A Bear of a Reputation Read online

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Kramer,” I said in a hushed tone. “I heard about what happened to Markus.”

  I saw her eyes blink before they focused on me. “Maren? What are you doing here?”

  “I heard about the accident on the police scanner,” I said, avoiding the direct line of questioning. “Do they know what happened yet?”

  “Bear trap,” she choked. “Why he was up there at all, though, I have no idea.”

  “Shulman’s Trail is the border for the Loper Clan, right?” I hated myself for inserting myself into this woman’s life like this, but there was no way that Dad was going to let me off the hook without something. I just needed a few breadcrumbs, and then I could slink out of there like the buzzard I was. “Maybe he was supposed to meet someone up there?”

  “He wouldn’t have been meeting any Lopers,” Bea said, shaking her head. “Everything is kept under wraps until the Summit.”

  My ears perked up. “It could have been a secret meeting, then. It just doesn’t make any sense why he was up there otherwise.”

  “Why are you here, Maren?” The minister returned the focus to the original question. “I didn’t realize that you were a friend of the family.” His flat tone told me that he knew exactly why I was there and that it wasn’t to act as a supportive pillar of the community. I was ferreting out information for a story. I still cursed Lukas for talking me into toilet papering the rectory that summer when we were fourteen. The minister hadn’t looked on me kindly ever since.

  “I’ve known the Kaspers since we moved to Greyelf,” I said defensively. “I practically lived in the general store’s back lot when I was little. I always admired Markus, and I’m incredibly sorry to hear about this tragedy.” I felt myself growing more indignant by the second, because all of it was true. Never mind if it wasn’t the real reason I was there. It sounded good.

  “I thought that all ended when Lukas moved away.” One of the other men in the room stepped forward. I swung around to him and realized that he looked familiar. Joe? Mike? Ben? I couldn’t remember his name to save my life, which was yet another reason that I sometimes questioned my career choice these days.

  If there was one thing that I knew, it was when to beat a retreat before things got ugly. I was supposed to tell the story, not be the story. “I’m sorry again for your loss,” I said to Bea, ducking my head. Then I stepped away. The group closed in around Bea as if to protect her from me, and I heard the murmuring.

  “You’d think they’d give people space to breathe.”

  “Fucking jackals.”

  Yep, that was me and my life. I scooped up my purse. Then I wandered over to the other side of the reception desk. There was a coffee machine there in the corner, and I figured I’d grab one for the road. I tried to avoid caffeine pretty much all the time, given my natural insomniac tendencies, but the long drive back to Greyelf at this hour seemed to call for it. My dad was going to be pissed that I didn’t have a direct quote from Bea, but at least I had the nugget that something might be amiss with all of this.

  It had been bothering me since the moment I heard that it was Markus up on Shulman’s Trail. Even though the county had finally gotten around to putting asphalt down last summer, I would always remember it as little more than a muddy path that stretched across the National Park Reserve that served as the northern border for Greyelf proper. That was part of the reason that we saw so many shifters in these parts. We lived on the edge of the largest growth of natural woods in the state. It rivaled most national parks in the country, outside of Yosemite, and so it had naturally become a focus for shifters over the years.

  I wasn’t surprised to hear Bea say that Markus wouldn’t have been meeting with Lopers unless he had to. There had been a lot of tension between the two clans ever since the original peace treaty eighteen years ago. There were many who believed that Markus should step down and give someone else a try at organizing and keeping the peace between the clans. Personally, I thought Markus had been doing a fantastic job and never understood why the Lopers wanted to upset the apple cart.

  I had a bad feeling about Markus’s accident, but it was also the feeling that told me that this was exactly the kind of thing that made for a good story. I cursed the fact that Earl’s blood ran through my veins. I shouldn’t be thinking like that. I was a human being with compassion and empathy. So why was I scooting a few inches closer to the reception desk when I heard the words “shifter accident” drift from the two women ensconced in a whispered conversation behind the desk?

  I carefully took a small notepad out of my pocket and started flipping through it as I waited for the old coffee machine to dispense my drink. The whirling and churning noises inside it made it sound as if the thing were on its last legs. I knew that Bea and the rest of the clan members gathered on the other side of the desk wouldn’t be able to see that I was still there. I’d give it just a few more minutes to see if I heard anything else of interest. There wasn’t really any harm in that, right?

  “I heard that he was out there for three hours before a car went by and saw him on the side of the road,” one of the women whispered. “He had dragged the trap with him because he couldn’t get out of it. If he hadn’t had the fur to protect him from hypothermia, he would have died practically right away.”

  “I heard there was something weird about his fur on the back of his neck,” the other woman whispered just as earnestly. I started to scribble frantically in my notebook. “The driver told me. They brought him in the back, you know. They didn’t want to draw any attention to it because he was still half shifted.” The woman made it sound as if Markus was some kind of mutant.

  I felt torn again. I shouldn’t be listening to this. I shouldn’t even be there. I should be at home, curled up in my bed, trying to sleep, just like every other night of the week. I needed to tell Dad that I didn’t want to take over the paper when he retired in a few years. But what else was I going to do in Greyelf? Wait tables at Croseley’s Diner? Help pick bolts and screws at Lehman’s Hardware? The employment options were slim pickings around town. I felt miserable as the desk phone rang, and the conversation stopped as one of the women answered it.

  Flipping my notebook closed, I figured I had enough to see what corroborated whatever Dad was gleaning from Sheriff Monroe. As my feet turned toward the sliding glass doors, I saw him. I whirled back around, sloshing coffee all over the front of my sweater. I hissed at the pain but quickly moved deeper into the room.

  Please tell me he didn’t see me. Please tell me he didn’t see me. The words played desperately in my head.

  “Maren?”

  I wanted to disappear off the face of the earth. It was a voice that haunted my dreams often, even now. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Then I turned and met the jade-green eyes that I remembered all too well.

  “Lukas,” I said stiffly. I could see the worry lines on his face. It was a face that had grown even more handsome in the last ten years. His skin was tanned, and I couldn’t help but notice his broad shoulders that appeared to be stretching the limits of the simple green button-down shirt he wore. His dark blue jeans hugged his trim waist, but what was most impressive was his height. Both Lukas and Markus had always been tall, but as I looked up at him, I realized that he had to have grown at least another three or four inches since I last saw him. Didn’t he have even enough grace to have gotten uglier with age instead of better looking? Then I remembered with a start why he’d be there, and, of course, I felt my stomach churn once again.

  “I’m so sorry to hear about what happened,” I said lamely.

  His jaw tightened. “What did happen?”

  Why was he asking me? I wasn’t friend or family, which the group on the other side of the reception desk had not-so-gently pointed out to me.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “It happened up on Shulman’s Trail.”

  “Isn’t that Loper territory?”

  I wondered how much Lukas had kept abreast of the goings-
on in Greyelf. “It’s a boundary line now,” I said. “Has been for about five years.”

  Lukas ran a hand through his thick black hair. “I don’t even know how to process all of this.”

  He seemed different to me. Older and more mature for sure, but it was unsettling how quickly we seemed to be falling back into our old pattern. Lukas would run into some situation that he couldn’t deal with, and he’d show up on my doorstep, expecting me to help him navigate through it. And I had done that for years. Always the friend. Always the one he complained to when he got in trouble. Always the one he ranted and raved to when some girl broke his heart because she didn’t want to be associated with a shifter. Lukas always chased the human girls for some reason. All of the human girls except the one who wanted him back.

  “I need to go,” I said. I was acutely aware of the fact that I had a huge coffee spill on the front of my sweater and that I looked as if I had just rolled out of bed, which of course I had. “Bea is right over there.” I pointed around to the other side of the reception desk.

  “I know,” he said with a slight twist to his mouth. “I thought I was ready to see everyone again, but I guess I freaked out at the last minute. That’s why I was so relieved to see you.” He offered me a tired half smile. “I haven’t spoken to Markus in ten years. Bea will call me every few months or so to tell me what’s going on. I’m still in shock. I pretty much thought that Markus would live forever.”

  The two brothers had never been close, and I knew that had always been another sore point for Lukas. When their parents died, Markus brought Lukas to Bea and then pretty much dismissed him as Markus got involved in the human and shifter politics. He gained quite a sympathetic following for the fact that he was so young but had taken on the guardianship of his younger brother, and he played that angle up at every opportunity.

  “You should go over there and comfort your aunt,” I said a bit more harshly than I would have liked. “I need to go.” And I did. I could barely stand still, and I felt as if my stomach was going to upend everything left inside it at any moment. I couldn’t stand here talking like we were two normal people who just saw each other yesterday. It wasn’t right. There was so much wrong with the picture that it made my head spin. “Your family needs you.”

  Lukas shook his head, and I saw the glint of a familiar emotion in his eyes. Anger. Well, perhaps he hadn’t changed so much after all. “They don’t need me. I’m here to find out what I can do to help Bea and pay my final respects. Then I’m out of here.”

  Of course, he was. I steeled the swirl of emotions that I felt inside of me. He’d come and go again, and he made it sound so easy. Clearly, it had been equally easy the last time.

  “Sorry again for your loss, Lukas,” I said. Then I brushed past him and made my way to the door. I felt his eyes burning into my back, but I didn’t care. I guess I had one good thing come out of the whole awful charade: I was over Lukas Kasper for good.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It turned out that Dad had a lot more success than I did at the police department. What I had heard at the hospital was true. After getting caught in a bear trap, Markus Kasper had suffered some kind of head trauma that was what eventually led to his death, combined with the blood loss from his leg wound. The sheriff said it was possible that Markus hit his head after getting snagged in the trap, but my dad didn’t believe it. No one knew anything else, but the proximity to the Loper border was suspicious enough that my dad said he didn’t think it was an accident.

  There was a reward being offered for any information from anyone who might have seen Markus that night, but so far no one had come forward. With the Summit now less than a week away, everyone was on pins and needles, wondering what was going to happen next. It was widely assumed that Sheriff Monroe was going to take over official duties as the alpha of the Grizzly Clan, given that he was Markus’s right-hand man and had been with the Grizzlies since the beginning.

  But with Lukas in town, everyone seemed to be waiting with bated breath to see what he was going to do. My dad found out that Sheriff Monroe couldn’t officially take over until Lukas rescinded his claim. The alpha title was supposed to pass to the next male in line within the Kasper family. That was Lukas, and I don’t think anyone was as surprised to hear that as I was.

  Over the few days since I had seen him at the hospital, I had caught glimpses of him around town. His height made him stand out, which meant that I had to duck into more than one store off Main Street to avoid him. I didn’t want to see him, and I certainly didn’t want to speak to him again.

  On the day of Markus’s funeral, I watched the procession of cars out the window of my office at the newspaper on Main Street. My dad had gone to pay his respects to the family and the clan, or so he said. I knew that he was going to try to scuttle up some new insight on what was happening with the Grizzly Clan succession. I told him that I needed to finish up a story on the latest city council meeting, so I couldn’t go. I could see that he was going to tell me that I could do it later but then seemed to change his mind.

  He had heard that Lukas was back in town, just like everyone else. In fact, it seemed as if that was the only thing that people wanted to talk about these days. While I waited in line at the grocery store, I heard two women gossiping about how good looking Lukas had gotten. On one hand, it was amusing to me. Those women wouldn’t have given Lukas the time of day ten years ago, no matter how good he looked. Funny how times changed. On the other hand, though, I found that I wanted to scratch their eyes out, and it had nothing to do with my desire to protect the man who used to be my best friend. That might have been at the heart of it once, but in reality, I knew the terrible truth no matter what I told myself. Lukas Kasper was far from being out of my system.

  Which brought me back to the funeral and my lame excuse for ditching it. I didn’t want to see Lukas again, and I was still embarrassed about my intrusion on the family at the hospital to begin with. It further reminded me that I didn’t think I was cut from the same cloth as my old man. So, in all actuality, instead of writing my story, I was surfing the classified ads for jobs in neighboring counties. There had to be something else I could do with my journalism degree. My dad would be pissed, but it would probably make our relationship better if we stopped working together.

  When I heard the bell of the front door jingle, I looked up from my laptop in surprise. Everyone in town was at the funeral. I got up from my desk and peeked around the corner of the doorjamb. I sucked in a gasp of surprise. Lukas stood there in what appeared to be an expensive navy-blue suit. He looked every inch the professional businessman that he swore he’d never become. I had heard that after getting his business degree, he had gone on to some sort of swanky analyst position with a financial services company. He had moved up the ranks quickly. I hated that I still kept tabs on him, but there it was.

  His face was stoic as I saw him spy me in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” The words tumbled out of my mouth.

  “Hello to you too,” Lukas replied sarcastically. “Everyone in the entire town has turned out to pay their respects to my beloved big brother, and yet I couldn’t help but notice someone was missing.”

  “You are supposed to be at that funeral,” I said, working hard to keep my tone even. “That is your brother and your family. I know you were never much for appearances, Lukas, but surely you can understand that this one is required for people to even think you’re human.” I cringed at the faux pas of my words even as I watched his mouth twist in a hard smile.

  He splayed his hands out on either side of him. “Well, you got me there, because I’m only half human, right?”

  It was an argument he and I had had many times when we were teenagers. At that time, Lukas hadn’t gone through the change yet. I knew that despite whatever he said, he was hoping that he wouldn’t follow in the family bloodline of being a shifter. We’d always debate what it meant to be part of both worlds, and despite my early trepidations about sh
ifters when I was little, I had come to have a much better appreciation for them. Now, after eighteen years of living beside them, I barely even thought about it at all.

  But I knew that wasn’t the case for everyone in the community, and it definitely wasn’t the case for many of the shifters. After years of oppression and living in secrecy, the new rules that governed them now sometimes chafed. But we all had to live by some rules, or at least that had always been my stance. Lukas, on the other hand, wholeheartedly disagreed. He was an enigma then, a boy in a state of transition into adulthood that would take two forms, who lived on the outside while desperately seeming to want to be accepted by both. I wondered how many, if any, of those issues had been resolved inside of him over the last ten years.

  “You need to be there for Bea if nothing else,” I said slowly. “That’s what Markus would have wanted, and you do owe him something for everything he did for you.”

  “Left me with a damn mess on my hands is what he did,” Lukas said. His gruff voice sounded almost like a growl, and it caused the hair on the back of my neck to stand up. Other parts of my body were equally affected, though in a much more pleasurable way. Damn the man. I had every reason to hate him. He slammed a paper down on the counter between us and caused me to jump. Then he jammed his finger toward the headline. “‘Prodigal Son Returns’? Really, Maren? What the hell is this shit?”

  “I didn’t write that,” I said evenly. Actually I had, but I let dad have the byline once again. “Are you really going to pick a fight with me over this right now?”

  “I’ve only been back for three days, and everyone is either kissing my ass or looking at me like I’m going to bite them. All’s anyone wants to know is if I’m going to back off my claim to be the Grizzly alpha, but really it’s more a question of when I’m planning to do it. If you keep publishing stuff like this, it’s going to turn into a feeding frenzy. So if you’re really worried about making sure that people are focused on the right things like my brother’s funeral, you could start by letting this thing lie, at least until his body is in the ground.”