Ski Bear

  Drama or not, he still wanted a mate. He wasn’t in the habit of confronting human women at their places of business, and he wasn’t about to start now. Not when he was determined to be the new and improved Zach Rayner, the mature polar bear with his own home.

  Zach sighed, his shoulders slumping. Part of him wanted to be the old Zach. Old Zach would have just gone down there and found out. Instead, he took another sip of beer and loosened the tightness in his pants.

  4

  Maisie pushed her measuring cup into the deep vat of flour. When she had the right amount, she dumped it into a large mixing bowl and began adding the other ingredients. Maisie had a talent for delicate sweet pastries, but it was the bread that kept the doors open in a small bakery like this one.

  She’d studied her craft and skills for a long time. Now she was putting those skills to the test. It was the first time she’d done everything on her own. In a lot of ways, she felt like she was winging it.

  Flipping on the blender, she watched the mixer hook swirl through the dough. It was a beautiful sight. But bread baking was an early morning task and a lonely one. Most people weren’t up this early. Maisie walked over to the counter and took a sip of hot coffee from her Thermos. She’d need a lot of it to adapt to the new time zone.

  She might just be out of sorts, but Maisie had a deep sense of longing in her chest that she could barely recognize. As she sipped her morning coffee, she tried to understand what it was. That’s when she pulled her smartphone out of her purse and started to navigate to that silly dating site her mother had been pestering her about.

  What was it called?

  She remembered now. Mate.com. Those shifters definitely wanted their fated mates. Wouldn’t it be nice to know that you belonged with someone? Humans didn’t have that kind of thing. She clicked on the button to download the app onto her phone. When she opened it, the app wanted her to answer a bunch of questions to match her with her mate.

  Maisie answered a few questions and then got stumped. She had work to do. She didn’t have time to sit around answering absurd questions. She went back to whip the filling for her macaroons.

  “If you were a vegetable, what kind would you be?” she said aloud.

  How was that supposed to find her best match? She rolled her eyes and continued working. As the bread dough rose, she went back to her phone and looked at the question that had stumped her. The choices of vegetables were: corn, squash, sugar pea, cucumber, and celery.

  What the heck?

  She sighed and thought about it for a minute. She loved sweet things so she chose sugar pea. It made as much sense as anything else. The rest of the questions only took her a few more moments and then the screen started to load her matches. Maisie tapped her foot, thinking of all the things she had to do that morning.

  The screen loaded and the faces of sexy shifter men filled her phone. They definitely were tasty. A fated mate was supposed to be a one hundred percent match. She scrolled down the screen and came to the profile of a man named Zach who was supposed to be her fated mate. She wondered if that was part of the gimmick. Everyone gets one. Then she looked closer. He looked somehow familiar.

  She recognized him from the lodge the day before. He’s been walking toward the front door when she was leaving. That sexy blond that seemed to tower above the rest of the men. It wasn’t just that he was tall. He also had an air about him that made him seem grander than the rest.

  Maisie had felt as if she’d somehow known that man when she’d first seen him. Now this website was telling her that he was her fated mate.

  Maisie had to admit to herself that there was something to this whole fate thing. She’d seen him right after talking to her mother about signing up for Mate.com. The very next morning, she was matched with him on the same website.

  It couldn't just be a coincidence. Could it?

  Maisie had grown up on Fate Mountain and strange things had happened all the time. There was a reason the town and the mountain had been named that. The Native Americans who lived there considered it a secret place. It was called Ta-máh-no-us La mon’-ti by the Chinook tribe, which roughly translated as Magic Mountain.

  Maisie thought of herself a rationalist, but she wasn't completely unmoved by the supernatural. She'd grown up in the world after shifters had announced their presence. If shifters could exist, maybe fate could too.

  The aching in her chest began to intensify as she looked at Zach's picture. She felt she had to meet him, but part of her was still hesitant. This website could just be using clever marketing tactics to keep people coming back for more.

  When she grew up on Fate Mountain, the shifter community there had largely kept to themselves. That's the way things had been in the old days. Fate Mountain had always been a safe community because so many of the local populace were already shifters at the time. But after they came out, humans and shifters mixed as little as possible.

  Things had changed a lot after the war, and the shifter community had come out as the dominant force in the area. Maisie didn't mind at all, but she still didn't really know all that much about shifters. Most of the time she’d been in France, she had been too busy to engage in the growing shifter hysteria. It wasn't until recently that shifters had openly shared information about their culture.

  Maisie clicked on Zach's profile and began to read everything he'd written there. Zach was a serious athlete who had toured with the X-Games before the war. Now he worked as a skiing and climbing instructor at Fate Mountain Lodge.

  Maisie looked down at her curvy hips and rounded breasts, wondering why in the world she’d been matched with a man like Zach. She wasn’t a slouch, but Maisie’s idea of exercise was going for a relaxed walk in the park after a leisurely cappuccino.

  The two of them probably didn’t have anything in common. Still, there was something about him that called out to her. Maybe there was something to this fate thing after all. She clicked on the “Message Now” button that brought up the text pad.

  Hi there,

  We were matched on Mate.com.

  I’m new in town and wouldn’t mind meeting new friends.

  Maybe we could meet up for a cup of coffee sometime.

  Sincerely,

  Maisie Green

  She put the phone down and continued getting ready to open the store. She immediately tried to put the message out of her mind. She had far too much to do to be concerned about getting a reply from some random man on the internet. As far as she knew, the whole fated mate thing on this website was just some marketing gimmick. That didn’t keep her from checking her phone every fifteen minutes for the rest of the morning.

  When she flipped on the open sign, her phone pinged from the back of the kitchen. She hurried to check to see if it was a message from Zach. To her delight, it was. She bit her lip and read what he’d written.

  HELLO MAISIE,

  I would love to meet up with you, but I’d rather take you to a romantic dinner.

  Zach

  WOW, he wanted to take her to dinner already. Men on dating sites weren’t known for shelling out for expensive meals. But Maisie still wasn’t sure if she was prepared for real dating at this point in her life. She had far too much to do and couldn’t be distracted if she wanted to succeed as a new business owner in this town.

  As much as she wanted to reply right away, she told herself she needed to think about it. She couldn’t get caught up in make-believe, and she didn’t know if she was even ready for a real relationship.

  Maisie worked for the rest of the day, selling her pastries and bread to her excited new customers. The residents of Fate Mountain seemed as excited for the grand opening of Fate Mountain Bakery as Maisie was.

  Toward the middle of the day, Levi Blackthorn, her mother’s boss, came in to the shop. He had mentioned that his wife was craving sweets, and she had something perfect for an expecting woman. When Levi approached the counter, she gave him a big smile and greeting.

  “I’m so glad to see y
ou today, Levi. I have just the thing for your wife. A box of my special macaroons,” she said, putting the box into Levi’s hands.

  “Thank you very much, Maisie. How thoughtful. I’m sure Juliet will love them. While I’m here, I’d also like a loaf of French bread and half a dozen chocolate croissants.”

  Maisie packed up Levi’s order and rang up his total.

  “Shane wants to start a daily order for baguettes and croissants at the lodge. He isn’t happy with our current supplier. I told him I’d ask you about it.”

  “That would be fantastic.”

  A daily order for bread and croissants at the lodge would be a serious boon for her new business. That would mean she would always have steady income. She thanked Levi and told him she hoped his wife would enjoy the cookies before he left with his bag.

  The rest of the day went by quickly, but Maisie couldn’t help wanting to reply to Zach’s message the entire time. She couldn’t believe she felt so excited at the prospect of meeting him. It was a strange and interesting sensation she’d never experienced before.

  Maisie was no stranger to the dating scene, and French men really weren’t all that different from Americans. Dating culture was all hook-ups and short-term relationships. This whole shifter thing was completely different. There was one person for everyone and they were meant to be together. That took away all of the other unknowns in the equation, and you were left with someone you might as well marry and settle down with at first sight.

  Maisie wasn’t sure if she was ready for all that, but as she turned off the open sign and locked the door of the bakery, she knew she was ready to go out to dinner with the sexy ski bear she’d been matched with on Mate.com.

  She hurried to the kitchen and picked up her phone, taking a deep breath. She clicked on the Mate.com app and hit reply on Zach’s last message.

  “I would love to go to dinner with you.”

  The reply came almost as soon as she hit send.

  “How about tomorrow night?”

  Maisie felt nervous and excited at the same time. It was as if electricity was running a course up and down her body. She made a nervous moaning sound through her lips and started to reply.

  “Sure. What time?”

  “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “See you then.”

  Maisie turned off her phone, feeling too overwhelmed by strange sensations to even think about the conversation any longer. Part of her was so startled by her feelings that she almost wanted to tell him to forget about the whole thing. But she decided the best thing for it was to finish closing up the shop, go upstairs to her apartment, take a nice long bath, then go to sleep.

  And that’s exactly what she did.

  5

  Zach picked up his phone and looked down at his Mate.com app with utter surprise. He’d finally been matched with his fated mate.

  He couldn’t wait to find out everything about her. He clicked on the message and found that she’d already sent him a text introducing herself and asking if he wanted to go out for a cup of coffee.

  That’s when he realized that the woman he’d been matched with was Maisie Green, Kelly Green’s daughter, the woman he’d seen the day before at the lodge.

  He’d known there was something about that woman. She really was his mate. Zach’s heart was pounding out of his chest, and he could barely breathe. Maisie was opening up a bakery in town and today was the grand opening.

  His finger hovered over the reply button as he considered going down there to introduce himself as soon as the doors opened that morning.

  It was still early and he’d been woken by the sound of his phone pinging. He got a special buzz from Mate.com when the system found him a hundred percent match. He’d set it up months ago, but it hadn’t helped calm his eagerness to find a mate.

  Now that he’d found her, she wanted to go out for coffee. He wanted much more than that. He wanted to make her his at the first possible moment.

  He was still looking for the perfect house to make a home, and now he had someone he could share it with. He took a calming breath and sent her a message asking her out to dinner.

  Zach sat on the side of his bed, staring at the screen for a long time. Why wasn’t she replying to his message? He wanted to take her out to dinner at the lodge. It was the nicest, most romantic restaurant in town and would be perfect for a classy first date.

  This woman deserved nothing but the best. She’d spent six years living in Paris and working in the best bakeries in France. He was blown away by how cultured and sophisticated she was.

  Her profile picture showed a woman with deep red hair curled up in a French twist. She wore a chic black dress, fashionable jewelry, red lipstick, and pink high heels. She was the cutest, sexiest thing he’d ever laid his eyes on.

  Why wasn’t she messaging him back? The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that Maisie must think he was a dumb jock and that she didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He’d go down to the bakery and talk to her. Then she’d see he had more to offer than his toned body.

  He hurried over to the lodge to get a cup of coffee. Zach didn’t always keep a lot of groceries around the house, and coffee was one of those things he was always running out of.

  When he made it into the dining room, he found Levi sitting at a table having an omelet before the restaurant opened. Usually, Zach went into the kitchen to grab his morning coffee. No one minded. But he was glad Levi was there this morning.

  On his way back from the kitchen with his cup, he sat down at Levi’s table.

  “Good morning, Zach. Run out of coffee again?”

  “I did but that’s not why I sat down.”

  “What’s up?”

  “You know how I’ve been waiting for my fated mate for a long time?”

  “Of course I do. You talk about it all the time.”

  “No more than anyone else,” Zach muttered.

  “That’s fair. All the guys talked about it all the time until they found someone.”

  “Well, it’s finally happened to me.”

  “What happened?”

  “I found her.”

  “Really? Is she close?”’

  “She just came to town. She’s Kelly Green’s daughter Maisie.”

  “Wow. Small world. Maisie just opened the bakery on Main Street.”

  “I know. I wanted to ask your opinion. I want to go down there to meet her. ASAP.”

  “Why?”

  “She sent me a text this morning asking if I’d like to meet for coffee, and I said I wanted to take her to dinner. She hasn’t replied. I’m afraid she’ll think I’m a dumb jock, and I want to show her that I’m more than that.”

  “Zach. You’re much more than a dumb jock. You’re a hero who served your country. And I don’t know anyone who’s more dedicated to helping people learn to enjoy the outdoors than you are. You’re a natural with kids. Any woman would be lucky to have you.”

  “Thanks, Levi. So do you think I should go down to the bakery to talk to her?”

  “It’s opening day down there, Zach. That probably isn’t what she needs right now.”

  “But…I’ve been waiting so long. I have to meet her.”

  “Just wait. Let things develop naturally. The last thing you want to do is scare her away.”

  “I see your point. Drew and Quinn’s story is a fair warning to us all.”

  “I promised Juliet I’d go down there to get her some sweets. And Shane wants to talk to her about doing a special order of bread and croissants. He isn’t happy with our current supplier.”

  “Will you ask her if she’ll have dinner with me?”

  “That, I won’t do, but I’ll tell you what I think of the shop and what kind of mood she’s in. I’m sure she’s very busy this morning.”

  “Fine. I’ll wait,” Zach said, feeling more impatient than ever.

  The last thing he wanted to do was wait to meet Maisie now that he knew she was here. He’d
already been waiting so long. He couldn’t wait a second longer. Trying to be the new, mature Zach was taking a toll, and he was about ready to chuck the whole idea.

  But Levi had a point. Human women could be skittish and unpredictable when they came into contact with their shifter fated mates. He had to play it cool.

  Zach had gone on his fair share of dates and he’d never been this eager to meet anyone in his entire life. Compared to all the other women before her, his reaction to Maisie was off the charts.

  He hadn’t even gotten a good scent on her the day before, but from what little he’d been able to make out, he was sure she was the one.

  He grumbled and stood up from the table. If he hadn’t talked to Levi, he would have just followed his impulses and gone down to the bakery. That might have been a disaster. She might have rejected him outright for acting like a stalker. That was the last thing he wanted.

  He wanted to wine and dine her and make her feel like a princess. He wanted to show her the mountain and share the thrill of the outdoors with his fated mate. More than anything, he wanted to mark her as his own and plant the seed of a child inside her.

  Seeing Quinn and Juliet grow heavy with their cubs had made Zach long for a child of his own. He wanted to watch Maisie’s belly round and ripen with his fertile seed.

  Just the thought of it made him hard as he walked back to his cabin with his paper cup of coffee. He let out a deep growl into the crisp winter air, and it puffed out in front of him as his coffee steamed in his hand.

  Inside his cabin, he drank the rest of his coffee while finding out everything he could about Maisie Green on the internet.

  If he couldn’t stalk her in real life, he’d internet stalk her. It wasn’t one of Zach’s proudest moments, but it was the only way he could convince himself to stay away until she agreed to meet him.

  He learned that she’d grown up in Fate Mountain and graduated with honors from Fate Mountain High. After that, she’d gone on to Seattle to culinary school and then went over to France to continue her education as an apprentice baker. For the last several years, she’d been managing Paris’s number one ranked bakery and had won an award for excellence that came with a cash prize. Apparently, it was quite the honor in the baking industry.