~

 

Harvey stalked down the aisle of the store like he was hunting his prey. His left hand shot out and he snatched a large pack of his favorite treats from the shelf. He lifted the basket in his right hand, and chucked them inside. He had a system for shopping that involved minimum effort and he was sticking to it.

He hated shopping. It made his bear feel inferior – as if the beast couldn’t hunt its own dinner. It could.

The animal seemed to be getting a foothold within him more and more as the days ticked by and that wasn’t a good thing.

Harvey knew what it was, the bear was lonesome, and it didn’t help that he’d sworn off females since the last nut job, bear shifter groupie had rolled out of town. He’d sworn never again, and he meant it.

His bear, on the other hand, liked having females around, and it wasn’t just the sex, although, that was all good, it was the need to protect that his beast felt so damn deeply about.

Harvey hated shopping with a vengeance because he couldn’t scent the air or smell the breeze. Even if he’d tried to do it inside the small confines of the shop then he’d be sneezing for an hour from the stupid scented candles that human females loved so much.

He twisted his head slightly at the sound of something smashing to the floor. That sound came from the back of the store and grunted at the multitude of curses that followed. That was exactly how he was feeling. The sooner he got out of there and home the better.

Harvey had been planning how his night was going to go all day while working on old man Taylor’s barn. He was going to get home, shed his clothes, shift and let his bear have some leg room for a good few hours. Then he’d pig out in front of the television watching sports.

It sounded good to him.

“There’s a line,” he turned his head at the sound of the female voice and looked down. His bear grunted within him.

A little person. Just about waist height. Her big blue eyes stared up at him like he was Satan in the flesh. Her full red lips pouted as if he’d wounded her, and her curly brown hair held a certain frizzy halo around her head.

“You in it?” Harvey’s deep, gravelly tones made her eyes narrow at him just a little, and she gave a small nod. “You got money?” Harvey demanded and watched the ivory skin on her forehead crinkle a little.

“No…” she started, looking a little sheepish.

“You got food?” Harvey’s tone made her frown harder.

“I’m saving a space,” she announced, so precisely that she could have been one of those child actors on a television commercial that annoyed him so much when they interrupted his viewing.

“Yeah, well, I got money, and I got food, and that makes me a customer and you a lurker,” Harvey tossed his basket up onto the counter and turned his attention towards the teen who was serving.

The young lad reached into his basket and took out his favorite treat, and Harvey could have sworn that he could already taste them on his tongue. The beep of the scanner annoyed him.

“Those are bad for you,” someone’s little mini-me announced with those precision words, and he felt a flare of annoyance.

“Yeah, I know,” Harvey offered without looking at her. “Give me one of those large bottles of Scotch…”

“That’s really bad for you,” she offered up, and Harvey’s annoyance flared once more.

“That’s what makes it so good,” Harvey grumbled, shuffling on his feet, and resisting the urge to shout out for the youngster’s mother to control her child.

“People get mean when they drink that stuff,” she announced, and Harvey’s eyes practically rolled back in his head.

“I’m already mean,” he snapped back.

“Then you’ll be double mean and hurt people,” she said.

Harvey’s bear took exception to the child’s words. A low, deep growl rumbled within his chest.

“Can you hurry up, I don’t have all night,” he growled at the young lad behind the counter and the guy nodded fast, his hands moving faster as he scanned and bagged the groceries.

“You’re a shifter!” The child announced with something that sounded like wide eyed excitement and Harvey snapped his gaze downwards to glare at her.

“What gave it away?” he snapped back.

Harvey just wanted to escape to the woods. Sports be damned, he just might let his bear run loose until the sun came up.

He didn’t want anything to do little people, especially not a little girl. They were so – fragile. He didn’t trust himself or his bear around them.

This one was especially annoying, tweaking his pissed off gene to the point where he wanted to run from the store and shift in mid stride.

“The growl,” she said like he hadn’t used sarcasm at all.

“Hurry up,” Harvey growled at the teen, and the man nodded faster and worked faster. He guessed the guy didn’t want Harvey in the store as much as Harvey didn’t want to be there.

“Are you a wolf?” she asked, and Harvey grunted in annoyance.

“No.”

“Cheetah?”

“Hell, no,” Harvey growled back.

“That’s a bad word, and I’m telling my mother,” she said.

“You go right ahead, right now, run on, get going.”

Harvey waved one large hand in her direction and heard her gasp in a breath. For a moment he’d thought that he’d inadvertently hurt her. His beast roared within him, his guilt gene went into overdrive, and his protective side flashed into being.

He snapped his head around on his neck and stared down at her, praying to whatever God would listen that she wasn’t hurt, and begging anyone, including Satan himself not to let her cry. He hated tears.

“A bear!” she announced, her eyes full of wonder and with the kind of a smile on her lips that kicked him right in the stomach.

“Thought you were going to tell you mother what a bad guy I am?” he growled longer, harder, deeper, and all because she wasn’t injured.

It wasn’t that he wanted her to be injured. It was that he’d just endured a mini-roller coaster ride of emotions and guilt for nothing. Human children annoyed the hell out of him.

“You’re a bear, right?” she demanded, grinning from ear to ear with a knowing look in her eyes.

“Are we done yet?” Harvey demanded on another growl as he turned towards the cashier and thrust a handful of bills at the lad.

“Done,” the man rushed out, his hand shaking as he reached for the money.

Harvey felt doubly guilty. First for the child, and then for the pubescent teen that acted as if he was robbing the store at gunpoint.

Damn, he was acting like a bear with a sore head, and he felt like one. He just needed to escape the store, the cashier, and the child, and not necessarily in that damn order.

“Guess it’s true what they say…” the girl’s sing-song voice annoyed him once more, but still, he fell for it.

“What?” he growled.

“Bad mood bear,” she said and poked out her tongue; a second before she turned on her heels and ran away.

“That’s…” he growled, and his top lip twitched in anger. “She yours?” he growled at the spotty youth and the man balked.

“No!”

“Well, there should be a policy about annoying kids in shops,” Harvey grumbled as he snatched the change from the teen, fisted his grocery bags, and fled the store before he shifted right there in front of everyone.

Yeah, he was going to run until the damn sun came up.