Page 84 of Bears Behaving Badly
“You okay?” David asked, tracing a finger over the darkest hickey on her neck, which sounded like the title of a romance novel.3
“Fine. You?”
“Everything’s good on my end.”
“Good. That’s…good.”Oh my God. Reduced to single syllables. The shame of it.
David cleared his throat, which seemed to be his way of announcing “I would like to contribute to the conversation now.” Either that or he was coming down with something viral. “Listen, about—”
“If you say ‘about last night,’ I’ll get to mark off another X on my romance-cliché bingo card.”
“Regarding the events of the past evening…”
She snickered. “Nice. Listen, I’d just like to focus on the case. All right? That’s got to be our priority.”
“Okay.” His smile faded as if someone had drawn a shade over his expression. “No problem.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” He nodded. “The kids come first.”
“Right! They absolutely do. So let’s get back to it. Please tell me that the bacon I’m smelling isn’t a hallucination.”
“What bacon?” he replied, and smirked at her gasp of horror.
Which was followed by another gasp of horror when Annette walked into Jim and Jenn’s kitchen to see Oz Adway gently fending off Jenn’s attempts to smother him with a wet washcloth, most likely because his nose was streaming blood all over her sink.
“Well, hiya,” he said, his usual enthusiastic greeting muted by a good 60 percent.
“GoodGod! What happened? Your clothes are—”
“Don’t talk about it,” he groaned, and she knew why. Oz’s bespoke navy-blue suit and crisp white dress shirt were shredded and bloodstained. He was missing a shoe, and the exposed black dress sock looked like it was on its last legs (so to speak). His monthly clothing budget was larger than her car payment. This clearly
“I’ve worn this shirt once. Once!”
wounded him deeply. Not to mention the actual wounds; aside from the nose, he was a mess of contusions, and there was a gash just over his ear that might need a stitch or two.
“What happened?” she cried. “Please tell me you were doing something stupid on your own—”
“No promises.”
“—and this wasnota consequence of our case.”
“Again, no promises… Argh, thank you, stop it now.” Oz all but yanked the washcloth from Jenn. “Look, I’ll just keep the rag, okay? Bleeding’s stopped. Well, mostly.”
“You said you got hit by a car!” Jenn protested. “You might have a concussion!”
“Who cares? Thank God it was me and not my car.”
“You’re definitely concussed.”
“He’s not concussed,” Annette interjected. “He just has a lot of feelings about his car.” To Oz: “What happened?”
She’d known Oz was returning for them. He’d appointed himself their chauffeur, God knew why, and not only dropped them off at Jenn and Jim’s but also promised to return the next morning.
“I got a message from my contact at Citigroup—I’d talked to him about shell corporations. At least, I thought it was from him. Figured I’d meet with him, then come get you. But only one of those things happened.”
“Let me guess,” David said. He’d come up silently behind Annette and laid a hand on her waist, listening, then moved it before anyone could see. Kind of like how she’d held his hand during Oz’s shell corporation lecture. She’d let go before David could get the wrong idea. Because that’s what this week was: day after day of wrong ideas. “Nondescript black SUV with blacked-out windows, and you didn’t get the plate number.”
