Read The Christmas Tree Bear: A Bear Shifter Paranormal Holiday Romance for Free Online Page A

farm,” she told him.  Still, she patted his cheek once before rolling up her window and heading out.  
     
    Willis eyed her hatchback as Charlie climbed into her car.  “Maybe I should drive you home.”
     
    “It’ll be fine, I promise.”  Charlie mimicked his mother and petted his cheek, then leaned in and kissed him once.  “I’m going down to my friend Lynne’s.  She's just down the road a few miles.  Straight shot.”
     
    Willis still frowned.  “Call me when you get in?  Not to badger you, only--”
     
    “No, I understand.  I’ll call you right after I call my mom, all right?”  She leaned up and kissed him again.  Then, again, when the big guy followed her through the open car door and sucked on her lower lip.
     
    “Okay, you have got to go home,” he growled at her as he pulled away, “or you are staying here with me.”
     
    “Now you’re just tempting me,” she teased.  But she leaned back and pulled her car door shut before they both made her even later getting on the road.  
     
    The tiny bits of sleet and snow were starting to come down hard and fast.  It was barely four in the afternoon, but Charlie had her brights on and her windshield wipers on their max setting as she bounced back down the dirt road toward the main highway.  Willis was following behind her in the truck.  
     
    She paused just outside the gate while Willis popped out to lock it behind her.  She texted Lynne and her mother one-handed: “leaving now, be there soon!”.  She waited until Willis got back in the truck, just to be sure.  He honked at her, and Charlie turned back onto the main road.
     
    It was already icy.  “Fuck, shit, fuck,” she whispered to herself as she crawled along at barely a few miles an hour.  She didn’t think it was sleeting that hard, but the wind was whipping along.  It made her tiny hatchback rock when it hit her dead on.  Maybe she should have stayed with Willis back on the farm.  Even without taking sexy sleep overs into account, it might have been a smarter idea.  
     
    She had driven through snow before in Ohio, but only a few times.  Certainly never through a big snow storm.  She hadn't thought it would be this bad:  when did serious ice storms happen in down south?  There was only one white Christmas she even remembered as a kid.
     
    She wasn't paying attention like she should have, and the car suddenly skidded on the road as she went around a bend in the road.  “Shit, shit!”  Charlie tried to turn into the way the car was fish tailing, but it didn’t do any good.  The tiny car slid off the icy road and into the snowy rough.
     
    Charlie swallowed and tried to take stock of everything once the car stopped moving.  She didn’t seem hurt, though she knew her arms and neck were going to be sore tomorrow from how tightly she had held herself.  The car was still on, so she didn’t think she had ripped out the undercarriage.  Putting the car in reverse, she tried to back out back onto the road.  The tires squealed but the car didn’t move.
     
    “Shit.  Shit, shit, shit,” became her refrain as she put the car into drive.  Same thing:  the tires spun on the icy ground but refused to move.  
     
    Popping out of the car, Charlie tried to take stock of the situation, though she was a little cold in her light coat and thin cardigan underneath that.  She used her phone to light the back tires and found there was nothing but icy mud.  There was no way she was going to get traction there.  The front was no better:  at least it didn't look like she'd damaged anything when she slid off the road.  
     
    The wind was howling around her.  She looked back from the way she came, but it was pitch black.  Not too many street lights this far out in the country.  She didn’t think it was that far back to the farm.
     
    Charlie climbed back into the car.  She checked her cell: only 20 percent battery.  That was not going to be a useful flash light