CONTENTS
About This Book
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Epilogue
Thanks
Bearly Hanging On
A Laid Bear Novel
Marina Maddix
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
Nothing can stand in the way of a werebear and his woman…not even crazed valley girls!
Take a trip in the wayback machine to 1986, when the hair was big and the shoulder pads were even bigger. Yuppie bear shifter Chet Pearce is used to living the high life in L.A. His days (and nights) are filled with hot fashion, hot parties and hot chicks — and not necessarily in that order. So when he’s sent to a podunk British Columbia island to be initiated into his ancestral clan, he bristles under their restrictive rules and lack of awesome parties.
Punk isn’t just a type of music to curvy Crystal Witherspoon, it’s an attitude — and she’s got plenty to spare. Shuttled off to her grandparents after getting mixed up with the wrong crowd, Crystal does her best to fit in with all the ‘normal’ people in Port Numas but her rebellious nature can’t be contained by neon headbands and acid-washed mini-skirts.
Sparks fly when Chet and Crystal first meet, and it doesn’t take long before they realize they’re meant for each other. But their families have other ideas. Will old prejudices force them apart or will their bond be strong enough for them to survive on their own?
Bearly Hanging On is part of the Laid Bear series from New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author Marina Maddix. It can be read on its own, but fans of the series will recognize Chet from Laid Bear and Laid Bear: The Kodiak Clan, both of which are available on Amazon:
Laid Bear
Laid Bear: The Kodiak Clan
CHAPTER ONE
British Columbia, 1986
“Ticket, please.” The rotund brown-skinned woman at the bottom of the ferry’s gangplank smiled, revealing a couple gaping holes where teeth should have been. A ripple of disgust wormed its way down Chet’s spine as he handed over his ticket and slid his Ray-Ban Wayfarers on top of his slicked-back sandy hair.
“First time to Port Numas?” she asked pleasantly as she tore off a stub, her cadence clipped in a distinctly Indian way.
“Totally. I’m from L.A.” He didn’t mean to sound like an asshole but even he could hear the snobbery as the words came out of his mouth.
“You don’t say,” she replied wryly, eying him up and down, a smirk tweaking her lips. She handed back his ticket and motioned him aboard.
What was she looking at? He swiped a hand across his carefully groomed two-day stubble but didn’t find any food crumbs. After what seemed like a month of travel but wasn’t even twelve hours yet, his custom-tailored Italian white linen pants and matching sport coat were still pristine. The massive shoulder pads hadn’t even wilted. His lavender t-shirt was still clean as were his white slip-on loafers — no socks, of course. He was totally stylin’.
Besides, who was she to judge? She was no fashion plate, with her dark blue, high-waisted jeans, Reeboks and strange t-shirt with a skull and crossbones made of salmon — Jolly Roger-style — that read ‘Spawn Till You Die’.
Dismissing the woman out of hand, Chet made his way down the main aisle of the small ferry and picked an empty row of three seats. Taking the window seat so he could check out the intensely green scenery, he stretched his long legs diagonally, taking up all the legroom in the row. He plunked his overnight bag on the seat next to him and left his Louis Vuitton suitcase next to the outside seat, effectively blocking the row so no one else could sit next to him.
Slipping his shades back in place, he took a look around the cabin. Locals filed aboard and his bear’s nose told him they were all human. A handful of hippie backpackers — were they still a thing? — passed by, their patchouli and B.O. stinking up the enclosed cabin worse than the fish smell coming from some of the locals.
Chet was astonished at the blatant rejection of style and fashion everyone displayed. Some were even wearing overalls and brown rubber boots, like they were living in some bygone era. It was 1986, for chrissakes! Get with the times, people!
He couldn’t help notice that many of the same people he was surveying from behind the safety of his sunglasses were doing the same to him. Some of them were even giggling. They’d probably never seen such a handsome specimen on their backwoods British Columbia island before. The girls he knew in L.A. — technically, Malibu — totally had the hots for him, gushing over his sandy hair, olive complexion, ripped abs and the pièce de résistance: his gold-flecked cinnamon-colored eyes.
If he had to pick a favorite feature, which would be difficult, his eyes would win. They could hypnotize a girl — werebear or human — in three seconds flat, if he tried. Even when he wasn’t trying, they worked some kind of magic that he would be eternally grateful for. Without putting too fine a point on it, Chet was never lonely on a Saturday night.
That was something his old human high school buddies could never figure out. Of course, none of them knew he was a werebear — his family totally flew under the radar unless they were at their club — and he wasn’t about to let them in on the secret. Los Angeles was a helluva town to get a foothold in and one small misstep could send you plummeting to your social death. If his family’s secret was discovered, the fall-out would suck.
Naturally, his parents didn’t approve of his dating human girls. They’d drilled into him from birth that he’d have to find a nice werebear girl to mate with, but they were too busy hobnobbing at their private werebear country club to pay much attention to Chet’s galavanting. Besides, he was nineteen and having a little fun. Big whoop. It wasn’t like he was going to marry any of these girls. As if!
Chet slouched into his seat, slipped a pair of headphones over his ears and pressed ‘play’ on his Walkman. The tape inside squealed for a split second before clunking to a stop. “Shit,” he mumbled, popping open the lid to pull out the jammed tape.
“Don’t yank on it, dufus!”
A girl about his age wearing a ripped Sex Pistols t-shirt scrabbled over his suitcase, heedless of the fact that her worn Doc Martens were scuffing his expensive luggage, and plopped her round butt into the aisle seat. The skin tight black and red plaid leggings she was poured into left little to the imagination, highlighting every curve and nook, but they weren't the only eye-catching part of her. The electric-blue spikes that poked out of her head every which way commanded the ultimate attention.
As she plucked the Walkman from Chet’s hands, his inner bear — which had been slumbering away during the seemingly interminable trip from California — was suddenly alert and very interested in her. Take a chill pill, big guy, he chided his bear. She’s cute but we’re out of her league. His bear let out a deep rumble of disapproval that left Chet squirming in his seat, but he wouldn’t let the damn brute bully him. He was in c
ontrol here, not the bear.
And he didn’t need any help handling this crazy punk girl either. She was just a human, after all, and he’d had enough practice charming — and brushing off — gushing groupies that this plump yet admittedly delicious little thing wouldn’t be a problem. Chet ignored his bear’s grumbling and tried to think of decidedly unsexy things while he looked at the scrumptious morsel next to him.
“Um, hi? What’re you doing?” he said, reaching for his tape player, but she held it just out of arm’s reach.
“I’m fixing your Walkman. Doy.”
Pulling a gnawed stub of a pencil from the hidden depths of one blue spike, she delicately poked at the innards of the machine, freeing the unraveled tape and winding it back into the cassette using the pencil. Tossing the Walkman back in his lap, she inspected the label on the tape.
“Huey Lewis? Seriously?”
Chet blushed and snatched the tape back. “What? They’re rad!”
Why was he so embarrassed? If anyone back home had dared to criticize his music selection, he would have laughed the guy off and stolen his girlfriend to teach him a lesson. And girls…they never criticized him. But this girl had him unnerved from her very first words to him and, frankly, he didn’t like it.
She wasn’t the type of girl he normally hung out with, of course, so that had to be the answer. Punk rockers didn’t roam the streets of Malibu like they did elsewhere in L.A. Even if they did, he wouldn’t be caught dead with one. Nothing could ruin your social standing like being seen with the wrong person.
Whatever. The silly blue-haired freakazoid could take a flying leap, for all he cared, and he hoped his well-practiced sniff of disdain would encourage her to do said leaping, despite how drawn he felt toward her physically.
Instead, she scrunched herself down in the hard orange plastic seat and slammed the soles of her heavy boots against the back of the seat in front of her. That earned him a glare from the seat’s occupant. Uncool! Here she was, causing trouble and he was getting shit for it.
The girl picked at the flaking black polish on her nails, chewing here and there and spitting the remnants into the aisle. People around them kept looking at him like it was somehow his fault that she sat down next to him, like they were together or something.
Fuck that noise. He’d just listen to his music for the rest of the trip and try to pretend she didn’t exist. It wouldn’t be easy because her scent was driving him crazy, but he had a feeling that talking to this girl would be dangerous. Of course, as he pressed play, she said something to him.
“Huh?” he asked, slipping a headphone from one ear.
“Which one are you?” she said again, a gleam in her kohl-rimmed, ice-blue eyes.
“Which what am I?”
“Crockett or Tubbs? Which one? I can never get ‘em straight.”
“I’ll have you know that Armani designed this suit long before Miami Vice was ever aired!” Now she had him defending his style, in addition to his music choices. How did she know just which buttons to push, and why did he care what she thought anyway? It was his bear’s fault. The beast was crushing on this girl and it was totally messing with his mojo.
She snickered. “It’s Tubbs, isn’t it?”
Crossing his arms, he turned with a huff to stare out the window.
“Aw, c’mon, Tubbs,” she wheedled. “I was only yankin’ your chain. Let’s start over. I’m Crystal.”
She shoved her hand in front of him but he ignored it and turned up the tape player while Huey sang about the power of love and other such nonsense. Maybe she had a point about his taste in music after all. After a long moment, her hand disappeared from his field of vision and he was left to watch the scenery pass by.
He’d never seen so much green. Green everywhere. Green water, green trees, green moss. Green, green, green. It was almost overwhelming. He was used to the blues and browns of Southern California — blue sky, brown hills, blue sea, brown smog — and this world where plant life not only thrived, but threatened to overrun anything in its path, was completely foreign to him.
The next few weeks were going to be a bummer. Summer in L.A. was bad to the bone, with a different party almost every night of the week. Gorgeous models and actresses — they all claimed to be models and actresses, even if they worked in a diner across town — prowled around half-naked, just looking for a sugar-daddy to give them their big break. Booze flowed freely and sometimes the nose candy made an appearance. He’d tried it once, but it sent his bear into a frenzy so he didn’t bother with it anymore. But he never felt more alive than when he was at a rockin’ party.
Yup, L.A. was righteous.
He suspected the same couldn’t be said for tiny little Port Numas, B.C. His brother had come up a few years earlier and reported that it was a very quiet, boring place — unless you liked to fish or hunt, which he didn’t. He didn’t hold out much hope for the nightlife, either, but surely there had to be kids his age who liked to party hearty. One way or the other, he’d find out soon enough.
The ferry finally bumped and jostled itself into its holding pen at Port Numas. Out of the corner of his eye, he tracked the punk girl clambering back over his suitcase and breathed a sigh of relief as her hips swayed down the aisled. His bear wasn’t as happy to see her go, and that disconnect between his feelings and his bear’s had him jumbled up inside.
“Later, Tubbs!” the girl called out as she shoved her way through the crowd gathering in the aisle.
Once again, every eye turned on him, as if he was somehow responsible for her. There was something about her, though. His cheeks burned as he gathered his bags and mumbled, “Bogus.”
CHAPTER TWO
Chet adjusted the rabbit ear antenna on the portable TV in his room for the umpteenth time, trying to tune in anything besides a local public access station. All he found was more snow, as usual. Mashing the power button off, he paced his room, bored out of his skull. It’d been two whole weeks since he’d watched anything decent. Back home, he always had MTV playing in the background but apparently Port Numas hadn’t caught on to this newfangled invention called ‘cable’.
Regardless, his uncle Max’s house wasn’t actually in Port Numas, so they couldn’t even get basic network channels. They were stuck ten miles into the forest, isolated from town and its human inhabitants. The only people he was allowed to hang out with were other werebears, and not even ones his own age.
“The initiants can’t mingle until after the ceremony, Chet,” Uncle Max reminded him when he complained about his impending death from sheer boredom. “Go play with your cousin.”
His cousin Sandy was fourteen going on eighteen. No self-respecting adult male, such as himself, would be caught dead hanging out with her. Besides, all she wanted to do was talk about The Coreys and tacky teenage trends. Armani and teenagers didn’t go well together.
The bear community on this small Canadian island was different from L.A. back home, they had a private club where they could socialize, but there were no restrictions on fraternizing with humans. That would be impossible, especially considering that so many of his kind were in the film industry. Of course, they kept their true nature secret.
But here it was completely opposite. The human community was aware of the werebears’ existence, but each group was kept completely separate. Aunt Clea admitted that they mixed at the grocery store and the ‘package store’ — it took him a while to riddle out that she meant a liquor store — but other than that, they pretty much stayed away from each other.
“They don’t want to socialize with us any more than we want to with them,” Aunt Clea explained on the ride to their place, smoothing her already perfectly smooth blond bob. “After all, who wants to go to dinner at their employer’s house? It would be uncomfortable for everyone.”
“All of the humans in town are your employees?”
She sniffed a delicate laugh. “Of course not, dear. But we — the Skookum Clan — are the biggest employers on this end
of the island. Most of the local loggers and fishermen are paid by one of us. They’re blue collar, we’re…not.”
He understood that hierarchy because it was much the same in California. Unfortunately, it didn’t help his boredom. The Skookum Clan was very small and the handful of weres his age were being kept away from each other until their initiation rite in a couple of weeks. Of course Uncle Max wouldn’t tell him when it was going to be — something about keeping him on his toes — so he was left trying to figure out what to do with his time.
“But I’m so bored,” he whined, dragging out the last word as long as possible. “Can’t I just go sightsee in town for a bit? I saw this little pizza place that looked pretty fresh—“
Uncle Max cut him off. “I’m afraid not, Chet. That’s a hangout for local kids. It’s not the place for our kind.”
Chet rolled his eyes and skulked back to his room, slamming the door behind him. It wasn’t fair! He was stuck out here in the boonies with no friends, no decent radio stations and no MTV.
“This sucks!”
A soft knock sounded as his door squeaked open a few inches. Sandy’s bright green eyes peeked around it. “You okay, Chet?”
“This all is just too lame,” he huffed, motioning her in. She might be an annoying kid, but at least she was on his side.
Sandy was petite for a female werebear, standing only five feet or so. Her style was an amusing mix of Madonna and Cyndi Lauper, and was no doubt the pinnacle of fashion up here, though in L.A. she would have been laughed off the street. Two baggy neon t-shirts were layered so when the sleeves were rolled up, the color underneath contrasted with the one on top. Even the tiny rubber bands on her braces were neon. A scrap of black lace tied her hair back enough to show off her gaudy dangling neon earrings. Her legs were clad in bright turquoise fishnet stockings and matching shorts, with little black ankle boots to finish off the look. At least she wasn’t wearing those stupid half-gloves.
Bearly Hanging On (A Werebear Shifter BBW Romance) (Laid Bear Book 3) Page 1