by Sylvia Frost
The man looked down with comically wide eyes, as if the rose had just appeared there by magic. “Well, I guess I did.”
“Do you have any idea how much that’s worth?” He could practically feel his canines lengthening into fangs, and he closed his mouth. With his wild black hair, massive frame, and inhumanly bright green eyes, Samson looked beastly enough already.
The man held the rose out to him. “You can have it back.”
“What use would a cut rose be to me?”
The man shrugged, which made his jowls jiggle. “I don’t know. But I’ll pay it. I’m so sorry. My daughter, you see—”
“One point five million. That’s how much that rose is worth.”
The man’s mouth dropped open, and his lips moved mutely before his vocal cords began working again. “One… one point five million? You’re joking. How is that even possible? What are you growing them with? Heroin?”
“Do I look like a man who jokes?” Samson said. The idiot wouldn’t understand how decades of selective breeding had created the most perfect flower, imported specially from England at great expense.
“N-no, I have to say, you don’t.” The man sidled to the right, foolish enough to think there was some hope of escape. “But I don’t have that kind of money...”
“There are other ways for you to pay.” Samson’s wolf rejoiced at all the fantastic ways he could have his retribution, all carefulness forgotten as his anger grew. He’d start by biting off the fool’s hands. Maybe if the man was lucky, he’d leave it at that. An impending transformation itched at his skin, and the line between man and beast began to fray.
“But we’ll take the money.”
Samson whirled to see his brother, Rex, standing only a few rows over, staring at both of them. With his brother’s lighter frame, boyish good looks and slicked-back sandy hair, the only trace of shifter in him was in his predatorily calm cerulean eyes. In some ways, his humanity made him even more dangerous than Samson. At least with Samson, you’d know when you were about to die.
But now caution gleamed in Rex’s blue eyes. With his alpha’s intuition Samson got the message. They had enough troubles without adding murder to the list.
Samson straightened his shoulders and pushed down his wolf’s fury.
“But I d-don't have that kind of money. And I couldn’t ask my daughter, even with her book royalties,” the man spluttered, clearly oblivious to how close he had just come to being torn into a thousand pieces.
Rex, knowing that Samson didn’t have the energy to deal with the man, strode over and grabbed the intruder by the elbow. “Our lawyers will deal with that.”
“B-but I don’t have a lawyer.”
Rex rolled his eyes discreetly. “I’d recommend getting one,” Rex said, dragging the intruder through the door. The whistle of the wind drowned out the man’s reply.
Samson closed his eyes as the door clicked shut and silence returned. Time slowed as he lost himself to the calming scents of green growing things and wet, fertile soil. His mother had kept the garden for his father, to help him keep his wolf in check.
It was only the scent of life that abated a wolf’s hunger for death, she said.
Samson hadn’t understood how necessary the garden was until both his mother and father had passed and he had been left to care for his two younger brothers, Rex and Luther.
“I’ve packed him away, and I’ll have the papers drawn up by morning,” Rex drawled.
Samson opened his eyes to find his brother leaning against a trellis embroidered with exotic vines. “How many times have I told you to close the gate when you leave?”
Rex smiled gently, not cowed by Samson’s lecture. “Millions now.”
“You never listened when you were a teenager. I shouldn’t be surprised that you don’t now.” Samson pressed his thumb against his jaw, dragged down by a riptide of melancholy.
“Don’t feel too bad. By that time, all my habits were set,” Rex lied.
Even without his increased perception as an alpha, Samson knew it was a lie from the bitter twist of Rex’s mouth.
Rex had his first shift the first few days after their father died from cancer, and as far as Samson knew he hadn’t transformed more than a handful of times since. Which was better than Luther, the youngest brother and member of their pack.
Luther…
Luther was the reason, Rex had to re-purchase his family’s old home in the first place, and return back to Crystal Creek after twelve years away.
“Cheer up,” Rex said, grinning grimly. “We’ve got a lawsuit in our future.”
Samson shook his head, confused by his brother, as usual. “You’re the oddest wolf I know, Rex.”
* * *
But even after twelve years, a publishing contract, and her virginity gone, her home town hadn’t changed. From the single dingy Chinese restaurant to her dad’s almost-condemnable ranch house on the outskirts of town, Crystal Creek, Michigan was like a time capsule.
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.
* * *
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.
Isabella.
* * *
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