My Heart Laid Bear (Blue Moon Junction, #4)
by Georgette St. Clair
Chapter One
“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.”