He haunted her darkest dreams. He stalked her when she managed some quiet moments alone; she couldn’t get him out of her head. His words repeated in her mind. Why don’t you sit down and we’ll share it?
Who on this God-forsaken mountain would think of a thing like that? Who in their right mind would think of a Farrell and a Cunningham sitting down on a bench and sharing it? Who ever heard of a Farrell and a Cunningham having a civil conversation like two civilized Bruins?
That would never happen. She hated … him, so why didn’t she just come right out and say his name. Brody Farrell. She hated Brody Farrell.
Those words sounded exactly right in her mind, so why did her heart say, No! Why did she wish so much she’d taken him up on his offer when he made it? She would give anything to sit down on a bench next to a Farrell and have a civil conversation. That would give her hope that the world hadn’t gone completely insane.
She wanted Hyatt and her family and all the rest of the Farrells to leave her alone, but she didn’t want Brody leaving her alone. She climbed up to Bruins’ Peak to get away from all the others, but in her heart, she had to admit the truth. She went up there to find him.
Would he be there again? Did he think about her the way she thought about him? After the things he said, he must hate her as much as she hated him, but she couldn’t believe he hated her. The look in his eyes when she told him about Hyatt made her heart leap at a lifeline she never knew she needed.
Someone cared. Someone understood how she felt about marrying Hyatt. Too bad that someone had to be a Farrell. Then again, she never told anyone before how she felt. She loved Hyatt like a brother, but the thought of marrying him, of spending the rest of her life with him, blocked up her throat with stifled sobs. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it.
She couldn’t shatter her father’s plans by telling him. She couldn’t unburden her tortured soul to anyone but a Farrell – and not just any Farrell. Brody understood. Brody cared. Brody wanted to help her.
That made her madder than anything, but she couldn’t pin that anger on the people who really caused it. She couldn’t get mad at her parents for pressuring her into this situation. She could only lash out at the one person she knew on instinct could handle her anger without taking it personally. She lashed out at Brody.
What a fool she was not to accept his help. She wanted nothing more than to get down on her knees and beg him to help her, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him her secrets. She had to hate him, to fight him.
What could he possibly do to help her anyway? He couldn’t exactly kidnap her to stop the wedding: a Cunningham accepting help to thwart the plans of Cunninghams? That was a cruel joke.
She came up to the Peak, but her heart sank when she saw the bench empty. He wasn’t there. He didn’t care about her. He was miles away. He was busy getting his family Homestead battened down for a Cunningham invasion. He was planning all the best ways to kill her and her loved ones.
She threw herself down on the bench and buried her face in her hands. What was she going to do? She couldn’t go on this way. She couldn’t carry the weight of her secret alone. He wasn’t here. She had no choice but to go home and confront her parents with the truth. They wouldn’t listen. They would keep pushing her to marry Hyatt. She might as well put Brody Farrell and all his maddening complications out of her mind right here and now. The less she thought about him, the better.
She hoisted herself off the bench with a heavy heart, but when she turned around, her nerves prickled. Something was out there, in the trees. A branch swayed. The birds fluttered into the air over the spot, and a figure emerged from the shadows.
Her spirits soared. It was Brody.
He eyed her from the tree line. His jaw jerked with nervous tension, but he kept his thumbs hitched in his pockets. Was he just going to stand there and stare at her? Didn’t he want to come out and talk to her? He couldn’t be afraid when he believed the Peak belonged to the Farrells.
At last, he made up his mind and came toward her. Swallowing her pride and going to meet him in the trees never crossed her mind. She couldn’t admit to herself or to him that she really wanted to see him.
He made the decision for her. He stopped in front of the bench. He shot her a quick glance. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, but her hands shook. She bit her lip. “You?”
He nodded, too. His eyes skated over the countryside. “So...uh....you’re here.”
She nodded again. She couldn’t stop herself nodding like a fool. Her heart pattered like a hummingbird in her chest. “I didn’t think you would come.”
“Is that why you came? Do you want to be alone again? I’ll leave you alone if that’s what you really want.”
She put out her hand. “No! I mean, I was hoping you’d be up here.”
He settled down and looked straight at her. “I was hoping you would come back. I didn’t think you would, but I kept watch just in case.”
“You did?”
“Sure. I thought you might change your mind and want someone to talk to.”
“You’re the only one I can talk to. You’re the only one who knows what’s going on with me. Everybody else thinks I’m cool with marrying Hyatt.”
“You’ll have to come clean sooner or later.”
“Yeah; I’m thinking hopefully later.”
“The sooner the better, you’re killing yourself holding this in.”
She tried to smile, but her face twisted up into a mask of anguish. “Do you really think so?”
He took a step closer. “Sure. Just look at you. The sooner you get it off your chest, the sooner you can stop worrying about it. What can they do to you? They can’t force you into a loveless match.”
“No, they wouldn’t do that. My father dotes on me. He only wants me to be happy. He thinks I’ll be happy to marry Hyatt, since we’re so close. He thinks he’s doing me a favor – and himself one, too. He thinks it’s a win-win for everybody.”
“Has he said anything to the Kerrs yet? Do they know he wants this match?”
Star shook her head. “He’s too busy preparing for....”
His eyes snapped to her face. “Let me guess. He’s preparing to fight the northern peril.”
“How can you joke about this? Our families are at each other’s throats. They’ll be slaughtering each other in a few days if someone doesn’t step in.”
“Who would that someone be?”
“I don’t know. I wish Forsyth Mackenzie was still alive. I can’t think of anybody else both sides would listen to.”
“I forgot about him. Too bad he died of a heart attack last year, and his son Rex, the new Mackenzie Alpha, is a drunken gambler. I can’t think of anybody else that could do the job.”
“You should see my father and brothers. They patrol the Homestead day and night, and they have booby traps set up all around the place. I might as well be living in a maximum security prison. They didn’t want me to come here today.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what my brothers have going on. They’re preparing for World War III.”
“Would you get in trouble for talking to me? My father would flip if he knew you came within spitting distance of me.”
“My parents already know I met you up here last time. I asked my father about our southern boundary.”
“What did he say?”
“He said our southern boundary is Craven Creek.” He held up his hand to stop her arguing. “It doesn’t matter. Let them think what they want to think.”
“So what did they think when you said you met me up here?”
“They just kept going on ‘bout how you were dead wrong about our boundary. That’s as far as it went, except when I told them about your family wanting to marry you off to Hyatt, my father said....”
“What? You told your family about that? How could you tell them?”
“I’m about to tell you. When I told them, my father said...”
Her voic
e rose to a shriek. “You told them? How could you betray me like that?”
“Betray you? What are you talking about?”
“You’re the only person in the world I’ve told anything about it, and now you go and blab to your family – the Farrell family – my most closely guarded secret? You prick! I’ll kill you. Don’t you dare come near me again. I’ll crush your nuts with a meat tenderizer.”
“Now just hold your horses, slick. I never....”
“How can you be such a peckerhead? So now the whole rootin’, tootin’ Farrell tribe knows every detail of my personal life. You whoreson! I’m never talking to you again.”
Brody froze. “You better take that back. I was only trying to help you. You don’t have to pull out the nasty names.”
She flew at him with both fists and pounded them against his chest. “You're a liar! You scum! You rat! I’ll kill you.”
He grabbed her wrists and wrestled her away. She thrashed and punched, but he held her at a safe distance. When she tried to wrench her hands free, he wouldn’t let her go. “Hey! What’s the matter with you?”
She fell to wordless roaring. She couldn’t reach him to pummel him with her fists. That made her madder than anything.
She hurled herself at him with all her strength, but she only succeeded in wheeling aside. When she stumbled off balance, he let go of her wrists and let her spin wide.
Star rounded on him with her hackles raised, but before she could launch herself at him again, her body shimmered. Her shoulders hunched, and her mouth yawned bigger and more terrible to let that enraged bellow burst from her lungs.
Her shoulders swelled to twice their normal size, and her whole body doubled over. Her hair blew back from her face, and her skin darkened to dusky brown fur. She landed forward on her hands, but they weren’t hands anymore. Raking claws scratched the rocky soil, and her powerful shoulders extended into massive legs.
She opened her mouth to let out another deafening roar, and the transformation was complete. A massive brown bear stood where willowy Star Cunningham had been just a few seconds before.
She coiled her legs under her to spring. Her fangs glistened in the sun, and her small black eyes burned in her face. An instant later, she left the ground, and all her muscular bulk flew through the air toward Brody.
She would have flattened him if he hadn’t dodged out of the way at the last second. Star sailed past him and landed a few feet away, but she recovered in a heartbeat. She pivoted and came at him again, but he retreated to the far end of the bench. She bent her head between her shoulders and thundered her challenge to him.
In the blink of an eye, Brody shifted, too. His shoulders spread out across his wide back. His T-shirt split down his spine, and dark brown fur sprouted all over his skin. He raked his claws through the air in Star’s direction and shivered the mountain to its foundation with his ear-splitting roar.
For a brief moment, they matched each other in volume. Brody dropped down on all fours and walked sideways around Star. He bellowed into her ear and twisted his head on his burly neck. She arched her shoulders at him and thundered sideways at his broad back.
He stood a good foot taller than her at the shoulder, and anybody could see he outweighed her by hundreds of pounds. She had to crane her neck to yell up at him, and he looked down on her when he looked at her at all. She was well and truly outclassed. She could get as mad as she wanted, but her bear instincts would never let her attack him. He could devastate her with one swipe of his paw. No one knew that better than she did.
She didn’t stop bellowing, and she didn’t back down. He slashed at her with his teeth, but he pulled back within inches of cutting her with his bite. She growled and tossed her head. She lashed, but she didn’t dare nip. She could lose her temper with him, but if she provoked him into losing control, he wouldn’t stop until he killed her. Once he started, she couldn’t stop him.
They bellowed and threatened for five full minutes until Brody lost his patience. He stood up on his hind legs and stretched out his forefeet toward her. He towered over her in all his monstrous bulk. He raised his voice and thundered to the skies.
Star didn’t dare rise on her back legs to confront him. She stayed on all fours and returned his bellows, but he’d made his point. He would dominate. He outweighed her, and he could crush her any time he chose.
Her thunderous rage gradually diminished until she grunted up at him. He gave her one or two more pointed roars before he dropped back down on all fours. The minute he did that, Star took a step back. Her shoulders straightened, her skin lightened, and her face collapsed inward. Her dark hair hung down to her shoulders, and her arms stretched thin and shapely to her painted fingernails. She was herself again.
Brody matched her, movement for movement. He pulled his head back on his shoulders, and his spine straightened to let him stand upright. His hips narrowed, and his chest lay bare to the sun.
Chapter 4
Star surveyed Brody down to his belt loops. Tattoos covered his chest, his arms, and the lower half of his neck. Geometric designs and interlocking swirls grew up out of his pants to twine around his abs, tuck under his armpits, and surround his neck with their skin-tight grip.
He let out a long breath. “Feel better now?”
Star brought her eyes back up to his face. So that’s what he looked like as a bear. Not too shabby. He dwarfed every other Bruin she’d ever seen, even her father, who could throw his weight around and dominate his own sons. No one could stand up to Kaiser Cunningham. However, this man standing in front of her could whip them all with one paw tied behind his back.
Did all the Farrells grow that big, while their human forms remained normal sized? She would probably never know. She took a step toward him. “Thanks.”
“What for?”
“For that.”
“Which part? Yelling at you?”
“For not mauling me like you had a right to. You could have ripped my throat out.”
“You know I wouldn’t do that.”
“I wanted to rip yours out. I would have if you had let me.”
He shrugged. “We all get angry sometimes.”
Star sank down on the bench. Now that she didn’t have to worry about the bear taking over, her nerves shattered. She gripped the bench with white knuckles to stop her hands shaking. “No one has ever stood up to me like that before. No one has ever made me back down and shift back.”
He stared at her. “Never? What do they do at home when you get mad and start blowing your trumpet?”
“They just stand back and let me go.”
“What do you do?”
She turned her face away. She could only hope he didn’t hear her. “Oh, you know, nothing much. I trash the house and threaten everybody in sight. Sometimes they all take off into the forest and leave me alone until I’m finished breaking the windows and ripping the couches to shreds. They never shift and dominate me like you just did.”
He hissed through his teeth. “Are you serious?”
She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at him.
He sat down on the bench next to her. His skin radiated heat and power toward her. She didn’t trust herself to look in his direction. She couldn’t look at his bare tatted chest without following those patterns to their source. They called to her and hypnotized her. They twined their seaweed arms around her body and sucked her down to the bottom of a vast sea of dreams.
He looked her up and down, but he didn’t touch her. “It’s okay. You’re safe with me. If you need to go a “little nuts”, I won’t run away. I’ll stay and stand up to you, if that’s what you need.”
“Thanks.”
They sat in silence for a while. He wouldn’t break the ice. He could sit there until doomsday waiting for her to come out of her shell. Did she really want to come out, to make herself known to him? She had to decide that for herself.
They both stared out at the view until she asked, “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Won
’t your family wonder where you are?”
“They’re used to me disappearing for days at a time. I like to spend a lot of time in the woods by myself. It calms the bear when things aren’t swimming along too well at home.”
Her head shot up. “Me, too.”
“Anyway, all they do and talk about anymore is rigging the place to explode the first time a Cunningham sets foot in our territory. It’s not just really boring anymore. It’s getting downright dangerous. It’s only a matter of time before Austin accidentally trips one of his own Claymores and blows his leg off.”
“Claymores! Jesus, they got it bad! And I thought Dax was crazy.”
He didn’t chuckle. A black cloud crossed his face. “This whole Cunningham thing has turned into an obsession for them. No one can talk about the weather anymore without the Cunninghams getting blamed for it.”
“I know! I tried to talk to my dad this morning about Hyatt, but he was so busy supervising my brothers’ patrol around our perimeter he couldn’t pay attention. I finally gave up.”
He turned toward her. “So that’s what got you so rattled. I wondered.”
“I used to be so close to my father, but now, I don’t even recognize him anymore. I have no one to talk to. No one understands.” Her voice cracked.
He slid his hand along the bench and covered hers with it. “It’s all right. I understand. You can talk to me.”
“You’re a Farrell. I can’t talk to anyone about you, either.”
“What do you want to talk to them about me?”
“Just, that I met you; that we were talking. If they found out, they would hit the roof. You’re nothing but the enemy to them.”
“Am I the enemy to you?”
“No! That’s what I need to talk to someone about. I never went in for all the Farrell bashing anyway, but now that I’m getting to know you and talking to you about my problems, you’re not the enemy at all. I don’t want to fight you and hate you, but no one else would understand that. You probably think I’m talking out of my ear. You probably think I’ve cracked a cylinder.”
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