Chapter 4
Just after ten on Sunday, Ari walked off the plane looking like he’d slept the whole flight, which Pax knew was a lie.
Ari never slept on planes. He just had the kind of face and controlled expression that didn’t show inconvenience.
He was darker from sun, and there was a new watchfulness in his green eyes that Pax recognized from past missions.
He had the alertness of a twin who’d been running alone too long.
They didn’t do anything dramatic when they saw each other.
They didn’t have to. Pax was leaning against their dad’s pickup truck in the arrivals lane as Ari came out through the doors and dropped his bag.
They met in the middle and the energy that had been missing for far too long slotted back into place.
They stood there for a moment. Pax’s hand on the back of his brother’s neck. Ari’s forehead briefly against his.
Then Ari stepped back, picked up his bag, and said, “You look better.”
“You look terrible.”
“I’ve been running the op solo for too long.
I’ll look however I want.” But Ari was already examining him with the same thoroughness Pax had applied to Ari.
He was cataloging, assessing, and confirming that the damage matched what had been reported.
His eyes tracked down to Pax’s left leg. “Show me.”
“I’m walking fine.”
“Show me the leg or I’m calling the healer before we’re out of the airport.”
Pax rolled up his jeans. The scarring was still visible.
There was new pink skin over reconstructed tissue, the kind of thing that would have been a permanent disfigurement on a human.
On a shifter, a couple more weeks and it would be gone almost completely.
Ari crouched and looked without touching, and his jaw was tight when he stood back up.
“How close?” he asked.
Pax understood the question. His brother was asking how close he had come to losing his leg. “Closer than I’d like to admit,” he said. “The blast hit the truck and the sheared metal damn near took my leg off.”
Ari sighed. “Salt Lake City is going to need a follow-up conversation with the Wraiths. They advertised it as a milk run.”
“I know.”
“Their intel was incomplete. That’s a problem.”
“I know that too.” Pax opened the truck. “Let’s go home. Mom made those tamales you were after.”
Ari got in the truck and some of the tightness around his eyes eased. “Tell me about the town,” he said. “What’s changed since the last time we were home?”
Pax told him about the hardware store and Mr. Leeland.
He filled him in on Tomás taking to the place like he’d been born for it, and the slow accumulation of Clan members finding their way to Leeland’s Hardware.
He told him about the screen door and the ice maker and the circuit breaker in the back room that had needed replacing.
He told him about the new Saturday morning workshops and Emilio asking questions.
Then he told him about Bree, because not telling Ari about Bree would have been tantamount to an admission of guilt. Though Pax didn’t think he really had anything to feel guilty about.
Ari listened to all of it without interrupting, watching the desert go by outside the window. When Pax finished, Ari seemed to think on his words before replying.
“Bree’s still the same,” he said finally. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes and no.” Pax kept his eyes on the road. “She’s more. Herself, but more of it.”
Ari considered this with the seriousness it deserved. “You always did like her.”
“She was a good kid. A good friend.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Ari glanced at him. “And she’s not a kid now.”
“No, she’s not,” Pax agreed.
“So?”
“So nothing, yet.” Pax felt Ari’s attention on the side of his face. “We’re getting reacquainted. Leave it alone, brother.”
“I’m going to be supportive,” Ari said decisively. “You won’t even know I’m there.”
Pax drove. Ari looked out the window as if he were plotting ways to make his presence known as he butted into Pax’s business. The jerk.
Ari saw Bree for the first time in a long time on Monday, which was the first day Pax felt genuinely steady on his feet.
The twins went together to the hardware store, ostensibly because Ari wanted to say hello to Mr. Leeland, and Pax was there to provide moral support.
Also, if he was honest, he wanted to go because being at the store had become the best part of his day.
Adding Ari to the mix didn’t really change that.
It just made the picture a little more complete.
Bree was unloading a delivery when they came in through the back. She heard them and turned, her expression warming, which, in turn, warmed his heart.
“Ariihau Rojas,” she said, setting down the box.
“Nobody calls me that,” Ari said, grinning.
“I know all your names.” She came forward and he folded her into a hug that lifted her off her feet, which was classic Ari. He used to head-butt her in his jaguar form, knocking her over when they were kids, while she giggled at his antics, and apparently some things didn’t change.
She laughed as Ari swung her around and Pax stood back and watched. He felt a weird double reaction of being both glad his brother was home, and slightly irritated by how easily Ari made people laugh. How easily he made Bree laugh.
“Put her down,” Pax said in a low growl.
“She’s fine. Are you fine?” Ari drew back to look down at her face.
“I’m fine,” Bree confirmed as Ari set her back on her feet. “But you look terrible.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because you look like you haven’t slept in days,” she said. “Come in the back. Dad’s going to want to see you.”
Mr. Leeland greeted Ari with a measured look. “You look like you haven’t slept right in a week, son.”
Ari scratched his head, tilting it as he made a face. “Something like that, sir.”
“Well, come over here and sit down,” the old man invited. “Tell me what you’ve been up to since the last time you were home.”
Ari didn’t need much more invitation than that to sit down and charm Mr. Leeland. Ari had always been a little easier with his words than Pax. Pax had always been the more serious one of the twins and he envied Ari his relaxed manner.
Pax was thinking about it, leaning against the doorframe while Ari made Mr. Leeland laugh. He was telling a story about a supply run gone wrong in Morocco, when Bree appeared at his shoulder with a cup of strong coffee for him.
“You’re doing that thing,” she said softly.
“What thing.”
“The thing where you watch Ari work a room and look like you’ve stepped on something ouchy.” She handed him the cup. “For what it’s worth, you’ve been in here practically every day since you got back, and he’s only been here twenty minutes. My dad knows the difference.”
He looked at her in surprise. She just nodded, entirely matter-of-fact.
“Also,” she added, “you’re the one who actually fixed the circuit breaker. Ari would’ve suggested we call an electrician.”
“He would. He never got the hang of electrical work,” Pax agreed, feeling a tiny grin lift the corner of his mouth.
“So.” She nodded toward where the two men sat talking and the sound of his brother effortlessly making everyone happy. “You two just have different skill sets.”
He thought about that for a moment, and what it meant that she’d noticed.
“You’re good at people,” he said.
“I run a store in a very small town,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You either get good at people, or you get bad at retail.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
She looked over at him, and something shifted in her expression. “I know what you mean,” she said, soft enough that only he could hear it.
The sound of his brother’s voice and her father’s laughter filled the room.
Pax stood close enough to her that he could have lowered his head and said something into her ear, but he didn’t, and she didn’t move away.
That meant something, but he wasn’t sure what.
He’d been seeing Bree in a whole new light since he’d come home.
He just wasn’t sure what to do about it, or if he should do anything at all.
The last thing he wanted was to hurt her in any way.
The workshop on the following Saturday was bigger than the first one had been.
Word had gotten around the Clan and more youngsters wanted to give it a try.
Mr. Leeland arrived to find twelve young people instead of eight, including, this time, three young women who had apparently decided they were not going to be left out.
Mr. Leeland looked at the expanded group and said, “Good. More hands.” Then he launched into a session on basic electrical safety that held everyone riveted for forty-five minutes.
Pax and Ari worked the room together. They took on different roles, but with the same goal, and no need to discuss it.
Ari rotated through the group and kept the energy up, keeping the younger ones engaged when their attention wandered.
Pax stayed closer to the demonstrations, answered technical questions, and made sure the hands-on portions were supervised correctly.
Bree ran the store around them, which required a certain organizational flexibility given that there were now a bunch of people in the back room, and she was running the store all by herself.
Still, she managed it with the same competence she brought to everything.
At one point she appeared with a tray of cold soft drinks and bottles of water, distributing them without breaking the session’s momentum.
“She’s something,” Ari said, appearing at Pax’s shoulder.
“Don’t start,” Pax said warningly.
“I’m not doing anything. I’m just making an observation.” Ari accepted a bottle of water from the tray as Bree passed. “She’s been watching you all morning.”
“She watches everyone. She’s working.”
“The way she watches everyone and the way she watches you are two very different things, brother.” Ari sipped his water. “I’m just saying.”
“You said you were going to dial it back to a four.”
“This is a four. You should hear me at an eight.”
Pax looked at him sideways. Ari pretended he was being reasonable, wearing an expression of insulted innocence. Pax wasn’t buying it for one second. He knew his twin better than that.
“Shut up and finish your water,” Pax said.
Ari finished his water and went back to the group. Pax stood and watched his brother fold himself into easy conversation with a seventeen-year-old who’d never held a drill before. Pax was just grateful to have Ari back where he could see him.
Whatever came next for the twins, whether it was more work with the Wraiths, going back to the castle, or staying home with the Clan, they would figure it out together. That was the only thing he was certain about.
Well. Nearly the only thing.
He looked across the room to where Bree had paused to show one of the young women how to read a circuit diagram. Both of them were bent over the workbench with their heads close together, as Pax thought about what Ari had said.
The way she watches you.
He filed that one away too.
The next day Pax was at the store again and remembered the sticky drawer in the back office that had been bothering him since he’d first noticed it.
It was a small thing. A wooden filing cabinet drawer that swelled with humidity and didn’t run true in its tracks.
But small things had a way of becoming larger irritants, and fixing it was fifteen minutes of work.
He did it while Bree was up front with a customer and the store was quiet. He found the beeswax in the supply cabinet where it had always been kept, and ran it along the drawer slides, then worked the drawer back and forth until it moved cleanly. Done.
He was sliding it shut for the third time when Bree came in looking for a part number in the files.
She reached past him in the narrow space, and he didn’t move back fast enough.
Her arm brushed his. She reached further, he shifted to give her room and her hand found what she was looking for, but when she straightened, she was closer than either of them expected.
He caught her by the waist. She’d been slightly off-balance coming upright and he’d caught her reflexively, not wanting her to fall. His hands were on her hips, steadying her.
She went perfectly still as her breath caught audibly in her throat.
He let go immediately and stepped back the half-step the tiny office allowed.
“Drawer’s fixed,” he said, because he had to say something.
She looked at the drawer and then at him, and her cheeks were faintly pink. “Thank you,” she said.
“Sure. No problem.”
She examined the part number in her hand. He gazed at the beeswax on the workbench. The office had never felt smaller.
“I should—” she started.
“Yeah, me too,” he said.
She went back out front. He stood in the office with the beeswax and talked himself through about thirty seconds of his jaguar’s extremely unhelpful commentary on the warmth of her supple body through her clothes.
Then he kicked himself mentally, put the beeswax away and went to find something else to fix.
There were a lot of things in this store that needed fixing. He was going to need more time.