A Pair of Bears: Bear Shifter Menage Paranormal Romance Read Free

guy who’s supposed to be here? Do all you werebears know each other, or did you answer some ‘werebear seeks same’ ad? Do you know any other werecats? If you really do want to hire me, how much are you offering?”
    She could have gone on, but Eli put up a hand. “Whoa. I think I’ve already lost track of the first couple questions.”
    “I can start over,” Paisley offered.
    “That’s okay,” Jackson said hastily. “I think this’ll make the most sense if we start from the beginning. I don’t know if all werebears— dammit, you’ve infected me— all bear shifters know each other, but a lot of us do. There are definitely other cat shifters, but I don’t know any personally. Eli and I grew up together in a little town in Maine. It’s got a couple families of bear shifters, and lots of forest for us to roam around in.”
    “I don’t remember a time before I was best friends with Jackson,” Eli put in. “We’ve been buddies since we were five.”
    “Three,” Jackson corrected him. “Then we graduated from high school, and we went our separate ways. Eli became a Navy SEAL, and I became—”
    “A hacker,” said Eli.
    Jackson elbowed him in the ribs. “An inventor. Hacking’s just a hobby. Anyway… Eli, do you want me to tell the next part?”
    “No, it’s fine.” But from the grief and anger that tightened Eli’s jaw, Paisley realized that Jackson had been thinking it might be too painful a story to tell. She knew all about painful stories. “I can’t get into details. Most of our missions are classified. All I can tell you is that my team was issued new, lightweight body armor made by a company called SmartDefense. They told us it was state of the art, and would protect us much better than the older, heavier vests. There was an ambush, and one of my buddies, Ryan, was hit. The bullet went straight through his armor.”
    Eli paused, his fists clenching. Jackson briefly rested his hand on Eli’s shoulder. Paisley also started to reach out, without even deciding to do it. Eli looked so sad, and she couldn’t help wanting to comfort him. Then she reminded herself that getting emotionally involved with people led to nothing but heartbreak. Paisley yanked back her hand, hoping neither man had noticed.
    Jackson continued the story. “What Eli’s not going to tell you is that a bullet went through his armor too, when he ran into the line of fire to rescue his buddy. Eli made it. Ryan didn’t.”
    Paisley remembered the puckered scar on Eli’s chest. If that was what it was from, he was lucky to have survived.
    Eli went on, his voice roughened with emotion. “That was the end of my career as a SEAL. The bullet just barely missed my heart, and the surgeons couldn’t get it out. I can still do everything I used to do, but they wouldn’t clear me to go on any more missions.” 
    Paisley could see what a blow that had been to him. Awkwardly, she said, “I’m sorry.”
    “Thanks.” Eli spoke as if her ordinary words had actually meant something to him. “Well, I reported that the new armor didn’t work. SmartDefense confiscated our vests for ‘testing.’ They sent back a report that Ryan and I had messed with our armor before the ambush, taking it apart to see how it was made, and we’d put it back together wrong. They said it worked perfectly if it was used as directed. So I took my medical discharge and went home, and I told Jackson about those fucking bulletproof vests that don’t stop bullets.”
    The bitterness in his voice spoke to Paisley’s heart. Without meaning to, she heard herself saying, “That’s like what happened to my mom. Her car had a defective air bag. The company knew that sometimes the air bags exploded instead of inflating. But it was rare, so they didn’t do a recall. My mom got in a fender-bender, and her air bag blew up. A piece of metal hit her in the neck— killed her instantly. The only person who ever loved me died because some executive didn’t want