Reidar winked. “Yeah, we figured as much. Good?”
She nodded and wiped her mouth with her linen napkin. “Very. Homemade dressing too. I guess you bring a lot of dates here?”
“Fishing now?” Kelan asked, raising one eyebrow at her.
She shrugged and grinned. But she did wonder if she was special, or if this was a weekly thing with them. How many tourists did they wine, dine, then bed? On second thought, she didn’t want to know. It made her chest ache to think along those lines. That she was one of many, even if she wasn’t naïve enough to assume otherwise. They were grown men, single and handsome. She’d be a fool to think they’d been celibate before meeting her. Even she wasn’t a virgin.
“After work, we mostly eat and drink at the Tap ’n Tine,” Reidar said. He set his spoon into his empty soup bowl. “But this is a nice change, now and then.”
“Actually,” Kelan offered, “we normally eat at home. Heidi likes to cook.”
“You live with Heidi?”
“And our…parents,” Reidar said.
“Why?” They were late twenties, early thirties, but neither one looked the type to be sci-fi gamers who dwelled in Mommy’s basement and debated conspiracy theories online.
“Our parents own a big log home and a lot of land on Mountain Home Road, and they aren’t as young as they used to be. They can use the extra help in taking care of it, so we stay there when we’re not out on a hike or working at the store.”
She took a sip of her ice water. “And what about your other brothers?”
“Axel and Gunnar just built a house not far from our parents. Torsten and Sindre live in an apartment above the shop.”
She chuckled. “Heidi must feel like the odd duck.”
“Why? Because she’s the only girl?”
“Yeah, a little, but mostly ’cause I heard you guys all travel in pairs.”
The men didn’t laugh.
“You heard?” Reidar asked.
“Yeah. The Falke family is a popular topic over at the local diner.”
Reidar groaned, muttering, “The gossip mill never stops,” which made her grin.
Kelan asked, “Does that bother you?”
“The gossip?”
“The pairs…”
After last night? She shook her head. “Not at all. Just seems a little…odd, I guess, that you all…” She laughed and waved her hand. “Well, not that I know all of you do what we…umm.” Biting her tongue, she gave them a sheepish grin. “That’s probably none of my business, is it?”
“You remember the other woman at the shop when you shot me? The pretty one with jet black hair?” Kelan asked, staring into her eyes.
Beth nodded.
“She lives with Axel and Gunnar.”
“Ohhh. Well.” She fiddled with her napkin.
“So, what about your family? Any ‘odd ducks’ in it?” Reidar asked with a teasing smile.
“Man, my mom…” She shook her head and laughed. “Then again, she’s on her fifth marriage, and if you count all the men in between, sticking with just two would be a step up for her.”
Reidar asked, “Lots of stepfathers in your life?”
“Yeah. My parents divorced when I was around four. Mom cheated. Wound up marrying the guy she cheated with. That lasted about a year. Then there were a half dozen boyfriends/uncle figures hanging around before she started marrying them. She was on the third husband when I moved into the dorms for college. I never even met number four. Married in Vegas and divorced there a few months later. The guy she’s with now actually seems the most stable, and has lasted the longest.”
“And your father?”
She made a face. “Used to spend summers and holidays with him, but he left Seattle with a new wife when I was fourteen. I’ve only seen him a handful of times since then, although he never misses a birthday or Christmas.” She poked her fork at what was left of her salad. “He’s got another family. Lives in Florida. He was a fisherman here, and he’s one there.”
“So you do have siblings?” Kelan asked.
Beth nodded. “Three half-sisters from my dad, and seven step-siblings from my mom’s various marriages. Never close to any of them.”
“Sounds like you’ve been on your own a very long time,” Reidar said.
“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “It’s better than being in the middle of all the drama.”
Kelan leaned his elbow on the table and propped his chin on his hand only to straighten up when his cell phone buzzed. He checked the number and pocketed the phone without answering it. “It’s Heidi. I’ll call her back later.” To Beth he said, “Family drama can be interesting at times. Really damn annoying at others.”
She laughed. “I guess you’re stuck in the middle all of the time, huh?”
“Middle children too, kind of. Not the oldest, not the youngest.”
Kelan’s eyes…She could stare into them forever.
“What made you pick your line of work?” he asked.
“A trip to the zoo with my dad when I was ten.” She grinned and lifted her mixed drink. “I fell madly in love with the tigers. So big and beautiful.” She took a sip. “But, as you know, there aren’t a lot of tigers around here, and I can’t imagine living anywhere but Washington, so I had to find something closer to home.”
“What’s your goal? Why do you do what you do?”
“That’s simple. To learn everything I possibly can about the elusive predators and to make sure their numbers don’t dwindle while I’m still on this earth.”
Reidar raised his eyebrows. “All by yourself?”
She laughed. “Of course not. But I want to be part of the solution. Starting with genetic samples to make sure they’re not inbreeding, which leads to birth defects, high mortality rates and eventually the end of a species.” She leaned forward, warming to her subject. “There are only estimates on the numbers because they’re so hard to find, but there are between two thousand and twenty-five hundred in Washington State, and though the population seems stable in western Washington, the numbers are declining in the eastern parts. I want to know why.”
“But every week on the news there’s a sighting near a town, or a cougar eats someone’s beloved toy poodle, so there can’t be too few.” Kelan sat back and crossed his arms again.
“Yeah, the towns keep expanding. People build in the country, in the forests, in cougar territory. What do you expect?”
“You want everyone in high rises in downtown Seattle?”
She laughed and shook her head. “No. I’m not a tree hugger, but I do love the country. Spent my childhood on a huge farm surrounded by forest on Whidbey Island. Human population grows; it’s a fact. But we also need to make sure that the creatures in our world don’t suffer unduly because we want to share their space. By studying and helping the cougars, we can learn things that will help other breeds of big cats that are in greater danger all over the world.”
Kelan sighed and looked across the table at his brother. Reidar nodded.
She looked back and forth between them. “I swear you two can talk to each other without saying a word.”
They both turned to her.
“How’s that?” Reidar asked.
“You stare at each other, and I know you’re communicating somehow.”
Reidar chuckled, but it sounded a bit forced, his smile not reaching his gorgeous eyes. “It’s a twin thing.”
“So I’ve heard,” she muttered and lifted her drink again. She’d almost polished it off. “Something I’ll never know, I guess.”
“Want another drink?” Kelan asked.
She nodded as the waiter arrived with their dinner. The scent of her prime rib made her mouth water. “Thanks, guys,” she said when the server departed.
“For?” Kelan glanced up at her, butter knife in one hand.
“Dinner. Conversation. Even arguing with you is more relaxing than…” a night alone in a hotel room. She smiled. “It’s nice, and I like you two a lot.�
��
They glanced at each other then back at her. “We like you too, Beth,” Kelan said in the gentlest voice she’d heard him use. “More than we should.”
Chapter Nine
“There’s still daylight left,” Reidar said as they stepped outside ahead of Kelan, who was taking care of the bill. “You up for a stroll?”
“Sure. That’d be nice.”
“I know just the place. Have you been to the park?”
Beth shook her head.
They waited for Kelan to catch up before Reidar led them down a different side street and into a wooded park that stretched along the river’s edge.
Neither brother spoke, nor did she as she took in the tranquil sight of plant life alongside the rippling waters. No words were necessary. Though Kelan stayed close, he let Reidar guide the way, and it was the gentle Reidar who took her by the hand during their stroll.
She enjoyed the sweet comradery they shared as they listened to birds chirp. A squirrel did a one-eighty on the path, scampered up a nearby tree trunk and vocally chewed them out for disrupting its plans.
The critter’s anger made her grin.
They stopped at a point where the water foamed white amid a rocky outcrop, the sounds of bubbling rapids filling the silence. Kelan moved closer to the shoreline, picked up some pebbles and skipped one after another out across the smoother surface upriver from the rapids.
“I can see why you love it here,” she said, drawing Reidar’s attention.
He winked, bent down to pluck a tiny white wild flower and slipped it over her ear. “And I knew you had the kind of heart to understand.” Lifting her hand to his lips, he looked out across the river. “I was impressed by what you said about man sharing this world with animals. You have conviction, a passion for what you believe in, and that’s admirable.”
She studied his profile, so similar to his brother’s and yet different. They each had a fire inside that she could sense, but where Kelan’s was more explosive, Reidar’s simmered with undying strength and a tenderness that called to her.
“But?”
His lips twitched with amusement before he replied. “But…are there limits to what you’d be willing to do to achieve your dreams?”
She tensed. “Of course. I’m not unethical.”
“I didn’t say you were. It’s just…”
“Just what?”
He shrugged, avoiding her gaze, apparently unwilling or unable to say more.
She couldn’t fault him for having doubts. The scene she’d made in their store hadn’t exactly presented her in the best of light. “I don’t think your sister likes me,” she said, speculating on where his concerns came from. What did she have to do to convince them she wasn’t a threat to their precious pet?
“Heidi doesn’t really know you.”
“Axel? And the others?”
Reidar looked at her then, his gaze holding hers for a long moment. “They’re just concerned about Falke’s safety.”
“And you?”
“We all are.”
“That’s what I thought. I swear to you, I mean no harm to Falke. I want to help animals like him. I can’t do that by sacrificing my integrity and harming the very thing I’m trying to protect.”
He released a breath and caressed her cheek with his fingertips. “I believe you.”
After a suspended pause, she asked, “What about you?”
He held her gaze, stared.
“What do you believe in, Reidar?”
He glanced at the horizon, toward the setting sun, his thumb caressing the back of her hand. After a second, he answered, “Like you, I think there are some things in life worth protecting.”
“Ah. So you’re the tree hugger?” she teased, making him smile, and something fluttered inside her tummy at the sight.
“Not exactly. That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” She grew serious, stepped around to face him and took his other hand in hers too. “What’re your convictions? What things are worth protecting to you?”
His eyes warmed with such passion as he released her hands to rub his palms up her arms.
“Family.”
Smiling, she let him turn her, leaned back against him and wrapped herself in his arms.
“Hey! Care to stroll out here?” Kelan shouted from where he stood shin-deep in the river. He’d rolled up his pant legs and removed his socks and shoes.
She chuckled. “Are you crazy? Isn’t it cold?”
He grinned. “Yep. Refreshing.”
“Is he always like this?” she asked Reidar.
“Like what?”
“So adventurous.”
“Yes. Kelan is a free spirit.”
“Come on in,” Kelan urged. “It feels great.”
When she hesitated, Reidar murmured, “Scared?”
“No.”
“Where’s that adventurous spirit of yours?”
She slid a sideways glance at him. “My scientific spirit is trying to calculate the odds of falling in…or determine whether you two are up to something.”
“Come on,” Kelan called out again. “What are you waiting for?”
Reidar smiled. “Make him promise not to get you wet, and you’ll make it out with only damp feet. On my honor, I know my brother. He’d never break a vow.”
His tone was enough to convince her.
Honor.
Family.
The man before her was pretty passionate about his own convictions, too. Impressed, she smiled.
Only after she received promises from both brothers did she remove her shoes, roll up her jeans and wade into the river.
Her happy laughter soon echoed through the valley.
Reidar laced his fingers with Beth’s as they walked back to the inn from the park. The sun had set, but the chilled water had revived all of them like Kelan said it would. And as promised, they all escaped without a dunking.
Kelan opened the hotel’s door for them. Reidar noticed his brother glance at the clock and then his watch, but didn’t say anything as he led Beth upstairs.
“Left pocket,” she said, this time not even attempting to reach for her own room keycard.
We shouldn’t be doing this, Kelan said silently. We got nowhere with her tonight. She still wants another blood sample, but how do we figure out where the first one went?
Reidar slid his fingers into the pocket and told Kelan, I need this—her—tonight. And so do you.
Beth’s eyelids drifted closed as he squeezed her butt, pulled her against his body, and then retrieved the card, which he used to open the door. Dipping his head, he kissed her while he walked her backwards into the room and tossed the keycard on the dresser by the television.
“Mmm,” she murmured, pulling away enough to talk. “You comin’, Kelan?”
Not yet, but I will be.
Reidar smiled at the tone of surrender in his brother’s telepathic quip. “Yeah, he’s not gonna let me have you all to myself,” he told Beth as he removed her glasses and handed them to Kelan.
“Sharing’s good,” she got out before he claimed her lips again.
While they kissed, she tugged at his shirt, so he let her remove it and started to help her off with her own. Pushing one bra strap off her shoulder, Reidar pressed his lips to her skin and noticed his bare-chested brother draw near to kiss her on the nape. In seconds her bra, a sexier lacy scrap of material than what she’d worn the other night, landed on a growing pile of clothes, and her breasts were in Kelan’s hands, lifted and ready for a taste.
He dipped his head lower to lick a plump nipple and heard the catch in her breath when he sucked the tip into his mouth. She combed her fingers into his hair and held him to her for several minutes while he suckled at his leisure, but then he felt the delicate brush of her fingers along the waistline of his pants.
A slight yank and a few tugs later, she shoved his jeans and underwear down his thighs until they dropped to his ankles. He toed off his shoes and was abou
t to step free of his clothes when she slid her palms over his thighs, her nails scoring his flesh with maddening gentleness. He froze, letting her explore his body—his hips, abdomen, sides, and ass.
She was naked, his brother having somehow taken care of stripping her pants and shoes off when Reidar wasn’t looking. Though he watched her explore his body with her hands, her head was lowered, her silky, shiny hair blocking his view of her face. He used a finger under her chin to lift her face toward his.
Kelan reached around her to play with her breasts, pinching and plucking at both pert nipples, but he spoke not a word, letting Reidar control the tempo and tone of tonight’s affair.
A passive Kelan was an odd thing, and Reidar’s gut clenched. His brother was in turmoil. So was he. But he couldn’t stay away from Beth. She was sweet, warm, and her passion about her work—even though it could destroy their entire family—made him love her all the more.
He loved her.
As his lips came down on hers, Beth wrapped her fingers around his cock. He moaned into her mouth and shifted closer toward her touch. His fingers bit into her arms, but he let her explore until she cupped his balls and he could take no more.
Kelan…
His brother responded immediately, taking Beth by the wrists and pulling her arms behind her back. Her gaze met Reidar’s, and he wanted to fall into the emerald depths of her eyes. Instead, he held her face with one palm and gave her a soft, chaste kiss on the mouth.
She surprised him when she nipped at his bottom lip as he pulled away, and then she dropped to her knees as if they’d ordered her to do so, which they hadn’t. Not yet. But that didn’t matter the instant she enclosed the head of his cock in her mouth and laved it with her tongue. He buried his fingers in her hair and held her to him, shoving his rock-hard flesh a little deeper each time she sucked on his aroused length.
“Fuck, Beth,” he said, the curse escaping on a burst of air.
She giggled, and the vibrations ricocheted straight to his heart, which pumped more adrenaline through his veins and made him want her that much more. At this rate, they would never make it to her bed even though it was only a few feet away.
With a hint of regret, he pulled himself free, maneuvered her around onto her hands and knees and knelt behind her. “I can’t wait,” he explained.
Falke’s Captive Page 14
