by Anthology
Bel blamed her dreams. Every night the same garden, the same orchid, and the same man’s blurry face filled her sleep. How could she move on, when she still had a sliver of the past splintering her mind?
There was one new addition to her dad’s house: a mason jar on the dining room table holding the fullest pink rose Bel had ever seen. That, at least, made her smile. Her dad wasn’t very good at saying ”I love you,” but he sure did know how to show it.
So Bel wasn’t surprised that when she mentioned the rose, he stammered about some local wolf hunting ordinance before asking her how long she was planning to stay.
Then it was Bel’s turn to stammer. She didn’t want to tell her dad that her big advance had run out. Or that her publisher had decided against picking up her new series on shifters because, ‘Werebeasts just aren’t in, Bel. It’s faeries or zombies if you’re going to write young adult.’
But it wasn’t until Bel checked the mail that she’d realized that maybe the most dangerous secrets in the Booksmore family weren’t hers. Buried under the electric bill and false sweepstakes mailers was a legal notice. Her father was being charged with grand theft. For 1.5 million dollars. For a flower.
This was how Bel ended up wading through half-melted snowdrifts alongside the empty stretch of highway. She had stuffed the rose and the jar underneath her jacket to keep the flower warm, but the glass was just making her skin colder.
Bel stopped, hands on her knees. She was so winded her breath came from her mouth in bouts of steam. Curvy, hefty, chubby, pleasantly plump; whichever adjective you wanted to use to describe Bel, fit wasn’t one of them. The only reason she was walking now was because her horrible vision meant she couldn’t drive.
When Bel looked up she was confronted with a familiar sign engraved in a wooden log.
‘Camp Kikanoo.’
Bel smiled sadly. The camp had been shut down only a year after she had left.
Bel fished her phone out of her pocket, her numb fingers fumbling with the touch-screen before getting to her GPS. Patchworks of green and beige proved what she had suspected. The legal notice‘s address was from one of the houses bordering the camp. In fact, there was a good chance that it was the same farmhouse whose greenhouse she had snuck into all those years ago. The one where she had lost her glasses and had her first kiss.
Unconsciously, Bel’s hand moved to the small of her back, feeling for the patch of fur there. It warmed her fingertips.
The patch was the only tangible reminder of her encounter with the man in the farmhouse. It had grown only a few days after the incident. At first, in a flight of teenage fancy, Bel had thought it might be a mate mark, a sign of her bonding to a werewolf, like in the old myths.
Then her dermatologist had told her she had polycystic ovarian syndrome. Which helped explained her inability to lose weight. It was when the hair grew in that Bel had checked the address of the farmhouse and found out two important facts. First, the old owners weren’t listed by name, but by their company’s name, Rom Investing. And second, the new owners were a lovely older couple who had won the state fair’s award for largest zucchini two years straight.
So even if the person suing them lived in the farmhouse, Bel could handle a couple of retired zucchini growers, right?
Bel bore a sharp left, cutting through the woods and into Camp Kikanoo. But as she walked, she realized that the fire pit, the flagpole, and even the cabins had been torn out. It was only her GPS that kept her on track, and so Bel made sure to keep her nose buried in her phone.
Which was why she was startled when she looked up and realized where it had led her.
There it was, the same old farmhouse. It guarded the edge of the dark woods like some ancient grey ghost. An overgrown field was its front yard, and from its back peeked a familiar transparent building. The greenhouse.
Bel shivered and told herself it was just the cold.
The last time she had been here, it had been high summer, and her best friends and fellow counselors Cynthia Sinders and Red Stromwell had accompanied her reluctantly. Now, Camp Kikanoo would never have a summer again. Cold bit at Bel’s lips, and she gripped the mason jar with the rose closer to her breast.
She would return the rose and explain everything. There was no turning back now.
With the coming snows, this walk would only be harder tomorrow, so Bel screwed her courage to the sticking place and stalked over to the house. This time she didn’t skulk in the woods, she didn’t drop her glasses, she didn’t lose her friends, and she certainly didn’t run into a creepy, sexy-voiced man.
Instead, she braved the still-icy front porch and rang the doorbell.
3
The carving knife slipped from Samson’s hand as the doorbell echoed through the empty hallways. He bent to pick it and the half-finished wooden deer figurine up from the floor when the noise came again.
His inner wolf’s pelt bristled with irritation, and his mate mark pulsed.
Who was it this time?
After he’d placed his tools on the table, he reluctantly headed to the doorway. However tempted he was to ignore the noise, Samson didn’t have strong enough control to deal with someone sneaking around his property today, and he bet if he barked at them loudly enough, they’d scatter. Even if he was barking in human form.
So by the time he turned the handle and opened the door, he had his lecture prepared.
Then he smelled her.
Warm and dusty, like a cross between a bakery and a library, her scent teased his nostrils and made his wolf howl. Her face aroused him, too. Except for her red cheeks, it was pale and deliciously round. While her puffy pink winter coat obscured most of her hair, a few walnut-colored curls poked out. He wanted badly to touch them.
Samson tried to focus on something less sexual, but ended up gaping at her lips. They were plumper than he remembered. All of her was. But it was a welcome change. He liked the idea of having more of her to hold, to caress. To own.
Mine.
His inner wolf growled.
He said, “Isabella.”
Her brown eyes widened adorably. There was something familiar about how comically large they seemed under her glasses, but then again, everything about her felt familiar.
“If you know my name, you must know what I’m here for,” she said quickly.
I have to get her inside, Samson realized. She was probably freezing, and he liked the idea of her in his home, taking off all of those layers. He leaned against the door, opening it farther. “I’ll make you some hot chocolate, and we’ll talk.”
“Oh, okay. Sure,” Isabella said, relieved. “I hope we can get this all straightened out quickly.”
Samson gave a gruff chuckle. “I can’t promise to be quick with you.”
The reality of all this finally sank in. She had returned. To him. His mate mark sang with warmth on his back. She was his mate.
All that was left was to seal their bond, a prospect Samson was already imagining in vivid detail. He got so caught up in his fantasies that it was only after he had reached the kitchen and put a pot of milk on the stove that he noticed he had lost his mate on the journey.
Samson retraced his steps and found Isabella peering up at a framed family portrait his mother had commissioned before his father was diagnosed with cancer.
Rex must have hung it up, the mutt. One of the conditions Samson had set for returning was that they wouldn’t try to turn the house into a memorial. Their purpose for returning to Crystal Creek was simple: find and subdue Luther. Not relive old memories.
”This way,” he said.
She jumped, nodded, and followed him. How high she managed to get in spite of her size reminded him of someone else, but he couldn’t think who.
A minute later they were both in the kitchen, Isabella sitting at the wooden table, which had been carved out of a tree trunk, and Samuel bent over the antique gas stove, measuring out dollops of cocoa powder into warm milk.
“This table is amazin
g. Did you make it yourself?” Isabella rambled. Although there was genuine admiration in her voice, he could sense she was talking out of nervousness.
He plopped two fat marshmallows into the mugs of hot chocolate and carried them over to the table. Samson noticed she still hadn’t undone her coat, although she had taken off her boots at the front door. Her gaze remained fixed on the tabletop, even when he slid a mug in her direction.
“Thanks,” she said, but didn’t meet his eyes.
His fingers itched to tip her chin upward so he could kiss her tense, pursed lips. “I think it’s better for both of us if we stop avoiding the inevitable.”
That made Isabella look up and push her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Her pulse was audible and fast, even as she nodded in agreement. ”Okay.”
Then she did something so surprising his wolf almost rolled over in shock. She began to unzip her coat.
It was possible she was just trying to get more comfortable, but with Samson already half-hard from just the scent of her, there was no way he could interpret her gesture as anything other than a seduction. It wasn’t until she had reached into an inner pocket and pulled out the flower that he realized the truth.
There on his table was his stolen rose: drooping stem, crumpled petals and all, imprisoned in a dollar-store mason jar.
He stared at it in shock for a moment, overwhelmed by the many truths it represented. Isabella hadn’t come back for him. She was the daughter of that fucking idiot trespasser who had wanted to murder his wolves, and thus his kind. His brother. In fact, all of this—her compliments and her strange questions about his parents’ vegetables—was probably nothing but a ploy to get him to drop the lawsuit.
Worst of all, her apology, which he had thought was for running away years earlier, wasn’t an apology for that at all.
Samson’s human side understood the logic of the situation and tried to formulate a response, but it was too late. His wolf was too enraged by the sudden shift in reality. It snarled and spat and demanded to burst free of his skin.
Samson slammed his hand down on the table. The mason jar jumped, splattering droplets of water. Samson watched as it hung in the air, almost in slow motion. At the apex of its flight, he swiped it with one hand, sending it careening toward the floor. It shattered into too many pieces to ever be put back together again.
4
Until the man had swatted away the rose like it was a malaria-carrying mosquito, Bel had been certain she knew what was going on. But as she stared at the flower lying askew on the hardwood floor, framed by a mosaic of shards and a shallow moat of rose water, she realized that while she might have found the right clues, she had come to the wrong conclusion.
Despite the family portrait in the hallway, this man was not the son of the retired zucchini plant growers. And he would not be happy with a simple apology. She wasn’t sure why she had ever thought he would.
Maybe it had been the way he looked when he opened the door. Like he had been waiting for her. Or maybe it was the way he was dressed.
Bel had never been into the whole sexy-hipster-lumberjack thing that had taken hold of most of the men in Tribeca, but this man made a compelling case. He wore his flannel shirt, ripped jeans, and half-beard unironically, and the muscles in his arms promised he could actually chop wood. His beautiful mess of black hair and piercing green eyes helped, too.
All in all, he had seemed like the kind of guy to let bygones be bygones. Or at least not the kind of guy who would own a million-dollar rose. It had all seemed like some kind of misunderstanding.
Seemed being the key word.
Bel stared, too shocked to be angry at his bipolar reaction. “Well, so I guess this won’t be solved just by returning the rose, will it?”
“No, I don’t think it will, Isabella,” he said coldly.
There was no denying it. Beneath the man’s sexiness was a wild animal. And the animal, while calm now, was still loose. The fear numbing her mouth felt familiar to Bel, and she was taken back to her last time near this house, when another man, with just as compelling a voice, had made her feel so…confused.
But he couldn’t be the same guy. Why sell a house only to buy it back? No, he probably just knew her name as part of his lawyer’s research.
Bel gripped her mug tightly, vowing to stop being afraid. “Tell me what will make this go away.”
The man’s eyes narrowed to emerald slits. “Go away?”
“My father,” Bel said, ”can be foolish sometimes, but to be honest, he probably took this rose for me. He knows they’re my favorite flower, and I was coming home. If he had known how much they were worth, I’m sure he never would’ve touched it. I completely understand that you should be compensated for your loss, Mr.…”
“West,” he said in a gravelly tone that was suspiciously close to a growl.
“Mr. West,” Bel continued. “But we really don’t have that kind of money lying around. So I hope that there’s some kind of compromise we can reach without driving us into bankruptcy.”
The man looked unconvinced. In fact, his green eyes were analyzing her with such intensity that Bel was sure he could see her entire life history like a two-dollar paperback.
“Please?” Bel asked, trying to ignore the sour taste begging left in her mouth.
But Mr. West wasn’t done. Now his gaze burned through her armor of winter layers in a single glance. Bel's core clenched as she imagined his calloused hands against her smooth skin. He had hands that had worked hard, that knew how to take wood or stone and mold it into something else. How to control with a single touch.
Her fear gone, another hot sensation took up residence in her belly. Bel wished for the terror’s return.
Finished with his analysis, the man folded his hands together on the table with a disturbing sense of finality. “How about a bargain, Ms.…”
”Booksmore.”
Mr. West’s eyes sparked with something Bel hoped to God was only anger. “I need a maid.”
That, Bel admitted, was certainly true. While it was charming, the interior of the farmhouse was in serious need of repair. In the kitchen alone, Bel counted three rusty appliances, the floors were dusty and scratched, and underneath the smell of fresh wood lingered the damp odor of mildew. But that didn’t mean that she wanted to be that maid.
Bell scrunched her fingers into a fist, trying to keep her pride from getting her into even hotter water. “You really don’t want me cleaning your house. Talk to anyone who knows me. When I do the dishes, I somehow make them dirtier.”
Was it her imagination, or did the man’s tongue dart out and lick his lips when she said the word ‘dirty’? She decided it was. “Trust me, it would take forever.”
“That’s not a problem,” he said.
Great. Not only was Mr. West an asshole with anger management issues, he was an asshole with anger management issues who seemed to want to see her suffer.
“There must be something else I can do for you,” Bel said.
His gaze fell to the zipper of her jacket, which was only half-undone. An image flashed through her mind of him pulling the rest of it open with his teeth.
“I-I’m a New York Times best-selling writer, for example,” Bel said, vowing not to let their chemistry get in the way of business. ”Maybe you need someone to, I don’t know… ghostwrite your memoirs.”
Even through his slight beard, Bel could see his distaste. “I have enough people bothering me as it is. A book is the last thing I need.”
“I wouldn’t have to write about—” She waved her hand. “Never mind. So you need cleaners. I actually have a friend who’s the best of the best at professional organizing. Her name’s Cynthia Sind—”
“No,” he said firmly. “It’s you I want.”
There was no missing the double meaning this time, and Bel felt a flush creep up the back of her neck.
Mr. West said nothing, not moving a muscle, simply waiting for her to yield. He didn’t even look worried.
>
Bel took a swig of her hot chocolate, welcoming the burning liquid as it annihilated her taste buds. She wished it was spiked with vodka.
“Okay, so let’s say I do help you. How long do you think you’d need me for?” she asked before taking another gulp.
“A year,” he said.
She pursed her lips to keep from spitting a fountain of hot chocolate at him, swallowed, and said, “A year?”
“Did you make a million and a half dollars last year, Ms.— ”
“Jesus, just call me Bel, please.” For all his woodsy appeal, when Mr. West called her by her last name, it made her feel eighteen again. But when he called her by her full first name, it was worse. Wet panties, trembling knees kind of worse.
And if his squared shoulders and spread legs were anything to go by, Mr. West definitely knew the effect he had.
“I’m going to be your boss. So I’ll call you what I like,” he said. From anyone else, his words would’ve sounded smarmy, but Mr. West spoke with an old-school, stoic masculine authority that almost transcended political correctness.
Almost.
”As long as it’s appropriate,” Bel said, resigned. Control of the situation was slipping through her fingers.
Mr. West tapped the table, the sound much louder than a normal person’s fidgeting because of his large, powerful hands.
“You’ll live here,” he said.
“What!” Bel thrust out her open palm as if she could direct the flow of the conversation like traffic. “No way. Not in a million years.”
“How about a million and a half?” A twitch of a grin hid in the corner of his mouth.
Bel stood, her hands flying to her hips as she glared at him. “Let’s get one thing clear, here. I’m not going to be taken advantage of. So whatever it is you need, Mr. West “— Bel put a sarcastic emphasis on his title —“you’re going to outline it in a contract that discharges me and my father of all debt to you upon completion of required services. And the required services had better not contain anything you wouldn’t ask a guy to do.” Bel held up a finger, feeling like a righteous lawyer. “And I’m definitely not going to sleep at your house.”
