by Elsa Jade
Brandy handed the child to her goth sister behind her with all the fierce finesse of a center lineman on Superbowl Sunday and squared off to him, dusting her hands. Reddish flakes drifted away and he caught a whiff of burned wood and…blood?
“If you prefer to be outside, we’ll be going elsewhere,” she said.
And then she swayed, reaching for the fallen ponderosa behind her like she was about to fall too.
The Sunday school teacher sister hurried forward to touch her elbow. “Bry… Hey there. Hold on.”
Brandy put one hand over her eyes. “Got lightheaded for a sec.”
“We need to get you home,” Gin said, “out of the sun.”
Mac frowned. He’d figured it was the goth one that needed to be out of the sun. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Brandy murmured. “I just…” Despite her sister’s grip, she stumbled.
Trying to steady her, Rita fumbled with her crutches, and Gin had the kid in her arms already.
So Mac stepped forward. “I got ya.”
He lifted Brandy’s slack arm behind his neck and lifted her into his arms.
The boy crowed again. “Mama, up!”
“Down,” she gasped. “Put me down.”
“I will,” he growled. “That was your car in the parking lot, yeah? I’ll put you down there.”
“So you were following me.”
Well, at least judging from the strength in her accusation, she wasn’t dying. “Not. Following. You.” He resisted the urge to jolt her with each word as he stalked out of the clearing, her sisters falling into line behind him like nervous chickens. “I have a job out here tomorrow, and I wanted to get the lay of the land.”
But now that he had her in his arms again, he was thinking of laying other things…
She twisted, looking over his shoulder, half-choking him, and he had to bobble her to keep from dropping her. “Is Aster okay?” The urgency in her voice seemed out of keeping with the laughing kid he’d seen.
“He’s fine,” Rita reported. “I think he’ll just sleep really well tonight.”
“Sunstroke can be dangerous, but it’s not contagious,” Mac said. “Did you guys bring water for your hike?”
Subsiding, Brandy averted her face. “We…weren’t going to be out that long.”
He frowned down at her. The scattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks seemed too bright on her blanched skin. “You don’t have jackets either. You shouldn’t trust the look of the weather. Things out here can change instantly.”
Behind him, one of the sisters made a choked noise, and he glanced back. Gin was looking too innocent, and Rita was shooting her a sideways, over-wide, shushing glare.
He returned his attention to the sister in his grasp. “Even before the sun goes down, the temperature can drop twenty degrees if the clouds roll over the mesa, and if you don’t watch out—”
“I know,” Brandy interrupted sharply. But just as quickly, she tempered her tone. “Thank you, but really, I already know how fast things can change in Angels Rest.”
He knew he was making the other two women strain to keep up, but he lengthened his stride. If Brandy didn’t want to see him, he could make this all go away as soon as he dumped her back at the parking lot. Anyway, he was supposed to be scouting for the work on the festival grounds tomorrow. He was losing daylight dealing with her.
And she didn’t even want him around, could barely stand to look at him.
Resentment churned sluggishly in his gut. She had all of New York City, so why did she have to be in the park right then?
He lost half a step as he hesitated, wondering. Why were they in the woods? None of them were prepared for a picnic. Heck, the boy didn’t even have pants.
The other two sisters surged past him, bustling toward the VW bus. He’d parked his truck as far away as possible, but he’d been unable to not notice the citrus-colored automotive monstrosity.
So, okay, maybe he had sort of followed her. Accidentally, but still.
Rita unlocked the sliding door and Gin set the boy inside, and they both turned to face him, reaching for Brandy.
They would stuff her inside and zip away, he guessed. And he’d never see her again.
Rita had left the key in the door latch so as he handed over Brandy, he slipped out the key. “Wait right here.”
A chorus of indignant “hey”s followed him, but he ignored them and raised puffs of dust in his stomp across the parking lot to his truck. He grabbed his big thermos and several red Solo cups, and from the cooler he retrieved a sports drink that he usually saved for hard-core sweating. He hesitated, then added one of his sandwiches to the pile.
The two upright sisters glared at him, arms akimbo, all the way across the parking lot. Brandy was glaring too, but she was lower, sitting on the floor of the van in the shade, almost invisible behind the sea of pointy female elbows.
As he held out the cups to Rita and Gin, forcing them to lower their shields, the boy poked his head past their arms. “Peebee!”
Mac peered at the kid while he thumbed the spigot on the thermos. “It’s just water.”
“Peebee is peanut butter,” Rita said.
“Oh. Yeah, I have a peanut butter and honey sandwich, if it’s okay for him to have it.”
They all looked at Brandy, even the kid.
She mumbled something even less clear than the boy. Aster? What kind of name was Aster? Although asters were tough little flowers, drought tolerant and late blooming, so maybe not such a bad name for a boy. Mac handed her the sandwich and the sports drink since she looked like she needed the electrolytes and sugar. And a chill-pill.
“Give me the key,” Gin said.
Grand theft auto wasn’t a charge that would help the clan’s credibility, so he handed her the key. But since Brandy had taken the sandwich and was ripping off dainty chunks for the boy, they weren’t going anywhere right away.
And Mac felt as if his own boots were stuck in something stickier than peebee or honey.
The kid gulped down the sandwich as if they hadn’t fed him for days. Mac watched, awed. “You want the other sandwich? Or maybe a surf and turf buffet?”
Brandy shook her head. Her freckles had receded a bit, as color came back to her cheeks. “He’s always hungry. But that’ll hold him until we get home.” Somehow she’d managed to stay completely peebee-free, except for a spot of golden honey on the side of her thumb. Delicately, she licked off the droplet.
Just an innocent dab of tongue, and his roomy work pants tented like he’d grown a ponderosa in time lapse behind his fly. Thank the great bear he wasn’t running around pantless like certain other males around here. The heavy weight of the cargo canvas prevented a shameful reveal.
Not so much that his dick was shameful, but that he still wanted her even though she’d run twice and rejected him outright the third time.
Gah, he was worse off than his cousins.
That sent him backing away where even lady glares and a kid without a diaper hadn’t done the trick.
“I gotta get back to work,” he mumbled.
Rita and Gin were climbing into the front seats, leaving Brandy to pull the sliding door closed. She had her hand on the latch, and for a second he thought she’d slam it shut right in his face.
But she glanced up, her lush lower lip twitching from one side to the other as she bit at the inside. “Thanks, Mac,” she said finally. “I know this probably seems weird to you…” A sharp laugh that didn’t sound amused to him bounced her shoulders in a way that seemed more like a sob. “Which would be true.” Her cinnamon-brown eyes glistened, but maybe it was just the bright sunlight. “Goodbye, Mac.”
She yanked the door closed.
He watched the bus wheel out of the lot, spitting gravel, and when he swallowed, the back of his throat stung as bitter as the pith of the lemons he’d added to the thermos.
She had her own life. She’d made that clear enough. So why did he feel like she was keeping secrets dark
er than those tinted windows he couldn’t see past?
Everywhere in nature, yellow and black were warning colors, saying keep away.
But if there was one creature that could take a wasp sting…
It was a bear.
Chapter 8
Brandy couldn’t sleep.
When they got back to the house, Aster had run around the old Victorian exploring—it was his first time there on two legs—and then collapsed like an exhausted puppy.
Except he wasn’t a pup, or a cub. He was a little boy.
Though her sisters had tried to get her to take a nap, she hadn’t been able to let him out of her sight, terrified if she glanced away, even for a second, he would be a bear again. She’d had herself a good cry instead, silent and wrenching.
On the drive back, Gin had tried, subtly, to ask him what he remembered, but he’d only grinned at her and said, “Up!” And then managed to almost spill Rita’s spell bag because in any shape he was a handful.
Brandy had given her sister a hard headshake after that. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want to jinx it. Even though that wasn’t how magic worked.
Rita had disappeared into the spellatorium when they returned, mumbling something about reviewing the spell. What, like a supernatural Yelp?
The urge to tell her to leave it alone churned in Brandy’s stomach, with the same slightly queasy feel of the too-sweet drink Mac had given her, but she wouldn’t leave Aster long enough to go downstairs. Instead, she sat at the foot of his crib—no longer a cage—and kept watch while he slept. She rested one hand on his not-furry belly, holding back the hitching breaths that were the aftermath of her crying jag so she could listen to his peaceful snuffles.
Even after the old house quieted and night arrived quicker than usual with a thick blanket of clouds—Mac hadn’t been wrong about how quickly weather on the high desert plateau could shift—she stayed with her son. Who stayed a boy.
Was it over? Had they really banished the bear? And just in time. Aster had changed right before Mac appeared; if Mac had seen the little cub…
She clenched her fists, all her maternal instincts rising to the fore again, ready to rip through any threat. Her folded knuckles pressed against her palm, and she winced at the twinge of scrapes and splinters in her right hand, the hand that had crushed the talisman.
She should’ve trusted in the spell. Everything was going to be all right.
Rain pattering down from the clouds made soft music on the tin roof, as if lulling her to sleep.
But then a louder pounding brought her to her feet.
A quick glance at Aster—still a boy, still asleep—and she hurried downstairs, righteous outrage burgeoning. Who dared threaten to wake her child?
She flung open the door with a snarl on her lips.
And realized somehow she’d already known who it would be.
She tried to push the door closed again, but Mac blocked it with one big hand splayed across the heavy, solid wood. His work boots were spread wide, as if bracing himself against a powerful gale. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t raining that hard, and she was barely half his weight, so it wasn’t like she was holding him at bay.
No, he was braced against his own inner storm. He was holding himself back.
For the first time with him, her heart pounded in a bad way. He looked…not like himself. Not like the nice guy she’d impulsively chosen to launch her post-college new life. His dark hair glistened with sinister gloss from the raindrops, like a movie villain with too much gel. Once upon a time, she might’ve thought the amber flames in his eyes were just a reflection of the Victorian’s vintage lamps, but now she knew better.
He was already half bear.
She licked her lips to unseal her suddenly parched mouth. “Mac.” Her voice sounded hoarse in her own ears.
“Is he mine?”
Even more broken than hers, his voice cracked, and the tears she thought she’d drained coalesced again, like the rain clouds outside.
“Mac,” she said again helplessly.
“I know who I am. Just a small-town guy who digs in the dirt, not some fancy big-city businessman in a suit asking you to find me a loophole in my taxes. I can do the simple math here, Brandy. Is. That. My. Son?”
Hissing out a breath to quiet him as his tone rumbled deeper with each word, she took a menacing step toward him.
To her surprise, he stepped back, his hand sliding away from the door and clenching into a fist around nothing. “You’re not saying no.”
She closed the door behind her, trapping them on the porch together, the rain just an arm’s length away erasing the rest of the world. “Aster is my son.”
He lowered his head between his shoulders, glaring at her. “It takes two.”
“Two to tango,” she snipped. “Only need one to parent.”
He spun away from her, raking both hands through his hair and scattering silvery droplets everywhere. “You have no idea. Jesus, Brandy…”
“Okay, that one was immaculate.”
When he spun back to face her, expression incredulous, the movement was so fast she almost gasped. At least the urge the cry was gone now, evaporating in the rising heat of her anger. He thought he could just rage over here in the middle of the night and interrogate her?
“This doesn’t concern you, Mac.” Even as she said it, she heard the lie. She’d needed his blood to save Aster. “Not anymore,” she added. There, that much was true.
The caution-yellow amber in his eyes was even brighter. “It concerns me very much. You have no idea what could happen—”
“Like my son could turn into a bear?”
He reared back so fast he almost fell off the porch. She couldn’t hold back a little smirk at ending his sanctimonious tirade.
His gaze narrowed on her, the muscle in his jaw clenched so hard it made a lump under the dark scruff of his late-o-clock-three-days-ago shadow. “What do you mean by that?”
With a flippant wave, she went to the porch rail and wrapped one arm around the spindle column. The Victorian’s eaves protected her from the rain, just as her mother-love would protect Aster from Mac. “I mean Ursus arctos horribilis. Grizzly. Big, stinky, monstrous brutes.” She glared at him.
He half turned his head. “Not monsters.”
Oh, that was the word he objected to? “The kind of monster who would stomp muddy boots all over the porch of a nice lady’s house in the middle of the night, yelling about things he doesn’t understand.”
The sidelong glance he shot her was much less yellow. “Not even midnight,” he muttered. “Wasn’t yelling.” He faced her straight on. “And you’re the one who doesn’t understand what this could mean.”
She met his gaze directly. “He’s not a shapeshifter. At first I worried when I figured out what you were, but… Well, anyway, he’s not. He’s not like you, Mac.”
His mouth flattened and his big shoulders hunched back as if she’d hit him with something much sharper than mere words. “What do you know about shifters? Your aunt isn’t one, and she’s not one of the pack’s allies either. She’s lived here for years and never hinted about knowing.”
A quiver of uncertainty straightened Brandy’s stance away from the porch rail. Someone else to protect. “Leave Aunt Tilda out of this. She came here because she just wanted to be herself. Live and let live.”
He huffed out a harsh breath through flared nostrils. “Let live? You think it’s that easy? If shifters want to live, that’s exactly why we have to keep our secrets.”
“Aunt Tilda knows how to keep secrets,” Brandy argued. Hoo boy, did she ever… “You don’t have to worry about her. Or me and Aster. We’re doing fine without you. Just go back to living your life, like we were never even here.”
He pivoted away from her again. For a heartbeat, she thought he would charge out into the rainy night. But he only paced to the end of the porch. The old Victorian wasn’t huge, but the normally spacious and airy porch suddenly felt much too smal
l as Mac swung around to face her from that inadequate distance.
“You think I can just walk away?” His voice was low.
“Lots of guys do.” She swallowed hard. “My dad did, less than three months after my sisters and I were born.”
No man could stay with a witch. Even if he didn’t know about magic, even if he never saw the circle in action, he’d sense the power that wasn’t his, not by birthright, never by force. Most men couldn’t accept it. Witches who wanted a lasting relationship had to hide what they were for as long as they could.
Maybe not so different from being a shapeshifter.
Brandy steeled herself against the twist of empathy triggered by Mac’s stricken expression. “But this isn’t about the past. My sisters and I didn’t need our father, and Aster doesn’t…” She heard the cruel slam winding up in her words and deflected them. “He’s happy with just us.”
Mac was silent for a beat. “I’m not like ‘lots of guys’.”
“Exactly. Which is why I think you understand why it’s better if Aster and I go back to Manhattan, you keep enjoying the, er, freedom of Angels Rest, and we pretend this awkward reunion never happened.”
The rain chose that moment to stop, and her blithe proposal hung in the nighttime silence like a rude belch. But she knew she was right. Aster wasn’t a bear, not anymore, and he didn’t need some man who wouldn’t stick around. Nor did she. Their lives were just too far apart.
Except for that first time when she and Mac had been so perfect together…
She squelched that memory. After she’d left Angels Rest, their day had been first a hot fantasy, then a sweet dream, then a nightmare when she discovered she was pregnant and hadn’t known what to do. The only reason she was thinking about it now was because the rain had soaked Mac’s T-shirt to near transparency, and she couldn’t help but remember how that big, hot body had moved against hers, not the wary circling they were doing now, but an intimate dance of pleasure and release.
Pleasure and release she hadn’t had time for since then.
Though the afternoon heat that had overcome her earlier in the day had dissipated in the rain, some sultry breath remained like a tease of the high summer months to come.