Page 22 of Bear's Rejected Love

Tabitha

Greenacre’s diner wasn’t like the ones in the outside world. It was funny how she’d started dividing things that way too—her old life, and her new. All the former places she’d waitressed involve ass grabbing and pinching or other various groping. Not in Greenacre. Every single person was respectful. It was a better, cleaner, brighter, sweeter place than her own clan, even.

The people of Greenacre had tabs they put their orders on, whether they were eating in or taking out. Elowen was a good woman, mated to a shifter who had come from the neighboring clan to Greenacre, but lived there now. Clay was big and burly and kind of scary looking, but Tabitha only thought so the first time she saw him. He only looked that way. He wasn’t afraid to melt and fawn all over his mate, and their kids. They had one child together and two that Elowen had from a previous marriage. They were all wonderful.

Carl, the middle-aged man who helped out with cooking, and Daniel, a younger late twenties guy who did the food prep, the dishes, and occasionally helped cook if they were slammed, were also super nice. Having non-surly coworkers and a good boss was about as foreign to Tabitha as the moon was.

The truth was, before she’d applied for the job, it was pretty obvious that Elowen, Carl, and Daniel had things handled. They didn’t need a waitress, parttime or otherwise. Sam must have talked Elowen into it, but she wasn’t annoyed with it. She worked with it instead, adapting so that instead of ordering at the counter, people now sat down at booths and tables and were brought a menu. They didn’t pick up their food cafeteria style when it was ready. It was brought to them.

This shouldn’t have given Tabitha any great sense of purpose, but it made her feel useful. She helped in the kitchen too, and cleaned like a maniac around the entire diner, whenever there was downtime.

She received a small amount of cash every month—probably like everyone in Greenacre did—but all her needs were met. Groceries were either delivered if she made a list or grown locally in Greenacre’s gardens. The town had a butcher for meat. They made their own preserves. They cut their own firewood, but also cut trees and milled them to make lumber for building and furniture. The town had a series of wells and out in the woods, more than one stream flowed freely. She didn’t pay any bills for the house. She had her old car still, and she knew if it ever needed fixing, all she had to do was ask and there would be someone to see to it. If she needed to take it to the city, it would be paid for. If she needed new clothing and wanted to shop for it herself, there was a store on main street, and Glendy, the mate of Thaddius the gardener, could order just about anything in, also on a tab that she never had to actually pick up and pay.

The magic about Greenacre was that it was what everyone thought a cult, or a commune would be like, but it actually worked. No one appeared to take advantage of the generosity. This wasn’t a group of people trying to make a go of it because they didn’t want to work a nine to five or because of an extreme set of values, or because it was trendy to get away from society. This was a group of people who were the other. They’d been persecuted. Killed. Their ancestors came here and made this spot a haven for their future children so that they could continue to survive. Taking more than their lot wasn’t just frowned on. The people of Greenacre were raised from birth to know what it was to work, to share, to care about each other, but to stick together as a clan in order to ensure their survival.

That didn’t mean they couldn’t go out into the world. Carl told her about many of the young shifters leaving and going to college, or just leaving to see the world and coming back years later. No one was banished, but no one needed to be banished. At least, as close as it got was the apparent drama the year before, when a previous clan alpha ran off in the middle of the night because decades earlier he’d sold clan lands to keep his own secrets. No one had known that their lands were no longer theirs—until Domhnall, the man who became Silver’s mate, had come to collect. He was a billionaire land mogul who wanted to develop the town. He knew nothing about people being bears.

He knew nothing about himself being one of those very shifters before he’d come.

He’d fallen in love and that waylaid his plans for Greenacre’s destruction. Finding out he was also a shifter helped him put aside his bad feelings and now he was all about helping the clan in any way he could. He and Silver were raising their family in Greenacre. He was invested in its future.

Tabitha was musing over how lucky she was to be a part of Greenacre as she helped fill a large order to go to the clinic. On Fridays, Josephine and Trace ordered take out for their staff, which generally included Tavish and Kier, who worked there. They always ordered extra to have for dinner when their five kids were home from school, but Tabitha knew that half the town’s youth liked to stop in there as well. She heard the clinic was kind of a magical place. Literally. She wasn’t even sure what that was all about, but it made her smile as she put together the massive food order.

She’d just finished bagging up the three dozen chocolate chip cookies in a paper bag when the bell over the front door jingled.

It was lunch time on a Friday and any other diner would be slammed, but the trickle into the place was slower during the day and picked up more when the kids got out of school. Sometimes they wanted to stop by for a cookie or a treat. Other times, they came with their families for dinner.

All in all, Elowen told her the place probably didn’t even need a diner, but it was nice to be able to treat yourself and not to have to cook all the time. Sam and Lily thought it was important for the town, also, to maintain appearances. They hid in plain sight. There hadn’t been a single tourist who trickled in yet, while she’d been working at the diner, but it was still fairly early in the season.

Summer, apparently, was much busier and they all needed to bring their I’m not actually secretly a bear or anything else game when outsiders wandered in.

Since she was first and foremost a waitress, Tabitha shot Elowen, Carl, and Daniel a big smile. “I’ll be right back. I’m just going to see that whoever that is gets seated and gets a menu.”

“For sure. There’s no rush getting back here. The order’s almost done.”

“Kier’s coming for it too. We just have to call, and they’re not hungry enough to eat their own arms or anything.” Carl’s hands flew, assembling sandwiches anyway.

Tabitha rushed back out front, laughing to herself at that mental imagery. Her soft chuckle died in her throat when she saw who it was just inside the front door, standing frozen like a statue with a baby in his arms.

A painfully handsome statue. A man who was so undeniably lovely that she’d once gone straight ahead and happily plunged into ruin with him.

“Tabitha.” Roan swallowed thickly and bounced Honor in his arms. He was wearing an adorable little set of overalls and a striped shirt. The baby. Not Roan. Roan was all hard planes in a pair of jeans and a long sleeve black Henley. “I was… I wanted to… apologize.”

She swept a menu off the stack at the front counter and shook her head. The diner might be called a diner, but it wasn’t fifties style. More like last renovated twenty years ago with white ceiling tiles, industrial carpet, and typical small town eighties looking booths, tables, and chairs. Everything was in great condition though, and clean as it came. It was just about old fashioned enough to be cool again, but it was never going to be red counters, chrome stools, juke boxes, milkshake machines, and other awesome fifties diner vibes.

“Do you want to follow me? You can sit at a booth if that’s easier? I can get Honor a highchair.”

“I didn’t really come for lunch. I just- wanted to see if you could take a fifteen-minute break.”

She forced her smile back until it felt almost real. “You don’t need to apologize to me, Roan. I want to be past that. Since you’re here, though, don’t run off. Sit down, have a snack at least. I can find you something, if you like.”

He looked unsure, but he also looked… different.

He’d always be unreasonably beautiful, but he’d lost the sharpness in his gaze, in his posture, in his voice. It was like he no longer thought the world would be coming at him with a knife, ready for a middle of the night back-alley fight to the death.

“I don’t need anything.” He looked around the empty diner then back at her, his posture relaxing. He patted the baby’s back, jiggling him the way he liked. Honor looked so serious and somber, but he cracked a smile and waved his hands when he figured out the place was okay. “I mean… he paused and shrugged his big shoulders. “It’s hard to try and be not a dick when you’re used to being a dick,” he remembered Honor suddenly and winced. “It’s hard to have a good attitude when the bad one is entrenched in you.”

Tabitha laughed at his about face, “I don’t think you have to worry about Honor picking up bad words just yet. Come on, sit down, what about a sippy cup with milk for him? I can heat it up. I have toast or a cookie, if that’s okay for him?”

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