged her not to leave when he had fallen ill.
But there had been no way that Ginger could’ve let her dad die alone. Not after a lifetime of so much love and care. He had always been there for her, sacrificed for her, given her everything that he could. The love in her heart wouldn’t allow her to do anything less for him in his hour of need. The bond between them had been incredibly strong, and he had been gravely discouraged that he was leaving her with nothing to depend on.
She knew it wasn’t his fault. It was nobody’s fault. When he had gotten sick, his health insurance wouldn’t pay for most of the bills. With each passing month, more bills piled up that nobody could pay. The cancer made him weak, and unable to work as it ravaged his body and mind. In the end, he had become frail shell of the man he had once been, the man who had held her hand before her first music recital, the man who had killed the monsters under her bed, the man who bagged her to stay in university and leave him alone to die.
A silent tear slid down her cheek, and she wiped it away. Her grief was so palpable, it made her forget how desperate everything in her life truly was. The bank took the condo, and the hospital claimed the rest of his resources. The one glimmer of hope was the story he had told her about the raw gold he’d panned during his summers in Alaska that she’d spent with her grandmother in California. Her grandmother had passed away, but her dad had still traveled out to Alaska while she was in college before he had taken ill.
She knew that the cabin really existed. She didn’t know if the gold really existed. Near the end, when he’d told her about the gold, he had already become somewhat delusional. His memory and his thoughts had become muddled, and Ginger could rarely tell what was true and what was fiction. But he had been so adamant about the fact that the gold was there, that she was forced to believe him. Since it had been her father’s dying wish that his ashes be spread at his place in Alaska, the trip served two purposes, and she could endure the sacrifices required of her to make it.
She watched Brock walking ahead of her, his tight, sexy ass framed in the rugged jeans he wore. Part of her wanted to reach out and grab it, squeeze it and really feel it with her hands. She bit her lip at the thought.
Ginger hadn’t had a boyfriend in ages. Back in the Conservatory, she’d spent some time with a boy, but not much had come of it. In the two years she had spent taking care of her dad, she hadn’t been on a single date. The sight of Brock’s sexy behind right in her face was giving her heart palpitations that were not associated with her overexertion.
The trail opened up into a broad meadow with tall grasses that shone gold under the bright, late afternoon sun. At the edge of the meadow was a small river that bubbled past and down the mountain towards the sea. Brock walked out into the wide meadow and set down his backpack in a clearing of lower grasses. Gi
nger noticed that a fire pit had already been built there and that the area was cleared out for camping.
“We’ll camp here for the night. There’s another spot about two miles further up the trail, but I don’t think you can handle anymore hiking today. I’m a little worried that your legs will be too sore to walk tomorrow as it is.”
Ginger was so grateful to stop moving that she dropped her backpack off of her back with a loud thud and sat down unceremoniously on the ground. Brock stood over her, a smile spreading on his full lips. Light sparked in his eyes, and then he began to chuckle.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re just really cute when you’re exhausted.”
Ginger raised her eyebrow at his remark. He thought she was cute? “If being exhausted makes me cute, I must be the cutest woman in the entire world,” she said unzipping her backpack to find something to eat.
Brock began spreading out the tent and had it pitched up in a matter of moments. He threw in his sleeping bag, sighed, and asked her to hand him hers, which she unstrapped from her backpack and gave to him. He unfurled it in the tent and then began working on the fire.
A violent shiver went down Ginger’s spine, the electric feeling pulsing in her core. She squeezed her legs together and shook her head, staring at the tent. She was supposed to spend the night sleeping next to Brock. How she was supposed to do that without jumping his bones like some kind of wild animal, she had no idea. The fact that she was even having these feelings was so confusing she didn’t know what to do. It seemed totally inappropriate to be so lustful right after losing her dad, but she chalked it up to the emotional upheaval of grief. It was probably just nothing.
Brock had the fire made in a few minutes from branches that he found littered around the edges of the forest. Ginger moved closer and absorbed the heat from the fire. Every muscle in her entire body ached, and she had no idea how she was going to keep going the next day. Brock was right, there was a very good likelihood that she wouldn’t even be able to walk in the morning, let alone hike another ten miles into the backcountry. But she had made it this far and she was damn well going to make it the rest of the way.