Page 10 of Bears Behaving Badly
“A giant electric razor,” David agreed. “Yeah.” There was ablip-blip!as he hit the unlock button, and then they were getting in for the twenty-minute ride to the hospital. Two of which Annette spent finishing her second Cinnabon and casting about for something to say. Anything to say.
The fact was, she didn’t know David very well. The real David, at least—she knew Dream David intimately. Real-World David wasn’t IPA but a special investigator who worked with Stables as well as Shifters. He was a notorious loner, with the looks of someone right out of central casting for “mountain hermit”: intimidating height and a tendency to stoop when speaking to someone shorter (which was almost everyone), bulky shoulders and long legs, a head of thick brown hair and a mouth that rarely smiled, deeply tanned skin and constant dark stubble blooming along his jawline. He favored flannels and denim—the latter matching his eye color almost exactly—with occasional daring forays into button-downs. His loafers looked a hundred years old. He spoke in as few words as possible, when he bothered using words at all.
But judging by the pile of Skittles in what was once an ashtray (How old was this car? Did they even make them with ashtrays anymore?) and the pink Starbursts in his cup holder, he had excellent taste in candy.
He saw her looking and said, “Help yourself.”
“No, thanks. I had Skittles for breakfast.”Do you want to go out sometime? Kick some life into these odd rumors? Wait, I’m not sure I want to reward Nadia’s insistence on an alternate reality by making itactualreality. Who knows what the woman might dream up next?
Not to mention she was getting ahead of herself. For all she knew, David Auberon was married. Or seeing someone. Or gay. Or gray-A. Or not into zaftig werebears. Before she could ponder further, something caught her eye and she leaned forward. “Good God, I just realized—it’s only the red ones.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s…”Nutty. Anal. Wasteful—where are the other flavors? Do you toss them? Give them away? Mail them to your enemies?None of which were appropriate to ask, so she coughed to cover her confusion. He motioned to the glove compartment and she hit the button, then stared as a torrent of red Jolly Ranchers fell out. “Um…”
“There’s Kleenex underneath all that. I’m pretty sure,” he added in a low mutter.
“Quick! What’s your favorite fruit?”
“Red?”
“GoodGod.”
“What?” He sounded defensive, which was the last emotion she wanted to elicit, but honestly.
“You’re the guy who dumps maple syrup into everything.”
“Not everything. Not fries. Well, once on fries,” he admitted. “More an accident than design.”
“Even for a werebear, your sweet tooth is ridiculous.”
“Well.” He seemed to consider that for a couple of seconds. “Yeah.”
She laughed; she couldn’t help it. Something about his bemused resignation struck her as funny. And to her surprise, he joined in, and she heard his deep, warm chuckle for the first time.
Damn. A girl could fall in love.
Not this one, though.
Too much to do.
* * *
“So, to sum up, you’re fine, you’re well on the road to recovery, your attempted murder was a misunderstanding, you wish your assailant all the best, and you really must be going. That about right?”
More than right, Annette thought. David had nailed it in fewer than ten seconds.
They’d bypassed the Stable floors, used their IDs to get past the security for the Shifter wing (David casting a longing look at the candy-stacked vending machines they passed), and were now watching Terry Lund limp back and forth as he tossed his few belongings and his discharge paperwork into a plastic bag. Which was tricky, since Caro had bitten off two of the fingers of his left hand. They’d found them at the scene, unsalvageable.
“This strikes me as a bad idea,” Annette observed.Cheating on your income tax bad. Jumping your unsuspecting colleague bad.
“I’m fine.” The balding redhead, who was short but powerfully built, like a fire hydrant in yesterday’s suit, flapped a (whole) hand at her. “I’ll be fine. I just want to put this nightmare behind me.”
Annette shook her head. “I’m astonished you’re not pressing charges.Astonished.”
“Hey, it’s tough out there for troubled kids.”
“She ate your fingers,” David pointed out, because was it possible Lund had forgotten? Or thought they might grow back? The man was behaving like he’d been mildly inconvenienced, not mauled and nearly killed. “And crushed a couple of bones in your foot. That’s a little more serious than ‘these cubs today.’”
