Oriana and the Three Werebears (5 page)
“Oh, yeah,” Jon concurred with a chuckle. “Think about it. In the story, a little blond girl comes upon the home of a family of bears who are away, taking a walk in the woods. The little girl goes inside their house and finds three bowls of porridge. She tries them all, and ends up eating all of the baby bear’s porridge. She then sits in the three chairs, and breaks the baby bear’s chair. She lies down in three beds, and the bears find the little girl sleeping in baby bear’s bed”
“She’s no little girl.”
This woman was a man’s dream come true.
“Come on,” Jon exasperated. “It’s so clear. You’re the papa bear,
“Hey! Why do I have to be the momma bear?”
Jon continued, “This woman has golden locks, and we have the ability to shift into bears. While we were at the stream,
in the woods
, she stumbled upon our bunker and came inside. She tried the beef stew we left out on the table, and ate all of mine. She sat in all our office chairs, and broke mine. Now she’s sleeping in my bed. And I guess I should tell you both, your bedspreads are wrinkled.”
“It’s just a coincidence.” Jack gently tugged the covers away. Her hands were dirty and scratched, and bruises marred the skin on her arms and legs. “She’s probably a
very
lost hiker. And we need to get her out of here before the local authorities come looking for her.”
“Oriana Ricci,”
“Do you think she has a plane nearby? Do you think she crashed?”
“Her plane might be near, but I don’t believe she crashed.”
“Lost hiker or lost pilot? What’s your theory?”
“Pilot. Plane malfunctioned, she was forced to land. Radio is out, and she got lost looking for help. No one’s reported her missing yet.”
So she had a plane. All the easier. They would help her get back to it. The faster she was out of their lives, the better for them all.
“Hey, lady. Wake up,” Jack said, poking her arm. “We’re going to take you back to your plane.”
“What are you doing?” Jon bit out.
“What does it look like?”
“Even if you can wake her, she’s in no condition to fly.”
“Fine, she can stay here and rest.” Jack poked her again. “But we still need to know where the plane is so we can fix it and send her on her way, preferably before someone sends a search party looking for her.”
And more importantly, he needed to know how much of a security threat she was. How lost was she? Or if she wanted, could she find her way back to their bunker to pay them a visit at a later date?
“You don’t have to be a dick about it,” Jon muttered, nudging Jack and Jordan out of the way. “Move. I’ll wake her up.”
When Jon knelt beside the bed and gently took one of her hands in his,
Jon scowled. “No, you ass.”
Jack lifted one hand in a gesture of impatience. “Whatever you’re going to do, just get on with it.”
Jon used his free hand to smooth the hair away from the woman’s face before lowering his lips to her ear like a lover trying to rouse his partner after a night of passion. “Oriana, honey, wake up.”
She whimpered softly.
“Oriana? Please wake up for me.”
Her eyelids fluttered open for a brief moment, then fell close again. “Jonathan,” she whispered.
Jack felt his jaw go slack. How in the hell did she know his brother’s name? Did she know them?
“Are you okay?” the youngest asked.
“Tired. Cold,” she mumbled.
Jon pulled the covers back over her body.
She snuggled deeper into them. “Sorry. Your bed.”
“It’s okay, I don’t mind.”
“Didn’t think you would.” Though her eyes remained closed, a small smile touched her lips. “The nice one. The fun brother and...” she trailed off.
A large grin crossed his face. “The best looking?”
Jack rolled his eyes.
“All three brothers...” She yawned. “…great looking.”
The mattress dipped as
“Sleep now, talk later.” She then rolled over again, giving them her back.
Jack walked to the other side of the bed. He crouched down and smoothed the matted curls back so he could see her face. “How did you get here? Where’s your plane?”
Her lips began moving, but he couldn’t understand anything she was saying.
“What?” He shook her shoulder. “How did you get here?”
“Stop, Jack,” she grumbled. “The plane broke in the lake and fell down the hill.” She then pressed her face further into the pillow.
He shook her again, harder this time. “How do you know my name?” he demanded. “Who sent you? Why are you here?”
Oriana lifted her head and looked at him—but not. “I know you. You’re the asshole brother. My plane broke.” Suddenly, her head dropped back down and her eyes fell closed, her breathing again soft and steady in slumber, as if the outburst never happened.
very
well.”
“She didn’t mean it,” Jon offered. “I think she’s so exhausted she doesn’t know what she’s saying. You know, like when you’re talking to someone in your dream, and someone in real life is also trying to talk to you, so you mix the conversations up?”
“There you go, Jack,”
Jack ignored the taunts and rose to his feet. “We’ve never met this woman before, yet she knows our names.”
“Use a bit of logic, please,”
“Let’s hope we’re not giving her too much credit,”
She fell down the hill...lake.
“Jon, you know this area better than anyone. She couldn’t have wondered far from her aircraft. Search the nearest lakes that are large enough for her to land on.
“What are you going to do?” Jon asked.
“You mean in addition keeping an eye on our guest? I’m going to finish checking the bunker, and then I’m going to do some research and see if our guest is really the person her ID says she is.”
The sun was setting by the time
Jon did the same.
“One, two, three,” they chanted in unison, pounding the air.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jon muttered and started undressing.
“And make sure you tie the rope tight. It would really suck if the rope came undone while we were pulling the plane in. Then you’d have to swim out there all over again.”
“Thanks for the advice, brother.”
Once naked, Jon looped the rope around his shoulder and waded into the cold water. While he made for the floating aircraft,
Suddenly, the sound of an engine coming to life filled his ears.
Jon circled around a couple of times, then landed the small amphibious aircraft, pulling it up along the shore. After shutting it down, his brother climbed out, with a big grin upon his face, still naked as the day he was born.
“Well, what did you do to fix it,”
“Nothing,” his brother replied, shrugging. “It wasn’t broken.”
“We need to get back to the bunker.”
“Why? The sun is already setting. We won’t make it back before dark.”
“Because Oriana Ricci, if that’s her real name, is a very good liar and Jack’s in danger.”
Jon shook his head. “I don’t think she’s lying. You saw her. She looked like she’d been stranded out in the wilderness for days.”
“Could be a part of her ruse to gain our trust, thus gather information on our operation.”
“Okay, Jack Junior,” Jon chuckled, retrieving his clothes. “Don’t you think you’re being a tad paranoid?”
“I wasn’t until now.” Jordan flung his hand out toward the aircraft. “How do you explain the plane?”
“Perhaps she just doesn’t know how to work it properly,” his brother offered as he dressed.
He raised a skeptical brow. “She’s a pilot.”
“Yes, I know. But this could be a new plane.”
“You know as well as I do that it’s not new.”
“I meant new to her.” Jon rolled his eyes. “Or it could be just one of those weird things. She just said her plane broke. She never told us what was wrong with it. You’ve worked with electronics long enough. You’ve seen equipment can go quirky for no reason one minute, then be fine the next.”
“So we’re just going to camp out here for the night and leave Jack alone with her? You’re that sure she’s innocent?”
“For one, ruse or not, Oriana is too weak to do much harm at the moment. Two, even if she was dangerous, Jack can take care of himself. Three, if Oriana is lying about who she is, Jack probably already knows. He was checking up on her when we left the bunker. Four, she’s not lying. I just know she’s not. Call it gut instinct.”
“That last reason
defies
reason,” Jordan remarked dryly.
“I know. But if you stopped being so damn
reasonable
, you’ll feel it too. Have a little faith.”
Jordan didn’t want to admit it, but somehow, he knew Jon was right. “Fine,” he grumbled, moving to collect a pile of wood. “Let’s set up camp.”
“Gladly.”
They fell into companionable silence as they set everything up, Jordan mulling over his youngest brother’s words. It was dark by the time they completed the rest of their tasks and settled down before the fire.
“What do you think?” Jon asked, reinitiating conversation.
“About what?”
“Oriana.”
“What about her?”
Jon sighed. “I think she might be the one. The one we’d always hoped to find, the perfect woman we described that night right after my breakup, the one that wouldn’t mind—”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jordan tossed another log into the fire. “We just met the girl. We have no idea what she would mind.”
“I’ve been thinking. Perhaps fate has intervened so that we could meet, and that’s why her plane came down here even though there’s nothing wrong with it. And that whole weird
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
recreation, that’s the universe holding up a sign saying, ‘she’s the one, so make sure you don’t let her go.’ God is hooking us up, so maybe we should be grateful for the gift and not throw it away.”
“It’s like Jack said, just a coincidence. Fate, destiny, God… There is no scientific evidence to back up these concepts—”
“Says the man who can shift into a Kodiak bear at will.” Jon ran his fingers through his hair. “Not everything can be explained with formulas and charts. I know you can’t help being a science geek, but try to have some faith. Some things in this world defy explanation. You, me, Jack—we’re living proof that magic exists, that extraordinary things can happen, that some things can’t be explained. Is it so hard to believe that Oriana is here because she’s meant to be here, for us, to stay with us?”