The second her black Mercedes swung into Greenlake County, Milla Keto pulled onto the side of the road and stuck her sleek, blonde head full out the window. She took a hearty sniff of the pitch black air, searching for three scents in particular.

Ah. Yup. Kain and Inka were in bear form on the other side of the mountain. Probably picking daisies and reading each other’s auras. Or whatever her two, goofy, freewheeling siblings liked to do in bear form. She took another sniff.

And there was Ansel, also in bear form, the way he was almost every night. He wasn’t far. She could park at Inka’s cabin up on the ridge and track him down in a matter of minutes.

Her three siblings, who got to shift whenever they dang felt like it, were much calmer and low key than Milla. Living in Manhattan meant that she shifted on the weekends when she could drive up here. And it meant that she was VERY keyed up whenever she shifted. Ansel was the only sibling who could roughhouse and sprint and go as hard as Milla needed to go.

Running a tech company was very stressful. Bear form was very stress relieving. She figured she was still coming out on top.

Twenty minutes later, fully shifted into her sleek, dark gold bear form, she found Ansel sniffing around the waterfall where that boy had gone missing all those years ago. He was keeping a healthy distance. Still sniffing, he barely looked up when Milla gamboled over. They pressed heads together in a brief greeting.

“You still on that kid’s trail?” she asked him. To a human standing by, it would have only sounded like a series of grunts and huffs. Just some average bear noise. To them, it was language.

“Unfortunately, there is no trail.” Ansel continued sniffing around. “His sister comes up here a lot and I just wanna make sure it’s safe. There’s a mama black bear who I’ve scented a bit further up the mountain.”

“What a gentleman.” Milla knew, as clearly as her siblings did, that Ansel had always had a little thing for Ruby Sayers. Deep in her heart, Milla thought it was sweet. She wanted her brother to be happy. She wanted her siblings to have families. Just because she’d never have that for herself didn’t mean that they couldn’t have it. She bit back a sigh.

Ansel grunted. “I’m trying to be less of a gentleman these days.”

Milla sat back on her dark gold haunches. “Finally making a move on Ruby Sayers?”

Ansel looked up. Jeez. Did all of them know the entire time? He didn’t respond, but Milla hadn’t expected him to. Her brother was the silent type. Something she’d always appreciated about him.

Milla ambled after him and the closer they got to the waterfall, the sleepier and sadder she got. She recognized the feeling. There were a few spots around the mountains that made her feel the same way.

She shivered. “I hate this place.”

Ansel sat back on his haunches and swiped a paw over his snout. “Me too.”

They ambled out of range of the waterfall, both of them instantly feeling a lot better with a little distance. He looked back at Ruby’s waterfall, satisfied for now that it was safe. Knowing exactly what would happen, Ansel swiped a paw out at his sister’s bear form. Her sleek, wiry, dark gold body ricocheted into a pine tree, rattling it down to the roots.

He saw her teeth flash before she launched herself at him. The two of them, as they did every weekend, fought tooth and nail, halfway around the mountain. When they finally collapsed, exhausted, they couldn’t help but laugh.

Milla held up a paw in her line of sight. She watched as the foot-long gash healed before her eyes. Man, she lived for the weekends.

***

 

Why was she tiptoeing? This was so dumb. Ruby took another step; her red rain boots were silent on Ansel Keto’s front yard anyways. But still, as she looked at the silent cabin in the early morning light, she couldn’t help but hold her breath and tiptoe. It was 7:45 on a Sunday morning and she had no idea of the man’s habits. He could have been up for hours, or on his way to church. Or he could be snoozing. She had no idea, but either way, approaching his front porch felt an awful lot like sneaking up on a sleeping bear.

She got to his porch stairs and a sudden thought occurred to her. What if he wasn’t alone in there? Oh lord. What if he was sleeping all tangled up in some woman? Or worse. What if he was awake and all tangled up in some woman?             

Ruby felt all the breath leave her body at once as she pressed the heel of her hand to her stomach. Why did that thought make her want to puke? Maybe because he was such an attractive man. Which was something that Ruby had forced herself to admit at about 4 pm yesterday. She’d been fighting with herself all weekend, eyeing the wrench on her counter that she hadn’t moved.

She knew what she would have done if that wrench had been anyone else’s. She would have dropped it off on their front porch with some sort of baked goods and a thank you note for fixing her sink. But for some reason, the thought of doing that for Ansel Keto set a herd of horses galloping in her stomach and she had no idea why.

Finally, she’d been honest with herself. The reason he made her palms sweat, her heart trip, her eyes want to look anywhere but at him, was because he was very, very attractive. Not classically handsome, she supposed, with that biggish nose and those eyes that squinted all the time. But with those bowling ball shoulders, expansive chest, tan skin, neat blond beard, yeah. He was attractive. And he smelled good.

Admitting that to herself had been as much relieving as it had been perplexing. Because she wasn’t a shallow woman. She didn’t understand why she would be so affected by something like a physical attraction. And it disturbed her that she might not do the polite thing just because a man happened to be attractive.

And lastly, just because he was attractive didn’t mean that he was attracted to her. Or that they would ever be anything besides neighborly toward one another. There was that word again. As dumb as it was, Ruby clung to it as she stepped, almost silently, up his front steps.

She was just being neighborly. Just because being close to him raised the hair on her arms didn’t mean she couldn’t treat him the way she treated the rest of the world. With polite respect and manners.

Ruby, having gotten halfway up the steps, leaned forward toward the top step. She slid the covered pie that she’d baked for him and the wrench he’d left behind onto his porch. Damn! She’d left the thank you note in the car. But there was no way she was going back for it now. He’d just have to put two and two together on his own.

Inside the house, Ansel froze as he brushed his teeth. He sniffed at the air. Ruby Sayers was on his front porch.

A mystified, intrigued little smile on his face, he quickly strode through his house and peeked out the side window. Yup. There she was in a long, button-down red dress, her hair in a braid, and she was setting something on his porch. And now she was straightening up to walk away.

Hell no. One more step and Ansel had the front door flinging open. The abrupt noise had her jumping about a foot in the air as she clutched at her heart.

Ruby, still halfway down his steps, turned to look at him and her cheeks were instantly stained a rosier red than he’d ever seen. Those navy blue eyes of hers ripped away from him like he’d burned her. She stared at the porch floor.

Ansel glanced down at himself and realized that in his hurry to get to her, he hadn’t put on a shirt or pants. He stood in front of her in just a pair of tight black boxer briefs, his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth.

Even with her eyes glued to the ground, she grew rosier and rosier.

“Morning,” he spoke around the toothbrush.

Ruby looked up, landing her eyes about a foot above his head. “Morning,” she said faintly. Then, clearing her throat, she pointed vaguely in the direction of the things on the porch. “I’m just returning the wrench you left at my house the other day.”

Ansel grinned down at it. The wrench he’d intentionally left at her house. But his grin fell away as he saw what else was on the porch.

“And you baked me a pie.” He sniffed the air to figure out which kind. “A raspberry pie.”

A Ruby Sayers raspberry pie sat on his front porch, steam curling from the edges of the pie tin, and Ruby Sayers stood on the steps below. He thanked himself for whatever he’d done in a past life to deserve this moment.

“Ah. Well. Yes,” she stuttered. “To say thank you.”

He stepped back from the doorway, pushing open the screen with one foot. “Come in.”

“Oh,” was all she said, standing exactly where she was and looking at nothing, especially not him.

He had no idea how to interpret that. So he just tried again. “Come in and bring the pie. I’ve got coffee.”

“Right,” she said. And then, as if she couldn’t quite believe it was happening, she bent to pick up the pie and the wrench and walked past him into the cabin.

And then Ruby Sayers was in his house. He watched with a kind of rising fascination as she neatly slipped her rain boots off and lined them up by the door. And then Ruby Sayers was barefoot in his house and Ansel quickly needed to pull himself together.

First off, he needed to get some damn pants on because she was more skittish than a rabbit faced with a fox and if he looked at her legs in that dress a second longer this was gonna get uncomfortable for both of them.

He waved at the kitchen table and then at his toothbrush still in his mouth. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”

Once he turned his back to her, Ruby allowed herself to look at him. She suddenly felt like her skin was too small for her body. Never in her life had she seen a more beautiful human. The man was cast from gold. Like a statue of Adonis. He had muscles in places she didn’t know had muscles. Every line of him was rippled and shadowed and smooth. His lower back and calves bunched and coiled as he strode away. The shock of seeing him nearly naked still raced through her. The sight of his body, the blur of his black tattoo, had imprinted itself on her brain the way a bright light in the dark would echo in her vision for hours afterward. She knew that even if he came back zipped to the chin in a sleeping bag, she’d still feel as if he were naked. Now that she knew what was under his clothes, clothes were pretty much pointless.

Ruby heard the sink run and then a drawer or two slam back in the part of the cabin she couldn’t see. She took the minute to look around the part that she could see. It was nice. Small and very nice. The kitchen and living room were the same space pretty much, with a dining table on one side and a comfortable looking couch facing an old television in the other corner. The kitchen was neat, with spices in labeled jars on the counter and a 1950s style ice box. Mostly everything was dark wood but there were bursts of color splashed around that Ruby could appreciate. The yellow dishtowels on the door of the oven. Bright blue placemats on the dining room table. A many-colored afghan over the back of the couch. And even all the mismatched books on the shelf against the wall added a sort of whimsy to the house.

She heard his footsteps and Ruby cast her eyes back toward her pie as he came back into the room. She didn’t want to get caught being nosy, so she busied herself by fussing with the cover of the pie tin.

“I’m gonna have a slice with my coffee,” Ansel’s gravelly voice said as he opened up a cabinet and pulled out some dishes. “You?”

Ruby, reminding herself that just because he was attractive didn’t mean she had to act like a freak, dragged her eyes up to him. He wore a nicer pair of jeans than usual and a button-down flannel shirt rolled at the sleeve. His hair was combed back with water.

His words filtered to her. “Wait, you’re having pie for breakfast?”

He flashed a quick smile at her. “That there pie is still warm from the oven. It’s a crime against humanity not to have a slice.”

“Oh,” she glanced down at her hands. “Then I guess I’ll have one, too. But I can’t stay long.”

Ansel nodded as he pulled out the plates and forks, grabbed two mugs and brought the coffee over. He wanted to pump one fist in the air in victory, because Ruby Sayers was sitting at his kitchen table, her red fingernails touching at her hair. But instead he played it cool and slid into the seat next to her.

“You working today?” he asked, slicing her a piece and then himself. She poured the coffee, looked around for a beat, and then rose to his fridge for the cream. She stooped to examine the jars on the counter before selecting the cinnamon. He watched in suspended glee as she fixed his coffee for him and slid it over.

She took a sip of her own black coffee.

Ansel clenched his jaw. He wanted to lace his hand in her hair and tip her backwards, kiss her until they were both an absolute mess. A woman makes you coffee like that, you kiss her. That was just simple math in his head. But her hand trembled as she lifted her fork and Ansel could scent her nerves on the air. This was not the time to be greedy. The woman had baked him a pie, brought him a pie, and was about to eat that pie sitting next to him. Little miracles.

“No, not working," she said, sliding a bite into her mouth. “Oh, it’s good,” she remarked. “It’s a new recipe so I wasn’t sure.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Ansel groaned as he took his first bite, pinching the bridge of his nose and slamming his eyes closed. “It’s better than good. I hope this pie ushers me into heaven one day.”

Ruby laughed in surprise at his reaction. An effervescent little bubbling laugh that delighted him and surprised her even more. She covered her mouth with one hand, as she was still chewing, and swallowed. “The raspberries are in season,” was all she conceded.              

They ate in silence for a minute and Ansel was pleased to find that it was a fairly comfortable silence. Her heart rate was evening out and her hands were steady as she ate.

To his dismay, the very second she was done, she rose up, picking up their dishes. “Well, I really have to get going.”

He stilled her with his hands over hers, slipped the dishes away and brought them to the sink himself. “You’re not working but you’re on a tight schedule?”

She looked after him, a little perplexed at how he’d gotten the dirty dishes from her so smoothly. And now she was standing with absolutely nothing to do with her hands. “I have an appointment, sort of. A window of time. Over at an aviary in Twin Hills.”

Ansel turned to her as he wiped his hands on a dishtowel, his brow furrowed in curiosity. “An appointment at an aviary?”

Ruby nodded. “To take pictures, just for my own interests,” she clarified. “The man who owns it, Mr. Burrows, he has all sorts of birds of prey there. Mostly ones that have been injured. Falcons and hawks and even a bald eagle. He rehabilitates them. I love taking pictures of wildlife and I’ve been curious about it for a while.” Ruby, comfortable talking about photography, loosened just a bit. She wandered to his fridge and smiled at the pictures haphazardly stuck onto it. She traced a finger over one of them and he desperately wanted to know which one. “He’s kind of prickly, this Mr. Burrows, and he doesn’t seem to like the looky-loos, but I finally convinced him to let me come, just for an hour or two.”

She turned back to him, and seemed to realize all at once how much she’d just said. A small blush stole over her cheeks and her hands nervously smoothed her long red dress.

Ansel, leaning against the counter with his hands crossed over his chest, nodded once and made a decision to just leap. “I’d like to come.”

“Oh,” Ruby said, one hand flying up to her forehead as she took a quick step back from him. “I– why?”

“I’d like to see the birds, for one.”

“And two?”

“I’d like to make sure this prickly Mr. Burrows is someone you should spend an hour or two with.”

“Oh,” she repeated, her brow furrowing even further. “I’m fine to go by myself, Ansel. Really. I’m careful when it comes to things like that.”

“Of course you are,” he agreed, striding over to the door and pulling on one boot and then the next.

She stumbled after him, very aware of the fact that she was not successfully talking him out of coming. “So, you don’t have to worry. I’ll be just fine. I–”

“Are we friends?” he asked in that clench-jawed gravel.

“I– yes, I suppose.”

“Right,” he nodded. “You want me to drive?”

She bit her lip and watched in amazement as he finished pulling on his boots and nudged her rain boots over toward her. Somehow, she found herself balancing against his outstretched hand as she stepped into one and then the next. “No. I’ll drive.”

She still hadn’t quite figured out how it had all happened. But that’s how she found herself, not five minutes later, pulling onto a two lane highway with Ansel Keto in her passenger seat. He’d had to slide the seat all the way back and still his legs had damn near nowhere to go. He had one arm out the open window, despite the light drizzle that had just started, and the other arm was flung across the car, resting along her headrest.

Somehow the man was boxing her in, even as he just sat there on his own. How he’d wrangled any of this, she had absolutely no idea.