Bear Seeking Bride: Thorn (Bear Canyon Brides Book 6) (BBW Paranormal Bear-Shifter Menage Romance) by Ruby Shae

Chapter One
     
    Ava Redmond put the lid on the plastic container that held her holiday decorations and sighed as she looked around the room. The spacious apartment had been her home for several years, but it had never felt so bare and empty.
    She hauled the two boxes of décor into her office and then returned for the long box holding the artificial Christmas tree. The tall, skinny tree was beautiful when assembled, but fluffing all the prongs was a timely process and she missed the smell of live greenery.
    Growing up, her father had always insisted on a real tree. Every year he would pile everyone into his truck and set out for the mountains. After a nearly two hour drive, they would pull into a small dirt parking lot, gather an axe and rope from a man in a little shack, and set out to find the perfect tree. After they’d found it, her father would cut it down, strap it in the bed of the truck and they’d start the journey home.
    Her sister, Claire, would complain the whole time, but Ava would open her book and ignore her younger sibling. Every now and then, one of the holiday tunes from the radio, or one of her parent’s voices, would break through her concentration, but she’d always welcomed those distractions.
    She hadn’t had a real tree since her parents had passed away and she missed the smell filling her home. She’d been living in the same apartment since she’d graduated from college, and it was on the third floor of a high-rise in the city. On her first Christmas alone, the thought of hauling a real tree up and down two flights of stairs, or wrestling with it in the elevator, had given her incentive to buy an imitation. She’d figured once she had a permanent man in her life, she wouldn’t have to worry about carrying the tree up alone.
    Of course that hadn’t been the case with her ex.
    Even though it had meant so much to her, David hadn’t wanted to mess with a real tree. Looking back, he hadn’t wanted to mess with a lot of things she’d liked. Except for her dream of owning her own bookstore. For that, he’d jumped in with both feet, and she’d stupidly followed with her inheritance.
    Three years later, she was right back where she’d started, only with lighter pockets.
    She and David had dated nearly a year before she’d told him about her bookstore idea. He’d been overly supportive, talked of marriage and commitment, and convinced her to add him as an equal partner, even though he had less capital. She’d eagerly taken his advice, and then built her dream. She’d picked the perfect location, stocked the best books, made several promising connections with distributors and publishers, and turned her little dream into a successful business.
    Everything seemed perfect until six months ago, two years into the project, David announced he was marrying her sister and he wanted her half of the business. Her entire world flipped upside down as his words had slowly sunk in.
    While she’d been splitting all of her time between him and the bookstore, he’d been running around town, partying and cozying up with her estranged sister.
    She and Claire had never been close, but after their parents’ deaths, they’d been virtual strangers. They were as different as night and day in both size and appearance, and Claire had always resented their parents for loving both of them the same. The woman had felt entitled to more love because she was short, thin and had their mother’s coloring. Ava was tall, curvy and took after their dad.
    A wave of sadness washed over her as she thought about her parents, and her thoughts drifted back to the last time the three of them were together. She’d gone home for spring break and her mother stood at the stove making pancakes, while she and her father sat at the island counter and drank coffee. She’d told them a joke one of her professors had shared with her class the day before, and her father’s booming voice echoed around the room when she’d reached the punch