The Bear's Nanny Read online

  The extra latte was still warm when Ainslie handed it to him, and it was worth it just to hear him wonder, in all confusion, “Why does this coffee smell like Thanksgiving?”

  He did appreciate it more than Ainslie typically did, at least, so she considered the endeavor worth the effort.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  There were four days left until the next full moon. The cookie bars were gone, but Paisley was happy to volunteer to help make more. Ainslie instead opted to make a tray of muffins. It was a decent way to pass the time in the afternoon, and it meant she had another option for breakfast the next morning, assuming the entire tray didn’t get devoured in a single go.

  It didn’t take much time, though. The baking was long done by the time Malik got home that evening, and Ainslie was nearly finished helping the girls with their homework.

  She knew Malik was watching from the kitchen doorway as they sat at the table. She wasn’t sure what was so fascinating about watching, but when she snuck a glance at his face, he looked impossibly fond, though he glanced away as soon as he noticed that she was looking at him.

  Slowly, he pushed himself away from the doorway and left, only to come back a few moments later.

  “Anything exciting happen today?” he asked as he came back into the room and the girls finally noticed him. Paisley launched herself out of her seat at him, as if she wanted to climb him like a jungle gym. Malik caught her without any issue, remarking casually as he did, “It smells like someone baked.”

  Of course, he noticed that quickly. Ainslie really couldn’t even be surprised.

  She found herself smiling without even being fully aware of when it started.

  *

  There were three days until the next full moon, and the day was unexpectedly exciting.

  A storm rolled in, in the early afternoon. It was quick and loud and seemed as if it wanted to shake the house apart, and after a particularly close bolt of lightning that lit all the windows in magnesium white and unleashed a nearly simultaneous snarl of thunder that shook the walls, Lily squealed in surprise and transformed.

  It took Ainslie ten minutes to help get her disentangled from her clothing, and some of it was ruined. Lily spent much of the rest of the afternoon sulking in embarrassment in her bedroom. But it got Ainslie thinking.

  “Why do they go to public school?” she asked that evening, sitting in a chair in the den and drinking a cup of coffee. “I mean, I saw Lily transform earlier because a storm startled her.”

  Malik sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I could homeschool them,” he admitted, “but there isn’t really anyone around their age out here, so they wouldn’t be able to socialize nearly as well. Besides, it’s good practice. An average school day is pretty unlikely to actually push Lily over the edge, even if it might fray her nerves.”

  “Even if there’s another thunderstorm?” Ainslie asked dryly. It seemed a little farfetched that there would just never be a thunderstorm during school hours, and she had been taking care of the girls for long enough that she couldn’t help but to worry, even if it maybe wasn’t her place to.

  If Malik thought she was crossing some invisible boundary, though, he made no mention of it. It felt like maybe he was just glad that he wasn’t the only one who cared about his girls, even if Ainslie knew that wasn’t the case to begin with. They had family. The girls had friends.

  Ainslie didn’t question the feeling.

  “She actually has much better control when she’s out of the house,” Malik answered, his tone wry. “Something about the idea of being discovered gives her a remarkable second wind.”

  Ainslie snorted out a laugh. “Wily,” she replied, reaching over to pat his shoulder.

  “I need to have a few tricks up my sleeve,” he returned blithely, raising his palms as he shrugged. It made the gesture seem innocent, as if to silently say ”oh well.” It was strangely endearing. She didn’t question that feeling, either. It was something she was getting surprisingly good at, putting her feelings in a box to examine them later (or, potentially, never; that was a nice fallback plan).

  “You mean other than turning into a bear,” Ainslie stated blandly. “I’m pretty sure that counts as a trick.”

  Malik scoffed in feigned outrage. “That’s not a parenting trick,” he protested. “It’s just a life trick. Those are two completely different things.”

  “Mmhmmm,” Ainslie hummed in melodramatic agreement. “Right. Whatever you say.”

  He pouted after her as she left the room, but she could hear him laughing once she was back in the hallway and slowly closing the door behind herself.

  *

  There were two days until the next full moon. Andy seemed anxious. Not in any sort of loud, outrageous sort of way, but in a quiet, slightly dread-filled way. As if something awful was building on the horizon and she knew she had to confront it.

  She had been staring at her homework for the last twenty minutes and her pencil hadn’t touched the page. Ainslie knew it wasn’t because of the actual work. Andy would go on, at length, about how easy her classwork was, so Ainslie found it hard to believe that she was stumped by any of it.

  Andy nearly jumped out of her skin when Ainslie sat down next to her and wondered mildly, “Are you bringing your ukulele or your guitar to your grandparents’?”

  Andy blinked at her slowly, a look of utter bafflement on her face before she finally asked, “Why?”

  Ainslie’s eyebrows rose. “Don’t you think they’d like to hear you play? I mean, everyone left in the middle of the afternoon last time, so I figure they got there with plenty of time before the moon rose. It’s not like it’s going to be all critters all the time. And I kind of get the impression they haven’t actually heard you play.”

  Andy glanced away quickly, confirming Ainslie’s guess. She was silent for a moment, before she slowly conceded, her words a mumble, “I guess I can bring my ukulele.”

  With a broad smile, Ainslie nodded in satisfaction and left her to do her homework.

  She didn’t know how to get Andy to stop worrying in the lead-up to the full moon, but she figured she could at least prod things along to make her feel more appreciated once the day arrived.

  *

  There was just one day until the next full moon. One night, rather. Tomorrow afternoon they would pile into the car and head to the girls’ grandparents’ farm, where there would be plenty of space and plenty of cover. Ainslie couldn’t help but to feel a bit excited.

  Or a lot excited, honestly.

  She stared up at the ceiling of her room, absentmindedly running a hand along Christopher’s back over and over. She knew she should have been sleeping—it was going to be a long day and an even longer night tomorrow—but it wasn’t working out very well. Every so often she shifted position, seeing if she could get sleep to come easier if she was in this position or that position.

  Unsurprisingly, her fidgeting wasn’t helping, and she gave up on it when Christopher dug his claws into her chest in impatient outrage, aghast at the fact that the person he had chosen to use as a bed wasn’t sitting still.

  Ainslie contemplated getting up to wander around the house, but she didn’t want to wake anyone else up. In the end, she just closed her eyes and stayed still.

  Eventually, sleep finally fell over her, light and fitful though it was. She dreamed of a great many things, colorful and loud and in her face, and though they woke her up on more than one occasion, she couldn’t actually recall what any of the dreams were about. They weren’t bad, though, and they didn’t leave her feeling shaken or threatened, so she supposed that was the most important part.

  She woke up for the day when Christopher’s tail nearly smothered her, and she spent a solid ten minutes sneezing out cat fur. He slept innocently on her pillow, curled up into a deceptively harmless ball, adorable and impossible to be annoyed at.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Most of the day passed surprisingly normally, with the addition of Ainslie need
ing to check the girls’ bags to make sure they had packed everything they would need for the evening and the next morning.

  She packed the car early, loading the girls’ bags and Andy’s ukulele into the back just to get it all out of the way and to know she had it done.

  It wasn’t until the early afternoon that they all piled into the car. Ainslie was glad she already had some experience with being in the car with all of them together, considering all three girls were wide awake and in rare form, and the drive promised to be a loud one.

  Indeed, Paisley and Lily spent most of the drive shouting over each other in efforts to be heard, until neither of them could be properly understood and all Ainslie could tell was that Paisley was attempting to explain what the farm looked like and Lily was trying to tell a story about the last full moon.

  It was a long drive. She was pretty sure Malik was laughing at her suffering.

  *

  The girls’ grandparents were not what Ainslie expected. Rose was a slender, willowy woman who wasn’t yet showing her age, at least not quite, with grey-speckled black hair pulled up on top of her head. She had dark skin and dark brown eyes, and she was unexpectedly tall.

  Jackson was a sturdy, stocky man, tall and broad, with dark skin and dark brown hair slowly but steadily being taken over with grey, and eyes the color of pine needles in winter. Like his wife, he hadn’t quite begun to show his age.

  Both of them were lively and welcoming, and they welcomed Ainslie into their home without a single problem. They hugged her warmly, hugged Malik warmly, and then promptly began ignoring both of them in favor of Andy, Paisley, and Lily, which was exactly the way it was supposed to be, as far as Ainslie was concerned.

  They gushed excitedly over Andy’s ukulele and Lily’s sketchbook, and they prodded at Andy excitedly until she quietly agreed to play a song for them after dinner, before the sun finished setting.

  Dinner that night could best be called comfort food. Warm and filling and intense when it came to the caloric load. Ainslie was going to assume that transforming and running around the woods (or the yard, in the case of Lily and Paisley) for most of the night was a bit of a strain on the body.

  In any case, everyone ate at least two servings, and there was hardly a scrap of food left afterwards. The dishes were left on the table for the time being, and Rose and Jackson swept Andy away into the living room with her ukulele to listen to her play a song. Ainslie contemplated following them, but only for a moment before she decided to let Andy simply enjoy the time with her grandparents.

  Instead, as Lily and Paisley went to raid their grandmother’s crafting room, Malik led Ainslie outside to give her a tour of the yard.

  Just outside the front door, the road was barely even visible in the distance. A few goats meandered around in the front yard, chewing at the lawn. Most of the western yard was enclosed in a fence with a few horses grazing. Most of the eastern yard was equally enclosed in a fence, but with a handful of cows moseying around. Behind the house, not far off, there was a barn, stained dark brown and smaller than Ainslie had expected.

  Farther off, the property was surrounded by trees on three sides. Ainslie couldn’t see another house no matter how much she squinted into the distance.

  At a leisurely pace, Malik led Ainslie along the edge of the horse paddock. They strolled until one of the horses noticed them, lifting her head from the grass to look at them. Her ears pricked up and her tail lashed at the air behind her. Malik whistled once and drummed his fingers against the top rail of the fence in a rapid-fire staccato beat.

  She was tall and leggy, her coat mostly white but spattered in rusty red-brown spots, with an equally rusty colored mane and tail and stockings on her legs.

  Slowly, the mare approached the fence, eyes bright and ears upright in curiosity. Finally, once she reached the fence, she buried her nose in Malik’s hands. He rubbed the top of her head and scratched behind her ears, and he slid Ainslie an expectant glance.

  “What—me?” Ainslie didn’t know why she said that. It wasn’t as if there was anyone else there he could have been looking at.

  He snorted out a laugh and nodded. “Yeah, you. Come on. She’s harmless.”

  Slowly, cautiously, Ainslie reached out. She stroked her hand down the mare’s nose, pausing in surprise when she realized just how much like velvet the fuzz there felt. Slowly, the mare sighed out a blustering sigh against Ainslie’s hands. With a quiet laugh, Ainslie ran a hand down the mare’s head from the middle of her forehead all the way down to her nose.

  Eventually, the mare got bored once she determined that neither of them had anything to feed to her and she moseyed on her way.

  “Congratulations,” Malik offered a moment later, his tone droll. “You just met Ruby.”

  “She certainly seemed to know you,” Ainslie remarked. And she guessed that made sense. He was there pretty often, and she wasn’t sure how attached horses got to people. She couldn’t say she had any experience with them.

  Malik huffed out a small, slightly melancholy laugh. “Yeah,” he sighed in agreement. “She used to be my wife’s.”

  For a moment, everything in Ainslie’s head seemed to grind to a halt as she processed those words.

  Slowly, she reached out, her fingers curling around Malik’s. “I’m glad I got to meet her, then,” she replied, her grip tightening.

  Malik’s shoulders eased with something like relief, and he squeezed her fingers in return.

  They were still holding hands as they made their way back to the house. The sun was beginning to set; soon enough Malik, Paisley, Lily, and Rose would be transforming, and Ainslie was sure that Andy had ideas about what the two of them would be doing for the night.

  She couldn’t deny that she was a little bit excited. Even if nothing happened, just the knowledge of what the night was made everything seem newer and more exciting.

  *

  Everything was a flurry in the house as Rose and Jackson tried to pick up everything that could feasibly cause problems if it was left on the floor, darting here and there and everywhere like a pair of hummingbirds.

  “For Lily and Paisley,” Malik explained. “Mostly Paisley, if you couldn’t guess. Jack will take them out to a smaller fenced in area behind the barn, but it isn’t unheard of for one of them to escape and head back to the house, and no one wants anyone getting into any trouble.”

  Ainslie nodded slowly, but there was no time to have an actual conversation on what was coming, as that was when Andy found them. “Come on,” she huffed, fingers closing around Ainslie’s wrist and tugging. “Everyone’s going to start heading outside and stripping soon,” she groused as Ainslie followed her. “No one wants to see that.”

  Well, truth be told, Ainslie could think of one person who she wouldn’t mind seeing strip down, but she wasn’t going to say that in front of Malik’s daughter. It seemed a little inappropriate. And unprofessional.

  (She ignored the part of her that tried to chime in that she hadn’t been particularly professional lately and that Malik didn’t seem to mind too much. She wasn’t going to get her own hopes up on a night when everyone was already busy.)

  *

  Andy gave Ainslie the briefest tour of the house, and by the time they were in the kitchen again, the night was well underway.

  There was something surreal about watching a bear, knowing it had been Malik until just a moment ago (was Malik still, of course, and Ainslie knew that, but she could only phrase things so many ways before she started to confuse herself), saunter away from a pile of clothing and make his way in the direction of the woods.

  Ainslie turned to look out the back window, and she caught a glimpse of Lily and Paisley racing each other towards the barn, Jackson jogging along in their wake. She wasn’t sure where Rose was until she saw an enormous wolf lope past one of the side windows, moving from the front yard towards the woods behind the barn.

  Considering the sheer amount of wildlife on the run or soon to be on the ru
n, it was promising to be an interesting night already.

  Ainslie looked down at Andy expectantly. “So, what are we up to first?” she asked, cocking her head to one side.

  Andy hummed a low, thoughtful note, before she asked, “What do you know about tracking animals?”

  “Less than nothing,” Ainslie assured her. “I’ve never even had to look for a lost dog.”

  Slowly, Andy grinned. “Then I know what we’re going to do tonight.”

  *

  It would likely surprise absolutely no one to know that Ainslie had never been much of an outdoorsman in the past. She had been content to stay inside and mind her own business and let nature stay outside and mind its own business. And in fairness, she had been aware that going with them on the full moon would likely require some amount of being outdoors.