Her Bear and a Baby: BBW Bear Shifter Baby Paranormal Romance (Who's the Daddy? Book 2) (2 page)

But she hadn’t. Not yet. Beau being her mate was both a good thing, and a bad. She could not allow herself to be distracted.

“Yes,” he was saying. “You’ve just driven into town. I wondered where you were staying.”

“I… I haven’t thought about it.” Finding Beau and getting things set in motion had been her priority. Elise knew she needed closure, for her sake and Connor’s. Once Gable was found, she would make her decision. If he was the kind of man she thought he was, Gable would never know of Connor, and she would raise her nephew as her own child.

It would be so easy live tucked away in the mountains where no one would ever find them. But therein lay the problem. She needed to know who Gable was, or more importantly
what
he was. What kind of creature could walk away from his mate? It burned inside Elise, until it began to blossom into a darker emotion, one that needed purging, or she knew it would eat her up. For Connor’s sake she couldn’t let that happen.

“Why don’t you stay here?”

This time his words well and truly jolted her back to the room and the man in front of her. She knew he had ulterior motives, but asking her to stay seemed a little presumptuous. Yet when she looked into his face and saw there was no hidden motive, only a wary concern, she knew she would be safe under his roof. He wouldn’t hurt her, couldn’t hurt her, and that included forcing himself upon his mate.

“I don’t want to impose,” she said.

“You won’t be. The house is big; I rattle around in it on my own. It will take me a couple of minutes to prepare one of the guest bedrooms, but you are welcome to stay.” He studied her again, and maybe he thought she was about to say no, because he added, “It will make it easier while I am doing my preliminary research if you were close by…. So that I can ask you any questions that might arise.”

She smiled, liking him more and more, a dangerous position to be in. She needed to keep her distance; until this played out one way or another, she had to keep him at arm’s length. Her sister had proved how devastating a mating bond could be, and she could not let Connor get caught in the middle of this. His future was more important. Her feelings were already being torn in two, warring over what would happen when they found Gable. To add the choice of denying her mate to the mix was too much: it added too many variables.

No. At present Beau had no idea she knew he was her mate. Elise had kept her emotions meticulously under control. She needed to keep it that way. Just until she found Gable and fulfilled her promise to her sister. Or the one to herself, to stab a knife in his heart.

“Thank you,” she said quickly, shaking off thoughts of bloody revenge.

“I’ll go fix the room now, please go and make yourself at home.” He paused, a hint of longing in his voice, which he quickly covered. “There’s coffee in the pot.”

“Thank you,” she said again, and stood to one side as he walked out of the room, his scent tickling her nose, and she breathed him in, savoring it, and storing it away. Then she steeled herself for what was ahead.

She took Connor’s tiny hand and kissed it. “A promise is a promise, Connor.” He smiled at her, his little hands grasping her hair. “A promise is a promise.”

“So can you help me… Beau?”
Her words echoed around his head. Yes, he could help her, but he didn’t want to help her find the man who had fathered her child. He wanted to take her to bed right now and claim her as his own. How could another man have told her he was her mate? Why would another shifter tell her he was her mate?

Well, where did he start? Her luscious, curvy body would be one place he would like to start. Peeling her clothes off to reveal her pale flesh, her voluptuous breasts—damn, he wanted to kiss them, and suck on her hardened buds until she begged him to touch her lower down. The heat between her thighs would be inflamed until she ached for him. Then he would slip a finger inside her, test her readiness, and then when he found her willing, he would thrust into her, fill her with his cock and make love to her until she never thought of another man again.

He found himself leaning against the wall in the hallway, his breathing ragged as if he had run across the mountains for miles. Shaking his head, he straightened up. He had to keep himself together; if she sensed he wasn’t up to the job, she might go elsewhere, find another investigator to help her. Beau could not let that happen. He needed to stay by her side, keep her close, keep her safe.

With an unusually accurate sixth sense about these things, he was convinced this Gable was bad news. That wherever the trail led, it was not going to be a happy ever after for Elise and her baby.

You are biased
, his bear said.

And you are not?
Beau asked.

Met with silence from his bear, he gathered his wits and went upstairs to ready the room for his guests. It had been a long time since anyone had stayed in the large house. Once a lively family home, it was empty since his brothers had left to pursue their own lives. It had come down to him to keep the place aired: it suited him, he liked solitude. He never thought he would say that, but for the last couple of years, since he retired, it had been true. The house sat on the lower slopes of the great Bear Claw Mountain range, and people did not pass by. If they came to his door, they came here because they needed his help.

And each time he helped someone, it usually reinforced his need to be away from the human population, and the shifter one too. Husbands who ran off with their mistresses. Wives who hired hit men for their husbands, and various other cases that highlighted how people refused to just get along with each other. Murder…

He was done with that, done with dealing with people. He couldn’t face it anymore.

Until now. Now he was presented with his mate. For the first time in a long time, he was not going to be happy to tell someone in need he was not in the game anymore. He was not going to tell her he wasn’t interested in her miserable life.

No. This time he would do whatever it took to help Elise, and make her stay. If that meant taking on the baby too, he would do it. His bear agreed.

He began to make up the bed with clean bedding, taking extra care to smooth out the crisp white sheet, and choosing the prettiest flowered covers for the bed. They reminded him of the past, when his outlook on life was happier.
When his sister hadn’t been lying dead in a ditch
.

Shutting that part of his brain off, he worked methodically to make the bed, and then quickly cleaned the already clean bathroom. Working at tasks like this helped. They helped a lot. But they were not the kind of tasks that would help Elise.

“Time to man up,” he said to himself in the mirror.

Elise didn’t need to know he was rusty at the whole PI thing; she didn’t need to know he hadn’t worked a case for almost two years, that his contacts were old, some of them maybe even dead.

She had no doubt been told he was the best, and once he had been. Now… Well, he wasn’t sure what he was now. Maybe he was going to find out. And that scared the hell out of him.

“Well, Connor, let’s hope I’m doing the right thing,” she said. She hadn’t moved from where Beau had left her, not wanting to drop Connor. She needed time to make sure her knees weren’t going to go weak before she walked anywhere.

Connor gurgled at her. She realized it was time he had a feed, and had his diaper changed. The journey had taken them three hours, and was the last leg in their cross-country quest to find the perfect person to help them. She smiled to herself.

Beau was all kinds of perfect. Her bear roared in agreement, but Elise had no choice but to shut those tempting thoughts down. Connor first. His health and well-being were of paramount importance; she had sworn to put her life on hold until she had made contact with his father. That niggling doubt surfaced once more. What was the right thing to do?

Her sister had made her promise to find Gable. She never specified what she expected Elise to do when she did. Elise needed to reconcile those thoughts pretty quickly. By coming here, she had set things in motion, and Beau would start the investigation soon. In only a few hours she might have the answers she was looking for; she would have stirred up things that might be best left alone.

In the space of the next day or two, there was a chance she would come face to face with Gable O’Donnell, with eyes as dark as the abyss. What happened then, she didn’t know. Would it depend on what kind of man he was? Had she misjudged him when it came to him abandoning Eleanor? Maybe he had a good reason for disappearing. Or maybe he didn’t.

She wished she had someone to talk things over with. But she had no close confidantes any more. When her sister finally made contact after being away so long, Elise had rushed to her side. Only to find her sick, with a young baby in her arms. Elise had left her old life behind to go and nurse her and look after Connor. It had consumed all of her time, so she had never made friends with anyone in the faceless city where her sister lived. The only people Elise knew on first-name terms were the nurses who worked on the ward her sister had been on, as she slipped from this life to the next.

A lump rose in Elise’s throat. She had to forget about that now. Focus on the future, not the past.

“Let’s go and get our bags, shall we?” she asked Connor.

She left Beau’s office, which, she guessed, used to be a dining room; the clue was a large, solid oak dining table, pushed back against the far wall to make room for his desk. The same desk that was surprisingly empty for a PI. She had expected it to be overflowing with pieces of paper, scribbled notes of his current cases. Instead it was neat and tidy. Maybe too tidy.

Not for a man who has retired, her bear reminded her.

True,
she answered. It was becoming clearer, that for whatever reason, Beau had stopped taking on cases.
Yet he was powerless to refuse his mate
. A prickle of guilt crept up her back. He must have had good reasons for retiring, and she ought to respect those reasons and let him live in peace.

Her assumption was confirmed when she noted his fingerprints in a thin layer of dust which had settled across his desk. Now, she began to wonder if he was the man he had been built up to be by the other investigator she had spoken to, or if he had lost his touch.

Was Beau still the best in the business? Was he the man she needed him to be? She had told him she didn’t need a man, but the ache in her chest told him she did. Or one specific man, at least. She ought to come clean and tell him the truth. Yet she was scared.

Scared of being the woman alone with a baby, knowing she was going to die and never see her beautiful child grow up. Eleanor had wept so many tears over life’s cruel twist.

Wiping away her own tears, Elise left the room, her resolve firm once again.

As she walked along the hallway, retracing the steps she had taken to get to Beau’s office, she took her time to take in the rest of the house. It wasn’t exactly stuck in a time warp, but there was a feeling that the house was holding its breath. That time stood still.

It was clean, and the wallpaper wasn’t faded; there was no sense of Miss Havisham here. And yet there was. On the coat stand hung a coat belonging to a woman. Shoes were neatly tucked under it. Blue, with four-inch heels and a cut-out pattern to reveal the wearer’s toes. Again with a layer of dust on them, unused for some time. She shook off her suspicions that something wasn’t right here. For all she knew he might have a woman living here. A live-in lover, a woman to warm his bed while he waited for his mate to appear.

While he waited for his mate to appear.

That hurt. A stab of jealousy in her heart. Wouldn’t that make things so much easier? If he already had a woman, he wouldn’t be so cut up about her denying him as her mate.

How was she supposed to sleep under his roof, when he was lying in bed, only feet away from her, with another woman in his arms?

A hotel was the best idea. She had to go and find him and tell him she had changed her mind about staying here.

Turning away from the front door, she walked purposefully towards the staircase, her eyes lifting to the landing and wondering if
Mrs. Beau
was up there. Only one way to find out.

Each step was deliberate. She wasn’t trying to hide the fact that she was coming, in fact she made more noise than she had to, to ensure he knew. The last thing she wanted to do was walk into a room and find the two of them having sex. Not just because she didn’t want Connor to see, but because it would tear her heart in two.

Reaching the top of the stairs, she was confronted by pictures of a pretty woman, wearing four-inch blue heels, and a dress that fitted her like a glove, surrounded by three young men. One of whom was Beau. She stepped forward and took a closer look. They all had similar features, making them obvious relations. Maybe even siblings. That was it, the shoes belonged to his sister, she tried to convince herself.

They looked so happy, and the lump in her throat returned, to remind her of the sibling she had lost.

Tearing herself away, and trying to blink away the mist of tears that crossed her eyes, she headed down the left-hand hallway, to where she could hear movement. Steeling herself, trying to tell herself that if he was in there with another woman she would cope with it, she opened the door, reminding herself only after it was too late that she should have knocked.

“Everything OK?” he asked. He was leaning over the bed, tucking a blanket in.

“Yes. Perfect.” She let her eyes sweep around the room. Clean, neat, no personal objects at all. “I just wanted to let you know I was going out to the car to get my things.”

“Want a hand?” he asked.

“No. I can manage,” she said evenly, her breath catching in her throat at the sight of him standing by the bed. If Connor wasn’t in her arms she would have thrown herself at him. But as was becoming her natural defense now, Connor’s weight acted like armor.

“You have a baby in your arms. It would be much easier to let someone help you.”