Page 24 of Coveted By the Bear

I rested my head against the back of the chair and waited.

“Becca has liked him for a long time. I mean really liked him. But Caleb hasn’t ever formed an attachment to a girl. He took her out a few times last year but moved on and seemed unaffected.” She turned her soft green gaze to me. “I haven’t ever quite figured him out. I’ll tell you two things, and maybe I’m in the wrong for doing so, but I’ll give my two cents anyway. First, I hope that someday I have a man look at me the way Caleb looked at you in the kitchen this morning. But,” she warned, “Caleb’s different. You have to be careful with that one, Mira. I love my brother, but he isn’t like other people. He doesn’t need companionship like the rest of us. He is a good man and a hard worker, but I haven’t actually seen him really let anyone in. Ever.”

He didn’t sound so different to me. He sounded like me. I understood the loneliness that came along with pushing others away.

“Also, Becca is a bunion. I’m glad she isn’t my sister-in-law,” Sadey said through a mischievous grin.

The idea of Caleb and marriage startled me. “How old is he?” I asked, suddenly feeling very young.

“Twenty-three goin’ on thirty-five. If any of us has a chance of taking over Dad’s business, it’s him. He has the head and the work ethic for it.”

It was approaching lunchtime, and I was searching for something to do with Sadey to keep her from getting bored. I guessed the electrical work would take all day. “You want to take lunch out to the boys?” I asked.

“Sounds good. How will we find them though? Your place is pretty big.”

“I have a couple of horses out back. Do you ride?”

She bit her lip. “I have before, but I wasn’t very good at it. Horses kind of scare me.” Her admission gave her brownie points in my book.

“You don’t have to be afraid of these horses. They are older than dirt and sweeter than honey.”

“Let’s do it,” she said with determination. “I could use an adventure. Wait. What about the bears up here?”

I waved my hand nonchalantly. Her brother was the only bear around here, and I doubted he was any danger to her right now. “Nah, you don’t have to worry about them. The one that got Caleb is dead, and they are pretty territorial. Plus they aren’t native to Texas. There won’t be any more grizzlies around these parts.” I hoped it was true. “I’ll bring a rifle if it’ll make you feel better, though.”

“Okay,” Sadey said. Her green eyes held an attractive combination of uncertainty and excitement.

It was still early in the day so we took our time making sandwiches and saddling the horses. I had Sadey brush out Blue before she attempted the blanket and saddle. The extra time primping him seemed to make her feel more comfortable. Probably because he stood there like a brick with his back hoof propped up and resting, like he would either fall asleep or die on her at any moment. It was hard to be intimidated by a horse that acted as if it had taken a dose of moose tranquilizers instead of alfalfa cubes for breakfast.

Bobby was more of an ornery old cuss, but I liked that about him. Every time he bit at me or tried to rub me off on a tree, I marveled at the effort he put into ridding himself of riders. His habits hadn’t changed with old age, and I appreciated his stubbornness. I liked to think that, like my old rusty truck, no one could start him but me.

The ride was comfortable and the conversation easy, but I couldn’t take credit for that. Sadey could probably charm a tree into discussion. She told me about school, about her friends, and what she did for fun. She talked about some of the town’s upcoming social events. She had a knack for telling stories, and they kept me enraptured. That and the lives of the town’s residents were an enigma that I had never managed to solve, but still wanted to. Hearing tales of the town from someone who inhabited the sweet candy center of it made me like the people there. Almost.

“I see them,” Sadey said, pointing excitedly through the woods to the front line of my property. She sat up proudly and grinned.

“Good eye, Sadey,” I said as I squinted to catch the movement she had seen.

The boys were huddled near a wooden post that held up power lines off Dark Corner Road. Caleb saw us first, and his eyes landed on my new shorter hair. I couldn’t read his expression, and I hadn’t looked at it in the mirror so I grew self-conscious. Back went my hair into a ponytail as fast as my nimble fingers could manage. I wished I could hide, but we had already been spotted, and Sadey was waving wildly.

“We brought lunch,” she sang as our horses picked their way around mesquite brush and close enough for them to hear.

“Good,” Brian grumbled over his shoulder. “Saves us a hike back up to the house.”

As he approached Bobby and Blue, Caleb’s boot prints kicked up little clouds of dry sand. He slipped his fingers into their halters and held them while Sadey and I dismounted. Bobby flattened his ears and curled his lips back to nip at Caleb, but he jerked the horse’s head down with a stout yank on the reins, and Bobby was wise enough not to try it again. I did my best to hide my smile. I couldn’t help myself. Bobby’s naughty antics had always entertained me.

“Don’t encourage him,” Caleb chastised me, but the corners of his lips had turned up slightly, and I waited for a remorse that didn’t come.

After the horses were tied, Sadey and I unpacked the saddle bags and laid out an old blanket. The blanket had belonged to my grandfather and was made of a patchwork of old jeans and shirts he and his brothers had outworn. If it was anything at all, it was unique.

“This should take us a few more hours, but it won’t be longer than that,” Brian said around a bite of turkey sandwich. “Looks like someone tried to patch you in before me. I don’t think they knew what they were doing, but they did some of the work for us. Was it your uncle?”

I shrugged. I had stopped trying to guess at Uncle Brady’s actions after the first week of living with the man. I finished chewing and swallowed an enormous bite to find my three lunch mates all looking at me, waiting for an answer. Human conversation would probably never come easy for me.

“Oh. I’m not sure. I never saw him messing with any of it, but then again I didn’t spend a lot of time with him during the day. He liked to stay away from the house. Or away from me.”

I had answered honestly, but my response seemed to make them uncomfortable. I didn’t offer any more answers for the remainder of our short lunch. It had never been my intention to make them squirm. I wished they would just learn their lesson and stop asking questions. There were no happy or witty stories in my repertoire like Sadey had. I couldn’t, for the life of me, even remember a happy memory other than the day I spent with Caleb after the attack, and that had been traumatizing and bloody.

It was hard leaving Caleb to his work. I worked slowly to pack up our trash and blanket, and my gaze slid to study his silhouette as he dusted off his pants and pulled an old baseball cap over his blond hair. Brian watched me, and the unsolicited attention made it easier to focus on getting Sadey back into the saddle.