Chapters One and Two of ZZZ!

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Peck

 

My phone buzzes and I ignore it. It’s just one of my sisters.

The guy in the sound booth shoots me a dirty look. I’m working on a track for the new album, because I want to see how some new beats sound mixed with our new single. He hits a button. “Do you need to take a break?” he asks.

I shake my head and keep playing. I play drums for a band, and I don’t have time to stop right now. Anything my sisters have to say can wait until I’m done here.

My phone rumbles again.

“Let’s call it quits, shall we?” he says from the booth.

Sometimes it’s hell having four sisters. And sometimes it’s awesome. Right now I’m annoyed. I pick up my phone but instead of answering it I cram it into my pocket.

I go out into the sound area and sit down next to the recording engineer. “Let me hear it one time, will you?” I tap my drumsticks lightly on the table while I talk.

He mixes it all up, and music comes into the headset he gives me. I like it. I like it a lot. I smile at him and nod.

He smiles back. “It’s better,” he says. “You were right.” He shakes his head.

“Don’t look so happy about it,” I tease. I take the headphones off and lay them on the counter. I swipe a hand down my face.

My phone rings again, just as the door opens. It flies inward, slamming hard against the wall. I jump to my feet when my sister Lark comes sliding into the room.

“Oh, my God, I have been trying to call you for an hour,” she blurts out. She bends at the waist, trying to catch her breath. She stands up, pressing a hand to her side.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“I can’t breathe,” she pants. She holds up one finger. “Stairs.” She gulps air.

One of her gloves slips down her wrist, and that’s when I realize how serious this is. Lark never takes her gloves off. She never lets anyone see her hands or arms. Ever. For a long time, I thought she was just a germ freak—until I learned the truth. But the fact that she just let her glove slip tells me a lot. “Did someone die?” I ask.

She nods. But then she shakes her head. Then she nods again.

“Oh, my God!” I cover my mouth with my hand. “Who?”

“Sam Reed,” she pants out.

My heart lurches. My stomach dips and blackness crowds the corners of my vision.

“Emily just called to say he was in a really bad accident. They’re all on their way back from the beach to go to the hospital.”

I sink into a chair. “And he died?” How could he? We have unfinished business.

She waves a hand through the air. “No, no, not yet.”

I jump up. “Then why the hell did you tell me he was dead?”

“At the time, I was trying to breathe!” she yells back. “It’s not my fault you misunderstood!”

The door flies open again and another of my sisters runs into the room. Finally. Someone who can make sense of it.

“Emily just called again,” Wren says. “They just got to the hospital and Sam is in surgery.” Wren might be a mess on the outside, but she’s got it together on the inside. Thank God.

I jab my drumsticks into my back pocket and start for the door.

“Where are you going?” Wren calls to my back.

I don’t wait for her. I hail a cab and get in it, my heart beating about a mile a minute. Sam’s in the hospital. In surgery. I left things at a bad place the last time I saw him. A really bad place. I can’t stand the idea of him being injured and possibly dying without knowing how I truly feel about him.

 

***

 

The cab stops at the Emergency Room doors, and I get out. I go to the desk, and they tell me where the waiting room is for surgery, and I go in that direction. “Are you one of them?” the lady at reception asks me.

I lift my brow at her, because I can’t get my thoughts together enough to talk.

“There are a lot of them here for him.” I look blankly at her. “His family.”

Oh, yeah. There are a lot of Reeds, and all of them in one place can be a little intimidating. Lots of big, blond, tatted-up men. Like a buffet of testosterone and hotness, wrapped in pretty ink.

I stop in the doorway of the waiting area. I can hear the low murmur of male voices and stick my head into the room. The Reed brothers are all over the place, not to mention their wives. I find Emily and motion toward her. She waves me into the room.

I sit down beside her and she takes my hand. How bad is it? I ask her in sign language. Emily’s husband, Logan, is deaf, so the whole family signs. Thank God these people speak my language. Because if I opened my mouth right now, one big long stutter would come out, and nothing else.

Pretty bad, she replies.

What happened?

She shrugs and shakes her head. He left the beach right after the wedding to go home. He had to get to practice. He’d already missed way too much training time. And on the way from the airport to his house, he was in an accident.

Can I do anything?

“Pray,” Paul says from behind her.

Well, there’s that. I nod. Anything else?

She shakes her head.

Pete is sitting across the room with his elbows on his knees, his face buried in his hands. Reagan rubs his back and talks softly into his ear. He nods, albeit reluctantly, and kisses her quickly, pulling her against him for a hug. She falls into his arms, like she’s meant to be there.

Is it okay if I stay for a little while? I ask.

Emily squeezes my hand. “Of course.”

There’s a commotion in the hallway and my four sisters come into the room. They’re on their tiptoes almost, trying to be quiet. Emily gives them the story, and they sit down beside one another on the floor and lean against the wall.

The Reeds take people in like they’re family. Anyone. The only requirement is that you have a pulse. And if you don’t have a heart, they’ll give you theirs. So my sisters and I already feel a connection here, but I can’t help but think that we should leave and give them some privacy.

“Where are the kids?” Lark asks.

“With a sitter,” Friday says.

“All of them?”

There are a lot of Reed kids too. Paul and Friday have two—three if you count Jacob. And Matt and Sky have four little ones plus Seth. Emily and Logan have one.

Matt sniggers. “You say it like we have our own circus.”

“Well, if the shoe fits,” Lark says.

Pete holds up a finger. “That would be shoes—plural. Lots of circus animals.”

Do you want us to go and take care of the kids? I ask. We’d be happy to.

Sky, Matt’s wife, shakes her head. “We’re going to go home as soon as we find out what’s happening. He’s going to be fine. I’m certain.” She squeezes my hand.

Ten bucks says the wives might go home, but the brothers won’t. Or at least not all of them.

A man in green scrubs walks into the room. “Reed family?” he asks.

“Here,” they all say at once. The doctor looks around the room and shakes his head.

“Immediate family?” he asks.

“Here,” they all say at once again.

“Get on with it,” Paul barks.

“Your brother is a very lucky man,” the doctor says as he pulls his glasses from his face and brushes a finger over the bridge of his nose. “He broke his tibia—one of the bones in the lower leg—in the crash, and has a pretty bad head laceration. We stitched him up, set the leg, put him in a cast, and we’re going to need to keep him at least overnight.”

“Why?” Pete asks.

“The team physician wants us to keep an eye on him.”

So they know who he is. And what he does.

“How did the team know?”

The doctor shrugs. “I called them.” He glares at us. “He plays pro ball.” He says it like it’s the Holy Grail. “They’re sending the team physician to evaluate him in the morning.”

The door bursts open, and a couple of men and a few women walk into the room. They’re loud and noisy and they’re extremely disrespectful.

“Will he still be able to play?” one of them asks.

The doctor shakes his head. “He’s going to be on the bench for a while. It’s a damn shame, too.”

Paul swipes a hand down his face and takes a deep breath.

“Some players come back from an injury like this,” the doctor says helpfully.

Oh, hell, there’s a chance he might not play again?

“Can we see him?” Pete asks.

“One at a time,” the doctor says with a nod.

“Which way?” Pete barks. The doctor points.

Pete takes Reagan’s hand and drags her down the hallway. “Only one!” the doctor calls.

“We are only one,” Pete yells back, but he doesn’t stop.

“Matt, you should go next,” Paul says. “You have kids to get back home to.”

Matt nods, but he says, “So do you.”

“I’m going to hang out for a while anyway.”

“You know Pete’s not going to go home tonight,” Matt says.

Paul nods. “I know.”

Pete and Sam are twins. They have a bond.

The doctor shakes hands with Paul and leaves the room. The people who came in last swarm Paul, asking questions. It turns out they’re from the team. And the girls are cheerleaders.

“Only family can visit,” Paul warns.

“We know,” one of the girls says. “We heard about the accident and just wanted to come and check on him. We won’t stay long.”

I sit down beside my sisters. “Y-you should go h-home,” I say to them quietly. I talk to my sisters. I always have. My stutter isn’t as bad when I talk to them. Not as bad as it is with anyone else.

“We’ll wait,” Lark says. She leans the back of her head against the wall, and tilts it so that she can look at me. She takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. “He’s going to be fine,” she says.

I take a breath.

I sit quietly as his brothers come and go. Pete and Reagan come out, and Matt and Sky go in. And the cycle continues until everyone has had a visit. Pete kisses Reagan goodbye. It looks like he’s going to spend the night after all. “This is a pretty sucky wedding night,” he tells her.

“You’ll make up for it later,” she teases him. He hugs her, and then walks her and the rest of them out to waiting cabs.

When Pete comes back, I stand up and wipe off the butt of my pants. I should go home. I can do nothing for anyone here.

Pete motions toward the hallway. “Come on,” he says. He doesn’t want the team members or the cheerleaders to see me. I sneak to the doorway and follow him down the hall. The smell of disinfectant tickles my nose.

When we get to Sam’s room, he’s sitting up, but his eyes are closed.

I don’t want to wake him, I sign.

He smiles. “You’re the only one he asked for.”

My heart thuds. He asked for me?

He nods. “He’s a little fucked up.” He grins. “Okay, a lot fucked up.”

I walk into the room and sit down in the chair beside the bed. Sam’s hand lies outside the covers, so I take it in mine. I can see the veins in his hand, stark against his too-pale skin, and I move his IV line over so I don’t bump it.

Sam’s hand suddenly squeezes mine. I look up and find him smiling at me. It’s a goofy grin, and I’m so damn happy to see it that tears fill my eyes.

“Don’t cry, cupcake,” he says softly.

His eyes are barely open, and they shaved part of his head.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” I whisper. I tap my thumb on the bedrail, so I can talk without stuttering.

“It’ll take more than a semi truck with a drunk driver to take me out, cupcake.” He laughs, but then he clutches his head. “That hurt,” he murmurs.

“Can I do anything for you?” Tap. Tap.

“Just stay for a little while.”

I scoot my chair closer.

“Where’s Pete?” he asks.

“I don’t know.” Tap. Tap.

“He got married today. And I fucked his honeymoon all up.”

“He doesn’t seem to mind.” Tap. Tap.

He whispers fiercely, “He’s s’posed to be getting laid!”

I laugh. I can’t help it. “He’d rather be here.”

“If I had a choice between having newly-wed, wall-banging, awesomely good sex and hanging out with me, I wouldn’t pick me. I’d be at home fucking Reagan.” His face turns a little green. “Well, I wouldn’t fuck Reagan, because that would be gross. But Pete should be home fucking Reagan.”

His words are slurred and I can tell they’ve given him pain meds. But he still makes me laugh.

“Hey cupcake!” he says, like he just had a great idea. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” I say.

“I thought you were ready to kick me to the curb.”

I was. But when I found out he was hurt, it nearly gutted me. “Would if I could,” I say.

“Do you think you could fall in love with me, cupcake?” he blurts out.

I’m startled. I know he’s medicated, so I shouldn’t put any stock into his words, but I can’t help it. “You should get some rest,” I say. Tap. Tap.

“So, that would be a no.” He whistles. Then he scrunches up his face when it makes his head hurt. “I’m in trouble,” he whispers quietly.

“What?”

He squeezes my hand. “I’m pretty sure I’m in love with you, cupcake,” he says. “I just wish you could love me back.”

“You’ve had a lot of pain meds,” I say.

Suddenly, he grabs the neck of my shirt and jerks me so that I fall over his chest. His lips are right next to mine. “Listen to me,” he says.

“Okay,” I whisper.

“I don’t have much going for me, but I know what love feels like.”

“How?”

“It just is, cupcake. You don’t get to pick who you fall in love with. And God knows, if my head could pick, it wouldn’t be you.”

I push back to get off his chest, because I’m offended. But he holds me tight.

“You’re not easy to love, because you can’t love me back. But you might one day. I’ll wait. But you got to start taking my calls.” He cups the back of my head and brings my face toward his. A cough from the doorway startles us apart. I stand up and pull my shirt down where he rucked it up.

“Visiting hours are over,” a nurse says.

“She’s not a visitor,” he says. She comes and inserts a needle into his IV, and his eyes close. He doesn’t open them when he says, “She’s going to marry me one day. She just doesn’t know it yet.” His head falls to the side and he starts to softly snore. His hand goes slack around mine.

I pull back, my heart skipping like mad.

“They say some of the most ridiculous things when they’re medicated.” The nurse shakes her head. “He probably won’t remember any of this tomorrow.”

Pete comes into the room. “Everything okay?” he asks. He looks from Sam to me and back.

“Just gave him some pain meds,” the nurse says.

I’m going to go, I sign to him. I turn back when I get to the door. Will you call if anything goes…wrong?

He nods. “I’m going to go get some coffee while he’s asleep.”

I go to the public bathroom and sink back against the wall. He was medicated. He didn’t mean any of that. Did he? He couldn’t have. I stand there until my heart stops feeling like it’s going to jump out of my chest. I need to go and tell him that I do have feelings for him. What if something goes wrong during the night and I can’t tell him tomorrow? I need for him to know.

I go back to his room and stop in the doorway. Sitting beside his bed is a girl. She’s holding his hand and talking to him. He smiles at her and says, “I’m serious. I’m going to marry you.”

My heart jolts. He may as well have stabbed me with a knife.

I turn and leave. I don’t run into Pete, and my sisters are waiting for me.

“What happened?” Lark asks when we get in the cab.

I wipe a tear from my cheek as it snakes a warm path down my face. “N-nothing.”

“Did you talk to him?”

I nod.

“And?” Wren chirps.

“A-and the ch-cheerleader is in with him now.”

“Oh,” Wren says.

“Yeah,” I say.

I’m an idiot.

 

 

 

 

Peck

 

When I was twelve, I went for months thinking I was dead. Everyone in my household ignored me. That was per my mother. “If she won’t speak, don’t speak to her,” she’d said. What she didn’t understand was that I wanted to speak. I wanted to speak with a desperation unlike any other. I wanted to unburden my mind. I wanted to talk.

I just couldn’t.

So I moved around the house, prepared my own meals, got myself on the bus and off, took care of my own laundry, and I spent most of my time in my room, since no one was going to talk to me anyway.

I thought I was dead. Because why else would they not speak to me? Why would they punish me like they did for something I couldn’t control? I must have died and someone forgot to tell me. I was a ghostly specter of myself.

My mother and her boyfriend spent more time away from home than in the small apartment my mom and I shared. He kept a place across town, and it became easier for her to stay there rather than come home. I didn’t mind. I was a ghost walking around alone anyway, right? I spent my nights alone and was grateful for the silence. Because it would still be silent even if she were here.

But then there was a problem one day at school, and I ended up in the emergency room and then had my appendix out. It took them four days to find my mother, and suddenly someone cared if I lived or died.

Her name was Mrs. Derricks, and she was the school counselor. She brought me into her office and changed my life that day, and every day since.

The door slamming behind me jerks me from my thoughts of Mrs. Derricks.

Why aren’t you dressed? I ask Lark in sign language as she drops her things on the couch and flops down.

“Dressed for what?” she asks, blowing out a breath.

For the funeral.

Her brow furrows. “What funeral?”

My hands fly wildly. Mrs. Derricks’ funeral!

“Oh, crap,” she says. She jumps up. “Totally forgot. Give me five minutes to change.”

I text Wren and Star to see where they are, but just as I hit send, they come through the door. They couldn’t be more opposite. They’re sisters, born one year apart. And while they look alike, they couldn’t be more different.

“You need to tie your shoe,” Star says to Wren.

Wren looks down. “Why?”

“Because you’ll trip over it.”

“Who cares,” Wren tosses back.

Star has her shirt tucked into a pair of nice pants, her creases all perfect and sharp. Wren, on the other hand, is wearing jeans and a T-shirt I think she stole from Emilio when we stayed over with him and Marta at their house for Christmas. It’s four sizes too big for her and hangs down almost to her knees.

Emilio Vasquez isn’t our real dad. He’s the man who “sprung us from jail” as he calls it. In reality, it was a group home, but he’s pretty accurate. He and his wife Marta couldn’t have kids, so they decided to use their millions to better the life of a child. And they ended up with five of us, all at once.

Emilio is a former rock and roll star who hung up his microphone when drugs and drinking destroyed his band. Marta is a former groupie he fell in love with, or that’s at least how he tells it. She smacks the back of his head every time he calls her a groupie. She’s a tiny little Latina fireball.

To us, they’re our parents. They’re the family we weren’t born with, but were lucky enough to grow into.

“I can’t find black gloves!” Lark calls from her room.

“Why do you need black gloves?” Wren yells back.

“For the funeral!” Lark bellows.

“Oh, shit.” Wren streaks to her room with Star right behind her. They forgot too, apparently.

Five minutes later, they all come out dressed in dark colors. Wren looks like a slouch, but a respectable slouch. Star looks like she could be walking a runway.

“Tie your shoe,” Star says to Wren.

“Why?” Wren asks.

Do we really have to do this every day? When we lived with Emilio and Marta, their solid presences kept the fighting down. But now that we’re on our own, my sisters snipe at one another like verbal fencing is their favorite pastime.

I tap my finger on the counter, because when I tap, I can speak without a stammer. “Has anyone seen Fin?” I ask.

Star shakes her head and squats down to tie Wren’s shoe.

“Can’t stand it, can you?” Wren taunts.

“Shut up,” Star grumbles. She pulls a brush from the tidy little purse she has hanging over her arm and goes toward Wren with it. Wren backs up and blocks her.

“You are not brushing my hair,” Wren says.

“Somebody needs to,” Star says. She holds the brush out and raises her brow.

Wren turns to the mirror, licks the palm of her hand, and slicks her hair down by dragging her wet hand through her pink-and-blue locks.

“That is so gross,” Star says.

Wren grins.

I shake my head and motion for everyone to go. We’ll just have to leave Fin. If I wait any longer, I’m going to be late for the funeral, and I simply can’t have that. Mrs. Derricks saved my life. She’s the reason I’m still alive. And now she’s gone. Tears burn my nose and I sniffle.

“Are you all right?” Wren asks quietly as we walk toward the car waiting out front. Our driver gets out and holds the door for us, and we all slide in.

Fine, I sign, holding my five fingers out in front of my chest. All of my sisters know sign language. It was the only way I could talk for a long time. Until Emilio put a pair of drumsticks in my hand one day and I realized I had a voice.

Suddenly, there’s a squeal of brakes as a red four-door coupe slams to a stop in the street. The car jumps the curb and lands with one wheel on the sidewalk.

“Sorry I’m late!” Fin yells as she jumps out of the car and runs toward us. She’s already dressed, so she just gets into the car. “Were you going to leave without me?” she asks with a huff, settling her black skirt around her as she scoots in the car.

Finch is her name, but we call her Fin. She’s perpetually late. Always. For everything.

“Yes,” we all say at the same time. We have learned through the years that if we wait for Fin, we’ll be waiting forever.

She grumbles something to herself. Then she reaches into her purse and pulls out a brand new pair of gloves. She tosses them to Lark and grins. “Thought you might need those,” she says.

“That’s why you were late?” Lark asks.

Fin nods, looking down her nose at all of us. “I went to get you black gloves. So sue me.”

“You suck so bad,” Lark mumbles. She turns away from everyone and pulls her gloves off, and pulls the new ones on. Lark never goes without gloves. Ever. These go all the way up to her elbows and the tips of the fingers are cut out. “Where did you get these?” she asks. “They’re comfy.”

“At that new shop on Main.”

Lark spins her hand in front of her. “Did they have more colors?”

“Only about a bazillion.”

“Nice.” Lark smiles. She looks at us. “We’ll have to forgive her for being late. She was doing a good deed.”

“If we have to,” Wren grumbles.

Fin flips her the bird.

The car stops in front of the church, and we all get out. We have a security team of two and they’ll be with us. Hopefully no one will recognize us, but you never can tell how people are going to react.

Marta and Emilio find us inside the church and come to sit with us. They kiss each of us on the forehead and ask how we’re doing. The two of them together—it’s like looking at newlyweds all the time. They’re so in love with one another that it hurts.

The service starts, and I feel tears prick my eyes and my nose starts to run. Emilio pushes a handkerchief into my hand. I wipe my eyes and try to keep it together. But Mrs. Derricks saved my life. I don’t know where I’d be if she hadn’t found out about me and made it her mission to help me. I certainly wouldn’t have four sisters and two wonderful parents, that’s for sure.

The church is bursting at the seams with people, and right before the service is over, we hear the whispers among the crowd. They know who we are, which means there’s a good chance we’ll get mobbed when we leave here. The security guards keep us close, flanking us on each end as we walk out the door. But when we get outside, there’s an even bigger crowd.

Someone inside the church must have alerted social media that Fallen from Zero was in the building, because there’s suddenly a mob of teenagers who are blocking the door.

“Oh, shit,” Emilio says.

Shit is right. This is awful. We try to speak, say hello, and sign some autographs, but suddenly someone jerks my hair.

“I got some!” I hear a female voice yell as she lifts a lock of my hair, which she just jerked from my head. I press on the offended spot. That hurts like crazy. My sisters start to run when they realize that this crowd is out for blood. I run too. Hell, I already lost a lock of hair. I don’t want to lose my clothes. Yes, that does happen.

We’re almost to the car when someone’s shoe sticks out and trips me. I hit the concrete hard, so hard that my forehead smashes into the sidewalk. Holy hell, that hurts. Someone steps on my wrist, and I scream.

But suddenly the crowd parts, and I see five really big men with tattoos holding back the offenders. “Back the fuck up!” one of them barks at the overzealous fans. I hold my wrist, because it’s throbbing like crazy, and roll over onto my back.

“I got you, cupcake,” Sam Reed says as he pulls me up off the ground. He moves me around like I’m light as a feather, getting me quickly to my feet.

“Th-thanks,” I murmur. Then I realize he just heard me stutter.

“I want to be your knight in shining armor, swoop you up, and carry you the rest of the way, but…” He looks down at the crutches he dropped.

I’d like to see you try, I think. But I don’t say it out loud.

His brother picks up his crutches and hands them back to him. Sam looks like he’s in pain. “You okay, Sam?” Matt asks. Matt is the one with the long hair and the kind smile.

“I’m okay,” Sam says. “Get her in the car, would you?” He jams his crutches under his arms and walks with us, and Matt holds my elbow.

Matt scowls at Sam. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Well, I couldn’t just let them walk all over her.”

“Um-hmm,” he hums. “I think the four of us had it covered, but whatever.”

Sam winces as he maneuvers his crutches. You okay? I ask. Since Sam can sign, talking with him has always been so easy.

“Fine.” He winces again, though, and I can tell he’s hurting. His eyes suddenly jerk up to meet mine and he says quietly, “This wasn’t how I’d planned on seeing you again, cupcake.” He reaches out and touches the side of my face. I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

I hadn’t planned on seeing him again at all. Ever. Not after the way we ended things.

“Can I call you?” he asks.

Best if you don’t, I sign.

He looks everywhere but at my face for a second. But then his blue eyes meet mine. “Why not?” he asks softly. He stares into my face.

I don’t answer. I see that the car door is open and I get in, still holding my wrist. The driver closes the door, and I fall back against the seat.

Emilio and Marta ended up in our car, and I’m glad of it. “M-melio,” I say. I try to move my wrist and gasp as pain shoots up my arm.

“What?” Emilio asks. He sits forward.

“I th-think I h-h-hurt my wr-wrist,” I finally get out.

He tells the driver to take us to the hospital.

I lay my head back and look out the back window. I can see Sam Reed standing in the street watching the car until it’s out of sight. He’s standing apart from his brothers and their wives, all by himself.

“I’m glad those boys were there,” Emilio says. “I’ll have to buy them a beer to say thank you.”

Marta clucks her tongue. “They’re going to get swamped themselves, if they don’t get out of there.” The Reeds are local celebrities, ever since their reality TV show started.

I touch the top of my head where I lost a lock of hair.

Marta leans forward and pulls my head down gently so she can look at it. “I think you’ll be okay,” she says. She pats my hair down flat. She leans close to my ear. “At least your head and your hand will. Not so sure about your heart.”

She turns to look back at Sam, but he’s a speck in the distance now, and that’s how he needs to stay.

 

 

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Proving Paul’s Promise

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Friday

 

I’ve heard that the best way to get over one man is to get under another. With that said, I doubt this is what the speaker had in mind. A hand squeezes mine tightly. It was pretty stupid of me to allow them to be in the room with me for this part because I’m feeling terribly exposed, despite the fact that my lower half is draped with a sheet. There’s just something about having my legs up in stirrups and the top of a woman’s head visible between my thighs that makes this all awkward.

It should be beautiful, and really, it is. It’s just…odd.

I have Cody on my left and Garrett on my right. They lean toward one another to kiss over my head, and Garrett uses his free hand to wipe a tear from Cody’s cheek.

The doctor looks up from her perch down below. “You doing okay up there?” she asks.

I squeeze my eyes shut. “Fine,” I say.

Garrett leans down and kisses my temple, his lips lingering there. “Thank you for doing this,” he whispers vehemently, and emotion swells within me.

“Thanks for letting me do this,” I say back. I tip my face up, and he presses a soft kiss to my lips. There’s no passion in this kiss whatsoever. There’s only emotion and gratitude and a type of affection like I’ve never known.

Cody squeezes my shoulder. These guys make the cutest couple. They have been together for about twelve years, and after three failed adoptions, they wanted more than anything to have a kid. They didn’t even ask me. I volunteered to be their surrogate. I’m healthy, I’m young, I’m in love with the type of love they have for one another, and I wanted to give them their own baby.

We used a donor egg and a mishmash of their sperm. The donor egg is so I could stay as far removed from the situation as possible. The mishmash is so they won’t know who the father is. They’ll both be fathers. All I know is that I don’t want to be a mom. But I’m willing to let the little guy cook in my uterus for nine months or so. Then I will gladly hand him over to these wonderful men, and they will be able to raise their own child.

I wince as the doctor cranks the speculum down and pulls it from my vagina. She lifts my feet from the stirrups and rolls her chair back. “Friday,” she says. That’s my name. Friday. Like the day of the week. It’s not the name on my birth certificate, but it fits me better than that old relic of my former life ever did. “In about ten days, I want you to come in for a blood test.”

Cody rubs his hands together. He’s so excited that I get all teary again. That could be the hormones they used to get me on a cycle similar to that of the egg donor, but either way, I’m much more emotional than on a normal day. “Ten days until we find out if we’re going have a baby!” Cody squeals.

A grin tugs at my lips as Garrett helps me sit up. I feel a lot better with the gown covering all my girly bits, instead of having my hoo-ha up in the air for everyone to see.

“I can go to work today, right?” I ask.

She nods her head. “The only thing you can’t do is have an orgasm.”

Heat creeps up my cheeks, so I slap my palms against them. “Oh no!” I cry. “What am I going to do without my daily orgasms?”

Garrett holds up two fingers. “Twice on Sundays.”

“Don’t do any heavy lifting or any strenuous exercise. And no warm baths,” the doctor says. She looks at the tattoo on my knee with keen interest. It’s a spider web with a baby rattle in the middle. “Interesting,” she says, more to herself than to me. Hell, she already saw the one on my inner thigh.

I cover my knee with my hand, and she jerks her gaze away. I have tattoos all over my body. I love them, and each one tells a story. I drew most of them, and they all mean something to me. I know people with tattoos have a lot of stigmas attached to them, but I just like art, and I like to wear art on my body. Judge me if you want to, because I don’t care.

“I have to get back to work,” Cody says, and he leans over to kiss Garrett on the lips. Then he kisses my temple and leaves, his smile big and bright.

Garrett hangs out with me while I change clothes behind the curtain. I can hear his feet hitting the side of the exam table he’s sitting on. He’s like a giddy little kid with his feet swinging back and forth. “Where do you have to go when you leave here?” he asks.

“Work,” I say as I pull my dress down over my head. I like vintage clothes, and today is no different than any other day. I wonder how I’m going to be able to pull off the vintage look when my belly is big and round. I am not sure vintage-inspired maternity clothes will be easy to find.

“Don’t you want to take the rest of the day off?” he asks. “We could go shopping. Buy some baby stuff.”

“Tempting,” I say. Honestly, it sounds like hell. “I’ll leave that to you and Cody, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine,” he tosses back harshly, like he’s annoyed, but I know he’s not. “Let me buy you lunch, then. And I’ll walk you back to Reed’s.”

Reed’s is the tattoo parlor where I work. The idea of him walking me there makes me surprisingly joyful. “Will you be sure to kiss me before you leave?” I ask. I grin as I put on my delicate shoes with the tall heels that I love so very much. They match the dress.

“Why?” he asks, instantly suspicious. He jerks the curtain back as I pull my hair from the neck of my dress. He grins. “Which of the Reeds are you hoping to make jealous?” He narrows his eyes at me.

I start to tick them off on my fingers. “Logan is married and has a baby on the way. Pete is with Reagan. Matt is married and knocked up his wife. With twins!”

“So that leaves Sam and Paul.” He appraises me shrewdly.

Kissing Sam would be like kissing my brother. Paul, on the other hand…

“Mmm hmm,” Garrett hums. “It’s the big one, right?”

“He’s not that big,” I mutter to myself.

“Are you kidding?” he shrieks. “He’s fucking huge.” He grins. “I bet the rest of him is just as big.”

Sometimes having a gay man as a really good friend has its advantages. Because a straight man would never wonder how big Paul Reed’s dick is. “I wouldn’t know,” I murmur. His baby mama would, though, because he still sleeps with Kelly. That part makes my gut ache.

“Does he still walk you home at night when the shop closes?” Garrett asks.

I shrug. “One of them does.”

“Does he still try to kiss you?” Garrett sings. He’s like a damn woodland creature with his giddiness. I expect him to break out into song any second.

“That only happened once,” I say. It was the kiss that rocked my world, though. I pick up my purse and step out into the room.

“And?” He makes a rolling motion with his finger as he opens the door for me and we walk through the hallway. He checks us out, pays the bill, and we step into the sunshine.

“And what?” I huff as I put on my sunglasses and pretend like I don’t know what he just asked.

“The man laid one on you and you still have to see him every day, Friday. How’s that going?” He takes my hand in his and threads his fingers through mine as we wait for the subway. The baby doctor’s office is on the good side of town. And Reed’s is not. It’s in the area that I love more than anything.

“Fine.”

He gapes at me, his mouth hanging open. “That’s all I get? Fine?” He points to my belly. “You might have my baby in your uterus, and that’s all you’re going to tell me?”

I cover his mouth with my hand. “You don’t get any say over any part of my body except for that baby that may or may not be growing in there.”

“Oh, that was cold,” he says. But I have quite effectively changed the subject.

He talks about nurseries and bottles and clothes and all the things I don’t even want to know about until we get to Reed’s. When we get there, he stops in front of the shop, cups his hands around his eyes, and looks through the glass into the room.

“Yep,” he says with a grin. “It’s showtime!” He takes my hand and opens the door. The grin falls off his face, and he replaces it with a look of aloofness. It’s uncanny how he can do that. He minored in theater many years ago, though, so I guess it makes sense. He’s a teacher now.

I drop my bag behind the desk at the front, which is where I usually work. I design the tattoos, and sometimes I do the actual tattoo part. I’m still learning how to do that, but drawing is my thing. That is where my skills lie—I’m an art major at NYU, after all. Or at least I was until I graduated two weeks ago. Now I’m just a possibly-knocked-up soon-to-be-homeless person. Oh crap. I haven’t told Garrett and Cody about my living situation yet.

Paul looks up from where he’s doing a tattoo on a guy’s shoulder, and he frowns. “Morning,” he says, looking from me to Garrett and back. Garrett swells up in size. Honey, no matter what you do, you will never look as big or as tough as Paul Reed.

“Morning,” I chirp back.

Logan is here, too, and he smiles at me and waves. Logan is deaf but can speak, and we all learned how to sign many years ago. I wave back.

Who’s that? he signs at me and points to Garrett.

I put my hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “Garrett, this is Paul, and the quiet one there is Logan.”

Logan stands up and shakes Garrett’s hand. Paul just grunts.

“Nice to meet you,” Garrett says. He turns to me and tips my face up. He leans down close to my ear and says, “I bet he’s fucking huge.” I laugh and try to turn my face away, but he just holds me there with his thumbs beneath my chin and his fingers splayed toward my ear. Then his lips touch mine.

He’s actually a really good kisser, and I kind of envy Cody a little bit, because if he goes after sex the same way he’s going after this fake kiss, Cody’s getting it pretty good.

The only thing about it…there’s no spark. Not a single one. It’s just warm, wet lips sliding across mine, and a really quick touch of a tongue. I pinch his side, and he laughs against my lips and pulls back. He drags his nose up and down the side of mine.

“Cody is going to love it when I tell him about this.” I stab him in the side with my index finger, and he bends over, trying not to laugh.

“Remember what the doctor said,” he tells me, facing me and speaking quietly. “No orgasms. Not even ones offered by great big studly tattoo artists that make you sweat.” He waves a hand in front of his face like a fan. “He makes me sweat a little bit, too.”

I hear a clatter behind us as Paul throws down his tattoo gun and stalks toward the back of the shop. He pulls the privacy curtain closed behind him.

Logan looks up at me, grins, and just shakes his head.

Garrett kisses my forehead, lingering there for a second. “In ten days, you might be my baby mama,” he says, his body rocking against mine as he chuckles.

I punch his shoulder and point toward the door.

Next time he fake kisses me, I have to remember to tell him not to use tongue. I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth and watch him leave. He waves and blows me a kiss.

Logan throws up a hand to get my attention. You’re playing with fire,he warns. He jerks his thumb toward the curtain. He’s pissed. He must not want Paul to hear him or he would be talking instead of signing.

I wave a breezy hand at him. He’ll have to get over it.

He looks toward the curtain. You should go talk to him.

Why?

Because he still has a client out here, and he had to leave because you were sucking face with the other guy.

Crap. Paul walked away with a client in his chair. With a half-finished tat. He has no right to be angry.

Logan’s brow arches, and he shakes his head.

Well, he doesn’t.

Quit being a baby, he signs. He jerks his thumb toward the curtain again. Go talk to him.

I heave a sigh and go to get Paul out of his snit.

 

 

Paul

 

I can’t fucking believe she brought that man here. To my shop. Where I work. Hell, it’s where I live.

I lean against the counter and balance myself on my palms. My forehead rests against the upper cabinet, and I force myself to take a deep breath and count to ten. It was all I could do not to jerk him off her and show him the door. With my foot up his ass.

One of my brothers left shit on the counter that should have been put away, so I clean up and slam the cabinet door. That feels a little better, but not much. I can just imagine that douche in the front of the shop. He’s probably got his hand all the way up her shirt by now.

I slam another door.

The curtain rattles behind me, and a breeze tickles the back of my neck as someone walks into the space. “Not now,” I grind out.

“Then when?” she tosses back.

Great. It would be her that came to get me. I knew it was her. No one else makes the hair on my arms stand up or gives me fucking chills. Not to mention that the perfume she wears gets to me before her voice does. It reaches across the room, creeps up my nose, and wraps itself around my heart. I lower my head and grit my teeth. “Go away, Friday,” I say.

“You have a client waiting,” she says, as though I don’t know.

“I’m aware.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing?” she asks.

Friday is the only one who talks to me like that in my shop. She calls me on my shit, and she has since the day she first walked in here. She was eighteen years old, and she had just started at NYU. She walked in looking like she was lost, and I hired her on the spot when she told me what was wrong with the tattoo on the side of my neck. She told me how she would change it and that any good artist would have known that it was placed wrong. She pulled out a sheet of paper and drew a quick sketch of a new design.

“Want a job?” I’d said.

“Yeah,” she’d replied. “But only if you’ll fix that fucking tattoo so I don’t have to look at that monstrosity every fucking day.”

I’d grinned. Hell, the thought of it still makes me grin. Logan had fixed the tattoo that day, and she’d started working for me. That was four years ago. Four fucking years of looking at her beautiful legs and red lips. Every. Single. Day. Four years of watching her and wanting her. Four years of lusting over Friday. Four years with her busting my chops.

“I’ll finish in a minute,” I say. I heave a sigh and drop heavily into a chair. Friday wears me the fuck out.

She puts her hands on her hips and glares at me. “Why?”

“Why what?” I force myself to look at her face instead of her rack. She has the most beautiful rack I have ever seen, and I’ve been looking at it long enough to know.

“Why are you back here instead of out there working?”

Because I couldn’t watch you sucking face with that douche. “I told you, I’m taking a break.” I give her a what-the-fuck look. If I let her think she’s gone mental, I can blame it all on her, right?

“But why?” she asks. She stomps that little foot of hers, and it immediately draws my attention to her feet, and then up her legs, and then… God. I swipe a hand down my face. “Why, Paul?”

“Who’s the douche?” I ask, instead of telling her how I’m feeling.

“What douche?” She still has her hands on her hips.

“The one who had his tongue down your throat.” I glare at her. But she doesn’t back down. She never does.

“His name is Garrett,” she mumbles. She is suddenly really interested in looking at the magnets on the fridge.

“Garrett is a fuckwad. Tell him to keep his dick in his pants the next time he comes in my shop.”

She blows out a breath and raises her finger to point at me, and I can tell she’s about to ream me a new one.

“Weren’t you fucking somebody else last week, Friday?” I blurt out. I want to take it back immediately because it hangs there in the air between us like a bomb about to explode.

“What?” she asks, and her voice goes soft.

“Last week it was a different guy who took you to lunch.” I grumble to myself and get up, pretending to clean the counter.

She thinks it over. “You mean Cody?”

“How many are there?”

She blinks hard. What the fuck? Friday never cries. Ever. I take a step toward her, and she steps back, putting her hand up like she’s going to push the air around me back. “How dare you?” she breathes. A tear falls over her lashes, and she swipes it away and then looks down at the back of her wet hand like she doesn’t know what the fuck a tear is.

“Friday,” I say. I step toward her again. I soften my voice because I have no idea what to do. I have never seen this Friday before. I have only seen the one who can eat my balls for lunch. Hell, she’ll feed my balls to me if I piss her off enough. And make me like it. Four years and I have never seen her shed a tear.

She turns around and runs into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. I lean my ear against the door and listen, but I can’t hear anything over the sound of the fan. I knock. She doesn’t answer.

“Dammit,” I swear. I lean my forehead against the door.

“Leave her alone,” I hear from behind me.

I turn around because Logan is talking. “I can’t,” I say to him. I knock again, but she doesn’t answer.

“Just leave her the fuck alone,” he says again. He’s pissed, I can tell. “You have a client.” He waves toward my customer like he’s Vanna Fucking White. “Work to do. So, you might want to get to it.”

I heave a sigh and look at my client. “Just a moment,” I say.

“Take your time,” he says with a grin. He’s loving the show, apparently.

I pull my keys from my pocket and fit the key in the lock. I hesitate long enough for Logan to notice.

“You shouldn’t,” he warns.

I know I shouldn’t, but I am.

I turn the key and let myself into the room. I find Friday washing her face.

“What the fuck, Paul!” she cries. She turns back to the mirror and dabs beneath her eyes. She looks at me in the mirror. “Get out.”

I close the door behind me and lean against it. “Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know,” she bites out. But another tear slides down her cheek. “Fucking hormones,” she says as she swipes it away.

All this because she has her period? I know better than to say that out loud. “Oh,” I say instead.

She turns to face me, hitching her hip against the sink. She crosses her arms beneath her breasts, which pushes them up and makes little pillows over the top of that low-cut dress she’s wearing. My God. I look up at her face. She smirks at me. I like a smirking Friday a lot better than one who’s crying because I don’t know what do with tears. Not from her.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” I blurt out when she just glares at me.

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Fuck me, Friday,” I breathe. I swipe a hand down my face again and growl to myself.

She faces the mirror and starts to put on her lipstick. “I tried to do that and you didn’t want to,” she says. She purses her lips and kisses toward the mirror. The move shoots straight to my dick. “So, you, Mister I Am Jealous, don’t get to tell me who I can and can’t sleep with.” She looks directly into my eyes in the mirror. “So, I can sleep with Garrett. I can sleep with Cody.” She throws up her hands. “Hell, I can sleep with both of them at the same time, if I want.” She glares at me. “And you don’t get to have any say-so about it.” She walks toward me. “You can’t say a word because you didn’t want it.” She gestures toward the front of her body. “You said no to all this, so you don’t get to have an opinion.”

“I didn’t say no,” I mumble.

“You kissed me and then you tried to take it back!” she yells.

Okay, I like Friday yelling. I like it so much more than Friday crying. “I didn’t try to take it back!” I slap my palm against the wall, but she just looks at my hand, smirks, and rolls her eyes. “I just… Never mind.”

“Just what?” she asks.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s over and done with.”

“Yep,” she says, letting her lips pop on the P. “Over. Done.” She dusts her hands together. “So you don’t get to go all Neanderthal when someone else kisses me.”

“I just…” I shake my head. “I had something I needed to take care of.”

“Don’t you mean somebody?” She smirks and shakes her head. “Was it Kelly you had to take care of? Heaven knows Kelly needs to come more than I do.”

Did she just say come? I shake the thoughts away. They’re not going to get me anywhere.

Friday tolerates my daughter’s mother, but I don’t think she’s ever really liked her. “It actually was Kelly I needed to take care of,” I say. I may as well lay all my shit bare. Friday cried, for God’s sake.

She lets out a heavy breath. “You kissed me, and then you went and got some from Kelly?”

Her voice is soft. She’s… What is she? Is she hurt?

“No, I didn’t go and get some from Kelly. I went and broke things off with Kelly.” I take a step forward until I’m towering over her and she has to tip her head back to look at my face. “I had to go and tell her that I kissed you and that you rocked my fucking world.”

She freezes, so I take a chance and put my arm around her, pulling her against me.

“What?” she breathes. She turns her face up to mine.

“I haven’t slept with Kelly since before I kissed you. I don’t want to sleep with Kelly. I have you on my fucking mind, and I can’t get you out. So, I went and broke things off with Kelly. Completely.”

She blinks her brown eyes at me. Blink. Blink.

“Then I came back to see you, but you were pissed. You wouldn’t let me in. You said ‘no fucking way, you stupid son of a bitch.’ And you told me to go home. So, I went. Alone.”

Blink. Blink.

“Kelly and I weren’t dating. We were just friends with benefits. Or parents with benefits. Whatever. Now we’re just Hayley’s parents.”

Blink. Blink.

“I went and told her that we couldn’t do that anymore, and she understood.”

“You told her?” she whispers. “That you…what? What did you tell her?”

“I told her that I can’t stop thinking about you.” I brush her hair back from her forehead. I kissed Friday that one time when I walked her home and she invited me inside, and we both knew what she was offering, but I don’t think I’ve ever just held her in my arms. I like it. She lays her palms flat on my chest, like she needs to steady herself.

“I have a thing for you,” I admit. I wince inwardly because it sounds so lame.

“A thing?”

“A big thing.”

Her gaze drops.

“Not that thing.” Although now that she’s looking down at it, it’s ready to rise to attention. Fucking attention whore. I tip her chin up. “But,” I say.

“But what?”

“Then you showed up with that first douche. And then that second douche. And I had just changed my whole life for the possibility of you. But you had moved on. Quickly.” I drag my fingertips up and down her bare arms, and chill bumps rise. She shivers. “So, yeah, I’m mad. Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.”

“I’m not.”

She laughs, and the sound of it shoots straight to my heart.

“Am I too late?” I ask. I wait, with my heart in my throat.

She steps back from me. “Paul,” she says. Her voice cracks. “I’m so sorry.”

I don’t need to hear any more. I go out and start my machine up and get back to work. I hear her move around in the shop, and I glance up at her every once in a while, but she gets busy with clients, drawing tattoos, and she ignores me. She doesn’t look in my direction. Not even once. Not for the whole rest of the night. And when it’s closing time, Logan volunteers to walk her home. I let him.

Proving Paul’s Promise

Coming 8/19/2014!

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Chapter One – Unedited

Friday

 

I’ve heard that the best way to get over one man is to get under another. With that said, I doubt this is what the speaker had in mind. A hand squeezes tightly to mine. It was pretty stupid of me to allow them to be in the room with me for this part because I’m feeling terribly exposed, despite the fact that my lower half is draped with a sheet. There’s just something about having my legs up in stirrups and the top of a woman’s head visible between my thighs that makes this all awkward.

It should be beautiful, and really, it is. It’s just… odd.

I have Cody on my left and Garrett on my right. They lean toward one another and kiss over my head, and Garrett uses his free hand to wipe a tear from Cody’s cheek.

The doctor looks up from her perch between my thighs. “You doing okay up there?” she asks.

I squeeze my eyes shut tightly. “Fine,” I say.

Garrett leans down and kisses my temple, his lips lingering there. “Thank you for doing this,” he whispers vehemently, and emotion swells within me.

“Thanks for letting me do this,” I say back. I tip my face up and he presses a soft kiss to my lips. There’s no passion in this kiss whatsoever. There’s only emotion and gratitude and a type of affection like I’ve never known.

Cody squeezes my shoulder. These guys make the cutest couple. They have been together for about twelve years and, after three failed adoptions, they wanted more than anything to have a kid. They didn’t even ask me. I volunteered to be their surrogate. I’m healthy, I’m young, I’m in love with the type of love they have for one another, and I wanted to give them their own baby.

We used a donor egg and a mishmash of their sperm. The donor egg is so I could stay as far removed from the situation as possible. The mishmash is so they won’t know who the father is. They’ll both be fathers. All I know is that I don’t want to be a mom. But I’m willing to let the little guy cook in my uterus for nine months or so. Then I will gladly hand him over to these wonderful men and they will be able to raise their own child.

I wince as the doctor cranks the speculum down and pulls it from my vagina. She lifts my feet from the stirrups and rolls her chair back. “Friday,” she says. That’s my name. Friday. Like the day of the week. It’s not the name on my birth certificate, but it fits me better than that old relic of my former life ever did. “In about ten days, I want you to come in for a blood test.”

Cody rubs his hands together. He’s so excited that I get all teary again. That could be the hormones they used to get me on a cycle similar to that of the egg donor. But either way, I’m much more emotional than on a normal day. “Ten days until we find out if we’re going have a baby!” Cody squeals.

A grin tugs at my lips as Garrett helps me sit up. I feel a lot better with the gown covering all my girly bits, instead of having my hoo haa up in the air for everyone to see.

“I can go to work today, right?” I ask.

She nods her head. “The only thing you can’t do is have an orgasm.”

Heat creeps up my cheeks, so I slap my palms against them. “Oh, no!” I cry. “What am I going to do without my daily orgasms?”

Garrett holds up two fingers. “Twice on Sundays.”

“Don’t do any heavy lifting or any strenuous exercise. And no warm baths.” the doctor says. She looks at the tattoo on my knee with keen interest. It’s a spider web with a baby rattle in the middle of the web. “Interesting,” she says more to herself than to me. Hell, she already saw the one on my inner thigh.

I cover my knee with my hand and she jerks her gaze away. I have tattoos all over my body. I love them, and each one tells a story. I drew most of them, and they all mean something to me. I know people with tattoos have a lot of stigmas attached to them, but I just like art, and I like to wear art on my body. Judge me if you want to, because I don’t care.

“I have to get back to work,” Cody says, and he leans over to kiss Garrett on the lips. Then he kisses my temple and leaves, his smile big and bright.

Garrett hangs out with me while I change clothes behind the curtain. I can hear his feet hitting the side of the exam table he’s sitting on. He’s like a giddy little kid with his feet swinging back and forth. “Where do you have to go when you leave here?” he asks.

“Work,” I say as I pull my dress down over my head. I like vintage clothes and today is no different than any other day. I wonder how I’m going to be able to pull off the vintage look when my belly is big and round. I am not sure vintage-inspired clothes will be easy to find for pregnant women.

“Don’t you want to take the rest of the day off?” he asks. “We could go shopping. Buy some baby stuff.”

“Tempting,” I say. Honestly, it sounds like hell. “I’ll leave that to you and Cody, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine,” he tosses back harshly, like he’s annoyed, but I know he’s not. “Let me buy you lunch, then. And I’ll walk you back to Reed’s.”

Reed’s is the tattoo parlor where I work. The idea of him walking me there makes me surprisingly joyful. “Will you be sure to kiss me before you leave?” I ask. I grin as I put on my delicate shoes with the tall heels that I love so very much. They match the dress.

“Why?” he asks, instantly suspicious. He jerks the curtain back as I pull my hair from the neck of my dress. He grins. “Which of the Reeds are you hoping to make jealous?” He narrows his eyes at me.

I start to tick them off on my fingers. “Logan is married and has a baby on the way. Pete is with Reagan. Matt is married and knocked his wife up. With twins!”

“So that leaves Sam and Paul.” He appraises me shrewdly.

Kissing Sam would be like kissing my brother. Paul, on the other hand…

“Mm hmm,” Garrett hums. “It’s the big one, right?”

“He’s not that big,” I mutter to myself.

“Are you kidding?” he shrieks. “He’s fucking huge.” He grins. “I bet the rest of him is just as big.”

Sometimes having a gay man as a really good friend has its advantages. Because a straight man would never wonder how big Paul Reed’s dick is. “I wouldn’t know,” I murmur. His baby mama would, though, because he still sleeps with Kelly. That part makes my gut ache.

“Does he still walk you home at night when the shop closes?” Garrett asks.

I shrug. “One of them does.”

“Does he still try to kiss you?” Garrett sings. He’s like a damn woodland creature with his giddiness. I expect him to break out into song any second.

“That only happened once,” I say. It was the kiss that rocked my world, though. I pick up my purse and step out into the room.

“And?” He makes a rolling motion with his finger as he opens the door for me and we walk through the hallway. He checks us out, pays the bill, and we step out into the sunshine.

“And what?” I huff as I put on my sunglasses and pretend like I don’t know what he just asked.

“The man laid one on you and you still have to see him every day, Friday. How’s that going?” He takes my hand in his and threads his fingers through mine as we wait for the subway. The baby doctor’s office is on the good side of town. And Reed’s is not. It’s in the area that I love more than anything.

“Fine.”

He gapes at me, his mouth hanging open. “That’s all I get? Fine?” He points to my belly. “You might have my baby in your uterus, and that’s all you’re going to tell me?”

I cover his mouth with my hand. “You don’t get any say over any part of my body except for that baby that might or might not be growing in there.”

“Oh, that was cold,” he says. But I have quite effectively changed the subject.

He talks about nurseries and bottles and clothes and all those things I don’t even want to know about until we get to Reed’s. When we get there, he stops out in front of the shop, cups his hands around his eyes and looks through the glass into the room. “Yep,” he says with a grin. “It’s show time!” He takes my hand and opens the door. The grin falls off his face, and he replaces it with a look of aloofness. It’s uncanny how he can do that. He minored in theater many years ago, though, so I guess it makes sense. He’s a teacher now.

I drop my bag behind the desk at the front, which is where I usually work. I draw tattoos, and sometimes I do the actual tattoo part. I’m still learning how to do that. But drawing is my thing. This is where my skills lie, since I’m an art major at NYU. Or at least I was until I graduated two weeks ago. Now I’m just a possibly-knocked-up soon-to-be-homeless person. Oh, crap. I haven’t told Garrett and Cody about my living situation yet.

Paul looks up from where he’s doing a tattoo on a guy’s shoulder and he frowns. “Morning,” he says, looking from me to Garrett and back. Garrett swells up in size. Honey, no matter what you do, you will never look as big or as tough as Paul Reed, I can’t help but think.

“Morning,” I chirp back.

Logan is here, too, and he smiles at me and waves. Logan is deaf but can speak, and we all learned how to sign many years ago. I wave back.

Who’s that? he signs at me, and points to Garrett.

I put my hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “Garrett, this is Paul and the quiet one there is Logan.”

Logan stands up and shakes Garrett’s hand. Paul just grunts.

“Nice to meet you,” Garrett says. He turns to me and tips my face up. He leans down close to my ear and says, “I bet he’s fucking huge.” I laugh and try to turn my face away, but he just holds me there with his thumbs beneath my chin and his fingers splayed toward my ear. Then his lips touch mine.

He’s actually a really good kisser, and I kind of envy Cody a little bit, because if he goes after sex the same way he’s going after this fake kiss, Cody’s getting it pretty good…

The only thing about it – there’s not a single spark. Not even one. It’s just warm, wet lips sliding across mine, and the touch of a tongue really quickly. I pinch his side and he laughs against my lips and pulls back. He drags his nose up and down the side of mine. “Cody is going to love it when I tell him about this.” I stab him in the side with my index finger and he bends over, trying not to laugh.

“Remember what the doctor said,” he tells me, facing me and speaking quietly. “No orgasms. Not even ones offered by great big old studly looking tattoo artists that make you sweat.” He waves a hand in front of his face like a fan. “He makes me sweat a little bit, too.”

I hear a clatter behind us as Paul throws down his gun and stalks toward the back of the shop. He pulls the privacy curtain and goes behind it.

Logan looks up at me and grins, and just shakes his head.

Garrett kisses my forehead, lingering there for a second. “In ten days, you might be my baby mama,” he says, his body rocking against mine as he chuckles.

I punch his shoulder and point toward the door.

Next time he fake kisses me, I have to remember to tell him not to use tongue. I wipe the back of my hand across my mouth and watch him leave. He waves and blows me a kiss.

Logan throws up a hand to get my attention. You’re playing with fire, he warns. He jerks his thumb toward the curtain. He’s pissed. He must not want Paul to hear him or he would be talking instead of signing.

I wave a breezy hand at him. He’ll have to get over it.

He looks toward the curtain. You should go talk to him.

Why?

Because he still has a client out here and he had to leave because you were sucking face with the other guy.

Crap. Paul walked out with a client in his chair. With a half finished tat. He has no right to be angry.

Logan’s brow arches and he shakes his head.

Well, he doesn’t.

Quit being a baby, he signs. He jerks his thumb toward the curtain again. Go talk to him.

I heave a sigh and go to get Paul out of his snit.

Maybe Matt’s Miracle – May 1st!

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Chapter One

 

Skylar

 

Today would be a beautiful day if not for the casket and the three children with wet faces and red eyes sitting beside me on the front pew. The service hasn’t started yet, and people keep wandering up to look at my half sister, Kendra. Some of them whisper soft words to her and reach out to touch her cold hand. I touched it, too. That was the second and last time I would ever touch her. She’s the sister I never got to meet until the day she died.

I startle as the pew shakes. Seth, the oldest of Kendra’s children, jumps to his feet and cries, “Grandpa!”

Grandpa? What? He has a grandpa? I look up and see my very own father. He’s here? Huh? He wraps Seth up in his arms and squeezes him tightly. He sets him back and looks into his eyes. “How are you holding up?” he asks quietly.

Seth’s eyes travel toward the casket. “We’re okay,” he says. He swallows hard. I can hear it from where I’m sitting.

Dad takes Seth’s face in his hands and stares into his eyes. “Everything is going to be fine,” he says. “She’s in a better place.” He looks over Seth’s shoulder toward me. “And you have Skylar now,” he whispers. Seth nods.

A better place? When can I go to a better place? Anywhere would be better than this church where my dad is paying homage to his illegitimate daughter.

Dad walks over to me and kisses my cheek. “How are you, Sky?” he asks. He’s not nearly as friendly with me as he is with the grandchildren I never even knew he had until a few days ago.

“Fine,” I bite out.

Dad sits down and motions toward Kendra’s girls with a crook of his finger. The little one, who is three, scrambles into his lap, and the older one, who is five, leans into his side. He drops an arm around her and holds her close. He knows these kids. He knows them a lot better than he knows me. That chafes at me so badly that it makes me squirm in my seat.

Dad’s brows scrunch together in subtle warning. I stop moving.

I really need to learn that look now that I’m a mom.

Yes. I’m a mom. My dad came to me about a week ago and asked for my help. And bang—instant motherhood.

 

“Skylar,” Dad says quietly. “I need for you to do something for me.”

I look up from my manicotti and force a grin to my face. I should have known that he wanted something. He never would have invited me to lunch otherwise. “Did you get another speeding ticket?” I ask. I’m a brand-new attorney as of last month.

“No,” he says slowly. He won’t look me in the eye. “It’s about Kendra.”

I drop my fork, and it clatters loudly against my plate. I scramble to catch it and then brace myself with my palms on the table. “What about her?” I ask.

I know who Kendra is. She’s the daughter my dad had with his mistress. I found out a few years ago when my mother went on a drunken bender and unburdened her soul. And burdened mine.

Kendra is the daughter my father loved. Her mother was the woman he loved. It didn’t matter that my father was married to my mother. It didn’t matter that he had three kids with my mother. It didn’t matter that we were the perfect family with the house on the hill and a summer home at the Cape. Our family was only perfect until we found out he had another one. One he actually loved.

He had a whole other life with Kendra’s mother, right up until she died. They shared an apartment together, and they had a daughter. Dad went back and forth between our house and theirs for many years, but he was never really present when he was at ours. My mother was too resentful. So he stayed away more and more. With them.

Then, suddenly, one day he was back. His eyes were rimmed with red, and he retreated to his study with a bottle of Glenlivet. He didn’t come out for days. When he finally emerged, my mom walked around for a week singing, “Ding-dong, the witch is dead.” Kendra was already an adult at that point, and married.

But I had my father back after that day. I didn’t understand at all how it had come to be. I didn’t know at the time that he had another daughter. Another woman he had loved. Another life. But he did. And now he wanted to talk about her?

“Kendra is dying,” he says. His eyes fill with tears, but he won’t let them spill over. He blinks furiously, his face reddening.

“Oh,” I say. How am I supposed to respond to that? Ding-dong, the witch is dead… “What happened?”

“She has cancer. She found out when she was pregnant with her youngest daughter, Mellie.” He wipes his eyes with a cloth napkin and motions for a waiter to bring him a drink. “I got her into a really wonderful chemical trial, but she wanted to wait until Mellie was born.” He heaves a sigh. “If she hadn’t gotten pregnant, she might have made it. She could have gotten an abortion, but she refused. She waited too long. The cancer is going to win, and she doesn’t have anyone to take the children.”

I can’t breathe. My chest stills, and I feel like I’m going to pass out. Dad shoves a glass of water at me, and I raise it to my lips, sputter into the rim of it, take a sip, swallow, and inhale. I take a deep breath. And I wait. Because there’s more. There’s always more with my dad.

“She has three children. Seth is sixteen. Joey is five. And Mellie is three.” He covers my hand with his and squeezes it. “They don’t have anyone but me. And I can’t take them.” He sits back and rubs the bridge of his nose. “You know how your mother is,” he explains.

Yes, and I know how my mother was betrayed. Yes, I know how my mother found out about his mistress. Yes, I know how my mother hates the ground they all walk on. Sometimes I think she hates me, too. It’s hard to tell. I really don’t think she loves anyone or anything.

He looks me in the eye. “I need for you to help me. They’re your nieces and nephew, no matter what your mother has taught you.”

I am stunned. Absolutely stunned. “You love them,” I say quietly.

He nods. “I do.”

“You love her.” The words fall on the room like cracks of thunder.

“I do.”

I lean back against the chair. “Can I ask you something?”

He nods. It’s a quick jerk, but I see it.

“What did they give you that we couldn’t?” I ask. I don’t even cry. I just ask it. I always wanted to know.

“Your mother made it really hard for me to be a part of our family,” he says. “After she found out—” He raises his hand to stop me when I open my mouth to complain. “Wait,” he says. “Hear me out.”

I nod. I couldn’t talk if I wanted to.

“I loved you and your brother and sister. But I loved Kendra’s mother, too, and I should have divorced your mother and made a clean break.”

“Without us,” I say.

“No, I would have taken you with me if I could. But I couldn’t. Your mother would have ruined me financially, and I could get over that, but she would have gotten custody of you all. And I couldn’t just leave you with all that hatred, without at least trying to be a buffer.” I don’t remember him as a buffer. I know him as that man I never knew. He balls up his fist and squeezes tightly. “That’s why I never left completely. Your mother is more than a bit vindictive, as you know.” He scrubs a hand across his perfect white hair. “Sometimes I think she would have been okay with it if Kendra’s mother was white.”

What? Kendra’s mother’s not white? My father had an affair with a woman of a different race?

“If you do this for me, your mother is going to be very angry at you.”

No shit. She’ll hate me. But I think she already does anyway.

“I understand if you say no,” he says on a sigh. “But they don’t have anyone else.”

“Where is their father?” I ask.

He shrugs. “Fathers,” he says, enunciating the word. “Seth has a dad who sees him once or twice a year, and the girls’ dad has a new family and not enough time for them.”

“So, what do you want me to do?” I ask. I throw my napkin into my plate. My manicotti is churning in my stomach.

“I want you to go and get them.”

“Did you ask Tim? Or Lydia?” They’re my brother and sister and both are older than me.

He shakes his head. “They have families of their own.”

“And I don’t.” Shit, I don’t have anyone. No one but a boyfriend I almost never see. My mother is a nutcase and my father’s heart lies with another family.

“You’re single. You would be wonderful with them.” He lowers his voice and looks around the room. “You won’t look at them like they’re unwanted, biracial children. You’ll love them. I know you will.” He glares at me. “Will you at least meet them? Please? I know it would be a challenge. You’d have to learn a lot, but Seth is sixteen. He helps to take care of the little ones. Hell, in two years, he can take custody himself. That’s what he wants.”

Dad’s pleading with me.

“I’ve never asked for anything before,” he says.

He’s right. He’s never asked for a good night kiss. Or any of the things fathers want. Well, he probably asked for them from Kendra.

“I’ll go,” I say. They’re just children after all. And children need to be loved. I wasn’t, but I can make it better for Kendra’s kids, can’t I? There’s a tiny little piece of me that wants to make my father proud. To make him love me.

He deflates like a balloon. “Oh, thank God,” he says. He lays a hand on his chest. Then he gets up, lifts me by my elbows, and pulls me to him. I can’t remember ever getting a hug from my father before, and I don’t know what to do with it. He holds me like that, breathing into the hair on the top of my head for a moment. Then he sets me back. His eyes are wet with unshed tears. “Thank you,” he says. “Thank you so much.”

I nod. I can’t do anything more. I feel like somebody took my insides and shoved them up my throat.

 

I’m jerked from my memories when someone sits down on my left. I look up and instantly recognize Matthew Reed. He was a friend of Kendra’s from the cancer center. I went to visit, right before Kendra died, and to get the kids. Matt was waiting with her. He stayed with Seth so they could be there when she took her last breath. I took the little ones home; I didn’t think they needed to remember their mom that way.

His blue eyes gaze into mine, and he sticks out a hand to shake. He doesn’t say anything. I look up at him. He’s wearing a blue turtleneck covered up by a black button-down shirt with a pair of really nice trousers. He tugs at the top of the turtleneck, and I get a tiny peek of his tattoos.

“You clean up nicely,” I say. I smile at him because I don’t know what else to do.

“Thanks,” he says quietly. His blond hair is held back with a leather band at the nape of his neck, but a piece falls forward, and he tucks it behind his ear. He has a row of piercings up the shell of his ear, and I count them in my head. I have a suddenly insatiable desire to see his hair hang loose around his face.

He looks down at my black skirt and my white shirt. “So do you.”

I think I was wearing something similar the last time I saw him, but I smile anyway. He squeezes my hand and pulls his fingers from my grasp. I probably shouldn’t have held his hand so long. I’m an idiot. He leans across me and reaches for my dad’s hand. “Mr. Morgan,” he says with a nod. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Dad nods his thanks and grips Matt’s hand tightly, and then swipes a finger under his nose. He goes back to talking to the girls, and they’re snuggling closer and closer to him as he murmurs softly to them.

Matt reaches past my dad and bumps knuckles with Seth. Seth smiles at him, but then the preacher walks to the front of the church, they close the casket—thank God—and the sermon begins.

Matt takes my hand in his again, and I feel tears sting my eyes. I blink up at him, and he smiles softly at me. He squeezes my hand gently and listens to the pastor. But he doesn’t let me go.

 

 

Matt

 

“She looks lonely,” Emily says as she elbows me in the side. She’s my brother Logan’s wife and she holds a little piece of my heart. But sometimes I want to elbow her back when she pokes me with her scrawny limbs. “You should go check on her,” she whispers vehemently. She raises her elbow again, and I grab it before she can jab me.

“Fine,” I bite out. I get up, stepping on my four brothers’ feet as I scoot past them. Of course, I’m in the center of the aisle and have to go by all of them. Reagan, Pete’s girl, reaches out and squeezes my hand as I walk by her. I love Reagan, and Emily, too. But Emily is a little more outspoken. Reagan is famous for her tender touches, and Emily is the opposite.

I adjust my suit coat and tug at the turtleneck I borrowed from Logan. He gets free clothes from Emily’s parents, who own Madison Avenue, the upscale clothing company. I feel like a monkey dressed up in a coat and a top hat. Like the ones that dance at carnivals. Dance, monkey, dance.

I drop into the open seat beside Skylar, Kendra’s half sister, and I reach out to shake hands with her. She holds on a second too long, and I don’t mind it. She looks tired. Her dad is sitting beside her, but there may as well be an ocean between them. It’s only a few inches, but even I can feel the divide.

I shake his hand and bump knuckles with Seth. Seth and I were both with his mom when she died. We shared the most difficult moment of his life, and it’s something I will never, ever forget.

I watched Kendra take her last breath and all I could think was how lucky I was that it wasn’t me dying there in that bed. It could have so easily been me. Kendra and I were in the same chemical trial, but I got better and my cancer went into remission. Hers didn’t.

She died.

I’m alive.

I look down at Skylar. She looks nothing like Kendra. Kendra was biracial, so she had skin the color of sweet coffee, and she wore her hair natural but short. Skylar is light skinned, blond, and blue eyed. She has rhinestone-encrusted sunglasses pushed up on top of her head, holding her hair back from her face. It hangs halfway down her back in soft waves.

The preacher starts to speak at the front of the church, and Skylar closes her eyes. She squeezes her hands together in her lap, and I can’t tell what’s going on in her head. I wish I knew.

I reach out and take her hand in mine without even thinking about it. I tuck our twined fingers down on the seat between us, and I give her a gentle squeeze. She looks up at me and blinks slowly, her blue eyes startled. But then they soften and she blinks at me again, and this time she really looks at me. She squeezes my hand back, and I don’t let her go. I hold it until both our palms start to sweat.

I get so wrapped up in the feel of her hand in mine and the soft drone of the preacher, that it startles me when a cough jerks me out of my trance. I look up and see a tall man looking down his nose at me. He nudges my knee. “I think you’re in my spot,” he says.

I look at Skylar, and she is just as shocked as I am. She pulls her hand from mine and wipes it on her skirt. I scoot over, and he settles down beside her. He drops an arm around her shoulders, and she leans over to press her lips to his. It’s a quick kiss, one that makes me wonder how often he does it and if it’s always quite that chaste.

Great, now I’m thinking about how it feels to kiss her. Shit. Where did that come from?

Finally, they roll the casket from the church, and we all follow to the graveside. I am a pallbearer and so are my brothers. My brothers are really good for things like that. I volunteered them when Mr. Morgan called to ask me to do it.

I take the carnation off my lapel, lay it on top of the casket, and go to stand with my brothers behind the crowd.

Emily threads her arm through mine. “Who is the guy?” she asks, nodding toward the man who’s standing with Skylar.

I shrug. “I have no idea.”

“Does she have a boyfriend?” Reagan asks.

My brothers are silent. I wish Logan and Pete would tell their girls to shut it for a few minutes and quit being so nosy. I tap Emily on the tip of her nose, and she scrunches up her face. “Stop being so curious,” I tell her.

I wrap my arm around Reagan and pull her to me. I like it when she goes all soft against me, because when she’s not soft, she’s ready to take my head off with a karate chop. I have been on the wrong end of a startled Reagan before, and I don’t particularly want to go there again.

“You okay?” she asks quietly.

I heave a sigh. “I guess.” I shake my head. “I still can’t believe she’s gone,” I say.

Reagan kisses my cheek and then stops to wipe her thumb across the lipstick she must have left on my skin. She smiles. “I’m glad you got better,” she says quietly.

I squeeze her. “Me, too.”

But shit. I feel guilty. Kendra left behind three children.

I see Skylar walking toward us, and Emily and Reagan step back. The heels of the three-inch-high shoes Skylar’s wearing sink into the earth, and she totters a little because of it. I reach out to help steady her with a hand on her elbow. She stops in front of me.

“Thank you for being there with her,” Skylar says quietly.

“She was my friend,” I explain. I don’t know what else to say.

She looks into my eyes. “Was she in a lot of pain?” she asks. She shakes her head. “I tried to talk to Seth about it, but he pretty much pretends I don’t exist.”

I shove my hands in my pockets. “What do you mean? He’s not giving you a hard time, is he?”

She shakes her head again. “No. He’s perfect. He takes his sisters to day care in the morning and picks them up after school. He feeds them, and he bathes them. He won’t let me do anything. I think I’m just a placeholder.” She blows out a heavy breath.

I scratch my head. I don’t know how to tell her what I want to say.

“What?” she asks, her delicate brow arching.

“Kendra asked him to make it easy for you,” I admit. “When she was dying, she told him some things about how to be a good man. Always open car doors. Carry a handkerchief on dates, because you never know when she’ll cry. Never let her pay for dinner.” I take a deep breath. “And she told him to make it easy for you.”

Her mouth opens like she wants to say something but nothing comes out. She’s speechless. She closes it tightly, pressing her lips together. “What else did she tell him?”

“Just normal stuff about dying,” I tell her. It was soul-wrenching to watch. I’d finally had to leave the room so I wouldn’t upset them both with my sobbing. I missed some things as a result.

“I don’t know what to do with kids,” she says.

“They don’t really need much,” I say. “Just for you to love them.”

“I’m trying,” she says.

I want to lay my hand on the back of her hair and smooth down the length of it. I bet it feels like silk.

“I, um, should have introduced you to my boyfriend,” she says. “Do you want to meet him?”

I shake my head. I see him talking with Mr. Morgan. Skylar’s dad doesn’t look like he’s impressed.

“When you, um, took my hand…” she says. “I should have told you.”

“Why?” I look down at her. She comes up to my shoulder, even in her heels.

“I, um, didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

This time it’s me raising my brows at her. “Why did you think I took your hand?”

Her face colors. “I’m not sure,” she says.

I wrap my hand around her wrist and give her a soft squeeze. “I took your hand because you were trembling,” I say. “That’s all.” She’s trembling now, too, but I let her go.

“Oh,” she breathes.

She has her phone clutched in her free hand so I take it from her and add myself to her address book. “Do me a favor?” I say.

She looks up at me and then back down at the phone.

“Call me if you need anything. Anything at all. I promised their mom.”

“Okay,” she replies. “Thanks for everything.” Her blue eyes meet mine, and I have never seen anyone look quite so lost. But then her eyes narrow as her gaze shoots past me. “Shit,” she suddenly spits out.

“What?” I ask, looking over my shoulder toward the sedan that just pulled up.

“My mother is here,” she says. She squares her shoulders, and I suddenly see a spark that wasn’t there a moment ago. “Can you watch the children for a minute?” she asks.

“Why?”

“Just because,” she says. She grits her teeth and looks up at me. “Promise me. No matter what, don’t let her anywhere near the children.”

What the fuck? I look back at the sedan. The door opens, and an older and much harsher version of Skylar gets out.

“Okay…” I say slowly. Skylar nods her head, steels her spine, and walks toward her mother.

The rigidity of her posture makes me think of my own mother’s the time that Johnny Rickles stuck a “Kick me” note on my back and then watched all the other kids laugh. My mother went ballistic when she saw it. It’s a look that says danger will have to go through her before it gets to the children, and I think I just met Seth, Mellie, and Joey’s mom for the very first time. Her name is Skylar Morgan, and she’s tiny and gorgeous and awesome.

Chapter One of The Magic of ‘I Do’

THE MAGIC OF ‘I DO’ will launch on June 4th, which is quickly approaching. It’s available for preorder now in all formats, and here’s a sneak peek at chapter one, if you’d like to see what this book is about.

I shared an excerpt from my upcoming New Adult book a few weeks ago.  If you missed that, you can find it here.

Autumn 1817

A faerie without magic was about as useless as a carriage without a horse. If Claire Thorne had known that this would be her reward for trying to save her sister from the dangerous Duke of Robinsworth, she never would have gotten involved in her sister’s mission. She would have stayed at home. The land of the fae was so much more comfortable than the land where others resided.

Claire refused to look at her abductor. She refused to acknowledge his presence, although he did have her magic dust. It was in his pocket at that very moment. Despite the fact that she’d warned him it could explode in untrained hands, he’d taken it with no hint of hesitation. And now he refused to give it back. Claire lifted her chin and stared out the coach window. If anyone had told her a sennight ago that Lord Phineas would take her hostage, she would have laughed in his face. Yet here she was, at his mercy.

“Oh, blissful silence,” he said. He must have said it to himself, because he certainly couldn’t be talking to her.

“You really should return my dust to me before it does you harm.” She didn’t look at him as she talked. She continued to stare at the changing landscape. They’d left behind the bustle of Mayfair and were headed toward… nowhere, it appeared.

“And just what kind of harm might a little bottle of shimmer do to me?” He looked much too composed.

“It could explode and blow off an arm.” She finally turned to look toward him and found him grinning at her unrepentantly. That man had a smile that could stop a lady’s heart. Though it had no effect on hers. Well, almost no effect. His sparkling blue eyes made him look impertinent enough to annoy her to no end.

He held out his hand and appraised his arm with a critical eye. “I can live without an arm.” Lord Phineas swiped a lock of hair from his forehead and lowered his arm back to his side. He arched a golden brow at her as though taunting her to continue her threats. He hadn’t seen threats yet. Just wait until she turned him into a toad. Or a pig so that his outside could reflect his inside.

Claire let her gaze roam up and down his body slowly. “It might blow off something you use on occasion.” Her eyes stopped at his lap. He fidgeted in his seat. “It’s really quite volatile in the hands of the untrained.”

That wasn’t true. Not in the least little bit. But he didn’t need to know that. In his hands, the dust was useless. Just shimmery flecks of shiny things he didn’t understand. In her hands, however, it was quite useful. If she wasn’t afraid to commit one of the Unpardonable Errors—never use your magic to do harm—she would take a chance and wrest it from his possession. But if she had the dust in her hands right at that moment, she would use it to harm him. In a most satisfying way.

She forced herself into a casual shrug. “Take a chance. Blow off an appendage. Perhaps you’ll be lucky and it’ll be the smallest one. One you probably don’t get to use much.”

His smile vanished. “I can assure you there’s nothing small about my appendage.”

She grinned. “That’s not what she said…” She left the taunt dangling in the air. His face flushed. She must have touched a sore spot. But since he was holding her hostage, he deserved to be just as uncomfortable as she was.

***

How the devil could a faerie be aware of his problems with his mistress? Katherine had only left him a few weeks before. It wasn’t his fault that she’d spread a bit of a rumor about his prowess in the bedroom. One that was completely unfounded upon reality. He narrowed his eyes at Miss Thorne. “Are your people omniscient?”

She didn’t answer. She simply turned to look out the window again. Blast and damn. The woman was already driving him toward Bedlam and he’d only had her in his possession for a few hours. His brother, Robin, would owe him dearly for this. Very dearly.

The carriage hit a rut in the road and she bounced in her seat. She uttered a most unladylike oath as her head bumped the roof of the carriage. “Beg your pardon?” he asked. He cupped a hand around his ear. “I didn’t quite hear that.”

“If I’d meant for you to hear it, you would have heard it.” She adjusted her skirts, settling back more heavily against the squabs. The bounce had left her looking a bit disheveled, with a strawberry blond curl hanging across her forehead. She blew the lock of hair with an upturned breath.

She really was quite pretty if one could get over the shrewish behavior. Her body was tall and willowy, her limbs long and graceful. Her heart­shaped face would probably be beautiful if she ever graced it with a smile.

“Just where are we going?” she asked. She still didn’t look at him. She gazed out the window with the countenance of someone who had the weight of the world upon her shoulders.

“My house in Bedfordshire.”

Her shoulders stiffened and then she exhaled deeply.

“And just what recommends such a place?”

“It has bars on the windows and heavy locks on the doors.” It didn’t. But she didn’t have to know that.

“It will take more than bars and windows to keep a faerie under lock and key.” She sniffed and raised her nose in the air.

“Then thank God there are ropes aplenty. I will tie you to my side if I must. I did promise Robin I’d take care of you.” That was a bit of a long and sordid tale, and he still didn’t understand the half of it. “Pray tell me how you people came to exist.”

She arched a delicate brow at him. “The same way you did.” Her face flushed scarlet. “Do you really need me to tell you about reproduction?”

Damn her hide. He didn’t need her to explain anything about reproduction. This lady knew how to jab him where it hurt, though. He would have to take great care with her. He grinned slowly and leaned forward. “Please do. If you’re lacking anything in the telling of how babes are made, I’ll fill in the blanks for you. Certainly, you have questions about it.”

“Should any pressing questions arise, I’ll be sure to let you know.” She looked back out the window. Damn, he hoped that Robin finished up his business soon so he could free the harpy.

“How long do you plan to keep me there?”

“As long as it takes for Robin to finish his business.” The sooner, the better.

“I’m certain he’s done by now. So we can turn around and go back to the city.” She looked quite pleased by that idea. A smile tipped her lips and the beauty of it nearly took Finn’s breath away.

“He’ll send word when he’s done. I’ll set you free not a moment before.”

She laughed lightly, and the sound raked over his skin like silky fingertips in the night. “Only an idiot would think he can keep a faerie confined.” She snorted lightly. It was a most unladylike noise, but he found himself biting back a grin at the sound.

Finn leaned over and looked out the window at the cloud-filled sky. If he couldn’t keep her confined, the inclement weather would. Unless he was mistaken, the snow would begin to fall before they reached their destination. Then she would be as confined by the elements as she was by him. Perhaps he wouldn’t have to tie her to him. He’d have to wait and see.

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An excerpt from A LADY AND HER MAGIC

 

One

August 1817

If the Duke of Robinsworth had known it would be so difficult to raise a daughter alone, he never would have killed his wife. He would have coddled her, wrapped her in lace and taffeta, and put her on a shelf so the whole world could view her beauty.

Even though he’d never admitted it, everyone knew he’d killed her. And though he refused to share the details, they were all correct.

His daughter broke him from his reverie when she stomped her foot and demanded that he purchase not one, but two, sweets from the vendor.

Ashley was quite used to the antics of his daughter, and although they were annoying, they never bothered him overmuch. When she became too unruly, he simply left her with a nurse. If it happened at home, he left the manor. He’d even left the country once. But she was always there when he returned, always just as petulant as she had been the day he left. He’d resigned himself to the fact that she would never change.

Anne was a perfect re-creation of his late wife. Her long blond curls danced around her face. Her porcelain skin and blue eyes reminded him of a doll he’d seen once in a shop window. The only difference: the doll didn’t have a temper like Anne. Yes, she had inherited that from her mother, too.

When Anne was younger, she would drop to the ground and kick and scream when she didn’t get her way, flopping about like a fish out of water. Now she simply scrunched up her pert little nose and screeched.

Ashley winced as she shrieked out the words, “I want it!”

He took a step toward the child, fully prepared to throw her over his shoulder and drag her back to her nurse, who waited on a park bench nearby, when a woman stepped forward. His breath caught in his throat as she entered his line of sight. She was the opposite of his late wife, who’d been blond and thin and fragile.

His gaze traveled over the woman’s rounded hips to her ample breasts, nearly hidden among the frills and folds of her light-blue gown. He lingered there, imagining how she would look in a gown that didn’t have quite so many trimmings hiding her curves. When his eyes finally rose to meet hers, her flashing hazel orbs held censure. Ashley coughed into his hand in a horrible attempt to hide the smile that wanted to erupt. It had been years since he’d been so well scolded. And she’d yet to even speak to him.

Before he could say a word to her, the auburn-haired nymph looked down her nose at his daughter and said, “Ladies do not shriek.”

His own little termagant rolled her eyes in a horrid display of social ineptitude.

The woman raised her eyebrows at Anne and said, her voice a bit crisper, “Ladies do not roll their eyes.”

“But I want another,” Anne snarled, stomping her foot.

The beautiful woman smiled at his daughter, a dimple appearing in her left cheek. People very rarely smiled at Anne because she was so obnoxious that most gentlewomen turned from her in disgust.

“May I tell you a secret?” she asked of Anne. Then she looked at Ashley, who nearly fell over trying to avoid leaning toward her so he could hear her soft voice as she spoke to Anne. “Do you mind?” she asked, smiling as she asked him for permission to speak to the girl.

“No,” Ashley said, waving his hand negligently. “You may disclose all the secrets you wish.” He wanted to add that she could whisper a few in his ear as well, but he assumed she’d take that as an insult.

She knelt down to Anne’s level and whispered in her ear. Anne’s nose turned down slightly until she suddenly smiled. She covered her mouth with her fingertips and giggled.

“Go on.” She nudged Anne forward. “Try it.” She shot Ashley a quick look that encouraged him to play along.

Anne tugged gently on his sleeve. “Yes, Anne?” he said quickly, finding it painful to tear his gaze away from the stranger long enough to look down at his own daughter. But when he did, he was surprised to see the pleasant smile that curled her lips.

“Papa, may I please have another treat? I regret to inform you that they are pitifully small.”

Ashley glanced up at the lady, who smiled at what must have been his perplexed look. He stared at her for a moment, unable to draw his eyes away, until Anne tugged at his sleeve and whispered, “I should like to grow up to be as sweet as the lady someday.”

Ashley turned to the street vendor and asked for two more treats. He promptly gave one to his daughter, who was delighted by her newfound ability to win her father’s favor. Then he looked over at the lady who’d transformed his daughter and winked.

***

Sophia felt certain she turned ten shades of red when the man turned and winked at her. It was such a masculine gesture, and not one that was commonly tossed in her direction. Of course, considering that he was the Duke of Robinsworth, Ashley Trimble, to be more exact, it was completely fitting.

It did gratify Sophia a bit to see that the child took her advice and approached her father in a gracious and respectful way. She smiled softly when he placed the treat in the girl’s hands and bent to kiss her forehead.

Sophia turned to walk away but heard quick footsteps behind her. “Miss?” The child called for her. Sophia looked down at her smiling face. She held up a second treat and said, “My papa said this one is for you.”

Sophia hesitated for a moment before she took the wrapped square from the child. “Thank you very much.”

“Wait.” When the girl’s father’s voice reached her, it hit her like a runaway horse, making the hair on her neck stand up and her belly drop toward her toes. His quick footsteps hurried across the cobblestone walk toward her. He stopped, his blue eyes darting to and fro in the nearly empty park. “If your chaperone sees me speak to you, I fear she’ll steal you away almost as quickly as you appeared.” He let the last trail off as he waited for her to fill the empty space.

Quite the opposite. Her grandmother had contrived the scheme so they could meet in the first place. “I appreciate the flattery, but I have not required a chaperone for a number of years. We do things differently where I’m from, you see.”

“And where might that be?” His blue eyes danced at her.

Unpardonable Error Number Three: Never share the existence of the fae. “I’m certain you’ve never heard of it.”

His eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Should she extend her hand to him? Try as she might, she was unable to remember all the social proprieties this world was based upon. Her grandmother had repeatedly tried to drill them into her throughout the years. And failed. “My name is Sophia Thorne, Your Grace,” she finally provided.

His gaze grew shuttered at the words “Your Grace,” almost as though a heavy curtain dropped between them that was difficult to see through. She wished she could bite the words back as soon as they left her lips.

“My reputation must precede me,” he said as he looked away. Sadness suddenly overwhelmed his features. “I’ll let you be on your way.” He bowed slightly and turned from her.

“Your Grace?” Sophia called. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder, no hint of the playfulness she’d seen earlier present in his gaze.

“I’ve never rested much faith upon the opinions of others, Your Grace,” she said slowly. “I prefer to draw my own conclusions.”

A sardonic smile broke across his face. “You could very well ruin your reputation by being seen in my company, Miss Thorne.”

She shrugged. “One must have a reputation in order to ruin it, Your Grace. And to be more succinct, one must care.”

A smile that might be genuine slowly lifted the corners of his lips. “I thank you for the help with my daughter. How did you do it?”

She shrugged again. She’d simply treated the child with respect and firmness, both of which the girl was surely lacking. But that was neither here nor there. “Most women learn to manage men at an early age,” she laughed. “It appears as though your daughter has not.”

“Not until today.”

“I was happy to help.” Sophia held up the wrapped square of candy. “And these are my favorite,” she admitted, unable to keep from smiling at him.

The little girl tugged at her father’s sleeve. “Can we go home now, Papa?”

The duke pulled his watch fob from his pocket and flipped it open. “Actually, I do have some things to attend to,” he said apologetically as he touched the top of his daughter’s head. “Tell Miss Thorne good-bye and thank you,” he instructed her.

Instead of dropping into a curtsy, the girl locked her arms around Sophia’s waist and squeezed. Sophia was almost too surprised to return the embrace.

“Perhaps I’ll see you again another day,” she said to the little blonde.

“I can only hope,” the duke said quietly, his gaze meeting hers only briefly before he turned away, took his daughter’s hand, and started down the lane that led to the entrance of the park.

Sophia took a moment to catch her breath. It wouldn’t do for her to swoon in the middle of the park. Not at a mere suggestion from the dangerous Duke of Robinsworth. The man was a walking scandal. A walking scandal that made her pulse pound so loudly she could hear it.

“Well, that went better than I expected, dear,” her grandmother said as she stepped into her line of sight.

“Better than I thought,” Sophia lamented.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d be able to feign the mannerisms of the British ton. But you did fairly well.”

She certainly still had a lot to learn about this world. The land of the fae might look similar, but none of its magic was present in this world. Here, people wore full clothing, and not a single one of them had wings or pointy ears the way she did. Just willing her own wings away was difficult and not something she usually had to concentrate so hard to do.

“He seemed discontent about my lack of a chaperone,” Sophia said. “Do you think I need one, to look like one of them?”

“Perhaps we should have Margaret shadow you a little more,” her grandmother sug…

An excerpt from the prologue of THE WOLF WHO LOVED ME by Lydia Dare

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

Blackmoor House, Mayfair

April 1820

Lady Madeline Hayburn was more than ready for the Season to be over. Ball after ball. Soirees and garden parties after more soirees and even more garden parties. There was no point to it all. Oh, she knew her father was hopeful Maddie would somehow stumble upon her destined husband at one of these inane events. But if it hadn’t happened during her three seasons on the marriage mart, Maddie wasn’t terribly optimistic it would happen tonight.

“Madeline,” whispered her grandmother, the Duchess of Hythe, as she nudged Maddie’s arm. “Do you see Blackmoor over there?”

Maddie glanced across the sea of people littering the ballroom until her eyes fell on the intimidating duke. “Yes, of course,” she whispered back. What on earth did her grandmother care about the Duke of Blackmoor? He and both of his brothers were married and hardly prospects as far as Maddie was concerned.

“The man was a degenerate,” Grandmamma informed her. “One of the worst rogues London has ever seen.”

Just idle gossip then? Maddie smiled at her grandmother. “So I’ve heard.”

“His wife should be commended for bringing him to heel.” Grandmamma gestured toward the pretty duchess who was still greeting her newly arrived guests at the entrance. “Let that be a lesson to you. The right woman can take charge of even the most imposing man.”

Not idle gossip, but another lesson on the management of men. Maddie nearly sighed, but doing so would only earn her another lesson of a different sort. “I can manage Papa,” she said instead.

Her grandmother agreed with a nod of her head. “Of course you can. You’re my granddaughter.”

Maddie giggled.

“And you can manage any other man you set your mind to, as well.”

“Thank you for your confidence.”

Grandmamma continued as though Maddie hadn’t spoken. “I just wish you weren’t so finicky about this whole marriage endeavor, my dear. I would like to actually meet my great-grandchildren, you know.”

Maddie couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her. “In that case, you should probably have this conversation with your grandsons.” Who knew how many great-grandchildren her grandmother might already have?

Grandmamma scowled, but before she could begin a lecture, Lieutenant Hawthorne bowed before them in greeting. “Your Grace, Lady Madeline.”

“Lieutenant.” Maddie smiled with relief. Thank heavens he’d saved her. “I hope you are well this evening.”

“I will be better if I can urge you to stand up with me.”

And whisk her away from her grandmother? Maddie could have kissed him, if only she liked him a little bit. Alas, she didn’t. Besides as the fourth son of a baronet, Lieutenant Hawthorne needed to find a wealthy wife. His interest in Maddie began and ended with her dowry. Still, he was her salvation, if only for a moment. “Thank you, sir. I would be honored.”

He offered her his arm and then led her to the middle of the ballroom where sets were being formed for the minuet. As they circled each other, Maddie couldn’t help but glance across the crowded room and her breath caught slightly in her throat.

Heavens. What was Weston Hadley doing here? Maddie stumbled and would have fallen if Lieutenant Hawthorne hadn’t caught her arm.

“Are you all right?”

Maddie shook her head and tried to regain her composure. “Just clumsy,” she muttered. Though her eyes still fell on Mr. Hadley, as if she just couldn’t help it. The Duchess of Blackmoor’s ball was the last place on earth she would have expected to see a man of his ilk.

Oh, he was born of nobility like everyone else in attendance. And he filled out a coat better than most, even if the coat tended to be a bit on the shabby side. But there was something dark and mysterious about him. And then there was the scar he sported across his cheek.

Lieutenant Hawthorne must have followed her gaze because an expression of amusement settled on his face. “Weston Hadley?”

Maddie straightened her back and stared at her companion as though he was an imbecile. “Hardly.” When they turned the opposite direction, she cocked her head to one side. “Are you well acquainted with Mr. Hadley?”

The lieutenant shrugged. “We’ve met.” He glanced over her shoulder and smirked. “Seems he can’t keep his eyes off you, either.”

And it had been that way ever since she’d met Weston Hadley. She wasn’t quite certain what to make of him. She never had been. And whenever their paths crossed, his gaze followed her. “My dowry has that effect on most men.”

Lieutenant Hawthorne chuckled. “You do know how to wound a man, Lady Madeline.”

She hadn’t meant to insult him. “That wasn’t my intent at all,” she hastened to explain.

“I’m certain it wasn’t,” he agreed good-naturedly. “But I can understand your concern about him. He’s hardly the sort I would imagine has any honorable intentions.”

That was an understatement. He was a Hadley, after all. The most degenerate set of brothers of Maddie’s acquaintance.

“Do you know how Hadley came by that scar of his?”

“No.” But Madeline had wondered about that very thing every time she saw Weston Hadley. “Do you?”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Sadly, no, but there is a bet on the books at White’s about it. I would love to know.”

“Has he never said?” she asked, even though she shouldn’t think about Weston Hadley or his scar. After all, he was one of those penniless Hadley brothers. Even worse, he was a friend of her brothers. That alliance on its own was hardly one to recommend him.

“Never breathed a word about it, as far as I know,” the lieutenant muttered just as the music came to an end. He smiled and then bowed. “Ah, here comes your admirer now.”

Maddie glanced over her shoulder to see Weston Hadley headed straight for her. His dark eyes raked across her form, sending shivers skittering down her spine. Something about his gaze always left her the tiniest bit breathless.

“Lady Madeline,” Mr. Hadley drawled. “What a pleasant surprise.”

Before she could think better of her actions, Maddie offered her hand to the rogue. And when he touched his lips to her gloved knuckles, her knees threatened to buckle beneath her weight. Maddie snatched her hand back and stood her tallest, hoping she appeared more poised than she felt.

“Do have a good evening, sir,” she said before turning on her heel and heading for a small group of ladies at the very edge of the room.

His eyes were still on her; Maddie could feel them. But she refused to turn around, to acknowledge him any further than she had already done. No, everything would be better if she just kept her distance from Weston Hadley with his penetrating dark eyes and his even darker scar.