Page 13 of Taming Her Bears

“I’ll stay with her,” volunteered Lee.

The others were making similar offers. I lifted my hand. “Natalia is right. Valdez is too dangerous for her right now. Pete, who did you talk to before leaving base?”

“Only the harbor master when I clocked out.”

“Good. Let’s keep it that way. The fewer people who know where we’re going, the better. Ladies, we have a crook to catch.”

Roy

It felt good to be onboard ship again, nice to be home. That was how it felt to me. I had family in Nome that I visited with every three months or so, when we weren’t too busy with search and rescue operations or patrolling our borders. Border infractions had become fewer in recent years, although there had been a run of them shortly after the Soviet Union fell. The biggest problem these days was floating canneries trying to steal our fish, process them, and get out before we discovered them in our waters.

Most military and law enforcement divisions were busiest during the summer months when tourists flooded in by the thousands, but not the Coast Guard. Illegal entries and criminals were usually caught by the harbor master or by mainland law enforcement. Our biggest busts were in the cocaine trade, traveling port to port.

The seas were calm during the summer months, with only a few mild storms, giving the fishermen and the big cruise ships no grief. It was those iffy months between October and December that we were busiest. Boats—any boat—will push the limits to how long they can stay in the water, watching the clouds like the hands on a clock, but those storms can blow in with so little warning, you’re an icicle before you see what’s coming. That was when our services were needed the most.

We were the icebreakers, the toughest team in the fleet. We went into the wailing arctic zone where the sun remained over the horizon for only three months, and temperatures plunged forty degrees below zero overnight. We rescued barges, cruise ships, and fishing vessels imprisoned in ice. We had the highest success rate at arctic operations because… well, we’re bears. We don’t mind sub-zero temperatures. Also, because I was the only one in the fleet who can swim with ease between the ice floes.

Still, as much as I like being a bear, I also like being human. While we were on the island, our instinct had been to retain bear form as the most comfortable means of survival, but with a human in our care, we had to abide by protocol. The protocol was, no shapeshifting in front of faint-hearted citizens. The protocol had flown out the window, but it wasn’t really our fault. I guess it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just three days and two nights of exposure to pouring down rain and northern winds, huddled together with the kind of woman you dream about—long-legged and blonde, her eyes taking in the entire wilderness as a backdrop for her milk-and-honey skin. We could keep up the human part during the day, but at night, we needed our blubber-rich, fur-covered hides; and when hunger struck, we needed the fish. I was just glad Natalia had gotten over it. I didn’t want her thinking back on us as monsters.

Now that we were on boat, we could be fully human again, and I could appreciate the fine points. I had a marked preference for my own small cubicle on ship than a damp cave burrowed into a mountain. I don’t talk much, but I do like socializing. I enjoy live music, beer, and dancing. I like sitting around a table for dinner and shooting bull. And I really like human girls. They are so soft, even when they are swinging around clubs.

I also like tinkering with things—radios, computers, cameras—which would be very hard to do with paws. After a shower and a hardy lunch, I retired to my cabin to continue working on a gaming computer for the idle hours we spent at sea. I found it more difficult to concentrate than usual. Natalia kept entering my thoughts. While we were waiting for our ship, I couldn’t help thinking how sad it was that it would be over soon. I don’t kid myself about things. No matter how passionate an affair a seaman has, there are few women who are willing to wait weeks, sometimes months, for him to come back to their arms, especially ones you’ve known only a few days.

I had come to terms with it. I was willing to let it rest, but Natalia opened her mouth. She had directly opposed the captain’s decision to drop her off in Valdez, telling him, with as few expletives as possible for polite company, that he would be a dickhead to leave her behind. Josh doesn’t mind being called a dunderhead. He doesn’t mind being called a thick head, but to be called a dickhead was a very undesirable outcome, especially with the added threat that she would be dead if he left her behind. He agreed to keep her on board, and all the resolve I had gathered to wipe her from my mind crumbled around me like ashes.

From the look in Josh’s eyes as he brushed past me, I suspected he had made the same failed resolution. “Women,” he growled at me in frustration. “Are they just naturally right? Or are they right because they won’t allow themselves to be wrong?”

My mouth flapped a few times before words would come out. “I don’t know, sir. I know less about the whole species than you do.”

He swept by, muttering to himself and waving around his hands, with Darkhorse right behind reassuring him it was all for the best. “She’s a noncombatant,” he growled.

Darkhorse did one of those little dance steps he used to keep up with the captain and maintain his attention. “She’s a state trooper, sir!”

“Well, I hope she doesn’t troop all over our investigation.”

Those were the last words I heard from them before entering my cabin. I set the motherboard carefully into place and dropped in the screws. “She can troop all over me any day,” I whispered.

As though listening, Natalia gave two knocks at the door, then barged in. “Oh! Is this your room? It’s little. The one they gave me is bigger.”

“I think they gave you senior officer quarters. We’re working at half-crew.”

She dismissed the information with a shrug. She tiptoed around, noticing my Klingon battle cruiser and scale model Mars cruiser. “I was curious about the way you live. You really are a nerd, aren’t you? I looked in Lee’s room first. All he has is a Playstation, some superhero comics, and a Janis Joplin poster. And he sleeps on a bunk.”

She stood at my shoulder and peered at my work, making it difficult to concentrate. “He’s a petty officer,” I explained. “He usually has a roommate.”

“He’s been a bad boy, then?” she asked in a sultry voice. “He doesn’t get a big room?” I didn’t know if she was joking or not. I demagnetized my screwdriver for probably the fifth time, thinking oddly to myself, I couldn’t seem to go beyond the simple act of touching it to the mat and applying it to the tiny, waiting screw. “It’s his rank,” I mumbled. “He needs an officer’s rank.”

Something told me she already knew, but she was flirting. She patted her wavy hair and fluffed it away from her shoulders. “I’ve never been in the military. The only boats I’ve been on have been fishing vessels. I think I like this life. Do you think I could join the Coast Guard?”

She blew into my face and it smelled enough like alcohol to give me a second-hand buzz. l laughed at her. “You’ve only been on board for two hours. That’s not long enough to think you like it.”

She leaned over my worktable, allowing me a peek inside the open collar of her blouse. “Josh says we won’t reach Sitka until tomorrow. Until then, there’s not much to do.”

It was useless. I couldn’t work on the computer tonight. I set the case over it so I could pay attention to my lovely company. “It’s pretty calm sailing through here. Even the northerners are a snap.”

“There’s nothing except leisure time until then?” She dimpled when she smiled.

I was acquiring a few ideas. I locked my wrists at the back of her neck. “The commander has it covered.”

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