Hero Bear: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance (7 page)

Chapter Eight

Caleb was never going to be able to show his face in the holler again, much less in town. When Dalton came home and told him what had happened at Willie’s, it was already too late. Dylan Ellis would have told the whole damn Ellis family by now that Caleb Bentley had lost his bear. The shifter community in Salem Creek was small and tight-knit, and like any family, they razzed each other mercilessly. For something this serious, though? They might be quietly sympathetic, and that was a thousand times worse. As if he didn’t get enough pity these days.

He rolled over and stared at the alarm clock. Much as he wanted to hide out in the house, he was going to have to get up and go to work soon. He hadn’t slept a wink all night, tossing and turning.

He told himself Michaela didn’t understand what she’d done, blurting out his problems like that. That she didn’t understand how hard it had been to tell anyone. It didn’t make it feel any less like a betrayal. He sat up and rubbed his face hard. Might as well get up and face the day. His hands went through the practiced motions of attaching his prosthetic, so much a part of his morning routine he hardly thought of it anymore.

Michaela really
didn’t
understand though, and that was the thing. How could she, when she didn’t believe him? At least hearing what had happened last night made that much clear. It hurt, though. He felt like he’d opened up his soul to her and she’d thrown it in the mud.

He got up and went to start the coffee. Lucille followed behind him, whining softly, so he let her out into the backyard. The sky was still dark, stars twinkling overhead before the sun came up and made them vanish. The cool quiet was a balm to his hurting heart, but looking up at the stars just reminded him of that first night with Michaela. Everything had been so perfect that night. And now it was ruined.

He went back in when he smelled the coffee. Nothing for it but to push on. He couldn’t change what had happened.

Saturdays were one of the few days Dalton got to sleep in, so Caleb stayed quiet while he got ready and headed out to Smithson’s. For once he was grateful for the busy Saturday rush. It kept him from thinking too much. He told himself he was imagining Janine Ellis looking at him different this morning.

He was doing just fine until old Miss Coleman, one of the Ellis cousins, came through his lane. “Afternoon, Caleb.”

“Hey, Miss Coleman.” He started ringing up her shopping, aware of her eyes resting on him heavily.

She leaned in and said quietly, “I’m awfully sorry to hear about your bad time. My uncle Otho, he lost his wolf for years after an accident in the mines. Got it back after my aunt started making a tonic for him. You come see me, I’ve got that recipe.”

Caleb’s face got hot and he couldn’t ring up her groceries fast enough. “That’s awful nice of you, Miss Coleman, thank you.” She patted his hand and made a cooing noise. He wanted the ground to open up and swallow him right then. If word had reached an eighty year old widow, everybody knew.

Jake and Daniel Ellis, two of Janine’s younger brothers, came in not long before Caleb was due to get off work. The teens bought some snacks and some soda and headed right for Caleb’s register. “Hey Caleb,” Jake said, and shot a quick glance at Daniel. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad, you?” Caleb was ready to go home.

“Oh, all right. Bearing up.” Both boys snickered.

And right then he knew what was coming.

“How do you like working with our sister?” Daniel piped up. “Is it bearable?”

Caleb forced a thin smile. “More bearable than dealin’ with some of her puny brothers.”

“Yeah, Dylan’s a jerk. I dunno how you bear it.”

“He doesn’t!” Daniel delivered the
coup de grace
, and both boys giggled. The brats knew they could get away with it, because how was Caleb going to explain beating the tar out of two paying customers over some harmless-seeming comments?

“Go on, get on home.” Janine came over and shooed the boys away. “I tell Daddy what you’re up to in here and he’ll whoop you.” Her brothers postured, but left. So he’d been wrong before, and even Janine knew. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Caleb shrugged. “At that age, I woulda thought it was funny too.” For a young shifter, it was like finding out a guy couldn’t get it up— a lost symbol of manhood. Which was stupid, considering that women were shifters too, but nobody was ever going to accuse Daniel and Jake Ellis of an overabundance of smarts.

“Get on out of here. I’ll close up.”

Caleb should resist— he still had a half an hour to go and he didn’t want the pity, but he just wanted to go be alone for a while, lick his wounds. “Thanks, Janine.” He pulled off his apron and took his register drawer with him to count out.

Michaela hadn’t realized how much she missed having girl time. Despite the disaster that was Friday night, they were up bright and early on Saturday.  Brenda declared they were going to finish decorating Michaela’s new place, so off they went. Salem Creek wasn’t exactly a shopping mecca, but they drove around until they’d at least found the nearest Wal-Mart and Target. Michaela spent way more than she should have on curtains and new pots and pans and decorations, but came home feeling better than she had since the whole mess with Caleb. Maybe there really was something to retail therapy.

The very first thing she did was strip off her old comforter and replace it with the new one she’d bought, one that Caleb Bentley hadn’t touched. She’d put the old one in the closet, and never wanted to sleep under it again.

They spent the afternoon puttering around the apartment, hanging things on the walls, rearranging furniture, and by the time they were done, Michaela looked around with a deep sense of contentment.

“Now it looks like a home,” Brenda declared.

Michaela impulsively gave her a hug. “Thank you. I probably never would have gotten around to it without you.”

“You would have eventually. Now what do you say we go make a mess in your kitchen?”

They cooked enormously. Michaela had a pile of vegetables from Miss Harvelle’s garden, and they needed to be used. Brenda made a giant pot of green beans like Michaela’s mom used to make, with plenty of salt pork and some bacon fat, while Michaela fried the zucchini and summer squash, slices coated with a crispy layer of cornmeal. There were fresh sliced tomatoes and cucumber, and Brenda insisted on making cornbread (from scratch, Michaela noted with a small, mean pleasure). There was so much to choose from, there was no need for a meat.

“Look at that, we’re practically vegetarians,” Brenda declared as they sat down.

Michaela laughed. “There’s pork in the beans, I think that rules us out.”

“I don’t trust anybody who makes beans without salt pork. It’s just not natural.”

Michaela, who was going to be eating green beans for a week from the looks of it, didn’t complain. With the smell of good Kentucky cooking in the place, it really did feel more like a home. They took their plates out on to the back porch. The duplex butted up onto a patch of woods, and between that and Miss Harvelle’s lush garden off to one side, it felt like they were sitting in the middle of a forest.

While they were eating, Brenda asked, almost too casually, “When you were working with us, did you ever see anything that... just seemed wrong?”

Michaela tried to be just as casual. “I don’t know, seeing that client who kept coming in wearing a skirt and high heels and trying to use a balance ball was pretty wrong.”

“Lord, I remember her.” Brenda flashed a brief smile. “No, I mean, from our side of things.”

Michaela had seen plenty, but she’d sworn to stay quiet. The wrong word would be the end of her career. She shrugged. “What did you see?”

Brenda paused for a second too long. “Never mind. It was probably nothing.”

She didn’t mention it again, but the question stuck with Michaela. Were things still bad at Silverwood? She’d hoped that after she left, they would have improved.

Monday morning came and Michaela headed to work with a vague sense of unease. Since Brenda had left the night before, her apartment felt a little emptier, and she was forced to face all of the feelings she’d been avoiding since ending things with Caleb. And since it was Monday, Caleb would be coming in for his physical therapy today.

As soon as she walked in the door, she knew something was wrong. Marty was looking at her funny, and Dottie wasn’t looking at her at all. Before she had a chance to put her things away, Dottie called her into her office.

“Shut the door, please,” Dottie said, and Michaela did, a tense knot in her belly.

“Morning, Dottie. What’s going on?” Michaela tried to smile.

Dottie didn’t smile back. In fact, she looked as grim as Michaela had ever seen her. “Have a seat.” Dottie opened the folder in front of her. “You had some glowing references when I hired you. Did they know the whole story?”

Oh god. She knew. How did she find out? Michaela searched for something to say. “Some of them did, ma’am.”

“And yet on your application, you specifically said you’d never been fired.”

“Dottie, I can explain—” Reuben had promised, the bastard, he’d promised not to tell anyone.

“I could have overlooked that, Michaela. We’ve all had some bad luck. And I admit, I had my suspicions, you moving all the way out here in the middle of nowhere.” Dottie looked more disappointed than mad and it cut Michaela to the core. “But some things I just can’t overlook.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Insurance fraud is probably at the top of that list, Michaela.”

“But I didn’t...” Michaela stopped with a sigh. She knew full well the records made it look like she had.

“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to let you go.” The hell of it was, Dottie really did look sorry.

Tears burned in Michaela’s eyes. She should have known this would happen. Even though she’d kept her end of the bargain, and had stayed quiet, she should have known she couldn’t trust Reuben to do the same.

She cleaned up her desk while Dottie stood watching her, feeling more and more like a criminal with each passing moment. Right now, she just wanted to go home and crawl into her bed forever.

Just when she thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, as she was heading out the door with her small box of belongings, she met Caleb on his way in. It was a small consolation that he looked as miserable as she felt. He met her eyes briefly and then looked away as she passed him, neither of them saying a word.

Chapter Nine

Someone was knocking on her door, and Michaela pulled the covers over her head and hoped they’d go away. She’d been unemployed for three whole days, and had barely been out of bed since then. Her nightstand was piled with three days’ worth of dirty dishes. Thank God she and Brenda had cooked so much, because she’d been living off the leftovers.

Ugh. Whoever was at the door wasn’t giving up. She threw back the covers and sat up with a groan.

“Michaela? Are you in there? Honey, I’m worried about you.” It was Miss Harvelle. Michaela had dodged her when she’d come home that first day, and had been inside ever since.

She opened the door, aware of her unwashed hair and dirty pajamas. She was a mess.

“Oh no, are you sick?” Miss Harvelle looked faintly horrified. “You go sit down, I’ll be right back.” She left Michaela’s doorstep and hurried back to her own, returning with two quart-sized mason jars of something red. “Why are you still standing there? You go sit down and I’m gonna heat you up some of the soup I canned this summer.”

Michaela didn’t even have the energy to protest, much less to be mortified at Miss Harvelle rushing in to take care of her. She sat down at the kitchen table and let Miss Harvelle take over.

“You look so pale,” Miss Harvelle tutted. “What is it? A cold? Flu?” She bustled around, finding a sauce pan big enough for both jars of soup. “You and your friend were busy this weekend, it looks real good in here.”

At the mention of how much money she’d spent over the weekend, Michaela groaned and put her head on the table. That had been a big chunk of her savings, money that she now wished she had. She wondered briefly how much of it she could take back to the store.

“I’m not sick, Miss Harvelle. I lost my job.” There, she said it out loud.

“Oh no, that’s terrible, honey. You get laid off? And so soon!”

“Something like that.” Michaela couldn’t bring herself to tell her that she’d been fired. Again.

“Well, you’ll find something soon. You’re a smart girl.” She stirred the soup on the stove and fetched down two bowls. “I haven’t seen that Bentley boy around. He seemed like a nice boy.”

“Yeah, he did.” Michaela sighed. “Just didn’t work out, I guess.”

“Well bless your heart, you’ve just had a bad time, haven’t you?” Miss Harvelle put a bowl in front of her. The tomato-y broth smelled delicious, and she saw chunks of potatoes, beans, corn, and carrots, plus some elbow macaroni.

“Thanks.” She picked up her spoon. “It’ll get better soon.”
It has to
.

“Salem Creek can be a hard place to live.” Miss Harvelle started to eat her own bowl of soup. “Whole town’s seen its share of troubles, but I reckon that’s true anywhere that used to be a company town. East Kentucky Coal used to own the whole place. They even owned this house, used it for their supervisors to live in. If you didn’t want to live in a miner’s shack, you had to go back in the hollers and build your own. You ever been back in the hollers? I know the Bentleys have a place back there.”

Michaela shook her head. With her first bite of the soup, she was ravenous, and was trying to find a balance between being polite and shoveling it into her mouth.

“Let’s see... the Bentleys and the Ellises are back in Bear Pine.” Miss Harvelle laughed. “When I was growing up, people used to tell stories about that place. Said if you went up there at night, you’d get eat by bears. I haven’t seen a bear around Salem Creek for years! I had a cousin try and tell me the Ellises could tame bears. Said they had them a whole family of black bears just to sic on outsiders. He swore up and down he’d seen old Bill Ellis leading a pack of bears through the woods one night.”

Until Miss Harvelle mentioned bears, Michaela had been half-listening. That got her attention. “Bears? Really? I didn’t think there were any bears around here.”

“Some. Not as many as there used to be.” Miss Harvelle paused. “People probably hunt ‘em, drive ‘em out. Still, if anybody talks about spotting one, it’s always out around Bear Pine.” She leaned over, with a conspiratorial smile on her lined face. “My Papaw used to try and tell us that everybody who lived up Bear Pine was part-bear themselves. Said the reason why folks saw more bears up that way was because the people could turn into bears.”

It had to be a coincidence. Or else Caleb had used local legend to come up with his story. “Did you believe him?”

“Lord, no. I mean. There might be some truth hidden in there.” Miss Harvelle stood up and refilled Michaela’s bowl from the stove. “My momma used to tell me where she grew up out in Troublesome Creek, there was some people that were blue as a lake. Blue skin! We never did believe her, but I saw on the news a couple years back that they were real.”

Michaela tried to imagine what grain of truth might be hidden in stories of men turning into bears. Hairy mountain men, maybe. For some reason, knowing that there was at least a local legend involved made her feel a little better. Maybe Caleb assumed she’d heard it, so was trying to play off it. It made his story seem not quite as out of the blue.

“Thanks. For everything, Miss Harvelle. I feel a lot better.”

“See, you just needed a good meal and some company. Michaela, you know you can come by and see me any time you want, honey.”

“I know. Thank you.” She hugged the tiny old woman, grateful to have found at least one good thing about Salem Creek.

Later that night, after spending the afternoon fruitlessly combing the want ads and internet sites for a possible job opening, Michaela decided to call Brenda and tell her what was going on. She took the phone out onto the back porch and sat in the dim twilight, listening to the katydids start up while she told her story.

“I don’t understand,” Brenda said when she was done. “You said they loved you there.”

Michaela sighed. “I guess they found out that Reuben fired me.”

There was a long pause, a hiss of static over the line. Finally Brenda asked, “Are you ever going to tell me what happened, for real?”

She wasn’t supposed to. She’d made a deal. But since Reuben had broken his end of it . . . “Remember you asked me if I’d seen anything at work, anything off?”

“I knew it. I knew there was something!”

“It’s bad. I did the wrong thing, Bren. A really wrong thing.” This was it, the moment she’d been dreading for months now. “I caught Reuben changing client records. I think he was overbilling the insurance companies. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it now.” Dottie had mentioned insurance fraud.

“Why didn’t you say something? You know we would have had your back.”

Michaela closed her eyes. It was the question she’d been asking herself ever since she’d made that damned devil’s bargain with Reuben. “He said nobody could prove it was him. He was using our logins to change the records, Bren. He showed me. Most of the changes looked like they were mine.” She still remembered the sick feeling of fear in her belly, the feeling of seeing her entire career disappearing before her very eyes. “He said if I didn’t stay quiet, he’d go to the police and tell them what he’d ‘found’ while auditing the system.”

“Oh my god.”

“Then the next day he said he thought about it, and decided he didn’t trust me around. He fired me for ‘falsifying client records,’ and made a deal with me. He wouldn’t cause any trouble with me getting a new job as long as I kept my mouth shut.” Now that she’d started talking, it was like she couldn’t stop, and the words flew out of her. “I know I should have gone to the police, but what if they believed Reuben and not me? We all could have gotten in trouble with the law. It just seemed... easier. To play along. I told myself I was doing it partly for the rest of y’all, but honestly, I was just scared. I was a great big coward so I ran away.”

There. She’d said it.

It felt like hours were ticking by before Brenda finally spoke. “Oh, ’Chaela. I’m so sorry. I knew it was bad, but I figured he’d, I dunno, tried to grab you in a storage closet or something.”

“You don’t hate me?”

“Why on earth would I hate you for something that asshole did?” Brenda sounded equal parts exasperated and affectionate. “I can’t say I would’ve done anything different in your shoes. He had you by the balls, and he knew it.”

“I guess he got tired of keeping it a secret and called out here to my new boss.” A thought occurred to Michaela, leaving her horrified. “Oh god. Brenda. What if I get arrested?”

“You’re not going to get arrested,” Brenda scolded. “Listen to me. He’s still up to the same things, cause I saw him too, but he doesn’t know I saw. If we both come forward, it’ll be two against one. And even if he did use our logins, I’ll bet there’s some way the cops can figure out which computer it was.”

Michaela hadn’t even thought of that. Brenda should have a better idea of what was possible or not, at least, she was the one who watched all the cop shows. “I should have told you sooner,” she said.

“Shoot, I would’ve been afraid too.”

That day in the office, Michaela had been so sure of herself, so confident when she went in to confront Reuben with what she’d found, and she’d crumpled like a paper tiger as soon as he fought back. Would it be any different this time? Maybe, with Brenda at her side. “What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. I guess you better come up here and we’ll go in and see the police together.”

Michaela took a deep breath. “Okay. Tomorrow?”

“Friday? I want to get some actual proof to take in with us.”

“Be careful.”

Brenda laughed, and Michaela was a little relieved to hear it was her usual devil-may-care laugh. “Oh, I will, don’t you worry.” She paused, then said, “I’m glad you finally told me.”

“Me too.”

Michaela went to bed not long after they hung up. And for the first time in a week, she managed to get a decent night’s sleep.