River Bear (BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance) (Blue Bear Rescue) by Terra Wolf, Holly Eastman Read Free Book Online

you’re breakable. Don’t forget that. I won’t.”
    “I do this because I am breakable.” She hesitated and then added, “I graduated from the police academy, you know. I was going to be a cop.”
    “Was?” he echoed. “What changed your mind?”
    “The breakable people. My dad.”
    “Is he a cop too?”
    “He was. Ten years ago, a gas station robbery went sideways on him, and he was shot and killed. The guy got away, but there was video footage. It was taken without a warrant, though, and between that and a witness he paid to lie about his alibi, the guy walked.” She grit her teeth, still furious when she thought about it.
    “And your mom?”
    “Not an option,” she said, resisting a shudder at the thought. “She wasn’t very nice to me. Mental problems, my dad said. She was committed when I was nine, and I never saw her again. Never cared to.”
    “Damn,” he murmured, his hand reaching for a lock of her hair. He ran his fingers over it, staring at her with what she really hoped wasn’t pity. She didn’t want to see that.
    She looked down, picking absently at the blanket as she talked. Might as well get it all out now. “After Dad died, I went into foster care for a while. I was on my own early, though. Foster care sucks even in the best situations.”
    “I was in foster care, you know,” he said, after only a brief hesitation, and she blinked in surprise.
    “No, I didn’t, but that explains some things.”
    “Like what?” he asked, his tone guarded now. She understood that. She understood more than he knew about growing up in someone else’s house.
    “You’re careful. You don’t put yourself out there very far, and you have that same wary look in your eyes that the other foster kids always had. And… I see how fiercely loyal you are to Xavier. He’s your family. In my experience, only someone who didn’t have parents, a home, would be that protective of what they’ve built.”
    “Your experience,” Jake repeated. “Did you ever find a family?”
    She turned away, hoping his sharp bear senses couldn’t spot the tears pooling. “Nah,” she said, keeping her voice light. “Still looking. But when I find them, I’ll protect them as you do yours.”
    Jake shook his head. “That must have been so hard on you.”
    She wasn’t sure what he meant. Foster care or not finding a family by the time she’d come out the other side. She ignored both, in case either one caused her to lose the battle with the tears she blinked back.
    She went with righteous anger instead. “It was harder knowing justice failed my dad because of technicalities in the law. I spent the next few years in foster care, bouncing around. Forgotten. Then, when I graduated high school, I went into the academy, but it wasn’t what I thought it’d be. The more I learned about the justice system, the less inclined I was to play by their rules. Not when so many criminals operate in the gray areas. So, I put the word out that I was for hire. Friends of friends and that kind of thing. Pretty soon, I was in business as a PI, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
    “You’ve seen some bad people,” he said. It wasn’t really a question, but she answered it anyway.
    “What happened tonight wasn’t the worst thing that’s happened on a job, if that’s what you mean. Not for me. But it sucked worrying about you.” She laid a hand on his cheek and rubbed lightly against the rough stubble. “That scared me.”
    He shifted, propping up on his elbow, and stared down at her. He ran the back of his hand over her cheek, his eyes pinning her still in the darkness. God, he was beautiful, even covered in shadows.
    “Your dad would have been proud,” he said.
    Delilah’s chest tightened. Tears stung her eyes and she swallowed, scared she was finally going to lose it. “Thanks,” she whispered, and just like that, the wall she’d built around herself crumbled. She gave into temptation. She gave in to Jake.
    And then,