Shelter Read Online Free PDF Page A

everyone because he felt like a fool. Caden had never been good at keeping secrets and he had dramatically let everything slip out after a few beers with Bruce. Bruce was five years older so he was always there to lend his little brother a shoulder.
    If Caden remembered correctly, his advice back then had been ‘ screw that jerk. You deserve better ’. As a twenty-one-year-old, he would believed him. He thought there would be somebody great out there for him. He thought he had met that person in Finn. Ha, look how that turned out.
    “I remember,” Caden nodded, “how’s the family?”
    “Becca starts elementary school next week,” Bruce bit his lip, “she’s growing up so quick.”
    Caden was about to ask more about his niece but his eyes wandered to the giant TV behind the bar when the sound of a cheering crowd signaled the first touchdown for the Havenmoore Rangers. Caden had never been interested in football but he remembered his dad saying that the game was starting at four.
    “Shit,” he gulped the last of the beer, “there’s somewhere I need to be. Oh, fuck. Mom’s gonna kill me. I’ve got my first Helping Hands meeting with this guy.”
    Shrugging himself into the jacket, he ripped open his canvas bag and quickly looped his new ID badge around his neck.
    “You’ll have to stop by the house. The girls would love to see you,” Bruce waved, “and if mom gives you any trouble, blame me.”
    “Will do.”
    Marching across the square, Caden pulled the thick file out of his bag, flicking to the address of the guy he had been assigned that morning. Underneath ‘ Elias James ’ was an address and Caden let out a sigh of relief when he recognized it as the apartment over the bakery. Straightening up the collar on his shirt, he quickly walked around the corner, the smell of fresh bread hitting him in the face. It made his stomach grumble, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since the eggs that morning.
    Craning his neck to look up at the small window, he tried to ignore the nerves circling in the pit of his stomach. In those couple of months he had spent working with his mom, he always got nervous when meeting somebody for the first time. It was a lottery and there was no way to know who he was going to meet on the other side of the door. Sometimes, they’d be friendly and accepting of the help that he was there to offer, but more often they wanted nothing more than to be left alone.
    Ducking into the narrow alley next to the bakery he saw a green door in the shadows. It didn’t have a number on the door but he knocked anyway. Wiping his hands on the backs of his jeans, he cracked his neck and pushed a smile up his stubble-covered cheeks. He had skimmed over Elias’ file that morning but he had been so nervous slipping back into a job he hadn’t done for eight years, he hadn’t soaked up much of the information.
    Clenching his eyes, he tried to muster the information on the file he had already stashed away in the bag hanging over his shoulder.
    The door swung open and Caden’s eyes opened wide. The jumbled words on the file in his memory disappeared when he saw the man in front of him. He didn’t know what he had been expecting but he hadn’t expected a man in a pair of very tight green and blue striped briefs standing in front of him. Caden’s eyes landed on his package, which was jutting out under a creased grey band t-shirt. He had a slight build, differing from Caden’s strong and wide frame. He had picked that up from his dad’s side, which apparently all Walker men inherited, making them look like they worked out without having to try. He looked a couple of inches shorter than Caden’s own six feet two inches but he wasn’t short by any stretch of the imagination. With his darkly haired lean thighs crossed, his narrow hips poked out as he clung to the edge of the door, waiting for Caden to introduce who he was.
    A quick reminder of why he was there sent his eyes running up to the man’s