didn’t seem like a lot to me, but I don’t care how much you eat, sweetheart. I just wanted to buy you dinner, and I’d like to do it again—many times if you’ll let me—but next time I’d like to make it official. Take you out to a restaurant instead of the food court at the mall. How about Friday night? There’s a great Italian place in town that I think you’ll like. They have the best bread sticks I’ve ever tasted, and their pizza is really good.”
She smiled at the pizza comment, probably because she knew his sister hardly ever let them order out, but then the smile fell into a frown, and he knew he wouldn’t like her answer.
“The thing is…” She paused and then took a deep breath before continuing. “I’m flattered, Lael, I really am, but I don’t want to date someone like—”
You.
She didn’t say the word, but she was going to, and that was enough.
“I just want to be friends,” she shrugged.
He nodded and forced a smile, but on the inside despair nearly consumed him. She was the only woman he’d been attracted to in years, the only one he’d even considered dating, and she didn’t find him worthy enough to be boyfriend material. Instead, she’d pushed him into the friend category without giving him a chance, and even though she didn’t fawn all over him like the lake girls, she’d still judged him without getting to know him, and that rejection cut deep.
It was his own damn fault, though.
He’d placed too much hope on her arrival. Too much hope on his attraction toward her, and too much hope on the fact that she treated him different than the others did. She was different, that was true, but it wasn’t in the way that he needed.
“I understand,” he said. “Friends is good.”
They wouldn’t be friends, though, he already knew that. This was her way of pushing him away, and he wasn’t a dick, so he would respect her wishes.
“I’m going to go now. If you need anything else, just let Lacey know and we’ll take care of it.”
He picked up the box the fan came in, and started walking toward the door.
“Lael, I…” He paused with his hand on the knob, but he didn’t turn back. “Thanks again. For…everything.”
He nodded, and then walked out into the warm, evening air.
Lael growled as another low-lying branch scraped across his face, but he kept on running. His paws pounded on the uneven earth, leaving misshapen paw prints in his wake, and the battered tracks gave him a sense of satisfaction. Most tourists didn’t venture this deep into the trees, but if they did, they would flee at the sight of his hurried, angry trail.
At least until one of his siblings came along and left fresh tracks, which would probably happen before sunrise. Even though they warned tourists about bear sightings around the lake, he and his siblings usually ran in the more secluded parts of their property, which meant they often ran the same trails.
They all had their favorite hang-outs, of course, but those spots were usually used for lounging around—like his swimming alcove on the lake—not for running, or exercise in general.
When his legs started to tire, he slowed his run to a walk and lumbered toward an outcropping of rock that was a perfect place to lounge and study the starry sky. He wasn’t ready to go back to his cabin—not yet—but he was done racing through the forest. The initial pain from Stacey’s rejection had turned into a dull ache in his chest, but he could live with that. Now he just wanted to breathe in the night air and rest his aching muscles.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one.
As he approached the rocks, he saw his sister laying in her bear form on one of the flat stones. When she saw him approach, she took a second to sniff the air, and then shifted back into her human form, making room for him to join her. The rock was large, but only one of them could fit while in the shape of their bears.
As an extra precaution, he sniffed the air, too, and then he also shifted back to human. The shift was instant, literally only lasting a second or two, and the magic allowed them the convenience of keeping their clothes on during the change. He never had to worry about stashing clothes anywhere, or getting caught naked in the forest because of some