Page 41 of Bears Behaving Badly
“Teasing you.”
“I’m not sure there’s a difference.”
He looked at her dead-on. “If I disliked you, it’d be mockery.”
“Oh.”
Silence fell with an almost audible thud, which made no sense but there it was. She cast about for something to say that wasn’t anything along the lines ofDo you like me, or do you LIKE-like me?Argh. Death first.
David broke the silence (whew!) with a forced cough. “Not trying to tell you how to do your job or whether your family’s formidable, but are you sure leaving Caro with your foster mom is safe?”
“Problem?”
“I mean…we’re pretty sure Caro only attacked Lund out of self-defense and wouldn’t hurt anyone else without major provocation, but… ‘Pretty sure’ isn’t a hundred percent.”
“David, we can’t expect Caro to trust us if we won’t trust her. And don’t worry. Mama Mac is a lot more formidable than she looks. There’s more than one person walking around with scars because they were dumb enough to mess with her.”
“Fair enough.” He sighed. “That poor kid. Could you believe that list of chores?”
“I memorized that list,” she replied grimly. “And her notes are going right into her file. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t believe chores are proof of abuse or neglect. I mowed plenty of lawns and washed plenty of dishes—that was one of Mama Mac’s rules. ‘Everyone contributes to keeping our home nice.’
“But the fact that Caro instantly assumed she would be put to work, and it would be anything from making beds to mulching a quarter of an acre possibly followed by sleeping in a damp basement… I found that telling.”
“Not gonna lie, now I kind of want to watch her trim a hedge into a rabbit with a balloon belly.”
Annette nearly choked. “Stop it! We’re headed back into the belly of the…balloon beast. We need a plan.”
“The plan is we tell everyone we’ve got Caro safe, then go see who shows up to kill her. And stop them.”
“That is a terrible plan.”
“Yep.”
“Also our only plan.”
“Yep.”
“Which, in itself, is terrible.”
“Yep-yep-yep.”
Television reallydidmake heroically going rogue to champion the underdog look easy. Or at least organized. Because Annette had lived or worked within the same institution for all of her adult life and half of her childhood, standing on the outside was as alien as turning down lunch. It was wrong and dumb and led to irritability. The lack of paperwork alone was disorienting.
But here they were, back where the nightmare might have started for Caro. Here was the glove compartment that held a quart of Skittles and a thousand rubber gloves. Here was the parking ramp where someone tried to kill her, David, and Dev. Or just Dev. (Which was worse.)
Here was the elevator from which she stepped into madness: Nadia, the audaciously awful Oz Adway, her boss—
Boss.
“Start at the top?” she suggested while the elevator went to the bottom. “I’ve got the perfect icebreaker.”
* * *
“Whoa.Whoa.” Oz was in the wrong place at the wrong time again—in this case, in her path to the boss’s office. “I need to talk to you, Annette. Right now.”
“Move or be moved,” she growled.
He stayed planted, because he thought his good looks and her forbearance would protect him from unpleasant scenes and broken fingers. Not that he wasthatpleasing to the eye. If she ever did something so crass as to rate men on a numbered scale, Oz Adway would get a five. Well. Maybe a six. Some women didn’t mind wealthy, lanky jackasses with swimmers’ shoulders and green eyes and a perma-smirk. “I started going over the account numbers Nadia sent—”
