Into The Light (Three Rivers #1)

Chapter 2

Two

NOELLE

"… A nd then he just leaves. Just like that! Can you believe it? He just leaves. Who does that?" Shelly Crawford, the client in my chair, chatters nonstop as I apply the dye to her hair.

I don't exactly tune it out, more just let it wash over me, occasionally offering up an encouraging word or two to keep her going. With Shelly, it's easy enough. Her current diatribe is about her latest online dating fiasco, one in a long series of them. She has terrible taste in men and never seems to learn.

She keeps chittering away as I let the dye set. I'm only half listening, the rest of my mind going back to my attempt at dating, a fiasco of epic proportions. He was a guy I met during a short-lived experiment with going to the gym, an attempt to shrink my backside a little. He was cute, seemed nice, and when we exchanged numbers and texted a little, he didn't even send any dick picks. The actual date, though? Horrific. He talked about himself the whole time, his financial portfolio, his workout splits, his favorite lifts, and his fantasy football picks. No question about me. He didn't even offer to pay for me and then tried to stick his tongue down my throat in the parking lot.

Nope.

That was several months ago, and I haven’t even tried to date anyone since.

Such is my luck. I've been in a funk ever since my divorce from Brennan. I mean, good riddance—he was cheating on me with no fewer than three different women, but still. We were married. I thought I loved him; I thought he loved me. So yeah, Nat and Nik warned me he was skeezy. Nate and Noah told me they saw him making out with a girl at the ice rink over the winter. The flags were there; I just didn’t see them. Didn’t want to? Chose not to? I don't know. It doesn’t make finding out the man you thought you were going to love forever was a philandering scumbag any easier.

I haven't been able to find my balance ever since—and that was over a year ago.

I rinse Shelly out and set about styling her long, voluminous, shiny, now-platinum blonde hair—no sign of the infringing gray strands. She's still yammering on about some reality show she's been watching, and I um-hum and no way in all the right places—a skill I've long since mastered after twelve years as a cosmetologist. I got my cosmetology degree a few months out of high school, got a job at a salon, and have been cutting and styling hair ever since—now I lease a chair here in Lux Locks Salon in downtown Three Rivers.

The dream, of course, is to have my own salon. I'm close, too. I almost have all the funds I’ll need, and I have the formal business plan, and I've been scouting possible locations for months. The trouble is that Three Rivers real estate isn’t cheap, especially downtown, which is where I want to be. I could easily get a space on Division over on the other side of town, but I’m not willing to compromise on the dream of having a salon right in the action. I just have to keep waiting for the right space to come along, and I know it will.

Someday. I hope.

My phone buzzes in my back pocket just as I’m putting the finishing touches on Shelly's hair. I wrap it up, cash her out, and then head in back to check the message before my next appointment shows up—Kelly, the salon owner, has a strict no phones out on the floor policy.

The message is a text in the thread between my sisters and me, creatively named THE GIRLS.

NIK

Mom and Dad want us all to come over for dinner tonight. 7 pm.

NAT

I won’t be done with my rounds till 730. I'll swing by then.

ME

I'll be there. Thanks for the heads up, Nik.

Nik gives my message the thumbs up.

NAT

What about the boys?

NIK

They're already going to be there. Mom told me to tell you two.

The bell over the door dings, announcing my next client, so I shove the phone back in my pocket and head out onto the floor. My client is Abby Sheffield, an every-two-week regular who comes in for a color touch-up, blowout, and a mani-pedi; she tips like a boss, and I enjoy talking to her, so the four-hour appointment goes by fast and takes me through the rest of the day. She always books the next appointment that day, so the big time block is always reserved well ahead of time. Some of the girls don’t like the long bookings, preferring to turn the chair over faster, but I do enjoy them. I like getting to know my clients and the longer blocks allow that. I pay closer attention, honestly. It’s the quick cut-and-color with the every-few-months clients I tend to tune out. Maybe I shouldn’t, but hey. I make the rules, right? No one ever complains that I’m not paying attention. I’ve always been able to multitask well, splitting my attention into different tasks.

Once Abby is done, I close up my station and head home. I don't have to be at Mom and Dad’s for another hour and a half, so I change into yoga pants, a tank top, a hoodie, and sneakers and go for a walk. I put in my AirPods, crank my favorite playlist, and head out.

I rent a tiny Craftsman a few blocks from downtown—close enough that I can walk or ride a bike to work in nice weather but away from the bustle of downtown, so it’s quiet. I’m in the zone, tuned into the music and the rhythm of the walk, arms swinging, feeling good.

I’ve tried gym memberships, yoga, Zumba, dance classes, and spin classes, and even I borrowed Nikki’s Peloton while she was on vacation, and the only thing that I do consistently and enjoy is walking. I’ll never be some skinny, jacked CrossFit athlete with a snatched waist, but I think I look pretty good. I walk three or four miles at a brisk pace almost every day, except in torrential downpours or the most brutal of winter days—when that happens, especially in winter, I borrow Nat's gym card and walk the track at the Y.

I catch a glimpse of myself in the glass of a storm door as I pass a house: five-seven and…curvy. I’m not fat or overweight by BMI standards, I just tend to carry some cushion around the hips and thighs, although my bust isn’t exactly small, either. My ass does look pretty good in the yoga pants, if I do say so myself.

I’m a true ginger with ivory skin, liberal freckles, and kelly-green eyes to go with it, courtesy of recessive genes since no one else in my family has red hair or green eyes. Everyone else—Mom, Dad, Nat and Nik, and Nathan and Noah—are blond with either brown eyes or blue. It fits, though. Nat and Nik are identical twins and older than me by four years, and Nathan and Noah are also identical twins and younger than me by four years—I’m thirty, making Nat and Nik thirty-four and the boys twenty-six. I’m smack dab in the middle and unlike any of them. The running joke in the family is that Mom had a secret affair with the mailman. It's only a joke because it's patently untrue: Mom and Dad have had the same mail carrier for forty years, a sweet old Black lady named Helen.

As usual, I’m lost in my thoughts and only half paying attention. Thus, when something warm and heavy hits my legs, I'm shocked and knocked off-balance. I hit the sidewalk hard, scraping my palms and ripping the knees of my yoga pants.

"What the heck?" I yelp, rolling to my butt. "Where did you come from?"

My assailant is a dog. Medium size, it looks like a lab-pit mix, with short brown fur, floppy ears, and big brown eyes. No collar, skinny, and dirty. It looks up at me pathetically, wriggling its tail even as it hunkers down in fear.

I hold still, extending the back of my hand toward the pup. "Hiya, friend. You lost?"

I catch a glimpse of its undercarriage—a female. She wriggles and shimmies toward me, afraid and trying to show submission. She sniffs my hand, sniffs again, and then licks.

"I can't bring you home, but I can bring you to the shelter. How about that? You seem like a sweet girl. I'm sure someone will bring you home." I carefully move to my feet, realizing only as I look around that I'm only a few doors down from home. "Come on, girl. I'll help you."

She seems to understand and follows me down the sidewalk to my house. I grab my purse, ignoring the stinging on my skinned palms, and then grab a bungee cord from the garage to use as a makeshift leash. The dog waits for me at the end of my driveway and lets me wrap the bungee around her neck and secure the hook. She’s clearly had a home and training because she jumps up into the backseat of my aged-but-serviceable CR-V without hesitation.

The drive to the animal rescue is less than fifteen minutes, but the eager, sweet little dog can't sit still, leaping from the front seat to the back and then to the front again, trying to crawl onto my lap even though she's definitely too big to be a lap dog, drooling on me and smearing drool on my window.

"You're a lot, girly, you know that?" I rub her floppy ears as we park behind Three Rivers Animal Rescue. “But I guess some people could say the same about me, huh? Brennan sure got annoyed with me a lot.”

The dog gives a little bark, grinning at me.

"You know, you're right. Frick him. We don’t need to even think about stupid, dumb-dumb loser-butt Brennan Engler. Do we? No, we don't." She ruffs again, flipping at me with her long pink tongue. "Okay, sweet girl. Let's go inside."

She hops onto my seat and waits for me to grab her makeshift leash before making the jump to the ground. I bring her inside, and she seems perfectly at ease, looking around and panting happily as I wait at the counter.

The rescue is a cacophony of animal sounds, mostly a chorus of barking dogs. The dog sits at my feet, looking up at me occasionally.

I look back down at her. "You know, you sure are sweet, aren't you? I'd love to keep you, but my landlord has a strict no-dogs policy. Plus, I work so much I'm rarely home, and that wouldn’t be fair to you, would it?"

She whines at me as if understanding and slumps down to her belly, chin on her paws.

A door opens and a middle-aged woman comes to the counter; she's short and plump with a bouffant bottle-blond bob and chunky costume jewelry, wearing mom jeans and a baggy T-shirt, with a blue vest emblazoned with a cat and dog logo and the words "Three Rivers Animal Rescue."

"Hi!" She's loud and effusive. "I'm Gloria." She leans over, resting her prominent chest on the counter. "And who do we have here?"

"She literally knocked me over just now. I was walking near my house over on Elm near First Street. She's a stray, but she's been trained. Good on the leash, jumped right in the car. She's a sweet girl, I just can't have dogs where I live."

Gloria comes around from behind the counter and approaches the dog carefully, letting her sniff before crouching to say hi. The dog greets her with kisses and a puppy grin.

"Oh, she is a darling, isn’t she? Too bad you can't take her, huh?"

I give the dog a ruffle of her ears. "I really wish I could, but my landlord has a very strict policy."

"Well, don't you worry. We have plenty of space, and I think I know someone who just might be a good home for this girl." Gloria clips a collar around the dog's neck and then a short lead. “I’ll take her back."

"That's it? I don’t need to do anything else?" I ask.

"Nope, we're good."

A digital bell chimes as the door behind me opens. I feel…I don't know. A tingle down my spine. A frisson of something electric.

Frowning, I glance over my shoulder to assess the source of the feeling.

"Oh." I blink in shock at the mammoth, terrifying human being standing just inside the doorway. "Um. Hi."

"Mmm." He juts his chin up with a terse grunt that barely counts as communication.

At five-seven, I’m not exactly pint-sized, and nor am I diminutively built. So I'm not used to feeling tiny.

But this man.

Dear goodness.

He's a colossus.

At least six inches taller than me, maybe even more like eight, he's not just tall. I mean, he is tall, but he's just…freaking enormous. His shoulders are titanic boulders bulging at the seams of his dirt-smeared black T-shirt, which bears the logo of Crowe Demolitions on the left breast. The shirt is so big I could wear it as a nightgown, and I’d probably swim in it. Yet on him, it's skin-tight.

His arms?

Lordy. Literally the size of my thighs. His chest is massive and hard, bulging with muscle and tapering to his waist. I've read the term "tree-trunk legs" before but never really visualized it until now. They're veritable sequoias sheathed in dirty, faded denim. His boots are probably as long from toe to heel as my arm is from fingertips to elbow.

The shock doesn’t stop there.

He’s a ginger. Bright red hair, and a lot of it. It's loose and wild and in desperate need of care. It's obvious he just let it grow and doesn’t really know much, if anything, about caring for it. If I had to guess, I’d say he either washes it with bar soap or has one of those all-in-one bottles.

And his beard. Dear goodness, his beard. It's a real-deal mountain man thing, bushy and chaotic, hanging to his chest in an explosion of red.

My fingers itch to get all up in his business, washing, trimming, braiding.

Yet, behind and beneath the wildman hair and beard, he has deep, probing hazel eyes somewhere between green and gray. He gazes down at me, assessing me—he seems almost…shy? Not fearful, but…I can't place it.

"Didn't mean to startle you." His voice is the rattling rumble of an approaching freight train, low and quiet and powerful.

"I…no, you didn't. Well, you did, but it's fine." I smile up at him.

His brows knit at my smile as if he's puzzled by it. And that's when I get it—given his size and shocking appearance, he's probably used to people shying away from him. The tattoos wreathing his forearms and disappearing under his sleeves probably don't help, either.

I stick my hand out at him. "I'm Noelle Harper."

At first, he just stares at my hand like he doesn't know what to do with it. And then, very slowly, he lifts his hand toward mine. And holy freaking crap, his hand is… I’ve run out of synonyms for “huge.” It could engulf both of mine and when his fingers curl around mine and his palm touches mine, his hands are as rough as cinderblocks. His grip is darned near delicate, though, as if he knows exactly how powerful he is and how to modulate his grip.

"Bear."

I blink up at him. "Bear? That's your name?"

"Yup."

"Like, for real? It's not a nickname?"

He just shakes his head.

"Bear, huh? Well, it certainly suits you." I try to see around his Godzilla thighs. "You're not bringing anything in. Adopting?"

"Volunteering."

"Oh. Really?”

"Yup."

I can't help but laugh a little. "You don't talk much, do you?"

Another shake of his big, shaggy head.

The door to the back opens and Gloria emerges, leash in hand, putting a cell phone in her vest pocket and then looking up.

"Wow. Hi." She blinks at Bear, clears her throat. "How…um. How can I help you?"

I'm nosy and curious, so I stay to watch the exchange.

Bear slips past me to the counter—that tingling on my skin explodes all over again as he nears me. "I'd like to volunteer. Work with the dogs."

Gloria stares at him for so long that it's awkward. "You…what?"

"I'd like to help. Volunteer." He repeats himself patiently, no sign of awkwardness, no sign that he even notices her reactions to him.

She swallows hard. "I…we…yes. Yes. Let's see." She ducks to peer under the counter and comes up with a clipboard with a stack of tear-off volunteer forms. "Just fill this out. I, um…I do need help in the back. It's just me right now, and we’re almost full up. I can't man the counter and clean up."

"No people. Just the dogs," Bear rumbles.

I almost laugh, but manage to hold it in.

Gloria watches him fill the form out; he hesitates when he gets to the section about prior convictions; I have good eyes and can read the form from where I’m standing.

He looks up at her. "I have a record. I work for Riley Crowe. He will vouch for my character."

Gloria opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. "I…I see. I would have to speak to Mr. Crowe. But…if you're okay staying in the back, I think we could make it work. I…I mean no offense, Mr. Bear."

The corner of his mouth twitches. "Just Bear. I’d rather stay in back anyway. Not good with people."

Gloria's mouth flaps again, and then she reads whatever he wrote on the form regarding priors her eyes widen. "Um…"

"Paroled. Good time credits and work release. Won't be trouble."

"But…but….” She's white as a sheet.

Bear sighs and takes a step backward. "Nevermind. I understand."

Gloria sets the clipboard down, looking at him. "You don't…you don't seem…"

"I just want to spend time with the dogs. I won't be trouble." He sounds…almost sad. Or resigned.

"I really do need the help. My last helper turned out to be terrified of dogs and quit after a week." Gloria looks down at the form, then at Bear again. "If Riley Crowe gives you a good reference, then that's good enough for me. I know Riley. He's had his share of trouble, but he's turned things around in recent years. And that program of his seems to be doing well."

Bear nods. "Changed my life. I owe him a lot."

"You're in the program?"

He nods again. "Three years. Got out a month ago."

Gloria seems to soften, then. "You like dogs?"

A shrug of one heavy shoulder. "Always wanted one. Cellmate used to be a trainer. Taught me some things."

"Wonderful. If you'd like to wait while I call Riley, you can start today, if you'd like." Gloria withdraws her phone, gesturing at a blue plastic chair in the corner.

"I'll wait. Thank you."

Gloria bustles into the back, phone to hear ear already. Bear doesn't move for the chair, I notice, although he does give it an appraising glance, clearly deciding not to risk it.

He looks at me, then. "Still here."

I blush. “Yeah, um…" I shrug, grinning. "I'm just nosy. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Bear."

That lip quirk again—like the start of a smile, quickly abandoned. "Just Bear."

"I almost laughed when she said that." I know I should go, but he's a fascinating person, and the tingle I feel around him is sort of addictive. "It's really your given name?"

He pulls a folded stack of cash out of his pocket, an ID on top, the whole held together with a rubber band. He shows me the ID—not a driver's license, I notice.

Bear Olaffson. It’s his real name.

"Wow. Pretty cool." I smile at him again, hoping to get another of those lip twitches out of him; no such luck. “Well, Mr. Bear Olafsson, I should go. But it was nice to meet you. Maybe I'll see you around?"

"Maybe, Noelle Harper." His eyes scan my face, flick quickly over my body and back to my eyes. "Hopefully."

I blush at his attention, his gaze—at the "hopefully."

"I play Trivia at The Cellar every Friday night with some friends," I blurt. "You should come. It's fun."

"Trivia?"

"Yeah, you know, random facts?"

He peers at me, thinking. "I don't drink."

I shrug. "No problem. A couple of my friends are sober, too. It's still fun." I grin at him. "You can just sit there and watch. Maybe that'll stop the randos from hitting on us."

"I could do that."

"See you Friday, then?" The tingle of hope and excitement is intoxicating.

There's just something about the guy. Despite his size, appearance, and whatever he wrote down on that form that rattled Gloria so badly, I don't feel even a hint of fear. The opposite.

He nods. "Friday."

I hold out my hand for another handshake, just because I want to feel his hands on mine again—it's a rush, how his massive, cinder-block hands are so gentle. He frowns, taking mine and turning it over to look at the palm.

“You’re hurt."

"Oh, it's nothing. A stray bumped into me and I scraped my hands. A little Neosporin and I'll be good as new." I swallow hard as he holds onto my hand, his thumb delicately brushing the scrapes. "I'm fine, I swear."

“Wash 'em out. Don't want an infection." His eyes flick to mine.

"I will," I whisper. My phone buzzes in my back pocket, and I jolt, shocked. Fish it out. "Crap! I'm late for dinner. I gotta go, Bear. I'll see you Friday!"

"See you Friday, Noelle."

I back up out the door, waving, holding his gaze till the last second.

Suddenly, Friday can't come too soon.