by Amy Star
“Because he hasn’t forgotten that that’s the way it used to be done. And to some people of that generation, old things still mean something.”
“Well, this old thing is just stupid,” Sherry huffed.
“Sherry…!” Andrea said, chiding, almost scolding.
“Well, I’m sorry, Mom,” Sherry maintained, “but in this day and age, it is stupid. It’s like hillbillies and shotgun weddings. People don’t do things like that now. I know Jaxon’s parents aren’t on board with this business.”
“I’m sure they’re not,” Vic replied. “I’m sure they’ve tried to talk him out of insisting on this. It’s not fair to you or Jaxon, putting this kind of expectation on you just because of the way you were when you were teenagers.”
“Well then, what about our lawyers?” Sherry asked. “What Humbert is doing, holding your business with us over our heads, trying to get Jaxon and me to fall in line and threatening to pull away his business if we don’t—Daddy, there’s a word for what he’s doing, you know that.”
“The fact that he’s putting it in his will,” Vic said, “seems to make it a bit of a grey area, legally. Yes, it can be seen as a kind of extortion…”
“Flat-out blackmail!” Sherry interjected testily.
Her father continued: “It can be seen as a kind of extortion, yes. But putting it in his will… A person’s last wishes at death are considered binding. Everyone is expected to abide by a will. Even in a situation like this. He’s dying with a controlling interest in the business. When he dies, the will states, the terms of the will go on in perpetuity. If you and Jaxon don’t marry, the Michaels’ lumber company is forbidden to go on doing business with us.”
“Why are you being so calm about this?” Sherry asked, frowning fiercely. “He’s blackmailing you too!”
“Because, sweetheart,” Vic explained, “the terms of the will are that you and Jaxon simply have to get married to continue our business relationship. They don’t have any bearing on what anyone does next. You were right about what you said to Jaxon last night. You don’t have to stay married. A coerced marriage can be declared null and void, and this marriage would certainly be coerced. You can turn right around and have the whole thing undone. Or you can stay married until Humbert dies and have it undone. This doesn’t have to be permanent.”
“But why do it at all? It’s so pointless!” Sherry protested.
Very sincerely, her mother answered, “Because, honey, he’s dying.”
Sherry started to protest further, “But Mom…”
“Honey, no,” Angela continued. “Humbert is old, and he’s not long for this world. And no matter how you prepare yourself for it, it’s not easy to face that. I’m sure he’s looking back on his whole life and everything he’s done, and everything he ever wanted to do and what he wanted it all to mean, and he’s thinking he wants this one last thing to make it all the way it ought to be. Everyone wants his life to mean something. I think Humbert wants this because he thinks it means something.”
Sherry sighed wearily in spite of the early hour of the day. “So, what does it mean? If this really means to Humbert what he says it does, he must know we’d just be going through the motions. It’d be pretending. Does he really want the last thing he does with his life to be just something that we can make go away like it didn’t even happen? This is an outdated, useless thing, and nobody should have to go to all the trouble it’d take to do it. People scrapped this thing a long time ago, and it shouldn’t be brought back now.”
In an understanding tone, Angela simply said, “Well, his life is ending. Sometimes when your life is ending, you look back at the things you thought were important in your life, and you see them all differently. And when you see things differently, you can let go. But Humbert still thinks this is something that matters. He can’t let go.”
“Mom,” Sherry said, “I understand he’s dying, and I always liked him even when I thought he was crazy, and he’s been good to us. And I understand it’s his last wish. But Mom, I can’t just put my life on hold because of an old bear’s dying wish. I had people taking an interest in me that last semester. I had recruiters coming around, headhunters talking to me. I looked at some of the jobs I could have, and the kinds of things I could be doing—and the kinds of money I could be making. I’m not ready to get married. I’m just not. Not ‘til I have a life.”
“Like we said, Sherry, no one expects you to stay in this marriage,” said Vic. “You and Jaxon can put an end to it as fast as you say the vows. I’ll even be happy to pay for it; it’s one of the least expensive things you can do, legally. I am the father of the bride, after all. Think of your annulment as a wedding present.”
“And what if Jaxon and I don’t do it at all?” Sherry asked. “What if we both just point-blank refuse to be marched down the aisle like a couple of puppets and act out this pointless, meaningless thing? What if we decide we’re not Humbert’s toys, and he doesn’t get to play with us however he likes? You’d lose business and have to pay more money to make up for it. Would you be hurt if I just plain said no? Would you be mad at me if I just refused to do it and had you lose all that money?”
There was a moment of silence at the table as Sherry studied her parents’ reactions to the question, and Andrea and Vic looked at one another. Finally, Vic spoke. “If you didn’t marry Jaxon, you’re right. Our business would take a bit of a bath. We’d have the trouble of finding another supplier we could afford. We’d have the trouble of probably not having the same deal we have with the Michaelses and having to pay more for materials. Some of our employees who count on us might even get hurt. All that is true, yes. But… The business will go on. We might face a lean time. We might have to let some people go for a while, and that means some other families in town might take a hit. But in the long run, we can probably make up for it. And the business will bounce back.
Dabbing at his mouth a bit with a cloth napkin, Vic stood up and walked down the table towards Sherry. “In the meantime, I have a daughter. Just one daughter. The only child I have. And she’s beautiful and smart and ambitious and wants to be out in the world and doing things with her life. And I never want to see anything hurt my daughter, even a little. Or stand in her way, even for a little while. Or break her heart. My daughter, no matter how old she gets and no matter what she does, is my little girl. Always. Always.” Reaching Sherry’s side, he leaned over and kissed the top of her head. And like a little girl, Sherry reached out and wrapped her arms around her Daddy and held him tightly and fiercely.
“Whatever you decide you’re going to do, we are going to be all right,” said Vic. “And I will still love my little girl.”
And Vic McCabe stood up straight again, letting Sherry’s arms slip away, and he ruffled the hair atop her head and smiled down at her in the way that only a father can smile at his daughter. And he excused himself and left the dining room.
After Vic was gone, Andrea said to Sherry, “You know, there is one thing you ought to do before anything is final. You should go to Humbert yourself. Talk to him. Tell him what you think; let him know just how you feel about all this. At least let him know it’s your life, not his. He’s old and sick, and he’s stubborn and wants what he wants. And he’s a bear. But after all, he doesn’t bite. It’s not as if he’s going to maul you.”
Sherry looked down at the partly consumed stack of pancakes and the half-eaten bacon swimming in the syrup on her plate and knew that her mother was right. Even so, she wondered how she would get through to Humbert Michaels when no one else could, especially since she was the one expressly concerned in this dying wish about which he was so adamant. She was the one it was about—well, her and Jaxon. To confront Humbert about this demand that she enter into a marriage that was so out of joint with the way people lived, so impractical, so unwise, she would have to go to the Michaels’ family estate and face Humbert in his home—no doubt in his bedroom, by his bedside where he was living out his last days. She found she did n
ot relish the prospect of going to face him right in his cave. He was old, but he was still a bear. And even a dying bear, she could not help but think, must be formidable.
She would need Jaxon to face his grandfather with her.
Chapter4
The “bear” fact about the Michaels family, and one should pardon the expression, was that they were one of the wealthiest families in Smithintown. They lived in a big house on top of a hill where the upper slope gave way into the forest of one of the mountains surrounding the town. The house was an old, stately place of wood and stone, built with logs from that same forest. It had been in the Michaels family for generations, going back to the days when they founded the logging and lumber company from which they made their fortune. Even in the days before it became ecologically fashionable to do so, the Michaels family treated the forest kindly. For all that they took from it, they made certain to give back by replanting, ensuring a future of abundance not only for themselves but for the Earth. It was their way. Part of what they were, after all, belonged to the forest.
Sherry drove the paved road up the hillside to reach the house and parked in the open, paved area in front of the multiple-car garage. Climbing out, she had a view of the perfectly kept, grand old home and a part of the forest behind it. How many times had she come up here when she was in school? How many hours had she spent in this house? She looked up to the third story—the attic. If only this house could talk, it could tell quite a few “stories” about what went on in that upper “story” when she and Jaxon would sneak up there by themselves. They would take one of the big bedrolls from the shelves and lay it out on the attic floor. Then, the clothes would come off, and Sherry and Jaxon would lay themselves down on the bedroll, and Jaxon would be relentless. Beautiful and insatiably horny and relentless.
She had made it only a couple of steps from the car when she saw and heard a rustling in the forest behind the house. She stopped and looked, and out of the forest underbrush, a large, dark shape lumbered into view and walked out on four legs onto the back lawn. Smiling, she changed her direction, heading for the back of the house instead of the front. She reached the spacious and well-mowed backyard just in time to see the shape from the underbrush ambling along near the front steps. Sherry stopped and cleared her throat, and the large black bear stopped as well, the big bear head turning to see her.
The bear stopped and stood up on two legs. It shook that mighty head and shrugged the massive upper body, and the body responded. The bear contracted as if squeezed from inside. The thick black fur disappeared, and the shape of every part of the body changed. The head turned from ursine to human, the limbs became arms and legs. The huge, clawed paws turned to hands and feet. In a moment, what stood before Sherry was not the body of a bear but that of a young man whom she’d known as a boy, known him as well as it was possible to know anyone.
Jaxon Michaels, as casually naked in front of her now as when they were teenagers, had become even more breathtaking than he was then. He still lacked the stoutness and stockiness that a werebear of his age usually had. He was not a round “bear” but a muscular one, devoid of fat. He had grown into his body magnificently. His muscles, accented with an immaculate growth of bristling body hair all over—pecs, abs, forearms, thighs, lower legs—commanded her eyes. A thick, dark bush lay at the junction of his thighs, and hanging beneath that bush was the ample limb of his maleness, looking ready for action. Now, along with the memory of being in this house so many hours and being in the attic so many hours, the time spent lying naked under that body and being on the receiving end of that maleness came back to Sherry’s mind. If only it were six years ago, they might not wait to get up to the attic.
She snapped back to the here and now when Jaxon, completely nonchalant about being stark naked in front of her, said, “Hey, Sherry. I left my clothes on the back porch. Let me put something on.”
He started for the short flight of stairs to the back of the house as if there were nothing remarkable about his nakedness. And for him, it was unremarkable. The Ursans had quite different attitudes about their bodies than humans had. Remembering this as well, and accustomed to it—and appreciating the view—Sherry followed behind him, admiring the flex of his hair-dusted buttocks as he moved.
Presently, they were up on the back porch of Jaxon’s house, which was much roomier and had much more furniture than that of Sherry’s house. In fact, Sherry recognized a lot of the furniture as being of her own family’s manufacture. Jaxon took the pair of jeans and the T-shirt that he’d left on a sofa and slipped them on. He did not bother with underwear either, and Sherry smiled inwardly, remembering how convenient it had been all the times when they were alone together, when all that Jaxon needed to do to get ready was just to peel off his trousers and let the thing that gave her the greatest pleasure fall free. Once he was dressed as he wanted to be, Jaxon said, “So, you’re ready to talk to Granddad then?”
“If he’s up to talking, yes. Like I said when I called ahead this morning,” said Sherry. “Since we’re the ones it’s about, if anyone’s going to talk some sense into him about this, it’s going to have to be us.”
“He feels up to talking, sure,” said Jaxon. “I can’t tell you he’s up to listening, but he’ll talk. He’s been saying he’s been looking forward to seeing you again.”
“I’ll bet,” said Sherry with a bit of a frown. “Jaxon, do you realize this has been in the back of his mind all these years since we were in school? He’s just been waiting for this. It’s probably what he was planning from the start, making it his call to say what we do with our lives. All this time…”
Sherry started for the back door, but Jaxon gently put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. Sherry faced him, curiously. “What?”
“I just want you to remember one thing, okay?”
“What is it, Jaxon? We’ve gone over this whole thing already. I’ve gone over it with my parents already. He’s old and sick, and he’s not going to be around much longer, and he’s got his heart set on it, and he’s manipulating people for it, and it’s not right.”
“Yeah, all that is true. He has been manipulating people; it’s what he does. He’s a big old Alpha bear, and he’s used to getting what he wants; he’s used to everybody doing what he says. I know. But there’s just one other thing I want you to remember before we go up there, okay?”
With a bit of a huff and a slight impatience, Sherry asked, “What?”
“He doesn’t mean any harm.”
Sherry actually cocked an eyebrow at him for that. But Jaxon stood firm.
“Look, he really doesn’t mean any harm. Sherry, remember all that time when we were growing up, when we used to just play together before we started…playing together. He always liked you. He was always nice to you, wasn’t he? Granddad always liked you like you were one of his own cubs. He did. When he found out you and I were ‘going fishing,’ he wasn’t mad. He thought it was fine. That’s why he called the arrangement. And the rest of us went on and forgot about it, but he never did—because he liked you and thought you and I were good together.” He watched Sherry roll her eyes at that, and he put a hand under her chin to make sure she was looking at him. “And we were, weren’t we?”
In a dark corner of Sherry’s memory came the feeling of Jaxon’s teenage muscles on top of her, and his teenage hardness pumping inside her, and his voice grunting long and low in climax—and how wonderful it all was. She exhaled, conceding that last point. “Yes…yes, we were,” she sighed.
“Damn right we were. So, I know you’re mad at him. And I’m kind of mad at him too. But he’s still an old bear, and he’s still my Granddad, and he was always good to me. And us. So please, for me—stand up for yourself, but try not to hurt his feelings. Please.”
A piece of Sherry’s heart melted at his request. The fact was that Jaxon was right about this part, at least. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s just go see him and see if we can’t get this thing dealt with and get on with our lives.�
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The master suite of the Michaels house was the largest room on the second floor. It was furnished with antiques that cost a small fortune. The king-sized bed presiding over one side of the room held an antique that had actually made a fortune.
Humbert Michaels was large and round and heavy with the accumulated years of both manhood and bearhood. His charcoal-and-white hair had stubbornly refused to give up the last strands of black that threaded ever so subtly through it. The silk pajamas he wore, the silk robe that enwrapped him, and the leather slippers on his feet did not disclose the wrinkles and age spots on the skin beneath them. The rising and falling of his chest and thoroughly rounded stomach somehow suggested not the breaths of a man expecting soon to breathe his last, but only the quiet rest of a man who would soon get back up and about his business. Humbert Michaels may not have been long for this world, but he looked for all the world as if he expected death to meet his schedule, not the other way around.
This was the sight and the impression that greeted Sherry and Jaxon when they knocked at the door of the master suite and let themselves in.
Humbert, propped up on his pillow, smiled at the two young people as if they’d brought new energy into the room with them, which was exactly the way he felt when he saw them. He called over to them: “Jaxon…Sherry. Come in, kids. Come here. Sherry, let me have a look at you, my girl.”