I don’t think so, her lynx purred. I think that was just for us.
What is wrong with you? Lynn thought incredulously. The last time her lynx had shown interest in a man was…oh, yes, never. Usually Lynn’s shifter side was only interested in hunting, sunning herself on rocks, napping, and more hunting. She barely paid attention to people who weren’t family.
Maybe he could become family.
No, Lynn told her lynx, as sternly as she could manage when she was essentially talking to herself. He could not.
Her family had enough complications. The last thing they needed was a sweet-talking, movie-star-looking, sunlight-bright-smiling environmental scientist waltzing in. And then, no doubt about it, waltzing right out, and leaving them hurting more than before.
And I don’t want to hear any more about it.
Her lynx just purred.
***
Lynn was up the next day at four-thirty. She lived in an old house she’d inherited from her grandmother, on the edge of town, out beyond where the houses clustered together, edging into the territory that was mostly trees, with the occasional cabin or isolated home. She and her sister had inherited it together, but Stella lived off with her boyfriend and daughter a few towns over, so Lynn had the whole, big, rambling place to herself.
Sometimes she thought about trying to sell it, if she could get Stella’s permission, and get herself something more suited to a single woman living alone. Cleaning the whole place was a hell of a pain, if nothing else, and she really only used about three rooms.
But somehow she could never bring herself to do it. She reasoned that it would be hard to find a buyer, out here in the middle of nowhere. Particularly for a house that hadn’t been repaired in quite some time.
Really, though, it was because she loved the place too much to let it go. She pretended it was convenience, if anyone asked. But she didn’t think she’d ever give up her grandmother’s beloved home.
The house was dark when she got up, but as she got ready and got in her car to drive out to Glacier, the early summer dawn was beginning, the sky lightening. She watched the light filter through the trees, and as she pulled in to the visitor’s center, the first rays burst over the horizon to light up…
…Ken Turner’s hair, flaring auburn in the dawn sun as he waited by his car, alone in the parking lot.
Lynn frowned at him, although he surely couldn’t see her face through the window from several yards away. It just seemed unfair that the very dawn was conspiring to light him up like a sign from above: Here is a handsome man!
I know, Lynn told the universe, and maybe slammed her car door unnecessarily hard as she got out.
She didn’t think of herself as susceptible to attractive men. She was even proud of it. But somehow Ken was so handsome that it was making her weak in the knees just to look at him.
And that was making her irritated at herself.
He walked over to meet her. “Good morning,” he said, still smiling that cheerful smile.
“Good morning.” Lynn was shooting for pleasant and landed hard at cordially polite. That was better than breathless, though, right? “How about you tell me something about the sort of research you want to be doing, and we can head over to an area that might help you out?”
A little abrupt, maybe, but five in the morning was a good excuse.
“Sure thing.” Ken settled himself casually against Lynn’s car, leaning on the roof, but too far away for him to be looming over her personal space. Which was good.
“I’m checking out the flora and fauna in old-growth versus reforested territory,” he said. “GeoSync understands that the way logging has gone around here, what with changes in regulations over the decades, there are areas that were logged a hundred years ago, fifty years ago, ten years ago, one year ago…and areas that have never been logged at all, particularly within the Park itself. We’re looking to get some comparison data to see what sort of ecology arises after different spans of time.”
“Well,” Lynn had to admit, “that sounds like a useful project.”
“We think so.” Were his eyes actually sparkling, or was that just the dawn light? “I have all the official logging records that we could get, but…your knowledge of local history and land use could be really helpful to me.”
“I suppose so.” Lynn felt a bit grudging about it, because on the one hand, it seemed likely that he was just looking to spend some more time with her.
But on the other hand…he was right. She would know more about the various local logging projects, legitimate and illegitimate, that had gone on in the areas around Glacier Park. She knew every area that had been logged during her lifetime, and quite a few that had been cleared out long before she was born.
And it was a worthy project.
“Let’s get going,” she told him. “You can follow me in your truck.”
He smiled cheerfully. “Great.”