by Zoe Chant
Sometimes she felt like she had spent her life being an accessory to other people's lives, letting their opinions overrule her own. She wished she could have someone who would listen to her, who respected her desire for quiet and privacy and order.
Dad says that most dragons don't have mates, which means there probably isn't someone perfect out there for me. Her parents weren't mated, and it showed; two strong-willed dragons, they couldn't be in the same room without arguing. She hadn't exactly grown up with good relationship role models.
Maybe she should try dating, even though it had largely been a disaster in the past. There might not be a Mr. Perfect out there, but perhaps there was someone she could have fun with.
Single man wanted. Must love books ...
Yeah, right. In this town? Three quarters of her customers were female, and most of the others were buying books for their wives or girlfriends or moms. Most of the men in Autumn Grove were big, physical guys who liked working with their hands, not exactly reading types. And the good ones were all married anyway. Her chances of stumbling across an unmarried male bookworm looking for a girlfriend were about as good as her chances of suddenly meeting the fated mate she was pretty sure she didn't have.
Heck, even her one employee didn't seem to like books all that much. He certainly couldn't put them on the right shelves to save his life.
"You look so sad, dear," the customer told her as Melody bagged up her books. "Do you know what my mother used to tell me when I was sad?"
"What's that?" Melody asked, trying to smile.
"She used to tell me there's a silver lining to every cloud, and a rainbow follows every storm. It'll get better, dear. Just wait."
Melody held the door for her, and then turned to look around the bookstore. Afternoon sunshine slanted through the windows, painting the books' spines in soft shades of gold. She drew a deep breath, inhaling the smell of old paper and bookbinding glue, and in her chest she could feel her tense, stressed-out dragon begin to uncoil and relax.
All her life, she'd yearned to have her own used bookstore, and now Hidden Treasure Used Books was no longer a fantasy but a wonderful reality. Even if the building was old and things were always breaking, even if she was already having trouble finding customers and realizing why Autumn Pages had gone out of business ... No, enough with the negative thoughts.
No matter what happened in the next few days, she reassured herself, everything would be all right. Her friends would be fine. She'd have her book hoard and her store.
So why did her life seem empty to her now? Why did it seem as if there was a part of her that truly did yearn for the clutter and cheerful chaos of Derek and Gaby's farmhouse, rather than wanting to retreat to her quiet apartment full of books?
I'm lonely. But that's okay. I have friends who love me, and I just need to keep busy with the store until this whole escaped-convict thing blows over. And then she could go back to her life, and nothing would have changed. Nothing at all.
Chapter Three: Gunnar
The ride from the prison was quiet and tense. Gunnar sat next to the cop, Keegan, looking out the window as warehouses and factories gave way to suburban houses and then woods and small towns.
"We're going out in the country?" he ventured. He was wearing the clothes he'd been wearing when they booked him, a slightly shabby brown suit. Three years since he'd last worn it, the seams strained at his shoulders and it was too loose in the waist. He'd bulked up and lost weight around the middle since he'd last been a free man.
On his lap he held a small bundle of items in a bag. Wallet, some cash, the keys to an apartment and car he no longer possessed, a phone with an expired plan, a few books and magazines he'd had in his cell ... it was literally all he had in the world now. He wondered what had happened to the stuff in his apartment after he was arrested. Probably the landlord had thrown it out.
"It's a little town called Autumn Grove," Keegan said, glancing at him. "Ever heard of it?"
Gunnar shook his head.
"Good," Keegan said, and looked back at the road.
Keegan had put on a pair of sunglasses, and without being able to see his eyes, Gunnar found his expressions hard to read. He suspected Keegan was some sort of shifter, but wasn't sure exactly what made him think that. It was something about the way he moved, the casual animalistic grace, and the way he made Gunnar's bear nervous. Some kind of big cat, Gunnar thought, or maybe even another bear.
Even without being able to read Keegan very well, the distrust came through loud and clear. Gunnar really didn't blame him, especially if he'd known Nils.
Are we going to fight Nils? his bear rumbled. It was enjoying the freedom, but seemed unsure about that. Nils is our brother. We shouldn't fight him.
We're not going to fight him unless we have to, Gunnar told his bear. But if he tries to hurt anyone, we won't have a choice.
His bear was distracted from the argument by the woods outside the car. Are we going there? We can shift there!
For a moment, it was all Gunnar could do to contain the animal inside him. Surrounded by humans, he hadn't been able to shift for the last three years at the prison. The urge to get back in touch with that side of himself was a desperate ache like a hole in his chest.
"You okay?" Keegan said. "Hungry?"
Gunnar's stomach growled. He'd missed lunch at the prison—not that there was much to miss—and they'd been driving for hours. "Little bit," he said.
"We'll eat when we get where we're going." Keegan hesitated; Gunnar could tell he was on the verge of saying something. What he finally said, though, wasn't what Gunnar had expected. "What were you in prison for?"
Gunnar eyed him, suspecting a trap. "You know that already, right? I'm sure you've read my file."
"I know what your file says. I want to know what you say."
Gunnar hesitated for a few long moments. Finally he said, "I wasn't a good kid. I used to get into trouble. It'd be easy to blame it on Nils, because he was my big brother, my role model. But I really don't have anyone except myself to blame. I dropped out of school, got in trouble, got caught doing things like stealing cars. Spent some time in juvie." He took a deep breath. He didn't like talking about this part of his life. But it had happened; he couldn't change it. "I finally hit a point where I could see that if I didn't go straight, I was going to get one strike too many and spend the rest of my life in prison. So I got a job, kept my nose clean, and tried to turn things around. Then ... then Nils showed up three years ago."
It still hurt to talk about it. His brother had come back into his life after having vanished for years, used him as an alibi and stashed stolen goods at his apartment, and then skipped town when things got too hot and left Gunnar to the cops. Whatever they'd once shared as brothers was gone ... or so he'd been telling himself for three long years in prison.
"I told the cops and the judge that the stolen stuff wasn't mine. But I had a record, and I couldn't afford a better lawyer than the public defender, who had a ton of cases and wasn't really that invested in mine. I mean, look at me." Gunnar gestured to himself with one big hand. "I don't look innocent. Apparently the judge didn't think so either. I got ten years."
"That's a lot of time when they don't really have you on anything other than holding stolen property. Because of your record?"
Gunnar shrugged with a lightness he didn't feel. He could lie. But he had a feeling Keegan had checked up on him thoroughly enough to know all of this already. This was a test, all right. It was a test to see how much of the truth he was going to tell.
Even though the truth could make Keegan turn this car around and take him right back to prison.
"They offered to cut me a deal. Let me go, or at least give me probation, if I turned state's evidence against Nils and helped them catch him."
"You didn't take the deal," Keegan said quietly. "So they threw the book at you."
Gunnar nodded. There was no surprise in Keegan's voice. He'd known all of that already. It really
had been a test.
"I know why you're asking me all of this," Gunnar said quietly. "I wouldn't betray my brother three years ago. So what you really want to know is, why did I agree to help you this time? You want to know if I'm just in it for an opportunity to escape."
"The thought did cross my mind," Keegan said, his voice bland.
"Look, if there's one thing I had plenty of time to do in prison, it was think," Gunnar said. "I spent a lot of my life telling myself that blood was more important than anything else. Nils and I ... we're all we have in the world. Our parents died when we were kids. We don't have any other close family. I used to feel like, if I lost my brother, I'd lost everything."
He drew a slow breath to calm himself and his restless bear, and wished he had sunglasses like Keegan's to hide his eyes. Instead he looked out the window.
"But I guess what I figured out in prison is that Nils hasn't felt that way about me for a long time," he said. "And even if he still did ... he's done a lot of bad things. Really bad things. He's killed people. I started feeling like prison was exactly where I deserved to be, for letting him get away with it for so long. I took your deal because I want to make things right."
"Even if it means helping put Nils away for good."
Gunnar nodded.
"Hmm," Keegan said, and didn't say anything else.
He turned off the road and drove through a small downtown. It was late afternoon now, and Gunnar looked out at the little brick buildings with the golden sunlight slanting between them. For some reason his eyes were drawn to a sign reading HIDDEN TREASURES USED BOOKS, with the colorful display of books in the window. He wanted all the knowledge inside those books. He wanted to be the kind of person who was worthy of it.
He turned his head to watch a group of children playing in a small park on the street corner. Two of them were little blond boys who reminded him of himself and Nils at that age. Would his life have turned out better if he'd grown up in a place like this? Or would he just have found some other way to screw it up?
"Something interesting out there?" Keegan asked sharply, and Gunnar shook his head, trying to shake off the echoes of the past at the same time. "Good. The place where I'm taking you ... well, let's just say, there's some trust involved in me taking you here. Mostly it's because I want you where I can keep an eye on you. I thought about putting you up in a motel, but you could skip out easily from there, or get a message out to your brother. This way, someone's going to be watching you every minute. Got it?"
They left town, turning onto a small road that went back into the trees. "You're taking me home with you?" Gunnar asked, disbelieving.
"Actually, I'm taking you to a friend of mine's place. His name is Derek, and he's the one your brother is gunning for. He's a mean fighting machine, and he turns into a big damn alpha grizzly. Don't think you can take him in a fight—and yes, I know you're a polar bear shifter, like Nils."
We're going to fight another bear? his bear asked, perking up.
No! Gunnar thought at it, horrified. Don't you dare! The last thing he needed was to get sent back to prison because his bear, after so long being cooped up inside him, lost control at the first dominant bear it came into contact with.
"His family's there," Keegan said. "Mate and kids. My mate too, and make no mistake, if you harm one hair on any of their heads, you won't be able to run far enough or fast enough. Derek and I will hunt you down and tear you apart."
"I won't." Gunnar tried to infuse the words with every ounce of honest sincerity he possessed. "I swear to you, I'd rather die than let harm come to anyone else because of my brother."
"Lucky for you, my animal lets me know when people are lying." Keegan's voice was close to a growl. "That's the only reason why you've made it this far."
He turned off the road onto a gravel driveway that stopped at a gate made of heavy bars of metal. "Stay in the car," Keegan said, still with the growl in his voice. He started to get out, then stopped and held out a hand, palm up. "I saw a phone in the things the guard gave you. Give it to me. You'll get it back when you leave."
"It doesn't even have a service plan," Gunnar pointed out, but he handed it over as requested. Keegan pocketed it and left the driver's door open while he went to the gate.
Are we going to fight him? Gunnar's bear wanted to know. I'd really like to fight him.
No, we aren't going to fight him. We aren't going to fight anyone. Settle down and be quiet.
He leaned forward and watched Keegan open the gate. It wasn't just a matter of unlocking it. Keegan punched a code into a key pad mounted on the steel pole beside the gate—Gunnar recognized it as an alarm system, and tried to stop the juvenile-delinquent part of himself from figuring out how hard it would be to turn off. There was also a wire wound around the top of the pole and gate that Keegan unhooked and left dangling while he swung it open.
As Keegan got back into the car, Gunnar said, "Don't normally see this kind of security on a farm."
"Yeah, well, most farms don't expect to be attacked by an escaped killer who turns into a giant polar bear, either." Keegan drove through the gate and left Gunnar in the car again while he went back to close the gate and re-arm the alarm pad.
This, at least, gave Gunnar some time to look around. Bathed in late-afternoon sunlight, the farm had a dreamy quality. It looked like something out of a movie, Gunnar thought, the sort of movie where little kids with braids and fluffy golden retrievers would be running through the grass in slow motion.
The main farmhouse was a big, rambling structure surrounded by a sweeping expanse of lawn. There was a wooden pole fence circling a barn and pasture. No slow-motion golden retrievers, but Gunnar saw a cat sunning itself on the top bar of the fence, and a small black-and-white pony browsing in the pasture. Some chickens pecked around in a wire-enclosed run beside the barn.
It was beautiful and peaceful and very much not a place for a guy who'd just spent three years in prison.
Gunnar's throat tightened. All through the drive, he'd thought the hardest part of all of this was going to be dealing with his brother. But this was the first time he'd felt panicked. For an instant he just wanted to tell Keegan to turn around and drive him back to prison.
I can't do this. I can't sit around with this nice farm family and pretend I'm like them. I'm not like them. I may not have done what I was sent to prison for, but I was a teenage car thief. I'm not a good person. I don't belong here—
"Hey!" Keegan said, leaning into the driver's side. "You can get out of the car now. Unless you want to sit out here all evening, but if you do that, then I have to do that, and I'll miss out on Gaby's amazing home cooking."
Gunnar got himself under control and made sure his bear was firmly under control. "Coming," he said stiffly, and got out.
They walked past several other vehicles parked outside the house: a sleek black Mustang, a minivan, and a little hatchback with some dings and rust spots. Interesting bunch of cars, Gunnar thought. He wondered if it was an equally interesting mix of people inside the house.
As they climbed the steps to the old-fashioned wooden porch, the door burst open and a woman ran out. She was visibly pregnant and had light brown skin and bouncing dark-brown curls, and that was all Gunnar had a chance to see before she flung her arms around Keegan and planted an enthusiastic kiss on him.
Keegan kissed her back just as enthusiastically. Gunnar couldn't believe the change in him; he'd thought the guy had a stick up his butt a mile long, but for this woman, Keegan's stiff cop face dropped away, revealing a grinning lovesick fool underneath.
The kiss broke and the woman's knees visibly wobbled. Keegan steadied her with an arm around her pregnancy-swollen waist. "Wow," she murmured, and then whacked him in the shoulder with the back of her hand. "You're late—" She stopped, noticing Gunnar on the lower step. "Oh ... hi. This is ...?" She looked blankly at Keegan.
"Ghost's brother Gunnar," Keegan said. "I need to talk to Derek before we go in the house. Is he insi
de?"
"Yeah, he's with Gaby in the kitchen." She turned to Gunnar with no sign of fear, and held out a hand. "Hi, I'm Tessa."
Gunnar started to reach for her hand, but Keegan put an arm around her, pulling her back.
"Hey!" Tessa protested.
"Don't go getting friendly with him," Keegan said. "He's here because we need him and because I want him where I can see him. It's strictly business."
"That's still no reason not to be nice." Tessa freed herself gently but firmly, and turned back to Gunnar. "I'm sorry that my husband has no manners. Anyway, I'm Tessa, and—"
The door slammed open for the second time, this time hard enough to bounce off the wall with a tremendous crash. "What the hell, Keegan?" a deep voice roared.
For a moment it was all Gunnar could do to keep his bear under control. The big guy who'd just stomped out onto the porch was pure dominant shifter grizzly from his bristling buzz cut to his size 13 boots. Massive shoulders strained against his T-shirt, and tats sleeved his arms. The bear inside him was so close to the surface that he had to be right on the verge of a shift; Gunnar could see it in his eyes.
"Calm down, Derek," Keegan snapped, holding out a hand to stop him. Derek was taller than Keegan by several inches and had probably fifty pounds of muscle on him. Still, Keegan didn't seem afraid of him in the slightest.
"We agreed we'd get him out of prison," Derek snarled. "Nobody said anything about bringing him to my home, where my family is—"
"And mine!" Keegan snarled back. "You think you're the only one with something at stake here? I brought him here not only because I believe he genuinely wants to help, but also because at the farm, we can watch him; he can't go running off to find a phone and call his brother—"
"So get him a guard! Or an ankle monitor! Don't turn my home into—"
"Are you reacting this way to him," Keegan shot back, "or is it because he looks like his brother? Stop letting your animal think for you. Calm down and consider this like a rational human being and not—"
