My Heart Laid Bear (Blue Moon Junction)

Copyright 2015 by Georgette St. Clair

This book is intended for readers 18 and older only.  It is a work of fiction.  All characters and locations in this book are products of the feverish imagination of the author, a tarnished Southern belle with a very dirty mind.

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              “This won’t take long,” Clover assured her younger sister Autumn. “I just have to go kill a bear and make him into a pair of boots.”

              Autumn, who at thirteen was embarking on her sullen teenager phase, favored her with a rare smile. She was very pretty when she smiled. “Any particular bear?”

              “Oh, I have someone in mind.” Clover bit out the words as if they tasted foul. 

              Clover and her four younger siblings were gathered around the dining room table at a boarding house in the town of Blue Moon Junction, Florida, three hours north of Orlando.  The owner, Imogen, had been kind enough to take them in on the promise of getting paid as soon as Clover found a job. They’d just finished breakfast, and Imogen’s handyman Rick was clearing the table.

Clover glanced at her reflection in the window behind Autumn and self-consciously ran her fingers through her brown curls. Damn these Florida summers, turning her hair into a frizz bomb. 

              “Does someone have a name?” Autumn asked.

              “All bears have names.” Clover reached into her purse, which was hanging off her chair, and rummaged around. She pulled out a scrunchy and twisted her hair into a ponytail, ignoring Autumn’s question.

She didn’t want to give Autumn the sordid details of why she was about to storm over to the McCoy family property and kick some bear ass. It involved their twenty-year-old sister Sapphire, who was in the family way thanks to Jeffrey McCoy, and his older brother Sam, who had refused to allow Jeffrey to marry Sapphire.

              “Are you going to whup tail, or are you going on a date?” Autumn raised an eyebrow quizzically.

              “What do you mean?”

              “You’ve been messing around with your hair all morning, and you put lip gloss on after you ate breakfast.”

              “Can’t a girl take some pride in her appearance?” Clover felt her cheeks grow warm.

              “So I take it that this nameless someone is super hot?”

              “I don’t know,” Clover muttered, avoiding her sister’s eyes. Autumn shouldn’t even be aware of hot guys. Sure, she was officially a teenager now, but Clover wanted her sister to stay the way she remembered her – an adorable little girl in pigtails.

              “You don’t know what he looks like?” Autumn folded her slender arms across her chest.  She’d taken after their skinny coyote shifter dad, rather than their generously sized bear shifter mom.  “How will you know who you’re going to give a whupping? You’re just going to walk around downtown, find a bear, and kick his butt?”

              Autumn was getting too smart for her own good. 

“I know his name. I know where he works. And I vaguely remember him from when we lived here before.”

Vaguely, her big fat butt.  She’d been twelve when her roving, restless hippie parents had decided to uproot their clan from Blue Moon Junction and travel around the country. She remembered Sam McCoy quite well.

He’d been eighteen.  Strong jaw, mischievous gleam in his caramel-brown eyes, and the build of a linebacker.  He came from a wealthy, well-respected family of farmers.

She’d been a shy, chubby middle-schooler, desperately insecure about her weight and her weird hippie name and her weird hippie family. 

Sam had existed in a different universe from the one she moved in. He strutted through high school, trailed after by crowds of worshipful cheerleaders. She slunk from class to class, keeping her head low and avoiding everyone’s gaze.  She’d be surprised if he even knew she existed back then, or that he’d been her first crush.

              Well, that was in the past. He’d grown up to be the arrogant furball who’d arrested numerous members of her family over the years and run them out of town until there were no Jones left here.  Even worse, he thought that her sister wasn’t good enough to marry one of the wealthy McCoys.  Well, too damn bad.  Her sister was eight weeks pregnant, and that bastard Jeffrey was going to do right by her, or her name wasn’t Clover Lulabelle Movie Star Windwalker Jones. Which, unfortunately, it was.

              “I’ll be back in an hour.”

              “Fine, don’t answer my questions.” Autumn shrugged. “Let us know if you need us to post bail.”

              “How would you get bail money?” Clover laughed as she grabbed her big floral purse and slung it over her shoulder.  Then she turned serious again when she realized they were all considering the question.

              Autumn thought for just a moment before she decided. “Rob a bank. I mean, I’d wear a mask and all.”

              Her twelve-year-old brother Lennon, spiky-haired and owl-eyed with big round glasses, raised his hand. “Ooh ooh! I know! Pick some pockets. That’s better, because if you rob a bank then they raise the alarm right away and the cops are looking for you.”

              Twilight, who was ten, frowned at him. “I’d vote for hustling cards or pool sharking. That way nobody can prove you broke the law.”

              “Twilight wins,” her twin sister Moonlight said, and high-fived her. The two girls had big blue eyes and thick dirty-blonde hair plaited into French braids, which gave them a deceptively sweet and innocent appearance.

              “Nah, it would take too long that way.” Lennon shook his head vigorously.

              “Gaaahh! All of you! Cease and desist! We do not break the law!” Clover raked them all with a severe look.

              “As far as you know.”  Autumn flashed a sweet smile that was all innocence.

              Lennon nodded, and winked at her. “Right. We don’t. Never.”

              The twins bobbed their heads in agreement.

              Damn it, she’d worried about this when she went off to college.  Their parents were total counter-culture hippies, and it was fine if they passed down their liberal views to the kids, but did they have to also pass on their rather loose interpretation of the law?

She’d really debated what to do when she’d been offered the full scholarship. Should she leave, get her degree, and show the kids the value of a good education? Or should she stay home and make sure that her siblings didn’t grow up any more feral, and try to convince her parents to settle down in one place and give them a normal upbringing?

              Going to college had seemed like the best idea at the time. Maybe she’d made a mistake.

Well, she was back now, and she was going to see that they stayed on the straight and narrow if it killed her.  Or, what was more likely, returned to the straight and narrow. She’d been caring for them for several weeks now since their parents had gone on the lam, and she was growing more and more concerned about them.

That was why she was determined to get a job, watch them like a hawk and give them an actual role model for the first time in their lives. She would do all of that just as soon as she went and pounded Sam McCoy flat. Then she’d start behaving like an upright citizen.

              “You know, another way to earn money is to do chores.” Imogen was standing in the doorway. She had sharp hearing for a human. “I’ve got a grove full of Valencias that need picking. Who wants to pick oranges? Five bucks an hour.” In addition to running the boarding house, Imogen had a small farm and orange groves on the property.

              “You don’t have to pay us,” Lennon said. “You’re letting us stay here.”

              “Imogen, no,” Clover protested.  “I can’t have you give them money. You’re already helping us out, and I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to get a job.”

              “Now, now, I’m not doing you any favors. I really need the help. I don’t have many guests right now, so business is slow. My niece Marigold and her husband usually help me out, but they’re on vacation for the next month.”

              “Yep, it’s true,” Rick said, nodding. “I’d do it myself, but my back ain’t what it used to be. All that bending over.” He spoke with a thick Georgia drawl. He was about Imogen’s age, a wolf shifter widower in his eighties who’d moved in to the boarding house recently to do odd jobs. He wore his white hair slicked back in a pompadour, with Elvis-style sideburns; Clover imagined he’d been quite the hellraiser in his day. She suspected that there was something going on between him and Imogen. They kept looking at each other and simpering.

  “I sell those oranges to the McCoy family to make marmalade,” Imogen said. “You remember the McCoys? They’ve really expanded their business. Gone nationwide.”

              “Oh, yes, I remember them quite well.” She tried to hide the venom dripping from her words, but she saw Autumn look at her with sudden interest. 

              “The McCoys are bears, right?” Autumn asked Imogen. “I think I’ve heard of them. I had their jam once.”

              “Yes indeed, one of the oldest, finest bear families in the state.” Imogen nodded proudly; people in Blue Moon Junction stuck together, even if they were different species, and when someone did well, they all took pride in it.

              “Are any of the McCoy men good-looking?” Autumn asked Imogen. Clover glowered at her, and Autumn flashed her a smirk. Was Autumn literally psychic? Because that would be horrible. Autumn would definitely use her powers for evil.

              “Oh, goodness, they’re all terribly handsome.” Imogen tittered and patted her hair. “If I were a younger woman…” She glanced at Rick and then cleared her throat. “Well, anyway, I think we were all talking about picking oranges. I haven’t been able to get enough workers this season, and I wouldn’t dream of having these youngsters work for me without pay.” Yep, definitely something going on between Imogen and Rick. An eighty-something widow in a small backwater town was getting more action than Clover. What a surprise.

             
Well, go, Imogen!
Clover thought.
I’m glad somebody’s gettin’ some.

“I will get a job soon, I swear,” Clover vowed. Ugh, she felt terrible about all of this – staying there without paying, letting Imogen give money to her siblings. Imogen had plenty of help – she was just pretending that she didn’t so the kids would feel needed and important.

Imogen flapped her wrinkled hand dismissively. “No worries. I know you’re doing what you can. You always were a good girl.”

              That was true. Straight A student, never got in trouble, waitressed to support herself while she went to college…  Sometimes Clover wondered if she’d been accidentally switched at birth. Except unfortunately she looked too much like her mother for that to be true.

              “You all behave,” Clover told her siblings. “I’d better hear that you said please and thank you.”

              “We will!” They chorused. She knew they would. They were basically good kids, polite and appreciative. It was their rather loose interpretation of property laws that worried her.

              “You behave too,” Autumn said cheekily. “Say hi to the McCoy boys for me.”

              Clover scowled at her. “You are not too old to be spanked.”

              “I most assuredly am,” Autumn said, and she turned and followed the rest of the kids, who were trailing after Imogen.

              “Say hi to the McCoys for me! Them are some good folks,” Rick said as she headed out.

              “I sure will!” Clover said with forced cheer. Hmph. They might be good to some people; they certainly weren’t good to her sister.

              Clover headed over to the McCoy farm, praying her thirty-year-old junker of a van wouldn’t die before she got there. 

              Her air conditioning didn’t work. She cranked the window down and, as usual, after a few turns the handle came off in her hand. She tossed it onto the seat next to her with a muffled curse. No big deal.  It was a beautiful May morning, the air warm and fragrant, with no hint of the blanket of wet heat that would descend next month.

              She was actually glad that she’d ended up in Blue Moon Junction of all places. Most of the people here were decent, and she had some fond memories of growing up here.

When she’d been forced to rush to North Carolina to pick up her brother and sisters after her parents’ latest disaster, she’d debated where to go. Her family had been renting a rundown old house month to month; they couldn’t stay there.  They’d gone to her sublet apartment in New York while she tried to figure out her next move, but it was way too small for them.  Then Sapphire had called her up weeping and wailing about Jeffrey, so she’d packed them all up and headed to Blue Moon Junction to see what she could do to help.

              The McCoy property had changed since she’d last lived here.  Flint McCoy, a successful entrepreneur, had come home to help his family expand their business, shipping their gourmet jams and jellies worldwide.  The dirt road she remembered had been widened and paved over, there were more houses on the property, and off in the distance she could see the small factory that the McCoys had built.

              The main house still looked the same, a three-story white clapboard-sided house with a wraparound porch. That was where Pete and Blue McCoy, Sam’s aunt and uncle, lived with their kids.