Page 6 of Falling for the Bear Dad

He walked over and looked at the car briefly but then back to me. Then he started to say something. The car was still making noise.

“What?” I said, thinking he was asking about the mailbox or his driveway. Maybe I’d hit some of his flowers or something.

Closer, he put his hands on his hips. “What happened?”

“I hit your mailbox.”

“Yes. I can see that. But you…are you fine? Hurt? Bleeding? You look pretty bruised up. Should I call an ambulance?”

Maybe. Those abs right in front of me were about to make me pass out. “Oh. I’m not bleeding or hurting.” Actually, I was hurting but not from the car breakdown.

“That’s good.”

He raised his nose in the air and maybe it was the sugar overdose—maybe the caffeine—maybe my tiredness—but I swore his nostrils flared and for a fraction of a second, his eyes changed to gold. Gold.

Oh yeah, I needed sleep.

“I think you need to sit down. You look very pale.”

Following his directions, I stumbled back onto the lawn and almost tripped over air. I plopped down onto the grassy area and let myself breathe while the tall glass of water perused my car and moved the mailbox post a little and then shrugged like it was no big deal.

Shrugged.

Chapter Six

Mya

Sitting there, gazing at this god, I’m all of a sudden concerned about grass stains on my ass. Never in my life have I worried myself over them but what if I stand up and there’s green stuff on my ass and he sees it and…goddess. Focus, Mya.

Except I couldn’t. The man crouched down in front of me, and I got an up-close-and-personal view of his face. Chiseled jaw. Perfect skin. Eyebrows that hadn’t been tweezed but were somehow also perfect. “Are you okay?”

This was the second time he asked me the question. I hadn’t really answered it. If he could stop making my entire throat dry up, I might be able to say something coherent. Oh, who was I kidding. I was done for. And I ran into his mailbox.

I cleared my throat and studied my hunk of junk and shook my head, trying to get the gears back in working order. “Um, I’m okay. Are you?”

The man chuckled, and the sound sent a dart of desire directly to my woman parts. What in the hell was wrong with me? “I’m fine. But you have bruises and a cut by your eye.”

I raised my fingers to inspect when it dawned on me that he was referring to old wounds and those Jacob had gifted me the night I left. Oh, that was only a day ago. It seemed like ages since I’d left. Bruises that had gone pukish green but hadn’t faded completely plus, I was sure new ones had surfaced. And the cut over my eye? It was from when Jacob slapped me weeks ago and the damned thing kept crusting up but never really went back to normal. Probably because I didn’t have any antiseptic or anything else to put on it to help speed up the healing process.

“That’s…it’s not from tonight.” I left it at that. There was no reason to spill my sob story all over this alpha, and he was most definitely an alpha, while I’d already ruined his night.

“Not from tonight…” Those perfect eyebrows bunched in concern.

“I’m sorry about the mailbox.” I managed to change the subject from me. Anything but talking about me and how I got these bruises.

“It’s just a mailbox…hey, my name is Greyson. What’s your name?”

“Mya. My name is Mya. I’m sorry.” I kept saying that. Also, I was sorry about being a complete idiot in front of this man, but my life was currently crumbling to pieces.

I had nowhere to go. Very little money to fix my car. No one to count on. Nothing. Jacob had plucked my friends from my life one by one. One wasn’t a good influence. Another dressed too provocatively. The others encouraged me to speak up for myself and wanted me to go on girls’ nights. And any that continued to call got their numbers blocked. I hadn’t figured that out until I ran into one of them at the market.

“It’s okay. What happened to your car? Did you swerve when it broke down, or…” He was still crouched and maybe he just brushed his teeth, but the scent of cinnamon and whiskey came right off him in waves. As though I wasn’t drunk enough on his presence.

“It sputtered and hissed, and I kind of freaked out and turned the wheel too sharply, and bye-bye mailbox and now it’s doing that.”

The car let out one more long exhale of steam and then finally called it a day. Dead. Probably never to be resurrected. I’d gotten it right out of high school and, even though Jacob was loaded, he told me I didn’t need a car. He would take me wherever I wanted to go, or I could take a rideshare. I’d stored the poor old car in the garage for so long, I was very lucky it had started at all and gotten me this far.

“I probably would’ve freaked out too.”