Bear The Blaze (Firebear Brides 3)

by Anya Nowlan

  She nodded, shaken. “Of course I’ll read them,” she promised.

  “Good,” Ragnar said, taking a deep breath.

  His hazel eyes sought out hers and she felt that familiar sensation of the air getting sucked out of her lungs when he looked at her. It was magic what that man could do to her with a look or a touch.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Abigail,” he confessed.

  “I’m glad I’m here too,” she agreed, smiling softly.

  Returning to Los Angeles was starting to feel like a trip she didn’t want to take, despite the crazy arsonist werebears.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Ragnar

  Sleep was fitful that night. He tossed in the bed, trying to find some kind of a position he would be comfortable in, and failing miserably. After a while, Ragnar was reduced to staring at the ceiling, deep in thought.

  A lot of things were suddenly happening in his life. He’d gotten everything in order in Phoenix. Everything ran the way it was supposed to there. He had his schedule and he stuck to it and didn’t deviate. Having structure was important for an addict.

  Pressing his hands behind his head, Ragnar stared into the darkness. He could make out the ridges in the wood, the small spines and shapes allowing his eyes to track lazily across the length of the ceiling. The room felt too empty. He felt too empty. A few years ago, it would have immediately made him reach for a bottle.

  But this time, he actually had a reason.

  The rest of the Hamiltons didn’t know this about him. He’d never shared it with anyone but Rhodes, and he was out of touch more than he was in Ragnar’s life these days. Searching for a reason why he’d fallen into the whiskey and neglected to get up for several years hadn’t been hard to find. He just had to turn over a couple of stones and rifle through his subconscious, and ta-da—a perfectly viable excuse.

  Ragnar scoffed to himself. He wasn’t the kind of man to make excuses. Not anymore. Now, he knew that seeing his father die had done a number on both him and Rhodes. It was the guilt that got him, he figured. Rhodes had turned into an adrenaline junkie and Ragnar had flitted through life until he found a friend in the bottom of a glass. He had to count his blessings that he’d managed to find the strength, or more like his bear had managed to find the strength to get out of it when he did.

  But times like this, his mouth was still dry and parched, longing for a taste of sweet abandon.

  Seeing Slade and Sear had brought it all back. The memories he’d ignored, but now couldn’t understand how he hadn’t seen them before. Power of the mind: blocking out that which has the greatest potential to harm. On the other hand, it also took him a step closer to figuring out what was going on now.

  The coincidences were far too large to be brushed away as random happenstance. The pattern was the same as twenty-plus years ago. And he was willing to bet that the culprits were too. And just like last time, the Hamilton brothers were in the thick of things.

  Ragnar muttered a groan that was somewhere between a growl and a curse. If there’d been a bottle near him now, he was positive that he’d be tearing the cap off with his teeth and downing it with reckless abandon. The fires and the past were not the only things on his mind. Abigail Ramirez had managed to monopolize a large chunk of it too, and she was another “something” he wasn’t paying enough attention to.

  There was no doubt in his mind that she was The One. His mate. The one he was meant to live the rest of his days with, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, fires or no fires. But how could he tie down a woman like her—so vivacious and full of life—with someone like him who was practically teetering on the verge of being dead inside?

  Gnashing his teeth together, Ragnar closed his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep. But sleep never came and he didn’t expect it to. Not really. There was too much on his mind, distracting him and keeping him questioning everything he did.

  It wouldn’t be fair to her to commit herself you, he told himself, trying desperately to convince himself of what his rational brain knew, but his bear and emotional side refused to listen to. You’d ruin her, just like you’ve ruined yourself. You know this. So why do you insist?

  It was a good question, he thought. Why? Why couldn’t he ignore her and put her out of his mind? Well of course he couldn’t forget about her. Having met her, Ragnar knew that every day without her would be pure torture. If the past didn’t drive him back to the bottle, losing Abigail definitely would. But could he really be that selfish and go to her, admit everything, and claim her because that would be better for him?

  Squaring his jaw, Ragnar felt his hands balling into fists. No. It wouldn’t be fair. She had her whole life ahead of her. To her he was a hot lay in a glorified toolshed, a good memory to sometimes look back upon with a wistful smile. Her life would not be tied around those moments they spent together, or the way she felt when their hands touched, or how the air smelled like vinegar when they were apart.

  She could have a normal future. One that wasn’t tied down with a bear who could barely handle himself, let alone protect her or keep her happy.

  At that very moment, Ragnar wanted nothing more than to stand up, cross the hallway between his room and hers, and fuck her until the only word left in her vocabulary was his name. She would taste better than any liquor and he could get drunk on her, not fearing the consequences. It would be, in a word, heaven. But he couldn’t do that to her.

  So, there he was, flipping himself over and over again in a bed that creaked every time he moved, suffocating in the hot summer air and contemplating the many, many ways in which he could lessen his current misery, but wouldn’t.

  I have to let her go. I can’t do this to her. She deserves better.

  Ragnar believed it with all his heart. And it broke his heart into a million pieces right along with that conviction.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Abigail

  Being around Ragnar was like trying to tell tomorrow’s weather off of tea leaves and good intentions. The day before, she’d felt closer to him than ever. Holding his hand as they exited the diner, kissing him like a rabid teenager in the car as they parked in the woods a few miles from Hamilton House and losing herself in him completely. And then like a light had been turned off, she felt like he didn’t acknowledge her existence at all.

  After she’d read the articles the same night and agreed with Ragnar’s assessment of the situation, she’d gone to his room and told him her thoughts. He’d listened to her impassively, not an ounce of that caring, brokenhearted bear she’d sat with at the diner visible in him. It was like she was in the room with a different person altogether, all the warmth and joy and lust had been sucked out of the situation, leaving Abigail confused and alone. It was not a pleasant feeling.

  The morning had been much the same. She hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before, thinking about what the hell had she done to mess things up with Ragnar or what could have happened. When he gave her the cold shoulder at the breakfast table, she was too tired and annoyed to put on a good face about it, and her irritation had turned to anger.

  Probably not wise to act like a sullen teen in front of everyone, Abigail thought, eating her breakfast on the hood of Old Bell, legs crossed.

  Tiana had made some amazing waffles and Royce had cooked up scrambled eggs. Those two were so obnoxiously perfect together that it made her gag. Funny, just yesterday she’d thought them endearing. Same went for Rose and Redmond, who cooed at each other like they’d never seen one another. That was all compared to Ragnar, who looked like he’d been staring death in the face for the whole night and had barely lifted his eyes to greet her when she came down the stairs. Abigail was feeling sick to her stomach at the moment.

  He’s hot and he’s cold, she mused grimly, stopping herself before the Katy Perry song got too far in her head. She had to keep some modicum of decorum, after all.

  She was halfway through her breakfast when she heard a flurry of hurried footsteps making the groun
d shake. A sound like that could only be made by a flock of Hamiltons descending upon the workshop like a plague of locusts. Hot, sexy, panty-meltingly gorgeous locusts. But locusts just the same.

  “What’s the hubbub?” Abigail asked, steadfastly ignoring Ragnar’s gaze.

  Not that there was much point to it. He barely looked up from the toes of his work boots anyway.

  “Fire. Trouble. Hurry,” Redmond said with a grin, grabbing Abigail by the ankles and yanking her down, catching her easily and setting her on the ground like she didn’t weigh a thing.

  He quoted what their old firefighting instructor used to say when they just started. The old grouch seemed to have exactly three words in his vocabulary, but Redmond had better control of them.

  “Yeah? Well, I think she’ll hold,” Abigail said, patting Old Bell with the palm of her hand. “But don’t break her. I’ll get pissed,” she chided, watching Ragnar climb into the truck while pulling on his turnout coat.

  She couldn’t keep her eyes off of him, no matter what she did. It was a curse and it was sort of getting on her nerves.

  “Ragnar will make sure I don’t trash it, won’t you bro?” Redmond hollered, getting a noncommittal humph in return.

  “Better yet, I’ll drive and we’ll get there alive and the truck will be fine. How’s that,” Royce said, beating Redmond to the driver’s side and pulling himself into the cabin with seasoned ease.

  Was there anything better than watching firebears work? God, they were like art in motion. It was beautiful and if Abigail hadn’t been so damn sullen about Ragnar, she might have actually enjoyed it.

  “Yeah, don’t let Redmond near that thing. He can’t drive a freight train without taking it off the tracks,” Abigail scoffed, stepping aside with her plate still held in her hand as the engine came to life with a satisfying purr.

  Old Bell sounded good. For a wretched old beast, she’d serve them well.

  “By the way, do you think you could check out my Ford while we’re away? She’s sounding awfully finicky to me and I think you’re better at this than I am,” Redmond said, dropping his keys into Abigail’s palm as Old Bell pulled out of the high-ceilinged workshop.

  “Anything for you, obviously,” Abigail said with mockery in her voice, batting her lashes.

  Both Redmond and she grinned and the truck took off with a rattling roar, Redmond’s triumphant holler echoing after it. Abigail laughed, watching Old Bell tear up the dirt road. A fire was never a laughing matter, but Redmond sure was. The difference between him and Ragnar was made all the more stark now that Abigail knew their past. Though the trauma was mostly shared, with the loss of their father obviously hitting each of the Hamilton boys hard, it was surprising how they could come out on the other side as such thoroughly different people.

  Shaking her head, Abigail tried to push Ragnar out of her head as she skulked through the yard and found Redmond’s truck. It seemed that she’d been left all alone, as Royce’s truck was gone and that usually signaled that both Tiana and Rose were out of the house, running errands or attempting to get both of their new businesses up and running in Shifter Grove.

  Abigail admired that—the get-up-and-go attitude those women had. They’d seen something that they didn’t love about their lives and made the conscious decision to change it, bettering both themselves and the people around them. It made her wonder what her damn problem was—boy troubles were usually not too hard to figure out, after all.

  I didn’t even ask them if it was a bad fire, she thought to herself, surprised.

  That was the sort of thing she never missed. Working at a fire station, where losing a friend or a co-worker was a constant danger, she’d learned to keep herself up-to-date on anything and everything that was going on in the field. But Shifter Grove didn’t quite operate like that yet, and the fact that she was distracted was showing in glaring colors. Ragnar had done a number on the curvy Latina and she wasn’t sure she appreciated it.

  Sighing, she clambered into the truck and drove it into the workshop, taking an opportunity to pull a quick donut on the open field of weeds while she was hidden from the view of the big house by the sheds. It was a rush, another little thing to keep her mind off of the man who was so thoroughly monopolizing her time and attention. But it did give her a chance to hear what Redmond was talking about. The engine did sound a bit jittery, especially on downshifts.

  Chewing on the inside of her lip thoughtfully, Abigail scooted out. She grabbed her headlamp and toolbox and got to work. She popped the hood and examined the engine, keeping it on to hear where the rattle was coming from. Another blessed diversion. Knowing Redmond, he’d thrown her a bone because the way she and Ragnar had been awkwardly avoiding one another had to be painfully obvious for everyone involved.

  You need to talk to him, she told herself, allowing one more second of obsessing about him before she’d put him out of her thoughts until her job was done. When he gets back.

  She refused to consider the possibility of if he came back. He had to. They had unfinished business. The werebear had no right to try and get injured during something as apparently routine as a forest fire in Idaho.

  Attempting to troubleshoot a truck alone that was finicky mostly during gear changes was not an easy task. After poking around in the engine for a while, Abigail eased herself into the service pit that opened up in the belly of the workshop. Wearing her headlamp and dragging her toolbox down there—a precarious climb as the pit was only accessible via ladder—Abigail took her time to check the underside of the truck.

  These modern cars were a real hassle. Most things that needed to be done required half of the damn thing to be dismantled. Thank the Lord she was so adept at it. Abigail was busy loosening some couplings when she heard the telltale sign of heavy footsteps outside.

  “You guys back already?” she called, but got no answer.

  She couldn’t see a damn thing from the darkness of the pit, despite standing up on a little foot ladder because she wasn’t tall enough to reach everything she needed to. There was no answer, and for a second she thought she’d imagined those steps. But a moment later she heard something sloshing, like liquid in a canister, and the footsteps sounded again, more distant this time.

  “Redmond, would you stop dicking around! Is everyone all right? Did Old Bell make it?” she called, frowning to herself.

  When that too went without a reply, Abigail hopped off the ladder and went for the one that would take her out of the pit. As she put her hands on the first rung, the heavy metal cover was slammed down on top of the pit, covering the ladder exit and plunging Abigail into darkness. All she saw were a pair of dark brown, muddy work boots with bright yellow tags.

  “This isn’t funny!” she hissed, clambering up the rungs and pushing at the cover, unable to move it from her side. “Let me out!”

  It was at that moment that her heart sunk. She heard the sound of a match being pulled and then the terrifying whoosh that came with a fire starting, big and angry. She could hear those footsteps faintly walking away again until there was nothing else but the roar of the fire somewhere outside of the workshop, and the panicked beating of her heart to keep her company.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Ragnar

  Putting distance between himself and Abigail was like taking a hot prod and trying to gouge his eyes out. In a word, impossible. Every fiber of his being longed to hold her, to be closer to her and cut through that distance he’d so painstakingly constructed. But he knew that doing that would have been for him, not for her.

  Got to be strong, he told himself, snorting dryly at the stupidity of that thought.

  He was very aware that he looked like an apparition of his usual self. Eyes sunken into his skull, and his face contorted in a constant scowl that put his usual grouchy demeanor to shame, he looked like the true definition of the outward image he’d been trying to create. There were too many balls in the air and Ragnar was wearing himself thin trying to keep them all moving.
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br />   While the pain and futility of keeping away from Abigail nearly consumed him, he threw himself into his work. Determining whether it had been the Hasslebacks starting those fires had become his one goal, driving him to study and revisit each and every fire site and look for a pattern that would lead him back to the werebear twins.

  With all of that at the forefront of his mind, Ragnar knew he was getting sloppy. The moment the tall pine tree, fully in flames, came crashing down mere inches from him was sign enough of that.

  “Ragnar, you okay?” Royce hollered, holding onto one of the hoses and spraying the arc of water onto the burning brush high and strong.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, shaking his head and securing his hard hat a bit better.

  He ran past Royce, having been on his way to check on Redmond. There were two hoses on Old Bell, leaving one of them as a runner between the firebears and the rest of the crew made up of Shifter Grove locals. Ragnar respected those men. Though few of them were even from around here, unlike Battle and Argo and the Hamiltons, each and every one of them seemed to treat Shifter Grove as a permanent home and they were willing to go through hell or high water to protect it. Or high fire, as was the case here.

  “The south side is getting under control. The winds are helping with the efforts there and the fire’s becoming localized here,” he yelled over the roar of the flames that he’d come to know so well.

  “Good,” Redmond replied, gritting his teeth as he maneuvered the jet of water. “We can’t keep going forever anyway. Need to refill the tank soon.”

  Ragnar nodded, going to check the tank levels. Thankfully, they were okay for now. It wasn’t a massive fire in any sense of the word. The one he’d seen at Rake’s place had been far worse. This one seemed almost casual in comparison, like an afterthought. That alone should have tipped Ragnar off sooner.