tenderness to his touch, as if he hoped to eradicate her fears and heal her sadness with the sheer force of his passion.
She blinked away tears as she opened the front door. Poor Roman. She should reassure him that she was fine, even if it was a lie.
She wheeled the two suitcases into the foyer that was already well lit. The porch light and a few lights in the house switched on each evening thanks to an automatic timer so the house would appear inhabited. “Come on in.”
“Oh my, Shanna!” Darlene looked around, her eyes sparkling. “What a lovely home.”
Shanna smiled sadly. “Thank you.” She’d procrastinated for three months before accepting the inevitable. They had to move. No matter how much she loved this house, it no longer worked, not with her and Roman both dead all day.
Thank goodness her mother was back in her life. Only recently had Darlene broken free from the cruel mind control imposed on her by her husband, Sean Whelan. She spent all of her time now with her children and grandchildren, trying to make up for lost time.
“Come on, Grandma!” Sofia clambered up the stairs. “I want to show you my room.”
“Don’t forget her suitcase.” Shanna handed the pink-and-green Tinkerbell suitcase to her mother. “She can bring whatever toys she can fit in there.”
“I want my Pretty Ponies!” Sofia shouted, halfway up the stairs.
“And there’s another suitcase in her closet,” Shanna said. “She needs more clothes.”
“No problem.” Darlene started up the stairs. “I’ll take care of it.”
Shanna handed her son his orange Knicks-decorated suitcase. “Here you go.”
Constantine regarded her quietly before responding. “Do we really have to move?”
She nodded. “It’s for the best. There are more people at the school who can watch over you during the day.”
“I don’t need a babysitter.”
Shanna sighed. Sofia was delighted with the move, since the school now boasted a stable of horses for equestrian classes. But Tino wasn’t so easily swayed. “You’ll have other kids there to play with, like Coco and Bethany.”
He wrinkled his nose. “They’re girls. They just want to do silly stuff.”
She tousled the blond curls on his head. “Girls are silly now?”
“Yeah. They just want to dress up and pretend they’re movie stars. I want to play basketball or backgammon or Battleship.”
“Where did you learn those?” She knew her son played basketball with his dad, but she’d never seen him play board games.
“Howard taught me.”
“Oh. That was sweet of him.” Howard Barr had been the family’s daytime bodyguard for several years now. As a bear shifter, he made a fierce protector, but he had such a gentle nature that Shanna had always considered him more of a honey bear than a grizzly.
“Howard loves games,” Tino continued. “People always think he’s slow ’cause he’s so big and eats so many donuts, but he’s really fast.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“He’s smart, too.” Tino narrowed his eyes, concentrating. “He says winning is a combination of skill, timing, and . . . stragedy.”
“Strategy?”
“Yeah. Howard’s real good at stragedy. When is he coming back? He’s been gone forever!”
She thought back, recalling that he’d gone to Alaska at the end of May, and it was now the end of June. “It’s been about a month.”
“Yeah! That’s almost forever!”
She supposed it was for a five-year-old. “I’ll call your uncle Angus and ask him, but for now, I need you to pack whatever stuff you want to take back to school.”
“Okay.” Instead of heading for the stairs, he positioned himself underneath the second-floor landing.
“Tino, wait—” She was too late. He’d already experienced lift-off and was quickly levitating beyond her reach. “Be careful.”
He peered down at her with the frustrated half smile he always gave her when he thought she was being overly protective. “Come on, Mom. It’s not like I can fall.” He reached the second-floor balcony and tossed his empty suitcase onto the landing.
She gritted her teeth as he swung a leg over the balustrade and straddled the flimsy railing. He could certainly fall now if he lost his balance or the balustrade collapsed. She tensed, prepared to levitate and catch him, but he landed neatly on his feet on the second floor.
She exhaled the breath she’d been holding. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry so much.” He rolled his suitcase toward his bedroom.
His words echoed in her mind as she wandered into the family room. She
She’d heard him ask Angus MacKay how high a Vamp could levitate. And he was always begging Angus and the other guys at MacKay Security and Investigation to talk about the dangerous adventures they’d managed to survive over the centuries.
In the family room, she rested her handbag on the back of an easy chair to retrieve her cell phone. She’d ask Angus about Howard and remind him that the guys needed to be careful what they said around an impressionable five-year-old boy.
Her gaze drifted to the space between the sofa and coffee table where Tino had taken his first baby steps. Why was he in such a hurry to grow up? If he attempted something dangerous during the day, she wouldn’t be there to stop him. How could she live with herself if something happened to her children while she was unable to protect them?
The solution was obvious. Howard needed to come back. He could guard her children better than anyone. Tino wouldn’t dare disobey when a Kodiak were-bear told him no.
With a twinge of shame, she realized she’d been too fixated lately on her own problems. She should have realized something serious was happening with Howard. It wasn’t like him to be gone for so long. In the six years that she’d known him, he’d only taken a day or two off each month so he could go to his cabin in the Adirondacks and shift. Was he having some sort of personal problem? Was he ill again?
She recalled the way he had looked when she’d first met him—a balding, middle-aged man with a broken nose. He’d had a ready smile and a cheerful sense of humor, so she had never guessed that he was ill.
Roman had explained that right after high school, Howard’s were-bear clan had banned him from Alaska. He’d spent four years at the University of Alabama on a football scholarship, and then three more years as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears. Separated from his kind, he had no safe place to shift.
In fact, the first time he shifted in Tuscaloosa, news of a grizzly on the loose had quickly spread, and he’d spent a terrifying night dodging bullets and shotgun shells. After that, he was reluctant to risk shifting. He was even forced to play football on nights when his body had desperately needed to shift. It had taken an enormous amount of control and strength to suppress his inner nature, but he’d managed it, knowing he would lose his career and endanger his species if the truth was revealed.
Refusing to shift had caused a chemical imbalance in his system whereby he was slowly poisoning himself. He aged. His hair fell out. The injuries he incurred on the football field wouldn’t heal.
It was a chance occurrence that had saved Howard’s life. Gregori had dragged Roman and Laszlo to a play- off game at the old Giants stadium, where they’d sensed an ailing shifter on the field. Even in pain, Howard had managed to sack the opposing quarterback three times. Impressed, they sought him out and convinced him he would die if he continued on his current path.
Relieved to find a job where he no longer had to hide his true identity, Howard began working for Angus at MacKay Security and Investigations. He built a cabin in the Adirondacks where he could shift, and slowly, his bones
