She hadn’t expected to feel so much when she drove past the town sign.WELCOME TO HARMONY RIDGE, TENNESSEE. POPULATION762. Memories had been rising since she hit the state line three hours ago, and now they broke the surface.
First day of kindergarten, wearing her favorite dress, aqua with white pin-dots. Meeting kids her own age and navigating the social world. Becoming aware that she loved pretty things like pin-dots on dresses and ruffles on sandal straps, yet girls themselves were usually boring. Approaching a tow-headed boy and asking if he had any spare cowboys and horses.
“You don’t wanna play with the baby dolls?”
“Baby dolls are so stupid. All they can do is lay on your lap and sleep and cry. But I can go away if you want.”
The surprised blue eyes of the generous five-year-old boy faded to those same blue eyes, surprised yet again on her tenth birthday when she whispered to him that she didn’t want a party though her parents didn’t believe her when she said so. To celebrate the milestone of turning one decade old, what she had asked for was a picnic on the railroad tracks.
A week later the blue-eyed boy, his brother, and the rest of her friends brought her to a red-and-white-checked blanket spread over the tracks. They feasted on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and potato chips. The chip bag saidPARTY-SIZED! which made her smile. They passed around a thermos of milk, still cold. Years later she learned from the boy’s brother that he’d made the sandwiches himself.
A car horn beeped.
Kelsey blinked away the rushing tide of the first seventeen years of her life. She was sitting at a stop sign. She waved an apology to the black pickup truck behind her and kept driving.
Gas in Harmony Ridge was cheaper than she’d seen it for the last hundred miles. Might as well fill up. She pulled in and got out of her trusty little Toyota. Its custom paint job wasn’t too far off from her aqua kindergarten dress. Favorites didn’t fade for her, never had.
The pickup truck had pulled in too. She hadn’t done anything worthy of a traffic ticket, but she kept her head down while she scanned her credit card and began gassing up. She knew how to be smart, a woman traveling alone; she’d had to learn when she chose it for her day job.
She could watch from the corner of her eye though.“Curiosity killed the Kelsey.”Her dad’s voice echoed from her middle-grade years while out of the truck climbed a mammoth of a man, six-and-a-half feet tall and muscled like a…
Werewolf.
Not that the general public called them that anymore. The politically correct term waslupine. Had the lupines themselves been consulted, people would know they preferredwolf.Unless they were being ironic, at which time a few of them flaunted the obsolete insult like a badge of honor. Not that the general public knew that either.
Kelsey turned to face the wolf from the pickup truck. He positioned the pump trigger to keep going on auto, then leaned against the truck, arms folded, watching the numbers tick. The October afternoon, mostly cloudy, held onto a slight chill that caused humans a few pumps over to shrug into jackets or hunch their shoulders. The wolf, on the other hand, stood predictably at ease in work jeans and a T-shirt. A wave of black hair had fallen over one eyebrow. His hair had been doing that his whole life.
“Aaron?”
He looked up. The eyebrow not hidden by his hair bore a faint scar through it. The other half of the scar was a faint white nick at his cheekbone, below his eye. She’d been there the day he got that scar.
“Sorry, do I know…?” His frown of concentration faded.
He abandoned the gas pump, but his steps toward her were cautious. He was too big, appeared too threatening to approach an unknown female. And of course he took it into account; he was Aaron.
“It’s me,” she said. “Kelsey Everette.”
His mouth fell open, and then he closed the gap between them and she was lifted off her feet, her entire field of vision blocked by his chest, his arms a brotherly yet powerful circle around her.
“Kelsey. I can’t believe it. You’re home. You came home.”
“Aaron, what…?” Another voice came from behind him. There’d been a second guy in the truck.
Aaron set her down, and she craned her neck to see around him. The second guy was equally tall and equally ripped, but his hair was sandy-blond, his eyes green as a vibrant forest. A lump filled her throat as she stepped away from Aaron to face him.
“Hi, Ezra,” she said.
“Kelsey?”
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He didn’t move. After a long moment he said, “What brings you back to Harmony Ridge?”
A spear pierced her chest. Shouldn’t he be glad to see her too? She cleared her throat, laced her fingers in front of her, tried to figure out what his problem was, but his face was blank. “My aunt Maggie. She’s having back surgery this week. She needs somebody to take care of her.”
“You’re not back permanently?” Aaron’s smile fell.
“Anywhere from four to eight weeks. It really depends on Maggie. I’ll stay until she doesn’t need me anymore.”
