An Unexpected Affair (6 page)

The sky might as well been falling. Her headlights turned on automatically as the dark clouds gathered above the car. The weather was a perfect reflection of her mood. She felt humiliated and deeply hurt in what little remained of her pride. She wanted to scream. Instead she hit the steering with her fists a few times, then cried at the hopelessness of it all.

The worst part was, the whole thing with Derek, whatever she felt, it was just a stupid infatuation. She didn't even know the man. All she knew was that he was tall, broad, and had a certain rugged, masculine charm that had drawn her to him involuntarily.

She didn't know the first thing going on in his head - if anything actually did happen in there - except that he clearly had developed some kind of instinctive dislike for her. There was no other explanation.

The winds started lashing against the car, making it feel slightly imbalanced. She felt more pressure on the steering, forcing her to correct against the stormy gusts aiming to push her off the road.

She didn't need this. After all the shit with Alan that threatened to ruin her career as a writer, as well as her sanity as a person, she really didn't deserve to be kicked back down when she'd finally found her bearings again. How was she going to finish the book now? How was she going to find a resolution for her imaginary couple, when her muse had all but betrayed her?

Although she wasn't sure how she would react if she saw Derek now, she had nowhere else to go but back to the cottage. Chances were, he wouldn't be around anyway. He rarely was at this time of day.

Tears were streaming down her face now, silently. She'd stopped sobbing.

The landscape that had looked so pretty in the misty conditions from before now seemed hostile as well as bleak. She was relieved to see the woods up ahead. Soon she'd be back, and she'd lock herself inside the cottage and perhaps open that bottle of wine a few days earlier than planned. Or she would make some tea, better yet, she'd make a hot chocolate using the cocoa powder she'd found in one of the kitchen cupboards.

Only, the weather had other ideas for her. As soon as she made it into the dark wooded patch surrounding the farm, a bright flash of lighting followed instantly by a loud thunder crack startled her, making her jerk the steering. The car skidded onto a patch of wet leaves. A split second later, one of the trees that had stood proud and healthy moments before, split and started to lean over dangerously across the road ahead.

She had no way of stopping, no opportunity to avoid it. The charred trunk was falling too close to the front of the car, and she was going too fast to be able to react. A jarring crash later, did both the car and the felled tree come to an abrupt halt together.

Her vision blurred, details of trees and brown, wet leaves making way for nothing but a bright, loud white. Then the darkness took over.

Although it pained him, Derek knew that his efforts to stay far away from Clarice were in both their best interests. Every day he had tried to limit his activities near the cottage to times when he knew she'd be working inside, and he wouldn't risk running into her.

The thing about running a farm alone was that there was always something to do. The work never finished, so he could keep himself occupied as far away from her as possible whenever the need arose.

The one thing he hadn't been able to stop himself from doing was leaving her treats.

His evenings at the house consisted of stockpiling supplies to prepare for winter. He was doing his best to harvest all he could before the kitchen garden would inevitably stop producing. Whatever he didn't eat straightaway, he preserved.

Still, he couldn't resist using some of his existing supplies - especially sweet ones - to produce the occasional cake or other treat. Not for himself, though he had always had a sweet tooth, but for her.

His keen sense of smell told him that without his intervention, the woman ate eggs for dinner every day, which was something he could not accept. Whenever he went fishing, he caught a little extra for her, when he planned to eat lamb for dinner, he shared his ingredients with her.

She always thanked him profusely, or rather, thanked his imaginary wife - same thing - so he was certain that she did appreciate the gifts.

And she didn't seem like one of those neurotic diet nuts, the ones who read the labels of whatever they eat, and seemed to revel in denying themselves any pleasure from food. No, Clarice was more of a hedonist, someone who allowed themselves to smell the roses - or eat the chocolate in this case. He appreciated that about her.

But despite his best efforts, things had changed over the past week. No longer was his attraction towards her largely shallow, inspired by the odd glimpse or scent. Even when he had his back turned towards her, it was as if he could see her more clearly than when he was actually looking at her.

Derek couldn't explain it without making comparisons to the stories his mother used to tell him. When bears found their mate, the one that fate - or biology, as Elise had put it - had in mind for them, they connected on a deep, subconscious level. They started to share a kind of understanding that didn't require words to communicate.

Empathy as a term didn't quite cover what happened to bears and their soul mates. And if this wasn't happening to him now, he would have never even believed it was possible for a bond to run so deeply.

When he walked past Moss Cottage, he could sense what Clarice was up to. If her work was going well or if she was pondering something. It wasn't clear, he wasn't a mind reader, but he always had some idea of her mood. In the evenings when she went for her short walks, he knew where she was without fail. He could pinpoint her position accurately, without even looking out the window.

In the old stories, these strange feelings and bonds were always mutual, but in his case, they couldn't be. She was human. There was no way that she could sense things as keenly as he did. The story Elise had told him confirmed this, plus Clarice hadn't acted like she felt anything but unease for him.

He tried to keep his thoughts about her to a minimum, to stay away from what-ifs and speculations on what might have been if she'd also been a bear and not a human. Instead, he'd marked the date of her departure in his calendar in bright red, and counted the days leading up to it with keen anticipation as well as dread.

Today, they had crossed the half-way point between her arrival and impending departure. It was a relief that he'd gotten this far without doing anything stupid, but also a worry that in just a week, he'd connected so deeply with her. There was no way of predicting how much stronger her pull on him would get before she left.

She'd worked as usual for most of the morning, then abruptly taken a break and gone out. He could hear her car start, and the crunch of gravel under her tires while he tidied up the raised beds in the kitchen garden. She was happy, almost triumphant as she left, and Derek caught himself whistling as he worked as a result.

Only when she was gone, did he realize how distracting her presence on the farm had been. He hadn't even noticed the dark clouds and the electricity building in the air. Bad weather was coming, and it had completely caught him by surprise.

He scanned the darkening skies, then hurriedly put away his tools and headed indoors. The radio confirmed his suspicions; the weather was going to deteriorate quite a bit, and the Met Office had even put out an amber alert.

Hopefully, Clarice would be back by the time the storm hit. Weather could get dangerous on the island, and they were predicting gusts strong enough to cause quite a bit of damage.

As he waited, he reorganized the stack of wood beside the fireplace. If the predictions were accurate, temperatures would plummet. Once he'd finished that, he headed into the kitchen to put on a pot of stew.

If he wanted to stay alert, he had to make sure there'd be plenty of warmth and nourishment available to him, or the urge to hibernate would threaten to overwhelm his senses. Hibernation was something he wasn't willing to risk with a visitor on the farm.

Just as the large pot started to simmer on the stove, and Derek had the chance to sit on one of the heavy dining chairs, did a feeling of unease start to pluck at his thoughts. The rain started to lash down against the windows, and the winds were whistling in the trees surrounding the farmhouse.

Surely, she couldn't have gone far? She would have just driven to the village, probably to visit the modest shop there. But he didn't sense her anywhere nearby yet, so she was still out of his range.

His discomfort grew until his instincts were almost screaming at him that something was going terribly wrong. Finally, he could no longer fight it. He put on a warm, waterproof coat and left the house to investigate.

For a moment, he paused near in front of the barn containing his trusty old Landrover. No, the route through the forest would be quicker, as well as more sheltered from the elements. His feet carried him forward almost involuntarily, and by the time he made it through the farm gates, he was sprinting.

He'd barely crossed the first tree-covered hill that lay between him and the open heathland nearer the village when a sharp pain pierced his chest. This was no longer a merely hypothetical worry that had inspired him to leave the house and brave the storm. He could feel the danger, the pain Clarice was in with as much clarity as he could feel the rain hitting his face.

Despite being fully clothed, he didn't stop to undress but shifted instantly. The winds were battering against the trees with so much intensity, it drowned out the sound of ripping fabric as his once smooth human torso sprouted thick brown fur and ripped its way through the much too small jacket. Everything he had worn only moments earlier was left in tatters on the wet, moss-covered ground underneath.

Up ahead, dim lights filtered through the trees and dense rainfall. As he approached the scene, he could see that it was indeed Clarice's gray hatchback. One of the first things he noticed was the smell of burnt wood, originating from a tree that had split in two across the base, causing the top end of it to fall into the road. The second thing was... blood.

His heart sank. There were no cries of pain, no noises at all coming from the car itself, just the incessant drum rolls of heavy rain, hitting the roof. Inside, Clarice slumped forward, her head resting on a blood-stained airbag. Of course, he feared the worst. She wasn't moving, and he couldn't hear her vital signs through the howling winds surrounding them.

He grabbed at the handle, but the car door wouldn't budge, so he rushed to the passenger side of the car and broke the window with a powerful blow from his paw. The glass shattered into a million little pieces, covering the seat inside, some of it landing in Clarice's hair. He grabbed at the rim of the door, and a strong tug later, threw the twisted remnants of it into the shrubbery behind him.

It didn't matter to him anymore that he risked discovery, that if Clarice was, in fact, fine, she could open her eyes at any moment and come face-to-face with a huge brown bear. He couldn't just leave her here, stuck inside this tin box. The road to McMillan Farm was secluded and lonely at the best of times. The nearest help was the voluntary fire brigade based in Portree, forty minutes away, and during a storm like this, there was no chance of them arriving anytime soon.

Whatever had to be done was up to Derek, and Derek alone.

He climbed into the car, his massive weight causing the suspension to creak dangerously. Although he could reach Clarice with his snout, he was too big to fit in far enough to get her out. At least from here he could hear her heartbeat. She was alive, but who knew for how long if she stayed here.

With one surprisingly accurate tap of his claw, he managed to undo the buckle of her seatbelt. He reached out and gently pushed her back into her seat, and then aimed the next blow at the airbag, tearing it free from the steering wheel to give him more of a view of what was going on.

She seemed to be in one piece though there was an ugly gash on her forehead with blood dripping from it. Her breaths were slow, calm, but not weak. Despite everything, she was still the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

Still, she wasn't conscious, so there was no way of finding out if that bump on her head was her only injury.

With so many unknowns, and the bad weather continuing, Derek didn't have time to carefully deliberate his next move. He closed his eyes and focused on his human form, feeling his limbs contract back to their original shape.

Taking advantage of his much more dexterous fingers, he freed Clarice of the seatbelt completely, then checked that both her legs were free underneath the steering wheel. He carefully levered her out of her seat, over the gear knob and into the passenger seat. Then he got out of the car completely, and with one arm supporting her shoulders, the other running through the crook of her knees, he lifted her up towards freedom.

She was still limp, completely out of it, which was just as well because the situation looked bad. His clothes were lying in tatters somewhere in the woods, and he preferred not to have to explain his current nudity to her.