Ray Helena - Mountain Pride [The Pride of Savage Valley Colorado 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

  The Pride of Savage Valley, Colorado 1

  Mountain Pride

  Recently divorced from her high school sweetheart, Chelsea Goebel begrudgingly accompanies her best friend on a work trip to Savage Valley, Colorado. A strange encounter with a mountain lion in the wild leads her to meet Oliver Cash, mayor of Savage Valley, and his brother Roarke.

  Mountain lion-shifters Oliver and Roarke instantly know Chelsea is their mate, and they want her as soon as possible. But Chelsea convinces herself she wants only a rebound fling with the sexy shifters, and the brothers set out to prove they want more.

  But a darkness looms over Savage Valley. The conglomerate NormCorp wants to buy up Savage Valley, and a drought and strange animal attacks have the townspeople anxious. Oliver and Roarke need to mate Chelsea to strengthen themselves for a fight. It’s up to Chelsea to get over her past, accept her lion-shifting mates, and help Oliver and Roarke save Savage Valley.

  Genre: Ménage a Trois/Quatre, Paranormal, Shape-shifter

  Length: 46,123 words

  MOUNTAIN PRIDE

  The Pride of Savage Valley, Colorado 1

  Helena Ray

  MENAGE EVERLASTING

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting

  MOUNTAIN PRIDE

  Copyright © 2011 by Helena Ray

  E-book ISBN: 1-61034-747-1

  First E-book Publication: August 2011

  Cover design by Les Byerley

  All art and logo copyright © 2011 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reprome-hrduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of Mountain Pride by Helena Ray from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Helena Ray’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. Ray’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  To Edith, for all the support, Cheez-Its, laughter, and inspiration. I never expected to find such a great friend on this adventure. Just don’t go getting all Freddy on me.

  MOUNTAIN PRIDE

  The Pride of Savage Valley, Colorado 1

  HELENA RAY

  Copyright © 2011

  Chapter 1

  “Chelsea! Come on!”

  Reluctantly, Chelsea Goebel picked up her bulging backpack and hauled it onto her shoulder. A stray lock of red hair fell in her face and wedged its way between her lips. She attempted to blow it away, but her attempt was futile. Sweat dripped from her neck as she reached up to redo the ponytail holding back her thick hair.

  I am not cut out for hiking, Chelsea thought to herself as she started her way back up the mountain.

  “On my way!” she shouted to her best friend Marta. Although due to this whole hiking business, she was seriously reconsidering the whole “best friend” thing.

  “Well, hurry up! This is supposed to be the shortcut.”

  After bullying her way through some unruly brush, Chelsea emerged into the clearing where Marta stood with her hands on her hips.

  “I’m here,” Chelsea panted and tossed her backpack to the ground again. “Can we please take a break, Marta? We’ve been hiking for two hours. The lady at the Woodland Den said it was only a half-hour hike to Adam’s Point.”

  “That’s if you don’t stop every five minutes, lazy butt.”

  “We just got here!” Chelsea dropped to the ground next to her bags. She looked up at the wide Colorado sky and wondered what exactly she was doing with her life.

  “What about a deal?” Marta crouched next to Chelsea and put her arm around her shoulders.

  “What kind of deal?”

  “You stay here for ten minutes—I swear—and I’ll check out this path.”

  “You want me to stay alone? In the woods?” Chelsea gulped. “With the animals?”

  Marta sighed. “A few minutes. And you know what I told you. This town is famous for not having any animal attacks. Like, none at all.”

  Marta gave Chelsea a quite pathetic puppy-eyed look, and Chelsea decided to cave.

  “Okay, ten minutes.”

  Marta leapt to her feet. “Thanks, Chels. Look, I have to do this if I want to write off the trip as work related.”

  “Go.” Chelsea motioned for Marta to follow the small path up the mountain. She flashed a smile and disappeared behind a grouping of boulders and brush.

  Chelsea curled up next to her backpack and laid her head on it. The past thirty-six hours had drained any energy she could ever have had. Her divorce from Lewis became final yesterday morning, and Chelsea hoped she was done with him forever. Then Marta had invited her to join her at a singles resort in Colorado, ostensibly part of Marta’s job as a travel writer.

  Now here she was, in Bumfuck, Colorado, waiting for Marta to come back down the mountain and wondering how her life had become such a mess. Lewis got control of their non-profit environmental organization in the divorce, which was fine with Chelsea, but left her out of a job.

  She closed her eyes and let herself succumb to the exhaustion that had been building over the past six months. Napping here in the wild was fine. They didn’t have animal attacks in Savage Valley, right?

  Wrong, Chelsea found out as she jarred from her nap.

  A low growl caused Chelsea’s eyes to snap open, any sign of sleepiness gone. She snapped her head up, and what she saw stopped her heart.

  Some sort of lion-like creature was crouched on the other side of the clearing, not ten yards away from her. Her mind raced through the Google search on northwestern Colorado’s predators she had done the night before. Always paid to be prepared, after all.

  Mountain lion! Her brain finally identified the animal and recalled what she was supposed to do. Mountain lions weren’t really that dangerous. Most of the time, they were just curious around humans. She only really needed to worry if the lion was…Oh, crap. The lion was crouching and stalking near her, two telltale signs of aggression. She made the mistake of looking directly in the animal’s eyes, and once she locked gazes with the animal, she couldn’t tear herself away from its stare. Its eyes didn’t look like the cats’ eyes she had seen on the Internet. No, this lion had steely blue eyes, and Chelsea found herself lost in their depths. The cat looked almost human as it moved its long, magnificent body closer to her. Its movements were exquisitely smooth, and its golden coat shimmered with each step it took. It had a distinctive black mark between its eyes, making it look as though it were a human scowling.

  Chelsea shook her head and remembered what she was supposed to do in the case of a mountain lion encounter. She started waving her arms beside her, and she was certain she must have looked like a complete idiot. Thank god no one could see her.

  “Marta! Marta, get your ass down here!” she called. All the websites said making oneself as big as possible and shouting would scare away lions, but this one appeared unfazed. Shit. It neared her, within ten feet now, and a low grumble emanated from it. Once more, the lion caught her eyes, and once more, she was frozen in place, hypnotized by the uncom
monly human pools of grayish blue swirling before her.

  The animal was nearing her quickly, and Chelsea accepted her fate. This was it. She would be killed by a mountain lion in Colorado. Not a bad way to go out, right? It roared in earnest and bared its teeth, and Chelsea’s body instinctively prepared for the attack.

  “Hey!” A bellowing male voice sounded just behind her, and the lion stopped its movements. “Out. Now.” Chelsea couldn’t move, but she felt the man move closer. He yelled a long, complex word in what sounded like a Native American language, and the lion turned and scurried away.

  When Chelsea turned to thank the man for whatever it was he did, his appearance took her breath away. He was tall with a broad, muscular chest that showed through his flimsy cotton T-shirt. She looked up and into warm pools of blue. Similar to the lion’s, she thought to herself, and the thought shocked and confused her. He had high cheekbones and chiseled features, and his messy light brown hair framed them perfectly. He looked down at her and smiled, a warm, comforting expression.

  “Th–thank you.” Damn it, she sounded like an idiot. “I mean, thanks, thanks so much. I just…I mean…” The trauma of the event was apparently affecting her brain. “Lion?”

  A deep laugh rumbled from the man’s chest, and he placed a large hand on Chelsea’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s just part of living in Savage Valley.”

  “You just saved my life.”

  The man snorted at her comment.

  “In more ways than you know.”

  Chelsea couldn’t believe her body’s reaction to him. She felt her nipples harden against the tight fabric of her bra and liquid heat build between her legs. The man had an intoxicating aroma, something woody and spicy and totally masculine. She took a step closer to him, and he followed suit. Something that Chelsea couldn’t quite identify flashed across the man’s face, but the look fanned the flames between Chelsea’s legs. His eyes were hypnotizing and held her just as immobile as the lion’s had.

  “Chels! Chels, where are you?” Chelsea managed to tear her gaze away from the man in the clearing long enough to see Marta striding across the clearing toward her. “There you are. It’s almost night! What on earth have you—”

  “Marta, this is…” Chelsea turned to introduce her rescuer to Marta, but he had vanished.

  “What?” Marta was out of breath and appeared put out with Chelsea, but that was the least of her problems.

  “Hello? Hello?” Chelsea shouted as she turned around, desperately seeking out the handsome stranger who had so captivated her.

  “Chelsea Goebel, what is your problem?”

  “There was a lion, and then this man…” Chelsea stopped speaking and realized how ridiculous she must have sounded. Babbling about mountain lions and disappearing strangers was hardly normal behavior for her.

  “Chels.” Marta’s demeanor turned gentle. “You’ve had a big couple of days, and you probably just had some weird exhaustion-induced lion dream.” She crossed to stand in front of Chelsea and gave her a warm, sisterly hug. “I can’t even begin to imagine all you’ve been through.”

  “It’s not that big a deal—”

  “Hush,” Marta said, releasing her. “Finalizing a divorce is a huge deal, and you’ve been really strong. Now what do you say we get back to the lodge and charge an exorbitant amount in room service to my company credit card?”

  Chelsea smiled weakly and nodded, and Marta gave her another quick hug. The two of them walked out of the clearing with their arms around each other, and Chelsea threw a glance back at where the lion’s stare and then the man’s had paralyzed her. Maybe it really was a dream, but nothing had ever felt so real, so visceral, so exciting.

  Chapter 2

  Chelsea leaned her forehead against the window of the rental Chevy Impala as Marta wove the car through the winding streets of Savage Valley. As they drove down the mountain, they crossed over a stream and passed a few abandoned industrial buildings. Marta chatted about the town and various landmarks she’d read about, and Chelsea could see why the town was popular with tourists. The scenery was breathtaking, with lush woods on one side of the valley and the Mukua mountain range on the other. The car turned and headed downhill toward a cluster of buildings that made up the town center.

  She watched as pedestrians milled on the streets, several greeting one another. Marta steered the car into a parking lot next to a small strip of stores with a diner on the end nearest them. Chelsea curled into the fabric upholstery of the car and buried her face there. She let her red hair spill forward, veiling her from the world.

  “Come on, Chels. You can’t hide from the world forever.” Marta opened the door, and Chelsea begrudgingly left the car. She looked up at the flashing sign above her advertising the “Savage Hunger” diner. She hadn’t had the appetite for her room-service feast last night, but now her stomach rumbled at the suggestion of a hearty meal.

  They walked around the rounded corner of the diner and through its glass doors. Inside, the diner featured an updated fifties-style décor with large booths arranged along a glass corridor and a long counter filled with burly men devouring their steak and eggs. Chelsea’s mind drifted back to the monotonous suburbs of home, and she decided that this was far better.

  “Hey, honeys.” An older woman clad in a uniform consisting of an orange and black dress and a black apron greeted them. “Y’all ladies want to sit at a table or the counter?” She flashed them a smile, and Chelsea felt herself warming to the woman and the town.

  “Table?” Marta said, and the waitress led them down the narrow length of the diner to a booth nestled in the corner.

  “Sorry ’bout putting you in the back, sugars, but the regulars can get real touchy when their booths are gone.” She shrugged her shoulders, turned, and made her way back toward the counter.

  Chelsea was nestled in the corner next to a large window looking out across the street toward what purported to be the Savage Valley Bank. The mountains rose behind it, making the scene rugged and romantic. The menu at Savage Hunger appeared to feature updated versions of American classics, and Chelsea and Marta both ordered the banana walnut pancakes with vanilla bean agave nectar.

  A tall, blond man in a loose-fitting T-shirt and jeans sat in the booth catty-corner to theirs, and Marta followed his every movement.

  “Have you noticed the men in this town?”

  Well, only the one, and she wasn’t sure if he was real. She decided it best not to respond and laughed as Marta turned in her seat to watch the man’s backside as he stood, grabbed a messenger bag from beneath the table, and leaned over to shuffle through its contents.

  Chelsea studied him for a moment. Yes, he was attractive, but nothing could distract from the memory of the man in the clearing. His eyes, the way his light brown hair fell across his chiseled features, and his heart-stopping smile all swirled in her mind. It felt more like a memory than a dream. Maybe the stress from the divorce really was getting to her.

  Just then, the bells hanging from the glass door jangled and two men walked in to prove her wrong. Her breath caught in her chest as she saw the man from the clearing smile and hug the waitress to his chest. Behind him walked a taller man built just like him with the same light brown hair, but his was neatly combed. He grasped the waitress’s hands in his, and she directed the two men to a booth directly opposite the entrance.

  “That’s the dream guy!” Chelsea whispered excitedly to Marta.

  “It sure is.” Her eyes were still fixed on the man who had been sitting near them.

  “Not him. With the guys who just walked in. The shorter one is the man I saw in the clearing.”Marta started to lift herself out of her seat and turn toward the entrance. “Don’t look! You’ll give us away!” Chelsea admonished in a harsh whisper.