Page 46 of Bear's Rejected Love

“Yes, but I—”

“Can we talk when I get back? When we’ve both cooled down and thought this over?”

“Yes.” She inhaled sharply. “I guess that’s probably wise.”

“Don’t look at me like I’m not coming back.”

“Roan! For goodness sakes, I wasn’t looking at you like that.” He looked at her like he didn’t believe her. “You’re right. Okay. Tomorrow night, we’ll talk. We obviously aren’t going to get anywhere right now. I’ll see you when I pick up Honor. Noon, right?”

“Unless that doesn’t work anymore.”

“Yes, it works.”

“Okay.” He swallowed hard. Too hard. This bothered him. It bothered her. She just hoped that they hadn’t damaged their trust and their chances of making this work. She had a moment. He was wise enough to see that. He wasn’t sending her off angry or with bad feelings between them. He was just right. They both needed some time.

She lifted a hand and instead of doing something silly like waving, she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and offered a shaky smile that she tried to make real. “Okay, goodnight. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Chapter 19

Roan

What the hell was that in the road?

Roan slowed the truck down and drove up on it with caution. It looked to be a deer, but the thing was really… bloated for having just been hit. Who hit something that big and didn’t stop to drag it off the road so that it didn’t kill someone else? By the looks of it, it happened quite a while ago. A full day? The twisting, narrow two-lane road that eventually met up with the freeway to get into the city wasn’t traveled all that often, but it was summer. Peak tourist season. There was no way that animal could have been hit and left out that long.

He crawled to a stop and pulled over at the side of the road. He left the truck’s hazard lights on just in case anyone came down the road behind him. The deer was half in the road, so maybe it was to warn people coming the other way as well.

He slid out of the truck and walked over to the animal. It was a deer. A large buck, but the horns had been cut off at the base. Not like enough to make a mount of them. They’d been individually sawn off. Whoever hit the thing had what? Run it down and stolen its antlers? Didn’t make a lot of sense.

His skin prickled. The nape of his neck crawled. Something wasn’t right.

A bright white van, the kind that people used for hauling tools or used as refrigerated vehicles, approached from the other direction. Seeing him, it slowed and eventually stopped. The woman behind the wheel lifted a hand in a wave and smiled. Her bright red hair matched her lipstick and her dress. She looked all wrong to be driving a vehicle like that, but what did he know?

She unrolled her window. His gut clenched as he dragged the deer by the hind legs. The sun had done a real number on the poor beast. It would have been heavy anyway, but in death, it was just about immovable. Even as a large, muscular man, the weight of it made him sweat. He budged it a few inches before he had to stop and take a breath. Bloated like that, the animal should have been at least a little putrid, but there didn’t seem to be a smell. Nothing had come to pick away at it. There wasn’t even a single bird in sight, circling overhead, looking for an easy meal. Everything about it was all wrong.

“Is it going to be a while?” The question out the side window dripped with impatience.

He ground his teeth together. “Nope. Just a few minutes.”

“Alright, good. I’m in a bit of a hurry.”

He was about to retort back that a little help would make the task that much faster to accomplish, and besides that, it wasn’t his job to remove carcasses from the roadside he was just a thoughtful driver. But instead he kept on grinding his molars and kept pulling. The animal budged an inch at a time, like it was filled with bricks.

Jesus, it was so… unnatural.

“Could you move it a little bit faster? I can get around if you just pull it a few more feet.”

His head snapped up and he let the feet go. They slapped back onto the pavement. “Lady, if you’d just—”

He looked at her and stopped mid-sentence. Her blood red lips were curled in more of a smile than a sneer. It was all wrong. The deer. The road. That twisted smirk. He should have listened to what the animal in him was trying to tell him. What all the animals inside him were trying to say. What all his instincts screamed the second he drove up.

He ran.

It wasn’t fast enough.

A sharp prick jabbed him in the shoulder. He turned, weaving as he ran, his hand closing around the end of a dart.

What the hell?

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