Against All Odds: A Gripping Secret Baby Romance (Bad Boys After Dark Book 9)

by Gabi Moore

  “No!” I screamed, but she leapt back and let his body fall down in front of her. A gush of red spurt out from a hole underneath his chin. She looked unruffled, watching him as he crumpled sinuously onto the floor. She crouched, picked the gun up and stood again, cocking it in the direction of the three stunned intruders. I would never stop being in awe of this woman.

  “You lied to me,” she said coldly, pinning me with her eyes.

  “No, Evie, I wanted to save you. He knew where you were. He betrayed me.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  Before I could answer she took two aggressive steps towards the trio, aiming cleanly at the guy in the middle’s head. I saw him waver a little, saw that brief flicker of fear in his eyes, Rookie mistake.

  She lifted her heel and leapt towards him, kicking hard down onto his shin and bringing him folding forward in pain. In a second she had snagged his arm and wrenched his weapon from him, sending it clattering to the floorboards and away from us. In the next instant two guns were cocked and aimed at her head, freezing her to the spot, her arm now around him.

  “Don’t move, bitch, that’s enough.”

  She didn’t move. In fact, it blew my mind how calm she seemed. Her eyes were wide and black and unfocused, yet she had moved as swiftly as a ninja. It was hard to believe that she was pregnant.

  We stood there staring at one another, in a standoff that I knew I’d have to bust us out of.

  “Drop your weapons,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster. I was banking on them having orders to capture her but not kill her. Little Joey Valenti was an asshole, but even he wouldn’t murder a pregnant woman. Would he?

  They stood their ground. I could make out her breathing. Her chest seemed so narrow and delicate, so small compared to those of the two that flanked her. I didn’t come all this way to have them do this to her.

  “I said drop your weapons.”

  The floorboards creaked under them as they dug their heels and stood their ground.

  “We’ll take you too, buddy,” one of them said.

  And then something strange happened. At first I thought I was hearing things. But then it was undeniable. I could hear her. Though her lips were squeezed tight I could hear her voice …in my head. I stared hard into her eyes. Nothing but deep, strange black. She wanted me to shoot the guy to her left. I just knew, like I knew my own name, that that was what she wanted, and in a moment, it was what I wanted too.

  But it was stupid. His finger was hugging the trigger. Shooting him would guarantee a bullet in her head. There just wasn’t another way.

  “Do you trust me, Jack?” she said out loud. I was taken aback. She flashed those stretched wide pupils at me and my heart broke and all I could say was that, yes, I think I did.

  The next few moments unfolded in slow motion, like a grisly, bloodied ballet where she was the prima ballerina, and I was there to help her execute a daring, dazzling display of grace and athleticism. I lifted my gun and fired. Before the bullet left the chamber she lowered and twisted her weight down and away from me, bringing her hostage’s body square into the line of fire. A burst of red spew out from her human shield as the bullet tore into his soft flanks. Before a second had passed I delivered another bullet clean into the guy on the right of her, toppling him. It felt like there were hours between each of those gunshots, and yet in reality they popped off almost at once, killing the three instantly.

  The sound echoed and ricocheted off the worn walls of that place, disturbing a flock of crows outside. Her eyes flitted back into her skull, and all at once, she collapsed down to her knees and then fainted. I rushed over, pulled the dead man’s limbs from her small body and held her in my arms like a ragdoll.

  “Evie! Evie, wake up! Are you hurt?” I cried out, my shaking failing to rouse her.

  She hung heavy and limp in my hands. I put a palm to her clammy brow. She was burning up. Had she…? I couldn’t even think about that now. At least she was alive. I scanned the room and tried to think. There’d be others. I didn’t know what Mike’s angle was and I had no idea who else he had involved, but I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

  I put one knee to the ground, slipped my arms underneath her and hoisted her up and then over my shoulder. She was light but a deadweight; completely unconscious.

  I went over to kick the bodies on the floor and, satisfied they weren’t coming back to life any time soon, I turned to leave. I took one more glance at Mike. I had never been a bad judge of character before. I would have trusted that man with my life. And yet there he lay, his blood seeping into the dusty wooden floorboards below, and I wondered just what was so special about all these secrets Evie knew.

  I angled her out the door and stepped into the harsh sunlight. I trotted over the gravel to the car, Evie’s hair bouncing in waves over my shoulder, and realized with fresh horror that they had slashed the car tires. With her still on my shoulders I opened the door, crouched down inside to pull out a few things, and then slammed it shut again. I didn’t have any idea what I was doing. I just knew that as long as she was alive, and as long as she had that little one inside her, I would keep running.

  Though my thigh muscles were crying out in pain and I was suddenly aware of some raw, torn patches on the skin on my forearms, I gathered all my energy and stood tall again. I eyed a clearing in the brush, leading away from the house and away from the gravel road. I lowered my head, took a deep, painful breath and ran towards it.

  Her body felt warm and toned and delicious as it weighed down on me. I was exhausted as I fled through that leafy tunnel, but it was all for her, all worth it …all easy so long as I knew she was alive, as long as I could feel her warmth, and the faint rise and fall of her breath in her chest against me.

  Chapter 15 - Evelyn

  I was strapped to the immense back of a giant, riding through the desert, heaving and swaying with each step it took. I could feel the giant moan and sigh underneath me as it carefully picked its way over the dunes, like the air in his lungs was the howling wind. I was safe. Mostly. Reflexively, I reached behind me to touch my own back. I was relieved to find that it was still there: the tiny swaddled bundle that I knew I had to carry and protect no matter what was still strapped to me. We were a stack of beings, each smaller than the one underneath, each more tenuous. He was awake, I was half awake, and the tiny bundle on my back was completely asleep.

  Something cracked loudly and shook me from my dream.

  It was Jack.

  Jack was carrying me somewhere.

  Though my eyes hung down heavy as lead and I couldn’t lift them, I realized that my arms were draped around his neck and the rest of me was hanging long and loose down the length of his back. I could feel my feet occasionally tap into things as he walked. Then he stopped. He could tell I had awoken.

  “Evie?”

  I said nothing, but he knew I was awake. I don’t how I knew he knew, but I did. He carried on walking, a quick, springy pace through what smelt like the woods. Slowly, the events of the day were coming back to me. A pile of bodies in a broken-down house. The feeling that I was only watching a video of myself from way up in space, a video where I could speed up and slow down time at will. Fuck, I had the hugest headache.

  “Are you OK?” he said. He meant the baby. I had never planned to embark on massive shootouts and chase scenes in my first trimester, but it was what it was. I knew the baby was fine. I don’t know how I knew it, I just knew it. I said nothing. He kept on walking briskly. I don’t know how much time passed, but the air around us seemed to change, almost getting thicker and damper somehow. Either we had covered some good distance and arrived somewhere in a tropical rainforest …or it was about to pour with rain.

  I felt myself being gently lowered and propped against a tree. My body felt weak but the fresh air revived me mentally. I was safe. Mostly.

  “They nearly killed you,” he said, looking down at me with concern. I could see that he was hurt bad. A dry, crus
ted black blood stain snaked down his tattooed bicep.

  “Before we go on, you have to be honest with me. What do you know? Why is everyone so keen to have your head?”

  Wincing, I got to my feet.

  “Where are you taking me?” I said.

  He didn’t answer.

  “You’re just like them… you just take and take and take …I left that life behind,” I said bitterly.

  It was so easy to trust him in my dreams. In those quiet moments alone where I was sure that he was the only person in the world who had my back. But looking at him now, I had the crushing fear that he was just like all the rest, just looking to take what he could get. I was tired of mafia men. Tired of the death and the lies and the greed…

  “Evie, tell me what you know.”

  He was even better looking than I remembered. The veins in his neck pulled tight as he frowned at me, one legged propped up on a tree root.

  “No.”

  “Evie, tell me, for fuck’s sake. Haven’t you lied to me enough already?”

  He took a step towards me, but I pulled back.

  “I’ll kill you,” I hissed, and brandished a weapon I had pulled from his belt when I slinked off his back. He looked stunned. He backed away, hands raised.

  “Evie you’re not well, you fainted back there, let me help you…”

  I lifted my arms and took aim right between his eyes. I had a clear shot. It wasn’t that long ago that I had cruelly framed this man, and now I was carrying his child and I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t make sense of the emotions swirling through me. Couldn’t get my heartbeat to stop jumping all over the place. But this is what I knew. Killing him would be easy. I would never have my happily ever after, not with my history, not with the enemies I had …so why was my hand shaking now, as it aimed at him?

  He took a step towards me.

  “Evie, put the gun down and let’s talk. Why do you think I’m out here now, in the middle of nowhere with you? If we have any hope of getting out of this mess alive we need to work together. And we need to be honest with each other.”

  His words sounded so sweet. So tempting. Of course I had imagined it. Life with Jack. I had no idea what women with babies and husbands actually did with their lives, but I still couldn’t help imagine it.

  Standing in front of me was a man who was offering to help me, no strings attached. Back in the house, something had happened. There was no denying it. We had worked together. Somehow. In my wildest fantasies I pretended we could read each other’s minds, that we were one of the rare ones who responded to Pink Kisses with a surge in empathy neurochemicals, and fucking secretly in a container glued us together and cemented our fates. But standing now looking at him, I felt silly for ever thinking that. Stuff like that didn’t happen. I had just taken too much of a poorly understood chemical and was paying the price. Old Evie would have wasted this guy hours ago. I lifted the gun and cocked the trigger.

  We locked eyes. He took another step towards me, bringing his chest close enough that it touched the barrel of my gun. He stood there, pressing gently into it, his eyes still firmly glued to mine.

  “Do it then, if you really want to,” he whispered.

  This isn’t what I did. I was a killer. A tough-as-nails mafia queen bee who fought blood and guts for every last scrap of respect she had in the organization. Pulling the trigger was the easiest thing in the world for me. But I couldn’t do it.

  “Kill me, Evie, if that’s what you want. Pull that trigger if you know you feel nothing for me, if what happened that night was just meaningless. Go ahead. If you’re really not curious to see where this goes, to see where we go…”

  I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I was coming down, and the ache in my head became a scream. But I couldn’t lower the weapon. The muscles in my arm had frozen.

  “I know that you got the paternity tests …that’s how they found you Evie. I know you wanted to find out who the father was, and that’s why you’re in danger now. Let me help you. They want to pit us against one another. They want us to fight. But I saw you that night… you’re not really a killer at all, are you…?”

  Though I held on with all my might, two fat tears escaped when I blinked hard and I stood there shaking, feeling them roll down my cold face and onto my cheeks.

  “I never… I never got the results back from the clinic,” I said. The more I held in the shaking the more it seemed to morph into sobs in my chest. His hand rose up, curled around the barrel of the gun and gently pushed it aside.

  “I’m the father, Evie,” he said quietly, pushing my arms down and to the ground so all the tension fell away. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Big sobs wracked through me and I began to cry. The gun fell from my hands and thudded into the wet ground below.

  He leapt forward and wrapped his arms around me.

  “I just want to protect you,” he said. Hot tears streaming down my face, I pulled away and shoved him hard against his chest. I couldn’t do this.

  “I don’t need your protection,” I spat. I must have been out of my mind. Maybe it was pregnancy hormones, or it was the stress of the situation, but no way in hell was I going to go gaga over some guy I barely knew.

  I picked up the gun again, shook my head to clear it and wiped down my face with the back of my arm. I turned to hike down the path.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away from you,” I hissed.

  “Evie, you can’t go,” he cried after me.

  I turned to smile at him.

  “I can’t? And what are you going to do about it?”

  To my astonishment, he smiled as well. But his smile wasn’t sarcastic. Wasn’t hard like mine. And scared.

  “If you would stop trying to kill me, and quit running away every chance you get, maybe we could actually help each other out here” he said.

  “I already told you, clearly I don’t need anyone’s help.”

  “Evie, you’re pregnant. If you want to keep that baby, it’s going to be harder and harder to run.”

  I said nothing.

  “What, you don’t think they’re after us right this instant? They’re not going to stop, Evie. Not till they have both our heads on spikes. We have a better chance of survival if we work together…”

  I hated how right he thought he probably was. I hated that maybe I thought he was right too.

  “The only way out of this is to take down the organization. Completely,” he said. “And now’s our chance. Little Joey has no clue what he’s doing. If you know something, Evie, now’s the time to share it.”

  I was frozen to the ground. The forest around us was dense, wet and creepy looking. I wasn’t in any position to argue.

  “Ok, fine, whatever.”

  “You said you felt it too, that night, right?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that right now, Jack.”

  “Well, I felt it too Evie. I haven’t been the same since… I don’t know what that stuff is but I’ve been having so many strange ideas, so many thoughts…”

  I tried hard not to look too interested.

  “I said, I don’t want to talk about that right now. We have to get to civilization soon and then come up with some kind of plan. I’m not telling you a damn thing till then.”

  He gave a little smile.

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not some damsel in distress, Jack, I’m serious. Don’t look at me like that.”

  “Never said you were.”

  “And just because I’m pregnant it doesn’t mean I’m going to just fall madly in love with you now and…”

  He raised his eyebrow at me.

  “Just because it’s your kid it doesn’t mean that we’re… that I owe you anything and we’re just going to screw each other right here in the bushes,” I yelled.

  He broke into a full grin.

  “Of course, not, no way! You don’t owe me anything, Evie.” He held both his hands up in defense. Then he looked down at the ground.<
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  “But I guess I was kind of hoping you’d …want to,” he said quietly.

  I felt that tight knot between my legs thump with anticipation. No. Don’t be an idiot Evie.

  “Oh, give me a break,” I scoffed and moved to brush past him. “We have a lot of walking to do, let’s go,” I said, but as I moved past him he reached out his arm and caught my elbow, swiveled me round and in an instant he had me pinned to him, locking our lips together.

  I resisted a little, but almost instantly melted into him, like our bodies were drawn to each other’s like magnets. It felt so good to kiss him again that I couldn’t suppress a moan, couldn’t stop from weakening at my knees and falling into a deep, passionate kiss with him. Both his firm hands rose up around me to anchor me closer to him, and at that moment it felt useless to fight, useless to insult him or kick and scream or play tough anymore. His body felt hard and warm under his shirt, and he had the smell of wet earth and grass on him.

  “Just so you know, this doesn’t mean anything,” I mumbled as he rolled his sweet lips over mine. I could taste him smiling.

  “No, of course not, you don’t need me, you don’t need anyone… and of course you don’t need this,” he said and pressed his hard body against mine. His cock felt like a third leg packed into his pants, and my hips tilted and rubbed against him of their own accord, like nothing but what he had in there would put me out of my aching misery. The spot between my legs was burning deliciously, wet with just the thought of what we were about to do. I had fucked him so many times in my dreams, so many times in my lonely moments, and now it was really happening.

  I ran excited hands down the length of his body as he laced his fingers in my hair and pulled back to look at me.

  “You’re beautiful, Evie,” he mumbled, tracing delicate thumbs along the contours of my cheekbones.

  I couldn’t bear to look into his eyes. I was afraid of what I’d see there. Afraid of that deep, delicious blackness that had haunted my every waking and sleeping moment for the last four months. I lost control when I stared into those eyes. And I didn’t know if I was ready to lose control again.