A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) (14 page)

Alison placed a hand on Michael’s back and the tension in the man evaporated. He glanced back at her and with the briefest of looks knew her thoughts. It wasn’t telepathy or even shifter senses, it was that on a very primal level he
understood
her in a way that no one had before. How exciting. How terrifying.

“I am going to open this box now, Mother. With Sheriff Pete, you and Michael as witnesses. If there is a stone pendant in the box, Michael gets it. You haven’t told me what you want out of the box and I really don’t want you looking over the contents
before
deciding what it is you want. There’s something you think is in here, but I know you. If you think you can get a better deal, you’ll try.”

“Alison! You think so little of your mother? That I’m some sort of lying cheat?”

“I think you are a very clever, very intelligent woman who raised five amazing daughters on her own. And that you developed the skills to do it out of necessity. But we’ve all left home, and you still feel the need to fight the world for every scrap you can get. You’re strong, Mother. You outfox everyone. But not everything should be a battle.”

Mrs. Meadows wasn’t expecting the compliments, and it knocked her off balance long enough for Alison to take the lockbox. It couldn’t have looked less impressive if it’d tried. It was a taupe-colored metal box, like the kind bake sales use, with a little handle attached to the top. It was as long as Alison’s arm and roughly a foot wide.

“Are we sure this is the right box? We’re all going to feel a little silly if we open this up and it’s just Grandpa Jackson’s chili recipes or old lottery tickets.”

“Try and open it,” Sheriff Pete said, a twinkle in his eye.

Alison looked at the seams of the box, but there was no latch. The seams themselves weren’t even real, but just grooves etched down the sides of the box. It was like someone had made a very convincing copy of a drab money box, but forgotten to make it real. She shook the box to see if it rattled inside, and Michael and her mother both winced in unison.

“I can’t hear anything inside.”

“See? This is all some trick!” Mrs. Meadows had regained her composed fury. “They have the actual box locked away and they’re laughing at us. It’s all some scam. Like this man, this bumpkin sheriff.”

“Mother!”

“He’s not what he pretends to be. He didn’t seem right when I first got here, so I called in some favors with some people I know and they looked him up. Did you know this Sheriff Pete was an agent with the FBI for twenty years? And they think he’s deceased?”

Pete chuckled. “They do? Well I’m sure that’s just a clerical error. I’ll call them in the morning.”

“It is the morning,” Mrs. Meadows sneered.

“Another morning then.” Pete smiled a tight-lipped dopey smile, but even Alison could see it was an act.
 

“Mrs. Meadows, the box isn’t fake. It just requires a special touch to open,” Michael said. “Alison, I’d like to try something. Do you trust me?”

“Do you need to ask?” Alison said. The grin he gave her in response made her knees melt and she wished her mother would go far away, the rest of the world would deal with its own problems, and she could spend a whole month in bed with this beautiful, generous man.

Michael took her face in his hands and gently brushed his lips against hers. Alison whimpered involuntarily and felt like she was floating off the ground. Why was he kissing her? It didn’t matter. He was. And he was doing a beautiful job of it. Michael parted her lips with his tongue and then
breathed
into her gently. It was more than his breath, than mere air, that filled her. It was his magic. He let go of her and stepped back and then
whoosh
. Whatever he’d done took effect. The world dropped into amazing clarity. All the sounds fell away. She felt like a kite blown high above the ground, tethered to the world by the slimmest of strings. Time all but stopped. Everything was slow and sparking with light and perfect. She felt like she could run around the room a hundred times in the blink of an eye, but when she tried to move, she found she was as slow as everything else. Only her mind was enhanced, her senses sharpened.

She looked around the room and saw Pete as the pretender he was, playing at the country cop while hiding his intelligence and his scars. She saw the wounded animal inside her mother, forever unable to trust, but alongside it was the fiercely proud woman who would do anything for her daughters. She saw Michael, the gorgeous man with the shadow of a bear. Golden lines of power, like runes or sigils, were etched into his skin, directing the magic in him. Was this how he always saw the world? Alison doubted it.

Between them all was the lockbox. With her magic sight she saw squiggles marked on its surface. Words that she knew must be magic. Did her grandfather paint them there? Was he some sort of wizard? The squiggles shifted and writhed as she tried to read them, burning with a golden light against the dull taupe of the metal. But as the symbols rearranged themselves, Alison realized they weren’t words at all. They were a handprint. Or rather, words in the shape of a handprint.

She exhaled and the magic left her with her head spinning. Her stomach flipped and flopped and threatened to empty itself all over Michael. Maybe inhaling his magic breath wasn’t a good idea after spending three days recovering from poison? Before her mother and Michael could face off again over who was more protective of her, Alison waved them both off.
 

“I’m fine,” she said. “Just a little dizzy. That kiss, wow.” Then she placed her hand exactly where the squiggly runes had been. The box grew warm under her touch. The seams glowed with a weird blue light and then, with a
clunk
, a latch that hadn’t been there seconds ago opened. Alison took a deep breath. If her mother’s whatever-it-was wasn’t in the box, this could be a problem. And if Michael’s pendant wasn’t in the box, she didn’t know if the man could take it.
 

She opened the lid.

Much like her grandfather’s house, his box was stuffed full of junk. Just crammed with handkerchiefs and scraps of papers and shiny pebbles and old coins. “What is all this?” she said, carefully scooping the upper layer of dross out of the box. Under the first layer was a thick pile of manilla envelopes that looked like they might be someone’s tax returns. It wasn’t what she’d hoped to find in the box, but also she hadn’t even let herself get attached to any idea that the contents might be hers. She knew her mother would claim anything valuable. Better not to hope, right?
 

Alison lifted out the thick stack of envelopes. They each had a name on them. She saw Sheriff Pete’s name, Michael’s, her mother’s and even her own. Along with two dozen names she didn’t recognize, but which Pete sure did.
 

“This is really weird,” Michael said.

“Is this a trick?” Mrs. Meadows asked. “How did you open the box? Why is there an envelope with that man’s name on it?”

Pete was the first to open his envelope. He glanced at the papers inside, went very pale, then sat heavily in his seat. The man’s eyes were distant, locked in the past as he chewed thoughtfully on the ends of his mustache.

Michael was the next to open his. He ripped the top off with his teeth and dumped the contents onto the table. A handwritten note fell out, followed by a bear pendant carved from old stone tied to a leather thong. Michael blinked at the pendant but didn’t move to pick it up. Alison leaned over to see what the note said.

In small, shaky handwriting, the note read:

I’m sorry for what happened to your pa, boy. And for any pain I caused you. It wasn’t me that fired the shot that killed him, but I can’t say I was innocent. I didn’t know he was a man pretending to be a bear. I didn’t know Ivan Serebro had silver rounds, either. Never trusted that man before that day and certainly never since. But from what I’ve seen, you’re going to make my granddaughter really happy and she deserves that more than you know. She’s going to give you lots of daughters and you’re going to love them more than you knew was possible. So even if you are some monster bear pretending to be a person, you’re okay in my book.
 

Michael blinked back tears, but remained silent. After a minute or two, he picked up the pendant and looped it over his neck.

Mrs. Meadows, sure this was all some elaborate con with her as the mark, opened her packet next. “There’s no way what I’m looking for is in—” she began, but when she peered into the envelope, she froze. Her hands trembled uncontrollably until she dropped the envelope on the floor. Alison stooped to pick it up and reached inside. It was full of photographs. Pictures of a couple, in the hospital cradling a baby girl with a serious scowl on her infant face. Alison recognized the scowl instantly.

“Is this you, Mom?” Alison asked.

“This is my mother. She looks so beautiful,” Mrs. Meadows said. “She looks so much like you.”

The photos were all of Alison’s grandparents—her mother’s parents—both from before her mother was born and just after. Her grandmother, who was never, ever spoken of while Alison was growing up, was a smiling curvy woman with an impressive array of hats. In every picture she wore a different one.
 

“I’ve never had any photos of her. I knew he had some, but he refused to share them with me. We never got along, you know, me and your grandfather. We were too much alike. And I lost her so young.”

A handwritten note drifted out of the envelope and fell to the floor. Mrs. Meadows snatched it up and folded it before anyone else could read it. “I don’t know how you did this, or if this is some odd last trick from my father. But thank you.” And with those words, Mrs. Meadows stepped forward, took Michael’s hands, and gave him a tight little hug. It may have been the first hug Mrs. Meadows ever voluntarily gave someone she wasn’t directly related to.

Alison hefted her packet in her hands. “Does anyone else feel like Dorothy in Oz right now?” Her grandfather had managed to give her mother a heart—what could be in her own envelope? She ordered her hands to open it, but she couldn’t. She knew it would change her life, but she was just starting to like her life the way it was.

“Michael, I need help. I can’t open this.”
 

“Do you want me to open it and look inside, or just like dump out the contents?”

“Dump them. Do it quick.”

And so he did.

Out tumbled official -ooking documents with gold lettering and embossed seals and attorney’s signatures, followed by page after page of what looked like recipes, followed by plastic sandwich baggies that held—if Alison wasn’t wrong—brewer’s yeast.

“What is all this junk?” Mrs. Meadows said.

Pete blinked, still lost in his thoughts.

“They’re deeds,” Alison said. “He’s signed his property over to me. Not just the house I think, but some other places, too. Did you know about any of this, Mother?”

“Your grandfather and I hadn’t been on speaking terms in quite a long time,” Mrs. Meadows sniffed. Despite being pleased with her own gift, her eyes were taking on the cold glare of envy. Alison decided to pack up her papers and dig through them another time. Deeds were complicated affairs, not nearly as explicit as what she imagined they might look like. Which was probably because her entire experience with deeds came from playing Monopoly with her sisters.

Michael looked at the pile of envelopes still opened on the table. “Pete, can we leave these other ones here for you to take care of?”

The old sheriff stirred. “I don’t want anything to do with those damn things,” he snapped, his voice sounding very different, with a clipped east coast accent. He ran a hand across his face, smoothing his mustache. “I mean,” he said, his voice warm and folksy once more. “I’d really appreciate it if you could deal with them, boy.” Pete smiled sadly, but the smile didn’t reach his haunted eyes.

Anything that got in the way of Alison taking Michael directly to bed was a terrible idea, but better to do it now than have to get out of bed later, right?

Michael sighed. “Sure, Pete. I can handle it.” Alison could feel his yearning like a bonfire on her skin. She wanted him to say
no
, to let someone else do the work. But she knew that wouldn’t happen.

“Mother, we’ll talk soon,” Alison said, hugging her mother and planting a kiss on her soft dry cheek.

 
“I’ve got my eye on you. You take good care of my daughter,” Mrs. Meadows said, leveling her best withering gaze on Michael.

“I will, ma’am. Now and forever.”

Chapter 9

Bearly Home

Dropping off the envelopes took much longer than Michael anticipated. Finding the recipients was easy enough, but then they all wanted to talk about Jack Sable and the Raven Queen. What was he like? What was she wearing? Did they really rescue a pack of werewolves? It was like for a moment all of Bearfield had turned into notorious busybody Marcie Jackson. But there was also an envelope for Marcie and she was even more Marcie-ish than usual, inviting them in for iced tea and zucchini bread. Michael wanted to pull her aside, to say, “Hey Marcie, this is a really amazing offer, but that curvy goddess of a woman over there is my mate and every atom in my body is vibrating with the deep need to hear her scream out in orgasm, and having tea with you is the exact opposite of that.”

But of course he couldn’t say anything like that, especially to Marcie.

And then there were the damn envelopes. He’d known Alison’s grandpa had been into some weird stuff. The wards around his property were evidence enough. But it was Bearfield, everyone was into weird stuff. Michael tried not to judge. If you were secretly a porcupine shifter or on the run from the mob or were trying to build your own backyard spaceship—it’s cool man, live and let live.

But the envelopes were different. Old Man Jackson had been channeling some serious juice to write them. Michael knew very little about magic, but he knew that peering into the future wasn’t easy and didn’t come cheap. It was surprising, because the few times he’d met Jackson in public, the old man hadn’t smelled like a witch or a wizard or whatever. But clearly he was.