business. It was located in the space formerly occupied by Black Bear Pizza and Pasta, and it had still been under construction during Maggie's last disastrous visit home.
Three years ago, Justin's unexpected Christmas mating with Thor's mom, the widowed Elle Swanson, had caused a real buzz in town, especially since Justin's daughter Cassie had mated Thor the previous summer.
As they drove past the restaurant, Maggie saw that it was crowded with diners, even this late in the tourist season. She'd definitely have to check it out, but right now, she had a different destination in mind.
"Wow," Steve commented from the passenger seat as he took in the sights. "This place looks like a set for one of those Hallmark holiday movies."
"Yeah, it does, doesn't it?" Maggie grinned. "I’m surprised that the Chamber of Commerce hasn't invited any film production companies here. Maybe I should mention it to Manny while we're in town. He's kind of a bigwig around these parts."
"And this is a shifter community? I remember Thor mentioning something about that."
"Well, not everyone living here is a shifter," Maggie explained. "But there are a lot of us in the area—two bear shifter clans in the valley, the Einarssons and the Swansons; a big wolf pack, mostly Jacobsens and Tringstads; the Bagweshi family, they're eagle shifters; and Elle Swanson's new mate is a sabertooth shifter." She mentally counted off the town's shifter population, trying to decide if she'd forgotten anyone, and then the obvious occurred to her. "Oh, and then there's our clan, of course."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Steve's astonishment. Well, it was pretty unusual to have so many different kinds of shifters living in the same place. Traditionally, shifters tended to be extremely territorial.
But the original shifter family living in this area, the Bagweshi family's Shoshoni ancestors, had welcomed any and all shifters who chose to settle in Bearpaw Ridge, on the condition that all of the different lineages live peacefully together.
And so it had gone. Mostly, anyway. Back in the early days, there had been a bloody conflict between two wolf shifter packs who hadn't been able to overcome their territorial instincts. The ugliness had ended only when one of the packs was driven out of the area and forced to settle elsewhere.
"That must have been nice," Steve commented. "I mean, growing up in a place where you didn't have to stay closeted the entire time. When I was a kid, there weren't any other shifters—that we knew about, anyway—in our part of San Diego."
"I hadn't thought of it that way," Maggie said. "I mean, no one here is totally out of the shifter closet, but it's kind of an open secret with plausible deniability. And most of the different shifter families are on friendly terms. In fact, there've even been a few cross-lineage matings lately that were considered no big deal. One of Thor's cousins mated one of the Jacobsens last year, and his mom Elle is mated to a sabertooth shifter…Cassie's dad, as a matter of fact."
"I knew that," Steve said. "I just didn't realize that Thor and his mom weren't the only ones to mate outside their lineage."
It hadn't always been that way. Thirty years ago, one of Maggie's many uncles had fallen in love with one of the Tringstad wolf shifter girls. It had ended with a tragic murder-suicide that the older members of Maggie's family refused to discuss to this day, and the younger generation speculated about.
To this day, there were still bad feelings between the Ornelas and Tringstad families. They interacted as little as possible and never socialized, which took real effort in a town as small as Bearpaw Ridge.
"I think my clan elders would all stroke out if I decided to mate someone from a different shifter lineage," Steve continued. "Which is weird, since a few of my cousins are mated to Ordinaries, and no one really got upset about that."
Maggie spotted what she'd been looking for, and pulled over. Unlike San Francisco, where each parking space was a precious commodity, Bearpaw Ridge always had plenty of places available on Main Street.
As she parked the rental car, she realized that this was the first time that she and Steve had really talked about themselves.
While Steve swung himself out of the sedan using his arms and his good leg, Maggie retrieved his knee-crutch from the back seat and handed it to him. He swiftly buckled himself in, then took a look around.