Taming the Beast

Her breath caught, but she reached out and took his hands in hers. And where his skin was fire, hers was as cool as the mountain stream. Just her touch seemed to soothe his bee-stung skin. She was so much smaller than him. Each of his hands were nearly as large as both of her pressed together.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, and meant it. “Have you tried seeing a doctor? Maybe they could help?”

Liam smiled wryly. “Nothing can help. But thank you.”

They sat like that for so long that Liam’s heart swelled within his chest. With her examining his hands in hers. Her breath tickled him, leaving traces of her honey-scent on his skin in an intimacy he had never deserved. It was only minutes, but for Liam an eternity of happiness was contained in that interaction.

She would leave—soon, likely—and all he would have to remember her by was this moment with her cool hands stroking his and he knew he would cherish this moment for the rest of his life. His bear ridiculed him as a soft-hearted and sentimental fool. But had he ever been so happy? Such a small kindness it was, but for a man who lived alone it was a feast.

“The phone?” she asked, finally.

“Let me show you,” Liam rumbled, getting to his feet. “It is upstairs. Follow me.”

He lead her into the ruined dining room and living room, where he often slept in his messy nest of ripped blankets. Shame filled him at the squalor, but Rose didn’t say anything at all.

Liam pointed up the broken stairs that led to the second floor. “Up there. First door on your left. You’ll find the phone there. But,” he added, “take care where you step. The stairs have snapped under my weight so walk on the edges of the platforms, where the stair meets the wall.”

Rose nodded. She looked up the broken staircase and swallowed hard. “I don’t like heights,” she said. “Or really, it’s falling that freaks me out.”

“If you fall,” Liam said. “I will catch you.”

“Promise?” Rose said, giving him half a smile.

Chapter 5

Liam called them stairs, but Rose didn’t see any stairs. She saw little nubs of wood, not even as wide as her feet, poking out of the wall. He was crazy if he expected her to climb them. In the geography where the stairs should have been was empty space, shattered support beams and below it all a thicket of splintered wood and rusted nails.

Rose had never liked heights.

As a child, when her mother had found out about her fear of them she made Rose climb onto the roof of the garden shed and jump off onto the soft lawn. The goal had been to cure her of her irrational fear by making her conquer it, but Rose had landed poorly and twisted her ankle and spent hours in the emergency room. If anything it solidified her fear.

“Go ahead,” Liam said encouragingly in his pleasant rumble. “Just up there.”

Rose knew she should be scared of the man. He was a weird hermit who lived in a half-collapsed house and kept his face hidden in the shadows of his hood—but she wasn’t scared of him. Working in the library, she’d developed a sense of which people were easy and which were difficult, and which might pull out a knife when you told them their time on the public computer was up. Ronald Carter tripped every alarm she had. Liam didn’t. He looked rather monstrous, but under it he had a good heart and a kind smile. Well, it sounded like he had a kind smile. She hadn’t really seen it clearly yet.

“What the hell,” Rose said. “Fortune favors the bold.” She gripped the railing tightly and found her footing. She took each step carefully, with trembling feet, even as the fear sweats came on, making her palms slippery. When she was halfway up, she glanced down and saw a forest of rusted nails looking back up at her and her hands spasmed on the railing. Her eyes snapped tightly shut.

She was going to remain on that broken step until she died of old age, she decided. Nothing would move her. The mountain could erode under her feet. Developers could bulldoze down the forests and put up a supermarket. But she’d still be

there, stuck halfway between the known and unknown, refusing to budge ever.

“What’s your favorite book?” Liam asked.

“Excuse me?” Rose opened her eyes and glanced back at him. Her breathing steadied. The sickly heat she hadn’t even realized was there broke and left her body. “Is this really the time?”

Liam’s smile under his hood was dazzling. “I don’t get many visitors and so rarely can talk books with anyone.” He scratched his chin with his clawed hands. “Right now I’m in the middle of an Austen phase but before that I was reading the old Russian masters.”

Rose blinked at him. He was not what she expected at all. If he had told her he couldn’t read at all, or that books were for other people, she wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But this—this was unexpected. “As a librarian,” she began, “I find it unfair to say which book is my favorite. It’s like a mother with her children, you know? They all have their redeeming qualities.” She paused a moment, then added, “Well, most do.”

“Keep climbing,” Liam said. “The library is up there, too. And I’d be very happy if you could throw down some books when you’re done with that phone call.”

“Certainly not,” Rose said sternly. “But I will hand them down to you. I think if I threw them they’d take away my library badge.” She didn’t know why, but she winked at him then. She never winked at anyone. She wasn’t a winky kind of girl. But there it was. It had been done. She’d winked and Liam looked away, ducking his head in a hurry.

He was embarrassed, she realized. Is he into me? The idea didn’t horrify her—instead she found it sweet.

With her mind turned away from fear and thinking about all of the books that were on her favorites list, she climbed the remains of the steps.

The second floor was different from the first. It wasn’t dirty and smashed and stained, no, it was dusty and a bit moldy but otherwise untouched. How many years had it been since Liam was up here?