Bearly Begun (BBW/Bearshifter Romance) (Bachelor Bears of Yakima Ridge Book 1) (3 page)

Erin lay sleeplessly brooding on the narrow sagging couch. The boys were asleep in their bedroom. She wondered how she could work so damned hard and never get anywhere. After five years, she was still sleeping in the living room and the twins still shared her old double bed in the single bedroom.

Somehow she never managed to scrape together enough money to be able to move to a two-bedroom apartment. It wasn’t a huge ambition. Pretty damn modest in fact. If only she could find a better job, make some decent money, she could find a better neighborhood and a better place to live. This apartment was too damned handy to Pacman’s crib. And too damn small for three people.

No sense in wishing for the moon. She was doing okay at Diamond Foods for a woman with only her high school diploma. It was just such a struggle to feed and clothe those two growing boys. They wore out their jeans and outgrew their shoes so rapidly she could never catch up. And they never stopped being hungry.

At least she wasn’t in debt. Although taking the pay cut to have a day job on the food line was nibbling away at her savings account. She couldn’t keep dipping into that to pay for everyday necessities. And it would be years before she could reasonably expect the boys to have jobs and bring home their wages. Besides, at the rate they were going, they would be in jail by sixteen.

Most days she felt much older than her twenty-nine years—tonight she felt ancient. How long had it been since she had her hair cut, or bought herself something new to wear instead of picking up something at the thrift store? Years, she thought gloomily. How long since she had a date? Had sex?

That last was easy. Five years. Since she took the boys in and her boyfriend, Josh, had balked at the prospect of two six-year-olds sucking up all her time and money. Not to mention that she had refused to have sex with Josh when Hunter and Cord were in the next room. Even if they were supposed to be asleep.

These days she didn’t meet men much. And even if she did, who was going to going to make a pass at a frumpy, plus sized woman with bad hair and worse clothes? Of course, wearing men’s tee-shirts cut down on the harassment issue. Big tits and a big rear seemed to bring out the pig in a lot of guys. She’d just as soon not show off her body and have to deal with grabbing and coarse comments or worse.

After high school, when she had got her first full time job, she had had big dreams. She was going to find herself a good, decent man—one with a good job—and they would get married and live in a nice house with a backyard, and pay down the mortgage sooner rather than later. They would drive a minivan with a couple of car seats. Have a couple of kids and a stable home life. Maybe a dog for the kiddies to play with in the backyard.

Well, Hunter and Cord had sunk that ship of dreams. Not that they were to blame for the misfortune of having Mom die. The van that had plowed into the bus stop and killed her, was nobody’s fault. Well probably the driver’s. But he had died too—so there wasn’t any satisfaction in that. There had been a decent insurance payout, but Pacman had blown the lot before he was sent to jail.

And it absolutely wasn’t the boys’ fault that their dad was a crook. But probably if she had done a better job of raising them, they wouldn’t have been so quick to absorb Pacman’s criminal tutelage. She had done her best, but clearly it hadn’t been enough.

Mind, eleven surely was too young for their characters to be fully formed, so they had to be salvageable. But how to manage it was beyond her. That book she had listened to at work was full of nonsense that required money to implement. Money she did not have.

It hurt to have her darlings call her ‘Ho,’ and ‘Bisnotch,’ and worse. Pacman was leading them astray and there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it. She was pretty sure if she got Child Protective Services involved that Pacman would get custody—they were insane about keeping families intact.

Or they would put her brothers into foster care. No one was going to support her in her efforts to bring those boys up right. She was only the half-sister and didn’t fit into their idea of the intact family. CPS would have lots of advice but nothing concrete, except taking the boys away from her.

Best she could hope for was being assigned another overworked social worker who would schedule meetings to suck up her free time. And if there was one thing she had learned in five years as surrogate mom to her brothers, it was that nagging didn’t change behavior—it just pointed out that you were powerless to make them do whatever it was you were asking.

Sitting down once a week with a nice lady who had to check their file to recall their names wasn’t going to make the boys stop cutting school or calling her names. They knew they were supposed to go to school, do their homework, and treat her decently. Telling them so was pointless without consequences for disobedience.

Hunter and Cord knew that she couldn’t make them do anything anymore. Pacman would give them new electronics if she confiscated the ones he had given them. They knew she had to go to work before they left for school. And that, even with her sandwich making gig, she was home after they were supposed to be back from school.

When they strolled in late, smirking and calling her Boob Queen and the like, what was she to do? Smack them? Hardly—she didn’t believe in beating kids. Send them supperless to bed? Right, as if they wouldn’t just leave and go back to Daddy. Assign them chores? And make them do them how?

She wasn’t a whiner, but she sure could use some help about now. A strong shoulder to rest against now and again. Someone to share responsibility with occasionally. Because those boys were on the road to ruin if something didn’t change.

Erin wiped the tears trickling down her cheeks in surprise. Crying wouldn’t help her. She needed a plan—not self-pity. She fell asleep chewing fruitlessly on her hopeless predicament.

* * *

Erin stood with a row of other women at the long stainless steel counter. They were all dressed in identical baggy, white overalls and white hair covers. Their hands were encased in latex gloves. Erin pulled a loaf of bread from the stack on the shelf before her. She laid out the twenty-four slices of wheat bread as if she were dealing cards.

She plopped twelve scoops of egg salad from the bowl on the counter on twelve of the slices, covered them and stacked the sandwiches. She passed them to the woman beside her who deftly sliced them into triangles and put them into the machine that wrapped them and stamped the best before date on them. When her tray was full, another woman carried them off to the refrigerated racks.

Erin was bored. But she was used to being bored. She listened to the audio book she had borrowed from the library. A woman’s voice cheerfully explained the seven simple steps to raising well-rounded, well-behaved adolescents. Erin had to laugh at the assumptions of the author.

Be Present
, was the title of this chapter. Well she had arranged to be present in Cord and Hunter’s lives. But being around after school meant swapping her job delivering sandwiches for a job making them. And, surprise, surprise, a big pay cut. And for what? So those budding young offenders could continue to skip school and hang out with their jail bird father.

Suddenly they had fancy new shoes and snappy haircuts and cell phones. All courtesy of dad. But if he ever fed those two hulking eaters, it was one hundred percent junk. She had outright asked him for money and he had leered at her and told her he could fix her up with a new job. Pole dancing. What a loathsome piece of work he was.

Hunter and Cord were turning into little hooligans and Erin knew that Pacman was coaching them in the criminal arts that were his skill set. Six years of raising them right all gone in a matter of weeks. They were cutting school, lying, taking money from her purse, doing worse with their dad for all she knew. It was heartbreaking.

She was so proud of her handsome, blond, muscular brothers. They were big for their age, but they were only eleven. Pacman had seen their tall, burly physiques as an invitation to involve them in burglary and drug running. Since they weren’t quite twelve they were too young to be charged. What a complete dickwad.

Pacman didn’t give a damn if his boys wound up in a group home or someplace more detrimental. And nothing she said got through to her foul mouthed, cocky half-brothers. For sure Satan had their souls. What she needed was an exorcist.

CHAPTER FOUR

The two husky boys were struggling to lift the copper tubing on the back porch. Len guessed they were about fifteen. Copper didn’t weigh much, but when it was secured to rebar, that was a different matter. Cast iron was plumb heavy. Lenny signaled Tracker to heel and watched to see what the kids would do. They had the stocky build of wrestlers or junior weight lifters. But rebar was rebar.

The blonder of the two boys looked around suddenly and his eyes widened as he saw Len and Tracker watching them from the kitchen doorway. He walloped his companion on his arm, and they both tried to jump off the porch. Len let Tracker have his way with one boy while he grabbed the other one. Both kids yelped.

The panel van that had been idling on the street burned rubber. Tracker held onto his captive by one sleeve and growled menacingly. Len knew the big black shepherd had not bitten his prisoner, but he was prepared to if Len gave the word. The kid Len had seized deflated at the sound of his ride abandoning them.

Len turned to the other one. “If you struggle, Tracker will take your arm off,” he lied. “Understood?” The kid half nodded.

“Keep,” Len told his dog. Tracker released his prey and sat in front of him with his eyes on his prey. The kid moved and the dog growled deep in his throat.

Len shook the kid he had collared by his tee-shirt. “You and your pal are going to have a little chat with Officer Friendly.” He whipped out his cell and dialed 911.

The patrol officers were happy to pick up the kids. The sullen little sods refused to give their names and demanded to speak to a lawyer. Hallahan and Boswell read the kids their rights and stuffed them into their black and white. Len offered to follow them to the station in his truck. He locked up his house and set Tracker to guard.

At the station Hallahan took Len to an interview room to get his statement. He had obviously run Len through the system because he wanted to talk about the incident at Maddie’s gym in the summer when he and Doug had taken down an intruder.

“You weren’t charged,” Hallahan said, “But you had a gun on you and you admitted to being prepared to use it.”

“In self-defense,” Len said calmly. “Guy had a gun on two women and was setting up an ambush for my cousin. He probably would have killed us all if he’d had a chance.”

“You didn’t have a gun on you today,” Officer Hallahan made it a question.

“No sir. I’m not carrying in the city. Besides I had my dog.”

“Kids say he bit one of them. You’ll be lucky if you don’t get charged,” Hallahan warned Len wryly.

Len shook his head. “Tracker didn’t even tear the kid’s shirt. He certainly didn’t break skin. Didn’t have to.”

“You better begin at the beginning,” Hallahan said.

“My brother and I are fixing up this house on Parkhurst. We’ve had us a little battle with the local thieves. Anything not nailed down, disappears.” Len shrugged. “So we nail stuff down. I changed the doors and the windows. Put in deadbolts, good latches on the windows. Security system. “

“This afternoon, I went to the hardware store.” Len went on. “You know how it is, no matter how you plan, you need something. Took the dog because it was broad daylight, after all. Mostly stuff has been going at night. While I was gone those two showed up with a guy in a van.

Len leaned back and got comfortable. “When I got home, they were wrestling with the copper tubing I bought to replace the stuff they stole last week. This time I had used zip ties to secure it to some rebar.”

Hallahan didn’t allow himself a smile. “You get a tag number?”

“Well, sure.” Len whipped out his cell and showed Hallahan the photo he had taken before he confronted the young thieves.

Hallahan turned off his recorder and stood up. “I’ll get this typed up and you can sign it. Maybe Boswell has found out something about those boys.” He got up and left.

Len pulled out his cell and texted Joey. He wouldn’t put it past Panel Van to return to complete the robbery, even with the kids in custody.

Hallahan came back. “Their fingerprints don’t seem to be in the system. But they’re now claiming to be eleven. Can’t charge them if they’re only eleven.” He sighed. “Got a sister coming down.”

“Pretty large for eleven,” Len said skeptically.

“You wait, it’ll turn out to be a lie.” Hallahan’s voice was weary. We’ll see what the sister says. If she’s really the sister. Meanwhile Community Liaison wants to have a word with you.”

Ms. Leah Carmichael from Community Liaison made an impassioned plea to preserve two small boys from a juvenile record. Len heard her out with polite impassivity. Finally, she wound down.

“So,” Len said. “Just to be clear here, ma’am. You think that if we let these little thieves off Scott free, that this will somehow improve their lives? You gotta strange notion of how to build character down here in Portland.”

Ms. Carmichael ruffled up. “I don’t think you appreciate the seriousness of saddling two young people with a criminal record. We want them to be able to maintain their position in the community.”

“Yeah?” Len was at his most affable. “Their position as thieves? Or do you think that teaching a couple of eleven-year-old boys that they can steal without any repercussions is going to make them decent citizens? Gotta say, I’m all for dropping an anvil on them.”

This statement shocked Ms. Carmichael into another eloquent speech this time regarding the boys deplorable lack of self-esteem. Len listened politely. When the social worker stopped speaking he shook his head.

“I’m sorry, ma’am” he said, “But I purely don’t know what a pair of eleven-year-old thieves would be doing with pride. Seems a natural response to being caught red-handed stealing should be some good old fashioned shame.”