by Zoe Chant
"And what would that be?" Tessa demanded, planting her hands on hips that had always been generous, but pregnancy had pushed in the direction of "ample."
"You know what." Melody cut her eyes sideways at the café, where her one part-time employee was fumbling with the espresso machine, and leaned close to whisper, "I'm a dragon, Tessa. I can take care of myself."
"Miss Keegan?" came a plaintive call from behind the machine. "Miss Keegan, I think I broke something."
Melody could feel one of her eyes twitching. "Broken on the machine or on you, Jimmy?" she called back.
There was a long pause before the sheepish answer came: "Both?"
Despite her worried attitude, Tessa looked like she was trying not to laugh.
"There's a first-aid kit in the restroom, Jimmy. Do you need help?"
There was another worrying crash that made her wince, followed by, "No, ma'am, I've got it."
Melody looked at Tessa for commiseration. Her friend's eyes danced with humor.
"Think about it, Tess," Melody whispered. "If I go into hiding just because some guy my brother once arrested is running around loose, I'm going to have to leave Jimmy in charge of the store. I mean, think about that for a minute."
"What happened to that other employee you used to have? I can't remember her name—Mary?"
"Martha. She was great. I wish I hadn't had to let her go; she used to work here back when it was still Autumn Pages, you know, before I bought the store. She's helped me so much over the last few months. But she's having another baby—that makes four for them, if you can even imagine it. Her husband has a good job with the Forest Service, and she's planning to stay home for a couple of years."
"I'm definitely staying home," Tessa declared, spreading her fingers over the round curve of her pregnant belly swelling out her oversized T-shirt. The T-shirt had a picture of a basket of kittens with PURR-FECT! in script letters above it. "I know I'm lucky that I can. But I'm so tired all the time. I don't know how Gaby manages to run her café with two little kids."
"She has her mom to help her," Melody pointed out. She didn't begrudge her friends having happy marriages and babies, but there were times when it drew uncomfortable attention to her own single state. Like I even have time for a boyfriend, busy as I am with the store.
"True. And I guess she's not even doing that right now."
Melody paused in the middle of reshelving a Dan Brown thriller. "They're not closing the café, are they?"
"Not permanently, but for the next couple of weeks," Tessa said. "With Nils Sorenson running around loose—Ghost, I guess, is his street name; it's what Ben and Derek call him, anyway—they don't want to take any chances."
"That's a big step." Melody knew how much Gaby loved her little bakery and sandwich shop. It had been her dream, in the same way the bookstore was Melody's.
"Yes," Tessa said emphatically. "You see how seriously they're taking this? Tessa, this guy almost killed Derek and Gaby two years ago. And you've met Derek; you know what he's like."
Melody nodded. Gaby's mate was a big, well-muscled, dangerous-looking guy who could've graced the cover of one of the Navy SEAL romances over in her Romance section. If Gaby hadn't been head over heels for him, she might have been a little bit nervous around him. It made it easier that she usually saw him behind the counter in the Brown Bear Café down the street, wearing an apron and handing Gaby trays of doughnuts.
"Are they going out of town?" Melody asked.
"They're talked about it, but right now they feel like they'd be safer here," Tessa said. "We're all staying at Derek and Gaby's farmhouse with at least one of the guys there at all times. Gaby didn't want to disrupt the kids' lives any more than they have to."
"You and Ben are there too?" They really were taking this seriously.
"Yes, us too. Come on, Mel, at least move into the farmhouse with us for a little while. There's plenty of room. And that little place you're renting is not secure. I know that you think you're safe because you can turn into—that thing you turn into—"
"Can you please talk about this a little quieter?" Melody glanced around nervously to make sure no customers were near enough to hear any of this. Jimmy had gone off to the bathroom, and the only other person in sight was a little old lady browsing in the Garden section.
Still, now that she'd finally managed to realize her dream of owning her own bookstore, and was working hard to get it off the ground, the last thing she wanted was to have her customers find out her bookstore might be the target of an escaped convict out for revenge.
Let alone any of them finding out that the soft-spoken bookstore owner, with her dowdy gray cardigans and glasses, was actually a dragon. Yeah, that'd be good for business, all right. Tessa was human, and even though she was mated to a shifter, Melody didn't think her friend understood the fear of discovery that all shifters lived with.
Tessa at least had the decency to lower her voice, but she still looked worried. "Melody, it doesn't matter what you turn into if someone whacks you over the head or shoots you."
"Miss?" the little old lady said with a smile, puttering up to her. "I'm ready to check out now, and that nice young man isn't at the register."
"I'll ring you up right away," Melody told her. As the woman puttered off with her basket of books, Melody patted Tessa's arm. "It's sweet of you to worry. But I don't need your worry. I'm fine."
Tessa grabbed her hand and squeezed it. "I just think about you all alone in that apartment. Ben worries about you too. At least come down to the farmhouse for a few days. Melody, please."
Melody thought of her apartment, her new lair, cozily filled with books, arranged just how she liked them. Every dragon yearned for a safe place to curl up and spread out its hoard. She'd only just gotten used to having moved her entire book hoard from the city to her new, smaller apartment in Autumn Grove. This place was finally starting to feel like home. And now, the idea of moving somewhere new, even if it was just across town, filled her with dread.
But Tessa was looking at her with wide, worried eyes. "Even if you think you don't need our help, if anything happens, you can help protect us, right?" Tessa said hopefully. "With your dragon. We need you."
It was clear that her friend wasn't going to take no for an answer. Melody's resistance finally crumbled. She patted Tessa's hand and forced a smile. "Yes, okay, I'll pack a bag tonight, and only my most important books." She could fit a little of her hoard into a suitcase. Maybe another box or two of books in the trunk of her car. There were so many she hadn't read yet! It was hard to find new books to read when there were so many old favorites to reread ...
"Miss?" the old lady called from the register.
"I'm coming! Do you need a lift home?" she asked Tessa. She might not be worried for herself, but an escaped convict posed a danger for her human friends.
Tessa shook her head. "Gaby is picking me up." A car horn honked outside. "Oh, there she is." She hung onto Melody's hand. "We'll see you tonight at the farmhouse, okay?"
"Okay," Melody sighed, giving in.
Giving in as she always did, she thought as she went to the front of the store to ring up the customer's books. She caught a glimpse of herself reflected in the glass of the countertop: a drab little woman dressed in gray, her black hair pinned up, the glasses perched on her nose giving her a schoolteacher air.
She'd always been steamrolled by stronger personalities around her. Growing up in the shadow of her father, a powerful dragon clan leader, it was easier to just tell him whatever he wanted to hear than to try to fight back. And she loved Tessa like a sister, but her best friend was so stubborn that Melody usually ended up going along with Tessa whenever they argued.
Like this situation, for example. After a long day at the bookstore, she just wanted to go home, make herself a cup of tea, and open a book. She didn't want to go to Gaby and Derek's farmhouse, which she knew would be full of cats and clutter and kids.
Sometimes she felt like she had spent he
r life being an accessory to other people's lives, letting their opinions overrule her own. She wished she could have someone who would listen to her, who respected her desire for quiet and privacy and order.
Dad says that most dragons don't have mates, which means there probably isn't someone perfect out there for me. Her parents weren't mated, and it showed; two strong-willed dragons, they couldn't be in the same room without arguing. She hadn't exactly grown up with good relationship role models.
Maybe she should try dating, even though it had largely been a disaster in the past. There might not be a Mr. Perfect out there, but perhaps there was someone she could have fun with.
Single man wanted. Must love books ...
Yeah, right. In this town? Three quarters of her customers were female, and most of the others were buying books for their wives or girlfriends or moms. Most of the men in Autumn Grove were big, physical guys who liked working with their hands, not exactly reading types. And the good ones were all married anyway. Her chances of stumbling across an unmarried male bookworm looking for a girlfriend were about as good as her chances of suddenly meeting the fated mate she was pretty sure she didn't have.
Heck, even her one employee didn't seem to like books all that much. He certainly couldn't put them on the right shelves to save his life.
"You look so sad, dear," the customer told her as Melody bagged up her books. "Do you know what my mother used to tell me when I was sad?"
"What's that?" Melody asked, trying to smile.
"She used to tell me there's a silver lining to every cloud, and a rainbow follows every storm. It'll get better, dear. Just wait."
Melody held the door for her, and then turned to look around the bookstore. Afternoon sunshine slanted through the windows, painting the books' spines in soft shades of gold. She drew a deep breath, inhaling the smell of old paper and bookbinding glue, and in her chest she could feel her tense, stressed-out dragon begin to uncoil and relax.
All her life, she'd yearned to have her own used bookstore, and now Hidden Treasure Used Books was no longer a fantasy but a wonderful reality. Even if the building was old and things were always breaking, even if she was already having trouble finding customers and realizing why Autumn Pages had gone out of business ... No, enough with the negative thoughts.
No matter what happened in the next few days, she reassured herself, everything would be all right. Her friends would be fine. She'd have her book hoard and her store.
So why did her life seem empty to her now? Why did it seem as if there was a part of her that truly did yearn for the clutter and cheerful chaos of Derek and Gaby's farmhouse, rather than wanting to retreat to her quiet apartment full of books?
I'm lonely. But that's okay. I have friends who love me, and I just need to keep busy with the store until this whole escaped-convict thing blows over. And then she could go back to her life, and nothing would have changed. Nothing at all.
Chapter Three: Gunnar
The ride from the prison was quiet and tense. Gunnar sat next to the cop, Keegan, looking out the window as warehouses and factories gave way to suburban houses and then woods and small towns.
"We're going out in the country?" he ventured. He was wearing the clothes he'd been wearing when they booked him, a slightly shabby brown suit. Three years since he'd last worn it, the seams strained at his shoulders and it was too loose in the waist. He'd bulked up and lost weight around the middle since he'd last been a free man.
On his lap he held a small bundle of items in a bag. Wallet, some cash, the keys to an apartment and car he no longer possessed, a phone with an expired plan, a few books and magazines he'd had in his cell ... it was literally all he had in the world now. He wondered what had happened to the stuff in his apartment after he was arrested. Probably the landlord had thrown it out.
"It's a little town called Autumn Grove," Keegan said, glancing at him. "Ever heard of it?"
Gunnar shook his head.
"Good," Keegan said, and looked back at the road.
Keegan had put on a pair of sunglasses, and without being able to see his eyes, Gunnar found his expressions hard to read. He suspected Keegan was some sort of shifter, but wasn't sure exactly what made him think that. It was something about the way he moved, the casual animalistic grace, and the way he made Gunnar's bear nervous. Some kind of big cat, Gunnar thought, or maybe even another bear.
Even without being able to read Keegan very well, the distrust came through loud and clear. Gunnar really didn't blame him, especially if he'd known Nils.
Are we going to fight Nils? his bear rumbled. It was enjoying the freedom, but seemed unsure about that. Nils is our brother. We shouldn't fight him.
We're not going to fight him unless we have to, Gunnar told his bear. But if he tries to hurt anyone, we won't have a choice.
His bear was distracted from the argument by the woods outside the car. Are we going there? We can shift there!
For a moment, it was all Gunnar could do to contain the animal inside him. Surrounded by humans, he hadn't been able to shift for the last three years at the prison. The urge to get back in touch with that side of himself was a desperate ache like a hole in his chest.
"You okay?" Keegan said. "Hungry?"
Gunnar's stomach growled. He'd missed lunch at the prison—not that there was much to miss—and they'd been driving for hours. "Little bit," he said.
"We'll eat when we get where we're going." Keegan hesitated; Gunnar could tell he was on the verge of saying something. What he finally said, though, wasn't what Gunnar had expected. "What were you in prison for?"
Gunnar eyed him, suspecting a trap. "You know that already, right? I'm sure you've read my file."
"I know what your file says. I want to know what you say."
Gunnar hesitated for a few long moments. Finally he said, "I wasn't a good kid. I used to get into trouble. It'd be easy to blame it on Nils, because he was my big brother, my role model. But I really don't have anyone except myself to blame. I dropped out of school, got in trouble, got caught doing things like stealing cars. Spent some time in juvie." He took a deep breath. He didn't like talking about this part of his life. But it had happened; he couldn't change it. "I finally hit a point where I could see that if I didn't go straight, I was going to get one strike too many and spend the rest of my life in prison. So I got a job, kept my nose clean, and tried to turn things around. Then ... then Nils showed up three years ago."
It still hurt to talk about it. His brother had come back into his life after having vanished for years, used him as an alibi and stashed stolen goods at his apartment, and then skipped town when things got too hot and left Gunnar to the cops. Whatever they'd once shared as brothers was gone ... or so he'd been telling himself for three long years in prison.
"I told the cops and the judge that the stolen stuff wasn't mine. But I had a record, and I couldn't afford a better lawyer than the public defender, who had a ton of cases and wasn't really that invested in mine. I mean, look at me." Gunnar gestured to himself with one big hand. "I don't look innocent. Apparently the judge didn't think so either. I got ten years."
"That's a lot of time when they don't really have you on anything other than holding stolen property. Because of your record?"
Gunnar shrugged with a lightness he didn't feel. He could lie. But he had a feeling Keegan had checked up on him thoroughly enough to know all of this already. This was a test, all right. It was a test to see how much of the truth he was going to tell.
Even though the truth could make Keegan turn this car around and take him right back to prison.
"They offered to cut me a deal. Let me go, or at least give me probation, if I turned state's evidence against Nils and helped them catch him."
"You didn't take the deal," Keegan said quietly. "So they threw the book at you."
Gunnar nodded. There was no surprise in Keegan's voice. He'd known all of that already. It really had been a test.
"I know why you're askin
g me all of this," Gunnar said quietly. "I wouldn't betray my brother three years ago. So what you really want to know is, why did I agree to help you this time? You want to know if I'm just in it for an opportunity to escape."
"The thought did cross my mind," Keegan said, his voice bland.
"Look, if there's one thing I had plenty of time to do in prison, it was think," Gunnar said. "I spent a lot of my life telling myself that blood was more important than anything else. Nils and I ... we're all we have in the world. Our parents died when we were kids. We don't have any other close family. I used to feel like, if I lost my brother, I'd lost everything."
He drew a slow breath to calm himself and his restless bear, and wished he had sunglasses like Keegan's to hide his eyes. Instead he looked out the window.
"But I guess what I figured out in prison is that Nils hasn't felt that way about me for a long time," he said. "And even if he still did ... he's done a lot of bad things. Really bad things. He's killed people. I started feeling like prison was exactly where I deserved to be, for letting him get away with it for so long. I took your deal because I want to make things right."
"Even if it means helping put Nils away for good."
Gunnar nodded.
"Hmm," Keegan said, and didn't say anything else.
He turned off the road and drove through a small downtown. It was late afternoon now, and Gunnar looked out at the little brick buildings with the golden sunlight slanting between them. For some reason his eyes were drawn to a sign reading HIDDEN TREASURES USED BOOKS, with the colorful display of books in the window. He wanted all the knowledge inside those books. He wanted to be the kind of person who was worthy of it.
He turned his head to watch a group of children playing in a small park on the street corner. Two of them were little blond boys who reminded him of himself and Nils at that age. Would his life have turned out better if he'd grown up in a place like this? Or would he just have found some other way to screw it up?