A Touch of the Beast

Hawk had been beautiful.

The way he walked, the way he and the mare moved together…it was like poetry in motion.

Now Sheryl looked at his face, lit by the glow of the dashboard. It was a hard face—unforgiving, but also honest. One more step toward him and she knew she’d be in too deep. This man oozed animal magnetism. What drew her to him? Chemical attraction? Biological need?

Whatever it was, she didn’t need it, a voice warned inside her head.

But like it or not, she wasn’t ready to turn her back on Hawk Donovan and his mysteries. Yet as she looked at his profile and tried to make sense out of everything she’d seen of this man, she got the distinct feeling that she didn’t want to know all his secrets….

A Touch of the Beast
Linda Winstead Jones

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Kathleen Stone. It’s readers like you

who make telling stories such a joy.

LINDA WINSTEAD JONES

would rather write than do anything else. Since she cannot cook, gave up ironing many years ago, and finds cleaning the house a complete waste of time, she has plenty of time to devote to her obsession for writing. Occasionally she’s tried to expand her horizons by taking classes. In the past she’s taken instruction on yoga, French (a dismal failure), Chinese cooking, cake decorating (food-related classes are always a good choice, even for someone who can’t cook), belly dancing (trust me, this was a long time ago) and, of course, creative writing.

She lives in Huntsville, Alabama, with her husband of more years than she’s willing to admit and the youngest of their three sons.

She can be reached via www.eHarlequin.com or her own Web site www.lindawinsteadjones.com.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 1

Hawk studied the boxes and bottles of remedies that were neatly arranged on the shelf. Greenlaurel’s sole pharmacy, Chapman Drugs, usually had everything a man might possibly need. But since the doctors were stumped about the cause of Cassie’s sudden onset of seizures, Hawk had no idea what to buy to make his sister feel better.

What he really wanted to do was hunt down one Dr. Shane Farhold and break the man’s scrawny neck. Farhold had always seemed like a decent enough guy, not the kind of man who would knock up a woman and then disappear. Hawk knew he’d be angry even if Cassie hadn’t been having strange spells.

He grabbed a couple of medications off the shelf. Something for nausea, something else for headaches. At the last minute he snagged a bottle of pink stuff. His mother had always given them that for every little illness. He didn’t really think it would do any good, but he had to try something. On the way out of town he’d stop at the grocery store for ginger ale and soda crackers. They were as likely as anything else to work.

Deep down he knew the medicines that might help Cassie with her normal pregnancy ailments would do nothing at all for the mild but disturbing seizures no one could explain. And he didn’t dare ask anyone about a treatment for the odd flashes of precognition that followed the episodes.

“You won’t find what you’re looking for here,” a smoky voice whispered.

Hawk turned sharply to find an older woman, one he did not recognize, standing just a few feet away. He hadn’t even known she was present until she’d spoken. In ordinary circumstances he knew very well what was going on around him; his worry for Cassie had clouded his senses.

The woman who looked up at him with fearless green eyes was not a resident of Greenlaurel, Texas, or the surrounding county. Hawk had grown up on a ranch outside this small town, and with the exception of his four years in the military, he’d spent his entire life here. Besides, except for Harmony Eastwood, a middle-aged, self-professed, die-hard hippie who had been emulating Stevie Nicks for more than twenty years, the ladies of Greenlaurel didn’t dress this way. The woman’s silver-streaked dark hair fell well past her shoulders, and the long, loose-fitting black dress she wore could have come straight out of the seventies.

“How do you know what I’m looking for?” Hawk asked sharply.

The woman leaned in slightly closer. “Your sister is ill, and you want only to take care of her. What she needs, for herself and for the baby, you won’t find in any pharmacy.”

Great. Apparently word was already out that Cassie was pregnant and sick. Not that Hawk cared, or ever had, what people thought about him or his family. But Cassie deserved better.

“Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying.” He headed for the cash register at the front of the store.

“I’m not selling anything, Hawk.”

He wasn’t surprised that she knew his name, either. In a small town, information was easy enough to come by. Hawk glanced through the glass front door of the pharmacy and smiled at Baby. The big yellow dog—a mixed breed with a healthy dose of golden retriever—sat right where Hawk had told her to stay, watching for him through the glass and waiting patiently.

Hawk placed his purchases on the counter, and Ike Chapman began to ring them up. Slowly. “I heard that Cassie wasn’t feeling well,” Ike said with a nod of his balding head. “I hope she gets to feeling better real soon.”

“Thanks,” Hawk said succinctly.

The strange old woman circled around him, as if she were headed for the front door. Ike watched her as closely as Hawk did. After all, she was a stranger, and strangers in Greenlaurel were always suspect. The woman moved gracefully, but before she passed by, she swept in with a swish of her skirts to grab Hawk’s hand. She pressed a piece of paper into his palm and folded his fingers over the note. “What you need can be found here. Look to the past for your answers, Hawk.”

Hawk gently but firmly took his hand from the woman and reached into his back pocket to grab his wallet so he could pay Ike for the medicine. The bell on the front door rang gently as the woman in black opened the door.

He was about to toss her note into a trash can behind the counter when she said in a very soft voice, “By the stars above, you look so very much like your mother.”

Hawk’s head snapped around just in time to see the door slowly close. He bolted, leaving his purchases sitting on the counter as he ran after the woman. A newly arriving customer, agonizingly slow and nearly ancient Addie Peterson, opened the door before he reached it. Standing front and center and planted there like a tree, she said hello, smiled and began to tell Hawk about her newest ailment. He nodded curtly, obviously impatient, and waited for her to move out of the doorway. When she took a step forward, he slipped around her and burst through the pharmacy doors.

Hawk searched up and down the street for any sign of the woman who’d given him the message, but she was already gone. Where could she have disappeared to so quickly?

Baby stood. Her ears perked up and her tail wagged furiously. Hawk dropped to his haunches and looked the dog squarely in the eye. He reached out to stroke firmly but gently behind Baby’s left ear. “Where did she go, girl? Show me.”

Baby ran down the sidewalk, turning sharply into the alley between the pharmacy and the coffee shop next door. Hawk followed. Through the narrow alley they ran, then down a grassy hill and into the parking lot of the restaurant that had closed down last year. In the middle of the small parking lot Baby came to a dead stop. Confused, she walked in a tight circle and then turned her gaze toward the street.

Hawk cursed under his breath, and Baby looked up sharply.

“Not your fault, Baby.” Hawk reached down and rubbed her head. “You did good.” But the strange woman was no-where in sight. She’d obviously left a car waiting in the parking lot, and she must’ve run from the drugstore in order to escape. Even with Mrs. Peterson slowing him down he should have been able to catch the woman who’d pressed the note into his hand.

When she’d said that Hawk looked like his mother, she must have been talking about his birth mother. The woman he’d called Mother all his life had been five foot one in her best heels. She’d had a round and cheerful face with dimples that appeared when she smiled, blue eyes and blond hair. No one had ever mentioned a resemblance before, because there wasn’t one.

Hawk’s eyes and hair were dark, and he’d always been tall for his age. In his youth he’d been lean, but in the past few years he’d added some muscle to his frame. His disposition was nothing like his mother’s, either. She’d been sunny. She’d been able to laugh easily. She’d loved people and they loved her.

Nope, Hawk Donovan had nothing in common with his mother.

From here the odd woman could have gone anywhere. He could try to follow her, but by the time he got to his truck on Main Street and picked a direction, she’d be long gone, and he didn’t have time to waste. Not today. Crap! How could an older woman move so quickly? He should have caught her long before she’d reached the parking lot and driven away. Obviously, she’d known he would follow…and she had no intention of getting caught.

Hawk stood tall and opened his fisted hand, unfolding the scrap of paper the woman had placed there. It said 204 Pine Street, Wyatt, North Carolina. There was nothing else written there, no clue as to what he might find at this address. He turned and headed back to the pharmacy to collect his purchases, retracing his steps up the hill and through the alley to the sidewalk on Main Street. A few shoppers walked along that sidewalk, purchases in hand, but for the most part it was a quiet September morning in Greenlaurel.

What if the old woman was right, and there was nothing here in Greenlaurel that would help Cassie? The knowledge that there might be no way for him to help her was scary. They’d lost their parents nearly three years back; Dad in a car accident, Mom from a heart attack not four months later. Hawk’s twin sister was all the family he had left. Her and the baby she carried. He would do anything to help them.

There was certainly no guarantee that he could find what he needed, what Cassie and the baby needed, at the address on the sheet of paper he still held in his hand, but he was desperate.

Desperate enough to travel to North Carolina on such thin evidence?

Back in the pharmacy, Ike handed over the small bag of items, then took Hawk’s money and made change with maddening deliberation, counting out each coin as if he’d just learned to count. He’d been making change just this way for more than forty years.

Addie Peterson, who was apparently put out because Hawk had brushed past her in midailment, lifted her nose and continued to study the selections on a shelf not far from the front counter.

“That woman who was in here a few minutes ago,” Hawk said as he returned his wallet to its place in the back pocket of his jeans. “Do you know her?”

“Never saw her before,” Ike said. His old eyes twinkled. “Strange-looking lady, I must say. I would guess she was just passing through. What was that she said to you as she left? Something about your mother?” Ike Chapman was certainly old enough to remember when the Donovans had brought their newly adopted twins home, some twenty-eight years ago, and he’d known the Donovans well.

But Ike’s old ears weren’t as good as Hawk’s. In truth, Hawk didn’t know anyone who could hear as well as he did. “I don’t think she was talking to me,” he said. A blatant lie, since the woman’s words had sent him racing out of the store. “You wouldn’t know where she might be staying?”

The old man shrugged his thin shoulders. “If she’s staying in town I reckon she’s at the Sunshine Motel, though she might be out at the RV park near the old campgrounds.”

Hawk thanked Ike and stepped onto the sidewalk, where once again Baby waited. She wasn’t as calm as she had been before; she’d picked up on Hawk’s own frustration.

He was going to search for the old woman at the motel and the RV park, and he’d drive his truck down the road, just in case he got lucky and spotted her along the way. But he had a feeling he wasn’t going to find her. Not here in Greenlaurel, anyway.

Maybe he’d find her in Wyatt, North Carolina.

Sheryl Eldanis locked up the veterinary clinic and headed toward home, walking as always. Laverne, that obstinate gray cat, walked beside her but a little ahead. Laverne wasn’t the type to follow. Ever.

Sheryl and Laverne had a lot in common these days. Neither of them wanted to be told what to do.

She couldn’t help but be pleased with the way her life was going now. Things had been working out well in the few months she’d been here. Wyatt was a smaller town than the one she’d grown up in, and she hadn’t been sure exactly how she’d take to living in such a place. But it suited her. She knew all her neighbors and they knew her. Town socials were frequent and low-key and surprisingly fun.

Now if she could just convince the local population that she wasn’t interested in dating, dancing or marriage, she’d have it made.

Her last romantic relationship had been bad enough to make her swear off men forever. She didn’t need a man, not for financial support or emotional support or sex. She was a veterinarian with her own business, and finances, while occasionally tight, were under control. For emotional support she had Laverne. And Bruce and Howie and Bogie and Princess and Smoky. As for sex…she could learn to live without it, if the occasional thrill meant letting a man disrupt her well-ordered life.

Yeah, Michael had taught her well. Romance just wasn’t worth all the trouble that came with it.

“Hi, Sheryl.”

The next-door neighbor—a tall, slender and attractive woman who always seemed to be smiling—rose from her place in the front yard where she’d been planting mums in an obscenely neat flower bed, dusting dirt from her knees and then pulling off her gardening gloves.

“Hi, Debbie.” Sheryl took a detour and headed down the walkway that led from the sidewalk to the neighbors’ front door. “Pretty day.”

Debbie’s smile widened. “I love autumn. September is my favorite time of year.”

“I like spring myself,” Sheryl said. “Autumn runs a close second, though.” She was happy to see the heat of summer wane. And traffic through town decreased substantially when the summer beach traffic let up.

Debbie studied the clear blue sky for a moment before asking, “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Sleeping, mostly,” Sheryl answered.

Debbie laughed. The woman had so much energy. She had a husband who worked on the road most of the time, three kids and a part-time job. And yet she never seemed to be overwhelmed. Did she ever sleep? Maybe that was the secret. No sleep.

“The autumn festival is next weekend, don’t forget,” Debbie said.

“I won’t forget.” How could she? Someone reminded her on a daily basis. She looked forward to her weekends, since she worked a half day on Saturday and was off on Sunday. Unless there was an emergency, of course. All her clients knew how to reach her on the weekends and in the middle of the night.

“My brother-in-law is coming to town for the festival,” Debbie said much too casually. “Maybe you can show him around while he’s here.”

“No, thanks,” Sheryl responded, not at all surprised or dismayed. Debbie was always trying to fix her up, and she was forever raving about the joys of marriage and motherhood. Sheryl had learned to take the friendly interference in stride, just as Debbie was learning to accept the fact that her new friend wasn’t at all interested in the things that made her own life complete. She wasn’t quite there yet, though.

When she’d moved to Wyatt, Sheryl had never expected her new best friend to be eleven years older than she, a married woman with three kids and an unnatural fixation for The Home and Garden Channel.

The Home and Garden Channel gave Sheryl a headache.

After talking to Debbie for a few minutes more, Sheryl headed for her own house, ready to kick off her shoes and plop down in a comfortable chair. She’d have to feed and water the animals first, but once that was done they’d let her have a breather. A short one.

Her own yard was not as well kept as Debbie’s, and was not nearly as large. Sheryl had bought the smallest house on the block, but it was more than sufficient for her needs. The clapboard ranch was square and ordinary, but there was something warm about it. The previous owners had painted the house a pale yellow, and she liked it. She had never thought of herself as a yellow-house person, but this one… She loved it. Inside there was a large kitchen, a spacious living room, a dining room, two large bedrooms and a big bathroom that needed updating but was functional and roomier than most modern ones. The attic was unfinished and strictly for storage, but the extra space was nice. After years of living in apartments, she found the yellow house was a real luxury.

Laverne waited on the deep front porch, her gray tail swishing with impatience. Sheryl collected her mail from the metal box beside the door, but waited until she’d unlocked and opened the door before leafing through the envelopes. Bills, ads, a letter from her dad.

There had been a time when something as simple as leafing through the mail had made her heart beat too fast. After she’d broken up with Michael there had been too many angry letters waiting for her in the mailbox, too many unwanted messages on her answering machine. She hadn’t heard from her ex-fiancé in four months, but still every now and then she expected him to rise up out of the bushes.

Yeah, romance was nice enough, but it just wasn’t worth the hassle.

As she walked through the front door, a chill ran down her spine. She felt as if someone was watching her. Sheryl turned around slowly, and her eyes swept the empty sidewalk. Debbie was busy working in her flower bed again, and no one else was in sight.

She brushed off the odd feeling, attributing it to unpleasant memories of her ex, and closed the door behind her.

“It’s such a long shot,” Cassie said as Hawk threw sloppily folded clothes into his suitcase. “And North Carolina is so far away. I can’t believe you’d listen to a crazy woman who accosts you in the pharmacy.”

“What makes you think she’s crazy?” Hawk glanced up as he closed the suitcase. His sister was pacing near the door, her hands clasped tightly. She wasn’t usually so tense, but with everything that had happened lately, she had just cause.

“Everything you told me about her,” Cassie snapped. “The way she dressed, the way she sneaked up on you, the completely insufficient note. An address, that’s it. How do you know that address even exists? She might’ve made it up or it might be the address of a dry cleaner or a bakery or some poor person’s house. What she said about you looking like our mother, that’s definitely crazy. What do you think you’ll find at that address, anyway? Another weird woman offering riddles about the past?”

Compared to Hawk, his sister was tiny. But the vast difference in their body mass had never stopped Cassie from standing up to him and speaking her mind.

“I don’t know what I’ll find.”

Cassie ran a nervous hand through her hair, brushing the black strands away from her face. “I know you, Hawk. You think you’re going to drive up to a house with a white picket fence, knock on the door, and our biological mother and father will come to the door with open arms, wondering where we’ve been all these years.”

He’d quit expecting anything like that years ago, though there had been a time when he’d been absolutely obsessed with finding his birth parents. “You’ll be okay while I’m gone.”

“I know I’ll be okay,” she said, a little bit calmer than she’d been a few minutes ago. “It’s just…I can’t talk to anyone else about what’s going on. They’ll think I’m nuts! And I am worried about you, you know. I don’t want you to go all that way and be disappointed when you don’t find what you expect to find.”

“I don’t expect to find anything.”

“Yes, you do,” Cassie said softly. “Hire someone to check out the address for you. You can find a private detective in North Carolina and have him check it out. That way you can stay home and no one gets hurt.”

“And what exactly would I tell this private detective?”

Cassie just pursed her lips. She knew too well that they couldn’t bring anyone else into this mix.

“I’m not a kid anymore,” Hawk said. “I don’t expect to find anything but answers about your condition.”

“My condition,” Cassie scoffed. “I hate having a ‘condition’!”

“Call me anytime you need to talk. I’ll have my cell phone on twenty-four/seven.”

His sister almost pouted. “It’s not the same.”

Cassie Donovan wasn’t one to pout, not for any reason. But the episodes were tough on her. She’d always had dreams that seemed more real than dreams, but something unexpected was happening with these seizures.

She was seeing a few minutes into the future immediately after each convulsion. It was hard to swallow, impossible to explain. But over the years they’d learned to accept that some things were just that way.

Impossible.

Cassie sighed, apparently resigned to the fact that he was going to North Carolina. “If you insist on making this trip, you could fly instead of driving,” she said as she followed him down the long hallway. “It would be much quicker. Fly over, visit this address, fly home.”

“I don’t know how long I’ll need to be there, and besides, flying would only save a day or two.” He glanced down at the dog who walked beside him. “Baby hates to fly, and I can’t leave her here. Last time I went on a two-day trip, she didn’t eat the whole time I was gone.”

“You love that dog more than you love me,” Cassie said, sounding very much the way she had at the age of twelve.

Hawk hid a smile. “You know that’s not true.”

“What if I tell you that I won’t eat until you get home?”

He laughed. “The way you’ve been eating lately, I know that’s a hollow threat.”

Cassie hit him lightly on the arm as she danced around him. “That’s not very nice.”

“But it is true.”

Again she seemed to pout.

Hawk dropped the suitcase and took his sister’s face in his hands. His tough, tanned hands only emphasized her paleness. There were dark circles under her eyes, and while she’d been eating plenty lately she wasn’t gaining weight. The thinness of her face told him that she’d lost a few pounds. She might not like it, but he had to do something.

He couldn’t possibly sit around here and twiddle his thumbs and just wait for something to happen. If he could find an explanation for what was happening to Cassie, maybe even a cure, then he could rest easy. Maybe.

Protests about unrealistic expectations aside, he had to admit that the woman’s final comment had been haunting him for the past two days. You look so very much like your mother.

“What if our biological mother gave us up because she knew we were different?”

“We were infants,” Cassie argued. “How could she possibly have known?”

Hawk brushed one thumb over his sister’s ashen cheek. “That’s what I’m going to find out.”