Bear With Me: Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance Read Online Free Page B

the same time.”
    “Absolutely,” said Kes with a grin. “How long can it take to narrow twelve bridesmaids down to one?”
 

* * *
    JAMIE
     
    The last of the day’s light stretched out across the forest. Treetops glowed gold and orange as the sunset spilled color across the landscape, then shattered into a million glittering sparks on the surface of a winding river.
    Jamie should have felt at peace. Instead, she was filled with a strange restlessness—the same restlessness that had plagued her since Kes’s wedding.
    She had skipped the post-wedding brunch. Lynda had done her best to convince her to stick around, but Jamie had managed to slip out while the other girl was fixing her hair, and jumped straight in her car.
    Her own car.
    A day’s driving later, Jamie had been back at work at the conservation center. She’d always thrown herself into her job, and now she had another reason to do so: distraction.
    It hadn’t been enough. No matter what she did, she hadn’t been able to get the mystery man from the wedding out of her head. She’d even found herself looking at her phone, waiting for it to ring—which was insane , because she was pretty sure she hadn’t even given the guy her name, let alone her number.
    Working at the center clearly wasn’t doing the trick. Luckily, Jamie had some field work coming up, so she’d packed her bags. For the past five years, the center had focused on raising California condor chicks for release into a conservation area. They’d recently released the first mated pair into the wild, and it didn’t take much to convince her boss that doing a quick trip to the area to check on the birds a little earlier than planned would be a good use of her time.
    That had been a week ago. Now, for the first time in months, Jamie didn’t need to close her eyes and imagine she was a hundred miles from the hustle and bustle of the city, from bright lights and blaring horns and raised voices … Or away from late nights in an empty office, waiting for a phantom phone call. Instead, she just needed to open her eyes and look around. No imagination necessary.
    Best of all, her quest had been successful. Well, one part of it, at least.
    Jamie took a deep breath, enjoying the clean, fresh air. Then with a final heave, she pulled herself up on to what she had decided to call her ‘crow’s nest’—a thick, solid branch near the top of a tree that gave her a clear line of sight across the river. Moving quickly but carefully, Jamie attached a carabiner from her climbing harness to the anchor she had set in the tree trunk two days before. Jamie was happy to camp on her own, but it did mean that if she fell out of the tree, there wouldn’t be anyone around to alert Search and Rescue.
    As soon as she was secure on her perch, Jamie unclasped the case around her neck and pulled out her trusty DSLR camera. Holding onto the trunk with one hand, she hefted her camera with the other. With the light fading, she had to move fast.
    A hundred yards away, the evening light glittered on the rushing water of the river where it bent around a rough cliff.  But Jamie wasn’t interested in the sunset. At least, not for its own sake.
    Jamie ignored the peaceful beauty of the scene and kept her lens fixed on a spot partway up the cliff. Her target was invisible from ground-level; only here, perched on a tall tree, could she sneak a glimpse of the jagged crack in the cliff that made a rough cave. Squashed into that shallow cave was a huge black bird with a pinky-orange, featherless face.
    “Hey, buddy,” Jamie whispered. “How about you stretch your legs and let me see if you’ve got anything back there?”
    Jamie raised the camera to her eye, peering through the high-powered lens. The distant cliff shot into focus, looking close enough for her to reach out and touch.
    The California condor sitting on the ledge looked even uglier in close-up, like a grumpy old witch wrapped in a raggedy cloak. Jamie sighed.