Bear in a Bookshop (Shifter Bodyguards Book 3) Page 9

  "I love listening to you talk."

  She might have thought he was just saying that, but she couldn't deny the sincerity in Gunnar's blue eyes as he gazed up at her. Moved beyond words, she leaned down to kiss him, long and slow, running his lower lip through her teeth as she pulled back.

  And then she reached for her bra with a small sigh.

  "Awww," Gunnar said, propping himself up on his elbows. "Back to the bookstore?"

  "I ... don't know." As much as she loved running the store, it just didn't have the usual appeal today. She hadn't really taken a proper day off since she'd moved to Autumn Grove. "Would you like to see the town? Not that there's much of it to see. You'll probably get bored before we even make it all the way through the two blocks of downtown."

  "With you," Gunnar said earnestly, "I could never get bored."

  ***

  He actually seemed to be telling the truth about that. Melody had worried that he'd lose interest by the second antique store, but he really seemed to be interested in all of the little small-town businesses, the tiny little park by the stream, the old-fashioned lampposts.

  "I've never really been in a town like this before," he explained. "To me it's like something from TV."

  They held hands as they wandered down Main Street, going into any little business that caught their eye. Melody hadn't realized how little she had explored the town, either. She'd just been too busy with her new business. She'd never been inside the hardware store, or gotten an ice cream cone at Marie's Creamery Corner.

  What she hadn't expected was to get stared at. Normally, she was used to being beneath notice, hiding under her gray sweaters and quiet, drab, librarian-like exterior. Coming from her father's mansion and a clan of larger-than-life dragons, not being noticed suited her just fine.

  But people noticed Gunnar. It was probably one part "stranger!" and one part "danger!" Women with little kids crossed the street to avoid them. Even the people who Melody had gotten to know from working at the bookstore gave her little waves but didn't come over to chat.

  "How dare they," she seethed as she turned away from paying for their ice cream cones. Even the young lady behind the ice cream counter had tried not to make eye contact with Gunnar and had only spoken to Melody. "How dare they judge you."

  Gunnar shrugged his big shoulders and licked a drop of chocolate from the edge of his cone. "They're not wrong, are they?"

  "They couldn't be more wrong," she said staunchly. A passing older couple gave Gunnar a nervous look, and Melody scowled back at them until they found something else to look at.

  But it was sucking the joy out of the day. And it was making her think more than she wanted to about Gunnar's past and the terms of his release, which she realized she didn't actually know. Was he out of prison permanently, or only while Ben and Derek tried to recapture Nils?

  "You okay?" Gunnar asked indistinctly, crunching a bite of his waffle cone.

  "I'm fine." Melody sighed and applied herself to her ice cream before it melted.

  "Penny for your thoughts."

  Melody grimaced. "You don't want to know. I was thinking about your brother."

  "Oh." He looked pensive. "I look a lot like him, you know. Did you ever, uh, have the displeasure of meeting him?"

  "No. I didn't meet Derek and Gaby until after Nils was already in jail." She looked around for a trash bin to discard their crumpled, chocolate-stained napkins. "But it doesn't matter if you look like him, Gunnar. You aren't your brother, not in the slightest. You're nothing like him."

  "Most people don't seem to believe that."

  "Nobody else," she said gently, "has looked into your soul. I know you, Gunnar. I knew from the moment I looked into your eyes that you weren't dangerous, no matter what anyone else thinks. I knew you meant no harm to us. And my brother does too, or else he wouldn't have helped you get out of prison."

  Gunnar grimaced. "Wish I believed that."

  "What part? About you, or about Ben?"

  "Either. Both. With my brother around, I am putting you in danger, Melody, and—"

  "Hush." She silenced him with a chocolate-flavored kiss. "No, you're not. You're here to help us. And ..." She glanced around at the quiet small-town street. "I, for one, feel safer with you here than not."

  "You're biased," he pointed out, but his hand wrapped around hers, his fingers strong and warm.

  "Mmmm." She smiled at him, tightening her hand in his. "Nobody's completely unbiased, you know. Maybe I'm just biased in the right direction. But you know what ..." She hesitated, looking him up and down.

  "What?" he asked, an anxious expression crossing his face.

  "I'm thinking maybe it would help if we got you some clothes that fit." Damn it. Now she felt like she was turning into Tessa, who used to nag her about her cardigans and severe hairstyles. The cardigans were going to have to be pried out of her cold dead hands (they were comfortable, damn it) but the way you dressed did influence how people saw you. In her case, she knew perfectly well the impression she was putting across and didn't care to change it, but if the problem—or part of the problem—was that people tended to look at Gunnar and judge him by his hair and clothes and jail tattoos, maybe giving him a makeover might help with that. It wasn't going to change minds, exactly, but at last it could make him display on the outside the qualities that she saw on the inside.

  Gunnar shrugged uncomfortably. "I don't exactly have ... you know ... a lot of money. Or much at all."

  "If that's the only problem, I'll be happy to buy you something." He still looked dubious. "As a present," she said. "Look, it's at least partly a present for me, too. I get to dress you up in something sexy. What's not to enjoy about that?"

  Now he looked intensely nervous. "Er ... how sexy are we talking here?"

  "I'm not going to put you in Speedos. How about a leather jacket or something like that?"

  "Which you're going to buy ... where, exactly?"

  "Uh. Hmmm." She looked around thoughtfully. He had a point; the shopping choices in downtown Autumn Grove were somewhat limited. She knew there were a Walmart and a Target in the shopping complex down the highway, but it was a bit of a drive. Her eye lit on an outdoor supply store. "Want to see what they have in there?"

  "Are you sure you can afford this?" Gunnar protested as she dragged him into the store. "I mean, you're trying to start up the bookstore and everything. There's gotta be a thrift store around here."

  "Trust me, I can afford it. I don't like to lean on Dad's money if I don't have to, but my family could afford to buy this whole store."

  "You're rich?" Gunnar said in surprise.

  Melody scowled at him. "Say it louder, why don't you."

  "Sorry." He dropped his voice and glanced around. It wasn't a large store, and they were the only customers except for an old man with a Santa Claus beard looking at hip waders. "But ... you didn't mention it. I wasn't expecting ... um ...."

  "Well, you know what I am. We ..." She made a gesture, trying to indicate "stuff," but Gunnar just looked confused. "We hoard."

  "I know that, but you hoard books."

  "Yeah, but Dad doesn't. Remember what you said earlier about a stash of gold? Now imagine how much of that you could accumulate over a couple hundred years, with sufficient determination and no particular scruples about where it comes from."

  "A couple hundred—what? You're—what?"

  "I'm not that old," she whispered. "Dad is, more or less. Please stop staring at me." She grabbed a flannel shirt off a rack and held it up against him. "This looks like a good fit. Want to try it on?"

  "Yeah, but ... you ..." He gave up when she shoved the shirt into his arms. "Okay."

  Gunnar obediently shed his ill-fitting suit jacket and began pulling on the flannel shirt over his T-shirt. Melody took advantage of the opportunity to check out the flexing of his shoulders and the rippling muscles of his back. So did the middle-aged saleslady who was putting tags on things behind the counter, Melody couldn't help not
icing.

  "I just don't understand," he said quietly, buttoning the shirt. "Your life must have been so different from mine. Unimaginably different. I don't know why you're bothering with—"

  Melody whipped out a hand and clamped it over his mouth. He paused in mid-buttoning and gazed at her in mild confusion.

  "Because you're my mate, for one thing. But also ... look, we're not that different, don't you understand? Okay, so I grew up in a nice house, though I bet it wasn't whatever you're imagining. Dad has a mansion, but I grew up with my mom, and she's just got a nice townhouse in a good neighborhood."

  "Your mom isn't a dragon?"

  "Oh no, she is a dragon. It's just that she hoards music, not money. Here, let me get the sleeves."

  As she buttoned his cuffs, Gunnar said, "How does that work?"

  "About like you'd imagine, I guess. She's got a million records and CDs in storage. Digital music was a godsend for our closet space. She also owns a recording studio and represents some bands. That part kind of comes and goes, because on the one hand, being a patron and muse for her own band is her dream life, but she's also somewhat on the unreliable end of things, and she's not actually that good at finding bands who are going to do well. Mostly they're a money sink. But she has fun and does some charity work, like organizing benefit concerts, and that sort of thing."

  "That's ..." Gunnar shook his head. "That's not what I was expecting. At all."

  Melody smiled. "We're all different, just like anybody. Anyway, I grew up in a modest townhouse because Mom always sunk her money into her hobby, the same way Dad likes to hold onto his and invest it in precious things. Turn around."

  Gunnar rotated obediently. "You like this one?" he asked with a hopeful little smile.

  "I do, but I'm not really feeling the lumberjack plaid ..."

  ***

  It was hours later when they left the store, Gunnar freshly decked out in a new flannel shirt with creases so crisp that he kept squirming, and Melody carrying the bag with his old clothes.

  He looked, if she did say so herself, amazing. She would've preferred maybe a little more 5th Avenue and less backwoods chic, but at least these clothes fit him and flattered him, unlike the old brown suit. The lumberjack look was hot on him. She'd found him a dark gray work jacket, which he was wearing over a shirt in a subdued green and gray checked pattern.

  And it was fascinating how the clothes changed the way he fit into his environment. Suddenly, rather than looking like a stranger who might easily be fresh out of prison, he just looked like someone who was maybe down from one of the logging camps up in the mountains, or a local farmer. People no longer crossed the street to avoid him. Instead there were friendly smiles and curious glances. An older couple even stopped to congratulate her on her young man and ask for Gunnar's name. Melody was blushing fiercely by the time they moved on.

  But Gunnar seemed pensive, subdued even. "Doesn't it seem fake to you?" he asked quietly. "They wouldn't have given me the time of day before."

  "They just don't know what to think of you. This helps. It's like camouflage; it lets you blend into a crowd."

  He touched a hand to the side of her face. "Is that what you do?"

  She didn't pretend not to know what he was talking about. "Look, it's complicated. My father wants me to be ... ornamental, I guess. Beautiful and deadly."

  "You are beautiful, no matter what," Gunnar said softly. He smiled. "And probably deadly too."

  "It doesn't bother you?" she asked. Although there was no one nearby on the sidewalk, she lowered her voice. "Knowing what I am."

  "Why should it? If you're not afraid of me, knowing what I am ... why would I be afraid of you?" He leaned in to sip at her lips, and murmured, "I would like to see your dragon sometime, though."

  Her heart fluttered. No one had ever seen her shift except other dragons, and more recently, Ben and Tessa—but that was due to necessity: she'd had to fight another dragon to protect them. She had never just shifted because someone wanted to see her do it before.

  "Wait until dark. I'll show you then—" Her phone interrupted her with an incoming text. She rolled her eyes when she saw who it was. "It's Ben, checking up on us."

  Gunnar grinned. "You gonna tell him what we were up to?"

  "And have him go all protective big brother on me? Hell no." She typed a brief return text letting him know she was still with Gunnar, still in Autumn Grove, and doing absolutely fine. "I told him I was showing you the town."

  "Well, that's not wrong. Though ..." He glanced around. "I kinda think we've seen most of it."

  "In that case, I suggest we get something to eat." She swept a hand down the line of shopfronts. "As you can see, you have your choice of diner food or ... diner food. There's also a biker bar up by the highway, and some chain restaurants out where the Target and all of that is, but it's a little bit of a drive."

  Gunnar's stomach rumbled, and he flashed a quick, embarrassed grin. "Diner food sounds great."

  Chapter Eleven: Gunnar

  They got a late lunch at a diner with checked red-and-white tablecloths and a waitress who knew Melody's name. This whole place was like something out of a movie, Gunnar thought. He kept plucking at the sleeves of his new shirt. He didn't know how to feel about any of it.

  The one thing he was sure about was that it didn't really matter where he was as long as Melody was with him. She pressed her knee against his under the table, and they lingered over coffee long after their burgers were gone, talking about anything and everything and nothing. She told him about growing up with an emotionally distant record-producer mother—they left the dragon thing unspoken due to the risk of eavesdroppers as the café began to fill up with the dinner crowd—and he talked about growing up with Nils.

  "He took care of me after our parents died. He was really all I had. I can't blame everything that went wrong in my life on Nils, it really isn't fair—"

  "It seems fair enough to me," Melody said stubbornly. "He's the whole reason you were in prison in the first place."

  "Yeah, but I made a lot of mistakes all on my own. Like I said, I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life. Even after I decided I didn't want to follow in Nils's footsteps, I still just ... drifted. Worked as a bar bouncer, moved crates in a warehouse, took on some construction jobs, that kind of thing. I kept feeling like I wanted to do something else with my life, anything else, but I never could figure out what."

  "Well, what are you interested in?" Melody asked. "If you could do anything, anything at all—if money didn't matter—what would you like to do?"

  If money didn't matter. For her, of course, it didn't. For him, scraping by at jobs that were minimum wage or temporary or seasonal—or all three—life had always been a lot more uncertain. He'd sometimes wished that it was a hundred years ago, when a guy like him could just jump on a tramp steamer headed for unknown ports. These days, getting the good union-wage jobs that might lead to a life like that wasn't easy. Even joining the Army wasn't open to him, with his criminal background and lack of a high school education.

  So he'd tried not to fantasize about a life he couldn't have. He just kicked around from one dead-end job to another. He'd thought that if you didn't have dreams, you couldn't be disappointed.

  But now he was starting to realize that if you didn't have dreams, you couldn't achieve them, either. Dreams were a map of the future. You might not make it to every point on the map, but without a map, you'd never get anywhere at all.

  "I think I'd like to travel. I've never really been much of anywhere." As soon as the words left his mouth, he instantly regretted them. Melody was clearly not a traveling type. With all the money in the world to do whatever she wanted, she'd settled down in a small town and started a bookstore. He might as well have just flat-out said I'm planning to skip out on you. Except that wasn't what he'd meant at all. Floundering desperately for something else, he grabbed at straws. "And ... uh ... finish my GED? I'm pretty close. I've been working on it in
prison—" Oh great, there he went, talking about prison again. Thanks, mouth.

  But her face was open, unjudging. "I can help you with that last part," she said. "We have study guides and that kind of thing. I've helped other people do it. There's not a library in Autumn Grove, it's too small, so I try to fill some of the functions with my bookstore that people might go to a library for. And I am absolutely dead serious about helping you get tested for dyslexia, too."

  "And you wouldn't mind all that work?"

  She brushed the side of her hand along his. "Stop acting like it's some terrible burden for me to spend time with you, Gunnar. I like spending time with you."

  "Same here," he murmured, closing his hand around hers.

  Melody beckoned the waitress for a refill on her coffee. "You know," she said gently, when the waitress had gone to help another customer. "I think I'd like to hear about prison. What it was like for you."

  Gunnar shook his head vigorously. The last thing he wanted was to expose his mate—his soft, beautiful mate—to the experiences he'd gone through. "No, you don't. It's not a nice place, definitely not something you'd want to know about."

  "Oh, come on. I'm not that fragile."

  "It's not because I think you're fragile, it's because there are some things most people don't want to hear about, and prison life is one of 'em."

  "Did you know my dad is a mobster?" Melody asked conversationally, stirring a packet of sweetener into her coffee.

  "... what?"

  "Oh, he doesn't call it that. But that's what it amounts to. I told you my dad's rich and he's not especially scrupulous about where the money comes from. You might have been thinking 'shady business deals' when I said that, but it's a lot more than that. I used to help him keep the books, so I know how many pies he's got a finger in. You said prison isn't nice; well, neither is my dad, and neither are a lot of the people he deals with."