She had just completed a difficult audit the week before and hadn’t been assigned any new cases. As difficult and heart-wrenching as her job could often be, she was still good at it.
Before her father had died, he had been nothing but encouraging to her, always telling her that she could do anything she set her mind to. She’d wanted to make him proud and repay his sacrifice in sending her to college. He had worked two jobs, just to make sure that she wasn’t overburdened during her time in school. After his death, she and her mother both lived comfortably on what he’d prepared for them.
Sylvia had graduated from her MBA program with high honors and had quickly found a job working for the government. It was a steady income and she had a nice lifestyle. If you didn’t count making people cry consistently, her life couldn’t be happier. She took a cooking class every Thursday evening. That’s where she’d gotten the chocolate fudge brownie recipe. On the weekends, she participated in spin class and regional nature hikes.
Sylvia knew that she was in touch with her feminine side, but over the years of working so hard to achieve, maybe she had let go of a little too much. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had worn a dress that wasn’t part of a suit in either black, navy, or beige. She had the kind of curves that men always said they liked, but her job required her to keep them covered up in the most conservative way possible.
A severe hairstyle and a dour look were what worked when performing her job as an auditor. There was simply no way around it. She learned a long time ago that if she wanted to be taken seriously, she had to look serious.
She continued checking her emails, contemplating looking for another job. The regional manager, Oswald Stands, came to her desk with a big stack of paperwork and set them down beside her. She looked up at him and blinked, giving him a fake smile.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“It’s your next case,” he said, his lips curling back in a slick smile. “Jim Huffman was on it, but his wife went into labor a month early. I had to take him off the case.”
Sylvia took the first folder off the stack and started to read the contents.
“This is for Timber Bear Ranch and the owner Hank Kincaid. The ranch is years behind in income and property taxes and the owner hasn’t been making his payments on his previous agreement. The debt is racking up to obscene proportions. His liquid assets have already been seized,” Mr. Stands said.
“The ranch is located on Fate Mountain,” Sylvia said, going through the paperwork. “The last assessment had it valued at three point two million dollars.”
“It’s over a thousand acres of prime Oregon ranch and timber. Not to mention there is currently two fully functional homes, outbuildings and barns.”
“Did Jim do anything but freeze their assets?”
“The executor of Mr. Kincaid’s will has already been informed that an auditor will be arriving Tuesday morning. You can keep that same appointment.”
“If my appointment is first thing Tuesday morning, then I should drive up there tonight.”
“Good luck on this case, Sylvia. You’re one of our best.”
Sylvia watched her boss walk away and felt the swell of pride in her chest at his belief in her. She knew she was good at her job. Accounting came easily to her, being a rational left brained kind of person. But the other side of her, the softer side, found it difficult to do what she did.
When it was some multinational corporation, with offshore bank accounts, who didn’t pay their payroll taxes, she felt she was doing a public service. The case at the Timber Bear Ranch on the other hand, was a bit different.
She bit her lip and started reading the paperwork, going over the returns filed for Hank Kincaid and the Timber Bear Ranch Corporation. It was a terrible, terrible mess. And frankly she couldn’t believe that they hadn’t been audited before. But Hank Kincaid had just passed away, and a whole heap of other debt had been piled on top of the already existing debt.
She squeezed her eyes closed and rubbed her temples, imagining all the things she had to do tomorrow morning. She quickly fired off an email to Mr. Stands letting him know that she was leaving early for the day to get ready to drive up to Fate Mountain.
Sylvia threw the stacks of files into her briefcase and started home. When she got there, she found Charlie waiting for her at the front door, meowing his demands for cuddles and affection.
“I’m going to have to leave you here for a few days Charlie,” she said, leaning down to scratch his chin.
She had a pet service that took care of Charlie while she was out of town. They even came to her apartment to change his litter box and make sure his food bowl was full. She’d rather leave him at home than put him in a kennel. She walked into the bedroom and pulled her suitcase out of the closet.
She plopped her suitcase on the bed and unzipped it. She looked at her clothes in her closet. Everything was black, gray, navy, and beige. No colors. No flowers. No life. She groaned at herself and ran her hand over the top of her head until it hit the severe bun that she wore at the nape of her neck.
Maybe what she needed was a new hairstyle. Unless she wanted to cut it short, keeping it tied back was the most professional way to wear it. She pulled the hairpins out and let it tumble down her back, where it fell right above the curve of her behind. She turned and looked in the mirror on the wall of the closet, putting her hand on her waist and looking at her curves.
She knew she was an attractive woman. As a person who constantly made technical assessments, she knew she was technically good-looking. If only she could find a man who could see through her tough exterior down to the warm, gooey core where she kept her softness.
She grabbed several suits, and put them all in her suitcase. She packed a pair of pumps, slippers, and grabbed her rain boots from the back of the closet. She would be on a ranch so it was important that she go prepared. She also grabbed some all-weather outerwear and threw in a few pairs of jeans and T-shirts.
When she packed up all her toiletries and underthings she had everything she needed for an out-of-town business trip. When she had confirmation from the pet sitting service, she gave Charlie one last scratch behind the ears and started her journey up to Fate Mountain.
On the way out of town, she listened to her favorite radio station and sang along with the music. It always made her feel more lighthearted when she sang, even though her mother had always told her she was tone deaf. That didn’t matter to Sylvia, she wanted to sing at the top of her lungs anyway.
She made it to Fate Mountain by the end of the business day and pulled into the Fate Mountain Inn parking lot. She’d already booked her room before leaving and went into the lobby to get her keys. The little old man behind the counter greeted her with a smile and handed them to her.
She carried her suitcase up to the second-floor room and went inside. The hotel room with well-appointed, but felt stale and cold. She quickly turned on the heater and sat on the bed beside it as it warmed up the room. With nothing else to do except wait for tomorrow, Sylvia decided to go out and explore Fate Mountain Village. She’d been here a few times on ski trips in the past and for hiking with her hiking group. But she had never stayed overnight before.
Out in the cool spring mountain air, she looked around the town from the balcony of the hotel and tried to decide where to go. There was a diner across the highway and she decided to get herself a bite to eat for an early dinner. When she walked into the diner she could smell the scent of frying bacon, berries, and waffles. It was the most intoxicating aroma she’d ever smelled.
The pretty blonde waitress brought her to her seat and gave her a menu.
“Can I get you anything to start?” the woman, whose nametag said Lily, asked.
“Just water. And I was curious if there’s anything fun to do around here at night.”
“A lot of people enjoy going to Fate Mountain Brewery in the evening,” Lily said with a smile. “You can always check out the paper for current events. But
our annual festivals are usually during holidays or in the summertime.”
Lily walked down the diner aisle to retrieve a glass of water for Sylvia. Sylvia grabbed a copy of the paper and flipped through it. Aside from the rising crime rates, most of the news was congratulations to children for school achievements or winning awards for the 4-H and FFA. Typical small-town news. It did her heart good to read about the simple things.
When she flipped to the back of the paper, there was a full-page advertisement for a website called Mate.com. The website catered to male shifters and the curvy human females they loved so much. Sylvia bit her lip, looking at the male model they’d used for the advertisement. The man had to be a shifter, having the exaggerated proportions most humans had come to recognize in them. He had godly good looks, with piercing eyes that bore into her soul through the ink of the newspaper.
Sylvia had never considered dating a shifter before. It wasn’t that she had anything against shifters or was afraid to date one. It had simply never come up. Shifters were a minority in the world of humans, especially in urban environments like Portland. But she knew that there was a higher proportion of shifters on Fate Mountain. She read the small print stating that the dating site had been created by one of Fate Mountain’s own: a man named Corey Bright. He’d built the Bright Institute for shifters. She had heard about the institute in the last several years. There was a big to-do about how great the education was, even in Portland. Humans were clamoring to get accepted to the Institute, even though it was designed for shifters. And that had led to a whole bunch of other drama that Sylvia hadn’t paid a lot of attention to.
But now that she was sitting in Fate Mountain, staring at the advertisement for Mate.com, the idea of dating a shifter suddenly sounded rather appealing.
“Have you joined Mate.com yet?” Lily asked, setting Sylvia’s ice water on the table and nodding at the open advertisement on the table.
“No I haven’t. I don’t seem to have much luck on dates these days,” Sylvia said, taking a sip of water.
“Maybe you’ve just been dating the wrong men,” Lily suggested.
“I’ve definitely been dating the wrong men,” Sylvia agreed with a giggle.
“Maybe it’s time to try something new,” Lily suggested.
“You may be right,” Sylvia said.
“What can I get you to eat, hon?”
“I’ll have the Fate Mountain burger and a huckleberry milkshake,” Sylvia said.
“Coming right up,” Lily said.
After Lily left the table, Sylvia continued reading the newspaper. When the waitress brought her meal and she started eating, she became convinced that Fate Mountain burgers were the best burgers in the entire world. And Sylvia was not prone to exaggeration, regardless of what her mother believed.
She finished her meal and went to pay at the checkout.
“How was it?” Lily asked.
“So good. I can’t believe it.”
“My husband Shane Keenan cooked your burger today. That might be why,” Lily said with a giggle.
“Oh, I see.” Sylvia looked toward the kitchen to see a chef with his black chef’s jacket rolled back to show off full sleeve tattoos. She recognized the name Shane Keenan from a cooking show way back before the war.
“Is that the Shane Keenan?” Sylvia asked. “Wow, what an honor.”
“You never know what will happen on Fate Mountain,” Lily said as Sylvia paid her bill.
She hurried out of the diner as the sun was setting into twilight. The air had already grown colder and Sylvia wrapped her puffer jacket more tightly around her body. As she started across the highway, a group of men on dirt bikes sped toward her.
“Hyenas rule this town!” one of them yelled as they passed.
Sylvia gasped and shook her head, wondering what that was about before she finally crossed the street.
Back in her hotel room, she tried to relax by watching TV but felt too bored to sit still. Lily had mentioned a brewery and Sylvia seem to remember seeing one not far from her hotel. Grabbing her purse, she went out again and walked down the sidewalk to the Fate Mountain Brewery. Halfway there she considered going back to change out of her navy skirt suit, but decided against it. She had the red lipstick in her purse and that was all she needed.
As she made her way into the parking lot, classic rock music spilled out of the brewery and into the night. Inside, a group of brawny looking lumberjacks stood around the pool table, staring at a group of college girls sharing a pitcher of beer. The bearded bartender with full arm tattoos chuckled with a group of tourists.
“What’ll you have ma’am?” the bartender asked, walking over.
“What’s good?” Sylvia asked.
“Most people are partial to the Fate Mountain Lager,” he suggested.
“I’ll have a pint of that then,” she said, diverging from her usual white wine.
The bartender turned and expertly poured her a pint of brew before setting it on the bar in front of her. She took a sip and smiled at the smooth, light taste. It was good and she could tell that it was also quite strong for a light beer.
Sitting in the brewery by herself, she thought about how much of a disaster the last date she had gone on had been, and she couldn’t help but let out an irritated groan. Luckily, the classic rock music was loud enough that no one around her heard it. Instead of once again going over every single bad date she’d ever had, she pulled her phone out of her purse and started to navigate to Mate.com.
When she opened the application, she was first asked to fill out a ridiculous questionnaire. The questions didn’t seem to make any sense or have anything to do with anything. According to the website, its algorithm could match a shifter with his one true love.
Sylvia knew that shifters were supposed to have a one true love that they called their fated mate. Not being a shifter herself, she couldn’t say for sure if it was true or not, but truth be told, she kind of thought it was a scam.
After she finished the questionnaire, she was invited to fill out her profile. She quickly filled in some information, uploaded a picture from her social media, and hit enter. Right after that, her matches started to load. She watched the screen as the little bar started to fill, her heart picking up the pace. She didn’t know why she felt nervous. Or maybe it was hopeful. Either way, she knew she shouldn’t take it very seriously.
A hundred percent match was a fated mate. The instructions had also told her that most male shifters would not be interested in dating women who were not a 100 percent match because they only wanted to date their fated mates. As the profiles loaded, Sylvia was blown away by how attractive all of the men were. She scrolled down the screen past the 75 percent match and the 80 percent match and the 92 percent match until finally at the very bottom of the page she came to her 100 percent match.
Her heart practically jumped out of her chest when she saw his picture. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life. He could have been a model or a movie star.
He wore a cowboy hat, dirty work gloves, and a dusty flannel shirt next to his bright red pickup truck. Someone had snapped the picture while he was working, but the sweat and dirt on his brow didn’t detract from the slap-in-the-face of his masculine presence. In fact, it only made him hotter.
Sylvia felt weak at the knees, and she was just looking at his picture on her phone. She shook her head at herself and took another long swig of beer. This guy could not be for real. She decided that this was surely a scam. Men like this just didn’t exist, especially in her world.
She giggled at herself and opened the chat application so she could send him a message. She texted him, through the fuzzy haze of her growing beer buzz.
“Hi Boss Bear,” she said, using his profile name. “I’m your fated mate. Want to get married and have babies?”
She was laughing at herself for being so daring and for calling the scam for what it obviously was. It was less funny, however, when not two seconds later he walked
through the door.
Chapter 6
Leland walked through the door of the brewery and his phone pinged. A wave of delicious scent hit him as the music washed over his body. He’d come down to Fate Mountain Brewery to try to relax before his meeting with the auditor in the morning. Standing in the tasting room with the sound of pool balls smacking and rock music playing on the jukebox, the scent of beer, fries and woman hit him like a ton of bricks.
Woman. Mate.
His bear grumbled. Disoriented, he pulled his phone from his pocket and checked what had caused the ping. There was a message from Mate.com on his phone. He’d joined the shifter/human dating website years ago, when he’d come home shortly after the war. He didn’t even remember downloading the app onto his current phone.
His inner grizzly was in a frantic state, clawing behind Leland’s eyes. Leland could barely think straight and was pushed from behind as another bear shifter maneuvered through the front door of the brewery. Leland grunted, moving out of the way. He flicked his thumb over the message to bring it up on his screen.
“Congratulations. We’ve found your fated mate.”
He stumbled toward a table in the corner, the scent of his mate filling his nostrils. He looked around the bar, shocked that she could be here right when he found her on Mate.com. His grizzly growled inside him, his heart pumping him full of adrenaline. Could she really be here?
He clicked on the link in the message and brought up the woman’s profile. When he looked at her sweet, heart-shaped face, full red lips, and hourglass curves, in that cute little business suit, he had to keep himself from crushing his phone from the sheer excitement.
A message came up on his screen. “I’m your fated mate. Want to get married and have babies?”
Her. He looked around the room again, convinced she was in this very bar. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air, trying to locate her scent among all the other scents in the room. The smell of her was so overpowering, there was no way he could get it out from under his skin. He went to the bar and ordered a pint of Fate Mountain Lager, downing it quickly to calm his nerves.