Bodyguard Shifters Collection 1
Page 32
"Something interesting out there?" Keegan asked sharply, and Gunnar shook his head, trying to shake off the echoes of the past at the same time. "Good. The place where I'm taking you ... well, let's just say, there's some trust involved in me taking you here. Mostly it's because I want you where I can keep an eye on you. I thought about putting you up in a motel, but you could skip out easily from there, or get a message out to your brother. This way, someone's going to be watching you every minute. Got it?"
They left town, turning onto a small road that went back into the trees. "You're taking me home with you?" Gunnar asked, disbelieving.
"Actually, I'm taking you to a friend of mine's place. His name is Derek, and he's the one your brother is gunning for. He's a mean fighting machine, and he turns into a big damn alpha grizzly. Don't think you can take him in a fight—and yes, I know you're a polar bear shifter, like Nils."
We're going to fight another bear? his bear asked, perking up.
No! Gunnar thought at it, horrified. Don't you dare! The last thing he needed was to get sent back to prison because his bear, after so long being cooped up inside him, lost control at the first dominant bear it came into contact with.
"His family's there," Keegan said. "Mate and kids. My mate too, and make no mistake, if you harm one hair on any of their heads, you won't be able to run far enough or fast enough. Derek and I will hunt you down and tear you apart."
"I won't." Gunnar tried to infuse the words with every ounce of honest sincerity he possessed. "I swear to you, I'd rather die than let harm come to anyone else because of my brother."
"Lucky for you, my animal lets me know when people are lying." Keegan's voice was close to a growl. "That's the only reason why you've made it this far."
He turned off the road onto a gravel driveway that stopped at a gate made of heavy bars of metal. "Stay in the car," Keegan said, still with the growl in his voice. He started to get out, then stopped and held out a hand, palm up. "I saw a phone in the things the guard gave you. Give it to me. You'll get it back when you leave."
"It doesn't even have a service plan," Gunnar pointed out, but he handed it over as requested. Keegan pocketed it and left the driver's door open while he went to the gate.
Are we going to fight him? Gunnar's bear wanted to know. I'd really like to fight him.
No, we aren't going to fight him. We aren't going to fight anyone. Settle down and be quiet.
He leaned forward and watched Keegan open the gate. It wasn't just a matter of unlocking it. Keegan punched a code into a key pad mounted on the steel pole beside the gate—Gunnar recognized it as an alarm system, and tried to stop the juvenile-delinquent part of himself from figuring out how hard it would be to turn off. There was also a wire wound around the top of the pole and gate that Keegan unhooked and left dangling while he swung it open.
As Keegan got back into the car, Gunnar said, "Don't normally see this kind of security on a farm."
"Yeah, well, most farms don't expect to be attacked by an escaped killer who turns into a giant polar bear, either." Keegan drove through the gate and left Gunnar in the car again while he went back to close the gate and re-arm the alarm pad.
This, at least, gave Gunnar some time to look around. Bathed in late-afternoon sunlight, the farm had a dreamy quality. It looked like something out of a movie, Gunnar thought, the sort of movie where little kids with braids and fluffy golden retrievers would be running through the grass in slow motion.
The main farmhouse was a big, rambling structure surrounded by a sweeping expanse of lawn. There was a wooden pole fence circling a barn and pasture. No slow-motion golden retrievers, but Gunnar saw a cat sunning itself on the top bar of the fence, and a small black-and-white pony browsing in the pasture. Some chickens pecked around in a wire-enclosed run beside the barn.
It was beautiful and peaceful and very much not a place for a guy who'd just spent three years in prison.
Gunnar's throat tightened. All through the drive, he'd thought the hardest part of all of this was going to be dealing with his brother. But this was the first time he'd felt panicked. For an instant he just wanted to tell Keegan to turn around and drive him back to prison.
I can't do this. I can't sit around with this nice farm family and pretend I'm like them. I'm not like them. I may not have done what I was sent to prison for, but I was a teenage car thief. I'm not a good person. I don't belong here—
"Hey!" Keegan said, leaning into the driver's side. "You can get out of the car now. Unless you want to sit out here all evening, but if you do that, then I have to do that, and I'll miss out on Gaby's amazing home cooking."
Gunnar got himself under control and made sure his bear was firmly under control. "Coming," he said stiffly, and got out.
They walked past several other vehicles parked outside the house: a sleek black Mustang, a minivan, and a little hatchback with some dings and rust spots. Interesting bunch of cars, Gunnar thought. He wondered if it was an equally interesting mix of people inside the house.
As they climbed the steps to the old-fashioned wooden porch, the door burst open and a woman ran out. She was visibly pregnant and had light brown skin and bouncing dark-brown curls, and that was all Gunnar had a chance to see before she flung her arms around Keegan and planted an enthusiastic kiss on him.
Keegan kissed her back just as enthusiastically. Gunnar couldn't believe the change in him; he'd thought the guy had a stick up his butt a mile long, but for this woman, Keegan's stiff cop face dropped away, revealing a grinning lovesick fool underneath.
The kiss broke and the woman's knees visibly wobbled. Keegan steadied her with an arm around her pregnancy-swollen waist. "Wow," she murmured, and then whacked him in the shoulder with the back of her hand. "You're late—" She stopped, noticing Gunnar on the lower step. "Oh ... hi. This is ...?" She looked blankly at Keegan.
"Ghost's brother Gunnar," Keegan said. "I need to talk to Derek before we go in the house. Is he inside?"
"Yeah, he's with Gaby in the kitchen." She turned to Gunnar with no sign of fear, and held out a hand. "Hi, I'm Tessa."
Gunnar started to reach for her hand, but Keegan put an arm around her, pulling her back.
"Hey!" Tessa protested.
"Don't go getting friendly with him," Keegan said. "He's here because we need him and because I want him where I can see him. It's strictly business."
"That's still no reason not to be nice." Tessa freed herself gently but firmly, and turned back to Gunnar. "I'm sorry that my husband has no manners. Anyway, I'm Tessa, and—"
The door slammed open for the second time, this time hard enough to bounce off the wall with a tremendous crash. "What the hell, Keegan?" a deep voice roared.
For a moment it was all Gunnar could do to keep his bear under control. The big guy who'd just stomped out onto the porch was pure dominant shifter grizzly from his bristling buzz cut to his size 13 boots. Massive shoulders strained against his T-shirt, and tats sleeved his arms. The bear inside him was so close to the surface that he had to be right on the verge of a shift; Gunnar could see it in his eyes.
"Calm down, Derek," Keegan snapped, holding out a hand to stop him. Derek was taller than Keegan by several inches and had probably fifty pounds of muscle on him. Still, Keegan didn't seem afraid of him in the slightest.
"We agreed we'd get him out of prison," Derek snarled. "Nobody said anything about bringing him to my home, where my family is—"
"And mine!" Keegan snarled back. "You think you're the only one with something at stake here? I brought him here not only because I believe he genuinely wants to help, but also because at the farm, we can watch him; he can't go running off to find a phone and call his brother—"
"So get him a guard! Or an ankle monitor! Don't turn my home into—"
"Are you reacting this way to him," Keegan shot back, "or is it because he looks like his brother? Stop letting your animal think for you. Calm down and consider this like a rational human being and not—"
Gunnar breathed deeply, keeping hold of his bear as it tried to lunge out of him. Getting into a fight wouldn't do him a damn bit of good. Even if he won, he would still have lost, because they would never trust him again.
"Derek, he's right," Tessa said. "You need to calm down."
"Stay out of this, hon," Keegan told her. "Go in the house."
"Excuse me? What kind of alpha-male nonsense is this?"
Keegan didn't take his eyes off Derek. "You're human, Tessa; you haven't seen how shifters can get when their animals are riled up. I don't want you to get hurt."
"You do remember I faced down a dragon, right?" Tessa said, her voice icy.
"You're right," Keegan said, the corner of his mouth twitching. "In that case, do me a favor and, for their sake, keep Gaby and the kids inside until things calm down out here."
"Now that, I'll do." She edged around Derek carefully and vanished into the house.
"Look what he's done to us already." Derek's voice was a low rumble. "We need to show a united front against Ghost, and now we're falling apart. Bringing him here was a mistake, Ben."
"I'm starting to think you're right," Keegan began, then turned his head at the sound of tires crunching in the driveway. "Are we expecting anyone else?" He reached across to his shoulder holster.
"The girls said your sister might show up."
"Damn it," Keegan muttered. His hand still hovered near his gun. "That's just what we need."
Gunnar's bear didn't want him to take his eyes off Derek, in case of a sneak attack, but he turned along with the rest of them to look down the driveway. From here, all he could see was a shadowy figure at the gate, undoing the security system as Keegan had done.
The gate swung open and the new arrival drove through in a little silver Miata convertible. The top was down, and Gunnar got a good look at her as she maneuvered into a parking place in the row of cars.
He would never forget that first look.
She was bathed in the golden light of late afternoon, turning her pale skin to honey and lending a golden sheen to her hair like a crown of liquid night. As she got out of her car, he took in the gray cardigan and the glasses, and his initial thought was that she looked like the world's sexiest librarian. Her buttoned-up sweater did little to conceal the luscious curves underneath. He wanted to unwrap her like a gift. He wanted to feel those ample breasts pressed against him, cup his hands under the bountiful curve of her ass ...
His newly arrived librarian goddess looked up at the scene on the porch. Behind her glasses, she frowned in puzzlement, and then her eyes met Gunnar's and—
It was like lightning striking. There was something charged and heated in her eyes. He was aware of the rustle of wings, the slow ripple of silver scales. And behind all that, a shocking conviction that Gunnar and his bear both knew, deep down to their shared core.
This woman was his mate.
Chapter Four: Melody
This man was her mate.
Melody stared up at the huge blond stranger on the porch, while her dragon writhed in excitement inside her.
Bathed in the glow of the sun setting behind the trees in the pasture, he was golden from head to foot, with short blond hair like a crown of gold, and the planes of his face lit as if by firelight.
Of course he's a fit mate for us, her dragon enthused. He's made of gold!
You don't even hoard gold, you silly creature, Melody scolded fondly. For us, he should be made of paper and bookbinding glue.
But her gaze stroked his face as if by proxy for her fingers, from the high forehead (intelligent, because of course any mate of hers must be), down the broad angles of his cheekbones, across a slightly crooked nose that helped keep his face from being too symmetrical and pretty, to full lips that she could so easily imagine caressing her own—
She gasped at the surge of want coursing through her and dropped her gaze away from his lips, but that was worse, because then her eyes went down to the tuft of golden hair peeking out of the collar of his shirt (no, not there!), down to the large capable hands that she could picture gripping her waist as he bent her over the hood of her car—
She wrenched her face away from him, her cheeks flaming. She couldn't believe the thoughts she was having, with the entire family there! It felt as if they should be able to look inside her head and see the lust that felt as if it would consume her.
Her family ...
Now that she'd managed to tear her gaze away from the golden vision of Adonis on the porch steps, she became aware, belatedly, that something was going on. Something ... intense. That was Derek, Gaby's mate, in front of the door, and he was all but bristling. Even without being able to feel his bear's agitation the way she could have recognized an angry dragon, she was aware of his fury; it had weight and force, as if protective menace rolled off him in waves, making her want to step back.
Her brother stood between her golden Adonis and Derek, and he was in what she recognized as Full Cop Mode, one hand even resting on his gun. Not to use it against Derek, surely?
"What's going on here?" she asked. Her voice cracked on the first word but she managed to gain control over the rest of the sentence.
"Long story," Ben said. "Sis, why don't you go in the house and check on how Gaby's doing with dinner?"
Her Adonis threw Ben a sharp look at the word "sis," and Melody's eyes narrowed. Ben seemed to be deliberately making a point of their relationship, which made her wonder why. For her mate's sake, to warn him away?
But of course he didn't know the Adonis on the porch steps was her mate. Her Adonis was now looking at her with clear blue eyes, as blue as summer skies and tropical oceans—eyes that were strangely tormented.
"This was a mistake," he said suddenly. His voice was a deep rumble that seemed to vibrate up from the center of his chest, and Melody's dragon thrilled to it. "This was a mistake, Keegan. Take me back."
Back? Melody thought. Back where?
Ben laid a hand on his arm. "Calm down, Gunnar. You've come this far—" and the rest of his sentence was lost, to Melody's ears anyway, in her dragon's delight at learning their Adonis's name. Gunnar! What a perfect name, so strong and masculine. It rolled off the tongue, with musical overtones that reminded her of his voice, deep bass notes to complement the lighter harmonics of Melody's name—
"That's right, take him back to prison where he belongs." Derek's snapped words cut through Melody's distraction, overriding her dragon's rapture.
Wait. Prison?
"No one's going to prison," Ben said in exasperation. "No one is going anywhere. Derek, between you and me and—our third, we can easily control him if anything goes wrong." He glanced at Melody, delicately declining to mention her dragon; even among their fellow shifters, dragons were reclusive and secretive.
But what was all this about controlling Gunnar, as if he were something dangerous? And ... prison? She tried to catch his gaze, but he stared at his feet and refused to look at her.
She was taking in more details now, though. The cheap, ill-fitting brown suit—she hadn't even noticed it before, too distracted by the shoulders inside the suit. The glimpse of blue tattoo ink on the back of one of his hands—that wasn't a jail tattoo, surely?
It was not possible that she'd found her mate only to have him turn out to be some sort of felon. Not a fellow bookworm who would delight in the same quiet scholarly pursuits that Melody loved, but some sort of common ... criminal?
But there was no other conclusion she could come to, particularly with the way Derek was looking at Gunnar as if he might lose control and attack them all at any moment, the way Ben was standing near Gunnar with "cop mode" on, not just as if he wanted to protect Gunnar from Derek, but as if to protect the rest of them from Gunnar ...
Melody stared in appalled disbelief.
There is absol
utely nothing wrong with our mate, her dragon insisted, though its earlier delight had given way to uncertainty. Our mate is perfect for us. Look at that jaw! Those arms! We just need to give him a cha—
Oh, shut up, Melody told her dragon.
Chapter Five: Gunnar
As a younger man, Gunnar had dreamed about the day he'd meet his mate. He didn't know what she would look like, what color her hair or skin would be, what her voice would sound like, what kinds of things would delight her. He knew only that she would be perfect, and in her eyes he would see all the best parts of himself reflected.
Never had he imagined that she would stare at him in appalled horror. And who could blame her? What did he have to offer this lovely, curvy librarian-goddess with her soft voice and soft hands? He'd just spent the last three years with the roughest dregs of society. Hell, even before that, he had a rough past and the criminal record to prove it. Even if she could somehow, by some miracle, look past all of that, his brother—and Gunnar's own moral failing in refusing to condemn Nils while there was still time—was the entire reason why all of them were in danger. Of all the times when he could have met his mate as a younger man, it had to be now, when he was too broken and ugly to have anything to offer her anymore.
The more she learned of him, the more she'd loathe him. What could he even say in his own defense? The best thing he could do for her was stay as far away from her as possible.
His misery was so deep that he barely cared that the standoff had broken and Derek now seemed willing to let him into the house, though with visible (and understandable) reluctance. Right now he wished he could be anywhere other than here.
Three years in prison had, at least, given him skill at hiding his real feelings. He was able to muster a veneer of friendliness as he was introduced to Derek's mate Gaby (small and pretty, with a round face framed in dark waves of hair), Gaby's mother Luisa, and Gaby and Derek's children Sandy and Jimena. Gaby was a consummate hostess, greeting him with such friendliness that no one would have guessed she'd just witnessed her husband threatening to throw him out by bodily force. Gaby's mother even came up, stretched on tiptoe to pinch his cheek, and declared that he was too pale and needed to eat more.