Bear The Fire (Firebear Brides 4) by Anya Nowlan Page A

way that he had.
    “But enough about me. Tell me why anyone isn’t explaining to me why we’re here.”
    “Here, as in...” Ragnar asked, feigning ignorance.
    Rhodes’s eyes narrowed, catching the shifty look in Ragnar’s eyes. Yeah, he could see it. They were hiding something, the whole bunch of them. No way that three of his eternal bachelor brothers had all suddenly hooked up with the women of their dreams and moved to Idaho to start some weird werebear commune. No, there had to be more to this and none of them were being straight with him, as if telling him the truth would make him run for the hills.
    Though he could see how that may be a worry in his particular case.
    “In Hamilton House. Don’t fuck around with me, Ragnar. I know something’s up. No way you’d come here after… you know. So, why?” Rhodes asked, sliding over the topic of their father’s death with all the grace of a bull in a china shop.
    They’d been kids when their father had died in a fire on the Hamilton grounds. Ragnar and Rhodes had been the only cubs to see it. After that, their mother had packed the car and taken the four of them out of there, never to return again. And yet here they were now, all four of the mostly estranged Hamilton brothers, with three of them now acting like they’d never been apart for a day. It was weird, to say the least.
    “Guess we’re just getting old. Wanting to reconnect. After Uncle Herbert died, it was now or never. So Royce came back, and he called Redmond… and then Redmond got me when things got dirty.”
    “With the Hasslebacks,” Rhodes said, spitting the word out.
    Thinking about the Hassleback clan made his hands ball into fists, and uncurling them was a Herculean feat of its own. It was Eric Hassleback, the clan patriarch and Alpha, who had been the reason that their father had died. Now the possibility was good that one or both of his sons were the assholes trying to burn down Shifter Grove and everything around it.
    I thought stupid skipped a generation, Rhodes thought glumly.
    “Yes,” Ragnar confirmed.
    It was getting dark now and none of this conversation was taking Rhodes anywhere. He was not in the mood to talk, but then again, he rarely was. In Hawaii, when he wasn’t working, he was surfing, and when he wasn’t surfing, he was mountain climbing. Or base jumping, or deep sea diving, or any number of things he couldn’t really do in this boring-ass state, surrounded by an overprotective clan of bears.
    He would have liked to claim that he felt suffocated by their attention, but in all honesty that would have been copping to a level of dramatics he didn’t quite possess. And as much as he hated to admit it, Hamilton House and the grounds felt… right. While he was far from a happy camper, he couldn’t remember himself being quite so at ease with himself anywhere else, ever. Something about the air, how everything fit together, and the happy memories beyond the sad ones tied Hamilton House together with something good in him.
    To say that he was appalled by this realization would have been an understatement.
    Still, some sappy sentimentalism wasn’t enough to keep him put. As far as Rhodes was concerned, he’d come and seen the kin, so that meant he wouldn’t have to do it again for another ten years. Maybe call Ragnar around the guy’s birthday every year… that would be enough to say he kept in touch, right?
    “When are you planning to leave?” Ragnar asked, as if reading his thoughts.
    “Day after tomorrow, I think. An old buddy offered me a job down in Mississippi.”
    “That’s a big fire state,” Ragnar commented with that trademark dry wit of his that made Rhodes’s hackles rise in irritation.
    “Yeah, well, a smokejumper takes what he can get,” he scoffed.
    “I doubt there’s a lot of smokejumping in Mississippi,” Ragnar grinned.
    Shooting him a dirty look, Rhodes shrugged. When he said he’d take what he could get, he wasn’t kidding. He had…