Bear The Flame (Firebear Brides 2) by Anya Nowlan Page A

it a bit slower this time. What could she tell Kari? She’d crashed at her friend’s place because she didn’t feel safe in her own apartment anymore, not with Kenner’s henchmen knowing exactly where she lived. It had started innocently enough, but things had escalated way past what Rose could deal with.
    With a sigh, Rose’s shoulders slumped and she stared into her wine, getting up the courage to speak. “Well, it’s… he’s not just some kind of a mogul, okay? And when I said he was my boss, I wasn’t lying. He was my boss… but not at the health food store that I said I worked at. I was a… dancer for him.”
    “A dancer?” Kari asked, frowning.
    Rose nodded. She held eye contact with Kari for a second longer until her expression cleared and she put the wine glass down. “OH! A dancer ! Rose, you minx,” Kari laughed, making Rose blush and grin at the same time.
    There was no judgment in that comment. If anything, Kari sounded impressed.
    “It wasn’t anything too bad. I was an exotic dancer in one of his clubs. I never got fully naked, never did anything I’m really ashamed about… but I wouldn’t want my parents to know.”
    “But why did you do it? And why is he chasing you now?” Kari asked, still as confused as she was before, just now with more details.
    “That’s a long story,” Rose grumbled, instinctively looking out of the window to make sure that no one was creeping around back there. She’d been doing that a lot lately—checking if no one was listening in on her, or following her. “We got together for a while. Just a few weeks. He was nice and he paid attention to me and he gave me a shoulder to cry on when school got too much. I only danced in his clubs because he saw me shaking my ass at a club one night and gave me his card, saying he had a job for me if I wanted it.
    “My school tuition was killing me and if I would have taken one more loan, I would have put my parents out of house and home. It paid well and he treated me and the rest of the girls with respect. But after a while, I understood that his attention wasn’t so simple to shrug off. It was a fling for me, but he’s not the kind of guy you dump. Since I’ve quit the club, he’s been putting tails on me, wanting to know what I’m doing, where I am.”
    Rose snaked her phone out of her pocket, showing it to Kari. “He won’t stop calling me and texting me. It’s creepy. He wants me to go back and work for him, but I know it isn’t just that. If I go to the cops, I’m going to have to tell them everything about my past as a dancer and I can’t do that to my parents. I just want to put it behind me,” she said, cringing at how silly it sounded.
    Kari looked sympathetic. She nodded her head, taking a sip of the wine. Rose picked at her food, her appetite suddenly missing altogether.
    “Well, there are other options. You said you don’t want to stay in Philly anyway, right?” Kari asked, propping her chin on the palm of her hand.
    Rose looked at her friend suspiciously, tucking a blonde strand of hair behind her ear. “I did. It’s too… too tight here. I’m from Minnesota, for God’s sake! I’m used to the forest and the plains and room to breathe. While Philly isn’t as bad as a lot of cities, it still feels really tight. And now, considering that I won’t be doing anything with my degree, I think there’s no reason to stay here.”
    The last words came out a lot bitterer than she intended them to be. Truthfully, she felt like a mess. Not only had she picked the wrong major—business administration! Who studies that?!—but she’d picked an expensive private school instead of knocking out a lot of the general courses at a community college. She was badly in debt, though she could handle that, even if the only job she could land was as a trainer at small salon fitness centers. After a year of trying, she’d given up on finding something closer to her major. It helped that she’d found out fast