Body and Soul

by Susan Krinard

  This party was a symbol of those changes. A kind of healing, Jesse thought—starting over, as she and David and Megan had begun to do. A fresh start for Kirk and his mother as well.

  Jesse grinned as she watched Kirk run up to join Megan and David. All at once David was swinging Kirk up on his shoulders while Megan hung on to his leg and laughingly tried to pin him to the spot. David was good with kids—he seemed to share their uncomplicated joy in simple things. Merely being alive, and with those he loved, was for him a daily miracle.

  As it was for Jesse.

  She glanced around the room, basking in the pleasure of happy conversation and goodwill. The one person she was just as glad not to see was Marie. The woman had closed up her restaurant and left town shortly after Gary’s death was declared official. Jesse doubted she’d show her face in rustic, déclassée Manzanita again.

  “Great party, Jesse,” Kim said, coming to join her in the corner of the room. “Too bad Eric couldn’t be here.”

  Jesse turned to her friend. “Don’t worry. There’s still your wedding—if you don’t mind my bringing a guest.”

  Kim grinned in David’s direction. “Mind? I just hope he doesn’t hog the limelight from the bride. Me, that is.” She rolled her eyes to emphasize the joke. “Speaking of which, when are you two going to …” She arched a meaningful brow.

  Jesse reddened. She had a tendency to do that lately. Sometimes it felt as if all the emotions she’d suppressed for most of her adult life were overflowing in blushes and tears and laughter.

  “Come on,” Kim said, leaning closer. “When’s it going to be? Give.”

  “Did you talk to Eric about the things we discussed?” Jesse said quickly.

  Kim chuckled. “Okay. Yes, I did, and he said he’d be more than happy to be your legal advisor. He’s going to ask around down in San Francisco this week. It might take a while to set up, but … we both think it’s a great idea, Jess.”

  “What’s a great idea?”

  Al loomed over them, a quiet smile on his face. Though he hadn’t exactly been the life of the party, he’d offered his home willingly and done more talking with more different people than Jesse could remember. He acknowledged Kim with a tilt of his punch glass. “I didn’t intend to interrupt …”

  “It’s a plan I’ve been putting together,” Jesse said. “I haven’t had a chance to discuss it with you, but now that Kim has Eric working on the legal end of things—” She felt a renewed flood of excitement. “You know my father left me a large inheritance when he died. I’ve been getting checks every month, but until recently I had no desire to touch that money.”

  She didn’t need to elaborate. During the awkward hours when she and David had explained his origins to a dumbfounded Al, she’d admitted a lot more of her deepest feelings about her family and childhood than she’d ever shared, even with her closest friend. She didn’t need to hug that anger and sorrow to herself anymore; she’d come to terms with all of it, including her father’s desertion.

  Now she could use her father’s guilt money for a good cause. “I’ve already started paperwork to buy the old resort. After the fire it’ll need a lot of fixing up, but—”

  “You’re reopening the old resort?” Al said. “But with Blue Rock—”

  “I don’t intend to go into competition with Blue Rock,” she said. “What I had in mind was a kind of special summer camp, a retreat for kids from disadvantaged homes or in fosterage, the kind who don’t get opportunities to come up to the woods. I remember what it was like going from foster home to foster home. No frills, no vacations, no one to listen when I was hurting.” She glanced toward Kirk, who was swallowing a large mouthful of cake with Megan’s encouragement. “Maybe even a place for kids like Bobby Moran, so they have a chance to try something besides drugs and alcohol. I thought of setting up a kind of survival training course, teaching kids some of the basics of search and rescue.”

  Al nodded slowly. “That’s an ambitious plan, Jesse. And a worthy one.”

  “I know it’s not going to be simple, but we have the money and the time. We’re already researching the steps involved in setting it up. Eric’s going to find us the legal help we need. We’re starting to look at financing, insurance, staffing. I’m hoping to hire Lisa Moran as a part of the team.” She met Al’s gaze. “And we’re going to need counselors, Al. For the kids.”

  He swirled the pink liquid in his glass. “I’ve been doing some thinking myself,” he said. “I’m pretty rusty as a psychologist, Jesse. I left practice years ago because … I wasn’t prepared to get involved with other people’s problems. I thought they would drag me into a place I didn’t want to go. But now …” He looked up, and his eyes were dark with emotion. “I’ve learned that the world isn’t the way I thought it was. The rational isn’t everything. I’ve spent too much of my life cut off from possibilities.”

  Jesse remembered when she’d admired that very detachment, wanted to emulate Al’s safe and sane distance from pain and passion. “But you helped me, Al,” she said softly.

  “I could have done more harm than good. That’s why I’ve been considering taking some refresher courses—catching up on the developments I’ve missed in the last decade or so.” He glanced at Megan. “I know that Megan will be in good hands if I leave her with you and David. She already thinks of you two as her parents.”

  Jesse swallowed. “That doesn’t mean she won’t miss you. But I think she’ll understand.”

  Since Al had loosened up around his niece, Megan had relaxed in turn. They were finally becoming friends. But if Al followed his plans to return to school, Megan wouldn’t feel abandoned. Megan had taken to David as if he were the father she’d barely known. It was almost uncanny. She didn’t question the fact that she’d seen him in dreams and visions of her own, or that her “angel” had become real.

  And three days ago Megan had called Jesse “Mom” for the first time. It might have been an unconscious slip, but it meant the world to Jesse.

  “I hope you’ll consider helping us with the camp someday,” Jesse said. “But whatever you do—” She offered her hand, and Al engulfed it in his own. “We’ll always love you.”

  The handshake became a hug—reminding Jesse how much strength lay behind that mild exterior—and then Al released her and walked quickly away. Jesse rubbed at her eyes, chagrined at her newfound tendency to go all weepy at the slightest provocation.

  As if someone had called her name, she looked up and across the room. David stood alone, his gaze locked on hers, and the noise and bustle of the party disappeared.

  He came to her now on ordinary mortal feet, as naturally as he’d once winked in and out of existence. She reached for his hand and he took it, wordless, his eyes promising the kisses that would have to wait for a more private moment.

  Jesse thought she could watch him forever. She treasured his quiet companionship as much as his passion—for her, and for his newfound life. She’d discussed her plans for the old resort with him first, after he’d wryly wondered what use he, a soldier and ne’er-do-well, could be in this modern world.

  She’d reminded him that he was nothing if not adaptable, and they’d both have a lot to learn if they were to implement her dream. She didn’t think it would take him long to learn carpentry, and she looked forward to the hours they’d spend together rebuilding the cabins and furniture for the resort.

  They were going to be very busy, but never too busy for each other. Or the little girl they’d both come to love.

  David cleared his throat. “I think this would be the right time for the announcement,” he said, squeezing her hand.

  “What announcement?”

  He only smiled mysteriously and held up his hands until every eye in the room was focused on him and the buzz of noise died.

  “Friends,” he said, “thank you for coming to Megan’s party.” Megan abandoned the new model horse she’d been putting through its paces and ran to David, who grabbed her playfully and prop
ped her against his hip.

  “I wish to make you all witnesses to my request,” he said, a certain solemnity in his manner in spite of the squirming, laughing child beside him. Gently he set Megan down and tweaked her nose with the tip of his finger. Then he turned, dropped to one knee before Jesse, and placed his hand over his heart.

  “Jesse Copeland,” he said, straight-faced, “I most humbly beg your hand in marriage.”

  She stared at him, blushing furiously.

  His voice dropped to a whisper as he searched her face. “Will you be my wife, Jesse?”

  “Say yes!” someone shouted. A chorus of voices joined the first, urging her swift agreement.

  “Say yes,” Megan said, grabbing Jesse’s hand with an urgent tug. “Don’t make him wait.”

  Jesse grinned and shook her head. “Of course I’ll marry you,” she said. David moved in a ghostlike blur and took her in his arms, and she didn’t even care if people were watching.

  And when Megan wrapped her arms around them both, Jesse knew they wouldn’t have to wait for heaven.

  Don’t miss Susan Krinard’s

  romantic fantasy, the first of a

  spectacular werewolf trilogy,

  TOUCH OF THE WOLF

  Available from Bantam Books.

  Read on for a preview …

  PROLOGUE

  Northumberland, England, 1860

  Braden stood in the broad shadow of his grandfather, Barnabas Forster, Earl of Greyburn, and gazed about the Great Hall into thirty pairs of eyes. Eyes that, like his, seemed human but were not. Watchful eyes: fierce, ever alert, weighing every other man and woman who waited in silence for the Earl to speak. Even now, at this ninth great meeting of the families, the delegates never forgot what they were.

  Loups-Garous. Werewolves. A breed apart from mankind, but living among humanity. A race that would have faced extinction if not for the Earl of Greyburn’s great Cause.

  Braden had been told the story so many times that he knew it by heart. Barnabas had spent his youth searching for his scattered people—in Europe, Russia, Asia, America. His special gifts let him sense them wherever they survived—among the aristocracy and elite of their homelands, more like than not; more rarely among the common folk, hiding what they were.

  The hiding was always necessary. It was a world of humans, and humans far outnumbered the wolf-kind. Yet the loups-garous had intermarried with humans, had ceased to breed true.

  Barnabas knew that their people would die out, fade to nothing in a matter of years or decades—inevitably—unless the blood bred true again. Unless those purest of lineage and power were joined to others equally pure.

  There was only one way it could be done. Boundaries must be set aside; old national rivalries, old hatreds forgotten. The loups-garous must come together, must make a great pact to preserve their race. Barnabas had cajoled, threatened, pleaded, argued, and used his considerable power to bend others to his will.

  And they had come, to this stronghold in the inner heart of Northumberland, where the Forsters had held their land for hundreds of years—Forsters who shared a name with humans but were so much more. That first meeting in 1819 had been fraught with peril and suspicion, but in the end the loups-garous had chosen their salvation. The first marriage contracts had been negotiated, bloodlines traced for the new records.

  So it had been now for forty years, twice each decade. But this was Braden’s first meeting; at fourteen he had passed his trial, had learned to Change, and was at last worthy of taking part in the Cause.

  He stared under drawn brows at the Russian delegate, the father of the girl who had been promised to Braden at this very meeting. A great landowner, this prince, who ruled a virtual kingdom of serfs in his distant country. The Russian blood was fierce and strong yet, and when joined to the ancient British strain—

  Braden shook his head. It was too much to consider here, in this forbidding place with its banners and cold stone. He looked instead at the other delegates, memorizing faces: dour Scots from Highland and Lowland; French aristocrats, who with their powers had survived the purging of the nobility in their land; the Prussians who kept much to themselves; the small conclaves of proud Spanish and Italians from warmer climes, where their people clung to the mountains; Norsemen who’d crossed the sea to land again on shores where once their ancestors had raided and conquered.

  There was a handful of guests from more exotic lands, who’d come reluctantly: an Indian prince, a Sheikh from the deserts, the last survivor of an ancient clan in Nippon. Only their nonhuman blood bound them to the others.

  And then there were the Americans. They fiercely guarded their independence and looked askance at the British nobleman who claimed leadership of all who ran as wolves and men. But they, too, recognized Grandfather’s warning, and so they had arrived at Greyburn—to talk, debate, hammer-out compromise.

  Today, the ninth gathering of the families was at an end. The delegates would scatter for five more years, but new contracts were set in place, and there would be another generation of children born to carry on the revived bloodlines. Just as the first contract had bound Braden’s late father to Angelique Gevaudan of the old French blood. Angelique had dutifully borne the Greyburn heir three children: Braden, Quentin, and Rowena. Each would, in turn, marry as the great Cause dictated, and their children as well, on into the distant future when the loups-garous would become the powerful, fearless people they were meant to be.…

  “Boy.”

  Braden jerked out of this thoughts and stared up at his Grandfather. A glance from Barnabas could freeze any man, human or werewolf, and it had always reduced Braden’s knees to jelly.

  But Braden had learned to Change, and fear had turned to respect. “Sir?”

  Barnabus cuffed him lightly and pushed him toward the massive wooden doors. “Go. I have final words with the others, but I will speak to you later.” He dismissed Braden with a jerk of his shoulder, and Braden saw that all the strangers’ eyes were on him this time, cool and assessing. The delegates knew Braden was to inherit the Earldom and his grandfather’s great purpose. They watched him for any sign of weakness.

  I’ll be strong, like Grandfather, Braden thought. One day they will all respect me. He stood tall and marched from the room, closing the heavy carved doors behind him.

  “Well?” hissed a voice as he passed into the entrance hall. “Was it as exciting as you thought it would be? Did you get to talk, or did they even notice you were there? What did you think about the one with the funny—”

  Braden snatched at Quentin’s arm. “Not here,” he whispered. He glanced at Rowena who stood, as always, at her twin’s elbow, and herded them both down the hall to the front doors. A footman hurried forward to open the doors, and then they were out in the fading sunlight. Once they were alone and beyond the high shield of the rhododendrons across the lawn, Braden fixed his sternest gaze on his younger brother and used his deeper voice to his best advantage.

  “You were spying,” he accused. “You had no right to be there. If Grandfather caught you—”

  Quentin laughed. Nothing ever frightened him—no threat of punishment, no prospect of dire consequences. He was, as Maman had said before her death, impossible.

  “Do you think it’s just a game?” Braden said. “What Grandfather’s done to save our people—”

  “I know, I know.” Quentin rolled his eyes. “So deadly serious. What’s the use of being able to Change if you don’t use it to have fun? When I make the passage, I’m going to enjoy it.”

  Rowena curled her small fingers around her twin brother’s arm. “I don’t like it,” she whispered. “I wish I never had to Change at all.

  “You don’t have any choice,” Braden said, more harshly than he’d intended. “We all have to do as we’re told, or there won’t be any of us left.” His voice softened. “Anyway, when you can Change, you’ll find out, Ro. It’s amazing …” He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Poor humans. I almost feel sorry for t
hem.”

  “Not me,” Rowena began. “If I could, I’d—”

  But her words were quickly drowned out by Quentin’s. “I know you can’t wait to take over when Grandfather dies,” he said to Braden, his grin belying his words. “But he’s going to be around for a long time, so you might as well relax.”

  Braden stiffened. “When I am leader, you’ll have to do what I say.”

  Quentin snapped into a mock-salute. “Yes, my lord. But not quite yet.” He gave a yelp as Braden grabbed for him, and suddenly there was a chase in progress, half serious and half in play. They tumbled onto the lawn, Quentin almost holding his own in spite of his lesser years. Rowena hopped a little, as if she’d join in, but she was far too proud of her new frock to dirty it, or to compromise her fragile twelve-year-old’s dignity.

  At last Braden had Quentin pinned. “Promise me,” he said breathlessly, “promise me that you’ll obey me when I am leader.”

  There was no surrender in Quentin’s eyes, and his smile never wavered. “Are you afraid I’ll do what Grandfather’s brother and sister did, and mess up your Cause?”

  Braden knew that story by heart as well. “They were both traitors. Great Aunt Grace married a human instead of the mate chosen for her. And Great Uncle William broke his word. He went to live in America, but he never sent his children back to England. Now he’s dead, and we’ve lost his bloodline—”

  “Bloodlines. You talk just like Barnabas.”

  “And you talk like a child, because you don’t understand.”

  “Just because the families who come here are loups-garous doesn’t mean they’re any good. Like that Russian girl—”

  “What about her?” Braden bent lower, showing his teeth.

  “You like her, don’t you? I saw the way you looked at her. Just because Grandfather’s arranged it so you have to marry her in a few years. But she and her father have something wrong about them. I saw him hit a stableboy and call him a serf, and that girl said Ro was an ugly stick. She’s nasty and conceited. She said when she came to live here, everyone will have to do what she says.”