Bex’s smile vanished. “Excuse me?”
Cipher didn’t remove his stony stare from the deputy. “I was talking to him.”
“I know exactly who you were talking to,” she snapped. She stepped away from the deputy and faced Cipher with angerbrightening her eyes. “You don’t get a say in what I do or with who!”
Cipher’s gaze never left her face, though a muscle shifted once along his jaw. “His hand was too fucking low.”
“It was on my waist.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
The deputy cleared his throat, muttered that he needed another drink, and escaped before Sheriff Raines noticed a club enforcer and his daughter arguing in the middle of the reception. Bex watched him leave before turning back to Cipher, her cheeks flushed for reasons that had nothing to do with shyness now. “I don’t belong to you.”
Cipher’s jaw hardened. “I know.”
Bex poked him hard in the chest. “Then stop acting like I do!”
Cipher went completely still, which usually preceded either a breakthrough or violence with him. His gaze dropped to her mouth, returned to her eyes, and revealed enough before he locked it down that even Jacqueline drew a quick breath beside me.
“You should,” he told Bex in a voice too low for anyone farther away to hear, “That’s the problem.”
He walked away before she could answer, disappearing toward the garage while Bex stood with her hands fisted at her sides and fury gathering behind her eyes. Jacqueline started to move, but I caught her around the waist and held her against me. Bex needed a moment before her best friend descended on her with questions. Cipher needed considerably more than a moment, although I doubted all the logic in his head would survive seeing another man touch the woman he had already decided he couldn’t have.
“Oh, that’s going to be trouble,” Jacqueline murmured.
“Not ours.”
“You noticed too?”
“Baby, everyone noticed.” I turned her gently until her attention returned to me instead of the beginning of another brother’s bad decisions. I slid my hand down the elegant line of her back and settled it over her ass, pulling her close enough to feel the renewed pressure of my erection. “My wife promised I could stop sharing her after cake.”
Jacqueline’s breath caught as my fingers tightened through the ivory fabric. “I said you could decide how long.”
“Decided.”
The reception continued around us for another twenty minutes because my wife possessed more patience than I did and insisted on hugging every guest before we disappeared.
When Jacqueline yawned and tried to hide it behind her hand, I slid one arm beneath her knees and lifted her before she could object.
“I can walk,” Jacqueline reminded me, though her arms circled my neck as naturally as breathing.
“I know.”
Her laugh warmed the side of my throat as I carried her up the porch steps. At the doorway, Jacqueline glanced back and her expression softened before she looked at me, one palm resting over the place where our child grew while the other curled against my shoulder. “Today was perfect.”
“Not finished yet.” I carried her inside, kicked the door shut behind us, and pressed her against it long enough to take the kiss I’d been wanting since she crossed the lawn in that dress. “Still gotta get my wife naked.”
Her fingers slid into my hair while the shy, but strong as hell woman I’d met behind a shotgun smiled against my lips with no shyness left between us. “Then take me upstairs, husband.”
I had spent most of my life building walls around what mattered. Jacqueline had walked through every one of them, handed me a future I hadn’t known to want, and stood beside mewhile I made it permanent. Now she was my wife, carrying my child in the home we were rebuilding together, and there wasn’t a man alive stupid enough to try taking any of it from me.
EPILOGUE
JACQUELINE
The late afternoon sun sparkled across the surface of the pool as I leaned against the low stone wall Brogan had built around the patio. Out in the water, our six-month old daughter kicked her little legs while she was guided through another gentle set of floats.
“That’s it, sweetheart.” Cecily’s voice drifted toward me.
