Heart Of The Bear (Appalachian Shifters #1) (2 page)

“I’m going to get you something to eat,” Caleb said.

He got up and left, and I tried to lift my head so I could see where I was. Unfortunately, I was met with that same vicious pain shooting down my spine, and I realized for the first time that I had something strapped around my neck. I guess it was some sort of neck brace.

I sighed heavily and closed my eyes. There was not much else I could do since I couldn’t see anything in the gloomy room except the golden flicker of a nearby fire and a few shadows on the ceiling above me.

A few moments later, he returned. I could smell something that made my stomach start to growl, and I immediately tried to sit up. This, I quickly regretted.

“Ow!” I groaned.

“Just relax,” Caleb said, placing a plate on something I guessed was a table by the bed. He sat back down on his stool and picked up the plate. “I hope you like trout.”

“I’ve never had it,” I told him.

“Then you’re in for a real treat,” he told me. “Even if you don’t like other fish, I bet you’ll love trout. Especially the way I cook it.”

“I do love fish,” I said.

I opened my mouth as he pushed a fork of flaky white flesh toward me, and the moment it hit my tongue my eyes rolled back into my head. I could detect several different flavors, and they all came together harmoniously with a hint of smokiness.

“Bay leaves?” I asked after I swallowed.

Caleb raised an eyebrow and said, “How’d you know?”

“I can taste it,” I told him. “I’m a chef, and I have a pretty decent palate.”

“Wow, a woman that can cook,” he muttered.

“What’s so strange about that?” I asked.

“It’s just that none of the women I know can boil water without setting the place on fire,” he chuckled.

I snickered and said, “To be honest, most of the women I know are the same way. Then again, most of the men I know are, too, except the chefs I work with.”

He shoveled another bite toward my face and I took it eagerly. He was right about trout. I loved it from the very first bite.

“I’m surprised you haven’t had trout before,” he said. “You being a chef.”

“We don’t work with it at my restaurant,” I told him. “We do a lot of beef, duck, pork, lamb… not too much seafood, and mostly just ocean-based stuff like tuna and sea bass. We have one risotto dish that contains lobster and scallops, but that’s about it.”

“Where’s your restaurant?” he asked.

“Napa Valley.”

“California?”

“Yep,” I answered.

“You don’t sound like a California girl,” he challenged me.

“I was born and raised in Charleston.”

“Beautiful area.”

“You’ve been?”

“Once. It’s the only time I’ve ever left Tennessee. I had to go help my brother out of a jam.”

He thrust the fork back into my face and I took the bite reluctantly. I had the sneaking suspicion that he was trying to prevent me from asking about his brother and the jam he’d been in.

“So you’re a paramedic?”

I could see the relief in his eyes when I shifted the topic away from his brother.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was a firefighter in town for a while. But my family needed me, so I came back up to the mountain.”

“Who’s Anna?” I blurted out.

Shit.

“Anna?”

“I overheard you talking to her earlier,” I said.

Damn it. My mouth was always quicker than my brain.

“Oh, her? She’s no one.”

“She didn’t sound like no one. Sounded to me like you two know each other really well.”

God, I sounded like a jealous stalker or something.

“Anna is an old friend of the family,” he said. “Nothing more.”

“You don’t have to explain anything to me,” I told him. “I was just curious.”

Oh, great. Now I sounded even more stupid. Yep, total stalker territory.

Caleb poked the fork toward me and I took a bite and chewed.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how much I heard?” I blurted out.

He blinked at me with a poker face that could have made him incredibly wealthy in Vegas… right up to the point where his cheek twitched slightly under his eye.

“What do you mean?” he asked with a nonchalant shrug.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “I heard Anna calling me a human.”

Ah, now the hamster wheel was turning. I could tell Caleb’s brain was working overtime trying to think of the right thing to say. Something was definitely up.

“Maybe you misheard,” he suggested, nearly impaling my nose with the fork.

I turned my mouth away from it and ignored the pain of moving my head as I said, “Uh-uh. I know what I heard. Just like I
know
I saw a bear at the crash site.”

“You’ve had some serious injuries,” Caleb said. “Anyone might see or hear things under the circum…”

“Stop it, Caleb,” I snapped. “Just tell me the truth.”

“About what?”

Now was my chance. I was either going to yank the truth out of him or end up looking like a total lunatic.

“You’re bears, aren’t you?” I spat out before I could stop myself. “Shifters.”

He stared at me for several long moments before bursting into a hearty guffaw that wrinkled the corners of his eyes and echoed all through the room.

“Bear shifters?” he asked. “Really? Let me guess… you’re a reader?”

“Huh?”

“You read those mushy romance novels, don’t you?” he said, wiping tears of mirth away from his eyes. “Where the lonely chick meets the impossibly sexy guy and he turns out to be a shapeshifter?”

My ears started to burn with embarrassment.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business!” I snapped at him.

Caleb was still laughing so hard he could barely speak. He threw the fork down onto the plate with a clatter.

“Oh, god,” he said, clutching his sides. “You’re killing me!”

“I’m so fucking glad I amuse you,” I glowered.

He took a deep breath to calm his laughter and then he said seriously, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I just… bear shifters. Really? Us?”

“Sorry I said anything,” I grumbled.

I was really starting to feel like a moron, and I wanted to be anywhere but there. Unfortunately, I was in no shape to flounce dramatically from the room as I wanted to, so I had to just lie there and sulk gloomily.

“Hey, I’m really sorry,” he said gently. “I really didn’t… I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“Whatever.”

“Penny, don’t be mad.”

“I’d really like to be alone right now.”

“You need to finish eating,” Caleb argued.

“I’m not hungry anymore.”

“Penny…”

“Please!” I snapped.

Caleb sighed, but he stood up and collected the plate, silently leaving the room. I stared up at the ceiling and said a silent prayer that I would heal quickly so I could hop the next bus to Charleston. I never wanted to see him again.

I’d been asleep for a while, but I had no idea how long. I heard the door creak open, and I gritted my teeth, expecting it to be Caleb.

“Penny?”

This was a female voice, but it wasn’t Anna. I allowed myself to be angry at myself over the tinge of disappointment I felt when I realized it wasn’t Caleb. I told myself I was still mad at him.

“Yes?”

“I’m Ivy,” the girl said. “I’m here to take care of you while Caleb is away. He asked me to entertain you and make sure you eat.”

“Away?”

“He had to take care of some family business,” she said.

Ivy moved into my line of sight. The room was still illuminated by only a flickering fire, but I could tell she was pretty. She was lean and strong, but somehow delicate of feature. Though her body looked like she could probably kick some serious ass, she seemed somewhat vulnerable. Her hair was a wavy mass of chestnut brown that fell into her eyes and cascaded over her shoulders, and even in the dim light I could see that her eyes were shockingly blue. She looked pretty young – maybe seventeen or eighteen.

“Wow,” I breathed in spite of myself.

“What?” she asked, sounding self-conscious.

“Sorry,” I said. “You’re just really beautiful.”

“Me?” she gasped, wide eyed and blushing.

“Yeah, you.”

She pulled her face behind a curtain of her hair, but I could see a pleased smile on her lips.

“Nobody’s ever said that to me before,” she said.

I found that incredibly hard to believe given how stunning she was. She could easily have been an actress or a model. She was prettier than anyone I’d ever seen on TV or in movies. In fact, much to my own irritation, I realized I was jealous of her being around Caleb. She was clearly so much more beautiful than me. I had to realize I never would have had a shot with him, anyway.

“You’re the beautiful one,” Ivy said.

“Oh, gosh, you’re just being nice,” I told her.

“No, really,” she said. “I envy you.”

Ivy pulled up the stool that Caleb had sat in before.

“Me? Why?”

“Because you have a real woman’s body,” she said. “I might as well be a boy. None of the guys pay a bit of attention to me. But if I had curves like you, they would.”

“Curves like me?”

I figured I must look especially fat for her to be able to see all my lumps through the blankets that rested on top of me. I made a mental note to go on a diet as soon as I was back in civilization.

“All the men around here like curvy women, but there aren’t any up here on the mountain,” Ivy said. “They don’t pay a bit of attention to the likes of me.”

“I find that really hard to believe.”

“It’s true. Then men around here… they’re not like the men you’re probably used to.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked like she thought she’d said too much, and she quickly replied, “I just mean they like a different type of woman than… than men in the big cities.”

“Sounds like my kind of place,” I chuckled.

“Not mine,” Ivy said glumly. “I want to get out of here so bad.”

“So why not go for it?”

“I can’t. This is my family. They need me.”

“I’m sure they can manage,” I encouraged her.

“Maybe I can’t.”

“I felt the same way when I left home,” I told her.

“Really? What happened?”

“I left Charleston to move to Napa Valley to work for one of the greatest chefs in the world,” I told her. “I was scared to death. I knew I’d miss my mom, and my friends… heck, even my stepdad. I was afraid I wouldn’t be any good at my job and I’d get fired and have to move home. But none of that happened.”

“You moved all the way from Charleston to California?” Ivy asked, seemingly impressed.

“Yup. I got a job offer through a friend I met in culinary school and I just packed up and left the next day. Took a bus all the way across country.”

“Man, I wish I could do that,” Ivy moaned.

“You can.”

“No, not me. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t. I’m not that kind of person.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“I’m nothing. I never have been.”

What the…

I just couldn’t believe that such a stunningly beautiful young woman could have so little confidence in herself. I could understand my own self-doubt. I grew up bullied for being a chubby kid, and then I got cheated on several times buy guys – usually with thinner women. I’d managed to develop my own confidence as I grew up, but there were some years there when I had practically none.

But Ivy? She was beautiful. She looked like a strong, capable woman. I just couldn’t imagine what could have caused her to have so little self-belief.

“How can you say that? You seem like a really smart girl, and you’re absolutely beautiful.”

Ivy shrugged and pulled her feet up onto the stool, wrapping her arms protectively around her knees. She was still hiding behind all that hair.

“I guess it’s because I’m an orphan and I don’t really belong here.”

“What do you mean?”

Ivy sighed heavily and tucked her chin between her knees. She shook her head slightly and acted as if she were contemplating something heavily.

“I was born in Northern Georgia, but my parents were killed when I was nine,” she explained. “I was really young, but I didn’t want to stay with my relatives, because they weren’t exactly nice to me. So I ran away.”

“Wow, I’m sorry.”

She shrugged and said, “I’m mostly over it now. My parents weren’t the best parents ever. But I didn’t really know how to survive on my own at that age. Caleb found me in downtown Gatlinburg begging tourists for spare change to get something to eat and he took me under his wing. Some of the others don’t like me much, but Caleb’s always been nice to me.”

“So Caleb’s a pretty nice guy, huh?” I asked cautiously, trying not to sound too eager.

“Yeah, he’s great,” she answered. “He’s the only person I’ve ever known who treated me like I matter.”

“Well, you do matter, Ivy,” I told her. “You matter to me.”

“Really?”

I tried to nod, but it hurt too much, so I said, “Yeah, really.”

I saw a slight smile puff her cheeks out behind her hair.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked me.

“No, I’m just enjoying the company,” I told her honestly.

“Me too,” she ginned, peeking out from behind her hair.

“Ivy!”

I cringed at the sound of her voice. Despite having heard it only once, I would recognize that grating sound anywhere. Anna.

“What?” Ivy growled. Clearly, Ivy was no more enthused to hear from Anna than I was.

“What the hell are you doing in here? You’ve got trash detail today!” Anna demanded.

“Caleb asked me to sit with Penny,” Ivy said.

“Doesn’t he realize you’re too stupid for that?” Anna snarled. “God, your blabby little mouth would say anything!”

“I’m not stupid, Anna!” Ivy shouted.

“Don’t you dare raise your voice to me, you impudent little bitch!” Anna snarled.

I heard Ivy yelp and I craned my neck painfully to see what was happening. Anna had her by the hair and was pulling her across the room.

“Ow! Stop it; you’re hurting me!” Ivy whined.

“I’m going to teach you a lesson, you stupid little…”

“Stop!” I shouted.

Despite more pain that I’d ever felt in my life, I managed to roll off into the floor. I landed with a thud, and a jolt of excruciating agony shot through my entire body. I ignored the pain and used the stool to pull myself into a precariously wobbly standing position.

“Let her go!” I groaned.

Anna turned to me, a set of jade green eyes flashing viciously underneath a mane of bright red hair. She narrowed her eyes at me and her lip twitched upward in a snarl.

“How dare you speak to me that way,” she growled. “This is none of your business, so stay out of it!”

She yanked Ivy’s hair harder, and Ivy shrieked in pain. Anna started to drag her outside again, and I dove across the room and wrapped my arms around Anna, causing her to release Ivy and knocking Anna into the doorframe.

“You stupid bitch!” Anna shouted.

Before I knew it, Anna turned to face me and backhanded me in one smooth motion. I felt the fiery rush of pain searing through me as I toppled backward and stumbled over the stool, landing against the wall with a thud. My head was swimming, and I struggled to hang onto consciousness.

“Caleb was a fool to bring her here,” Anna muttered. She snatched Ivy by her hair again, growling, “Just like he was a fool to bring you here.”

“Ow!” Ivy screeched as Anna pulled her along by her hair.

“I said stop!” I shouted, trying to pull myself back to my feet.

“Alright, I tried to be nice,” Anna said.

The next thing I knew, Anna bridged the distance between us and slammed me against the wall. My ears began to ring, and my whole body went numb. I assume shock was setting in. She tried to wrap her hand around my throat, but the neck brace was in her way. This must have really pissed her off, because all I remember was seeing flesh headed toward my face in a blur and I was out cold.