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“Why don’t you tell us all the story, dear?” Violet suggested to Beckett.
“Sure,” he said, draping an arm over Zara’s shoulders.
He told the story about how they’d met at work where Zara had actually started out as Beck’s boss, eventually moving to another department when it became clear they wanted to be together. As the story unfolded, I became increasingly aware of something going on between my daughter and the hulking being on my other side.
Katie was alternately stiffening and then relaxing into a pile of little-girl giggles, and without even looking, I could tell that Sly was entertaining her somehow.
I glanced over at him, preparing myself to catch whatever was going on between them, but he gave me a wide-eyed innocent look and mouthed, “What?”
Turning my attention back to Zara and Beck, I tried not to focus on Sylvester Remington, but it was impossible.
Sly had always done things to me that I couldn’t explain, stirred parts of me that no one else seemed able to touch. The fact that I’d had an out-of-control crush on him in high school hadn’t mattered to him in the least, however. He was too busy being a hockey god and getting any girl he wanted with a simple lift of his perfect clefted chin.
And the girls he wanted were nothing like me.
Honestly, my fixation on Sly had been exhausting. And demoralizing. And there was no way in hell I was ever going there again. But since my body seemed completely oblivious to the danger, I knew I’d have to take some kind of action to protect myself. And my daughter, who clearly had the same Sly Remington gene that I did, based on the way she was melting at whatever it was he was doing.
I turned to him again, and made my face stern. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but stop it,” I said.
Sly raised his hands again, playing innocent. “She started it.”
“Well, you’re being rude, which is totally up to you, but Katie is just learning her manners, and you’re setting a poor example.” I leaned into my daughter’s ear, wrenching my eyes from the handsome face. “When someone is talking, you should be giving them your attention.” I turned my body and hers to face Zara, who was finishing up the story of how she and the younger Remington brother had become engaged.
“And that was how it began,” she said, her smile lighting her dark eyes in a way that spoke of sheer contentment.
I’d felt that way once. Or I thought I had. But I doubted I’d ever looked quite as certain as Zara and Beck did. Katie’s dad had never inspired certainty. His entire purpose seemed to be to keep me from getting too comfortable. I’d spent three years letting him tell me who to be and how to be before it had finally become clear to both of us that I would never be what he wanted. And he didn’t want Katie either, as it turned out. The idea of a wife and daughter had been all Zach wanted. Faced with the realities of conflict and diapers, he’d bailed. My stomach rolled at the memory of living in that situation.
“The engagement dinner is Saturday,” Beckett told me. “We’d love it if you’d come. Both of you.”
“Is it dress up?” Katie asked, her little voice full of excitement.
“It is,” Zara confirmed. Then she looked up at me. “Nothing too fancy. We’re just having dinner over at Shepherds.”
“It’s so nice of you to invite us,” I said, my mind working to find a polite way to say no thank you. One night of trying to ignore Sly was going to be enough, certainly.
“Wonderful,” Violet clapped her hands as if it had been decided, and then rose. “Sam, could you join me in the kitchen please? Dinner will just be a minute,” she told the rest of us.
They went back inside, and I took a too-big sip of my blue drink, looking for a way to defuse the discomfort I felt sitting so close to Sly. It was like there was some kind of radiation coming out of the man next to me, and even as I tried to ignore him, it was pinging off my skin, affecting me whether I wanted it to or not.
“Beck says you’re a biologist?” Zara said, her wide smile aimed at me.
“Mommy is a wildlife boologist,” Katie told her.
“BI-ologist,” I corrected automatically, then I laughed, meeting Zara’s eyes. “Yeah, I am.”
“That must be so interesting,” she said.
“What does that mean, exactly?” The deep voice came from behind me. I’d turned to face Zara, scooting to the edge of my chair, basically turning my back on Sly.
“Um, it...” I swiveled back, and finally half stood with Katie still on my lap, pushing the chair back so I could see everyone at once. I also put a little more distance between myself and him. It was almost like our chairs had been arranged close together on purpose. “I work for the state,” I told them. “And the program I’m most involved with focuses on the black bear population in the Piedmont region.”
“What do you mean?” Beckett asked, his face full of interest.
I knew that if I got going, I’d be talking long after anyone cared. My work was my passion, but it wasn’t everyone’s, I knew it definitely hadn’t been Zach’s, so I tried to be succinct. “Well, there are a few areas of focus. First, we try to keep tabs on the population, to understand the resources they’re using and track their migration pattern. Bears have descended from the Western mountains and now range through most of the state. That’s happened over the last twenty years or so,” I told them. “But the main focus of my work is tracking breeding females and cubs.”
“Mommy finds homes for orphans,” Katie declared, and then appeared to have had enough of my job. She bolted from my lap and darted out into the wide grassy expanse of the back yard to spin in circles under the evening sky.
“Orphans,” Sly repeated. “Bear orphans?”
