by Selena Scott
Normally, he would have turned down a job like this without blinking. Not his particular taste. But Ms. Arla Weaver happened to have the good fortune of living just down the mountain from Ms. Ruby Sayers. And there was something inside Ansel that just liked being close to Ruby Sayers.
He’d done a bit of work for her, right when she’d come to town, and dang if she hadn’t hooked him.
There was something about that long, messy red braid she liked to wear all down her back. That smudge of red lipstick on her lips. All those flowery red dresses. All that dang red. She even smelled red. Don’t ask him to explain it. It just was. Something about it. Oh, and those blue eyes that were twice the size of everybody else’s. Those didn’t hurt either.
He’d wanted to ask her to take a walk with him, back when he’d been on the job with her. But judging from the way she could barely look him in the eye, and from the sheer number of things she knocked over the second he came into any room, he figured she would have said no.
He’d let her be. There was nothing wrong with letting a woman get her feet under her in a new place. And besides, she was a single parent, and all alone except for her younger brother up in that house. The last thing he’d wanted was to make her uncomfortable. But right around the time he’d figured she’d gotten enough of her bearings around here to know whether or not she’d want to get some bearings with him, her brother had disappeared.
And damn if that boy hadn’t gotten himself good and lost. It was an unsolved mystery around here, one that Ansel couldn’t exactly speak to. Except when he spoke up on her behalf to all the nosy Nancies who wanted to talk about anything and everything. Including whether or not Ruby Sayers had done away with her burden of a brother and hidden him somewhere nobody would ever find him in the mountains.
Ansel knew for two reasons why that was categorically untrue. 1. He’d spent four months fixing up their house and he’d seen the two of them together. As a brother who very much loved his siblings, he recognized what he saw between Ruby and Griff. Genuine affection. Happiness. A real joy in one another’s presence. She’d never lay a finger on that boy and Ansel would have sworn it under oath if anybody had asked him to.
The other reason was that he’d been to the spot where the boy had disappeared. He’d heard the news and followed the scent out there even before the hunting dogs had. Her story was true, even if it wasn’t believable. Griff’s scent stopped cold right at the waterfall. Went no further. Now Ansel had spent a good minute at the site, searching for other scents as well. Scents that a regular old hound couldn’t smell. But Ansel and his siblings could. Fear. Pain. The scent of regret. Fury. Rage. Death, which happens to have a very identifiable scent. Things that might accompany a murder.
Besides a strong dose of Ruby’s fear right by the waterfall, he didn’t pick up on much else. Either she was a cold-blooded sociopath, which he knew she wasn’t because he could hear her pulse racing every time he came close to her, or she hadn’t killed her brother.
And that’s why the Keto siblings often found themselves in the position of defending Ruby Sayers in the town of Green Mills, New York. Even if the only member of the Keto family that Ruby had ever exchanged a word with was Ansel. All of them did their part. Because all of them despised the rumor mill equally. Considering all of them had an equally large secret to hide from that very rumor mill.
Ansel sighed, realizing that said secret was currently pawing at the figurative glass inside of him, and needed to stretch his legs. He finished packing up his tools, heard Ms. Arla Weaver clacking around in her kitchen, and was out the door like a shot.
Any day that he could get out the door without her feeling on his bicep was a good day in his book. The woman gave Ansel the willies. He was in his truck, backing out of the driveway, when Ms. Weaver appeared on her front porch, hands on her hips and frowning. He knew he was gonna get a talking to about leaving without saying goodbye when he showed up for work tomorrow. But it was worth it to get out of dodge with nothing more than a wave out the open window.
Though it was the opposite direction from his house, Ansel found himself driving toward Ruby Sayers’s driveway. He liked to take just one peek every day, make sure that everything was in order. It always was. Even in her considerable grief over her brother, she’d never let her house go to seed. He was pleased to see a few rows of, you guessed it, red tulips lined up in the front garden beds.
Nice. He thought that was nice. That she was keeping a garden again. As he cruised slowly down the road, he craned his neck back behind him. Now, her mailbox was a bit rusty. That wouldn’t do. Maybe he’d bring her by a new one. Offer to–
“SHIT!” Ansel shouted as he turned back to face front, slamming on the brakes and skidding on the loose gravel road. His truck came to a juddering stop not more than two feet from Ms. Ruby Sayers herself. She stood, stock still, in the middle of the road, her eyes even bigger than usual.
One of her typical red dresses swirled around her knees, her crimson lipstick startlingly bright against the pale white her skin had just gone. She blinked and blinked again at the grille of the truck that had nearly mowed her right down.
Ansel was out of the truck like a shot, landing his hands on her shoulders as he skidded to a stop in front of her.
“Ms. Sayers. Jesus. Are you alright?” he asked in that deep, clenched-jawed rumble that he used.
Ruby didn’t look at the man who was currently towering over her. Her eyes stayed glued to the truck that had really looked like it was about to bring her to the maker.
“Ms. Sayers?” Ansel tried again. He dragged one hand down her arm, straight to her ice-cold hand. The other hand he lifted to her face and roughly pulled down the bottom of one eye and then the other. Looking for what, he had no idea. But it was something he’d seen people do after someone had experienced a considerable trauma.
Ruby furrowed her brow and batted his hand away from her, apparently startled out of her reverie. She tugged her hand out of his and took a step back. She didn’t like having to crane her head all the way back just to see the man’s face. It made him seem even larger than life than he already was.
“I guess,” she started and was dismayed to hear the tremor in her typically husky voice. “I guess you didn’t see me there.”
“I was looking at the rust on your mailbox.” It was a dumb thing to say. He knew it, she knew it. But there it was. What a time to be earning his reputation as a slow man. Right when he finally had Ruby Sayers’s ear for the first time in years.
“Oh.” She furrowed her brow again and took another step back. “I probably shouldn’t have been in the road anyways, I guess. I could have just waited for your truck to pass.”
“No,” he said as he took a helpless step toward her, trying to close just a bit of the distance she always seemed so intent on putting between them. “It was my fault, Ms. Sayers. One hundred percent. I apologize.”
Ruby took a deep breath and tried to look him in the eye. She got about chin level, to that well-kept blond beard of his, and found that was the best she could do. “Why do I always feel like you’re one second away from calling me ma’am?”
She watched as his lips formed a sort of half smile and her eyes dropped, of their own accord, to his chest. Well, that wasn’t safe either, she noted. The man was wearing a V-neck t-shirt. And two very prominent muscles were peeking out of the V. Not to mention the edge of whatever tattoo he kept on his chest. The ground, then. Yes. That was the safest place to be looking right now. The ground.
“Maybe because I am?” he replied. He shrugged, though she didn’t see. “Our parents really believed in good manners.”
She watched the toes of his rather large, rather dusty boots. They didn’t move or scuffle. Just held perfectly still.
Ruby darted her eyes up to his face and then away before she could distinguish any particular feature. He was just a tanned, trimmed, blond blur. She knew that if she let her eyes settle, she’d find a fine face, with a prominent bro
w over two bright green eyes. And sort of a big nose. Which she’d always liked about him. It kept him from having model good looks. And put him right into human territory.
It didn’t do much to keep her heart rate down, though, which always seemed to beat out of control whenever Ansel Keto was around. Something about him just had her on high alert. Maybe it was the way he smelled, like cedar and a nice, cool evening. Or maybe it was that he always seemed to have just the finest sheen of sweat over all that muscular, tanned body. Or maybe it was the way he watched her. For as rarely as she could bring her eyes to his, she knew he didn’t have the same problem. The man watched her like a hawk whenever he was close enough to see her.
Made her nervous.
Ruby took in a shaky breath and rubbed her sweaty palms down over the skirt of her flowy, red dress.
“Ms. Sayers–” he started, just as she was taking a step around him to get back toward her house. But he cut off when one of her traitorous knees buckled.
Ruby found herself caught against his side, one huge paw of his curled firmly around her elbow.
“I’m alright,” she insisted as she regained her footing. “I’m alright.”
She pulled forward and his hand fell away as she wobbled toward her front porch. She could hear by the crunch of gravel under his boots that he was following her. She wanted to go inside and collapse onto her comfortable living room couch, but the thought of Ansel Keto standing in her small house, boots and sweaty skin and V-neck and all those muscles, well, her gut clenched and she found herself choosing to sit on the steps of the front porch. He sat right beside her.
“Ms. Sayers,” he started again, but she cut him off, waving one hand in the air.
“Ruby.”
He paused, cleared his throat. “Ruby. I’m so sorry about that, with the truck. I know it must have scared the life out of you.”
She waved her hand through the air again in lieu of words. It had, in fact, scared her, but she wanted him to stop apologizing.
“Please, let me make it up to you. My family is having dinner in about half an hour. Come over.”
She paused and dragged one of those red lips between her teeth. Ansel noted that none of the color came off on those pearly white teeth of hers. What kind of woman magic was that? A soft breeze blew through the trees around them. It was the full bloom of summer and everything was hazy and warm. They could both smell the red tulips that fanned out in her flower beds.
“I already have dinner all ready inside. Thank you, though.”
There was something in her voice, more than her words, which told him not to push. He wasn’t much of a pusher anyhow. Live and let live. That was Ansel Keto’s motto. He just wished Ruby Sayers would be a little more inclined to live a little closer to where he lived. Figuratively speaking.
He rose up and jumped down off the porch steps; he didn’t want to loom over her. He’d learned that she didn’t much like that. Some women did, but not Ruby Sayers. “If you’re sure that you’ll be alright. That there’s nothing I can do…”
She shook her head. “It was nothing, Mr. Keto–”
“Ansel,” he interrupted immediately. “If I’m calling you Ruby, then you’re calling me Ansel.”
For reasons he couldn’t quite interpret, that brought a rosy blush to her cheeks, but she nodded. “Really, it was just an accident, Ansel. And nothing happened anyways. It’s all fine. I’m fine.”
She reached next to her for her backpack but came up empty. Squinting in confusion, she looked around her.
“I swear I had a bag.”
Ansel turned and looked toward the dusty road. He jogged toward where his truck was still parked haphazardly in the middle of the road. He narrowed his eyes at the skid marks left behind in the dust and cursed himself. That could have been bad. So bad. Sure enough, there was a bag, plopped down right next to where she’d been standing.
He picked up the worn black bag and dusted it off. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside; his heightened sense of smell told him everything he needed to know. A few bites left of a peanut butter sandwich, a banana peel, half a bottle of water and a library book.
Ruby watched as Ansel jogged the bag back to her. His eyes were on the bag he was still dusting off, so she felt that, for once, she was free to study him. There was something about the way the man moved that was so… something. It was easy to watch and frightening all at once. Like watching a predator in his natural habitat. There was an animal grace, sure, but it was grace that comes from a creature doing exactly what that creature was put on this earth to do, not because he was actually graceful. In reality, the man moved like a bulldozer. Inexorable and sure of each step. She supposed part of that effect would be because he was twice as wide as she was, damn near a foot taller, and yoked with muscle.
His eyes flicked to hers as he jogged to the porch steps and she thought she saw a flicker of surprise there when their gazes clashed. She immediately dropped her eyes. Of course he’d be surprised that she was looking him in the eye. She never looked him in the eye. And for good reason, she reminded herself as her heart trembled in her chest like a rabbit in a hole.
Gathering her wits, Ruby took a deep breath and rose up from the porch steps. He held out her bag to her and she took it.
“Thank you.”
“Saying ‘you’re welcome’ after I nearly ran you down in my truck doesn’t seem quite right.”
The puff of air that escaped Ruby’s lips surprised her. It was a sort of laugh, she supposed, but it was foreign and strange to her. She didn’t think she’d laughed once in the entire year. Not once since Griff.
The thought instantly sobered her and she frowned down at the bag. “Well, regardless. Goodnight, Mr. Ke–” She cleared her throat. “Goodnight, Ansel.”
And there was that rosy red staining her cheeks again. Seemed she couldn’t say his name without blushing. Ansel got just a little window into what she might be feeling when he replied. “Goodnight, Ruby.”
He realized that the phrase sounded oddly intimate. Like one that he would be using if he’d brought her to her front porch at the end of a date. Or that he’d whisper in her ear as he reached over her to shut off the bedroom lamp.
She scampered up the rest of the steps, with a little wave behind her, and unlocked her front door. He waited until he heard the lock click back into place and the front porch light came on before he sidled back to his truck, still in the middle of the dang road.
CHAPTER TWO
“Good Christ, Ansel!” Kain howled, facepalming at the dinner table about an hour later. Ansel had just told Kain and Inka the story of almost running Ruby down. “All this time you’ve been sweet on her and then you nearly… God!”
Ansel’s mouth opened and then closed. Part of him wanted to deny it. But the other part of him knew it was true, and if he couldn’t tell his siblings, then who could he tell? “How’d you know I’m sweet on her?”
Inka, shoving about four mouthfuls of spaghetti into her mouth at once, talked right through it. “Ansel, please. Slow and patient you sure are, but subtle? You are not.”
He furrowed his brow and reached for his beer. “You think she knows?”
Inka swallowed and her eyes dimmed with sadness. “I don’t imagine she’s given it much thought. Not since her brother disappeared.”
“I scented her over by that waterfall again the other day,” Kain said. “Seems like she’s spending a lot of time there these days.”
“I think she goes almost every day,” Ansel affirmed. Her scent was always fresh whenever he went by that area. “She was there today for sure. She’d packed herself a picnic in her bag and her dress smelled like the lagoon.”
“You think she goes to wait for him? In case he comes back?” Inka asked, attempting to scoop some of the food off Ansel’s plate. He absently knocked her hand away without even having to look; he’d been dealing with Inka’s eating habits for years now.
“Who knows,” Ansel said quietly. �
��She told the cops that the waterfall glowed right before he disappeared into it. Maybe she’s waiting for that to happen again.”
“That waterfall is freaky,” Kain mumbled, pulling his ball cap over his eyes as he pushed his plate over to Inka. She’d always had a bigger appetite than he did. Both of his sisters did.
“Yeah,” Ansel nodded, knowing exactly what Kain was talking about. There were certain parts of the woods, that waterfall included, that he and his siblings naturally avoided. They were strange places that had sort of a magnetic, sleepy energy. They made you wanna lie down and nap at the same time they energized you, like a zap of slow-building electricity.
Kain paused, a question on his thin, handsome face. When they stood side by side, anyone could tell Ansel and Kain were brothers; it was the coloring, their skin and hair were bronze and gold. But they didn’t share much in common besides that. Kain was wiry and lithe. His features were refined where Ansel’s were blunt. Kain’s face was open and smiling almost always, whereas Ansel’s eyes were usually in a squint, his jaw generally tight and clenched.
“You think,” Kain started, running a thumb absent-mindedly over the attractive five-inch scar that lined one side of his face. “You think that Griff Sayers was like us?”
Inka and Ansel considered, knowing exactly what Kain was talking about. Ansel shrugged. “He didn’t smell like us. And he gave no indication of it in the months that I was working over there. Except he had sharp senses. But what do I know? That woman can’t barely look me in the eye much less tell me if her brother is a shifter.”
“Especially not after you nearly ran her down in the truck,” Inka said candidly, in that very Inka way of hers.
Kain smothered a burst of laughter at his brother’s expense. “I guess you get points for originality, Ansel, but I gotta say, there’s less dangerous ways to hit on a woman. I can teach you a few if you like.”
