Rugged Fire [Rugged Savage Valley, Colorado 4] (12 page)

“Ahh.”

“She came to tell me that she could see something around you three, that she’d seen it around me and your fathers at the football game years before. However, she felt it wasn’t right of her to place such a piece of knowledge on her daughter’s shoulders at such a young age, before she’d finished college, before she knew what she wanted to do with her life, and before she got to experience things outside of Savage Valley. So instead, she came to me to ask a favor. She asked that I hold the knowledge, and if the time came that I felt I should share it, I could.”

Will’s mind was racing. Was his mother telling him that he and Seb should be with Lianne? That there was some grand scheme that had thrown them together because they were as perfect for each other as his fathers were for his mother? But he thought his mother regretted her life. He thought she wished for something else. And he and Seb had always known they wouldn’t marry. They wouldn’t have children. They wouldn’t imprison their sons the way they had been imprisoned by the curse their whole lives.

“I still don’t understand why you’re telling me this now.”

She laid her hand on his leg and gave him a motherly pat or two. “Will, my dear boy, I know you. I know the things in your heart that you’ve never said aloud. Did you know that every night after you and Seb had fallen asleep, both of your fathers would go in to check on you? They’d stand in the doorway and say, ‘I love you, boys. Sleep tight. I’m sorry.’ Every single night they would say this. So you see? I know how much it pulls at you to be stuck in the same place your whole life and how you can’t stomach the thought of bestowing that on anyone else. I know, dearest,
I know
. Do you think your fathers and I didn’t discuss this on many, many occasions?”

He swallowed hard and glared at the road. After a moment, he said, “But don’t you hate it here? Don’t you regret tying yourself so permanently? You’re always telling us what’s wrong with the house, the town, the air, everything. Everything is always wrong.”

“No, Will. Oh goodness, no. I never meant for you to believe that I don’t want to live here or that I wasn’t happy with my life. I miss your fathers every day, every minute, every second.” She stared out the window again. “I could never leave Savage Valley. I couldn’t leave them. They are my heart, Will. Always have been and always will be until we see each other again.”

He couldn’t say anything, and he didn’t think his mother would have replied if he did. He hardly ever heard her mention their fathers without berating them for this or that, for not taking care of themselves, for dying on her. Now, he realized that her unhappiness didn’t stem from anger that she was stuck in Savage Valley. Her anger stemmed from love, from the love she still had for them, for the love that she’d always had for them.

He’d been so self-absorbed that he’d projected his own fears onto his mother, and he’d let those fears twist and morph into something that was keeping him from seeking happiness. He’d been such a goddamn asshole.

A few minutes later he pulled into their driveway. After parking, he walked around to help his mother out of the car and into the house. She wanted to take a nap, so he saw her to the annex. As he turned to go, she placed a staying hand on his shoulder.

“Will,” she whispered, her voice suddenly very tired sounding, “you should also know what your fathers told
me
every night.”

“What?”

Her hand tightened on his shoulder. “They told me they loved me and that we had made the most beautiful family in the whole world.”

She smiled at him for a long moment, her mind and her eyes somewhere far off. Then her focus came back.

“I’m very tired, my boy. My sweet, sweet William. I’ll see you after my nap.”

She turned and plodded toward her bed, and Will closed the door softly behind her. He should talk to Seb, go over the conversation he’d just had with his mother. He needed a moment, though. He needed to think about things, about all the tiny, beautiful, complicated, imperfect, miraculous, unbelievable things.

“Okay, I don’t know about y’all, but when Beck friggin’ won the tournament and was all muddy and blood-stained and sexy and shit, I had to take a little break.” Marina Andrews swiped on a healthy dab of Lianne’s Honeysuckle Lip Balm and puckered up her lips in the mirror. With a wicked gleam in her eye, she turned around to face the group of ladies. “Then I had to find some fresh panties…if ya know what I mean, ladies.”

“Oh, we know
exactly
what you mean,” Elena Ward said in her prim British tones while squirming pointedly in her seat.

“Careful, Elena,” Chelsea Goebel said. “If one of your Kinman bears hears about this, they might get jealous of the Finn brothers and put an end to our book club.”

“Then I’ll personally write Sophie Oak and tell her to stop with all the hot sex scenes. I mean, look where it’s got me.” She pointed at her round, swollen belly. “I’m sure she’d understand completely,
femina a femina
.”

“You will do no such thing!” Marta Verner said, poking Elena in the ribs. “Now pass me that honey salve for dry hands.”

The book club had started over an hour ago, and they hadn’t really gone into depth about the plot. Mostly they’d been doing Google Image searches for a
Bound
dream cast, but Lianne was very happy with how the women were chatting and testing out her products. They’d given her a few suggestions on a couple of the scents for her bath soaps and even suggested a little less lavender in her lavender honey, but overall, they seemed to really like her stuff. At the end of the meeting, they’d all agreed to fill out a survey to help her tweak and perfect her products even more.

“Lianne.” Michelle Andrews’s soft voice reached through the laughter as Marina made yet another raunchy joke, this one concerning Cian’s considerably large farm tools, or tool, rather.

“Yes, Michelle? Did you want to try something else? Some of the eau de toilette maybe? I don’t think anyone’s tried the honey and lemon verbena yet.”

“No, it’s not that.”

Lianne noticed her take a quick peek at the other woman to make sure no one was paying them close attention. “What is it? Is everything all right?”

“Yes, yes.” She laughed a little. “It’s nothing like that. It’s only…” Michelle gnawed on her lip for a moment, eyeing Lianne as if to gauge her reaction.

“Go on. You can say whatever you need to.” Lianne laid a warm hand on Michelle’s arm for a moment and offered her most inviting smile.

“Well, the Carsons came to visit us last night.”

Something tightened in her gut, but she fought to keep it from showing on her face. As far as she knew, nobody in town besides Jamie knew she was pining after those two stubborn bears. Maybe this was about her business and the bank. She needed to play it cool until Michelle finished. “Oh? And what did they want?”

Michelle frowned. “They seemed perturbed. More so than
I’ve
ever seen. Granted, I haven’t been in Savage Valley for too long, but usually when I see them, they are very quiet and watchful. But yesterday they were agitated. They were definitely agitated. And it had to do with your business and with NormCorp. Do you know anything about this?”

Lianne let out a small breath of relief. At least she wasn’t trying to pry out information about her love life.

But then Michelle leaned in a bit closer. “I know he works for Jamie’s father, but has Skyler been bothering you?”

“Skyler? Mr. Fischer? No, no, not at all. What makes you think that?”

“My aunt, Agnes Bird, who owns the local salon, mentioned that Rita Copely saw you two at the diner and that there seemed to be a bit of a tussle between him and the Carson twins.”

Lianne gritted her teeth. “It’s so easy to forget sometimes just how small this town really is.”

Michelle chuckled. “Now don’t be mad at Mrs. Copely. You can’t blame her for being concerned.” After shooting Lianne an appraising look, Michelle said, “Are you sure there isn’t something else, though? Something a little more personal between you and the Carsons? They claimed that they were simply worried about your investment and about what NormCorp could do if they had considerable control over a business like yours, right in the heart of Savage Valley. They didn’t want to alert Joseph and Caleb Kinman just yet, but they did want some input from another bear family. Yet, call it woman’s intuition, but I could have sworn there was something else, something they didn’t want to come right out and say, especially not to my fiancés, but something that was a big part of their agitation. This wouldn’t have anything to do with you, would it?”

Michelle held her gaze, and after a long moment, Lianne realized she couldn’t fool Michelle in regard to the Carsons even if she wanted to. She gave a short little nod.

“Ah,” Michelle said, a warm smile breaking across her beautiful face. “I knew I couldn’t be wrong about this.”

“But I’d really rather keep it quiet if that’s all right.”

“Of course, of course.”

“Not even Marina, please. Not yet.”

Just then Marina let out a deep-throated laugh and pinched Anya, eliciting a screech followed quickly by high-pitched laughter. Lianne had no idea what they were discussing, but Marina was right in the thick of it.

“No,” Michelle agreed. “Definitely not Marina. But what’s bothering you? Is it anything I can help with?”

For a split second, Lianne thought about everything. She thought about when she’d found Will and Seb naked in the creek, how she’d burned for them every day since. She thought about watching them date beautiful woman after beautiful woman, fearing that they would never see her as more than a snot-nosed brat. She thought about how she’d left Savage Valley, how she’d become confident, how she’d found her strength. She thought about how she’d lost her mother and felt so terribly and utterly alone. She thought about how she’d come back to Savage Valley and fallen for the twins all over again, how they’d kissed her, touched her, awoken her. She thought about wanting them now. She thought about how she would settle, how she would give them whatever part of her they would take, even if it were only her body. She would settle. She would settle. She would settle. For that, for anything, if only she got to be with them.

“I don’t think so,” she finally whispered to Michelle. “I think it’s something I have to figure out for myself.”

Michelle grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Okay.”

When she started to stand up, Lianne said, “Thank you, though. Thank you very much.”

Michelle smiled her heartbreakingly warm smile. “Of course. You know, Lianne. I can’t remember which one it is, but in one of the Jane Austen novels, I read a line once that has always stuck with me. And I’m not sure exactly how it goes, but it’s something like, ‘It’s our imperfections that make us so perfect for each other.’”

Lianne laughed at the odds of Michelle quoting the very book she was reading. “That’s from
Emma
.”

“Yes, that’s right. I like to think about that from time to time.”

“Michelle!” Marina hollered from the other side of the room.

She chuckled. “I’d better go see what the diva wants.” Then she darted through all the women to her sister. Lianne watched her and thought about what she’d said. Lianne knew what she wanted now, knew that even if she couldn’t have the Carsons the way she had hoped, she would gladly take what she could get. She didn’t want to be that kind of person. She didn’t want to grovel or beg or give in to them, but she knew if they came to her, she would gladly ignore her better judgment. She would gladly forget every scruple she’d ever believed in. She’d gladly fall into their arms if they asked it of her.

Oh, god
,
they were right about me.

She could never see them again. She
couldn’t
. She had to avoid them at all costs. Her pride and her business were the only things she had left, and it seemed that even those two things were tenuous at the moment.

She realized there was only one person who could help her now, whom she’d always gone to for boy advice, and who, when all else failed, supplied her with as much bootlegged liquid courage as she could handle.

And that person was her cousin, Noah Strong.

* * * *

Lianne banged her fist on the door for the fifth time. “Noah, get your ass out of bed! I know you’re here. Your truck’s in the drive.” When he didn’t come, she banged on it again. “I’ll crawl in your window, Noah Strong, and yank your covers off. You know I will. Get! Out! Of! Bed!” She pounded even harder.

She felt her phone buzzing in her back pocket but ignored it while attempting to rouse her hungover cousin. Usually Noah lived with his older brother, Carter. They had a small, run-down cabin on the other side of the creek from town. The dark wood looked rotted in some places, and the roof dipped down slightly. Rusty pails, skulls of hunted game, old work tools, small machinery, bits of rope, animal traps, plastic tarps, and all manner of clutter was piled and scattered on the porch and across the yard. The place was a mess. It always had been, but Lianne had spent so much of her life at the Strongs’ that it only ever looked like a beautiful, homey mess to her.

She looked at the old truck parked in the mud. Technically it was Carter’s truck, but ever since Bohagande Young had taken away Carter’s bear-shifting abilities, no one had seen much of the elder Strong and Noah had been using the truck. Lianne couldn’t say that she was sorry about Carter’s absenteeism, either. He had tormented her and Noah both while growing up, and if she were honest with herself, he still scared her a little.

Renewing her door pounding, she shouted several more insults until at long last, she hear Noah’s slow, drowsy tread approaching.

“It’s about time, you lazy jerk,” she said as the door was ripped open.

When she saw who it was, she nearly screamed.