Bear The Burn (Firebear Brides 1) (2 page)

The farm lands were overgrown with weeds, but he could still see that there’d been vegetables grown and some sort of grains. Simply put, it was one of those real, old-school farm compounds that he thought only existed somewhere in the backlands of Kansas. Yet this one was nestled amidst thick green forests ad towering mountains, and there wasn’t an Amish buggy in sight. He couldn’t believe it.

This was nothing compared to the cramped apartment where he lived in Boston. But size wasn’t what really spoke to him. Royce made his way back to the main building, a gorgeous mammoth of a three-story home, with Victorian outcroppings and wooden paneling that despite its current state of disrepair still spoke of a dignified and magnificent past.

“So this is where Dad lived,” he mused to himself, walking up the creaking stairs and unlocking the front door with the single key that had come with the note from Herbert.

He walked in and the scent that greeted him was so familiar it brought tears to his eyes immediately. What smoke and noxious gases couldn’t do, the scent of his long-lost father managed in a split second. It felt like… home. And he couldn’t even recall ever being there.

Royce walked to what used to be the kitchen, the linoleum peeling up and the wallpaper sagging, but he knew exactly which room it was. It had the great view of the backyard that he remembered from…

I know this place,
he realized with a start.

Twisting around and inhaling deeply, Royce’s brows furrowed. Yes. He knew every bit of this place. Down to the crawlspaces under the house, the way that a bear cub could spring up to the second level of the hay shed even if there wasn’t any ladder in sight, and how good the water in the tiny hidden lake in the middle of the tuft of forest to the east of the main house felt on a hot summer day.

His father had died when he and his brothers Ragnar, Redmond, and Rhodes were just young cubs, barely a year between all of them. Royce had been the oldest and he couldn’t have been more than five. He had fuzzy memories of the big bear of a man who kept throwing him on his knee and the big family they had around them in the estate.

Royce knew from the few things he remembered that back then it hadn’t been just him, his brothers, and his mother, but a whole clan of Hamilton bears to teach them and raise them. It was the werebear way, to bring up the children of the Alpha or any other clan member in a warm, protective environment. And that had to also be why there was more than one building on the grounds that could house a family.

Wiping a tear from his cheek that had already almost dried, he pulled out the letter and let his eyes glide over it again in disbelief. What he’d thought to be the ramblings of an old man now made all the sense in the world. Uncle Herbert, who Royce had only shared a Christmas card or two with—as the aging bear did not wish to come to the city where his late brother’s wife had taken his children—was not a man to mince words. They read:

The Hamilton House and the grounds around it have always been in the Halt Mill clan’s ownership. The times changed and we changed with them, turning into Hamiltons, but the history never changed. This is sacred ground, for you, for me, for our kin. I want to be buried here, right next to my brother. And you boys need to continue what we never could.

If you want these grounds, all four of you must move back to the Hamilton farmstead, and within a year, I want to see all four of you married and at least two of you with cubs. Continue the Hamilton name in the way it was supposed to be—in our forefathers’ lands, living close to our roots. Not in some damn city spirits-know-where. Come home. If you don’t, the estate will be sold and you will be barred from buying it.

I would rather see it go to someone else entirely than to know that I did nothing and let the Hamilton name die. Your father deserves better. I deserve better.

Royce folded the note, this time with care, but kept it in his palm as he stared out the window. How hadn’t he realized? A lump formed in his throat. His bear fought to get out, driven by what Royce could assume was recognition of happier times. But deep down inside, he knew it wasn’t just that. It took no more than a few minutes on his forefathers’ grounds to know that he truly was
home
now. This was where he needed to be. Boston already seemed like a distant memory.

Now he just needed to get his brothers on board.

Time to find a woman the old-fashioned way,
he thought, already shaking his head at the very real possibility that popped in his head. He was beginning to understand why he could sense the shifters in Shifter Grove from miles away. How could anyone ever leave?
 

CHAPTER TWO

Tiana

Rolling back her shoulders, Tiana groaned softly as the dough underneath her palms refused to work with her. No matter how much she worked it, no matter how many of her little tricks she used, the damn thing just wouldn’t behave and she was having just about enough of it.

The kitchen was covered in flour and all the tabletops sported a bowl or a dish or a baking pan of something either cooling down or waiting to go into her big ovens. There was enough work in the kitchen for at least five bakers, yet she was there alone. It was a typical evening at Tiana’s Downtown Tea Shop and it really shouldn’t have surprised her. But it still sort of did.

Living in Dallas for most of her life, she had sort of grown accustomed to the fact that a lot of people really didn’t appreciate it when you went out on a limb for them. Or, they would appreciate it in the beginning, but when the going got tough, they just rolled out like she had never even existed. That seemed to be the common story among most of the bakers she hired for the kitchen.

If I can just get these cookies done, maybe I can get more than five hours of sleep tonight,
Tiana thought, bleary-eyed.

She rubbed her forehead against her shoulder haphazardly, not daring to touch any part of her hands to her face, lest she get flour in her dark, long curls again. Getting it out was a hassle and a half, especially with her natural, tight curls that took care and effort in the Dallas heat to keep from looking like she got assaulted with a rake.

Then again, who was she kidding, her black mop of hair always looked almost gray because of all the flour and sugar that kept ending up there.
Harrumphing
to herself, she pulled a stool out from underneath one of the tables and sat down on it, her hands still patiently working their magic. Cooking was an art, but baking was a science, and she’d always thought of herself as a reasonable mathematician when it came to the fine mysteries of making delicious bread or mouthwatering cookies. Yet, this time, everything seemed to be going wrong.

Her white and green kitchen looked like a mess and she had lost count halfway through of which orders she had filled and which she hadn’t. That was supposed to be the job of the new cashier and assistant she’d hired just two weeks ago, who kept falling ill with some sort of a mysterious cold in the Texas summer whenever it was the end of the week and she was scheduled to work.

And this damn ginger cookie? Well, that was the specialty of Layla, the young baker she had hired not too long ago. Layla was nowhere to be found either, though she was supposed to be helping out with the orders that evening. There was a lump in Tiana’s throat that would not go away every time she thought about how damn hard she’d worked to market Layla’s cookies to her current clients, after the girl had begged and pleaded with her to add it onto the menu. Layla had wanted something of her own to feel proud of, and somehow it had ended up as Tiana’s problem once again.

Exhausted and annoyed, Tiana stopped for a second, taking a deep breath. Yes, her bakery was doing well, so well that she could hire people to help out and share the wealth. But that seemed like a wasted effort if those people didn’t want the job and just kept adding to Tiana’s responsibilities. She loved her little family of employees, but sometimes she really wanted to wring their necks.

Especially when it was two a.m. and she was there making five hundred cookies from a recipe that Layla had only half-assed when writing it down.

“Lord, give me strength,” Tiana said softly, plunging into the dough again while mentally recounting every step she took to be sure she hadn’t missed anything.

It was then that her evening was slated to get even darker. Suddenly, she heard a loud crash in the front of the bakery and then movement. She froze for a moment, knowing that from the front, no one could see that there might still be someone in the kitchen. Glaring, Tiana stood up and very quietly sneaked toward the door.

In the corner behind it sat a big baseball bat, Old Louie, which Tiana kept for just such occasions. The lively little shop wasn’t situated in the worst part of town, but it was on the cusp of it, and sometimes the visitors who found their way to her bakery weren’t exactly the kind she wanted around. Especially the kind who liked to visit her after hours. Gripping Old Louie, coating it generously with flour in the process, Tiana grabbed hold of the doorknob and pulled quickly, running in with the bat held high.

“Get the hell out of my store you damn bastards!” she screeched, seeing two men busily putting away loaves of bread and pastries and trying to get into the till.

She emptied it every night after closing, but those poor saps certainly didn’t know it. Conking one over the neck and upper back, Tiana raised the bat again with a mighty hiss.

“Jesus fuck, lady!” one of them grumbled, grabbing the bag of bread and backing out toward the door. “Keep your fucking cool!” he yelled, his beady eyes flicking right and left behind his improvised black ski mask.

“Keep out of my damn store then! Get a job, you bum!”

Who wore a mask to steal from a bakery, anyway?

The other guy wasn’t so fast, possibly because Tiana had already gotten a good knock in. She smacked him over the head again and he slipped, half-running-half-crawling toward the door. Tiana whacked him on the ass for good measure before he got to the door, surrounded by glass shards from the big pane window they’d broken to get in, and snatched the bag of treats out of his hand before he could vanish into the darkness.

“And stay out, you louts!” she roared, swinging her bat at the two men, running at breakneck speeds down the street with their one bag of stolen baked goods.

When they got out of sight, Tiana sighed, dropping to her haunches in front of the bakery. She propped her chin on Old Louie and looked at the shattered window, now reading only “...own Tea Shop” in golden-tinted letters. It wasn’t the first time this had happened; it was already the third time when she’d been present during the robbery, and at least the fifth time altogether. It wasn’t that she was being targeted or anything, but simply that she had a nice, clean establishment with possible food and money. Some people didn’t need much to result to violence and thievery.

At least they didn’t have a gun this time,
Tiana thought morosely, remembering the one time when her being there at the time of the break-in had almost ended tragically for her.

One of the thieves had pulled a gun on her and told her to get down on her knees while his buddies emptied the kitchen of all of her valuable professional cookware and got the week’s earnings from the safe in the backroom. She’d found that unlike in the movies, when you had a gun to your temple, you really didn’t feel like being a hero.

A few seconds later, she heard her cellphone ring in the kitchen. With a groan, she got up and wiped her hands into her apron, strolling back inside. Keeping Louie with her, she grabbed the phone and answered.

“Yes, thank you. I’m all right. There was a break-in but I scared them off. No need to come down here,” she replied to the pleasant female voice asking whether she needed assistance. “You can tell the patrol to turn back.”

After the second burglary, Tiana had gone out of her way to get a good silent alarm system that would keep her livelihood safe. Unfortunately, that still didn’t save her from the smash-and-grab crowd who got a yearning for challah bread in the middle of the night and figured that the best way to get it would be with a brick and determination.

Laying the bat next to the forgotten cookie dough, Tiana strolled deeper into the kitchen and toward one of the smaller refrigerators. She was dialing a number on her phone at the same time and by the time she got to the fridge, she had the phone shoved between her shoulder and her ear.

“Hey, Bobby! Sorry to wake you. Yes, another one of
those
nights. Could you get here as soon as possible? The whole front window needs replacing.” She snaked a bottle of white wine out of the back of the fridge, hidden behind piles of baker’s chocolate and cans of fruit. “Yes, again,” Tiana chuckled sadly, snatching a bottle opener and a big wine glass on her way back to the central table.