Free Ready to Bear by Ivy Sinclair

would haunt her dreams.
    “I’d like to take a shower,” Thea said slowly.
    “Of course,” Billy said. He started to back out of the room.
    “Billy?”
    He paused and turned back toward her. She bit her lower lip as her eyes fell to her feet. Thea wasn’t sure how to ask what she wanted to ask without coming across like some weak-minded girl.
    “What is it?”
    “Do you have to go back to your hotel tonight?”
    Something crossed his face then, and Thea thought his eyes deepened in color. “I can stay as long as you’d like me to, Thea. I don’t have any other plans tonight.”
    A long breath seemed to drag itself out of her lungs. It didn’t even register with her that she had been holding her breath as she waited for his answer. “Okay, then.”
    A shadow of a smile flitted across his face. He looked…pleased. “I’ll make sure that Alex cleans up his mess in the kitchen in the meantime,” he said.
    “Thanks.”
    He gave her a short nod and was gone. Thea took a deep breath and found that she could still smell him. It was like a calming salve on her soul. She stripped off her clothes and dropped them into the trashcan. She was tempted to burn them in the fireplace in the living room, but she thought that would give the men who had attacked her too much credit. Thea wasn’t going to buckle or break. It would take more than that to get to her.
    With that thought firmly wedged in her mind, she turned on the water in the shower and climbed inside. She forced the thoughts of the two men from the alley away from her and focused instead on the surprise gift that life and fate had bestowed on her. Billy Miller was someone that she hadn’t been looking for, but she had to admit that she was more than intrigued.
    The warm water sluiced away the dirt and anxiety of the earlier encounter. Thea reviewed what little she did know about Billy. He seemed to shun the spotlight even as his alpha claimed it. He had to be in his early thirties. The Greyelf Grizzly Clan wasn’t his original clan. He had been with two others before that if she remembered his background correctly.
    A grizzly bear. Kyle also was a grizzly, although he had renounced all shackles of a clan affiliation long ago. Thea hadn’t stopped to think too much about her clanless brother and his friends. It made her wonder if there were any other reasons that Billy was in Copper City, and if perhaps her brother had a right to be suspicious.
    When Billy mentioned earlier that both he and Lukas had left messages for Eric, Thea knew that they had gotten caught in the Thea blockade. That was what Eric called it, anyway. She was exceedingly effective at catching and deterring any outside attempt to reach Eric unless Eric wanted to be reached. She had heard Billy’s voice before, on his multiple voicemails to Eric that had gotten shorter and more curt as time had gone on. It had barely even registered to her. Eric hadn’t wanted a meeting, so she blew Billy off.
    She felt bad about that now, especially hearing the reason that he wanted the meeting to begin with. She wondered about this man that he was tracking, and if he was going to try to cause trouble for Eric. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it was unlikely it would be the last. With his position and his money, Eric was a target for many.
    Thea also knew that Billy wasn’t the first member of law enforcement in his family. The media had made a big deal out of the fact that his father and grandfather were both police officers as well, with over half a century of experience between them. She also thought there was an uncle or two who were in the FBI or CIA. Billy had law enforcement in his blood. That made his reaction to how her attackers were being dealt with all the more strange.
    As Thea dried off, she knew that she hadn’t thought in great detail about what it would be like to date a shifter. Even though she lived in a family of shifters and was affiliated with one of the more famous ones, she