They didn’t fit well in her small space, particularly since all three of them tried to avoid the circle filling the center of the room. Neal and Hugh walked the circumference, staring down at it, while Luke loomed over her with anxiety written in the tense way he held his shoulders and the line of his jaw.
“You’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” When she fell, she’d landed in one of the bowls of wine, which left a matted mess of sticky flour and wine in her hair and on the side of her face. She scratched at the flour, self-conscious. She must look a mess.
“You’re a witch,” Neal said. Something in the tone of his voice lent her the notion he was either awed or pleased. Or both. Luke pulled his attention away from her to examine the circle.
“I’m not a witch. I can just do a little magic.”
Hugh crouched down to examine the circle, and read from her book. “‘How to Sever a Major Parasitic Cord.’ That’s not a little magic, if I’m right.”
She shrugged. “It was nothing. I didn’t even do it right, anyway.”
“Maybe it was a cord that can’t be broken,” Neal said. The men were quiet, sharing glances with each other. For the second time since meeting them, she had the infuriating idea things were happening that she knew nothing about.
“A witch,” Luke said with a big grin on his face.
“Indeed,” Hugh said. “You’re trained?”
“No, not trained, and I’m not a witch.”
“I beg to differ,” Neal said.
Hugh stood. All three of them turned and seemed to take in the rest of the room.
“Space heaters?” Luke asked. “Don’t you have heat?”
“It’s broken, and my landlord is out of town.”
“Hugh, look at it. You were always best with the plumbing,” Luke said.
Hugh crossed to the window beneath which the radiator sat. She’d stuffed rags in the crack where the wracked sash didn’t meet the sill. He poked at them and pushed the curtain aside to examine the glass. “Glass is cracked. Window is out of alignment.” He went to the window on the opposite side of the door. “This one is wracked, as well. You shouldn’t have to live like this.”
Ugh. He’s going to try to save me. “It’s none of your business.”
Luke opened his mouth, but apparently thought better of speaking. Neal whispered something to him, and the sense of being out of the loop once again infuriated her.
“Have you seen enough, gentlemen? I’m fine, and I would like to clean up this mess and get some sleep.”
“Radiator needs to be completely replaced,” Hugh said, rising from where he’d knelt to examine it. “It’s a time bomb. You get headaches? Smell gas?” he asked Crissy.
“Sometimes,” she admitted.
“You’re probably lucky it’s right beneath a leaky window.”
“We should go,” Neal said.
Luke stood in front of her. “What happened?”
“I passed out. That’s all. Fell in the wine and the flour.” She unconsciously rubbed her chest, where the pain was only a memory but somehow still bothered her. Like an embarrassing memory, if she thought about it, she could feel the pain.
She arched her brows. “Someone tagged me with a parasitic cord. I’ll break it somehow.”
The stupid jerk smiled a stupid smile she almost couldn’t resist returning.
“Liebling, I think, somehow, that’s not going to happen.”
Neal grabbed him by the upper arm. “Luke, now.”
Luke must have been in the habit of obeying his nephew, because he nodded and turned away. At the door, he paused. “Please don’t try that again.” He smiled, and she picked up the empty wine bottle and threw it at the door as it closed behind him. Fortunately, it didn’t break.
Laughter rang from beyond the door, and she called out, “Jerk!”
CHAPTER FIVE
Luke returned the next day with Hugh, a brand-new radiator, two windows, a welding torch, and a jumble of tools in a large plastic bin. He knocked, knowing she was inside.
“She might be asleep,” Hugh said when she didn’t immediately answer.
“She’s awake. I can hear her moving about. And I smell onions. She’s cooking something.” He leaned toward the door, excitement and nerves mixed at the thought of seeing her again. She’d been pretty upset last night.
She opened the door but balked at actually letting them in. “You can’t do this. My landlord needs to approve repairs, and I can’t afford them anyway.”
“Liebchen, you can’t afford not to do this. You could die.”
She stared into his face, perhaps guessing at the anguish that thought caused, and opened the door wider. The sizzle of frying meat came from the stove, and she moved toward it. “I’m in the middle of cooking here.”
“No worries. You don’t have to do anything; we’ll work around you.”
Hugh hefted a window. “You want to take the windows? You’re the carpenter.”
“Yes, but I’ll need your help. Maybe yank the old radiator and then do the windows while it’s out of the way?”
“You’re doing the windows, too?” she said, her voice rising. She turned from the stove. “Isaiah is going to evict me. There aren’t many apartments in this town.”
“Isaiah Jones is a skinflint,” Luke said. “He’s the cheapest man in town. If the work gets done, and he doesn’t have to pay for it, he’ll be overjoyed.”
“And if not, tell him the Baumanns are responsible and to take his objections to them,” Hugh added.
“Crissy, Liebling, this apartment is a deathtrap. You can’t open either window. The radiator leaks and could cause an explosion or a fire with those space heaters. It’s lucky you shut off the gas. Or the power could go out while you’re sleeping, and you’d have no heat at all. You could die.”
He closed his eyes, shuddering at the thought. When he opened them, she placed her hands on her hips, seemingly unimpressed with his fears.
“I looked up Liebling on the Internet. I don’t want you calling me ‘darling.’ I’m not your darling.”
He opened his mouth, flummoxed by the change of subject. She was his darling; she just didn’t realize it yet.
With a growl of frustration, she turned away from them. “I have to leave for work at quarter to four.”
She’d been frying ground beef and onions, and he smelled cumin and chili powder.
“I’m making chili.” She picked up a large spoon. “You can have some when it’s done. I guess.” She shrugged. “If you want.”
He exchanged a glance with Hugh, and they both smiled.
“I mean, if you’re going to the trouble of replacing that thing, it’s the least I can do.” She kept her back to them. “I’ve been craving chili since I woke up. And ginger snaps.”
“Wunderbar. I love chili.” And ginger snaps were one of his favorite things.
“She brings out the German in you,” Hugh said.
“Ja.”
“I like chili, as well.” Luke had never heard Hugh express that sentiment, but he supposed it could be true. “We’d better get moving.”
###
The chili simmered on the stove, the smell of cumin and chili powder making her mouth water. Crissy couldn’t understand why she had the strongest craving for it.
She sat at the folding table, her books and laptop spread over the entire surface, trying to concentrate on an old biology textbook with two handsome, muscular men working a few feet away.
Shifter men. Luke’s bear watched her openly, black eyes focused and intent, having no idea she could see him. Luke himself gave her little glances, like a teenager sneaking sips of Mom and Dad’s drinks when he thought they weren’t watching. The problem was she couldn’t stop looking either, earning a small smile from him each time he caught her.
“Hello,” Hugh said when Luke nearly dropped the window they carried into the room. “Pay attention.”
“I am.”
“To the work, you do
lt.”
Crissy snickered and turned back to her books but knew not much would get done today. She felt like a very bad hostess for sitting and watching them work. “Can I help?” she asked, rising.
“I don’t think so,” Hugh said, earning a glare from Luke. “A third person would get in the way.”
“You could...” Luke began. He ended up shrugging. “No, I guess not.”
At odds with herself, she paced the small room, listening to their banter, the easy conversation of two obviously good friends. They seemed like nice men, respectful of each other and toward her. Friendly. She wanted to hate Luke for what he’d done to her, but instead he roused her curiosity.
“You two have known each other long?”
“Yes, a very long time,” Hugh said.
“Years,” Luke added.
“Are you a farmer, too, Hugh?”
“Beekeeper. I’m in charge of the honey business. Luke and Neal do the apples.”
“Hold the level while I put in the shims,” Luke said. He frowned at Hugh, their easy mood suddenly strained. Crissy guessed he didn’t like her talking to Hugh more than him. She smiled to herself. She could feed his insecurities or lavish attention on him.
Neither appealed. She went to the tiny closet and pulled down Nana’s box. Clutching it in one arm, she removed the plastic card box of Nana’s recipes and set it on the table. After returning the box to the shelf, she thumbed through the recipes until she found the ginger snaps Nana had made for her when she was a child. She had to have ginger snaps right now.
“What are you doing?” Luke asked when she pulled out her baking things, rattling the baking pan and thunking a brand-new bag of floor on the tiny counter.
“Nothing.”
“It sure looks like you’re doing something.”
“I have a craving. Maybe if you don’t pester me, you can have some.” Nana’s words. But Nana had always asked her to help. Perhaps sensing no one else would ever give a damn about Crissy, perhaps thinking no one else lived to carry on her legacy, Nana crammed as much teaching as she could into the five short years she lived with her.
Crissy stared at the counter, a carton of salt in one hand, overcome with sadness. After her great-grandmother died, she had never felt loved the same way. She glanced over her shoulder at Luke, and a Knowing came to her. Something in her life had changed irrevocably, but she couldn’t quite grasp its meaning. All she knew was something horrible approached, and Luke stood at the center of it.
Yet, she couldn’t help but like him. Quieter than his friend, steady, true. She guessed he would eventually lose interest, like everyone in her life who mattered did. If she let herself fall for him, it would truly be horrible.
###
Bernie Schmitt’s brother Franz relaxed in the rec room at Schmitt headquarters, a fortress disguised as a huge mountain lodge, complete with outbuildings, tidy gardens, and a perimeter wall topped with razor wire.
Bernie poured himself a tumbler of whiskey at the corner bar and sat beside his brother in one of the red leather armchairs facing a huge fireplace of field stone. As Bernie approached, Franz tugged a footstool closer with the toe of his wingtip and placed both feet atop it.
“I wanted that footstool,” Bernie said, sitting. He took a sip of whiskey and set the glass on the table at his elbow. The room smelled of spirits and the log fire. It soothed him.
“Your dirty boots are unworthy of such accommodations,” Franz said. Like Bernie, Franz possessed a deep voice, but Franz had taken the trouble to perfect an accent reminiscent of an east coast prep school education.
“Forgive me for actually working for a living.” Bernie leaned back, folded his hands over his stomach, and closed his eyes. He’d had an idea for a porcelain tea set in the middle of the night and, typical for him, had worked on it since dawn with no food or rest. He now had a comfortable weariness that came to him after a successful day of creating something beautiful, a paradoxical feeling of being physically spent while at the same time spiritually fulfilled.
“You’re a potter. That’s hardly work.”
“I own the largest art pottery works on the west coast, and I still make pottery daily,” Bernie reminded him. “It’s hard work.” He examined his clay-spattered jeans and closed his eyes again. “And messy.”
“You’ve done well.” And there it was. It wasn’t the words as much as the condescending tone that left Bernie feeling like a child. A precocious child, maybe, but a child nonetheless. An irritation flooded him, a touch of anger that had grown increasingly familiar over the last few decades.
“I see by your getup you’ve been in Sacramento today,” Bernie said to change the subject. “Long drive. You must’ve left at dawn to be back by now.”
“My getup?”
“Charcoal gray pinstripe. It’s your visit-the-bankers suit.”
Franz didn’t speak for a minute. “I would like to acquire property down there.”
Bernie opened his eyes and rolled his head to address his brother directly. “Are you serious? The wolves would kill you first.”
“They are a small clan and willing to negotiate.”
“They’re as big as we are but ten times as vicious.”
“I won’t be satisfied with Redding. The wolves will help.”
Bernie snorted. “You dream big. We couldn’t wrest Redding from the Baumanns if we tried.” When Franz didn’t respond, Bernie said, “They’ve grown, Franz. They’re prosperous, and rumor has it they’re producing more shifter offspring than ever before.”
“Which isn’t saying much. Three-quarters of them aren’t even mated.”
Bernie pursed his lips and turned away from his brother to stare at the flickering flames. As they had both lost mates, the subject was a sore spot, and Franz well knew it. Bernie closed his eyes again. Mein Gott, I’m tired. It seemed like centuries since he’d slept well, but truthfully it had only been the last few weeks. Autumn was a bad time for Bernie. Bad things had happened then.
“I have some interesting news.”
Something about the way Franz spoke put Bernie’s senses on alert. “Yes?”
“I stopped at Bobby’s to arrange the annual conference. I thought I’d do it in person, since I was passing through.”
“So?”
“Bobby has a new bartender. A human woman.”
“Once again: so?”
“She has a mating bond.”
Bernie heard the satisfaction in his brother’s voice. His eyes flew open, and he sat upright. Franz could see mating bonds, so it had to be true. “Only Baumanns frequent that bar. I wonder who.”
“Indeed. I would very much like to know. A lot of single males are in their clan.”
“Single women, too,” Bernie said, somewhat wistfully. He made it a goal to meet every one of them, but none was his mate.
“You’ll find her, Bernie,” Franz said, knowing exactly where Bernie’s mind went.
“And you?”
Franz reached for his own tumbler. “I’m not looking. I had Sabine for over three centuries and have no wish to replace her.”
“Hmm. Don’t tell Ursula.”
“I’m not that foolish.”
Bernie leaned back in the chair, but he was no longer tired. He now had a mission: find out who the woman’s mate was.
CHAPTER SIX
A motorcycle engine growled outside, loud enough Crissy heard it even in the dim recesses of the restaurant. Minutes later, a newcomer paused in the doorway and scanned the room before striding up to the bar, taking his beast, a massive bear, along with him.
The shifter wore a creased black leather jacket and new motorcycle boots. She held her breath at his approach until he shrugged off his jacket and settled it over a stool. The jacket bore no patches. Not a gang member. With his stubbled jaw, he might have come across as a handsome bad boy if he didn’t have such a nerdy air about him. He resembled a young Silicon Valley entrepreneur playing at being a biker.
He smile
d at her, brushing sandy blond curls out of his eyes with the back of his hand, and a Knowing came to her. Guilt and grief were his constant companions, and a sort of restless loneliness. He searched for something every day, never finding it.
“Hello,” he said with a voice surprisingly deep for such a slender man. He was tall, though, at least six feet, and the biceps revealed by the short sleeves of his plaid shirt were well defined.
She shook her head a little to bring herself out of the stupor the Knowing caused. I hope I didn’t stand here too long, staring with my mouth open. “Hey. What can I get you?”
“Glenlivet. Neat. Double.”
“Sure thing.”
She turned to the bar-back and bent to get a dusty bottle from a low shelf, realizing as she straightened that he had a perfect view of her rear end. He wore a little smile on his face. I guess it’s nice to be appreciated. Even though the Knowing gave her a glimpse of a little bit of crazy, nothing about the man alarmed her, so she smiled back.
Her nose wrinkled as she scented the whiskey she poured into a glass. She didn’t know a lot about shifters, but common lore said they were immune to poisons, like alcohol. If it couldn’t get them high, why bother?
“Not a drinker?” he asked.
She handed him the tumbler. “I’m a wine drinker.”
“I’ll bet not the cheap stuff for you, either. You have the look of a champagne and caviar woman.”
What the hell does that mean? I’m white trash, no doubt about it. “Do I?” She capped the bottle and turned to replace it, crouching rather than bending this time, and not waiting for an answer.
“You do. Refined.” It didn’t come across as a pickup line, stated so matter-of-factly. “Usually when I see a woman tending bar, she looks like she’s gone a few too many miles down life’s highway, but not you.”
Yes, definitely a little crazy in there, but from what she’d seen inside him, beneath the bad-boy airs and beneath the nerdy exterior, there lived a tortured soul. Not a dangerous one.
She put out her hand. “I’m Crissy.”
“Adalbern. People mostly call me Bernie.” He shook once and let her hand go.
Runaway (Fox Ridge Shifters Book 1) Page 5