by Tasha Black
“No, the only yellow tomatoes I’ve seen were those little cherry-sized ones,” she told him.
“Well, these are the secret ingredients in Cresson’s Gold Chili.” His smile warmed her insides. “So don’t go telling anyone.”
“Wow, a secret ingredient,” she said. “Who is Cresson? Why have I never heard of his chili?”
“Oh, it’s a local thing,” Ethan explained. “Arthur Cresson was a wealthy man who was a volunteer firefighter here back in the thirties. After the wood frame borough hall burned down in 1910 it was built back with stone and brick. Well, Cresson wanted to give some of his riches to the station when he died, but the chief at the time was his arch rival. On his deathbed, Cresson claimed he had hidden three gold bars somewhere in the firehouse.”
“No way,” Evangeline said, wondering why she’d never heard this story. “So where did he hide them?”
Ethan shrugged.
“Are they still here somewhere?” she asked, glancing around incredulously.
“Possibly,” he said, grabbing a pepper and removing the stalk. “But of course it was probably just a tall tale. Or something he devised to drive the old chief crazy.”
“But you don’t know that for sure,” Evangeline said, suddenly taken with the idea that there was hidden treasure in the building.
“Well, they did renovate the building and expand in the 1950s, so it likely would have turned up then if it was ever here in the first place,” Ethan said. “But I guess it’s possible that the treasure is still here somewhere. A lot of people have searched though.”
“Why didn’t he hide it in his own house?” she asked.
“His house was wood frame and he was afraid it would burn down too,” Ethan explained. “And he wasn’t wrong to worry - a lot of houses did burn down back then. If you read the town history, you’d be amazed.”
As a matter of fact, she had read Tarker’s Hollow: A History, back in high school. And she’d heard some of the shifter history too, though that stuff didn’t make it into the books.
“You’re making a lot of chili,” she remarked.
“It’s for a fundraiser,” he explained. “The roof is leaking, and since it currently has three layers of asphalt shingles over the cedar shake, it’s going to be a pretty expensive job. We’re doing a huge bake sale too. It won’t be enough, but every bit counts.”
“So you’re spending Christmas here to make chili for a fundraiser?”
“Well, I’m on duty too,” he smiled. There was pride in his eyes.
“All by yourself?” she asked.
Ethan looked down at his peppers.
“It was originally scheduled to be two people,” he said. “A married couple. They almost always take the Christmas shifts. They’re retired now, but they’ve been volunteers here since they were teenagers. They’ve even got a tree and decorations down in one of the bays. But Ed had a heart attack and of course Dot wanted to be with him, so…”
Ed and Dot - could that be the Walkers who used to run the candy shop in town?
“So you volunteered to take the shifts,” she finished for him.
He nodded.
“That was really nice of you,” she told him.
He grinned at her and the sweetness of it almost hurt.
Something passed between them then. She felt it.
Her bear felt it too.
And even though Evangeline still felt the wrenching agony of her old crush, the bear’s first instinct was to play hard to get. She found herself hopping out of her seat and heading to the window to get some space.
What she saw outside surprised both woman and bear.
The snow was falling heavily.
It was at least six inches deep already.
“It’s really kicking up a dickens out there,” she said, although she really couldn’t say why she chose that silly expression.
Ethan didn’t say a word behind her.
She turned back to him and saw the change in the way he looked at her.
5
Ethan watched her looking out the window, and wondered again what brought her to him. Was his imagination working overtime, or had something just passed between them?
His hand went to the small stone bear in his pocket. In all the excitement, he’d forgotten all about it.
You’re lonely, Ethan.
Joseph Crow’s words echoed in mind.
The old man was right. Anything Ethan had just imagined was only wishful thinking.
“It’s really kicking up a dickens out there,” Angie said from the window.
Funny. That’s just what Kate Harkness always said…
The realization hit him like a car crash, taking his breath away.
For a moment, the woman at the window was gone, replaced by that shy, chubby girl, staring out at the snow through the window at Harkness Farms as he and Derek drank hot cocoa by the fire, waiting for their gloves to dry out so they could hit the sledding hill again.
She turned back to him, breaking the spell, her mouth slightly open.
“Evangeline,” Ethan murmured.
God, he never would have recognized her, she looked older, and so thin compared to the precociously buxom little beauty she had been.
But that… tingle that passed between them. It made sense now.
He hadn’t felt that since high school. Since that New Year’s Eve, the one before her birth mom showed up to take her away.
“I didn’t recognize you,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
She gazed back at him silently, hypnotizing him with those bottomless, dark eyes.
It made him want to wrap his arms around her, kiss the sweet lips he’d wanted to kiss seven years ago.
She looked down, and Ethan came back to himself.
Questions flooded his mind.
“You recognized me, didn’t you?” he asked, but he already knew the answer. Why had she lied to him?
“You look exactly the same.” She smiled down at the carpet.
“Hey, I’ve been working out,” he teased. “You didn’t notice my muscles?”
“You always had muscles, Ethan Chambers,” she smiled.
“You lost a lot of weight,” he observed carefully, not sure how to proceed when the truth was that he had preferred her fuller figure.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I was so fat.”
Fury surged in his chest.
“You were beautiful,” he growled.
She looked up at him in shock, her lips forming a perfect little “o”.
“Sorry, I mean, you look nice now, too,” he hedged, cursing himself inwardly. “What did you do? Work out or go on one of those meal plans?”
She blanched and he wondered where he’d gone wrong. Most of the women he knew who dieted liked to talk about it.
“Sorry,” he said again.
“Oh,” she said. “No. I mean, yes, something like that.”
He gazed at her again and somehow she looked more like herself than ever. Now that she felt off balance the familiar pink blush had appeared on the apples of her cheeks.
God, he’d had such a massive crush on her.
But she had been Derek’s little sister, and he’d known Derek was fiercely protective of all his foster siblings.
“Were you back in town to visit the family?” he asked.
She swallowed and her eyes were suddenly so sad. She turned abruptly back to the window.
Ethan crossed the space between them. He wanted to put an arm around her, to comfort her, but he settled for standing next to her, gazing out the window.
“Yes, I was going to visit,” she said quietly.
“That’s really nice, I’m glad you keep in touch,” he told her sincerely. “They were a mess when you left. And I know Kate worries about you. She mentioned you just the other day.”
“She did?” Evangeline asked, her face lighting up.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I didn’t actually hear the whole thing, I was in the other room, but she was saying s
omething to Derek about wishing she could bring you home for three moons or something.”
Evangeline’s smile disappeared.
“Three hundred moons,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s it, three hundred moons. What’s that all about?”
“Oh,” she said, “it’s a long story.”
“Well, we’re not going anywhere for a long time,” he told her, gesturing out the window.
They stood, side by side, looking out into the snow. The soft lights of the village made the lazy drifts look warm. Ethan noticed one of the streetlights across the square had gone out, and made a mental note to deal with it after the storm.
“I know you have a secret,” he told her, keeping his eyes on the scene outside so as not to frighten her. “I want you to know I’ll keep it for you, no matter what. And help you, if you’ll let me.”
The words hung in the air a moment. Ethan held his breath, wondering if the Evangeline of seven years ago was still in there somewhere - the earnest girl whose burgeoning confidence grew every day she’d spent at Harkness Farms.
“Knowing my secrets will only put you in danger,” she told him at last.
“I run into burning buildings, Evangeline. It will take more than that to scare me away.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she smiled.
He felt his heart melting like the snow against the warmth of the window glass.
But she turned and headed back to the table.
“I guess if we’re going to be here a while, we may as well make some Cresson’s Gold,” she said.
He joined her at the table. She might not be able to share her secrets yet, but as long as she stayed he would try to help her open up.
He snagged another pepper and got to work, trying not to notice the way her lips turned up at the corners as she got into her work.
6
Evangeline chopped up vegetables and tried not to let her consternation show on her face.
Three hundred moons.
She had forgotten after all these years. But maybe this was why the bear was nosing at the edges of her conscious mind, pushing her way to freedom.
Evangeline had been raised by her own grandmother, mostly. Her mom had bailed early, probably for the best. She wasn’t exactly a model parent, as it turned out.
When baby Evangeline had first shifted, Gram had brought her straight to Kate Harkness, where a family friend, Gloria Cortez had sung to her - a spell of protection, to keep her bear at bay. Some of the kids Kate and Gloria helped stayed there at Harkness farms. But Gram had taken her home again, unwilling to let her go if the animal was under control.
The spell was supposed to keep the bear inside until three hundred moons had passed.
But at age fifteen, when Evangeline’s mom had shown up out of the blue to take her away from her grandmother, the bear had exploded out of her again - this time viciously. Though her mother wasn’t injured, Gram had thought it best to hide Evangeline with Kate Harkness.
And it had done her a world of good.
Until the other shoe dropped.
“So what was it like, being a Harkness?” Ethan asked, interrupting her reverie.
“It was amazing,” she replied honestly. “I felt like the luckiest kid in the world.”
“You seemed so happy, once you got settled in,” Ethan replied.
Evangeline nodded, not shy about owning the joy she had felt for that shining year.
“I always wanted to be a Harkness,” Ethan confided.
She glanced up at his blue eyes.
He was serious.
“But,” she began, but couldn’t finish. Anything she could have followed it up with would have been rude or presumptuous.
He smirked and looked back down at the peppers on his board. Then he put down the knife.
“Look, I know from the outside I sound like a spoiled kid,” he said. “My parents had money. I was good at sports.”
She nodded.
“But I never felt accepted for who I really was except in that farmhouse,” he told her simply. “My parents worried about everything on paper - my grades, what position I played, my SAT scores. Once that was all satisfactory, they were worried about their club, their appearances, their perfect house, their perfect son.”
Evangeline nodded. She’d suspected as much, but wondered.
“Kate Harkness had real work, real problems for kids to solve. At her house I could be worth something more than my score on the last math test.”
“Yeah,” Evangeline smiled, thinking about her scores on the first few math tests at Tarker’s Hollow High.
“I guess I sound really entitled,” he said.
“No,” she said immediately. “I agree. That year was the happiest time of my life.”
Until right now.
He smiled at her and the warmth seemed to be bubbling out of his eyes. And her heart, her tenacious heart was thawing like a stop motion movie of a pond in the springtime.
“Listen, Evangeline,” he said. “I know you’ve been through something. I can tell. Your car’s not broken down.”
Panic froze her veins, and she splayed her hands on the table, ready to launch herself out the door.
“No, please,” he said. “I’m not asking to know what happened. I just want you to know I take my position as an honorary Harkness very seriously. I’ve got your back, and I’m here to help. No matter what.”
7
Ethan held his breath.
He had been waiting, wanting to speak those words since the moment she’d walked in the door. Before he had known she was Evangeline.
He had risked her flight, banking on her ability to trust him - to trust the piece of him that shared part of her history. He hoped he hadn’t bet wrong.
“I-I can’t tell you,” she said at length. But she moved her hands back to her lap, which was a good sign.
“That’s okay,” he told her. “But if you change your mind I’m here. And I’ll help you, no questions asked.”
He wondered if she had been abused physically. He hoped not.
“It was nothing like that,” she said suddenly, as if she’d read his mind. “I mean I’ve been through something, but nothing… sexual.”
She reddened and began chopping bell peppers as if her life depended on it.
“I’m glad,” he said, stunned.
He was relieved, although he certainly wouldn’t have thought any less of her. She was clearly the victim in whatever issues she had going on. And that sure as hell wasn’t her fault. But how was he supposed to follow that up in conversation without asking the million other questions it spawned?
“What was it like to go to Harkness Farms for the first time?” he asked instead.
“I don’t really remember the first time,” she said, smiling faintly.
“Weren’t you like fifteen?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, “the time you met me I was. But my grandmother brought me there briefly when I was a baby, too. Kate was able to help out that time. But when I was fifteen I got to stay.”
“I remember how shy you were,” Ethan smiled, putting the last of his green bell peppers in the bowl with her reds. They looked Christmas-y, together like that.
“Yeah,” she grinned.
“But Johnny sure tried to get you out of your shell,” Ethan laughed. Johnny had gone on to become a rock star, but not before he taught the Harkness kids his penchant for pranks.
“Do you remember the time he told me there was a snake in my bed?” Evangeline asked, her eyes wide.
“Yeah,” he laughed, “but it was one of Cleo’s kittens.”
“Oh my gosh. Remember how Derek yelled?” Evangeline asked. “I thought he was going to punch him.”
“He loved you,” Ethan told her simply. I loved you too. I just didn’t know it yet.
“He did, didn’t he?” Evangeline asked in wonder.
“He loved all his siblings,” Ethan said. “But you were special, s
uch a serious kid and such a hard worker.”
“I liked helping Kate,” she shrugged, but her cheeks went pink with pleasure.
“You sure did,” he told her. “I never saw anyone work so hard on that farm. Except maybe Kate herself.”
“It was wonderful,” Evangeline said. “I loved the trees, the shop, the people, and most of all the family.”
“So were things good with your birth family when they came back for you?” he asked.
Her expression darkened.
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” he said quickly.
Evangeline put down the knife, and wiped her hands on the towel on her lap. She turned to gaze out the window and he followed her eyes to see the swirls of snow outside. It was like a storm at sea, so ferocious it didn’t seem real. He was neatly distracted when she began to speak again.
“I suppose by now you know all the Harkness secrets,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he agreed. From Johnny’s stint in rehab to Derek’s near death in a plane crash, there was little of their troubles he hadn’t seen them through.
“Then you’re probably wondering what I am,” she said.
What?
He stayed silent, hoping she would extrapolate.
“I’m a bear,” she told him.
A what?
It had almost sounded like she said she was a bear. But that was crazy.
“And this is my 300th moon,” she continued, unaware that he was reeling in the wake of her words. It must be a metaphor, or maybe he had misheard her. Or maybe he’d missed the real issue - Evangeline had… mental problems. Delusions. But something about that didn’t ring true.
“So I’m worried about staying here,” she said. “I’m afraid I might hurt you.”
That much he understood - the threat of her going away.
“No,” he said immediately. “We’ll be fine.”
But the wind suddenly stopped howling, and the clouds thinned, revealing the curve of the full moon, radiant through a veil of snow.
A shiver went through Evangeline, and she turned to him.
Her eyes were like nothing he had ever seen before - wild and golden, the irises huge.
