One month later…
Bliss held the white stick in her hand and stared down at the two bright pink lines. That just capped off the month from hell. Not just a bad month. A month that had ripped her life apart and stitched it back together in ways she barely recognized.
The things she’d endured were almost more than she could bear. The kidnapping. The fear. The running. Choice no woman should ever have to make. Not to mention walking away from the only person who had ever really cared about her.
And now she was leaving the only place she’d ever known—even if that place had never truly been safe.
Placing a hand on her stomach, she glanced across the room at the month old twins sleeping in two bassinettes. Two tiny miracles, their chests rising and falling in perfect rhythm, innocent to the storm raging around them. Not hers by birth, but legally hers just the same.
They were the reason she’d had to leave Connor in Vegas. The reason she’d walked away from the one man who’d made her feel safe for the first time in her life. She’d had to go with themen and return to the Society’s western compound. Back to the place that had never once felt like home.
But she had a promise to fulfill. Her friend Phoebe was pregnant with twins and had developed complications. In case something happened, she’d named Bliss as their guardian. The Society hadn’t cared. The twins were female, and the father wasn’t a member of their group, which meant the babies were nothing more than inconvenient baggage. To the Society anyway.
Bliss’s father, the leader of the Society’s western compound, hadn’t wanted to invite trouble, and the bad press they’d receive if the twins’ father showed up one day claiming to want the twins back wasn’t worth it. Girls weren’t worth the risk. They never had been. Not in that place.
Bliss now had two babies to care for. Two little lives depending on her for every breath, every bottle, every ounce of protection she could give them. And shewouldprotect them.
Now, on top of all that, she was pregnant. The thing that wasn’t supposed to be possible turned out to be very, very possible. A miracle. One moment that had given her something—someone—who was all hers.
She had never longed to be back in Connor’s arms more, to feel his strength wrapped around her. It never went away. What would she give to hear that deep, steady voice telling her to breathe?Her Daddy would know what to do. Connor always knew what to do. But she might not like his solution to the situation she found herself in now.
He wouldn’t want her anymore. Well, he wouldn’t want the three, soon to be four of them now. To be fair, most men wouldn’t take on three babies and a woman who was nothing but trouble.
That’s what he’d called her. Trouble. But somehow, when he said it, it made her smile.
But now, in a matter of weeks, she’d become a package deal. He’d made it more than clear he wouldn’t want her babies. Not because he was cruel. Connor wasn’t cruel. But because the world he lived in was hard and dangerous, and babies… babies changed everything.
It made her heart hurt, but he had the right to choose. And he’d been honest. Connor had always been honest with her. The right to choose whether to be a dad, in addition to being a Daddy, belonged to him.
And now,for the first time in her life, Bliss intended to make a choice that belonged to her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Current day…
Connor drove to Reid Nolan’s house withThe Nutcrackerplaying softly. When your boss invited you to a Christmas party that was really a Sabre Security meeting in disguise, you went. Especially when that boss was more like a brother.
Connor took a lot of ribbing from his brothers over his love of classical music, but it centered him. The sound of strings rolling through the truck calmed him, smoothing the sharp edges of a mind that rarely stopped working.
Especially now that Bliss was back in town. He got it. Winnie was her only sister, her only family, really. But… Bliss was here now, but as far away as ever. So, yeah, he listened to his music a lot more than usual. A lot more. Because when the music stopped, his thoughts always circled back to her.
Rolling his neck in a futile attempt at relieving his tension, he tried to think through what he would say to her if she was at Reid’s house when he got there. How would that play out? Would she be happy to see him? Would those brilliant seafoam eyes light up the way they had that night in Vegas?
Seemed unlikely.
She hadn’t made any attempt to get in touch with him in the two months she’d been back in town. Not a call. Not a message. Not even an accidental run-in around town. Hell, Darling wasn’t exactly a big city. People talked. So her lack of communication had to be intentional.
She had to know he’d been keeping tabs on her for the past eleven months, right? As best he could, anyway. He’d reached out more than once to that manipulative dick of a father she had. Then again, he had no way of knowing what the man told her.
Either way, he wanted to be prepared in case she was at the party with Winnie.
Being prepared was important. It was the only way to keep himself under control. And control drew the line between the man he was and the man he refused to become. Not that he hadn’t blown that to hell and back the last time they’d been together.
It still blew his mind that he’d taken her virginity after knowing her for only a few hours. But those few hours were burned into his memory like a brand he couldn’t scrape off. Something about her got to him.
Not that her effect on him started in Vegas. Something about her had called to him from the first time she’d shown up in Darling. He’d studied her. Gathered every piece of information he could get his hands on about Belissa Jayne Carpenter as if she were one of the targets he tracked for Sabre.
He’d learned her schedules. Her habits. Even the places she liked to walk when she thought no one was watching. The fact that her father hadn’t given her his last name. It still pissed him off that, in the Society, only male children were considered worthy of their father’s name.
