*~*~*Snippet Saturday*~*~*
~ all the usual disclaimers. These are my characters. Hot off my word doc and haven't been editied yet.Enjoy!
xoxo
SD
Dot
“Women who were almost seventy years old should not be traipsing around the mountains looking for a crazy leopard shifter with more rosettes than sense,” Dot Lowell mumbled to herself.
She wiped at her face, pushing long curls of her hair away from her sweat-drenched brow. Dot had a moment of feminine unease as she wondered if Nick would even recognize her anymore. She was hardly a girl of twenty.
Ironically, she tugged on one of her own spirals. It bounced back to her crown in willful delight. “Not only don’t I have brown hair anymore but I probably still ironed it flat.”
Dot chuckled when she thought of the contortions she put her body (and hair!) through to get it bone-straight. “Such silly girls we were.” But was it really different from her daughter Caroline’s fascination with permanent waves or Luna’s desire to color her hair?
The sweat from her exertion combined with the humidity of the day making her feel gross and dirty. Was she on some crazy wild goose chase? Or would she find her husband once and for all?
“Even if he is my estranged husband.”
The flight from Maine had been quick and uneventful. Her granddaughter Luna and her mate Jason had met her. Jason had even been warm despite Dot’s distrust of the tall, handsome bear shifter.
Luna had a popular blog called Shifter Sightings. Using the contacts she’d developed over the last several years, Luna had tracked her grandfather to the small town of Silver Fells.
Buried in the North Carolina mountains, Silver Fells was home to a diner, a yoga studio, one real estate company, and a bar with the crazy name of The Lusty Leopard.
Oh, and several dozen former military shifter types.
Cree James, a mountain lion shifter, was the manager of the Lusty Leopard. Which just happened to be owned by one Nicholas Lowell. Her husband.
She glanced at the map Cree James drew for her. That was definitely a goat-shaped rock, so she must be going in the right direction.
Never mind the fact that she wouldn’t be seventy for another two years, walking around in snake, cougar, and bear-infested woods was not Dot’s idea of a good time. Portland may not be a major city by Manhattan or Los Angeles’ standards, but it had its charm.
The best of which was the decided lack of bears, snakes, and mountain lions within the city’s limits.
Despite any rumors the rest of the country thought, not everyone who lived in Maine was a hearty, eccentric type or a character out of a Stephen King novel. Some of them even preferred the occasional trip to Boston to catch a concert or a game.
But now, here she was in tennis shoes, for crying out loud! Sweating and walking though the woods. “I’ll probably be covered in ticks by the time this is finished,” Dot muttered.
“He’ll scent you,” Jason told her.
Dot wasn’t quite sure how to feel about her only granddaughter getting engaged to a bear shifter with the unlikely name of Jason Fox. What kind of name was that for a bear shifter anyway? Dot wondered.
Dot congratulated herself on the fact that she didn’t give Luna any lectures, though. Okay, yes, there was a stern look over her reading glasses. Had the girl learned nothing from seeing her grandmother’s pain?
She sighed. They would have a talk when Dot came down from the mountains. Dot couldn’t allow her only granddaughter to wind up with such an inappropriate husband.
She kicked up a small cascade of leaves, their scent setting off another memory. Her love for Nick.
Oh, she’d been ridiculously in love with him. Nothing would have stopped her from getting marrying Nick. Not even the fact she was only sixteen.
After a whirlwind courtship, she had begged her parents to sign the paperwork saying she could get married. She’d promised them she’d get her GED. Vowed she wouldn’t get pregnant. Swore that their love would be eternal.
Dot shook her head at her childish naivete. She had eventually gotten her GED, had returned home pregnant, and, although the love had been eternal, the marriage had not been.
So, there she’d been a child bride when she said “I do” and he was all of twenty, gangly with youth but looking so handsome in his uniform.
Her granddaughter was twenty-five, far older than she’d been when she got married. And Dot wasn’t so old she couldn’t recognize stupid in love when it smacked her on the nose. But still. That didn’t mean she had to like it.
Cree and Jason told her to not try and cover her scent. If anything, the walk in the woods would make her ripe for Nick to find her. Dot didn’t think much of the idea of being “ripened” but figured they knew more about that kind of thing than she did.
As Dot went around a bend in the trail, she found herself facing a rustic line shack. She snorted with laughter. It put those chic two hundred square foot little houses on TV to shame. Forget modern conveniences, this looked like something out of a Hollywood set designer’s idea of a moonshiner’s cabin. Not only was it barely standing but it didn’t look much bigger than an outhouse.
Dot would be surprised if there was room enough inside for a twin bed.
Opening the door and feeling quite a bit like Goldie Locks on a woodland adventure, Dot entered. “Hello?” she called, hoping against all logic there were no bears inside. Or bear shifters. Or whatever existed in this out back of beyond she was currently visiting.
Dot hoped her granddaughter knew where to find her because she was pretty sure she was going to die from either shock or a very fine mauling.
Other than a thick layer of grime and a plethora of dust motes dancing in the cabin, it was empty, at least from any animals. In one corner was an Army-surplus cot with a thin mattress. A blanket and pillow were neatly folded on one end. In the other corner was some sort of sink. There didn’t appear to be running water, so the sink was more for show than anything else. A quick glance under the cabinet showed a bucket for any water that ran off.
Dot began to think “rustic” was an overreaching compliment. Barren and primitive were far more appropriate.
Continuing her exploration, she looked in the pantry and found a case of water, some MREs that were still within date (guaranteed to last thirty years!), and plenty of freeze dried ice cream. Apparently, one thing that hadn’t changed was Nick’s sweet tooth. Cree told her to take what she needed while she was there. He would restock next month.
Placing her backpack on the round kitchen table that took up most of the square footage in the minuscule shack, Dot gathered a few candles and collected wood for the small wood burning stove. She was prepared to give her wayward husband forty-eight hours to find her and then she was out of this tiny town forever. And, hopefully, dragging Luna with her.
A cracked and rusty mirror hung on the wall. Dot stopped, caught by her own reflection. Would Nick be attracted to the woman she’d become?
“Stop it, Dot. Don’t go there.”
But once the line of thought opened, it wasn’t as easy to slam shut. Unbidden, she wondered what he looked like after all these years.
“Probably fat and ugly.” It was a mean thought. Beneath her, but after being abandoned for decades, she was entitled to a little bit of meanness. Or at least that’s what she told herself.
Dot thought back to the cabin she was staying at when she first arrived in Silver Fells. Affectionately named Little Yellow, or as Luna dubbed it The Love Shack, it had a warm, cozy bed and a beautiful quilt to sleep under.
A cabin full of magic, Luna said.
“This one is full of more dust than magic.”
<<<<>>>>
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