1. Briar

It wasa dark and stormy night, but that wasn't the worst of it.Briar Phillips was about to die alone—and in the most ridiculous way possible.He'd survived foster care, crazy ex-boyfriends, and the day male rompers came into fashion, but the boonies were going to kill him.

"You're not going to die." Nate's voice was almost drowned by the crackle and hiss of faulty cell towers.Service was hit-or-miss this deep in the middle of nowhere, especially during a storm.

"You"re my boss. You have to say that." Briar switched on his speaker and edged across the dark exam room, navigating by his cell phone"s flashlight."A dead vet tech would kill your insurance premiums."

"It's just a baby boa."

"Named Julius Squeezer!"

"He couldn"t kill you if he tried," Nate protested, amusement trickling through the static.

"Spoken like a man not trapped in the dark with it." Briar choked, scrabbling at the coils around his neck."He keeps squeezing."

"Just unwrap him."

"And re-open his wounds? Are you crazy?" Briar slipped one hand between his throat and the coils to protect his carotid from the pressure, but he kept his other hand stretched out in front of him.He"d already banged his shin and overturned two procedure trays in the darkness.

The clinic was always creepy at night, but it was downright spooky with only an occasional flash of lightning for illumination.According to Nate, the building had been standing, in one form or another, since the first Oregon Trail stragglers settled in Sweetwater.It was a patchwork of plaster, crumbling brick, and leaking water pipes.Nate had taken over the practice from the town"s retiring veterinarian, and he and Briar had spent months bringing the place up to code.

"Things like this never happened in the city," Briar muttered.

Nate laughed. "You"re just homesick.That's your rose-colored glasses talking."

"I promised to give you one year when you dragged me to this godforsaken place.Just to help you start up. At this point, I deserve hazard pay."

It was the same argument they"d been having since relocating from the city, and Briar wasn"t even sure he meant it anymore.For a town the size of a postage stamp, Sweetwater wasn"t so bad.Thanks to a few large, profitable ranches pumping money into the economy, the town had avoided the slow, agonizing death striking every other farming community.The old, utilitarian streets had been cleaned up and dotted by quaint little tourist shops.There wasn"t much entertainment for a man in his prime, but at least there was a diner, a steak house, and a bowling alley.One of each.

As far as Briar was concerned, the worst part about living in a hick town was the lack of variety.If he wanted a latte, he could swing by one place—Java Joes.But it marked him as an outsider.Locals all took their coffee from a shabby diner named The Hungry Pig.The Stop n" Shop was the only place for overpriced groceries, and clothes were best ordered online unless Briar was willing to drive three towns away.

And if he wanted a drink? Well...he just didn"t.

There were no hipster breweries or swanky clubs in Sweetwater.Not even for tourists. Only dark, sticky bars filled with hard-drinking men and tired women.Nate insisted they were safe, but he'd grown up here.He was well-known and liked, and besides, he was a different kind of gay.The kind that didn't get cornered in high school bathrooms.The kind who was big enough to fight his way out.

The biggest thing about Briar was his mouth.He stuck out like a sore thumb in a place like this.But Nate wasn't just his boss; he was the best friend Briar had ever known.He"d stick it out as long as Nate needed him, even if it meant living in the ass end of nowhere.

As the only licensed veterinarian in town, Nate was usually taking calls before sunrise, so Briar often handled the after-hours care by himself.It wasn't so bad, but the animals weren't great conversationalists.He'd learned to beat the solitude by turning on all the lights and cranking up the satellite radio, but that wasn't an option tonight.

He'd been in the process of lifting a juvenile boa from an antiseptic bath when a freak spring gale knocked out the power.He"d been left, stranded in the darkness, with a wet reptile dangling from his shoulders like the world's most dangerous scarf.

It was at times like this he missed his old job in retail, where he was safe from everything except bad fashion choices.

"When I die," he said conversationally, "make sure the Gazette doesn't put my obituary on the same page as the story about McPherson's two-headed calf."

"It didn't really have two heads."

"That distinction won't add any dignity to my obituary." Briar sniffed."Make sure they use the photo of me from last New Year.You know, the one with those fierce orange animal-print pants."

"Just start unwrapping from the tail," Nate said, exasperated. "You're not going to hurt it."

"I might."

"Hate to break it to you, bud, but you're overestimating your own strength.All five feet of it."

"Five-four," Briar corrected automatically, and then he couldn't resist adding cheekily, "Inches matter."

Nate laughed. Something clattered in the background on the other end of the line, followed by a scuffle and a deep, masculine murmur Briar couldn't make out.He hated pulling Nate away from a hard-earned night off with his brooding cowboy, but not as much as he hated being trapped in a building that was beginning to feel like a tomb.

"You still have power, don't you?" he asked suspiciously.

There was a smile in Nate's voice when he replied, "Tucker's got a backup generator.But so does the clinic. You've just got to figure out why it didn't turn on."

"Look, just because I reluctantly added some flannel to my closet doesn't mean I suddenly turned into the type of guy who knows how to fix things."

"Well, buckle up, sweetheart.You're about to learn."

A sudden boom nearly deafened him.It sounded like a thunderclap, followed by a rapid succession of thumps that sent Briar jumping out of his skin.He realized belatedly that someone was pounding on the front door.Forcefully. Very forcefully.

"What was that?" Nate asked.

"Door," Briar managed after working up the spit to answer.His mouth was dry with fear. "Has anyone called the emergency line?"

"No." Nate waited a beat before adding kindly, "I can stay on the line with you.But if you don't want to open it, I won't make you."

His concern came from a good place, but Briar didn't have the grace to appreciate it.Nate already coddled him so much that Briar was developing an irritated facial tic whenever it happened.

"It's probably a patient," he said irritably."I'll just call you back."

"You sure?"

He hated that worried tone in Nate's voice, so he purposely injected a jaunty note of sarcasm when he said, "Don't worry.If it's the big bad wolf, I've got a rabies shot with his name on it."

But his hand still shook—just slightly—when he slipped the phone into his lab coat and edged his way across the dark waiting room.

It wasn't that he didn't understand where Nate was coming from.After all, Nate was the one who'd called the cops and blocked the door while Briar packed a bag in his ex-boyfriend"s shitbox apartment.He'd probably saved Briar's life by getting him out of the city when he did.But that didn't mean Briar was traumatized, no matter what Nate thought.Even before the disastrous implosion of his relationship with Dax, he'd known not to answer unexpected knocks after dark.Not when they sounded like that, anyway.Not in the neighborhood where he grew up.

But that life was gone. Sweetwater might as well be another planet.A dwarf planet on the edge of the solar system, filled with strange, exotic terrain and so much fresh air it made him lightheaded.Locals acted like they'd just walked straight off the set of Yellowstone, and they all stared at him like he was the weird one.He blamed it on the language barrier.Even after a year, he still hadn't calculated the distance that got him to yonder or how mad a wet hen might be.But he'd learned to never drink downstream from a grazing herd or to squat with his spurs on.Not that he owned spurs. The only boots in his closet were from a shelf at Nordstrom.

The knock came again, louder this time.So loud that Briar was shocked the door hadn"t splintered into a pile of toothpicks. Whatever the ham-fisted ogre outside wanted, he wasn"t going away until he got it.

Briar took a deep breath and reminded himself that a little cow town like Sweetwater was the safest place on earth.No one was lurking in the freezing rain, hoping to steal some cats and dogs from an underfunded clinic. He'd be fine…unless some liquored-up good old boys had finally decided he was too queer for their taste.It wasn't impossible.

He twisted the deadbolt and cracked the door.Stinging raindrops lashed his face, blinding him to everything but ominous darkness. Every streetlight was out, and so were the rows of tidy little shops that stretched around the clinic like spokes in a wheel.Even the moon had vanished behind a quilt of storm-slinging clouds.He couldn't see a thing.

Then, out of nowhere, a hulking shadow loomed up right in front of him.

"Oh, hell no!" Briar yelped.

He slammed the door—or tried.He might have succeeded if a steel-toed boot hadn't shot out and wedged itself in the gap.His mind glitched with terror. He set his shoulder against the door and heaved with all his might.All one-hundred-thirty pounds of it.

"We're closed!" he shouted.

"Not anymore, you're not." The man's growl was like the rip of a chainsaw.He planted one hand flat on the door and shoved, flinging it open so effortlessly that Briar went flying backward. He landed on his ass, and the snake around his neck squeezed reflexively.His temples began to throb.

The stranger kicked the door shut, cutting off the roar of the wind.Briar's ears began to ring in the abrupt silence. Or maybe that was the pressure in his head.

His reluctant gaze crawled up, and up, and up, from scuffed boots to a pair of grease-stained blue jeans.From his vantage point on the floor, Briar had a direct line of sight to the man's hands, and he momentarily fixated on them.They were huge, like giant sledgehammers, and edged with visible calluses.Thick veins crawled up his forearms.It was too dark to see much of his face, but Briar didn't need to see his expression to know he was big and ugly and angry.

Ogrehad been too generous a description for him.

"We don't keep a register," he blurted, scrambling for his dropped cell phone and climbing to his feet.The man hadn't made a single move toward him, but his finger hovered over the emergency button just the same.

"Then I'll pay with a card. But I'm not leaving until you fix her."

"We don't—what?"

Wordlessly, the man unzipped his wet canvas jacket.Briar had assumed the bulk at his waist was a beer gut, so he stared in astonishment as the soggy fabric parted to reveal a shivering bundle of fur.

"A…dog?" he asked blankly. His voice was high and thin."You mean you're here for treatment?"

"It's pissing buckets outside.Why else would I be here?" The stranger's face was nothing but shadow, but Briar still tracked the precise moment he connected the dots.The man went perfectly still.Slowly, his head tilted. "What did you think I wanted?" he asked silkily.

Briar swallowed hard. His throat was so dry it felt like it had been scrubbed with steel wool.Fear left him in a rush, leaking out like he was a popped balloon and leaving him strangely deflated.

"I didn't…" His gaze skittered away, searching the empty clinic for any excuse that would be halfway believable.It was too dark to see much beyond the vague, angular shapes of the waiting room.He latched onto the first thing that came to mind."The generator! I thought you were here to fix it."

The man's head turned toward the back of the clinic, as if he knew exactly where the generator would be.Maybe that was another of those things the men around here learned in the womb, along with how to skin a deer and the complete history of football.

"What's wrong with it?" he asked, sounding annoyed.More annoyed than murderous, anyway.Briar wasn't sure how reassuring that was.Plenty of people had told him he was annoying enough to kill.It was his defining characteristic.

"It didn't start automatically when the power went out," he explained.

"Did you check it?"

"I hadn't gotten that far," he said lamely.

There was a beat of silence, and then a soft, derisive snort.

"I'll take a look," he said. He held the dog toward Briar.It looked small and fragile in his huge arms, but it probably weighed a full third of Briar"s own weight.

"I can't take it," Briar said, warding him off with one hand.

"Why not?" The man was sounding more irritable by the moment.

"I, uh…I've got a little problem of my own." He gestured to the passenger clinging to his neck.

The man leaned forward to get a better look, and Briar took an instinctive step back.His shoulders hit the wall, but he couldn"t escape the man"s surprisingly pleasing scent.It was crisp and clean, despite his dirty and bedraggled appearance.Fresh and masculine, like the mountain storm.Better than anything from a bottle.

"Is that a snake?" he asked. Somehow, he'd managed to put a disdainful spin on even that simple question.

"Well, it's not a fashion accessory.The lights went out and I couldn't just—dammit.Doesn't matter." As a demonstration, he waggled the fingers of the hand trapped between his throat and the snake's coils."I can't unwrap it on my own, and I need both arms to hold a dog that size."

"Hold still," the man huffed.

"Careful. It"s got burns—"

"I see them." His tone was brittle, like he resented being forced to deal with someone as stupid as Briar on principle.He zipped the lethargic dog back into his jacket before fearlessly grasping the boa by the tail and unwinding it.

Briar held perfectly still, barely breathing.Darkness was closing around them, suffocating him.The man"s bulk crowded him against the wall, sealing him off from the outside world.His huge body radiated no heat.Just icy chill.

Briar couldn't control his shiver.

The man noticed—he must have—because something in his manner gentled as he peeled away the last of the unhappy boa.

"Does the generator shed have a lock?" he asked, handing over the snake.

"I don't know," Briar admitted.

"You don't know?" The question was full of scorn.

"It's not part of my job description," Briar snapped defensively."You're welcome to take a look yourself."

He wasflusteredand embarrassed, off-balance and wrong-footed ever since the man had barged inside.So, he scrambled away, retreating to a pitch-dark exam room to return the snake to its tub.Moments before, the room had felt like a coffin.Now it meant safety and a door between him and the stranger watching him like he was the stupidest man on earth.Not that a door had kept him out the first time.

The moment he turned away, the hair on his necklifted.It felt like he'd just turned his back on a junkyarddog. When he gathered the courage to glance over his shoulder, the stranger was gone.