Read Online One Bear and a Baby: BBW Bear Shifter Baby Paranormal Romance (Who's the Daddy? Book 1) by Harmony Raines - Free Book Online

inherited.
    “Here.”
    “Thanks,” Cade said, taking the offered glass and sipping it. “That’s good.”
    “Bernie brings me a bottle every month or so. Damned if I know where he gets it from, but it’s a smooth drink.” His dad took a sip and then set the glass down. “I thought maybe there were some things you might want to talk about that you might not want your mom to hear.”
    “You mean about Maisie?” Cade asked.
    “About anything. You disappeared, Cade. We knew you were undercover, but we usually hear something from you. Then you turn up on the doorstep with a baby who isn’t yours.” He held up his hand and said, “I am not saying she isn’t welcome. The opposite, we will love her as if she were our own granddaughter. Which she’s not. Is she?”
    Cade shook his head. “No.”
    “And now you’ve found your mate. You know, if it’s an issue for Isabelle, having someone else’s daughter living with her, Maisie can stay here. We’d raise her, love her.”
    “I know, Dad. But Isabelle is all right with it. At least she says she is, and I believe her.”
    “Good. She is a good woman, fair, just, and doesn’t take any crap. You’re a lucky man, Cade.”
    “Am I?” He took another sip of his drink, and then looked at his dad.
    “You can’t take the blame for other people’s actions, son,” his dad said gently.
    “But if I had somehow stopped it… Or searched harder for Jenni. If only I hadn’t been undercover, she might have found me sooner and she could have kept Maisie. I could have helped her clear her name.”
    “We all have parts of our lives we would change if we could. But we can’t, so we make the most of now. You work through it, and make the best of it.”
    Cade put his face in his hands and shook his head. “I know. I never thought life could get this complicated. When I went undercover, it was simple. You play a game, you pretend to be what the bad guys want you to be, and then you nail them. But this time I feel like I got nailed. But then there’s Maisie… Like you said, I wouldn’t wish her away. I wouldn’t want to change a thing. And that spears my heart. Her mom is out there suffering.”
    “So she just left Maisie with you?” his dad asked.
    Cade nodded. “Jenni said the job ended, she put in her report. Then the evidence against the guy they were investigating went missing. Everyone thought it was her, that she had grown too close to the mark. She couldn’t deny it; she was carrying his child. She ran. Then one day I opened the door, and there she was, on my doorstep with a baby, looking as if hell itself was on her heels.” He took a large swig of his drink.
    “What happened to her, to make her want to give away her child like that?” His dad sat shaking his head.
    “Someone got to her. Someone knew her secret. I wondered if it was the mark. That was where I looked first. It took a lot of digging around to put the pieces together as to who he was. It seems they had enough to still charge him: he’s rotting in jail, got fifteen years. I went to see him. I came away convinced it wasn’t him. It appears someone was after the money that was confiscated and the drugs for the same reason, to sell.”
    “How many people on the team knew about her relationship with the mark, and also knew about her pregnancy?”
    “I don’t know. I went to see the detective in charge of Jenni’s case, Stanhope. He was also the lead detective on the case I worked with Jenni. He was helpful because he thought he had let her down too. I never mentioned Maisie though, never mentioned I even knew she was pregnant. I just told him I heard through the grapevine she had made some mistakes.”
    “Do you trust him?”
    Cade shrugged. “I don’t trust anyone right now. No one from my old life, at least.”
    “Which is why you came home,” his dad stated.
    “Which is why I came home,” Cade repeated. “I grew up here, I know the people, I know no one is going to sell me or