Page 28 of Coveted By the Bear

Caleb threw the truck into reverse, and we headed back up Main Street. “There isn’t any real point in trying to find you a job right now. The answer will be the same with everyone.”

I curled my knees to my chin and leaned up against the door. Caleb was quiet on the way back to my house, but it was the kind of silence that had weight. I looked at him exactly two times to blazing eyes and no response. He was completely lost in thought, enough to miss the turnoff for Dark Corner.

Was he disappointed with me? Had he realized I was a lost cause and that he was wasting his time trying to help me carve out a life in this town?

I kept my questions to myself for fear that he would confirm my racing suspicions. My rejection cup was full for the day.

Some time alone at the house would do wonders for recovery after this morning. I didn’t think he would work today. In fact, he would likely never come back to the house again. The change had been nice, but it was time for me to prepare for winter as I always did. It was time for me to recede into my woods—to become a part of them again.

Town wasn’t for me. Town would never be for me.

He didn’t say a word as his truck crept up the incline of the newly made dirt road to my house. As I shut the door behind me, he surprised me and leaned over to open the window.

“My family has dinner together every Sunday night at six o’clock,” he said.

I waited for the punch line.

“I’ll pick you up around five-thirty.”

My mouth was only able to form a wa sound before he pulled the truck around and headed back toward the gate. He didn’t look in his rearview mirror as he disappeared. I knew because I watched for him to. I waited for him to turn around and tell me he was just kidding, but as he was swallowed up by my woods, he gave no such satisfaction.

In one day’s time, I would be expected to share dinner in the McCreedy den. Most of the people in town would have sold their best boots for such an unlikely invitation, and here I was in full-blown panic mode and cursing under my breath at Caleb’s mile-wide stubborn streak.

I was starting to think he was trying to kill me. Clearly, Caleb’s plan was to maim me slowly with food and social engagements.

Chapter Ten

Caleb

Mira was what happened to Neverland when all the lost boys had gone but one. She clung to her ever-changing, never-changing woods because it was all she knew.

For the first time in my entire life, I wished my name meant more. She’d come out of the butcher shop with that disappointed and wholly unsurprised look on her face, and I had wished I could fix it with a single word. Not for the good of the town or even for the good of Mira, but for the good of me.

She would need a letter of recommendation from someone who meant more than I did to the town. She would need to be on my father’s good side, a tiny bird under his outstretched wing if she was to have a chance at getting a job.

Before, I had hated the difference in the way people had treated the McCreedys. But right now, in this moment, I wished I could use the name for more.

****

Mira

Hope was a hummingbird. Tiny in size and fragile by nature. Beautiful.

Flitting around a garden in search of an early morning drink, but my garden hadn’t had roses in years and hummingbirds hadn’t existed. A tiny weed had poked through the cracked and dry earth, and ever so slowly it had grown into a flower. And the hummingbirds had returned.

That’s what Caleb had done for me. I was beginning to hope for more from this life, and as scary as that was, it was also exciting.

Not on Sunday, though. Sunday, my hope was the lack of noise around the house when I awoke late in the morning meant Caleb had given up and I wouldn’t, in fact, be subjected to embarrassing myself in front of his father at dinner tonight.

Sadey showed up at four o’clock in the afternoon to flick my hummingbird right out of my garden.

“I thought I would come by and help you get ready,” she said.

“He’s still going through with this?” I couldn’t hide my disappointment if I tried.

Sadey laughed like I’d been joking. “Afraid so. He already told my dad you were coming. No turning back now.”

I showered and Sadey used a set of terrifying looking instruments to heat my hair into submission. I was pleasantly surprised at the effect when I looked at it in my old bedroom mirror. Instead of organized chaos around my face, it was shaped by soft and elongated waves of dark tresses that tickled my back and collar bones. She had insisted I wear the white sundress I loved so much and pinned the front of my hair to the side. She put makeup on my skin, not much, mind you, but enough to show there was effort made. My gray eyes looked even lighter in contrast with my dark hair and mascara, and my full lips held an attractive hue of deep glossy pink.