by Edith DuBois
“I’m just concerned. I don’t want you—”
“Oh my god!” Jamie waved her hands in the air. “I don’t want to hear it, okay? I don’t want to hear another damn word. Just forget it.” She stomped across the living room and into her room, slamming the door behind her. Lianne jumped at the noise. Then she let out a long sigh. She knew that Jamie would have a hard time accepting her decision, but only time would prove that she’d done it more for Jamie than for herself. She’d have to work her ass off to ensure not only that her business was a success, but that Jamie and her father found a way to resolve some of their issues.
She only wanted to help.
* * * *
Another cloud of hairspray blew into Will’s face. He scrunched his nose and held his breath until Mrs. Bird quit spraying the stuff all over his mother’s head of stiff gray curls. Her appointment was only supposed to have lasted forty-five minutes, but of course, the ladies had chitchatted too much and were running behind. He plastered on a smile, though, and waited patiently while Mrs. Bird finished up his mother’s coif.
His mother came to the salon every week to get her hair done, and he and Seb traded off picking her up.
“I’m so sorry, dearest.” His mother met his eyes in the mirror.
“We’ve just about finished,” Mrs. Bird said.
“I saw you and Seb in the Savage Hunger parking lot this morning,” Rita Copely chirped from her chair on the far end of the shop. “I was about to say hello, but you looked like you were having a pretty serious conversation with Miss Lianne. I thought I’d better just mind my own business.”
The other ladies made little noises of interest and shot questioning glances at Will. He wished Mrs. Copely had thought to mind her business at present as well.
“As you know, we’ve recently signed a contract with Miss Seward and will be working closely with her in the near future. You will no doubt see us enmeshed in several serious conversations over the coming months.”
“Oh, is that all it was?” Mrs. Copely asked with a smile. Then she turned her attention to Susan Pope, who was touching up her roots.
“You know,” Mrs. Bird said, “Lianne is hosting a book club tomorrow evening, and both my nieces are attending. My recently engaged nieces, I might add.”
“We remember, Agnes.” Mrs. Pope rolled her eyes.
“You bring it up every five minutes, I swear.” Mrs. Copely handed a hand mirror to his mother, and Mrs. Bird twirled her in the chair.
“I can’t help it if I’m proud.”
“It’s funny how close proud and gloating are.”
Agnes stuck her tongue out at Mrs. Copely but then laughed. “Anyways, they are both enamored with Lianne and her products and have been talking about this book club get-together all week.”
Will watched his mother as the ladies were talking. Her mouth was pinched closed in a tight line. It was very strange. Normally she had the most to say on the subject of his love life, or on any subject, for that matter.
Mrs. Pope said, “Well, it sounds like you two Carsons have made yet another sound investment.”
“In more ways than one, perhaps?” Agnes teased. All the ladies looked at him, hoping he would drop a juicy tidbit that they could share later.
“Thank you,” he said blandly, intentionally ignoring Mrs. Bird’s implications.
Mrs. Bird’s gaze softened, and she turned to his mother. “They sure are making their daddies proud, aren’t they?”
His mother bobbed her head sporadically up and down, seemingly knocked out of her tight-lipped daze. “Oh yes, quite so. Every day.”
Later, after his mother had paid for her hairdo and they were on their way back to the house, he noticed her fidgeting in the passenger seat. She’d look out the window, squirm, fiddle with her seat belt, and then look out the window again.
“What is it?” he finally asked.
“Is true what they were saying in there? About Lianne Seward?”
“Mother, we have gone over this several times. You cannot listen to everything you hear at the salon, and it’s precisely because of instances like this. I know they are your friends. I know they are respectable women, but they like to gossip. More than like, in fact. It’s borderline obsession, and it does no one any good to dwell—”
“Yes,” she said, interrupting him, “but you never told me that you and Seb had invested in her business. I wish you would have.”
He darted his eyes over to her face to gauge her expression.
“Really? Why?” He wondered why she was interested now. Did she know something about her? Was it only curiosity? He didn’t think so. She seemed different, quieter and more subdued. Thoughtful, even. He really didn’t want to discuss Lianne with his mother. He didn’t want her to get her hopes up and then take to questioning him nonstop about how things were going. Anytime the women at the salon mentioned either him or Seb or both of them in tandem with a woman, his mother hounded them for months about her. Things were already tense with Lianne, and he didn’t need to be worrying about constant attack from his mother on that front.
At the same time, it seemed like she might have something important to say. “You never seemed interested in that sort of thing before, Mother.”
“I haven’t been, and I’m not really interested now. It’s only that I wish you would have told me about Lianne. You care for her, don’t you?”
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel, disoriented by her soft tone and calm demeanor and by the way she waited patiently for him to answer. He was so used to her plodding on from one topic to the next without needing a response from him. She seemed to be waiting for his reply with an intensity he hadn’t seen in her since before his fathers passed away.
“By your silence, I’m guessing that I’ve hit pretty close to the mark.”
“What is this about, Mother?”
She sighed. “I never told you this, but it was her mother who was responsible for me and your fathers.”
He lifted a brow in question.
“Yes, it was at a football game, a couple years after we had all three graduated. They were my beaus, but I wanted to get a job in Denver or maybe Helena, somewhere that wasn’t Savage Valley. I knew what they were at that point, the family history and all it entailed—mainly that I wouldn’t be able to leave Savage Valley—but had held off on committing myself to them because a part of me couldn’t imagine staying in Savage Valley my whole life.” She suddenly laughed. “And to think, we’re the only ones who remained after our sons had shifted. Life is funny, Will. Life is so funny.”
His mother heaved another sigh and gazed out the window. “You’ll have to excuse my nostalgia. It was a bit of a shock to hear your name connected with Lianne Seward’s. I didn’t really think it possible. I thought she’d gone away.”
“She did for a couple years for school, but please tell me what this is about.”
“Your fathers and I had been arguing. Lianne’s mother, Emeline, was a cheerleader, and I noticed her watching us with a very strange expression the whole night. I didn’t really think much of it. Actually, I remember thinking that she was interested in your fathers and was a little bit annoyed with her.
“But then, as the game ended, your fathers and I just sort of let loose on each other. I had finally pushed them to the point of making an ultimatum—either I choose them or I choose leaving, but they wouldn’t let me put it off any longer. Naturally I was angry that they would force me to make a decision, so I told them I was leaving, that I wouldn’t be stuck with such pigheads for the rest of my life. And much to my surprise, they said okay, stood up, and walked away.
“As they were walking, though, Emeline screamed from the track. She started yelling, ‘No! No! No!’ Everyone around her was baffled because our team had just won. She launched herself at the bleachers, hauling herself over the railing, and then she ran toward me. I was just as shocked as everyone else. But she stood in front of me and clutched my hand and said, ‘Go after them
. Please, don’t let them keep walking. They’re yours.’
“She kept saying that over and over. ‘They’re yours. I don’t know who you are, but they’re yours. They’re yours.’ Then she pulled me up and dragged me and kept telling me I had to go after them. I thought she was crazy, but I remember thinking, maybe that’s exactly why I should listen to her. Sometimes crazy people have a point.”
She turned to look at him then. “She wasn’t crazy, Will. She knew exactly what she was talking about. After I agreed to marry your fathers, I became the happiest, most true version of myself. I go to bed every night with a special prayer of thanks for Emeline Seward. I know the rumors people still say about her, that she was a witch. And I must admit that I agree with them, but in my heart, I believe she was the best kind of witch, showing people to love.”
“Why are you telling me this now? What does it have to do with her daughter?”
“Although Emeline lived in Savage Valley her whole life, I only had one other conversation with her. It happened almost thirty years later, two weeks before she died.”
A chill zipped up Will’s spine. If his mother was trying to spook him, it was working a little bit. “Go on.”
“We talked about you, Will.”
“Me?”
She nodded. “And Seb. We also talked about her daughter.”
“Ahh.”
“She came to tell me that she could see something around you three, that she’d seen it around me and your fathers at the football game years before. However, she felt it wasn’t right of her to place such a piece of knowledge on her daughter’s shoulders at such a young age, before she’d finished college, before she knew what she wanted to do with her life, and before she got to experience things outside of Savage Valley. So instead, she came to me to ask a favor. She asked that I hold the knowledge, and if the time came that I felt I should share it, I could.”
Will’s mind was racing. Was his mother telling him that he and Seb should be with Lianne? That there was some grand scheme that had thrown them together because they were as perfect for each other as his fathers were for his mother? But he thought his mother regretted her life. He thought she wished for something else. And he and Seb had always known they wouldn’t marry. They wouldn’t have children. They wouldn’t imprison their sons the way they had been imprisoned by the curse their whole lives.
“I still don’t understand why you’re telling me this now.”
She laid her hand on his leg and gave him a motherly pat or two. “Will, my dear boy, I know you. I know the things in your heart that you’ve never said aloud. Did you know that every night after you and Seb had fallen asleep, both of your fathers would go in to check on you? They’d stand in the doorway and say, ‘I love you, boys. Sleep tight. I’m sorry.’ Every single night they would say this. So you see? I know how much it pulls at you to be stuck in the same place your whole life and how you can’t stomach the thought of bestowing that on anyone else. I know, dearest, I know. Do you think your fathers and I didn’t discuss this on many, many occasions?”
He swallowed hard and glared at the road. After a moment, he said, “But don’t you hate it here? Don’t you regret tying yourself so permanently? You’re always telling us what’s wrong with the house, the town, the air, everything. Everything is always wrong.”
“No, Will. Oh goodness, no. I never meant for you to believe that I don’t want to live here or that I wasn’t happy with my life. I miss your fathers every day, every minute, every second.” She stared out the window again. “I could never leave Savage Valley. I couldn’t leave them. They are my heart, Will. Always have been and always will be until we see each other again.”
He couldn’t say anything, and he didn’t think his mother would have replied if he did. He hardly ever heard her mention their fathers without berating them for this or that, for not taking care of themselves, for dying on her. Now, he realized that her unhappiness didn’t stem from anger that she was stuck in Savage Valley. Her anger stemmed from love, from the love she still had for them, for the love that she’d always had for them.
He’d been so self-absorbed that he’d projected his own fears onto his mother, and he’d let those fears twist and morph into something that was keeping him from seeking happiness. He’d been such a goddamn asshole.
A few minutes later he pulled into their driveway. After parking, he walked around to help his mother out of the car and into the house. She wanted to take a nap, so he saw her to the annex. As he turned to go, she placed a staying hand on his shoulder.
“Will,” she whispered, her voice suddenly very tired sounding, “you should also know what your fathers told me every night.”
“What?”
Her hand tightened on his shoulder. “They told me they loved me and that we had made the most beautiful family in the whole world.”
She smiled at him for a long moment, her mind and her eyes somewhere far off. Then her focus came back.
“I’m very tired, my boy. My sweet, sweet William. I’ll see you after my nap.”
She turned and plodded toward her bed, and Will closed the door softly behind her. He should talk to Seb, go over the conversation he’d just had with his mother. He needed a moment, though. He needed to think about things, about all the tiny, beautiful, complicated, imperfect, miraculous, unbelievable things.
Chapter Seven
“Okay, I don’t know about y’all, but when Beck friggin’ won the tournament and was all muddy and blood-stained and sexy and shit, I had to take a little break.” Marina Andrews swiped on a healthy dab of Lianne’s Honeysuckle Lip Balm and puckered up her lips in the mirror. With a wicked gleam in her eye, she turned around to face the group of ladies. “Then I had to find some fresh panties…if ya know what I mean, ladies.”
“Oh, we know exactly what you mean,” Elena Ward said in her prim British tones while squirming pointedly in her seat.
“Careful, Elena,” Chelsea Goebel said. “If one of your Kinman bears hears about this, they might get jealous of the Finn brothers and put an end to our book club.”
“Then I’ll personally write Sophie Oak and tell her to stop with all the hot sex scenes. I mean, look where it’s got me.” She pointed at her round, swollen belly. “I’m sure she’d understand completely, femina a femina.”
“You will do no such thing!” Marta Verner said, poking Elena in the ribs. “Now pass me that honey salve for dry hands.”
The book club had started over an hour ago, and they hadn’t really gone into depth about the plot. Mostly they’d been doing Google Image searches for a Bound dream cast, but Lianne was very happy with how the women were chatting and testing out her products. They’d given her a few suggestions on a couple of the scents for her bath soaps and even suggested a little less lavender in her lavender honey, but overall, they seemed to really like her stuff. At the end of the meeting, they’d all agreed to fill out a survey to help her tweak and perfect her products even more.
“Lianne.” Michelle Andrews’s soft voice reached through the laughter as Marina made yet another raunchy joke, this one concerning Cian’s considerably large farm tools, or tool, rather.
“Yes, Michelle? Did you want to try something else? Some of the eau de toilette maybe? I don’t think anyone’s tried the honey and lemon verbena yet.”
“No, it’s not that.”
Lianne noticed her take a quick peek at the other woman to make sure no one was paying them close attention. “What is it? Is everything all right?”
“Yes, yes.” She laughed a little. “It’s nothing like that. It’s only…” Michelle gnawed on her lip for a moment, eyeing Lianne as if to gauge her reaction.
“Go on. You can say whatever you need to.” Lianne laid a warm hand on Michelle’s arm for a moment and offered her most inviting smile.
“Well, the Carsons came to visit us last night.”
Something tightened in her gut, but she fought to keep it from showing on her face. As far as she knew, nobod
y in town besides Jamie knew she was pining after those two stubborn bears. Maybe this was about her business and the bank. She needed to play it cool until Michelle finished. “Oh? And what did they want?”
Michelle frowned. “They seemed perturbed. More so than I’ve ever seen. Granted, I haven’t been in Savage Valley for too long, but usually when I see them, they are very quiet and watchful. But yesterday they were agitated. They were definitely agitated. And it had to do with your business and with NormCorp. Do you know anything about this?”
Lianne let out a small breath of relief. At least she wasn’t trying to pry out information about her love life.
But then Michelle leaned in a bit closer. “I know he works for Jamie’s father, but has Skyler been bothering you?”
“Skyler? Mr. Fischer? No, no, not at all. What makes you think that?”
“My aunt, Agnes Bird, who owns the local salon, mentioned that Rita Copely saw you two at the diner and that there seemed to be a bit of a tussle between him and the Carson twins.”
Lianne gritted her teeth. “It’s so easy to forget sometimes just how small this town really is.”
Michelle chuckled. “Now don’t be mad at Mrs. Copely. You can’t blame her for being concerned.” After shooting Lianne an appraising look, Michelle said, “Are you sure there isn’t something else, though? Something a little more personal between you and the Carsons? They claimed that they were simply worried about your investment and about what NormCorp could do if they had considerable control over a business like yours, right in the heart of Savage Valley. They didn’t want to alert Joseph and Caleb Kinman just yet, but they did want some input from another bear family. Yet, call it woman’s intuition, but I could have sworn there was something else, something they didn’t want to come right out and say, especially not to my fiancés, but something that was a big part of their agitation. This wouldn’t have anything to do with you, would it?”
