Christmas Chimera

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

"T'was the day after Christmas," Colton Drew murmured to himself, "and not a creature was stirring, no—"

They are all stirring, his chimera said grumpily. ALL of them. LOUDLY.

Colton coughed on a laugh, trying to stay quiet. I know. They want to say goodbye.

They will be very LOUD about saying goodbye!

I know, Colton said again. But then it's a nice quiet drive to the airport, and a long quiet flight across the country. After we make our connection.

His chimera grumbled, and Colton gave it a fond nudge, mentally. You've been a champ.

The big beast in his mind sniffed, and Colton, smiling, finished packing up his rental car so he could make his early-morning escape. He had to admit the chimera wasn't entirely wrong: sometimes the best thing about Christmas was it being over.

It hadn't been a bad Christmas. It never was.

It was just that there were nine of them, eleven including Mom and Dad.

Colton's parents seemed to feel strongly that it was their job, as incredibly rare chimera shifters, to make sure their line of shifters didn't die out.

Single-handedly, if necessary. And four of Colton's siblings already had mates and children, with several more of the latter on the way.

With the kids included, Christmas Day had involved twenty-seven people, twenty-three of whom were chimera shifters.

Colton felt like he needed to release a memo: Chimeras are solitary animals and become cranky when forced to interact with others for long periods of time.

I do not, his chimera said, crankily.

Colton grinned. I probably mean me, not you.

The chimera sniffed again. Probably.

Colton closed the back of the car with a soft thump, and as if it had been a signal to the rest of the family, two dozen people came pouring out of the lodge they rented every holiday season.

For the next half hour there were hugs and pictures and goodbyes, and Colton, who knew how this worked, got on the road exactly when he expected to.

It had been snowing for two days already, the kind of light fluffy stuff that melted on roads or blew away, but as he drove out, Colton realized it had picked up considerably while they'd all been saying their goodbyes.

Even under the best of circumstances, it was a slow ninety-minute drive to the airport along the twisty mountain roads, but he'd given himself an extra hour, just in case.

Turned out he needed every minute of it, too: the snow became a blizzard as he drove, creeping more and more slowly through white-out conditions, until concern began to settle in along with the drifts.

The airport was a tiny one way up in the mountains, used mostly by people with their own planes and a couple of small regional airlines that flew people in and out at the holidays.

If his flight on one of those small jetliners got cancelled, it would be at least a day before he got out of there, and he'd promised to be back in the office over Christmas break to finish up some work on a big case.

His stomach dropped as he finally arrived at the airport: the parking lot wasn't plowed, and the snow was coming down hard enough that he couldn't see as far as the runway. He said, "It'll be fine," aloud, and his chimera sniffed again.

I'm not flying anywhere in this snow, it informed him loftily. Chimeras are warm-weather flyers.

"I know, buddy." Colton hauled his luggage out—there wasn't really that much of it, but the falling snow and unplowed parking lot made it seem like a lot more—and made his way into the little airport, which had one gate and a security process from the previous century.

He would have to go through security again in Denver, but as long as he got to Denver, he didn't mind.

There were about a dozen other people there besides the employees, and all of them were looking at the white expanse of runway with the same dismay Colton felt rising in himself.

There was a single flashing light from a snowplow out there, but as he went to check his luggage in, the desk agent gave him an apologetic smile.

"I know. It looks bad. We have two plows, and that's usually enough, but one of them is broken and Dan is out there doing his best, but…

" She shook her head, and Colton groaned.

"There aren't any flights later today?" He knew there weren't, but asked anyway.

The poor agent looked even more apologetic.

"You know how this airport is. One flight in and one flight out on whatever airlines do fly here.

And most people don't travel on the day right after Christmas.

Not in and out of here, anyway. So it's just the one flight on the one airline.

I'm not actually having people check their bags in yet, because the odds of nobody getting out are too high. "

Colton shot a hopeful glance toward the runway. "But our plane made it in, right?"

The agent grimaced and Colton groaned again, dropping his head to thump it lightly against the desk. "Where is it?"

"It took off from Denver but they've rerouted it to Spokane," the agent said apologetically. "If it clears up at all, they'll bring it back this afternoon."

Colton brightened and rubbed his hands together as he straightened up again. "This afternoon. I can work with that. I can reroute out of Denver if I have to. Great. Thank you for offering a shred of hope."

"I can also offer free coffee," she said wryly. "We've got a pot on in the back."

"I'll take it," Colton said gratefully, and a minute later took a cup of black coffee, his luggage, and the shred of hope in his heart to the lounge to watch the snow fall, and fall, and fall.

Twenty minutes later somebody arrived with a huge box of doughnuts from a local store, calling, "I hear we're snowed in, so I brought treats," and disappeared somewhere else in the airport before Colton could thank her.

She had to be an employee: there wasn't anywhere besides the offices to go in an airport this size, as was evidenced by all the waiting passengers getting up to have doughnuts and coffee and chat with each other.

His phone rang as they were chatting, and Colton excused himself to answer it with a rueful, "Hey, Jerry.

You're not going to believe this, but I'm snowed in. "

His boss, a deep-voiced man with an intense edge that had dragged their entire law firm into the forefront of a bunch of high-profile cases, paused to assimilate that information before even speaking. When he did, it was to say, "For how long?"

"We're hoping to get out this afternoon, but…" Colton glanced toward the snow coming down on the runway and made a face. "But I'd say we'd be lucky for that to happen. It's really coming down out there."

Jerry muttered a curse. "There's been a development in the case, Colton. I really need you in the office tomorrow, if it's at all possible."

"A development?" Colton sharpened and took several steps farther away from the other passengers, as if the airport was big enough to afford any real privacy. "What's going on?"

"I'd rather brief you in person," Jerry said with a sigh. "We're either going to court on the third, or it'll be dismissed."

"On the third?" Colton's voice shot up and he clawed it back down with an apologetic glance at the other passengers. "Of January? We're not supposed to be up until June! What happened?"

"You see why I need you in the office. Just get back if you can.

" Jerry hung up and Colton groaned. He worked in environmental law, not the kind of thing that usually had emergency court dates.

This particular case, though, was one involving a lawsuit brought by teens against a massive business, and it had been a struggle from the start.

The defendants, the Corpus Corporation, had impossibly deep pockets, and it was well within their ability to manipulate the system and force Colton's law firm into court months before they expected to be there.

Colton muttered, "Screw that." No way was he going to lose this case just because an immoral corporation thought he wasn't ready.

Filled with determination, he went back to the desk agent and offered her an apologetic smile.

"We're not getting out of here today, are we?

Are there any other options at all besides the scheduled flight? "

"Not really. We have enough runway cleared for a couple of local prop planes to get off the ground, but they're locals," the desk agent emphasized. "Nobody's flying more than a couple hundred miles, assuming they want to risk taking off in this weather at all."

"A couple hundred miles would get me out of the mountains," Colton said hopefully. "Even down to Billings, or even to Great Falls…anywhere I can catch a flight to Denver or Chicago. I'm not picky."

The agent made another face. "You can talk to Jo Talbott, I guess. I know she was planning to head out this afternoon, but assuming she goes at all at this point, she's only going to Helena."

Colton fought down a momentary wave of despair: Helena was still in the mountains. On the other hand, it was a much, much bigger airport than this one. "Helena's great. I can get to Denver or Salt Lake City from there. Can you point me at Ms. Talbott?"

"She's the one who brought the doughnuts in." The agent glanced around, obviously not seeing the woman she was looking for, then pointed toward a doorway that said 'Pegasus Puddlejumping' above it. "That's her company."

"Puddlejumping?"

The agent grinned at Colton's distress. "'Puddlejumper' is a nickname for small propeller planes that don't have long range. Jo flies a lot of photographers and hikers in and out, mostly from Helena or even Kalispell."

"Kalispell's only fifty miles away," Colton mumbled, but then, he wasn't about to try driving those fifty miles in a blizzard, either.

"Okay, thank you. I'll go talk to her." Shoulders squared, he went to knock on the Pegasus Puddlejumping door, and then to open it when a woman's voice called, "Come on in! "

The room beyond was at least thirty degrees colder than the main airport, and looked like it had been tacked on as an afterthought.

The single window overlooked a different stretch of the runway, and a small plane nearly within touching distance to the open door.

The woman who'd invited him to enter was on her way out the door, a bag over her shoulder.

Through the snow, he saw her toss it into the back of the plane through the pilot's door, voice rising as she shouted toward him. "What can I do ya for?"

"I need a flight out of here!" Colton yelled.

The wind carried her laugh. "Wait until tomorrow. I'm going to throw—"

Several words were lost, but he'd heard the important ones, the ones that meant 'no.

' He yelled, "I can pay you!" and her laughter carried again.

A minute later she came back in, a fluffy bundle of winter clothes, from a hat that was pulled nearly over her eyes and a scarf pulled up just as far the other direction, a huge coat, snowpants, and boots big enough for a yeti.

She was obviously tall even without the massive boots, and the way she moved suggested that beneath all that padding she was rangy and strong.

Her voice, although still muffled by scarves, was cheerful, warm, and welcoming. "Mister, unless you can pay me the ten grand I'm behind on the mortgage, I'm not flying anywhere today."

"Five now," Colton said desperately. "Five when we arrive in Helena."

Her eyes widened enough that he could see they were emerald green, and in a heartbeat she'd pulled her hat off to reveal flaming red hair, and her scarf down enough to expose a raw-boned, beautiful face with those emerald eyes proving to be huge and depthless. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Not even a little," Colton said hazily, because nothing on earth could persuade him to make that kind of joke to the gorgeous stranger who just happened to be his fated mate.