“Does, like, everyone in town know about us?”
“I think it’s mostly the folks that work for our companies, but that’s pretty much all the adults in town. Most of them don’t tell their kids till they come to work for Dad. Only one of my human friends knows. Maybe I’ll tack that on to my list of questions for mom. I’ll throw her some softballs, like ‘Where do babies come from?’ and then a few tougher ones. Keep ‘em confused!”
As it turned out, Aunt Clea’s answers to Sandy’s questions were vague at best and only led to more questions so now he was more confused than ever. All he knew for sure, standing there in Uncle Max’s office stuffing meaningless papers into even more meaningless file folders, was that he’d been profoundly changed when he met Crystal, and that couldn’t be a bad thing.
“Well, Chet? Would you?”
Uncle Max’s words snapped him out of his thoughts. Would he what? He had absolutely no idea what his uncle was asking of him, but he figured it couldn’t be any worse than filing old bills of lading. Besides, the one piece of his dad’s advice that he always tried to follow was ‘Say yes, then figure it out later.’
“Um, sure.”
“Great. Go meet Pete down on the loading dock. And take one of the company trucks.”
There was no time to try to puzzle out what he just agreed to because Uncle Max snatched up the ringing phone and started talking about basal areas, residual stands and stumpage. Welcoming any chance to get out of the office, Chet grabbed his Member’s Only jacket and bolted for the door.
“Oh, Chet!” Uncle Max whispered loudly, his hand over the mouthpiece. “Pete knows about us but don’t bring it up. It’s not something that’s talked about.”
Chet nodded and started for the door again when his uncle stopped him again. “Oh, and Chet? Remember, no fraternizing with humans your own age while you’re in town, got it?”
~ * ~ * ~
Chet couldn’t believe his good luck. He was driving old Pete, one of the company’s mill foremen, home in the most ancient pick-up truck he’d ever seen in real life. The top half was a faded turquoise and the bottom was white with rust for trim. An enormous bench seat stretched for a mile between them. The radio in the dash was AM only, which Chet didn’t even know was a thing. The suspension in the rig was completely shot so the rutted road into town sent Chet’s brain jostling around in his skull.
Pete was droning on about how all teenagers should be forced to get summer jobs because it trains them for the ‘real world’ — he hated it when adults used that phrase — and kept them out of trouble. He himself had found a job for his granddaughter at a whale-watching outfit called Whale’s Tail because he didn’t want to see her become some shiftless layabout. She was up at the crack of dawn and at work before he’d had his first cup of coffee. If Max Pearce knew which end was up, Pete insisted, he’d have Chet working all day, every day during his stay. Pushing a broom at the mill, if he had to.
Chet barely noticed. All he could think about was catching a glimpse of Crystal again. It killed him that he hadn’t been back to town since that night, but his aunt and uncle had been home every night and he didn’t dare take one of their cars. Their werebear noses would have caught his scent immediately the next morning. Part of him wanted to tell them that he was an adult and could do whatever he wanted but he knew it would only come out sounding peevish and immature. So instead, he bided his time.
“Thanks for the ride, kid,” Pete said, cranking down the passenger window. “Don’t suppose a young fella like you would be willing play driver to an old fart like me for the week, would ya? The shop says it’ll be that long before my truck’s ready. Can’t drive the company trucks with this cast. They’re all stick and mine’s an automatic.”
Chet glanced down at the cast on Pete’s left leg and saw hope. If he could track down Crystal today, they could spend time together twice a day without having to sneak out from under the very perceptive nose of his uncle. He had a sudden urge to find the carcass of the deer that jumped out in front of Pete’s truck two nights ago and give it a big hug of gratitude. Or at least a hearty ‘Thanks, dude’.
“Most definitely,” Chet replied, trying to not sound too excited. “What time do you want me to pick you up?”
“Oh, seven should be good. Pull in here.”
“Seven? In the morning?” Chet asked as he turned into the driveway of a compact yet tidy home. It wasn’t far from Paulie’s Pizza, he realized. Then again, nothing was far from Paulie’s in this town.
Pete just chuckled as he jammed his shoulder against the door, pushing it open with great effort and an eardrum-shattering screech. He had his crutches tucked under his arms by the time the front door of the house swung open and someone came out to help him.
It was Crystal.
Chet’s heart nearly stopped. Pete was her grandfather? Chet decided he must be the luckiest son of a bitch in the world to have found her so easily. The thought of running out to buy a lottery ticket ran through his brain before the rest of it kicked into gear and focused on her. A grin as wide as Vancouver Island spread across his face as Crystal bounced across the moss-patched lawn.
She hadn’t spotted him yet, offering him the opportunity to stare at her freely from behind his Wayfarers. His memory of her was flawless. Cute blond hair in relaxed wavelets, only a touch of makeup and curves that made his seated position increasingly uncomfortable. But he couldn’t adjust himself without Pete seeing, so he gritted his teeth and thought about what his first grade teacher looked like naked. No one wanted to see that!
It didn’t work, though. His bear was on high alert after being away from its mate for so long, and it took all of his concentration to rein him in. Visions of jumping out of the truck and taking her right there on the hood — in front of Pete and the world — ran through his lust-addled mind. He’d never experienced a need like this before and he found it uncomfortable and exhilarating at the same time.
Crystal ran up to her grandfather with a big smile, kissing him on the cheek and asking him something Chet couldn’t hear. Pete replied and jerked his head toward the truck as he hobbled up the path to the house. Only then did Chet realize that Pete had left his lunch pail on the floor of the truck.
Taking a deep, calming breath, he leaned back against his door, one arm draped against the back of the truck’s seat, the other propped casually on the steering wheel. Drawing on every drop of charm he possessed, he dropped his goofy grin down to a lazy smile and pushed all of his inner power to his gaze. The moment Crystal popped around the open passenger door, she went rigid with surprise.
“Hey, babe,” he murmured seductively. He saw himself through her eyes and could practically see the sun glinting off his toothsome smile. He was irresistible!
Or not.
Narrowing her saucer-like eyes to mere slits, she lunged for her grandfather’s lunch pail, slammed the door in his face and stormed across the lawn to the house.
She slammed that door, too.
CHAPTER SIX
Crystal was still fuming about Chet at six the next morning when she reported for work at the Whale’s Tail. The forecast was for an unusual eighty degrees, so she wore shorts and a Psychedelic Furs concert tee. The hoodie she wore to keep the morning chill at bay was totally unnecessary because she had her anger to keep her warm.
Her boss, Andy, was starting her out cleaning the company’s two whale-watching boats and organizing the associated gear, such as the million orange life vests surrounding her. Her job that morning was to unknot every safety tie on the damp, mildewy vests and organize by size. It promised to be more fun than one girl should have so early in the morning, but it was about as mindless as it got and gave her plenty of time to think. As if she needed to do more of that.
She couldn’t deny that her heart started pounding pretty hard when she realized Chet had driven her Pop-Pop home, but then he had to go act all cocky and conceited. Like there was no doubt in his mind she would swoon all over him after not
hearing from him for nearly a week. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be totally hacked at him. The dude had gone off the deep-end and told her he loved her about six seconds after they met, and then simply fell off the face of the planet.
He left her standing at the swings dumbfounded, wondering what the hell had just happened. But on her short walk home, an intense warmth had replaced her confusion and fear. Her brain insisted that the dude was a fruit loop but somewhere deep inside her, in a dark void that she hadn’t even known existed, a spark of hope glowed.
Was there really such a thing as love at first sight? Pop-Pop loved to tell the story of how he knew he was going to marry Nana the moment he laid eyes on her at a sock hop, which was apparently the blue-hair version of a dance. They’d been happily married for about a hundred years, so there was proof positive that love at first sight could work out in the end.
But this wasn’t love at first sight, was it? It was love at second sight. Chet had totally blown her off when she was punked out. It was only when she was dressed like all the other yuppie scumbags around here that he sat up and paid attention. Anyone who claimed to love her would have to love her no matter what, whether she was a punk, yuppie, headbanger or whatever.
Chet was probably just horny and saw her as a challenge, since his mojo didn’t work on her…as far as he knew, anyway. Secretly, she’d been as giddy and gaga over him as much as those girls she’d gone to the pizza parlor with, she simply refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing it. It didn’t matter, though. She suspected that as soon as he got home and whacked off, he’d think better of this infatuation.
Her suspicions were confirmed when he pulled a disappearing act afterward. There was no plausible reason why he wouldn’t seek her out the next day, or the next, or even the four days after that. Port Numas was a small town so all it would take to find her was to ask a few locals about a new girl in town named Crystal. That didn’t seem like too much effort to make in order to find your true love. By Day Three, she resigned herself that he was no longer interested and filed their brief tryst away as a learning experience.
“Shit,” she muttered as she snapped a nail down to the quick trying to untie a life vest knot.
The stupid tourists who went on the whale watching tours had no idea how to use a life vest, she learned. They must have pulled the vests over their heads to remove them. Nearly every one was tied with a hard knot, rather than a bow. And they were all really damp, making the knots almost impossible to untie.
“This should make it easier,” Andy said as he got her all set up, handing her a pocket knife with some kind of spike sticking out of one side. “It’s a marlinspike. Poke it into the knot to loosen it.”
It did help in working out the knots but she was sitting in the middle of a sea of grimy orange vests. She guessed it would take all day to work through them all but Andy wanted them done by the time the first boat left at nine. “Shit,” she muttered again as she picked up another one.
“Could be worse,” said someone from behind her. She jumped nearly out of her skin. “You could be stuck in an office all day filing papers.”
Chet! He was casually leaning against the doorjamb, one foot kicked back against the jamb and his shiny sports jacket slung over a shoulder, looking delicious…and arrogant. She gave him a hard look and went back to working on a stubborn knot.
“What do you want?”
He strutted over and knelt down in front of her. She had no choice to meet his gaze, that hypnotizing, heart-stopping gaze. “You, of course. You know that.”
“Chyuh,” she snorted, focusing on her work so she wouldn’t be lured into his eyes again. “As if.”
She was unprepared for how his touch, his hand wrapping around the back of her bare calf, sent waves of desire surging through her body. Every part of her vibrated with need for him, and no matter how hard her brain tried to shut it down, it only grew stronger as his thumb softly rubbed back and forth.
“Take your hands off me,” she whispered hoarsely, mustering every ounce of self-control she possessed. She risked a peek at him from under her lashes and was torn between guilt and satisfaction as his handsome face fell, the cocksure grin faltering, replaced by confusion.
“Crystal…what’s going on? The other night…”
Once he was no longer touching her, distracting her, she was able to think more clearly, and her anger and pain bubbled back up to the surface.
“The other night?! Try six nights ago. Six! You mack on me, feed me all that bullshit, and then blow me off, and you think I’m just going to throw myself into your arms? Fuck you, Tubbs! Maybe I’m not the leggy blondes you’re used to down in La-La-Land, but I’ve got some self-respect.”
“I wasn’t…I’m not…Crystal, I would never blow you off.”
“Oh, please.”
“No, really! I’m staying with my uncle and he’s got me working like a dog. Yesterday was literally the first time I’ve been able to get to town all week, and that was to drive your grandfather home. I’m not allowed—“
He broke off mid-sentence, as if he’d said too much.
“What? You’re not allowed to what? Are you telling me your uncle won’t allow you to come to town? What, does he think you’re too good for townies? I call bullshit. You’re an adult, Tubbs.”
He nodded wearily. “I know, Crystal, but it’s not that simple. I can’t really explain it now — I have to go pick up Pete — but maybe when I drop him off, we can meet up? Please say yes.”
Her stubbornness was no match for his desperate tone and pleading eyes. She was pretty sure she was going to regret it later, but right here, right now, every tiny little bit of her was screaming YES! Her shrug of acceptance lit up his face.
“Great! I’ll buy you a New Coke or something at Paulie’s. Meet me there a little after four, m’kay? God, you’re gorgeous.”
With that, he kissed the tip of her nose and slipped out of the shed, once again leaving her speechless and hot-and-bothered and thoroughly confused. When Andy came back to the shed to check on her progress an hour later, she was still grinning from ear to ear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Chet hadn’t been so nervous for a date in…well, ever. But Crystal was different, and he wanted to make a good impression. Obviously he’d failed at that already, and that was without even trying. Hopefully she would understand that he hadn’t been blowing her off.
The trouble was how to make her realize that without telling her about the initiation ceremony, and the separation between humans and werebears here, and that there were actually such things as werebears. He and Sandy had talked until late the night before about Crystal and they came to the conclusion that she almost certainly didn’t know about them. Even though she was related to someone in town, outsiders were rarely brought in on the secret, especially when they would be leaving in a few months to go to college.
Sandy had said that most human kids in town didn’t know, not for certain. They knew that the small community outside of town was off limits and that they couldn’t socialize with any of the kids from there but not precisely why. Some suspected they were murderers or aliens. There were more terrifying campfire stories about the clan than Bigfoot, it seemed. As they grew older, they thought maybe it was a polygamist sect or some weird survivalist encampment. It wasn’t until they got jobs at Pearce Forestry that they would learn the truth, and by then, they didn’t want to lose their income so they kept their mouths shut.
Of course, eventually he would have to tell her, but Sandy convinced him that maybe he’d come on a little too strong before, that telling her about his species might blow her mind completely.
“First of all, maybe you know she’s your life mate but she’s human, dork. She doesn’t have that same primal whatever it’s called.”
“Instinct?”
“Whatever. You need to cool your jets a little. Give her some space to breathe, ya know? She’ll come around, she just doesn’t know it yet. And the mor
e you push, the more she’ll think you’re a whackjob. Dude, you do not want to scare her off.”
“But it’s so hard,” he whined. He wasn’t even embarrassed at his wimpy, lovestruck ways. He was consumed by the need for Crystal, to make her his, to shout it to the world!
“Dude. Seriously, chill.”
“Fine, he said, putting a wicked spin on the ping-pong ball.
“Buttwad,” Sandy muttered as she ran after it.
“I’m not going to lie to her. And I can’t pretend I don’t love her. So what do you suggest?”
Sandy thought on it while they played. “Make her fall in love with you. Do nice things for her, bring her flowers, listen to her stories, ask questions. Girls love that stuff. Just don’t smother her. Girls also hate needy guys.”
“I don’t even know why I asked.”
“Because I’m all ya got, Cuz,” she grinned, taking him off-guard and earning a point.
And now he was sitting at Paulie’s, fidgeting with his sports jacket’s mega shoulder pads — he didn’t want to look lopsided — a pitcher of cola and dipping sticks on the table in front of him. The moment she walked in, all the air in the room whooshed out the door, leaving him breathless.
It was like seeing her for the first time…literally. Her hair was fluorescent pink and pulled into a dozen perfect spikes. Her makeup was heavy on the black, red flames shooting up past her eyebrows. Her black boots were back, though her leggings were half-shredded black fishnet this time, topped by a pink and black layered tutu-style skirt. The black tank top was studded with tiny metal spikes, and a matching pair adorned her ears.
Chet’s jaw dropped at the sight. Only two words came to mind. “Oh, shit.”
~ * ~ * ~
A flutter of disappointment swirled in Crystal’s stomach at Chet’s words. She couldn’t hear them from that distance, but it wasn’t too hard to read his lips. It was just as she suspected. He didn’t want Punk Crystal, only Preppy Crystal. Well, that was that.
Bearly Hanging On (A Werebear Shifter BBW Romance) (Laid Bear Book 3) Page 4
