Lion's Lynx (Veteran Shifters 2)

“Time to get this brochure figured out so we can both go home,” she told Nina, and something about her tone of voice must have made it clear that she was serious, because Nina immediately came over and bent her head to look at the papers with Lynn.

Good. It had been a silly conversation anyway. The idea that Ken might even be interested in her life…! Silly.

***

“So how’d you come to start working as a Park guide?” Ken asked Lynn, trying for a relatively casual tone of voice.

But he missed the mark or something, because her head came up like she’d just scented prey. “Why?” she asked. Suspiciously.

Which was completely unfair, because he’d done nothing suspicious whatsoever. “Just curious.”

She stared at him for a long minute, with that frown-wrinkle settling between her eyebrows. Ken wanted to reach out and soothe it away with his thumb, stroke his fingers down the side her face. Ask her what had made her so careful, so suspicious, that an innocent question like this set off her internal alarms.

But after a minute, the frown softened, and she said, “I kind of fell into it. I spent so much time in and around the Park as a kid, running wild, learning all the different places a person could go, to play or hide or what-have-you.”

Ken wondered what little-kid Lynn had felt like she needed to hide from. Other kids? Parents? He was filled with a sudden and fierce protectiveness.

But Lynn kept talking. “So…by the time I was a teenager, I felt like I knew everything there was to know about these woods. I felt like they were mine, and mine alone. But then I started talking to my grandmother about them.”

She smiled, then, and Ken was startled by the amount of pure love that was alive in her face. “Grandmother knew everything about the history of the land. She told me story after story, about how the Glacier area was originally settled, the way people used the land, abused it, harmonized with it, fought against it…times when it fought back. I hadn’t realized how much there was that I didn’t know. And learning from her was such a—a profound experience. I thought that all I wanted was to be able to do that for other people.”

She shrugged. “So as soon as I was old enough, I started taking little jobs as a guide, offering to show tourists around. And it took years, but eventually word got around, and it reached the point where I was making enough money that I could do it full-time. And here I am.”

“Here you are,” Ken echoed. Here she was, standing right in front of him, and he was so—

So something. So overwhelmed at the depth of feeling Lynn clearly had for these woods. So struck by the intimate space between them, alone here in the woods, as she told him that soft, simple story about her grandmother.

“That’s a beautiful story,” he managed.

Lynn quirked a little half-smile at him. “Thank you. Now—” She looked around. “Did you want to spend some time on that map, then?”

He started. “Oh, yes. Sure. Let’s get to it.”

Ken dug around in his bag for the map, and then a notebook and pen, feeling a little gobsmacked.

Lynn had turned the tables on him. He’d been determined to make her laugh, take her out of her serious thoughts. Instead, she’d brought him to a place where all he could feel was the seriousness of the moment. Where he didn’t want to laugh, just to feel what Lynn felt.

“Here it is,” he said finally. “Let’s see what you’ve got, then.”

And of course, she had a lot. Ken wasn’t at all surprised to find that Lynn seemed to know when every tree in a forty-mile radius had been felled over the last hundred years. Most of the time, she knew the name of the person or the company that had done the logging, even if it was long enough ago that they were dead or defunct.

“Did your grandmother tell you about all of this, too?” Ken had to ask, as Lynn was frowning over the last finishing touches.

She nodde

d without looking up. “Grandmother valued the forest. She always said that we needed it, out here, that we’d die off without it, and I think she was right. She always wanted to know when trees were being cut down, and how quickly they were growing back.”

“Sounds like a woman after my own heart,” Ken said sincerely. “We could use someone like her at my company.”

Lynn smiled again, this time a full-on grin. “Good luck. My grandmother would never have worked for a big corporation. She thought they had no souls.”

Ken raised his eyebrows. “And what do you think?”

Lynn shrugged. “Depends on who’s at the top, I guess. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have an organization big enough to accomplish so much. But once the people in charge lose sight of what’s really important…” She shook her head.

“And what’s really important?” Ken asked, fascinated.

Lynn threw her hand out, wordlessly encompassing the silent wilderness around them.