Aiding the Bear (Blue Ridge Bears Book 3) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

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  Aiding the Bear

  Blue Ridge Bears| Book 3

  Jasmine B. Waters

  Aiding the Bear

  Chapter One

  Millie

  I was secretly glad that Sammy Pullman had crashed his truck. Doing body work gave me a legitimate excuse to hit things without being looked at strangely.

  Not that I didn’t get those looks, anyways. Not all of the girls in the tiny town of Fairchild, Tennessee were aspiring debutantes, but I was the only girl around these parts that I knew of who enjoyed getting down and dirty beneath a car instead of in one.

  Pullman was in the other room, talking to my dad. Hopefully, Dad hadn’t offered him a beer, or my night was about to get a whole lot shittier. The last thing I needed was to drive a sloppy drunk ex-policeman back home to his depressing little trailer park on the outskirts of town.

  I took a step back from the truck. It wasn’t pretty, but it was looking marginally better. Sammy could have taken it over to the new garage that had set up shop in the next town over. He was closer to that one, anyway. But he’d brought it here, and I could only be grateful for that.

  Six months ago, I’d made a leap of faith. Or maybe one of desperation, I don’t know. My best friend, Lucy Elmsong, had disappeared, leaving her car on the side of the road. When I’d seen it on sitting abandoned on a back country lane the first time, I’d nearly had a heart attack. Where had she gone? What had happened to her?

  I’d reported her missing to the police, who couldn’t get in contact with her, either. Her cellphone was dead, and they said the last time her GPS had pinged a cell tower she’d been somewhere in Kentucky. I’d nearly gotten myself fired from my waitressing gig because I’d paid more attention to the news than any of the customers.

  After the story about her brother, Luke, made national news, I figured I knew where she’d gone. I still didn’t know why she hadn’t called me. I hadn’t spoken with her for close to two months when she suddenly called me out of the blue, from a number I didn’t recognize.

  I wasn’t sure I believed her story, about finding love and running away together. It didn’t make sense. Lucy wouldn’t have abandoned Luke, and the story had died down after he’d faced trial in Virginia. There was something more going on there than she was telling me, and I was going to give her the third degree when she reached home.

  I wiped the sweat from my brow with a weary smile. She was coming home. It was just the sort of good news I needed after the hell I’d gone through in the last few months.

  I’d quit my job at Pete’s Bar and Grill because the garage had been doing so well. We weren’t eating steaks and caviar every night or anything, but we could be reasonably considered middle-class now instead of dirt poor, the way we had been when Mom had run off.

  I scowled down at my hands, which were covered in dirt and oil. I didn’t remember her. I’d been too young to remember what she looked or even sounded like. Dad had hidden all the pictures he had of her, and no amount of pleading would make him tell me where he’d put them. All I could wheedle from him, after plying him with copious amounts of beer, was that she was beautiful and had red hair, just like mine.

  I clenched my dirty hands into shaking fists. I was finally living my dream. For the past few months, I’d been up to my eyeballs in tires, oil changes, body repair and so much more. It had been glorious. And now it was all crashing around my ears, thanks to that stupid were-bear.

  He’d moved his stupid self into the next town over and set up shop. He could afford to charge less than we could, because the city was larger and he had more traffic. And because he was only a half hour away, anyone whose vehicle was up to the task was willing to drive a few extra miles for the lower price.

  Not to mention, I’d heard he was exceptionally good-looking. It hadn’t taken much convincing to get Brandy Irwin, bless her, to spy on him for me. I’d been telling her to get her tires rotated. She’d consistently ignored me when I told her that it was essential that the wear be spread evenly. It didn’t just save you from a blowout, it could save your wallet by improving gas mileage. Which, let’s face it; she needed driving a Mercedes-Benz, G550 with its measly thirteen and a half miles a gallon fuel economy.

  But no, she hadn’t listened to me until I’d mentioned that he was good-looking. A chance for her to flirt with a hot guy and play super spy Barbie? Win-win.

  I forced myself to unclench my fists and take a few deep breaths. It was stupid to get so worked up. So what if he was good-looking? Our service was better. You got what you paid for, in my opinion. Not to mention, that there was a certain comradery that came from living in a small town like Fairchild. We banded together to support our own, most of the time.

  So what if this guy was taking my business? He wasn’t going to keep it. He was an outsider, and I hated to say it, but he was also a shifter. In these parts, that could mean a great deal to some people. Time and prejudice were on my side. I just had to ride it out.

  I set my tools aside. There was still a lot to do on the truck, and it was getting late. I’d probably start fresh in the morning. My concentration was shot for tonight. I sat down hard on a milk crate and put my head in my hands, glaring at the corkboard on the far wall, trying to remember exactly what she’d said about my enemy, Jay Hanlon.

  Apparently he was tall, but that meant jack to me. Everybody looked tall when you were five foot nothing and only a little over a hundred pounds. He had dark hair and eyes like chocolate. Her description, not mine. Brandy had been petulant that he’d been wearing a wedding band. I think she’d been looking forward to employing the patented Brandy Irwin interrogation special. A little maneuver that involved ice cubes and a spectacular amount of cleavage.

  So, there wasn’t even a chance of Brandy distracting him with her womanly wiles. Or if there was, that was another problem entirely. It could be used against him. The old women in Fairchild were very gossipy. I’d just have to slip a little white lie to Lucy’s Aunt Carol and it would set the rumor mill going.

  “Gah!” I cried, pushing to my feet. I was getting nowhere fast. I couldn’t keep doing this to myself. This wait-and-see attitude wasn’t like me. If there was a problem, I should address it directly.

  Dad wandered into the garage. Maybe my frustration had become palpable through walls and the beer haze. More likely he’d noticed my silence and had come to check on me.

  His piercing grey eyes scrutinized me. “Done already?”

  “No.” I huffed, plopping back down onto the milk crate. Forget speaking about the devil, just thinking about him sent him running m
y direction. Every time I thought about going out to confront the lowlife bear stealing our customers my dad showed up. I didn’t understand why he’d been so overbearing lately. I was working hard. Though I loved the work, I also deserved a life outside the garage. I could go where I wanted.

  “Do you want to come inside? I’m going to set Sammy up on the couch in the waiting room.”

  “Take his keys,” I grumbled. “He’ll try to go home, and I’m not going to fix the rental he’s driving too.”

  My dad gave me a thin smile and jangled a set of keys in front of me. “Already taken care of.”

  He plopped down on the milk crate next to me. I wondered if I was in for another lecture. I glanced sidelong at my father. His hair was more salt than pepper these days, but he was still more physically fit than most of the men in Fairchild. He lacked the beer gut that Sammy Pullman sported, despite drinking nearly as much in a week. My dad was a handsome man, all things considered. I wished he would put himself out there. My mother’s flight must have done a number on him because, even twenty-two years later, he still hadn’t moved on.

  Maybe that was why he’d imposed a prohibition on dating where I was in concerned. I liked to think he was trying to protect me from heartbreak. It didn’t bother me as much as it probably should. There just weren’t that many guys in Fairchild worth dating. The good ones had all married or moved out of state. That left a bunch of deadbeats and felons left to choose from, and I was okay with staying away from them. But this ban on visiting Jay Hanlon? It was stupid. I didn’t think I was the sort to jump a man’s bones first thing, no matter how attractive he was.

  “What’s on your mind?” he asked, offering me a bottle of water. I took it gratefully and splashed the majority of it on my face. There was very little in the way of a cross breeze in the garage, and though it was cold outside, I was covered in sweat.

  “The usual,” I grumbled. “Wondering what to do about the shirtless wonder that’s set up shop in Larton.”

  My father pursed his lips and gave me a weary but determined look. “I told you that I don’t want you going out there. It’s not safe anymore.”

  On the one hand, I sort of understood his worry. Tensions had been escalating. The friction between the general populous and the shifter community was at an all-time high. Not that things had ever been peachy for shifters in the rural areas of the south. There were a disproportionate amount of bible-thumping nutjobs living in our part of the state, who thought that a relationship with a shifter of any kind constituted bestiality.

  Lucy’s aunt and uncle fell squarely into that category, unfortunately. It was a big part of why she stayed away, I suspected. Carol and Mack had been furious to learn that Lucy had settled down and had a couple of kids with a were-bear in Virginia. Good for her, terrible for me. I’d gotten an earful of it while I’d still worked at Pete’s.

  I couldn’t pin the blame solely on religious discrimination and zoophobia. Strange events had been happening for a year or two. The most recent had been a string of suspicious deaths scattered across Virginia and the Carolinas. It just compounded the misery they’d experienced so far, with freak storms in the middle of an otherwise mild summer, and the spree killing that had taken place in the middle of a Roanoke mall.

  You’d think the unpleasantness would stay in the location where it had happened, but fear had spread like wildfire when the cops had suggested shifters of some sort or another might be involved. The tidy suburbanites had taken to the streets with their posters to protest the very existence of shifters in their neighborhood.

  My father was probably right. As the only known were-bear within a hundred miles of Fairchild, he’d probably received his fair share of harassment already. A malicious little part of me wished it had affected his bottom line more. If I wasn’t careful, I could end up getting hurt or harassed by an angry mob.

  “Why’d he have to come here?” I muttered, pushing to my feet. I started shuffling toward the door. I was hungry, and a bag of potato chips sounded great. I ought to probably acquiesce to my guilty conscience and choose salad again, but I doubted the lettuce would be any good at this point. It tended to wilt if you didn’t touch it for weeks on end.

  Dad reached the door first and held it open for me. Sammy Pullman lay sprawled on one of the peeling leather couches that furnished the front room. But for his unwelcome presence inside of it, I usually liked our little office.

  I didn’t bother to disguise my misery from Sammy as I trudged up the stairs to the little flat above the shop. He sat up and muttered something to my father which, again, I ignored. The sound cut off abruptly as I slammed the door behind me.

  I had no idea why Dad still tolerated Sammy, let alone called him a friend. From what I could remember, he’d always been like this. Drunk, lazy, and perpetually angry at the world. He’d been given every opportunity to do better and his unwillingness to change had cost him just about everything. Now, he was sleeping on the couch in our office more often than not.

  The stairs opened up onto the little kitchenette where I’d spent the majority of my time sulking in the past months. It was a studio-style living space, so it wasn’t exactly like I could cloister myself in my bedroom and have a proper mope-session complete with whiny music. I didn’t have a diary and it wasn’t as if I had a picture of him that I could burn. Damn it. What I did have was chocolate.

  I’d probably make myself fat at the rate I was going through brownies. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t stand to gain a few pounds, though. I’d finally broken into triple digits for the first time in my life, no doubt because of the summer’s chocolate and kalua bender.

  I crossed over to the stove and stretched, trying to reach the cabinets above. I finally had to scramble monkey-like onto the adjacent counter to reach my prize. Sometimes I really hated being short. I plunked the brownie mix and a large bowl down onto the counter and ripped into the box without prelude. After so many times baking this drecipe I knew the steps by heart.

  I was a hopeless case when it came to cooking anything more complicated than grilled cheese, but this I could handle. The simple, monotonous process calmed me somewhat. It was soothing to watch the ingredients run together to form a thick, chocolatey goo in the middle of the bowl. Disturbingly messy at first, but the more you worked at it, the better the batter looked, and the tastier it would turn out. Add heat and voila! Instant happiness.

  Maybe it was an apt metaphor for the problem I was facing. Everything looked like a huge mess from where I was standing – my best friend gone, my treasured business struggling, my father becoming increasingly more controlling. And I could only change two of those variables. But the fact was my circumstances were not going to change until I decided to change them.

  I set the timer and popped my brownies into the oven to bake. I licked my fingers clean of the chocolate thoughtfully as I mulled the revelation over. The night was still young, though, it probably didn’t seem that way to most. The days were so much darker as summer transitioned into fall. It was barely nine, and most of Fairchild would turn in early on Saturday so they could drag their sleepy asses to church in the morning and pray to God that no one noticed their raging hangovers. The ones who’d stay up all hours had better places to be than camping outside of a shop the next town over.

  In fact, I doubted there was anyone stubborn enough to camp outside Jay’s automotive shop in the dark and the cold, knowing full well that a were-bear, a grizzly bear, if the rumors were to be believed, could survive for longer in both.

  I leaned my back against the stove, a smile spreading across my face. I already had the perfect excuse, didn’t I? The warmth at my back seemed to creep into my insides as I cheerfully contemplated my next move.

  I could sneak out of the shop by climbing down the trellis. It would take fifteen minutes to walk from our shop to Pete’s Bar and Grill, where my motorcycle had been parked. That didn’t matter. It would give the brownies time to cool. The boss’s son,
Randy, had been borrowing my bike for the past week while his car was in our shop. I figured I owed him for being such a good sport when I’d quit without much notice. I’d take my spare key and borrow it back. If all went well, I’d have it back before midnight.

  I couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled out of me. This was the most cheerful I could remember feeling in months. The feeling was oddly addictive, after being so long absent.

  I’d turn up at Jay Hanlon’s front step with brownies in one hand and a big smile plastered all over my face. I was a southern girl, after all. Wasn’t it only polite to greet my neighbor?

  Chapter Two

  Jay

  It said something about the world I lived in these days that a knock at the door could make me nervous.

  Who knew what lay on the other side of the door? If I was lucky, it would be Jehovah’s witness. That was a testament to how bad things had gotten, that religious zealotry was the best I could hope for. Something was definitely rotten in the state of Tennessee.

  I risked a glance out of the peephole and my front step empty. Weird. Was this a prank? Would I find a bag of flaming dog crap on my front step, or was this something more insidious? What if it was a ploy to lure me out?

  This town, and all the little towns that dotted the countryside, were tiny. It was part of why I’d chosen this place. It was all but isolated, a far cry from the apartment in Queen’s that I’d shared with Valerie. I’d grown up in the sweltering heat of Arizona, and I liked the solitude. I wasn’t sure if it was the bear that had been born a part of me, or if I was naturally an introvert. I doubted I’d ever know for certain. After years, I’d traded the bustling streets for back country roads and the concrete jungle for thick copses of trees. None of it mattered. I was something approaching peaceful here.

  Not happy. Never happy. I hadn’t felt like that since Valerie had died. I twisted the ring apprehensively on my finger. Life wasn’t the same after she’d passed on. My bear was long absent, leaving me all alone with my grief. The core of who I was had been scooped out and buried six feet under, just like Valerie.