Seduced on Bear Mountain Read online

  Seduced on Bear Mountain

  Bear Mountain Shifters, Book 3

  By Sloane Meyers

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Similarities to actual people or events are entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Sloane Meyers. All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  More Books by Sloane Meyers

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Evan Long ignored the aching in his legs as he drove his semi-truck past the Pine Springs County Line sign. That sign meant that he was almost home. Just another half hour to go, and he’d be back in the city of Pine Springs. He’d park his truck at the one truck stop in town, then jump into his trusty old pickup and make his way back up to Bear Mountain.

  To home.

  It had been several weeks since he’d been home. As a long-haul trucker, that wasn’t that unusual for Evan. But this trip had been longer than most, and Evan yearned to sleep in his own bed and breathe the fresh mountain air. He smiled at just the thought of it, and pushed his truck to go just a little bit faster down the road.

  Thankfully, there wasn’t much traffic right now. The pages on the calendar had turned to September, which always brought a lull in the Pine Springs’ tourist crowds. The summer tourists had all gone home, and it was too early for the winter tourists to arrive yet. This was, in Evan’s opinion, the best time of year. He could enjoy being on his mountain with his clan of shifters—who happened to be the best clan in the world, if you asked him. But he could also go down into the town of Pine Springs without being overrun by giddy tourists. The people of Pine Springs made no secret of their hatred for the people of Bear Mountain. But when the tourists weren’t around, everyone did a lot better job of staying out of each other’s way. There was more space. More room for everyone to stretch out their elbows without accidentally jabbing someone else in the ribs, so to speak.

  A sudden, loud pop up ahead quickly captured Evan’s attention. A moment after the pop, he saw strips of black rubber flying across the road, and a small white car suddenly losing control as it careened wildly first to the left and then to the right.

  Evan quickly hit his brakes, adrenaline rushing through his veins as he prayed that the car wouldn’t come speeding into his lane. His truck slowed quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid hitting the little white car if it ended up in his lane.

  Luckily for Evan, the car veered sharply to the right and went off the road instead of into the left lane where Evan was driving. He continued to slow as he saw the car go over the shoulder and into the thick bushes beyond.

  With a frustrated grunt, Evan continued to slow and pulled to a stop on the shoulder a little ways in front of the car. He wanted more than anything to keep going and to not delay his trip home any longer. But he couldn’t in good conscience keep going without making sure that whoever had been driving the little white car was okay.

  “They probably should have replaced their tires twenty thousand miles ago, like so many people around here,” Evan grumbled. “Serves them right for not maintaining their car properly.”

  If there was one thing Evan couldn’t stand, it was people who didn’t maintain their vehicles. He didn’t care what their excuse was. In his opinion, no excuse was good enough to justify putting other drivers on the road at risk, and he was lucky that this car had missed a collision with his truck.

  But despite his anger, Evan wasn’t going to drive on without making sure that this driver, however irresponsible, didn’t need medical attention or some other sort of help. Once his truck was safely parked, he quickly set up orange safety cones behind it, and then jogged back to where the white car sat unmoving in the shrubs. At the very least, Evan had to admit that stretching his legs out felt good. He breathed in deeply, relishing the fresh air that filled his lungs. Even if it wasn’t quite as fresh as the air on Bear Mountain, it was still better than the air of his truck’s stuffy cabin.

  As he approached the car, he saw a woman getting out, looking visibly shaken. Evan quickly scanned up and down the woman’s body, looking for blood or any other indication of serious injury. But as far as he could tell, the woman was alright.

  She was also the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

  Damn. If she was a shifter and not a human, he’d be asking her out right this second—regardless of how irresponsible she might be with vehicle maintenance.

  But she wasn’t a shifter, so Evan wasn’t interested. Lately, everyone on Bear Mountain seemed to be going soft. Two of the most popular bear shifters on the mountain, Joel and Scott, had taken human lifemates. This was the first time in Bear Mountain’s history that anyone had done that, and Evan felt like he could practically see the storm clouds gathering above Bear Mountain’s otherwise peaceful community. His clanmates apparently hadn’t learned their lesson from the generations of shifters before them. Letting humans know that shifters existed never ended well. All Evan could do was hope that somehow these two humans wouldn’t betray his mountain, and that no more humans would come.

  Still, even though he would never show interest in a full human, he couldn’t help taking one more appreciative glance at the woman in front of him now. She was dressed in a pair of slim-fitting, dark wash jeans that allowed him to clearly see how gorgeous her generous curves were. Her shirt was a colorful silk blouse with shades of blue that matched her sparkling blue eyes. Those sparkling blue eyes were further enhanced by their contrast with her dark brown hair, which hung in loose waves around her shoulders. Despite the fact that she had just been through a bit of a terrifying situation, swerving back and forth across the highway, she managed to maintain some degree of composure. Her hands shook a bit, but she was steady on her feet as she took a few steps back to look at what remained of her shredded tire.

  “Are you all right?” Evan asked as he approached.

  The woman looked up, startled. She must not have noticed him in her eagerness to look at the damage to her car.

  “I…I’m fine,” she stammered out. “Things could have been a lot worse. But I’m afraid my tire is done for.”

  Evan snorted. “I’d say so.”

  He glanced at the license plate, which was from out of state. He wondered how far this woman was from home, and where she was going in such a hurry. He didn’t want to admit that part of him was relieved that she wasn’t a Pine Springs local. Knowing that a woman that beautiful was so close by and yet off-limits would have been a bit torturous. But this woman was clearly just passing through.

  “I can help you put on your spare if you want,” Evan told her. “That should get you to Pine Springs, which is the next town up ahead. There’s a decent tire shop on the corner of Spruce and Main, and I’m sure they can get you fixed up and on your way in no time.”

  The woman hesitated. “I’m not sure I have a spare.”

  Evan didn’t even try to stop himself from groaning. “Are you serious? You’re driving around on threadbare tires and you don’t even know whether you have a spare?”

  He stopped short of telling her that she deserved what she’d gotten, although it was the truth.

  The woman’s face turned red. “I don’t know. Maybe there is a spare, maybe there isn’t. It’s not m
y car. It’s a rental. I’m late for a very important meeting, and so I didn’t spend a lot of time inspecting the car before I left the airport.”

  Evan resisted the urge to make another snarky comment, and instead went to the back of the car to open the trunk. “Well, let’s take a look then.”

  The trunk was stuffed with several large suitcases, which Evan had to remove before he could check for a spare tire. He wasn’t all that surprised to find that there wasn’t another tire to be found anywhere.

  He blew out his breath in a long, exasperated sigh. “Do you have a phone that you can use to call roadside assistance? If not, you can use my phone before I take off.”

  The woman suddenly looked up in alarm. “I have a phone, but roadside assistance is going to take forever. I don’t have time to wait!”

  Evan glanced at the remains of the woman’s tire. “I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think you’re going anywhere anytime soon.”

  The panic on the woman’s face grew even greater. “But I have a very important meeting that I can’t miss! Surely, there must be some other way to get to town.” She paused for a moment, looked over at Evan’s truck, and then back at him with a pleading look in her eyes. “Do you think maybe you could take me? I’ll pay you for the gas.”

  Evan shook his head vigorously. “No way. I’m not allowed to have passengers in my truck, for insurance reasons.”

  This was true, but what was also true was that he didn’t want to be stuck in a small space with this woman for any amount of time.

  She was intoxicating. The sight and smell of her made his inner bear go wild, and he knew enough to know that spending time in close quarters with her was only going to make his inner bear go even crazier. But the women seemed completely undeterred by his words and gruff manner. Her eyes were starting to fill with tears, and she gave him the most convincing pleading look he had ever seen.

  “Please! I have a lot riding on this meeting I’m trying to get to. Besides, you can’t just leave me out here alone. We’re in the middle of nowhere! What if some shady character comes by before roadside assistance gets here?”

  Evan clenched his hands into fists. She had him there. Pine Springs County wasn’t exactly a hotbed of criminal activity. But still, what kind of gentleman would he be if he left a woman stranded alone on a deserted stretch of highway?

  He was left with the option of either waiting here with her forever until roadside assistance came, or with taking her into town in his truck—ignoring the insurance rules, and ignoring his own misgivings about spending time close to this woman.

  With a loud grunt, he turned on his heel and started walking back toward his truck. He wasn’t interested in spending hours on the side of the road. He just wanted to get home.

  “Come on, then,” he called over his shoulder. “Sounds like you’re in a hurry to get to Pine Springs, and I am, too. Luckily for you, I’ve got eighteen well-maintained tires on this truck.”

  A few moments later, he heard the woman scrambling after him, gushing her thanks. But he didn’t say anything else to her. The less he talked, and the quicker he got to town, the better. In fact, the only other thing he said was his name. After the woman introduced herself as Jackie while buckling into the passenger seat, he gruffly replied, “Evan.”

  Then he remained silent for the rest of the trip. During the first few minutes, Jackie tried to make conversation. She told him that she was a wedding planner specializing in destination weddings, and was meeting a big client here in Pine Springs to discuss their upcoming ceremony. Evan didn’t comment, and didn’t offer any information about himself. Jackie seemed to take the hint well enough, and soon lapsed into silence herself.

  When they arrived at the Pine Springs Truck Stop, Jackie quickly assured him she could get a cab from there. She tried to offer him gas money again, and he waved her away. He didn’t need her money, and he hadn’t spent any extra fuel to bring her into town. He’d been coming here, anyway. The biggest favor she could do for him was to get out of his truck and away from him as quickly as possible. As he’d predicted, his bear was going crazy within him.

  He supposed he couldn’t blame his inner beast. He’d never seen a woman quite like Jackie. And with any luck, he wouldn’t be seeing her again. He watched as she disappeared in the direction of the truck stop’s main building, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Time to go up to the mountain and leave her far behind. In less than an hour of knowing her, she’d managed to drive him crazy in a way nothing ever had before. But that was alright.

  It was nothing that a little time on the mountain wouldn’t fix.

  Chapter Two

  Jackie held tightly to the side of the car door as the taxi she was riding in swerved in and out of lanes on its way to the Pine Springs Grand Hotel. She’d paid the driver extra to get her to the hotel as quickly as humanly possible, so she couldn’t exactly complain about the crazy driving. Still, she’d had about enough of being thrown around in a vehicle for the day.

  She bit her lower lip and tried to contain her frustration as the taxi continued to swerve. She should have known better than to take that rental vehicle. The kid behind the counter at the rental place hadn’t wanted to give it to her. He’d told her that it was the last vehicle they had, and that it hadn’t been properly inspected. But the car had been her last resort.

  The car she’d reserved months earlier had inexplicably been given away to another customer when her flight arrived forty-five minutes late. The uninspected car was her last hope, and had seemed like a good idea at the time. It was better than being late for her meeting with the Joneses. She hadn’t noticed the threadbare tires, and she certainly hadn’t bothered to check whether there was a spare tire in the trunk. She had no one to blame but herself for the fact that she’d nearly totaled the car by colliding with a semi-truck when the left rear tire blew out thirty minutes outside of Pine Springs.

  If her meeting had been with any other couple, Jackie would have called and explained that she needed to reschedule. Even the most bridezilla of brides would have understood. But this wasn’t any other couple. This was the Joneses, and they had paid her four times her normal fee to ensure that she took on no other weddings anywhere close to the date of their wedding. They wanted all of her attention for themselves, and initially, Jackie had thought this seemed like a good idea. She could make much more money than she normally did while doing less work.

  Only, it wasn’t less work. It was probably ten times as much work and about one hundred times more of a headache. The Joneses had all of the patience of a hungry, sleep-deprived toddler—and that was on a good day. Jackie would have loved to drop the job, but she was no quitter. Besides that, the Joneses were a wealthy, well-known family whom she was sure could cause immense damage to her reputation if she didn’t keep them happy.

  “Just two more weeks of this,” Jackie muttered to herself as the taxi banked sharply to the right and came screeching to a halt in front of the hotel. “Two more weeks and this will all be over. I’ll never have to speak to the Joneses again in my life.”

  Jackie paid the cab driver and sprinted into the hotel, where she made her way to the elevators and pushed the button for the top floor. Even though she knew it wouldn’t help, she pushed the button several times in a row as the door slowly closed. She just needed to feel like she was doing something to help the elevator along.

  It was only when the elevator started moving upward that she took a moment to take a deep breath. She had to try to relax. She needed to appear professional, and not like the frazzled, nervous mess that she actually was at the moment.

  But as she tried to breathe deeply and center herself, Evan’s face unexpectedly popped into her mind. She wasn’t sure what was wrong with her. She had one thousand things to focus on right now other than how gorgeous the man who had rescued her had been.

  But oh, how handsome he had been.

  How could she not focus on it, at least a little bit? Sure, he’d been gruff an
d borderline rude. But he had helped her out quite a bit, so he wasn’t all bad. Besides, it didn’t matter how rude he was, because it’s not like she was ever going to see the guy again.

  And because she was never going to see him again, what was the big deal if she wanted to mentally drool over his good looks? He was easily the handsomest man she’d ever seen, and that was saying something. She’d worked with some wealthy, wildly good-looking clients over the last three years, but none of them came close to matching Evan. He was built like the Mack Truck he drove—solid and strong. His face held a certain toughness that made him seem like more of a man then any of Jackie’s other clients had ever seemed. Evan’s dark hair, dark beard, and dark eyes all combined to give him an irresistibly mysterious aura. There was something different about him, and Jackie would be lying if she said she wasn’t tempted to try to find out what that something different was.

  But, of course, the idea of trying to stay in touch with Evan bordered on absurd. Even if he wasn’t already involved in a relationship, he clearly wasn’t interested in getting to know her better. Besides, she lived several states away, and she wasn’t entirely sure if this was even where he lived. The whole idea of staying in touch or trying to meet up with him again was laughable.

  So why couldn’t she get him out of her head? As the elevator dinged to announce that she’d reached the top floor, she shook her head as though she could literally shake away the crazy thoughts she was thinking. She needed to be on her game as much as possible for this meeting. At least, she needed to be on her game as much as possible after the day she’d had. It had been a terrible day, and she had a feeling it was about to get worse. But part of her job was to always act sunshiny and upbeat, so that’s what she did. As she knocked on the door of the Joneses’ suite, she took a deep breath and pasted a bright smile onto her face.

  That bright smile froze stiffly in place as the bride-to-be opened the door and started yelling at her before even saying hello.