Hard To Bear Read Online Free PDF Page A

jokes or I’ll hit you.”
                  “You are a vivacious vision of voluptuousness.  Okay, your crazy old lady friend from yesterday is heading in the front door, and you are covering a bachelor auction tonight. I get to go with you.”
                  Coral looked at him. “I thought there was supposed to be good news in there somewhere.”
                  “The bachelor auction? You get to ogle a couple of dozen handsome men?”
                  She sighed impatiently.  She wasn’t in the mood to check out hot men.  Her self esteem had just been stomped on, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the bear. And she wanted to be covering real news stories, not more fluff.
                  “Why isn’t the society page reporter covering this?” she grumbled.
                  “Stomach flu,” Frederick shrugged, and turned back to his computer.
                  Blanche marched up to her.  Today she was wearing a purple velour track suit with sequined sneakers.
                  She plopped herself into the seat at an empty desk next to Coral.  “So, I hear the bear stood you up this morning,” she announced. “What are we going to do about it?”
                  “What? Oh, good God. My sister warned me about this town.  She told me that if a mosquito sneezed on the north end of town, everyone on the south end of the town would know about it before it finished wiping its nose.  Or something like that.”
                  “I offered to help take her mind off it, but she turned me down,” Frederick volunteered.
                  Blanche gave him a dismissive glance. “I would too,” she said, and suddenly Coral felt considerably warmer towards her.
                  Maybelle, who was sitting at her desk nearby clipping out articles to file, arched an eyebrow. “That would be a first,” she said tartly.
                  Before the two dueling spinsters could get into it again, Coral said quickly, “Anyway, it’s no big deal. It would have been a boring interview anyway.  What? Why are you staring at me?”
                  Maybelle and Blanche glanced at each other and shook their heads.
                  “Ah, youth! They’re so naïve.  Clearly, the bear has the hots for you, but he’s too scared to act on it,” Blanche said. “I’m not sure why, but I plan to get to the bottom of it.  He shouldn’t have stood you up, though.  We should get back at him. I could sneak into his house and put itching powder in his undershorts.”
                  “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Coral said hastily.  Fun, and well-deserved, but not necessary.
                  “I could leave a box of brownies laced with ex-lax on his porch,” Maybelle offered.
                  “Ladies! I am shocked!” Coral protested. “Shocked, I tell you!”
                  “The itching powder is a good plan,” Maybelle said to Blanche, ignoring Coral completely.  “However, I think-oh, there’s someone to see you, Coral.”
                  A wan-looking woman with circles under her eyes was making her way towards Coral’s desk.  She looked to be in her fifties, with bedraggled brown hair yanked back into a ponytail.  She wore a t-shirt and jeans that were clearly too big for her, as if she’d recently lost weight.
                  “Can I help you?” Coral asked.
                  “You’re the new reporter, right?  I wanted to know if anyone had heard anything more about Adrian,” the woman said.
                  Adrian Freidman was the reporter who she was replacing.  He’d apparently taken off abruptly several weeks earlier, which was why the internship had opened up.
                  “Not that I know of,” she said,