by Layla Silver
Josh had been his name. He’d been a regular, too, one who Angie had seen leave with dozens of girls over the course of the few months since she first saw him. His reputation as a womanizer had kept her away since she didn’t find much attractive about those types, but she’d had one night of weakness.
Running water pulled Angie from the reverie, and she slapped the faucet off. Emma stirred when she moved, yawning and whining a little in her sleep. A smile curved the edges of Angie’s lips as she looked at her daughter’s sleeping face. Despite all the mistakes she’d made, how hard she’d worked to stay afloat since Emma’s birth, the little girl in her arms made all the suffering worth it.
But no matter how much she loved her daughter, she was thankful to have her sleeping in a separate room since their most recent move. The apartment wasn’t much of an upgrade otherwise. Angie changed Emma into her pajamas, tucked her into her crib, and stroked her daughter’s hair in the silence, stealing another moment to think about the little girl’s father.
Angie didn’t let herself think of him often, at least not on purpose. Emma reminded her of him often enough that she rarely had to. Still, she remembered the night they met like it had been yesterday, despite the alcohol that’d been thrumming through her system: Josh had been at the Blue Lagoon’s bar when she came in, swathed in the sapphire light the club was famous for. She hadn’t thought much of it when she saw him; he was almost always at the bar scouting out his next lover. But then he turned and gazed at her like she was the only woman in the world, those emerald-green eyes framed by wild, chocolate brown hair.
When he looked at her like that, Angie knew she wouldn’t be able to resist him; his reputation and those months of despising him didn’t matter. Still, she’d made him put in the effort of seducing her, teasing him until they started making out and grinding against each other on the dancefloor, and she’d finally dragged him to a hotel for the night.
When Angie left, Josh had given her his number, and she’d taken it to be polite. But she burned it when she got home, trying to push their fabulous night out of her head. Josh’s reputation wasn’t just that he was a womanizer, but that his one-night-stands drove women crazy trying to get in bed with him again after. She wouldn’t become one of those women.
A month later, she’d figured out that she was pregnant with no way to contact Josh. She’d even wounded her pride by asking her friends if they knew where he’d gone, even the ones Angie knew had been enamored with him in the past. But none of them had heard from him. He’d disappeared.
Angie brewed herself some orange tea and settled on the worn green couch with her laptop. Even though she was burnt out every day after bookkeeping for her job downtown, it wasn’t enough to pay the bills, not with the little one to care for, so she’d picked up some extra work a few weeks ago working as an online administrative assistant.
It didn’t pay much, but it was simple enough, and the hours were flexible. And she’d finally been able to start putting some cash away to save for Emma’s future.
The day’s stress dwindled under the reliable tapping of each keypress while she answered emails and sipped her tea. When her phone buzzed, Angie didn’t think much of it and grabbed it off the armrest while scanning a support ticket one of her co-workers had forwarded to her for a second opinion.
She glanced at her phone. A message from TK. Where’s my money?
“Shit.” Angie scowled and chewed on one of her nails, a bad habit that she’d always struggled with. Some of the silver paint got in her mouth. She stopped herself and played with strands of her hair instead, balancing her laptop on her leg while she thought of what to do.
TK was her mother’s loan shark, some asshole who thought bullying struggling, single mothers was a good use of his time. He’d done it to her mother for as long as she could remember, and after he’d taken everything from her, he moved on to harassing Angie. It didn’t matter how many times she blocked him, got a new number, or moved, he always found a way to contact her and keep harassing her, and nothing else she did would get him off her case.
Ignoring him would be ideal, but she knew from experience that he wouldn’t shut up until she at least said something. Her phone buzzed again with his latest message: I found out where you live. Don’t make me bang on your door.
Angie’s anxiety spiked. She and Emma had only lived in their current apartment for a few months. Usually, it took TK half a year or so to find her physical address. Him threatening to show up at her place was the last thing she needed right now.
She texted him back: Screw off. I don’t have any money.
Her tea was cold when she picked it up again, but she sipped it anyway, hoping to achieve some semblance of calm. Another buzz against her leg forced her to put the cup down and close her laptop. She wouldn’t be getting any more work done tonight.
TK’s message read: Not my problem. Give me something, or I’ll come over and take my pick.
“This guy has a lot of nerve …” Angie mumbled to herself. She sighed, tucked her laptop under her arm, and typed out a response on the way to bed: Don’t bother. There’s nothing here.
***
Emma giggled and waved her favorite bear toy, Beary, at the window as they pulled up at the daycare center. It was a robin’s egg blue building with a rectangular sign over the front reading: ‘Bear Cub Daycare’ and a large outdoor play area with a small slide, house, and other fun things for the children. There were a couple of kids outside playing already.
“Play! Play!” Emma said, hitting the window with Beary.
They pulled into a parking spot, and Emma was still waving her toy around when Angie opened the door to help her out of her car seat. She grabbed the bear’s ears to stop its movement.
“What’d I tell you yesterday, sweetheart? Beary doesn’t like getting waved around. He gets motion sickness!” Angie poked her daughter’s nose, and she started giggling again, this time keeping Beary tight against her chest.
Emma had been an angel that morning, a miracle considering the little demon she’d turned into the previous night. Angie just hoped it lasted the rest of the day. After getting frustrated with TK’s texts last night, Angie had gone to bed without finishing all her work, so she needed the time tonight to get more done.
“Sorry, Beary,” Emma said, rocking it in her arms as she was lifted out of the car.
Angie balanced Emma on her hip with one arm and was about to close the car door when she saw someone running toward her and waving.
“Angie!” the woman said. It was Rachel, one of the daycare’s new hires. “Monica was wondering if you could lend us your car seat for the day. We’re planning on taking the kids to the farm, and one of ours is broken, so we’re short.”
“Sure thing,” Angie said. She unbuckled the car seat while balancing Emma’s weight, then slipped the seat and the base out of the car and handed them to Rachel.
The young woman carried them inside ahead of them, and Angie placed Emma on her feet and held her hand to walk inside together. Emma had become more and more independent over the last few months, ever since they’d moved to be closer to Angie’s mother. She still threw tantrums every now and then, as she had last night, but she was growing up fast and got cranky if she wasn’t allowed to do things she knew how to do on her own.
Angie checked Emma in and kissed her on the forehead. “Be a good little bear today, got it?”
The little girl nodded gingerly, then ran off to play with the other kids in the main room, hopping right over to the big bear stuffed animals that gave the daycare its name. She crawled around on all fours with Beary tucked under her arm, growling and laughing with the other kids.
Sometimes all the bears made Angie uncomfortable. After her night of passion with Josh more than two years before, he’d revealed to her that he was a Bear shifter. Angie, of course, had thought he was just drunk and dismissed the thought until his arms shifted, his tanned skin growing thick brown fur. For some reason, Angie had found it
hot as hell, and it explained his unnatural possessiveness and animalistic nature in bed. He took her again right after.
Coming here reminded her of that night, of him and his clove and earthy scent. She’d tried bringing Emma to a dozen different places, all of them closer to her work, but Emma always refused to behave. There were days when she wouldn’t leave the car, promising to be a handful for the workers that day, and days where she seemed pleasant enough, but then would explode during playtime. Most daycarers had labeled her a problem child, likely because she was being raised in a single-parent household, and started charging Angie more to watch her.
She had never once misbehaved since coming to Bear Cub Daycare.
Angie sighed and left for her car, mentally preparing herself for another day at work. But when she turned the keys in the ignition, the engine sputtered. Her heart fell. She tried again, and again … She pressed her forehead into the steering wheel and sucked in a deep breath, trying not to hyperventilate. It would be fine. Sometimes the car did this. It was old and difficult; she probably was just trying to turn it on too fast after shutting it off.
Tapping on the window forced her to look up. One of the other mothers who dropped her son off at the daycare was motioning for her to roll down the window, so she did.
“Good morning, Jess,” Angie said, trying her best to sound happy.
The blonde smiled and dug into her purse. “Having some car troubles?”
“Looks like it. But I’m sure it’s fine. It does this sometimes.”
“You should get it looked at,” Jess said and handed Angie a business card through the window. “This new shop opened up on that ranch just outside of town not too long ago, and I’ve been there a few times already, you know how my car is.” She chuckled. “Anyway, they’re wonderful, quick, and their prices are good. You should check them out.”
“Thanks a bunch,” Angie said, and Jess left her alone. She shoved the card into her purse. Even if her car was fine now, it might not be for much longer. Paying for the repairs might be an issue, but she’d be worse off if she didn’t have a car.
It would have to wait until after work, though. She turned the key again, and it sputtered a bit before the engine thrummed to life. Angie sighed in relief and drove to work.
Chapter 3 – Josh
Mornings at the shop were often slow, so Josh usually let Greg and Pete work the back and repairs on their clients’ vehicles while he handled the front and paperwork. He sat at the front desk behind the computer, trying to reconcile their expense reports with their income for the month.
He typed everything into their associated boxes one by one into his spreadsheet, but even though he was the best with numbers of the six of them, it was still a process. Since the Elders in their old village had been old school, he, like the others, had grown up without constant access to computers and other technology. Josh liked computers, but the learning process was slow, and having to learn while managing the shop’s expenses was difficult and frustrating.
By the time he finished typing everything in, between helping customers and in the back when needed, it was late afternoon. Satisfied, he ran the functions he’d picked up off Google and sat back to watch it work its magic.
And got an error.
Josh stared at the screen for a moment, sighed, then ran his hands through his hair, kneading out the stress. He would have to do it all over again; a whole day’s worth of work wasted. Fixing it wouldn’t take as long as redoing it completely, at least. If he’d been smarter, he would have tested the function with a smaller string of numbers beforehand, but he’d been naïve enough to believe he could copy and paste it without any issues.
The door chimed, and Josh looked up to see a young woman with jet black hair, milky skin, and piercing blue eyes walk in.
He froze, eyes flitting across her body and face in a near panic. It was her. He was certain of it. Older, more mature looking, but her. Angie.
She hadn’t noticed him yet. Angie was sorting through her purse in search of something, biting her lip in annoyance. Josh’s body warmed up at the sight of her, vulnerable and still unaware of him. He struggled not to imagine her as she’d been on that night they’d spent together, all sexy curves and dreamy eyes. She was still just as gorgeous, a show-stopper, and Josh struggled to push those thoughts out of his mind.
What were the chances of her showing up here? At his work, after all these years?
“Damn,” she mumbled under her breath. She still hadn’t looked up and was just a few steps away from Josh, standing on the other side of the auto shop’s modest reception desk. “I must have forgotten it at home.”
“Hey, how are—” Josh started, but she looked up. Those blue eyes of hers pierced his core, and he completely lost his train of thought for a moment.
Angie’s mouth hung open for a few seconds, her surprise evident. But she clamped it shut and pursed her lips. “Um. Hi,” she said after a moment. “I’m having some trouble with my car, and was hoping someone could take a look at it.”
Her voice was awkward, and for some reason, she refused to look into his eyes. He wanted nothing more than for her to look at him, to be happy to see him, to ask him how he’d been. But something told him that she wasn’t going to do any of those things. Worse still, she seemed determined to pretend that she didn’t know him.
Josh nodded a couple of times too many, his shock of it being her—the woman he’d been stuck on for the last years—still ringing through him. The one whose blue eyes haunted him most days and nights.
“Of course,” he said after a few speechless moments. “I should—” He’d been about to grab one of the guys from the back for help like he did with most customers since he still needed to fix the expense report. Except that would have been stupid. He needed to spend time with her, figure out what had happened to her, where she’d gone. Or … something. How he was going to do that without scaring her off again or being too weird wasn’t something he’d figured out yet.
He cleared his mind. It’d come naturally, just like it had that night over two years ago. Right? “I’ll take a look. What’s wrong with it?” Grabbing some gloves, he moved from around the desk and moved toward the door.
When he opened it for her, she slipped through without looking at him, fidgeting with the strap of her purse. “It doesn’t always start. It sputters and sometimes needs a few attempts before it’ll turn on. And sometimes it won’t start at all if I’ve turned it off and try to start it again too quickly.”
Josh nodded as he followed her through the small gravel lot. There were only a couple of vehicles parked out front, as they’d worked through most of the midday rush. Kyle was helping Greg and Pete with repairs. On the far side was the only vehicle Josh didn’t recognize: an old Honda Civic with peeling gray paint. From the looks of it, it had to be a late 1990s model, which could be a problem depending on what needed fixing. But for the most part, Civics were easy to fix and cheap to maintain.
“It’s probably something with the battery or wiring,” Josh said, thinking out loud.
The woman glanced over her shoulder. “Is that going to be expensive to fix?”
“If that’s the problem, it shouldn’t be,” he said. He wanted to say more than that, to bring on a real conversation, but he wasn’t sure how—interacting with her as a customer was difficult enough.
“Do you usually do self-maintenance, or do you bring it to a shop?” he said.
“A bit of both, I guess, but I avoid shops and usually leave the car to do its thing.”
Josh smiled nervously. “Not much of a car girl, I take it?”
She shook her head.
They stopped next to the Civic, and Josh slipped on his gloves. Angie dangled the keys on her fingers, at her side, like she’d planned on handing them to him but didn’t trust him enough to do it. Josh didn’t need them to open the hood, though, and he hefted it up and propped it open, giving it a habitual quick scan to check for any obvious problems. While he
was looking, he decided to risk it and strike up a conversation.
“You’re Angie, right?” Josh said. He glanced up from the car to chance a glimpse at her face. She pursed her lips.
“I’m surprised you remembered, Josh,” she said, adding emphasis to his name as if to make a point.
His heart skipped a beat. So she’d remembered his name. But from the way she said it, it was clear enough that she was upset. Had he done something that night to upset her? Was she mad that he never contacted her? Josh sure had tried, but she’d disappeared.
Or had he not looked hard enough?
“I deserve that,” he said.
He’d made plenty of mistakes, sure, but Josh had never tried to hide who he’d been back when they met. Even so, he couldn’t help but wonder why Angie had never called him. Their night together had been nothing short of amazing. And before he’d left, he’d made sure she got his number. A sinking feeling settled in Josh’s stomach. Was it because he’d told her he was a Bear? His skin prickled, and his Bear was beating against his ribs.
Josh looked at the car again to keep himself distracted. The belts were a little old, but nothing to worry about. Besides a little bit of corrosion on the battery posts, there didn’t seem to be anything immediately wrong under the hood.
Finally, she sighed. “Two years, huh? I didn’t think we’d bump into each other after all this time. Fancy the luck.”
She sounded sarcastic, but damn, it was good to hear her voice. After so long of relying on memory alone, her voice had started fading in his head, and before long, he might not have been able to hear her at all. But now, with her voice back in his head, he could go back to hearing the musical sound of it taunting him in his dream, fantasizing about—except that he wanted much more than a memory or a fantasy. He wanted the real thing.