Bear To The Bone (Bear Claw Security 1) Read Online Free Page B

lip and let it drag painfully over his teeth as he let it go. “I just need you to trust me for now. Even if I’m in the Aces.”
    “I don’t know what you want,” she said, throwing up her hands. “You’re here. I get that. You want to kiss me, take ownership, I guess. You want to come and go as you please. But, Cage, I can’t let you break my heart again.”
    Something inside him was shattered by that. “What do you mean break your heart?”
    “You stopped writing,” she said.
    He stared at her, words frozen on his tongue. I didn’t know what to say. I was being a coward. I didn’t know how to come back.
    “I didn’t mean to.”
    She sighed and stood, stretching, and he tried not to look at her body. “I have to go over to Willow’s today.” She frowned. “I guess I can’t take you over to see her, not when you’re wearing the patch. I don’t want the kids there to get the wrong idea.”
    He raised an eyebrow. Willow was the one who had contacted him about Carrie possibly being in trouble. She’d been the closest thing he had to a mother, after he’d gotten to know her through his frequent visits with Carrie. “She still taking in kids?”
    Carrie nodded. “Of course. And I help her. I can’t keep any here. I work too much and I’m not foster approved, but I help support her. And I go see the kids a lot.”
    “You support her?” he asked. “How? The bar?”
    She nodded.
    Damn . He’d hoped maybe just letting go of the bar would be the best way to keep the Aces’s attention off her for now. But she couldn’t.
    He’d also sort of hoped to be able to whisk her away from this town, take her to New York with him where she could live at his place while he did his security work.
    But she had a life here.
    “I’d love to see the kids,” he said.
    She shook her head as she pulled a jug of chocolate milk out of the fridge and poured two huge glasses. “You aren’t exactly a good influence right now.”
    He frowned. She was right. But he wanted to be a part of everything she was a part of, and he hated his current undercover assignment was messing that up.
    But the info he was gathering on the Aces right now would shut down their chapter in Winter Falls permanently, allowing Willow and Carrie and everyone else in the town to finally have peace.
    And then what? Some happily ever after where he swept Carrie away from this town? First, he’d have to tell her about his inner bear, and that was daunting.
    It was all a big mess. He was almost glad he’d gotten the call to come out here to deal with the gang, because a sense of duty or a need to protect always overrode any of his stupid insecurities.
    “Earth to Cage?” Carrie asked, holding out a glass.
    He took it and drank it in one long go.
    She grinned and refilled it, and he shook his head and set it down.
    He sat at the small, round table in the center of her small kitchen and looked around. There was a sliding glass door that led out to a small grass lawn with a redwood fence right behind it and then another house behind that.
    She had no space here. She deserved a mansion with lots of rooms of her own.
    But she seemed happy. He watched her as she busied herself fixing toast for breakfast, her cute butt swaying in her work clothes, which she must have been wearing when she fell asleep in her chair.
    Her hair was askew, her makeup faded. There were circles under her eyes from lack of sleep… and he’d never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.
    She turned to him, a tired smile on her heart-shaped face, and he felt his heart skip a beat.
    When she smiled at him, he felt more nervous than he’d ever felt in the field.
    “It really is good to see you,” she said, buttering toast and putting it on a plate and handing it to him.
    He slid it back toward her. “I already ate. You go ahead.”
    She nodded and picked up the toast and began to eat it with her milk. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I keep dreaming about us, starting with when