Snow Leopard's Lady (Veteran Shifters 1)

Wilson knew the truth: he'd become something of a dull man. He got up, went for a six-mile run, went into work, looked at paperwork all day, came home, cooked himself something difficult to take up the evening hours, went to bed, and did the same thing the next day. He was not someone who offered any sort of thrills or excitement. His conversation these days was fairly limited; he didn't go out and see shows or go on long trips. He just lived his quiet, boring life. Sometimes on the weekends he’d drive out of the city, into the wilderness, get far away from any popular hiking trails, and shift into his snow leopard form and go for a run.

But even that was rarer and rarer these days. It took hours to drive far enough from the heart of Washington, DC that he wouldn’t run into tourists or locals out for a hike. Sometimes it just didn’t seem worth it.

He knew that people heard "Marine Colonel" and thought that that meant he was directing secret missions or meeting daily with the President or something ridiculous like that. The reality was much more prosaic.

Still, apparently there was something interesting about him, because Mavis wanted to spend more time together.

And he certainly wanted to spend more time with her. He admired her affection for her daughter, but also the drive and ambition—not to mention the intelligence!—she must have to work as a freelance financial advisor and be successful enough to support herself, even out here in the middle of nowhere. The pride in her voice was obvious, when she talked about her clients getting themselves set up as small business owners in a world that overwhelmingly rewarded big corporations.

She cared about these people, it was clear. Wilson felt like he’d gotten used to the cold, number-crunching, heartless world of DC, where no one saw the faces of the people they were ostensibly serving.

And looking at Mavis, with her careworn but beautiful face and her kind dark eyes, standing against the breathtaking splendor of Glacier National Park, Wilson suddenly had a hard time remembering why living there was a good idea at all.

***

Mavis waited nervously outside of her apartment for Wilson to come by. He'd rented a car, and he said he'd come pick her up and they could drive around town, and she could point out local attractions.

She didn't know why she'd offered to do this. What sort of local attractions did they even have? Her mind was a blank. All she knew for certain was that there was nothing like what you could find in DC.

But it was too late to turn back, because a sleek little sports car was pulling up next to her, and she could see Wilson in the driver's seat. He leaned across to open the door for her, and smiled ruefully as she got in.

"Sorry about the car," he said. "I thought since I was on vacation I'd pick something fun, but I wasn't banking on having anyone else in it. You're going to have to resign yourself to riding around in a midlife-crisis-mobile."

Mavis laughed, surprised. "I like it," she said. "I've never been in a sports car like this before." She and Daryl had always had sensible middle-class cars.

"We'll have to get out on the highway and open up at some point, then." W

ilson grinned, and there was a sparkle in his eyes that Mavis liked.

"I'd love to." She looked around. "Take a left up here."

Since she didn't have any tour guide maps, or any real knowledge of the history of the town, because she'd only been here eight months—what had she been thinking, volunteering to show him around?—Mavis stuck with what she knew.

"There's Alethia's clothing store," she said as they went past. "Alethia's only been in town a year and a half herself, but she always wanted to own a clothing store, and so she got to work on it as soon as she moved here with her mate, Grey. She grew up poor and had to work hard to get nice things to wear, so she's working on making good-quality, affordable clothing available to local women."

"Admirable," Wilson said softly, looking at the store. The front was cheerful, well-lit and inviting, with Alethia's favorite outfits displayed in the window. Mavis felt warmly happy every time she looked at it.

"Alethia was a big help to my daughter when Nina first moved here," she told Wilson. "So I gave her a discount. She's got a big heart and a good head on her shoulders, and that's a combination you don't see too often."

Wilson looked thoughtfully at Mavis. "No, you don't.”

Mavis felt like that stare was looking right through her, somehow. She looked away and cleared her throat. "And, um, if you drive on down the road, you can see the hardware store. That place really needed some marketing work, because he bought the building from a chiropractor ten years ago and never bothered to change the sign."

Wilson made a startled noise in his throat. "Really?"

Mavis nodded, smiling. "Can you believe it? A hardware store with Gina Rossellini, Chiropractor on a big sign in front. But the locals just rolled with it for years, because they knew it was there, after all.”

Wilson smiled. “Of course. Small-town life.”

“That’s right. I got to know Sam, the owner, and we talked about why he didn't want to change the sign. Turned out he didn't think he was good at design, and he's color-blind, so he was afraid he'd pick something totally garish and ruin the whole thing, and also it had been so long that he was afraid he’d ruin the joke. So I worked with him and a local artist to come up with something nice."

Wilson came to a stop in front of the store, where Sam’s Hardware was set up in a lovely, old-fashioned-looking font against a weathered-wood background. “It is nice.”

“Look closer,” Mavis advised.

He leaned out the window, peering at the door, and suddenly laughed. Mavis knew he’d seen the tiny lettering at the bottom of the sign: for chiropractic questions, inquire within. “So he gets a tasteful, accurate sign, but the joke keeps going.”

Mavis nodded. “Everyone was pretty pleased with how it came out. And now anyone can find the store, and Sam’s doing better business.”