River Bear (BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance) (Blue Bear Rescue) by Terra Wolf, Holly Eastman Page B

line of pedestrians to cross and let him pass.
    “Busy today,” Delilah said from the passenger seat.
    “Tourists,” he grunted and hit the gas as the way cleared.
    “You don’t like tourists.” She cocked her head. “Aren’t they your job security?” she pointed out.
    She had a point.
    He hated to admit his dark mood had nothing to do with the damned tourists. He was grumpy because she’d chosen to sit so far away. His bear didn’t even like the two feet currently separating them. He wondered vaguely what the hell he was going to do when she finished her job and got on a plane bound for halfway across the country. He didn’t want to think about that right now. Like she’d said, the future was too uncertain. All he had was now. And what he wanted right now was to have her back in bed underneath him again. And maybe some breakfast.
    “Just ready to see what’s waiting up in that cabin,” he said, making a right onto the narrow road that would take them up the mountain.
    “Whatever it is, we’re dealing with it together, right?”
    He could feel her eyes on him, assessing. “Apparently,” he mumbled. He glanced over and found her smiling at him. “What?” he demanded.
    She slid across the bench seat until she was thigh to thigh with him. “You’re really cute when you’re grumpy,” she said, planting a quick kiss on his cheek before facing the road again.
    Jake’s frown relaxed by a few degrees.
    “I’ve been wondering something,” Delilah said after they’d driven in silence a few miles.
    Jake tensed. “What’s up?”
    “You and Xavier mentioned when we first met that you hired me based on a previous job I’d done. For someone you knew. I get privacy and all that, so if you can’t tell me, that’s one thing. But it seemed more like you didn’t want to. I was wondering if you could talk about it now.”
    Jake debated, but in the end, he knew this was easier than explaining his other secret. The vision Nash had of him killing her wasn’t something he was ready to share. After how open she’d been with him last night, he could give her this.
    “You did a job for the courts,” he began, and she turned to stare at him, brows furrowed. “Locate a man, a father of two boys.”
    “I don’t remember anyone with the last name River,” she said.
    “Jonah and I took Mom’s last name after my dad split.”
    “I thought you were in foster care?” she asked.
    “We were. Dad split, and Mom couldn’t handle it. She offed herself a few months later.”
    “God, Jake, I’m sorry,” she said, but Jake ignored her and kept on with the story. If he stopped every time she wanted to offer pity, he’d never get through it.
    “After Mom died, the courts hired you to locate Dad. We’d gotten word he lived in the city. Your name was on the report I smuggled from the social worker. I remember thinking how ironic it was, the PI they’d hired being only a couple of years older than me. That name on paper was already an adult, and yet I was still stuck in the damn system.” He shook his head, remembering how frustrated he’d been to realize that.” He took a deep breath, eyes on the road, memory a thousand miles away.
    “I did some grunt work for the courts when I first opened my business,” she said. “What was your dad’s name?” she asked quietly.
    “Williams,” Jake said, anger coating the word.
    Delilah nodded but didn’t say more. She remembered.
    Jake went on, determined to get it all out. It wasn’t something he could quit halfway through. “My dad always had a gambling problem. Cards, roulette, you name it. It only got worse as Jonah, and I got older. When I was thirteen, my dad finally left. I knew it was for the best, but my mom didn’t see it that way. She was fragile. Jonah was just pissed.”
    He blinked away the memories of what that had been like. Being so relieved to have that pressure gone and still having to hold it inside while his mom grieved for a dad that he’d