Baby For The Bear

Chapter 2

Bereft of a job to get her out of bed, Samantha had fallen into a habit of sleeping late, which she knew she should break, since looking for a job was a job in and of itself. Nevertheless, she was still in bed when she heard her phone’s ringtone and reached halfheartedly over to the nightstand to pick it up.

Blinking and squinting, she focused her sleepy eyes on the phone’s identification and shot upright when she recognized the name: Pamela Harrison.

Pamela Harrison! The contact woman from the WEREBEAR NEEDS HEIR ad. She was calling. She was actually answering.

The ringtone carried on, and Samantha, feeling self-conscious sitting up in bed in just her night clothes in spite of no one being able to see her, had to steady her breath before hitting the screen to answer. She also had to steady her voice to say, “Hello?”

The woman’s voice came from the other end: “Hello, good morning. Samantha Vance?”

Still resisting the tremble in her voice, Samantha responded, “Yes, this is Samantha.”

“Good,” said the woman. “My name is Pamela Harrison with Brecker American. I’m calling in response to your resume for the ad in The Central Square Weekly.”

Now Samantha could not stop the tremble. “The…the ad about…needing an heir…?”

“Yes, that’s the one. We’d like to have you come in for an interview.”

A sudden realization squeezed at Samantha’s brain. There was another name that she recognized. Her brow furrowed so hard, she thought her forehead would split open. Her mouth opened again, but this time no sound came out. The name reverberated in her mind. Brecker American. Her eyes widened as the realization squeezed harder. Brecker American!?

The woman’s voice on the other end shook her back to attention. “Hello? Ms. Vance, hello? Are you still there?”

Shaking her head hard, forcing herself to concentrate, Samantha gathered what wits she had and answered, “Uh…um…yes, I’m sorry. Yes, I’m still here.”

“Would you like to come in for an interview, today if possible?”

Again, Samantha’s voice failed her. She was still dizzy with disbelief. The woman calling her was with Brecker American, the company that had bought out Metro Foods. The company that had automated her store and laid her off and put her in this mess to begin with! The man—or metamorph—seeking a female to have his cub was the very one who had tossed her life in the dumpster. She had applied for a position as the hired uterus of the one who was the reason she was in trouble.

The universe had one hell of a sense of humor. If Fate itself were sitting in front of her right now, she swore she would slap it dead in the face.

And again came the woman’s voice. “Ms. Vance, are you there? Would you like to come in for an interview today?”

Shaking her head again, Samantha scrambled for an answer and could not believe it when she actually heard herself say, “Um…uh, yes. Yes, I…I think I can make it today.” She stared out into space with bulging eyes, knowing how terrible she must look at this moment. Oh my GOD, am I actually doing this?

“Good,” said Pamela. “Let’s see what time we can set up with you…”

And in another couple of minutes it was done. Samantha was scheduled for an appointment with Mr. Kenneth Brecker, the CEO of Brecker American, who had taken a wrecking ball to her life and would now be interviewing her for the privilege of having a doctor send his sperm into her womb to create his bearish offspring. She ended the call and dropped the phone into her lap, going from dizzy to numb. Not even beginning to know what she should feel, she completely shut herself off.

In a few hours she was going to be sitting in the office of this man, this billionaire who regularly morphed his body into that of a hulking mass of fur, fangs, and claws, who would ask her Lord only knew what kind of questions about her suitability to be his baby-bear momma. And this was the very man, the very being, whose thoughts of nothing but maximizing his own profits and making his bottom line as black as his fur had put her out of work and in need. What would she say to him? Would she even be able to face him?

And more, what would he say to her? He would certainly have looked at her resume. He would surely know where she was previously employed. And thus he would know that he, Kenneth Brecker, at least had a hand in her predicament, if he were not personally responsible for it himself. She lifted up the phone again, thinking she should call this Pamela Harrison back and cancel this whole thing. Samantha did not want to have this interview. She did not want to have this conversation. She did not want to have to look this man in the face—however excruciatingly handsome it might be, considering what kind of creature he was—and have to confront him about the upheaval that he had invited into her life with his business decisions that made no account of how, and on whose backs, businesses were built.

In all this city, there had to be somewhere else Samantha could go, some other corporate entity that she could approach, to restore her livelihood. She was not yet so desperate, so needy, so wretched, that she was prepared to take herself into the den of the bear who had already mauled her, figuratively speaking, before she ever had the chance to face him.

Samantha held up the phone and hovered her finger over the command to display recent calls. She only needed to hit that one number, get that Pamela woman back on the line, and tell her—and by extension, the bear who employed her—to forget the whole thing. Just one touch and she would at least be connected to Pamela Harrison’s voice mail. That was all it would take.

And for some reason she could not make herself do it.

Why? Why could she not make a simple phone call and cancel an appointment that her every instinct told her that she should not have accepted? Why?

Was it really that she wanted the $75,000 and the stipend so much? Or was it that she wanted to hear this Kenneth Brecker make an accounting for himself, for why he had done this to her life and the lives of so many other people she knew? Was it that she wanted to look the Ursine billionaire in the eye and tell him what she thought of him?

If nothing else, that would blow the whole interview, wouldn’t it, and spare her the experience of being pregnant with, and giving birth to, a baby that would be only half human. That was reason enough to go through with it, wasn’t it?