Page 5 of Midlife Animal Rescuer Bear

“Hey, you two!” Bryon called from the front door. “The vet’s here.”

Cal and Henry exchanged a glance. Then both men rose and left the kitchen, Cal feeling a wave of relief. At least a part of their problem was solved now. Whoever this vet was, hopefully he’d be able to keep more animals from wasting away in the woods.

In a matter of seconds, Cal and Henry were at the front door. Bryon stood in the doorway, talking to someone, but stepped aside as the pair approached. And Cal stopped in his tracks. It wasn’t simply because the veterinarian standing on the porch wasn’t a he,, but a she.

It was because of who she was.

Her dark hair was longer than he remembered, tiny gray strands in her wispy bangs, and her features were a lot more defined. She had on a linen blouse over jeans that hugged her hips. But it was those green eyes that nearly stopped Cal’s heart. They stared back at him, slowly widening with recognition, at the same time that he found his voice.

“Melissa?”

Chapter Two

Dr. Melissa Kinley, Animal Caretaker

Dr. Melissa Kinley considered herself a very lucky woman.

At twenty-five, she narrowly missed getting run over by three separate vehicles on the same road, all in the span of one month. She’d won the lottery at twenty-three, effectively wiping out her and her family’s debt. And just a few months ago, she’d somehow avoided getting kicked in the face by a sick horse she’d been tending, saving herself thousands of dollars in hospital bills.

But standing on the porch now, staring at Calvin Stein, she was starting to reconsider that sentiment.

Maybe I’ve run out of luck, she thought. Or maybe I’m just imagining things.

The latter thought was utter nonsense. As much as she would have preferred otherwise, she knew that this was very real.

Cal stepped forward, his gaze lingering on her as he brushed past Bryon, the man who’d opened the door for her. He’d filled out since the last time she’d laid eyes on him. His barrel of a chest strained against his wife beater, sprinkles of golden chest hair peeking out from underneath, and veins webbed along his sinewy arms. His hair was slightly darker than she remembered.

His jaw clenched as he looked at her, and she could’ve sworn she felt the temperature around them rise.

Melissa had always been attracted to Cal, and in the ten years since she’d left him, her body hadn’t forgotten about him. It responded instantly, her heart pounding, heat flushing through her. Her breaths came out in short, rapid gasps, and she felt her nipples strain against her blouse as they hardened. Only one thing was different this time: that same tightening sensation she’d felt in her gut on their wedding day.

A deafening silence settled around them, broken only by the occasional braying of an animal somewhere nearby.

“Cal,” she heard herself say finally. She felt her throat constrict. “I...I...”

Bryon’s gaze darted between them, and he frowned. “You two know each other?”

Cal’s expression hardened. “I’ll say. She’s my ex-fiancé.”

At those words, her heart gave a painful throb. Memories she’d fought to bury for the better part of the last decade came bubbling to the surface of her consciousness.

She’d been twenty-seven when she first met Cal. She was working as a waitress at a restaurant whose food she wouldn’t have recommended to her worst enemy. When Cal first walked in and took a table, she quietly advised him against ordering any specials. Why she’d done that, she hadn’t been sure at the time, but that evening, he’d taken both her advice and her phone number.

Within a month, they’d gone on at least four dates, two of them at his home. By the second month, they’d officially begun dating. Cal had turned out to be everything she dreamed of in a partner. Dashing looks and mind-blowing sex aside, he’d been a kind, compassionate man, and falling in love with him was easy. When he popped the question years later, she’d been beside herself with ecstasy.

Everything had been going so well. For a while, she’d been certain it would last forever.

But she’d been wrong.

Melissa could still remember the night Cal decided to open up to her in his living room. I’m not really human, he’d told her. I’m a shifter. At first, she’d been confused, even amused, by the absurdity of it all.

And then he’d dropped onto all fours and transformed into a fully grown grizzly bear.

She would have screamed her lungs empty, but she’d been too frozen in terror to even find her breath. To her relief, he’d quickly returned to human form, assuring her that all was fine. He was a shifter, but that didn’t mean he was dangerous, especially not to her. It didn’t make him much different from any other person either. He was simply one of millions of others across the world with supernatural abilities. Gifts, he’d called them.

In the days leading up to the wedding, she’d tried not to think too deeply about it. Sure, the man she’d fallen in love with and hoped to spend the rest of her years with had turned into a beast right in front of her, like it was just another Tuesday for him. So what? She still loved him, and that was all that mattered.

But that had changed on their wedding day. As badly as she wanted to, she simply couldn’t bring herself to go through with it. And so she’d done the only thing that made sense to her in that one moment.