Baby Protector Bear: BBW Bear Shifter Baby Paranormal Romance (Who's the Daddy? Book 4) by Harmony Raines

all. Nothing would get past him.” He stopped, turning to her and stroking her cheek. “I wouldn’t have left Sam if I didn’t believe one hundred percent that he was safe.”
    “I know.” She bent her head, resting her forehead on his chest, letting his calm wash over her. “I think my head will explode.”
    “Then let’s walk and you can talk about it.”
    “This was supposed to be simple job. Look after a baby, while the police do their best to flush out his father. Instead, the father might not be the bad guy after all. Well, he is a bad guy, but not the bad guy. Which means that if he wanted, when this is all over, Krieg could come and claim custody, and the chances are he would get it.”
    “Unless Krieg is the culprit. We don’t know for sure.”
    She’d given it a lot of thought, and she was sure now Krieg wouldn’t have pinned this on her. “Don’t we? The fact that I’m being framed points the finger away from Krieg.”
    “You said you were friends with Angela, maybe he is mad about that and getting his revenge.”
    “Killing Angela wasn’t enough?”
    “You have his child.”
    “To protect.” None of it made sense. “But that puts us back at either Anderson, or your chief. But they are both good men.”
    “When we get back, I’m going to take a look at what Beau has found on Anderson, and then dig some more myself. There has to be some reason, if it’s Anderson, then there must have been a trigger. A man doesn’t spend his whole life helping people and then turn bad for nothing.”
    “True, especially since he is going to take early retirement in two years. His wife had cancer, she recovered, but he wants to spend more time with her.”
    “A nice silver handshake with a large pension, I would imagine,” Joel said. “You could start calling him King Anderson .”
    “Not funny,” she said.
    “Princess lost her sense of humor?” he teased.
    “I don’t even know why he started calling me it. My nickname used to be Jenny Hen because he thought I fussed over everyone like a mother hen. Then one day he came in and called me Princess.”
    “Did he suddenly find out who your parents were?”
    “No, it was all in my job application, he even asked me about it when he interviewed me. Was very supportive of my career choice. Then he changed.”
    “When? How long ago. One month, one year?”
    She thought for a moment. “Around two months ago.”
    “It gives us a starting point,” he said, stopping and taking an appreciative lungful of air before exhaling slowly.
    “So I thought you were a city boy, but really you are a mountain man.”
    He chuckled. “I am not a boy, city or otherwise,” he said. “But the mountains are where my heart lies. A part of me will always long to be here, lost in the mountains, where no one can see me.”
    “That sounds strange for a police officer.”
    They had reached the edge of a thick belt of trees, and he led her under their canopy, to where the light was dimmer, the air cooler. There was little bird song, and she could imagine they were miles away from any other creature. Just the two of them. And when she saw the look in his eyes, she wondered if that was a good thing.
    “You know I’ve told you how special you are?” he began.
    “Damn it, Joel. You aren’t going to tell me you brought me out here so you can bury my body in a shallow grave?”
    He shook his head, smiling, and then touched her cheek. “Nothing like that at all. The opposite, in fact. I brought you out here to tell you why you are the most important thing in the world to me. More important than the breath in my body.”
    The look in his eyes had shifted; he was no longer so intense, there was a softening, a warmth, that was meant for her. Her stomach flipped, her insides turning to liquid fire. She tried to blame it on the whole situation they found themselves in, that she was projecting onto him or something. But it was more than that, deeper than that.
    She could depend on