Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,113

you don’t spend nearly every minute with this person, you can’t go on. Like you’ve already known them for a hundred years and yet there’s so much left to discover. This deep connection goes beyond all that too. That’s the fates. You feel it right here.” He pointed to his own heart. “It feels hot and tight. It hurts and it also feels good. You feel that?”

Yes, Cody thought. No question.

But he only shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”

39

Jessie

Jessie told herself that it didn’t mean anything that she stopped in the employee washroom to let down her hair and brush it out and style it, and put on a little makeup before heading down to the kitchen for Cody’s dinner.

She had no intention of pursuing a romance with Cody, she told herself. But she at least pretend to herself. That’s all it was. They were friends and they could flirt.

She applied a second coat of peach lip gloss that set off her warm complexion and smack her lips. There was a fanciful part of her that wondered if it was possible to be with Cody someday... once things were more settled with the kids. But the truth was, she didn’t know how things could ever really be settled. She had effectively stolen six children from their abusive parents and if they were ever found... Jessie didn’t like to think about what would happen.

Bear sleuths didn’t follow human law. They could easily just kill her as payback without ever being caught. Or they might enlist the help of shifter elders; older folk around the region who were trusted to decide what justice meant for such a crime. It was an old fashioned way of dealing with trouble among shifter folk. Jessie had heard of elders intervening when sleuths didn’t know what to do when one of them committed a crime.

Sometimes she forgot that was what she had done. It still might have been right... but the elders might not see it that way.

Jessie sighed and shoved that thought away, skipping down the main staircase and heading toward the kitchen for her definitely-not-a-date-dinner with Cody.

She could, at least, have this for herself.

“Hey, everybody!” Jessie said later that night as she walked in the door back at the cabin.

Jessie was on a high from spending just a half-hour in Cody’s company at dinner and there was something nice about knowing where each of them stood now. They at least both knew they were interested in each other. But there was no awkwardness as Cody had sat next to her, watching her eat his seafood linguini.

He was terribly curious about whatever she wasn’t telling him. She could sense it, even when he didn’t ask her. But they didn’t talk about that. They talked about The Great Gatsby and then Cody told her about he was reading Kafka and she remembered that she’d once read some Kafka too and that had started them talking about books and then their favorite bands, Cody loved R.E.M., Pixies, and a lot of old indie stuff and his brothers all thought he was stuck in the past.

It was almost dangerously easy to fall into the groove of conversation with Cody. She felt comfortable with him and safe in a way she’d never known before.

And more than that, she felt a desperate craving for him that seemed to sit right beneath her ribcage and it was so powerful it made her ache.

But she tried to ignore all that.

“Hey!” Molly smiled at her from her spot on the area rug where she was playing with Sophie and the twins, scribbling construction paper with giant crayons.

Poor little Molly took care of the kids all day until Jessie got home. That wasn’t fair to her, seeing as she was only twelve. But she at least had Chris to help her. The two of them were older than their years by necessity and she was always surprised at their knowing maturity.

“Hey, Molly.” Jessie had picked up the routine of quickly surveying the cabin for any obvious disasters as soon as she came home. All the spilled milk from the day before had been mopped up. The kids had done their best with towels and she’d given the kitchen floor a good cleaning afterward, fearing the eventual odor of spilled milk.

The abandoned cabin she shared with the kids had just two bedrooms and she’d set up cheap cots and cribs in both the living room and one of the bedrooms, but it was still