Protecting His Pregnant Lover (Southern Soldiers of Fortune Book 1)

by Leslie North

  Next time, it’s you.

  Her hand quaked as she ripped it off the wall and stared down at the rest of the scrawled words. Stay out of Reaper business or get Reaped. Did she recognize that handwriting? Olive’s vision blurred and she fought the urge to cradle her stomach, her child, protectively; there was nothing immediate to fear here. Only the immediate job of cleaning it all up before someone else stumbled upon it.

  Olive began to gather the broken pieces of her microscope. It was too damaged to repair, but she had to at least try and keep it together—

  A shard of glass bit into her skin and she cried out, then quickly silenced herself. Stupid. Trying to pick up glass like that. She must be in shock. She had to go and find a dust pan, and—

  “Olive?”

  She froze, watching the bright red blood stream down her hand, and turned. Levon stood in the doorway. For a moment, she almost didn’t recognize him. He wore the nondescript blue-gray uniform of the school’s maintenance workers, and a snug-fitting cap with the bill pulled down to conceal half his face. She offered a wobbly smile; she was afraid she didn’t have much else to offer in that moment.

  He was at her side in an instant and pulling her into his arms.

  “Levon.” She breathed his name shakily. “You can’t be in here. If whoever did this sees you—”

  “—they’ll think you’re cozy with the school janitor. If they’ve been watching you, they probably think that already—I drive you to and from school every day.” Levon took her injured hand in his and inspected it. He surprised her by pulling a clean handkerchief from his uniform’s pocket and pressing it into the palm of her hand. “Here. Clench this over the cut and keep it elevated to slow the blood flow. I’ll get started on cleaning this mess up.”

  “Who could have done this?” Olive wondered as she perched herself on her desk. It felt nice to have Levon take over. It felt nice to have someone ride to her rescue like that... even though she knew she shouldn’t make too much of it. Levon was just that kind of guy. She couldn’t let herself get used to this white knight treatment, but she might as well surrender to it while he was still here...

  Levon worked silently to clear away the worst of the room’s damage. She knew he was thinking about what to say; mulling the evidence over, and processing how best to move forward. God, she admired the hell out of him. She was just opening her mouth to tell him as much when he returned to her side, carrying a first aid kit he had located in one of the lab’s back rooms. He had locked all the doors and assured their privacy the moment he answered her cry.

  “Let me see,” he ordered quietly. Olive held her hand out obediently. Now that the bleeding had stopped and she had cleared most of the blood away, Levon could see the damage. He muttered to himself as he disinfected the wound and bandaged it for her. “Might make grading papers hard, but you won’t need stitches,” he said.

  “Levon.” She wanted his attention drawn back to her original question, and she wasn’t going to repeat herself.

  “Did they leave a note?”

  Olive withdrew the folded piece of paper and passed it to him. She watched him study it. “I’ll have to turn this in as evidence down at the station,” he said. “Do you recognize the handwriting?”

  Olive shook her head. If there was a twinge of familiarity to the letters, she couldn’t wrap her head around it. Not now. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

  But she knew something would have to be done. She dreaded what came next. As she focused on Levon’s hardening expression, she saw her white knight transform into a dragon who would sooner raze a village than let what he protected be threatened again.

  On the ride home, she came clean with him. “Levon, there’s something I have to tell you.” She glanced sidelong at his fists, clenched over the steering wheel for the entirety of their drive, and wished she had the courage to reach out and take one of them in her own hand. “I told some of the parents about the gang activity in town. I... may have mentioned that the activity could be filtering into the school.”

  Levon did not reply. His breathing did not change. But the hands on the steering wheel didn’t loosen, and Olive still didn’t reach for them. “Why did you do that?” When he finally formed the question, he asked it quietly. To Olive, it felt like the calm before the storm.

  They pulled up outside Levon’s house—or rather, the rental they had come to share. Levon cut the engine, but didn’t move. Neither did she. Eventually, she settled her hand on her stomach, and summoned the truth. “Because those are people’s babies, Levon. I get it now—the sense of responsibility that comes with being a parent. I see it more clearly than I ever did when I was just a teacher living a simple, single life. And now that I get it, how can I ever go back? How can I ever see anyone’s child endangered ever again?”

  “You can because you have to,” Levon ground out. “Olive, I don’t like this any more than you do, but there are protocols we have to follow. And if you’re worried about child endangerment, then I’m begging you...”

  The hand nearest to her lifted off the steering wheel and reached out to her. He wanted to touch her stomach, she realized, but something held him back. She took his hand and pulled it the rest of the way to her. Levon released a shuddering breath.

  “It’s all right,” she whispered. She didn’t know why she suddenly felt the need to reassure him. She wasn’t even sure it was the right thing to say.

  “It will be,” he promised. “But not yet.” He withdrew his hand, and Olive was certain she wasn’t the only one who felt the loss of his touch. She knew the baby did, too, with a deep instinct she couldn’t put a name to. “And your good intentions may have set us back. I need to know exactly who you spoke to and what was said. And I’d like you to call in for a sub tomorrow.”

  Olive’s eyebrows pulled together at this last request. She wanted to protest, but maybe she needed to pick and choose her battles here... at the very least she would wait until they got out of the car.

  The realization that they might not agree on how to handle this didn’t sit well.

  15

  “Are you going to be all right here alone for a while?” He couldn’t ever remember a more hateful question coming out of his mouth, but there was no help for it. As he held the door for Olive to come inside, Levon knew he wouldn’t be able to stay long.

  No matter how much he might want to.

  His responsibilities pulled him in every direction, but nothing mattered more than keeping Olive safe. Unfortunately, the best way to ensure that right now wasn’t to stay by her side, but to get to the bottom of who was behind that threatening note. He wasn’t willing to wait around now to find out what they were really capable of.

  “Okay.” Olive’s face pulled together in a miserable expression, and Levon knew he had disappointed her. Damn it. Could he ever get it right? He had thought she might want this time alone, especially after having him constantly restricting her activities and breathing down her neck all the time—could it be he had gotten it wrong? “I’m tired, anyway,” she continued. “I think I’ll go lie down.”

  “Olive.”

  She turned back to him as he said her name, and Levon pulled her into his arms. She buried her face in his shoulder, and he cupped the silky back of her head; he breathed in the perfume of his own shampoo, which she had been using. Why did it smell sweeter on her? Why was he suddenly unable to get enough of it?

  Their lips were on a collision course before he even knew he was kissing her. It was gravity that pulled him down to her. It was a force that he couldn’t put a name to, even though the startling shape of it was welling up inside him. If he hadn’t known how he felt about Olive—or if he had avoided acknowledging it—there was no more skirting around it now. Not after he had found her on the floor of her classroom; had seen the blood; had experienced a stark vision of what it would be to lose her...

  “What’s wrong?” he rasped. She was pulling back, and pulling away from him. Those warm brown eyes o
f hers held a strange curiosity; they seemed to be brimming with an unasked, and consequently unanswered, question. She must have sensed his mind was elsewhere.

  He tried to pull her in again, but Olive stopped him. “I’m tired, Levon,” she repeated. The sting of rejection flared in his chest, but he took her hand—her bandaged hand—and the reality of her long day came crashing back over him. He was being selfish.

  “Go lie down,” he told her. “I’m going to head back to the school, then to the police.”

  Olive nodded. He hated seeing her looking so numb, but felt helpless to come up with a resolution at the moment. He watched her break away from him, and shuffle slowly into the bedroom. He waited until the door was closed.

  Then he went to the kitchen island where Olive graded her quizzes, and he took them. She said she hadn’t recognized the handwriting, but he wondered if it was more that she didn’t want to recognize it—didn’t want to acknowledge that the person who wrecked her classroom could be one of her students.

  He didn’t head back to the school straightaway. He sat in the armchair beneath the golden glow of the lamp and read. He pulled the piece of paper from his pocket, the one containing the threat against Olive, and read it again. And again. He compared handwriting until it seemed like the words would wriggle free of their sentences and leap off the page, but he fought back against his inability to concentrate. He made the words sit still—just long enough for him to find what he was looking for.

  “Franklin.”

  He should have known. Of course the villain responsible for the day’s trauma would be the one person most capable of hurting Olive. He didn’t want it to be true, but there was no denying that handwriting—even though Franklin had obviously tried to conceal that it was him by inverting letters and throwing in random capitalization. Maybe Levon owed it to his dyslexia that he could look beyond the message of the words to the superficial shape of them.

  He needed to check the new security footage at the school, but he was already certain of what he would find: Franklin, breaking into Olive’s classroom, and likely not alone. This would have been a test, Levon thought. The Reapers wanted Franklin to prove his loyalty by betraying Olive—and, if the boy had any of the affection for Olive that Levon thought he did, Franklin had likely agreed in an effort to scare Olive into ending all interference with the gang—interference that could get her hurt, or worse.

  But Levon was getting ahead of himself. He was giving the boy a noble motive, when the reality was that his opinion of Franklin had been colored all along by Olive’s high regard for the boy. Levon needed to focus now, and treat this as he would any other crime scene.

  And any other threat.

  Levon pocketed the note and rose. Coupled with the footage Clint had sent him earlier, it should be enough for the cops to issue a warrant for Franklin Monroe. He replaced Olive’s assignments where he had found them. Then he placed a call on his way out the door.

  “Principal James?” he said as he got back into his car. “It’s Levon. I’m calling about Olive. I need you to meet me at the Harper’s Forge police station so I can fill you in on an event that transpired earlier today... yes, everyone’s safe.” His throat constricted, as if he still couldn’t wrap his own head around the fact that danger had passed over them all for now and left them almost entirely unharmed. For now. “But I want things to stay that way. And that means letting you know that, for the foreseeable future, it’s unsafe for Olive Owen to return to school.”

  Olive slept fitfully. She hadn’t even expected that much. But when she awoke, the bedroom was dark, and she was disoriented. It took her twice the usual amount of time to remember where she was.

  And whose bed she was in.

  Recognition would have been easier if she could locate the man who kept her captive, body and soul, while boasting of only the best intentions.

  Levon was nowhere to be found when she collected herself and left the bedroom. As Olive sat in the living room and gazed around the darkened apartment, an unfamiliar sense of loneliness resonated deep within her. It made her vastly uncomfortable; too uncomfortable to sit still, despite a pregnant woman’s inherent inclination to be off her feet. Olive rose again and turned on every light in the main room, the kitchen. Then she sat back down.

  Her mood had not improved. She longed for Levon. Why, oh why had she shut herself away in the bedroom so quickly? She had been tired, sure, but mostly it had been frustration that drove her from his arms: frustration at being unable to come up with a clever solution to the problem at school, and frustration with herself. It was apparent she might have given valuable information away to the wrong person, or people. Information that could imperil the case they had worked so hard on.

  Maybe that was also partly why she had a hard time looking at Levon. Where once he had treated her as a partner, he now appeared to be treating her as a liability. It was possible she had screwed up, but she still thought she was right to have told that mother what she knew about the threat the gang represented. And even if she did screw up, it was one mistake! It wasn’t worth throwing out his esteem of her entirely!

  But she was jumping to conclusions now. Breathe, Olive, she instructed herself. She didn’t care whether her heart led over her head or vice versa; but if she let her hormones lead, all was lost. She was as susceptible as any other pregnant woman to acting on estrogen if she wasn’t careful.

  Olive got up and wandered the illuminated space. She decided to shut a few of the lights off; and as she did so, she tried to take in every detail of Levon’s apartment with new eyes. She had brought a stack of scientific journals with her; the blanket she was knitting; heck, even her houseplant. She kept conveniently forgetting to pick up the shampoo she usually used just because she enjoyed smelling like Levon, but her pink razor was perched on the side of his tub, and her toothbrush inhabited the same cup as his.

  But Levon had to stay portable. It was his job. He might be called to up and leave tomorrow, and it would take him less than five minutes to pack his life away and be on his way. Who was to say he hadn’t done so already while she slept...?

  Her laptop chimed from the kitchen counter, nearly startling her out of her wits. It chimed again in a pattern, and Olive hastened over to her computer. She sat down, and answered the Skype call from her parents.

  “Hi honey!” her mother’s enthusiastic greeting came in a few minutes after the pixelated image formed on the screen. Bill and Jill Owen traveled the globe working for various non-profits, offering up their mighty intellects and well-researched opinions to countless organizations that struggled to make countries in the Third World more habitable and more humane. At present, they were taking a break from saving mankind to volunteer their parental concern while she told them about the investigation.

  Olive smiled despite herself, and leaned in as close as possible. “Hi, Mom. Is that blob of color beside you Dad?”

  “Speaking of blobs!” her father crowed, and Olive knew she was in for it now. “Haven’t you popped yet? What’s it going to take for you to make grandparents out of us?”

  “Nine months, usually,” Olive replied. “How have the two of you been getting on in Haiti?”

  “Fine, fine,” her mother said. “Same old, same old. We’re more concerned with you. Tell us what’s happening there.”

  Olive hesitated a moment, then decided to tell them everything. She needed a shoulder to cry on, people who knew and understood her and could help sort out this complicated mess she’d found herself in. She started with the most important piece, “Levon Asher is back in town.”

  For a moment, her parents froze and at first Olive thought maybe they’d lost the internet connection, but then her mother turned to her father and whispered something to him that Olive couldn’t hear before looking at her daughter again. “Does he know the baby’s his?”

  “He does.” Olive sighed. “But there’s more going on I need to tell you about.”

  She went over the details of the c
ase so far, including her fears about Franklin Monroe’s involvement with the gang. She’d always been close to her parents and they’d been her steadiest confidants, supporting her during times of trouble. Now was no different. “I’m just really concerned for him. Franklin’s a good kid. Good student, thoughtful, kind. If anything happened to him because of all this, I’m not sure what I’d do.”

  “Oh, honey,” her mother said. “I’m so sorry this is happening, especially with the baby coming and all, but I’m glad Levon’s back to help you. Where is he, by the way?”

  “Working, I think.” She’d searched for a note from him, but hadn’t found one, suggesting he’d not returned after leaving the night before. Olive wasn’t sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, she was glad he was out there seeking justice and battling the rise of the Reapers gang in their town. But on the other hand, she missed him. More than was probably wise.

  He'd never said the words out loud, but she was pretty certain he cared for her, at least a little. And he’d seemed nothing but over the moon about the baby coming. But neither of those things guaranteed he’d stick around Harper’s Forge to help her raise the baby after she gave birth. Hell, maybe he wouldn’t even be around for the birth itself, if the case wrapped up faster than they’d predicted. She loved him, yes, but she couldn’t rely on him past this whole gang situation. He’d take financial responsibility, Olive was sure, and might even show up for birthdays and few holidays, if his job allowed, but beyond that, there were no guarantees.

  Her heart ached a little more each time she thought of saying goodbye. Olive usually prided herself on being pragmatic, professional, prepared. But being with Levon the past few weeks had turned her life upside down, in the best and worst ways, and now she felt more than a tad perplexed by it all.

  As if sensing her inner worry, her father said, “Well, dear, I wouldn’t worry. SEALs are known for their ability to get the job done, no matter how difficult. I’m sure he’ll be home soon. What I’m more concerned about is whether the two of you have talked about how you’re going to raise your child together.”