"That would explain why you didn't bother to return my calls from this morning." Russell's hands landed at his hips, and he said bluntly, "Mother's signed the deed to this place over to you. She told me this morning, said she wanted to surprise you with it. What I want to know is what the hell you've been up to behind my back."
Masera spoke first, while Brenna let the flutter of hope settle firmly into place and blossom into happiness, hidden from Russell...but not from Nuadha's earth, which fluttered back at her. "I don't suppose it'll be the surprise your mother wanted, now."
"This is family business," Russell said.
"If you don't want Masera in on the conversation, then you'll have to come back another time," Brenna told him, unbothered. "Once you talked about selling the place out from under me, I asked Mother for the deed. That's all there is to it." Well, perhaps a little more than that. But nothing Russell needed to know.
"This isn't right, Brenna. It's not fair."
"I had always thought that in
your
book,
fair
meant whoever thought of it first," she told him, and was surprised to see how much redder his face grew, though it faded as he regained control. "Besides, Russell, haven't you read the paper lately?" For that was one thing she
had
done these past days, while sitting around in the hospital or passing time with Ezteban while Masera slept. "The raids that took place around here? Whose property they took place on? I don't think you'll be hearing from your buyer."
"I never told you—" he started, but stopped short of
who it was
, as though it was finally sinking in that Brenna was no longer someone who was just letting life—letting
Russell
—happen to her, but that she knew more than he'd ever thought she did. He made a sudden change in tactics. "I want the chance to go through the house, Brenna. There are things there that I want."
If they meant that much to you, you'd have asked for them long before now.
"Okay," she said. "I'm sure I'll be cleaning some stuff out, anyway. Give me a call after a few days, and we'll arrange a time for you to take a look."
And don't bother coming by when you think I'm out, because I'll have the locks changed before the end of the day.
But she didn't say it. Let him discover it for himself.
And he hesitated a moment more, as if there were something else he wanted to say, but he couldn't quite find the words...or use them front of Masera. Finally he muttered in excessively bad grace, "I'll call you. Soon." And stalked away.
Masera waited only until Russell was barely out of earshot. "I always knew you had that in you."
"How could you even wonder, considering our first conversation? And our second, and our third..."
"You work at Pets!, that's how I could wonder. You think I didn't know what that place was like before I started with them? Being there was part of the cover, Brenna, so I could stick close to Mickey, see if anyone else there was part of it all. I'll find somewhere else to hold my classes now."
She threw herself back on the grass, leaving the conversation behind, staring up at the roving clouds. Fluffy white ones, the fun kind. "Happy happy!" she said, and then couldn't stand it, but jumped to her feet, wanting to pull him up, too, but resisting and skipping around him instead. "It's mine, now, I don't have to go anywhere!" She wanted to throw her arms around him, too, but threw them around the deeply fissured bark of the oak instead, which bore no wounds from the night of battling darkness. "Happy me!"
He'd gotten to his feet anyway; one arm closed around her from behind. "Happy us."
But for all her happy, Brenna couldn't quite forget.
There should have been three of them.
~~~
"Look," she said, as they headed back to the house at a leisurely pace. She pointed to the back end of the barn. "Don't you think kennel runs would fit perfectly there? Not straight off the back, but meeting corners at the northeast of the barn?"
"Are you building kennels?"
"And a grooming room. But maybe I'll just run the kennels and hire out a groomer for a while. Take a break from it while I take some classes. And oh, did I mention I quit my job?"
That, she saw, truly stunned him. Took him by surprise, as she'd never managed to do before. He stopped walking, put all his attention into looking at her. She smiled beatifically at him as he said, "I thought you were on vacation, or sick days. You didn't quit your job for—"
"I quit my job," she said firmly, "because when I told Roger I'd had a family emergency and needed to take a week of my extensively accrued vacation time, he said no."
"No notice?"
"I gave him plenty of notice," she said, and snorted. "I told them any number of times in any number of ways that they'd lose me if they didn't change how they managed the grooming department. How they managed
me
."
He smiled, and held out his hand to her; they started walking again, and she started up with the plans. "And I definitely want horse or two in here, maybe even one of my own. The barn's just about ready for it. And you know, don't you think the loft is big enough to hold obedience classes in? If we kept all the hay on one side, and used electric heaters in the winter?"
"It might be," he said, still sounding bemused as they reached the barn.
"Lydney Hill," she said. "Good name for a kennel and training facility, don't you think?"
"Are you making this up as you go along?"
"I am," she said, stopping him in front of the gate from the innermost run-in section to the plank-floored middle part of the barn, just before the gate she'd fixed on the day Russell sprang what he had thought was a successfully manipulated deal on her. "But I like it." She put a hand on the gate, not about to let him go through just yet. "Listen to me. I need to be with someone who likes the way I think, who I am. Someone who brings me alive, not someone who tries to change me into who they think I should be. That's you, Iban." This, she thought, was as bold as she'd ever been in her entire life. A little too bold; she couldn't just let it hang there, as he looked back at her, unreadable. "Besides, didn't you tell me once that you wanted this place?"
"That's not what I
really
wanted," he said, and gave her one of those intent looks. And who knows where it might have gone, had not Emily's voice echoed across the yard.
"Brenna!" she called, slightly breathless.
Brenna sighed. "Hold that thought," she said, and turned her head away to holler, "In here!"
"Busy around here today," Masera said, not looking away from her.
"Too busy." Another sigh, but she smiled, too. "I can guarantee Emily will be much more pleasant than our last visitor. You've probably seen her at the store."
Emily appeared at the open double sliding doors, definitely breathless—her face flushed, her eyes wide with worry—but already talking. "Brenna! Where have you been? I haven't heard from you for days and Pets! says you quit and I've been so worried—"
Brenna opened the gate, let Masera precede her through. "I'm sorry," she said. "We had some trouble, but things are okay now."
Emily hesitated a moment, looking at the two of them, and relaxed a little, tucking a strand of blonde hair back into her ponytail as she came into the barn. "So I see," she said, eyeing Masera—if not with approval, with an understanding of how things stood—although as her gaze traveled his well-packaged arm, the look turned quickly to sympathy. "I hope that's not too bad."
"Better than it could have been," Masera told her with a dryness she couldn't and didn't understand. "Gil Masera."
"Emily Brecken," Emily said. "Brenna, did you see that big storm a few nights past? That's when I first tried to check on you. The whole sky lit up—it was the strangest thing—" she cut herself off, looking around the barn. "Where's Druid?"
Amazing how two little words could change the world, kicking her mood out from under her, closing her throat up painfully tight. Brenna tried to answer, but could only manage, "He's—" before finding herself without words or the wherewithal to say them.
"The storm caused some damage over here," Masera said, taking her hand. After another moment, when it became clear she couldn't say it herself, he added, "We were out in it, and Druid was killed. One of those freak things."
Emily gasped, and covered it with a hand over her mouth. "Oh, Brenna! I'm so sorry! What happened? No, never mind—forget I asked. You can tell me when you feel like talking about it." She stuck a hand in her pocket, pulling out a folded paper and giving it a doubtful look. "I don't know if you want this, now..."
Brenna ran a finger under each eye, sighed deeply, and pulled herself together. "What is it?"
"The girls were playing on the web, as usual. They found a new site under their Nuadha search—they still run one for you every time they go on. Look, there's a brand new kennel not twenty minutes from here." Emily handed held out the paper.
A new kennel.
Brenna took the paper, unfolded it and held it so both she and Masera could see; it was the printout of the web site's home page, complete with photos of a striking merle Cardigan and contact information.
"Look at the phone number," Masera said.
"I see it," Brenna said, and the paper trembled in her hands.
He took it from her and said, "I'll be back in a moment," as he left the barn.
Emily looked after him, looked back at Brenna, and raised an eyebrow. "Niiice," she said, which was exactly what she'd said the very first time she'd spotted Masera, the day he'd been making arrangements to work with Pets!. Then she sobered, and added, "Are you really okay, Brenna? And did you hear about the raid at Parker's—" She stopped short, narrowing her eyes at Brenna, her thoughts moving so fast Brenna could practically hear them churning away. "You were involved, weren't you? You and Mister Busted-Up? I take it he turned out to be one of the Good Guys?"
Brenna laughed, as tremulous as it was. "Later, Emily. I need to get things sorted out for myself." And she did, because she only now realized that there would be talk, and similar questions from other people. She and Masera would have to come up with a simple all-purpose response, although Emily...Emily alone might get the whole story. "And yeah, he's one of the good guys, and yeah, I'll be okay."
"Okay," Emily said, accepting the short version. She spent a few moments with deliberately changed subjects—the girls, her recent needlepoint pattern sale to a craft catalog, Sam's latest gossip. "We were going to get together for dinner last weekend...maybe this next one? And...maybe the two of you?"
"Me, for sure," Brenna said. "Him, I'll ask."
And
him
walked back into the barn. "Sure," he said to Emily. "Just make it something a man can eat with one hand," and held out his car keys to Brenna. "Wanna go for a drive? Just twenty minutes or so."
"You called them," Brenna said, and put her hands over her eyes, not knowing what else to do with herself, and not quite understanding why she felt like she was about to step off the edge of a cliff and walk on thin air. "You called them."