Chapter Seven: Gunnar

 

 

Breakfast at the farmhouse was an informal affair. The adults fed the kids, but otherwise, as far as Gunnar could tell, everyone got up when they wanted to, and fed themselves from a selection of cereal, eggs, and leftovers from the night before.

He'd awakened automatically at what would have been, for the last three years, prison wake-up call. Even before then, he'd drifted restlessly awake throughout the night. He had heard Melody come in, after having vanished for most of the night, shortly before the household began to stir. Lying in bed, listening to her soft, furtive steps on the stairs, he couldn't help wishing that those steps would turn his way, bringing her to his room to slip under the quilt beside him. She would be warm, yielding, her curves melting against him ...

He tried to force his mind to other things before he had to stumble half-dressed through an unfamiliar house with a hard-on and find a bathroom to masturbate in. Staining these nice sheets and the apparently hand-made quilt seemed like a poor way to repay Gaby for her friendliness.

But his dreams were full of Melody too, gray eyes like the sea and black hair that smelled like perfume and starlight. In his dreams, he was always searching for her, getting sad-eyed glances before she darted away. He knew that he should stay away—she'd be safer without him—but he couldn't seem to help following her, wherever she went.

Safer without us? his bear scoffed. As if! We'll protect her from our brother or anything else that tries to hurt her.

If only that was enough. The one thing he couldn't protect was her heart, and that was the thing, more than her physical wellbeing, that he risked by staying in her life.

When sleep finally deserted him completely, he got out of bed and poked guiltily through the contents of the shelves in the room. They contained a random mix of clutter that had overflowed from the rest of the house, canned goods and knickknacks, photo albums and books. A book on local history looked interesting. He sat on the bed, opened it to the first page—

—and quickly discovered that the text was, as usual, too dense and dry for him to read easily. Or, possibly, at all. He struggled onward for awhile, determined to beat it into submission through sheer effort, but when he found himself reading the same paragraph for the third time and understanding it no better than the first attempt, he gave up and skipped forward to the pictures and maps. Those were more fun.

When he heard sounds of the household stirring, he took the book with him to the kitchen. He tried to convince himself that the point wasn't to impress Melody that he'd been reading a difficult book, but ... well ... that kind of was the point, wasn't it?

Disappointingly, she wasn't anywhere in sight. All the other women were there, fussing over Gaby's baby. They saw him before he could slip off and everyone smiled at him, with a scattering of "hello" and "help yourself to whatever." Giving a nervous smile back, Gunnar got himself a cup of coffee and hovered awkwardly around the edges of the room for a little while before getting up the nerve to poke around until he found a box of Cheerios and a large bowl.

"When are you due again, dear?" Gaby's mother asked Tessa, patting Tessa's pregnant stomach.

"Only two more weeks, if they're on time." Tessa sighed. "From the size of me, not to mention all the kicking, I think little Whomever is as ready to come out as I am to have them out. I swear it feels like there must be a horse in there."

"It's not entirely out of the question, is it?" Gaby asked teasingly, looking up from wiping some of Jimena's breakfast off the high chair.

"A horse shifter, maybe. Better than an actual horse. I'm joking ... I hope." Tessa ruffled Jimena's dark curls, with little pink bows in them. "You've already carried one shifter baby. They don't ... you know ... shift in there, do they?"

"No, Derek says it takes awhile for the shifting to show up. Mina here hasn't shifted yet." She chucked Jimena's round, pink cheek. "We're not even sure if she's going to. She only gets the shifting from one side, after all."

Luisa turned around from the sink with a dish towel in one hand. "You should be so lucky if she doesn't. Running around after you was bad enough when you only had two legs. Imagine four! Might as well try to catch that little horse in the pasture out there—"

"Mama!"

It was all so warm and cozy and ... domestic. Even when Gunnar was a kid, his life had never been like this. There was nothing of the childhood he knew in this cheerful, sunny farm kitchen.

He took his bowl of cereal and cup of coffee, and went out the kitchen door. He was just planning to sit and eat on the back steps, but it turned out there was a little patio with a picnic table. He was sitting there, eating, and poking through the book again, when the door opened and Melody came out with a cup of coffee and a piece of toast.

"Hi," she said, smiling shyly. "May I join you?"

Her hair was down, like last night, framing her face in midnight-black waves. The urge to run his fingers through it was so powerful that he hastily picked up his coffee cup instead, to give himself something to do with his hands.

"Yeah, sure." He gestured at the bench-style seat across from his. "You don't need permission anyway. It's your house. I mean, I know it's not your house. But it's more like your house than my house."

While he mentally kicked himself for his complete inability to make casual conversation, Melody sat down and snuck a not-subtle peek at the spine of his book, tilting her head to the side and exposing a creamy length of neck, where a flash of gold was briefly visible. A necklace? It vanished as she straightened her head, hidden by the high collar of her sweater.

"That looks interesting," she said. "May I take a look?"

"Sure." He shoved the book at her and picked up his spoon to stop himself from leaving his hand on the book, hoping their fingers would brush.

It was stupid, the way he was behaving—like a kid with a crush. They'd kissed last night, hadn't they? He knew he had no right to ask for more, but ... he wanted more. So much more. But only if she was willing to give it, and he didn't know how to ask.

Melody opened the book to a random page. Upside down, he glimpsed solid blocks of text in paragraphs half a page long. Her eyebrows went up. "Oh," she said. "This is ..."

"Not the kind of thing you'd think I'd be into, right?" he said, trying for a self-deprecating smile that he was afraid came out as more of a grimace.

"No, it's only ..." She took a deep breath and brought her hand up to her chest for a moment, as if to touch something there. Then she looked up and smiled at him. She wasn't wearing any makeup this morning; her lips were coral pink, a few shades darker than the tint of her cheeks. "Gunnar, I'm afraid we got off on the wrong foot yesterday, and a lot of that was my fault."

"There was lots of blame to go around," he offered. "Lots of wrong feet. A whole centipede of wrong feet."

Just as he was prepared to kick himself for saying something stupid, again, her laugh chimed; it was as musical as her voice. His heart skipped a beat. He'd done that. He'd made her laugh. He'd made her happy.

Do it again! his bear told him.

I can't exactly come up with witty lines on the fly, dumbass. I'm a felon who doesn't even have a high-school education, and she's—

Smart. Beautiful. Perfect.

Completely wrong for him.

"Where did you get this, anyway?" Melody asked, flipping the book closed with her finger in her place to read the cover.

"Off a shelf in the guest bedroom."

"I assumed you didn't ..." She hesitated.

"Read?"

"No ... no, I just—I didn't think this is the kind of thing you'd pick up for light pleasure reading."

"Well," he said, embarrassed, looking down at his coffee cup, "I didn't have anything else to do, and I was bored, so—"

This was still coming out all wrong. All he had to do, what anyone in his right mind would do, was slip in a smooth comment about how he read this kind of thing all the time. He could tell her he'd gotten tongue-tied earlier and given her the wrong impression—

—and then she'd ask him all kinds of questions about his favorite books, and he'd have to make stuff up and lie to her. Where they should be having a warm, casual conversation, instead it would be stilted and difficult.

What kind of relationship could they build on a bedrock of lies? He could pretend to be good at the things she was good at, but in the end she'd call his bluff and everything would come tumbling down.

Better to get the painful part out of the way in the beginning.

"See, the thing is," he said to his coffee cup, "it's not that I don't like to read. I do. I'm just not good at it."

"What do you mean?" Melody asked quietly.

He risked a quick glance up at her. She wasn't looking at him with condemnation or dislike. Her face was open, gray eyes curious and interested ... the way she might look at a book, he thought, a book she was trying to read, as if she had to puzzle through them the way he did.

"I don't have much education," he explained. "I was working on my GED in prison, but—books like that one ..." He gestured at the book in her hands. "The words just kind of all mix up together. There's too many of them, and too many big ones that are hard for me to figure out. I do like books. I'd like to learn to read better than I do. When I was driving into town—"

He stopped. It was harder to say than he'd expected. Like ripping a part of his soul open, exposing himself to ridicule or worse.

"Yes?" Melody prompted gently, leaning forward. She reached out hesitantly. Her fingertips danced along the end of his hand, making his breath catch.

"I saw your bookstore," he admitted. "I didn't know it was yours, then. But I remember how I saw it and I ... I wished I could go in. It looked magic to me. Like a whole other world, so different from—" He stopped again, remembering how she'd reacted the last time he mentioned prison. But it had been his entire life for the last three years. It wasn't like he could just pretend that part of his life didn't exist.

"Like prison?" she asked softly, as if she'd read his mind.

"Yeah. I wanted to go into that world, but I felt like I didn't belong."

"I could show you," she said, very gently. Her fingers curled over the edge of his palm.

He turned his hand over, and she cautiously, uncertainly, placed her fingers in his rough, callused palm. Soft hands. Girl's hands. But not without calluses, he saw now, up close. She had a little callus on the middle finger of her right hand, from writing, and the tips of her fingers were faintly darkened, as if all that reading had left printer's ink permanently embedded in her fingertips.

"I really would like that," he said. "Maybe you could find me some books to read? Ones that aren't too hard, or too boring? Uh. I don't mean your books are boring. Just—"

He was cut off by the quick clasp of her hand on his. "Gunnar," she began, her voice warm.

Then she stopped, and they both looked up, at the sound of low voices and footsteps swishing through the dew-damp grass. Derek and Keegan were approaching from the direction of the barn. Derek had a shotgun slung casually over his shoulder; Keegan was wearing his shoulder holster and had leaves in his hair. Gunnar guessed they'd been checking the perimeter.

Melody's fingers slithered out of his and she sat back on her seat, reaching for her coffee cup. His hand felt bereft without her. His body yearned after her like a flower turning toward the sun.

"Funny how every time I turn around, seems like I find you with my sister," Keegan said to Gunnar. It was, Gunnar thought, not precisely hostile so much as wary, shading toward mild amusement.

"Funny how you think it's any of your business who I talk to," Melody said dryly. "Since I'm a grown woman. And that's not all I am, as you well know."

Gunnar was aware of the stirring of her dragon, the defensive rustling of its wings. He yearned to see it in all its glory, not these half-glimpses at the corner of his mind's eye.

"True," Keegan said with a half smile, not at all defensive. "I'm not here to break up the party, on purpose anyway, but we didn't get this guy out of prison just for coffee on the deck. Sorenson, I need to sit you down inside and start working on figuring out your brother's movements since he escaped. Old acquaintances, safehouses, anything you know that might help."

Gunnar nodded.

"After that—" Keegan began.

"After that," Melody said, "I was going to take him to the bookstore with me."

Gunnar had a feeling that he didn't look any less surprised than the other two men. Keegan gave both of them a long, searching look. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"I certainly don't plan to sit around the house all day," Melody said defensively. "He was interested in seeing the bookstore, so I figured I could take him to work with me."

"That's a terrible idea," Derek said flatly.

"Why?" Melody asked, looking from her brother to his friend, who was glowering at Gunnar. "Is it him you don't trust, or me? Or don't you think my dragon could keep him in line?"

Keegan cleared his throat loudly and pointedly. "We'll be inside. See you in a minute?" he asked Gunnar, who nodded.

After Derek and Keegan went into the house, Derek with a last glare over his shoulder, Gunnar said quietly, "Do you want to tell them?"

"About what?" Melody started to toy with the gold chain around her neck, then made a visible effort to stop, dropping her hand to her coffee cup.

"Us."

"You really think they'd react better if they knew you're my mate?"

"Well, at least that way they'd know why it was no use keeping us apart," Gunnar said—reasonably, he thought, but Melody looked down at her coffee cup.

"You should go help my brother," she said. "It's what you're here for, after all."

Things had been going so well, and now he felt like he'd ruined it again. At least this time it wasn't entirely on him; her family certainly wasn't helping. Like he could blame them, but still.

"You meant it, though?" he asked hopefully. "About taking me to the bookstore?"

Melody darted a quick look at him from under her lashes, behind the lenses of her glasses. "I meant it. As soon as you and my brother are done, we'll drive into town and you can help me open the bookstore." And her coral-pink lips curved in the faintest of smiles.

We. Just the two of them.

"I can't wait," he said, and he'd never meant anything so fervently in his life.