Driving Force

by Andrews, Jo

  Her knees were still wobbly from reaction. She stiffened them by will power alone and stalked to where his car was idling on the road. A little while later, he had transferred all her shopping from her trunk to his and was sliding into the driver’s seat.

  “Here.” He handed over her key.

  “Thanks.”

  She stared forward through the windshield as he started the car. She hoped he wouldn’t say anything. She had managed to steer clear of him for the whole five weeks she’d been back in Castleton. Now here she was, trapped in his car, and there would be no way to avoid the nasty cracks that passed as conversation between them.

  “Sorry about your mom,” he said, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Heart, was it?”

  Sierra glanced warily at him.

  Heavens! For once he’s being polite. Let’s hope he keeps it up.

  “Yes.”

  “She was a nice lady. Used to keep me up-to-date on how you were doing after you left Castleton.”

  She turned to stare at him. “Why would she do that?”

  “Uh…just talking. You know how it is.” He shrugged, not looking at her. In the dim light from the dashboard, she thought she saw a slight flush over his cheekbones. “She would have coffee with me sometimes when we met in town. It seemed only polite to ask about you.”

  Sierra tried to picture Ian Raeder having coffee with her mom. She just couldn’t see it, nor credit that he’d spared a thought to ask about her, even to be polite. There had to have been some other motivation. She eyed him suspiciously, but he was looking straight ahead and his profile told her nothing.

  “Didn’t expect you to come back to Castleton, though,” he was saying. “Weren’t you off in Arizona somewhere, apprenticed to some big-name potter?”

  “Naomi Wakanda.” Just the thought of her made Sierra relax a little and smile. “She was wonderful, taught me so much. We couldn’t afford college and art courses. Naomi was a gift from heaven.”

  “I heard she was the real deal. Famous. You must have really shown talent if she took you on. But then I’ve seen your work at the art gallery. It’s impressive.”

  “Thanks,” she said in surprise.

  “I hear it’s flying out of there. Hear it’s being snapped up by places in Denver and L.A.”

  Compliments from Ian Raeder? She might die of shock.

  “It’s starting to be.”

  She moved uneasily in her seat, wishing that her Ford hadn’t been so totaled that she couldn’t drive home by herself. Ian’s sports car wasn’t flashy, which surprised her, but it was still a two-seater and its interior was so small that they were almost shoulder to shoulder. She had never been so near to him before and she was way too aware of that lean, powerful body in its black tee and jeans beside her. Aware of the deep muscles of his thigh so close to hers and those strong, clever hands on the steering wheel and the clean, faintly musky, male-animal scent of him. Which all made her think irresistibly of sex.

  The side of his hand brushed her thigh as he changed gears. Even so slight a contact with him sent electricity flashing horrifyingly through her. Sierra jumped and edged closer to the door. Ian shot her a sardonic look.

  “What’s that perfume you’re wearing?” he asked suddenly.

  She glanced at him, startled. “I’m not wearing any perfume.”

  “It’s just you, then.” His voice had gone deeper and huskier.

  “Uh, yeah, I guess so.”

  His gaze slid over her, lingering on the curve of her breasts revealed by the V-neck of her vest and the length of her bare legs exposed by her cutoffs. She felt his glance like a touch, like a hand sliding down her from her throat to her ankle.

  She wished now that she hadn’t decided to wear that defiant vest and cutoffs. Annie had recognized them for what they were—a statement to the town saying that she wasn’t that prim, shy Sierra they had known before. But to Ian Raeder, a player all his life, they must seem like a come-on.

  His eyes had gone dark and intense. A violent shudder of heat shot through her, crisping her nerves. She drew back even more, pressing against the door. He looked away abruptly.

  “Why did you come back to Castleton?” he asked, a rough, almost angry note in his voice. “You could have gone anywhere.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think of anywhere else. There’s no mortgage on the house. It’s mine, and Mom’s insurance let me set up my own pottery with enough left over to buy me the time to try to make a living out of it.”

  “You were four years in Arizona, weren’t you? You could have sold the house and set up there. Why pick a small town like Castleton?”

  “It’s home. I know everyone and they know me. The whole town’s like family. I don’t have anyone of my own.”

  He sent her a mocking sideways glance. “No one? Not even a boyfriend? Don’t give me that, Mouse. Beautiful woman like you could have anyone she wanted.”

  Sierra glared at him. “Oh, put a sock in it, Raeder. We’ve known each other too long for you to try a line like that on me.”

  “What, you don’t think you’re beautiful?”

  Fulsome compliments didn’t fly with her, not even when they came from people like Annie. Coming from Ian Raeder, they were certain to have a sting to them, even if it wasn’t immediately visible.

  “I know I’m not and I know you don’t think so.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Su-ure.”

  “All these years and you still have no confidence in yourself, have you, Mouse?”

  “Don’t call me Mouse!”

  He grinned. “You hate that name, don’t you? But it suits you. You always did hide in the woodwork. Did you do that in Arizona? I’ll bet you did. You did that even when you were with that pissant who dumped you four years ago. But then he liked you meek and mild and no competition to him.”

  Here it came. Why had she thought he would avoid sniping at her for once? But the worst thing was that he was right about Peter.

  “Shut up! What do you know about it anyway?”

  “Hell, I’ve known about it ever since your graduation prom. Probably before anybody else did. That’s when it started, right? He was your date that night. Took you up to Lookout Point for privacy and a little petting. I happened to pass by during the grope-fest.”

  “How dare you…?”

  “Now there’s a girly comeback.” He gave her that derisive, provoking grin. “Oh, I know it didn’t go very far then, just a small post-grad make-out session. Nothing serious, just fooling around. But it got serious later, didn’t it?”

  It had and the whole county had known it. Everyone knew what everyone else was up to in a small town like Castleton, and Sierra had never tried to keep it a secret anyway.

  “Later you let him put it to you, didn’t you, Mouse?”

  Sierra’s whole face went hot with fury and embarrassment. “You—”

  His lips pulled back from his teeth in a smile that was really a snarl. “God knows what you saw in him. He was just a nothing. A user.”

  Peter had been, but she had been too young then to know it. The real truth was that if it hadn’t been for Ian Raeder, she would never have fallen for Peter. She had been so busy trying to keep herself from falling for Ian that she had never even seen Peter coming.

  Peter hadn’t been hotness personified like Ian. But he’d been attractive, ambitious and bright. And he had wanted her. She’d been so hyped that someone wanted her, she’d convinced herself she was in love. She’d never noticed the way Peter had always wanted to be the center of her attention, or that he had resented her wanting to express herself and be an artist.

  She had always tried to be what Peter wanted her to be, even though bits of herself—those fangs that Ian teased her about—kept slipping out despite all her efforts and making Peter angry. She hadn’t seen that suppressing herself like that was wrong and Peter wanting her to be suppressed was even worse. That Peter was small-minded and selfish and self-absorbed. Even her
mom had tried to warn her about that, but she hadn’t listened. It was Peter who had made the break, cutting and running.

  So then the letter to Naomi Wakanda, learning pottery and finding that she was good at creating those small works of art. Finding herself, really. So maybe Peter had done her a good turn in the end, because she was never going to be that stupid, that vulnerable, again.

  But she wasn’t going to sit and listen to Ian Raeder insult her about it. That “put it to you” had been a nasty, nasty choice of words. So she had made a mistake about Peter. Everyone made mistakes. She might have been a fool, but she wasn’t the cheap tramp that his crass phrasing implied. She was so enraged and humiliated that she could have killed him.

  “Just because you’re doing me a favor right now doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that, Ian Raeder!”

  He hunched his shoulders suddenly and she saw him flush. Was that at least a touch of decent shame? He should be ashamed, she thought furiously.

  “Sorry,” he muttered. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Damn right you shouldn’t have!” she snapped. “What I choose to do with my private life is none of your business!”

  “I’m—”

  “Let me spell it out. I don’t want anything to do with you. I don’t even want to breathe the same air as you! You’ve been hassling me for years and I’ve finally figured out that I don’t have to put up with it. So from now on, you keep your distance, I’ll keep mine, and maybe we can manage to be civil. Otherwise, I swear to God I’ll hit you with a two-by-four and I won’t care if the cops charge me for it!”

  * * * * *

  Okay, he’d asked for that. Why couldn’t he ever keep his mouth shut when he was around her?

  But just thinking of that jerk-off she’d been with made him feel as if a wrecking ball had slammed into his gut. He had never felt jealousy before that night of the prom, when he’d seen her with that himbo, had never known that it could feel like a knife twisting under his ribs. But he’d gotten awful familiar with that feeling in the two years following, especially when for a while there it looked as if she was going to move in with Mr. Plastic.

  Ian had tried to avoid her after that, but it really was a small town and he hadn’t been able to totally avoid seeing them together, shopping or dining or just walking hand in hand down the street. Sierra was still living with her mother, but he’d see them together and know that Useless was getting what he would never ever have.

  He’d wanted to rip him apart. Tear him into little, tiny shreds and strew them across the state. Cops would have been finding his body for weeks.

  Hadn’t done it. Hadn’t had the right. And anyway, if it hadn’t been that moron, it would have been someone else. Someone not him. Wouldn’t have mattered who, it would still have torn him up.

  Then the inevitable had happened and the asshole had taken off on her as everyone had known he would. A little while later, Sierra too had left Castleton. It had been at once a relief and a loss to him that she was gone—he didn’t have to see her all the time, but still there was an emptiness in the middle of him that nothing could fill.

  Sierra’s mom had known what was going on with him. He didn’t know how, but she had. She had never been surprised when he would see her in town and invite her to have coffee with him, had never failed to answer in detail when he’d asked with careful casualness how Sierra was doing.

  Now Mrs. Wallace was gone and here Sierra was, back again. But that gulf between them was still there, always would be, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  She didn’t say another word to him the whole way to her place, keeping her head turned to stare out of the window into the dark. Once there, she waited for him to unload her groceries onto her front porch, her averted gaze and rigid stance making it clear that he wasn’t welcome in her house, not even to take her groceries inside. Finally she thanked him in a frigidly polite voice while still never once looking at him.

  He deserved her anger and he knew it. The bitterness had just suddenly come spilling out. He had no right to that bitterness, no right to lash out at her the way he had. But damn he hurt.

  He had to stay away from her. That was all there was to it. Come anywhere close and bad things happened. But he was so hopelessly hung up on her.

  He was on Main Street the next day when the tow truck brought Sierra’s car in. A black-and-white pulled to a stop beside him and Abel Painter leaned over.

  “Did a good job on that, didn’t she?” Abel remarked.

  “Seems it wasn’t her fault. There was a lion on the road.”

  “Lion, huh?” Their gazes met. “Had she been drinking, by any chance?”

  “Stone-cold sober.”

  “Pity,” muttered Abel.

  “Told her it had to have been a deer.”

  “That would make a lot more sense. Think I’ll go talk to Kurt Lowe.”

  “Tell him his people seem to be getting careless.”

  “Looks like.”

  Abel drove off, frowning, and Ian put the incident out of his mind. It was up to Abel and Kurt to handle the ramifications now.

  A week later, Abel called. “Clan meeting at twenty-two hundred tonight.”

  Ian’s brows rose. “What’s up?”

  “Dunno. Kurt called and asked me to put the word out. Didn’t say anything more.”

  “We’ll be there.”

  The meeting was held at the usual place, down in the basement of the town library where the lights wouldn’t show and betray that something was taking place. Since Maggie Kindle, the head librarian, was one of them, the library was a convenient place to meet. A cozy, cuddly lady with age-whitened hair and gray-green snow-leopard eyes, Maggie made pastry to die for. Ian and Simon helped themselves greedily to one of every kind available while Maggie beamed benevolently at them.

  “So, where’s Neal?” she asked as people started drifting in one by one.

  “Brainiac’s attending a symposium in Seattle,” said Simon. Both he and Ian were proud of their brother’s genius-level IQ, but never failed to kid him about it.

  “He’s thinking of contracting himself out for stud service to the leopard clan there,” Ian murmured. “They need new blood and Neal figures he might as well sample the Jager females since he was going to be in the area anyway. It’ll keep him occupied for a month or two.”

  “You three are a disgrace,” laughed Maggie. “Well, maybe having cubs, even if they are in another clan, will settle him down some.”

  “Why should it?” Ian shrugged and Maggie gave him an exasperated look.

  “Having cubs makes one responsible. But that’s something you’d know nothing about.”

  “Hey, Simon’s the responsible one, Neal’s the smart one and I’m supposed to be the player.”

  Ian wasn’t really a player anymore. Not since Sierra had come back to Castleton. Just plain wasn’t interested in anyone else. But he’d always had a rep, which had got worse over the four years she’d been gone, when he’d run around tearing through the whole state, trying to convince himself that any willing Shifter body could take her place. Once she’d come back, though, it hadn’t been possible to keep on living in that river in Egypt. Still, the rep made a useful cover-up, saving his pride.

  Maggie frowned at him. “Your daddy and granddaddy worked hard creating that spread of yours. You’ve got a duty to keep the line going.”

  “No, I don’t,” said Ian flatly. “Bloodline is what counts. Sooner or later, Simon or Neal will have cubs. Those kids can take over when the time comes.”

  “Aren’t you interested in having children of your own?”

  “Not in the least. There’s a lot of Shifter females of all species don’t want to breed or already have kids and don’t want more. We get along just fine.”

  “It gets lonely, Ian. Everyone needs ties.”

  He was lonely already and the only tie he wanted was with someone he couldn’t have. He wouldn’t settle for second best.

&nb
sp; “Got Neal and Simon and whatever family they decide to bring home. That’s all I need.”

  “Doesn’t seem right.”

  “What’s right, Maggie,” he said harshly, fighting to conceal his irritation, “is not to be here at all. To be back in the world we came from. But we can’t go back and now we don’t really know what it’s like to be a true Shifter in that world. There isn’t even an oral tradition, since no bards or mages ever came through. It’s all lost. We’ve adapted to this world. Taken its names, accepted its traditions and ways of living. We make our own rules.”

  “Yes,” said Kurt Lowe behind him. “That’s exactly what this meeting is about.”

  All three of them swung around to stare at him. He was a force to be reckoned with, was Kurt Lowe, the patriarch of the twenty-strong pride of lions in Wade County. He was huge, his mane of shaggy gold hair now shot with white as he aged. No one messed with Kurt, not even Nick Korda, the lone tiger in the gathering, who was the only one who outweighed him. Anyone else who tried would end up as nothing but an oily smear on the ground. Nick could probably take Kurt, but he knew damn well that the entire Lowe clan would land on him the very next second and tear him to pieces. Possibly, back in the other world, a younger male might have seized Kurt’s place by now, but here the pride allowed no challenges. Young males with ambitions were forced to leave and no one would take Kurt’s place until he died of old age.

  “The meeting’s about making our own rules?” Maggie asked, puzzled.

  “It’s about how we’ve changed. Is everyone here?” Kurt looked around, then nodded at the mutter of assent that came back. “Okay. The thing I wanted to tell all of you is that a week ago the Gate opened.”

  People gasped and someone exclaimed, “That flash of light!”

  “Could be,” agreed Kurt. “I saw in the paper that the idiots who call themselves experts are saying it was ball lightning. But I’m betting it was the Gate.”

  “But the Gate hasn’t opened in a century!” Maggie exclaimed.