Caleb's Mate

  Caleb’s Mate

  Canyon Springs, Book One

  Becca Jameson

  Copyright © 2020 by Becca Jameson

  Cover Artist: Scott Carpenter

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

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Newsletter

  Acknowledgments

  About the Book

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Also by Becca Jameson

  About the Author

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  Acknowledgments

  The first two books in this series were a challenge because the stories are parallel. I spent a number of hours slamming my head into a wall, wondering why on earth I thought this was a good idea. But I eventually came out the other side, and I love the finished product. I have to thank my amazing beta readers for reading these two books in random order and making sure I didn’t leave out any details! Susan, Barbara, Melanie—you are the best!

  About the Book

  The small town of Canyon Springs, Colorado, is filled with warm, welcoming people and breathtaking views. Is that why visitors often decide to stay for the rest of their lives? Or is it something else?

  * * *

  Elena isn’t worried about spending a week in Canyon Springs settling her aunt’s estate. She’s never bought into the notion that shifters can somehow lure people into their dens and brainwash them into staying in town. That has to be a myth.

  * * *

  She and her twin sister have never met this estranged aunt, so they aren’t exactly in mourning. Elena intends to spend the week reconnecting with her sister. Hopefully, she’ll find the spine to tell her sister what a failure her career has been.

  * * *

  But what if the lore is true? In an unexpected twist, Elena finds herself instantly falling for Caleb, the sexy wolf shifter who approaches her on her first night in town. She can fight the pull. She can deny the illogical facts. But in the end, does it really matter why the heart chooses who to love?

  Prologue

  June 25, 1964

  * * *

  Dear Mabel,

  * * *

  This is the third letter I’ve written you in six weeks. I don’t understand why you’re being so stubborn. I got a letter from Mama yesterday. She tells me you’re angry right now, and I should be patient. The problem is that I’m not a patient person. You’re my sister. My identical twin. My best friend. I miss you.

  I wish you would read my letters instead of returning them. I won’t stop writing to you. I want you to know that I’m happy. Canyon Springs is a beautiful town. The people here are so nice. Josiah is the kindest man I’ve ever met. I know you don’t approve of him, but we don’t always choose who we fall in love with. It just happens sometimes.

  I wish you would come visit me. I can even send you the money for the bus ticket. I already got a teaching job here in town. I start this fall.

  There is a hole in my heart from missing you. I won’t choose between you and Josiah. I want both of you in my life.

  Please write back.

  * * *

  Love, Marge

  Chapter 1

  Present day…

  * * *

  Elena was holding the piece of certified mail in her hand, wondering what could be in it, when her cell rang. She smiled as she saw Layla’s name on the screen and answered. “Hey. Long time no talk,” she teased. “I was starting to wonder about you. I know you’re busy down in sunny southern California auditioning for the next Oscar-winning film, but it’s been like two weeks.”

  Layla groaned. “See? This is why I don’t call you. You don’t even say hello before you start bitching at me. And besides, if you took time off from writing the next masterpiece for the Chicago Tribune, you could call me too.”

  Elena sat at her small, rickety kitchen table and sighed, dropping the piece of mail on the table. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be snippy. What’s up?” Layla rarely called for no reason. In the two years since they’d graduated from college and moved to opposite ends of the universe, they had called each other less and less often.

  To be fair, Layla was right. Elena hadn’t been the best at keeping in touch either. She had no excuse. She was nothing but a floundering reporter, determined to get her big break. Any day now would be great.

  “Did you get a certified letter from Canyon Springs, Colorado?” Layla asked.

  Elena glanced down at the envelope on her table and frowned. “Yes. I haven’t opened it yet. Why do we have the same certified mail? Hell, why do we have certified mail at all?”

  “Yeah, so, remember that great aunt we have who Grandma Mabel loathed so badly that she didn’t speak to her for fifty years?”

  “How could I forget. Aunt Marge.” Neither Elena nor Layla had ever met Marge. She was their grandmother’s identical twin sister. Marge and Mabel should have been close. And they had been…for the first twenty-two years. Same as me and Layla… How far did those similarities stretch? Sometimes Elena worried that she and Layla had gone their separate ways at the exact same age.

  “Well, apparently she died, and… You really should open the envelope. I’ll wait.”

  Elena ripped the tab across the top of the cardboard and then reached in and pulled out a bound file of several pages and a cover letter. It was from an attorney: Larosa and Tanner Law Offices. She skimmed down the single page, taking in the regret to inform her that her great aunt had passed away and then moving down the page to the part that made her stop breathing. “Are they serious?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “Let me get this straight. Our grandmother’s estranged twin sister died last week, and she left everything she owns to you and me?”

  “Now you’re all caught up,” Layla stated. “The question is what are we going to do about it?”

  Elena speed-read the rest. “Jeez,” she muttered. “Looks like they want us to go there and deal with the estate.”

  “Yeah, and I’m kinda busy at work right now.”

  “Me too. I can’t just take off for nowhere Colorado.” I can’t afford to take off for anywhere, let alone Colorado. But Layla didn’t know that. A lump formed in Elena’s throat as she reminded herself how different the two of them were. While Layla was off in Los Angeles making a name for herself, doing what she loved—acting—Elena was in Chicago failing miserably. She was too embarrassed to admit to her sister that she was nothing more than another starving journalist. In fact, if she didn’t hurry up and get out the door, she would be late for her side job at the local department store. Fake smiling at people when they couldn’t find the size they needed in men’s jeans wasn’t her dream job by any stretch of the imagination, but she needed every dime she made to afford the rent.

  “I don’t thi
nk we have a choice. It says we have to be physically present…” Her voice trailed off as if she were reading the letter again. Elena was too.

  Shit. Shit shit shit.

  How was she even going to afford the plane ticket? She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. If the property was truly worth something, perhaps they would get enough money out of it to retroactively pay for the time off work.

  If she put the plane ticket on her credit card… She cringed. She hated using that card. All it did was rack up more and more debt. She never managed to pay more than the minimum.

  There was another problem too. She might lose her job entirely if she told her boss she needed a week off work. And what if a week wasn’t long enough? How long did it take to sell a property?

  Elena leaned back in her rickety chair, which matched her scratched up second-hand table, and stared at the dirty ceiling covered in damp circles from some unknown slow leak from the floor above her. She thought about who this Great Aunt Marge was. “Grandma grumbled about her sister meeting a man and staying in Canyon Springs every chance she got. I never fully understood why she held a grudge for the rest of her life.”

  “Yeah, I used to think Grandma Mabel was jealous of her sister or something for finding love so easily, but eventually I realized Mabel met Grandpa George and got married within months, so that wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t like Grandpa was a consolation prize. She loved him so much she never really got over losing him ten years ago. And he adored her. Hell, he put up with her rambling about Marge without a word every time it came up. I often wondered if he ever once suggested she lose the grudge and call Marge.”

  Elena sighed at the memory. “Right? Maybe there were times before we were even born that he tried to get her to call or visit, and by the time we came into the picture, he’d given up trying.”

  Layla sighed. “Could be.”

  Elena inhaled deeply, feeling all the sorrow of that situation wash through her. “It was so complicated. Sad really. I don’t think Grandma ever fully realized how judgmental she was being. She couldn’t stand the thought that her sister married a shifter.”

  “I agree. I guess it might have made more sense in the mid sixties when Marge got married, but you’d think fifty years later, Grandma would have joined the twenty-first century at some point. Black. Brown. White. Gay. Straight. Bi. Shifter. Whatever… Who cares these days?”

  “Yeah,” Elena responded. “It was more than that though. Grandma wasn’t just pissed at Marge for staying in Canyon Springs and marrying a local. She truly believed some mumbo jumbo about people getting lured in by shifters and unable to escape. She was furious with Marge for ever stopping in Canyon Springs and taking a chance in the first place. I think she said Aunt Marge stopped there to fill up her tank with gas.”

  “True. As if shifters have some superpowers that make it possible for them to take over our brains and convince us we belong to them.”

  Elena couldn’t help but giggle at that comment, and she was usually the serious one of the two of them. Their grandmother’s beliefs had been so preposterous that it was hard to take her seriously.

  Perhaps Elena should feel more sorrowful at the loss of their last surviving relative. But they’d never even met Marge, so it was hard to feel the loss. “Lordy. Any time she even suspected a shifter left Canyon Springs and came to our town, she would get all up in arms. She wouldn’t even leave the house. Like they could cast a spell on her or something.” Hyde Park was only a three-hour drive from Canyon Springs.

  Talking to Layla felt good even though the subject was depressing. Elena hadn’t come up for air to enjoy life at all lately. In fact, she hardly recognized herself. Her usual carefree personality had gone into hiding, replaced by someone far too serious who constantly had to worry about paying the damn rent.

  “Grandma acted like shifters had cooties.” Layla chuckled.

  Elena shook her head even though Layla couldn’t see her. “I knew there was no reasoning with Grandma. She couldn’t see that she sounded like such a bigot. She didn’t think ‘regular humans’—as she liked to call us—should mingle with shifters.” Grandma Mabel had been living in the dark ages when it came to tolerance. She’d kept her heels dug in so deeply on the issue that she hadn’t spoken to her identical twin for most of her life.

  “I think we should go to Canyon Springs,” Layla announced. “I know it might be hard, but we haven’t seen each other in over a year. Not since Grandma’s funeral. I miss you. We don’t want to end up like the two of them. Think of it as a vacation. When was the last time you took one of those?”

  Elena cringed. She hadn’t taken any vacation at all since she left college and arrived in Chicago with nothing more than a suitcase and a pipe dream. “When we went to Disney World for our tenth birthday, I think,” she joked.

  “Then that’s it. Let’s do it. Bite the bullet. Meet me there on Friday. We’ll find this lawyer and figure out what we need to do. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling and be out of Canyon Springs within a week. If we’re lucky, the house will be worth something, and we’ll get a check in the mail.”

  “Why in the hell do you think she stipulated that we had to come to Canyon Springs to settle her estate in person?” Elena asked, nervously biting her bottom lip at the thought of leaving town.

  Layla sighed. “I bet she wrote that will before Grandma died.”

  Elena agreed. “She probably wanted to lure us there and shove it in her sister’s face.”

  Layla gasped dramatically. “Maybe it’s all true. Maybe we’ll get there and find ourselves under some sort of voodoo spell and turn into monotone zombies with eyes glazed over, arms hanging limply at our sides, feet shuffling toward some sort of homing beacon as we follow a sexy shifter to his lair.”

  Layla’s imagination was contagious. Maybe this trip could be an adventure. Maybe it would shake Elena out of the slump she’d been in. “Lair?” she giggled. “I’m pretty sure the shifter community lives in normal homes like everyone else.”

  Layla laughed harder. “Hey, as long as the guy is sexy and makes my female parts come back to life, I’m not sure I’d be opposed to falling under his spell. I hope we can find a few nice bear or wolf shifters. It’s been a damn long time since I’ve even been on a date.”

  Elena sighed. “God, me too. What happened to us? We’re attractive. Young. Fun. Outgoing. How did we end up spinsters at twenty-four?”

  Layla groaned dramatically. “See, we need this trip. I’ve never had sex with a shifter. Maybe we can find a few handsome ones and sow some wild oats.”

  “What happens in Canyon Springs…”

  “Stays in Canyon Springs,” Layla finished.

  Elena shook her head as she ended the call. She could joke with her sister about finding men and having some wild romp, but she would never act on it. Layla probably would. Elena was more conservative and introverted. Practical. Choosy.

  Sometimes she wished she could be more outgoing and fun-loving, but she wasn’t created that way. Had that been the case for Mabel and Marge too?

  Elena shuddered as she pushed from the table. She had to get to work, and she needed to make a plan. Friday was only a few days away.

  Chapter 2

  The grocery store was not one of Caleb’s favorite places to go on any given day, but today in particular had left him hangry and exhausted. He’d spent far more hours than he wanted to at work, and he just wanted to go home, sit on his back porch, and enjoy a beer, or two, or three.

  However, when a man lived alone, he had no choice but to feed himself, and he’d put off going to Morton’s Grocery for three days now. There wasn’t anything left in his refrigerator worth speaking of, and he would be kicking himself in a few hours when his stomach started growling.

  He’d already ordered pizza and Chinese this week. It was time to suck it up and hit the store. He rushed through the aisles, tossing in dozens of things without much thought and then pushed his cart to the checkout.

&nbs
p; He was still scowling and frustrated with the line of patrons in front of him when the entire atmosphere of the store changed. He jerked his gaze up as he drew in a long deep breath and watched the most gorgeous woman he’d ever seen walk through the front door.

  Unable to blink, he took in every inch of her. Petite. Tanned. Cute. Her blond, curly hair was the palest he’d ever seen, and even from this distance, his eyesight was good enough to see that her eyes were a deep chocolate, an interesting combination of traits.

  He’d never seen the woman before in his life, of course, and wondered what she was doing in Canyon Springs. He wasn’t sorry by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he was suddenly beyond delighted that he’d chosen tonight of all nights to hit the grocery store. What had seemed like a mundane, hateful task half an hour ago suddenly morphed into a fated excursion that would change the course of his life.

  Unfortunately, this blonde beauty was oblivious to Caleb’s existence. She spent a few moments glancing around, presumably getting the lay of the land in a store she’d never entered before, and then she grabbed a basket and took off toward the produce section.

  At thirty years old, Caleb had stopped spending quite so much of his time searching everywhere he went for his mate. There had been a few frustrating years when he and his best friend, Hunter, had gone out nearly every night, hoping to catch a whiff of their intended life partners. They’d even visited the surrounding towns on occasion, after realizing there were very few people living in Canyon Springs they hadn’t met and even fewer tourists or guests came to town.