An Unexpected Affair (3 page)

But her instincts, however frazzled, insisted that it
was
something. She could practically hear the old man from the village store warn her about that bear all over again. What if he was right? What if on her first evening here, she came face to face with a fierce beast that would eat her alive? With her car parked outside the cottage, Derek or his wife would just assume she was still inside. There was no telling when -
if -
her body would be found!

She stood deadly still for another minute or so, scanning the trees around the road she'd just come from. Although they were only medium sized trees, and not very densely planted, the gaps between them were quite dark already. As if night had fallen early. All around her seemed quiet, though. Her frantic heartbeat slowed slightly.

Perhaps she had just imagined it. She took another deep breath and tried to banish all remaining thoughts of bears and danger from her mind. She had to get back before it got really dark.

Step by step, reluctantly at first, she walked back into the woods, careful to avoid fallen twigs and other debris on the road that would make noise if she stepped on them. As she grew more confident that she was alone, she sped up, eager to return to the safety of the farm. She had just imagined it. There was nothing in these woods! She was just being ridiculous. The over-active imagination that made her a good writer could be a curse at times like these.

The road wound left to right and back again, never revealing more of what lay ahead of the next turn. She didn't recognize it really, but then how could she? Things looked different in this light, and she hadn't paid much attention while walking earlier, because she was trying to type out that message to Lily.

She continued on for five, six minutes, growing more and more worried that perhaps she'd gotten lost somehow. Finally, she spied a sign up ahead. McMillan Farm.
Thank God.

As she passed through the gates that lay just beyond the next bend, she turned back one last time. Through the dark passage among the trees, a distant roar sent shivers down her spine. It made way for more silence so soon after that she doubted she'd actually heard it. Her mind was playing tricks on her.

She rushed up the drive, over to the left, along the bumpy gravel track leading to her cottage, almost running by the time she got near it. Then she turned the key in a rush, opened the creaky door and slammed it shut behind her, dead bolting it for extra security.

The thing with Alan had driven her a bit nuts; she already knew that. And this being her first solo trip in a very long time, possibly forever, had also affected her. But this was crazy, hardly enough cause to start hallucinating!

Back inside the cozy cottage, the entire experience seemed almost comical to her. She let out a nervous chuckle as she put her handbag down on the side table and unbuttoned her coat. Maybe it had been just the stress.

She double-checked all the curtains and switched on every lamp she could find. It wasn't very cold yet, or she would have been tempted to light the fireplace as well.

Now what?
Perhaps she should have not been such a coward and actually waited at the edge of the woods to call Lily up properly. It would have been nice to tell her about the lengthy drive across the Scottish Highlands, and of course about Derek. None of that was an option anymore now, not until she headed out towards the village again.

There was no TV in the cottage, just an old HiFi system, the type with an LP player on top. The bookcase that stood beside contained a selection of old records. Clarice read the spines of a random few and selected the first thing she recognized: The Beatles, and placed it on top of the deck with trembling fingers. As the first guitar chords started to play, she felt herself relax.

Too bad she hadn't picked up a bottle of wine from that little shop. Perhaps she would drive back there in the morning...

Exhausted after her eventful first day in Scotland, she settled into the large armchair facing the empty fireplace and closed her eyes. The music did its best to soothe her. She wasn't hungry after eating the cake earlier, and neither did she have the will or energy to get up and prepare dinner.

Tomorrow was going to be another day, and she had to be ready to make the most of it. Four-thousand words at least, if not more. This was a sprint as well as a marathon; that's why she was here. She had two weeks to finish her book, or her publisher would drop her, and she couldn't afford for that to happen.

She didn't have time for crazy shadows in the woods, or stories of bear sightings in places where bears shouldn't even exist.

It didn't take long for sleep to overwhelm her, as she sat in that comfortable chair. Even after the LP had stopped playing, and the music had made way for complete silence, she still didn't stir.

That's where she stayed until the morning.

That had been a very close call, Derek thought to himself. He couldn't shake the emotional confusion he'd felt after coming face-to-face with Clarice for the first time, so after finishing up in the barn, he'd decided to go for a quick walk.

He had to release tension, to blow off steam. There was no better way to do that than to shift and let his animal side take over for a while. In order to ensure her safety, he made sure that he was well away from the farm before taking off his clothes and hiding them in some fallen leaves in among the trees. Then he closed his eyes and focused.

It didn't take much. Shape-shifting was easier when you were already riled up about something. He felt a tickle pass over his spine, which then traveled down his arms and legs. He watched as his formerly relatively smooth limbs sprouted thick brown fur.

Shifting always started from the core outward. His torso would change first, and then a split second later his head, arms and legs would follow until he had transformed completely into a brown bear.

Derek planned to go for a bit of an outing, head towards his favorite stream for an evening snack of raw fish perhaps. What he wanted the most was to get away from the farm for a while, so that there was no risk of picking up Clarice's tempting scent, which he knew would whip his hormones into even more of a frenzy.

Only, things didn't turn out quite how he had planned.

Once he had shifted and started running towards the stream that lay about halfway between the farmhouse and the nearby village, he couldn't clear his mind of all the thoughts and urges Clarice had stirred up. In bear form, he was even more susceptible to the attraction he'd felt toward her.

The sights and smells of the woods did nothing to distract him. He could even still pick up her perfume, despite being almost a mile away from the farm.

Once at the stream, all he could do was listlessly watch the fish as they struggled to jump up the fast currents. He didn't feel like reaching out and catching one. He didn't even want to cool his paws in the icy waters as he normally would have.

None of it held much interest for him. Instead, Clarice's scent kept making its way into his nostrils, beckoning him to turn around and seek her out.

He left the stream and didn't walk as much as drag his paws on the way back to the farm. His entire being was spurring him on to run to her, but he did his best to resist. He thoughtlessly wandered on, carving a path through the empty landscape that ran parallel to the road.

For the first time in all the years he'd spent on his own, he wished for someone to talk to. He had to figure out why he was so affected by a human, of all things. He'd read of bears who had gotten so used to their animal form that they'd sought out the company of actual bears over their own kind, but never did he hear of anyone mating outside their species.

To take a human mate was wrong, wasn't it? How would it even work, when the bears' code of secrecy insisted that humans should never find out about their existence? If she found out the truth about him, it would endanger his entire kind. Humans were afraid of what they didn't understand. If he tried to pursue her without telling her the truth, that would be equally wrong.

And yet, he couldn't help how he felt about her.

His brooding thoughts were interrupted by a fresh waft of her scent accompanied by footsteps against gravel.
Clarice
.

Across his entire body, his fur stood up to attention, as if he was readying for a fight. He paused and got up on his hind legs, standing as still as he possibly could while observing her.

What was she doing here?

He watched as she walked along the road, clumsily stumbling over a particularly rough patch of gravel, until she recovered herself, phone in hand.

When she reached the edge of the woods, she paused and looked around, raising her phone into the air and waving it around ahead of her. Finally, she let out a triumphant 'Aha!' and smiled, placing the phone back into her purse.

Derek didn't have a cell phone, only a land line, which nobody ever called except telemarketers and tourists hoping to book a vacation. Still, he'd heard visitors say that most mobile providers didn't cover his farm. Most tourists didn't mind, but it seemed Clarice had had a pressing need to contact someone. A boyfriend perhaps?

The thought angered him.

His jaw tensed, and his upper lip curled instinctively into a snarl.

He decided to turn around and leave before he was spotted, though just as he got down on all fours again, Clarice turned as well and let out a fearful gasp. He hadn't been able to pick up on her physiology before, she was too far away, but now that she was startled, her bodily responses were loud enough for his sensitive hearing to pick up. Her heartbeat had sped up into a frantic pace.

Shit. She had spotted him.

Both froze, Clarice with her arms wrapped around herself, and Derek partially hidden behind one of the thicker trees in this part of the woods. Seconds passed as she continued to look in his direction, and then her breaths as well as her heartbeat relaxed, and she started to walk back to where she had come from before: the farm.

He breathed a sigh of relief as well, then made his way deeper into the woods, taking care to only walk on those extra mossy patches on the ground so that he didn't make any noise. Once again, a very close call.

That was it. He had to resort to desperate measures if he was going to remain sane throughout her stay. He left her to walk back to her cottage on her own and ran.

As fast as his paws could carry him, he pushed on until he had made it to the edge of his territory. There he let out an almighty roar, calling out for whoever was listening. Bears were territorial, so his call was bound to be noticed.

"Derek," a calm, if slightly cold female voice called out to him, almost an hour after he had reached the no-man's-land that lay between his and his closest neighbors' lands. Elise - his older cousin from his mother's side - had come to answer his call.

He nodded and waited patiently as the female approached. The light brown bear that emerged from the shrubbery surrounding his meeting place of choice eyed him suspiciously.

"What brings you here?" Elise asked.

"This is going to be awkward, but I was hoping for some insights." Derek straightened himself in an attempt to appear rather more confident than he felt. It was a massive hit to his pride, coming here for advice, but even though they hadn't been close ever since he'd taken over the farm, Elise was still family. He didn't know who else to turn to. "As you know, other bears are hard to find nowadays. I was wondering if you could share some information, for old times' sake."

"What about?" Elise asked.

"Uhh... it's rather delicate."

"Just spit it out, Derek."

"When you and Jack got together, it was fate, wasn't it?"

The female bear cocked her head to the side and simply stared at him.

"Was it?" Derek pushed again.

"I wouldn't say
fate,
but I knew immediately what was going on."

"I don't understand, the way Mum used to talk about what happened between Dad and her, she said it was their destiny to pair up."

"Your mother always was the romantic sort. No, I'm convinced it's biology, pure and simple. We pick our mates according to who is most compatible biologically. It's nature at work; that's all."