A Shifter for Christmas Read online

  “Wait!” she called after him.

  He stopped in front of a black work truck that was all splattered with mud.

  “The first holiday party is tonight,” she told him.

  He chewed his lip and stared out over the parking lot to the pottery building she worked in. “What time?”

  “Seven pm.”

  “And the attire?” he asked.

  “What you’re wearing is sexy.”

  He cocked an eyebrow and looked down at himself. “This will be covered in dirt by seven.”

  “Oh. Well, something similar.”

  “Great. Can you text me a list of wines your mom likes? I’ll pick up a bottle on the way to pick you up.”

  “I don’t have your number.”

  “Yeah, you do. I texted you earlier, but you didn’t respond. Save it when you check the text.” He turned and opened his truck door.

  “Oh, Kieran!”

  “Yes?” he gritted out, plastering an empty smile on his face as he turned back to her.

  “Today is a special day.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I have a day off from my job, and I’m a stage five clinger. It’s actually one of the hundred reasons I’m single. Or was until we made a deal. I’m not single for the next week, so don’t worry, I won’t hit on other boys.”

  “Fantastic.”

  “It’s bring your pretend-girlfriend to work day!” she exclaimed with a bright smile.

  He was really good at narrowing his eyes. Looked sexy and angry all at once.

  “You want to come to work with me?”

  “Yep! Your second job—me—starts now. We can get to know each other when you have lunch breaks and stuff. And I can entertain myself! I’ll bring my laptop.”

  “You. A Wilson. Wearing your tie-dye pajamas. You want to come to work with me?” Why was he smiling?

  “Yyyeeeeees,” she drawled out uncertainly with the distinct feeling she might regret this.

  He mirrored her bright smile. “You have two minutes to get ready. Dress warm.”

  Chapter Three

  “Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa,” she shivered, trying to compliment Kieran. “F-f-fa-fa-fa…fantastic driving.”

  Kieran snorted. At the very least, this next week would be amusing. She bobbled this way and that on the seat cushion behind him in the tractor as they hit the dirt road that would lead them to the sawmill. He was dragging a trailer with a dozen Douglas Fir trees piled on top.

  The tractor had an enclosed cab, so they were protected from the wind, but she was still shivering her ass off. That was her own fault. The woman had worn her same tie-dye tight pants, or leggings, or whatever they were called, and her same giant T-shirt. Over that, she wore a pink sweatshirt with a thin winter jacket that was made more for fashion and less for function. No beanie, no mittens, just her hand in a frozen claw around the damn cup of disgusting peppermint coffee he’d bought her this morning. It was probably frozen by now. Oh, nope. Some spilled onto the levers he was reaching for.

  “Why did you bring that damn coffee?”

  “I didn’t want to be ru-ru-ru-ru—”

  “Rude? Why would I think you’re rude? The whole damn tractor smells like peppermint now.”

  “Chri-chri-chris…Christmas. It smells like Christmas in here. And we-we-we’re getting Christmas tre-tre-tre-treees. We are festive as fu-fu-fu-fu—”

  “Festive as fuck right now?”

  Her hand went more tightly around his waist. “Yep.”

  Okay. He felt a little bad for dragging her out here. He didn’t know why he’d done it. Probably because her dad was Kieran’s boss and a consistent asshole when he graced the sawmill with his presence. It felt a little bit like revenge to drag Bert Wilson’s daughter out here in the cold to experience a workday with him.

  But over the last few hours, the amusement had faded. Why? Because Leslie wasn’t complaining. Instead, she had tried to help. Every time he’d cut down a tree and loaded it up, she’d asked questions and even helped steady the top ones as he roped them down. Her hands were all cut up and covered in sap, yet still…no complaints. She was freezing cold and had to be miserable, but she hadn’t snapped at him or complained about there being no heat in the tractor. She’d just toughed it out.

  “There’s a spot in the office you can warm up while I unload these,” he said. “I’ll get us lunch. It’s about at break time anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Really what?” he yelled over his shoulder so her puny human ears could hear him over the noise of the engine.

  “Really, you’ll buy me lunch?”

  “It’s two-dollar burritos from a food truck up the road, not a ribeye.”

  “They will be my favorite burritos of all time.”

  He tossed a glance back at her. Poor thing’s skin was white as the snow outside. When she tried to smile, her face didn’t move much. Steel blue eyes, black curls still piled on top of her head, delicate, dark eyebrows, and a face that told him every feeling she had as she felt it. This girl didn’t even know what a poker face was. He had no idea what her figure looked like under all those baggy clothes, but her face was pretty. She wasn’t even wearing any makeup. Definitely weird, but nice to look at.

  With a sigh that froze the air in front of his face, Kieran stopped the tractor and pulled off his jacket.

  “What are you doing? You’ll be cold!”

  “Pipe down. You said you wanted to survive Christmas. Don’t really want you freezing to death on my watch.”

  “Otter shifters sure growl a lot when they talk,” she pointed out as he twisted in the seat and wrapped his jacket around her. “Holy moly, it’s so warm! You’re like a furnace!” When she pressed her palm against his cheek, her skin was roughly the temperature of an icicle.

  “Holy shit, woman!” He flinched away. “No more touching.”

  “S-so-so-sorry,” she chattered, pulling her arm from around his waist and drawing her hands into his jacket.

  Ugh, what was this feeling in the pit of his stomach? Guilt? Why? He’d just given her his jacket. He, Kieran Dunne, didn’t do guilt.

  There was some sticky peppermint-scented Christmas bullshit drying on his turning lever, and the stranger behind him was stinking up his rig with lavender shampoo. He’d told her to dress warm, but now he was cold without a jacket. And all this stage five clinger stuff, for what? To trick her family?

  And the worst part of it all…she made him feel bad for not wanting to be touched. He just didn’t like touching. Didn’t like cold hands on him.

  “You liked her arm around you the whole way here,” his animal whispered through his head.

  Kieran jammed his foot on the gas and hated the cold feeling around his waist now.

  He hated being confused.

  She might be pretty, but she was also pretty annoying.

  Chapter Four

  There were piles and piles and piles of Christmas trees of different shapes and sizes, a sawmill that was closed for the holiday season, and a mobile home on the other side of the huge clearing with a sign out front that read Office. That was new.

  “I haven’t been up here since I was a kid,” she told Kieran as she considered the jump down from the tractor. She was definitely going to hit the ground and fall face-first into the slush.

  “Probably looks about the same.” He slipped his hands to her waist and lowered her down onto the slushy snow. She’d worn the wrong shoes, and the water penetrated her sneakers.

  “I didn’t realize girlfriends were allowed on site, boss,” yelled a short, barrel-chested man with a yellow hard hat as he jogged toward them.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Kieran muttered.

  “I’m his pretend-girlfriend,” she said. “Leslie.”

  The man came to a stop and stared at her offered hand for a few seconds too long to be polite. “Gary.” He gave his attention to Kieran and said, “When you’re done boning your girl on the job, the boys have some questions about
the spruce deliveries. They shorted us bad this year.”

  “How bad?” Kieran asked as he started walking toward a sky-high pile of silver trees with a half dozen men standing around them.

  Kieran and Gary walked in front of her, chattering on decisively about things she didn’t understand, and as the others greeted Kieran, she figured out something fast. Kieran ran this place. Well, her dad owned it, but Kieran was some sort of right-hand man to him.

  Huh.

  She’d just assumed he was a blue-collar boy at the bottom of the pecking order here, but she’d been mistaken. Hadn’t he said he’d worked around Missoula since he was eighteen? Had he been working here since then?

  Her dad would definitely know him at dinner tonight then. Crap.

  Kieran swatted the back of his neck and rounded on her. “I don’t like people walking directly behind me.”

  “Why?” she asked, skidding to a stop in the snowy mud.

  He cast a sideways glance to Gary and then back to her. “My instincts get all kicked up.”

  Oooooh. “You mean your otter shifter instincts.” She winked a few times.

  “Otter shifter?” Gary muttered. “Do you have something in your eye?”

  Kieran looked tired. He blinked really slowly when he was annoyed. “Why don’t you go on into the office, and I’ll be there in a while.”

  “Hope you’re wearing warm lingerie if boss is boning you in that cold-ass off—”

  Smack. Kieran’s hand when up the backside of the man’s head, and Gary stumbled forward, cussing up a storm as he scrambled to retrieve his hard hat off the ground.

  “That’s Bert Wilson’s daughter,” Kieran growled. “Stop talkin’ filthy to her.”

  “Well, shit, how was I supposed to know that?” Gary complained loudly.

  “Um, if you want, I can go get lunch from that food truck,” Leslie offered. “I think I know where it is. Is it the red one we passed on the way here?”

  Kieran looked shocked, and it was Gary who answered for him, “I’ll have three tacos and one of them chicken burritos.” He gestured toward the other workers. “Them six will have the same thing. Thanks, love.”

  “It’s not her fuckin’ job to get you food,” Kieran snarled. He pointed his finger at the pile of spruces. “Give me a moment, and I’ll be right there.”

  “Heard you loud and clear, boss,” Gary said, scooting off toward the others. “Wilson’s daughter gave us a Christmas bonus this year, boys. She’s buying our lunch!”

  “I haven’t seen that smile yet,” he murmured through a deep frown.

  “What smile?” she asked softly.

  “The empty one. I don’t like it. Just go in the office and get warm. I’ll be back soon.”

  “I always buy things for boys, Kieran. I’m a Wilson. It’s what I do. It’s no skin off my back to get lunch and, besides, I can warm up in your truck.” Leslie held out her palm and flicked her fingers twice. “Gimme your keys.”

  Kieran took off his hard hat and ran his hand through his blond hair. He glanced over at the boys, and when he looked back at her, his eyes were brighter. More the color of good whiskey now. He was very handsome. “Do you know how to drive a pickup truck?”

  “There is no one on these back roads, and you have chains on the tires. I’ll be fine.”

  He dug the keys out of his pocket and handed them over. “Save your money.” He pulled out his wallet and handed her three twenties. “Let the boys think it’s their Christmas bonus from the boss man, but it isn’t your job to feed them. It’s not your job to feed anyone. And if boys in your life expected money from you? Fuck them and the family they were raised in.” He put his hard hat back on and sauntered away, didn’t look back, and thank goodness for small blessings, because her mouth was hanging open wide enough to catch a small plane right now.

  Okay then.

  He was cute and an otter shifter and had morals about how to treat a lady. He was getting hotter. Danger, mayday, this ship might be going down.

  “Oh! What about your jacket?” she called, jogging forward a couple steps after him.

  “Keep it for the day. I’m hot.”

  “Yeah, you are!” she called after him.

  Kieran didn’t turn around, but she swear he either laughed or sighed. The frozen breath that came from him said as much. One meant she was amusing, and one meant she was annoying and, right now, it was a toss-up.

  She was staring. Why? Because he was dressed in hot-boy jeans, thick-soled work boots, and that tight white thermal that showed he had lots and lots of muscles and a very low body fat percentage. He was tall and had great posture and was powerful when he walked. Her stomach growled. “Right. Food.”

  “Food,” he said without turning around. Eeee, he’d heard her from that far away? Otters had very good hearing.

  “See you soon, honey!” she called, waving at his back. Why was she like this?

  “Don’t wreck my truck,” he called back.

  Aw, so sweet.

  She began to skip toward the truck, but her front foot slipped in the mud so that her legs spread out into an almost splits as she made a braying noise in her throat. So she righted herself and just walked like a normal person to his truck parked beside several others near the office.

  “Is she okay?” one of the lumber workers asked loudly, but she ignored him and all the not-kind muttered answers from the others. Men were just grumpy when they were hungry. Or when they were awake in general.

  She managed to start the truck, figure out the heater, and drive it slowly two miles down the mountain road to the food truck. She waited in the warmth of the heated rig while they made the giant order she put in and made it all the way back to the sawmill without sliding off the road. She was basically killing it at life today.

  Feeling confident as fuck, she turned off the engine, sniffed the new car-scented air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror, put on some Chapstick, zipped up Kieran’s jacket around her, and made her way to the boys, her hands full of plastic bags of food, napkins, hot sauce containers, and forks.

  Kieran was on his cell phone in a heated argument with one of their tree vendors, so she dropped his food off with the others and pointed to it when he turned to look at her. “That’s yours,” she murmured.

  He nodded and gestured toward the office.

  She tried not to have her feelings hurt at being banished to the office, but everything was okay. He had work to do, and she’d brought her laptop to update her website. At least he’d let her come here today. Not all men would do that. Not everyone would be okay with meeting a person in the morning and then showing them their jobsite a few minutes later, so she had to remember the good parts.

  She set up her little eating station in the office on a futon that sat against the back wall. She took her first bite of burrito and, oh dear goodness, it was still warm and tasted so good.

  The door blew open so hard it knocked against the wall, and in came Kieran with his blazing gold eyes and red cheeks, looking pissed. Instantly, the air in the office became impossible to breathe.

  “H-hi,” she said around a bite as he set his bag of food on the futon next to hers.

  “I swear, every fuckin’ year we have a problem with this company. It’s the same goddamn phone call every year, and then two months of us trying to get our money back, but your fuckin’ dad won’t let us cut ties with them. I’m gonna drive up there my damn self and fix this.”

  “Your voice is very snarly.”

  “It’s a three-hour drive, and the boys are fine with covering for me tomorrow. If my hands are tied on firing those motherfuckers, I’ll make it to where they never want me to come up there again.”

  She believed him. He looked and sounded terrifying right now.

  She held up a tiny container of green sauce. “Salsa Verde?” she asked.

  He frowned. “Fine.” Kieran stood and grabbed a couple of bottled waters from a mini-fridge in the corner.

  “I thought yo
u wanted to eat with the boys. That’s why I left your food out there. You gestured for me to come in here.”

  “No, I was saying take our food in the office. I can’t handle one more sarcastic remark from those assholes today. I’m gonna lose it.”

  “Remarks about me?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Um, thank you for bringing me here. You probably knew they would give you hell and you still brought me.”

  He shrugged up a shoulder and sat on the floor. “Why aren’t you eating at the table?”

  She glanced at the four-seater table near the desk and shrugged. Around a bite of food, she explained, “I don’t have a table in my tiny house. I’m used to eating on the bench, I guess.”

  “Huh. Fair enough.” He ate in silence for a couple minutes and then told her, “I’ve seen your house before.”

  “I know. You barged into it this morning. It wasn’t that long ago. I still remember.”

  “No, I mean the house you grew up in. I had to bring some paperwork to your dad one night a few years ago. He invited me in for some fancy-ass bourbon. It’s a mansion.”

  “Yeah, I was really lucky.”

  “And here you are, slummin’ it with me.”

  “Ha! You aren’t ‘slummin’ it.’ You’re actually the nicest pretend-boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

  “I’m hoping I’m the only pretend-boyfriend you’ve ever had.”

  “Jealous?”

  “No, it’s just weird having pretend boyfriends.”

  “Oh. Well, yes, before you, I was a virgin. To all of this. Not a virgin in real life. Obviously.” She forced a laugh. “I have sex all the time. I’m very experienced.”

  “Sex addict?” Why was he smiling like that?

  “Oh, yes. Definitely a sex addict. I should probably go to meetings. You know…to work on my issues…with all of the boys I’m sleeping with.”

  “In your tiny house?”

  “Yes. You know what they say. If the tiny house is a-rockin’…”

  “Don’t come a-knockin’?”