Unchained

by Suzanne Halliday

Lacey threw back her head and laughed happily. “Sweetie. Old, aging surfer dude? Show your new daddy some respect, would you?”

  Dylan laughed at them, yanked the cup out of his mouth as drool and water spread down his chin, and chanted, “Toe-toe.” It was his version of Tori. Lately, Cameron had playfully referred to her as Aunt Toto. Surrounded by a bunch of comedians, she was.

  “Lace, come on. Out with it.”

  “Okay, okay. I don’t know for sure, but I think a gambling man might take a bet that the ruggedly sexy and oh-so-fabulously-wealthy Calder Dane intends to do the whole down on one knee thing at her fiftieth birthday bash.”

  Tori’s mouth gaped open. A few seconds passed and then her eyes filled with tears. “She’s gonna love the shit out of that. Especially when she sees what he’s planning for the party.”

  Slinging an arm around her shoulders, Lacey hugged Tori close. “Well, he’s certainly pulling out all the stops—that’s for sure.”

  “I want her to be happy, Lacey. She deserves that.”

  Hearing the depth of unspoken emotion in her friend’s voice affirmed her fear that something was very, very wrong at the St. John household. A cold sense of foreboding wound around Lacey’s nerve endings.

  “Are you and Drae going to Pete’s this weekend? I know it’s our turn to keep an eye on Finn and his odd band of merry men, but I’d love it if you guys came too.”

  Silence. Never a great thing when an answer was expected.

  “Sweetie?”

  “Um, I’ll ask him, but”—she shrugged nonchalantly—“he’s not much fun these days.”

  Lacey schooled her reaction. She didn’t want to set off alarm bells in Tori’s head. Draegyn St. John. Not much fun. Since when?

  “Well, pooh to him then! He can stay home and babysit. You come with us, okay? Cameron can manage Finn, and we’ll dance. That sounds like a good time, doesn’t it? It’s been a long time since we worked up a dance floor sweat.”

  “Not since Boston,” Tori mumbled. “You know what? You’re right. I’ll ask Draegyn, but if he wants to sit at home and sulk or whatever he does when I’m not around, then that’s on him.”

  Jeez Louise. So many unspoken emotions and half-baked thoughts were in that statement that Lacey didn’t know where to start picking them apart.

  FIG NEWTONS. CHECK.

  O’s cereal. Check.

  Wheat bread. Check.

  Dog food. Check.

  Toilet paper. Check.

  Razor blades. Grrr. Heather bristled at the reminder that Brody planned to shave, get a haircut, and put on a suit for his return to Arizona. She’d come to like the scruffy, longhaired, jeans wearing, motorcycle riding outdoors guy her serious English teacher boyfriend had morphed in to.

  Like seriously—the guy was hot. Maybe she should try to change his mind and encourage the new look.

  “Heather?”

  “Hmmm?” She turned toward Bella, who was sitting on the floor near her feet and quietly brushing a doll’s hair.

  “Where’s my daddy? Is he coming back?”

  Ah. The semi-hourly Daddy Check-In. Smiling broadly, she winked at the little girl. “He’ll be here in a bit, baby Bella, so how about you and me just enjoy our girl time?” Girl time being one in a growing list of diversions she used to lessen the young girl’s anxiety every time Brody was out of sight.

  This answer satisfied Bella for exactly two minutes. Heather put down her pen and focused on the little girl she’d fallen instantly in love with. They’d had a challenging time of it since that first moment, but Brody’s sweet baby was a survivor. She’d been through hell and back for someone who was only five years old. Traumatized in ways she and her father were still trying to understand, Mia Jensen, or Bella as she asked to be called, was not going down without a fight.

  It was easy to admire the girl’s spunkiness and just as easy to agonize over the fears poor Bella Mia carried.

  “Heather?”

  “Mmmhmm?”

  “I like girl time.”

  Well, goddamn! Strike up the marching band. This was new—Bella voicing a positive reaction.

  Watching the child unhurriedly brush her doll’s hair, Heather weighed every movement and sound, searching for nuances in Bella’s behavior that would help her to navigate this change.

  Trying not to sound like a therapist, she chuckled, bent over, and leaned closer. “Girl time is my favorite!”

  “Can we take a bath? With bubbles? That’s my favorite.”

  A hard, throbbing blob of emotion closed Heather’s throat. Baby Bella had a favorite. This was big. No, screw that. This was huge. She wanted to text Brody to tell him.

  She already knew how much the child liked taking a bath. It was hearing her say it out loud that mattered. Bella took to a tub full of bubbles like a bird frolicking in a fountain. It was the first thing they did together the night the hunky English teacher turned dog trainer showed up on Heather’s doorstep with his frightened, bedraggled daughter in tow.

  That whole night was one big tumultuous eye opener. Poor Bella—she’d been such a hellacious mess. Dirty. Undernourished. Confused. Her hair was a filthy, matted mess, and what passed for hygiene in the kid’s world was disturbing.

  One long bathroom session later, a cute, doe-eyed mini version of her daddy emerged. And it turned out, after several washings, some heavy-duty conditioning, and a quick trim, her hair was a surprising chestnut brown. What was also painfully evident was that the child had no memory of ever taking an actual bath.

  In fact, from the bits and pieces of information Heather had gathered, not only had all the young children in the survivalist’s compound she’d been rescued from been kept in an outdoor pen, but they also washed from a trough and were occasionally squirted down with a hose.

  One horrible revelatory moment stood out. With Brody hovering just out of eyesight in the doorway to the bedroom, Bella had a five-year-old’s conniption fit when Heather had first tried to wash her hair. After an agonizing negotiation, her little head got a thorough scrubbing, but not before the child explained that the kids kept their heads dirty to ward off bugs. ‘Crawlies don’t like dirty hair,’ she’d said.

  Brody’s reaction was a case study in visceral. She’d seen things in his expression, in his eyes, as he listened to his baby girl talk about being kept like an animal that she’d likely never forget.

  He was going to be over the moon when she told him about Bella’s sharing.

  Bella was looking at her expectantly. Heather smiled and shook out of her reverie. The subject at hand was bubbles and a bath. Bella Mia’s first favorites.

  “I like bubbles too and guess what?”

  The child flirted with an eighth of a smile, but it was there.

  “What?”

  “Daddy brought home some special bubbles. Just for us.”

  Bella cocked her head and gazed pensively. “You mean for his girls?”

  Oh, my god. Please help me keep it together. For his girls. Heather came close to losing it. Seeing an opening to burnish Daddy’s current prince-like status, she threw down with something of a dramatic, phantasmagorical flourish. Who knew she’d be so adept at creating fantasy worlds and fairy tales in the blink of an eye?

  “That’s right, sweetie. Special bubbles for his girls. Fairy bubbles,” she said with a waggle of her brows.

  Bella’s expression brightened. She gasped, and the sliver of a smile went all the way.

  “Made with magic fairy perfumes and scents.”

  “I like magic.”

  At least once a day, she had the thought that she couldn’t love this child more if she tried. This moment brought the thought home with an emotional thud. Right in the center of her chest.

  Pulling the little girl from her spot on the floor, Heather brought her close and hugged her warmly. After kissing the top of her head, she put a finger beneath Bella’s chin and urged her to look up.

  “You are magic, Bella Mia. Daddy’s fairy princess, remembe
r? And do you know where the magic comes from, sweetie?”

  Relaxing into Heather’s embrace, she made a face like she was thinking and then shook her head.

  Tapping her heart lightly, she confidently told the impressionable youngster the very same thing her mother had said to Heather when she was a little girl.

  “The magic is in here. In your heart.”

  “You mean where I keep my love?”

  It was damn hard not to grab her up, squeeze her to pieces, and cover her adorable face with kisses. In a relatively short period, they’d managed to turn Bella away from the traumas she’d been subjected to and lay the groundwork for a happier, healthier future. Teaching her about concepts like love and forgiveness were critical to the child’s recovery.

  “That’s right, honey. Where you keep your love.”

  “My daddy loves me.” She said it like a statement, but Heather heard the anxiety.

  “Love is magic, baby Bella.”

  And then a mountain of the child’s anguish came tumbling into Heather’s lap.

  “Why didn’t Daddy come get me?”

  She had to will her heartbeat back to a steady cadence. Now wasn’t the time to show a weakness. Every damn time Bella asked this question, Heather prayed she said the right thing.

  “We told you, sweetie. He didn’t know where you were after he came home from the war.”

  “Because Tracey took me away.”

  Swallowing past the horrible lump in her throat, she kept her face passive. It wasn’t right on any level for a five-year-old to think of her mother by her first name. This poor kid, she thought. She’d been deprived of so much, including a mother. A real mother. Not some biological factoid.

  “But look how happy we are now that you’re here.”

  “Daddy used his magic love to find me.”

  Yep. That fucking did it. Sniffing and clearing her throat, Heather hugged the little girl tight.

  “You have a wonderful daddy.”

  “Can we take a bath now, Heather?”

  Ah, the mind of a child. Where everything was simple and straightforward.

  “I think we can manage a quick dunk in the tub. And then it’s time to pack more boxes before Daddy comes home with dinner.”

  “Tacos! Tacos!”

  Well, hot damn. That sounded like happy enthusiasm. This turned out to be a banner day. Baths, fairy bubbles, and tacos.

  “Whoa, buddy.”

  Brody pushed George away from the takeout he was trying to stash in the backseat from his favorite D.C. Mexican place. Looked like even the damn dog liked Manny’s Tacos.

  “Get in the front,” he barked with a smart finger snap and a pointed command. Looking disappointed, the reluctant dog did what he was told and clamored over the center console. Obediently sitting, George kept a keen eye on Brody’s movements—a sure sign he’d catapult into the backseat and inhale the entire dinner order if given even half a chance.

  Huffing, “I can see you,” to his canine companion, Brody slammed the rear car door and hurried to open the driver’s door. He wasn’t born yesterday. Even the most well-mannered dog could be tempted too far.

  Swinging into the big SUV, he got them quickly on the road and headed for home.

  Home. Wow. A new concept. After all this time, all the years and the going back and forth, he had a home. And this one wasn’t tied to a zip code. This home was wherever his girls were.

  Making his way through the mind-numbing beltway traffic, he maneuvered the Chevy Suburban with ease and checked the mental list he kept front and center in his thoughts.

  They were just two weeks from leaving for Arizona, and he had a hard time keeping all the shit he had to do organized. Neither he nor Heather had a moment of hesitation after he showed up on her doorstep with his daughter and a hopeful heart. Some stuff was just meant to be— no matter how fucked up the scenario.

  They’d been living together as a family ever since, and he’d never been happier. Or more nervous. He and Heather had been through so much. And so had his Mia. The three of them were this odd little unit of trauma survivors, and the situational irony was not lost on him.

  So much had gone down since he and Cam rescued the sad, frightened little girl he hadn’t seen since she was an infant. Not only were he and Heather perfectly in sync with the whole parenting thing, but their emotional closeness and intimate bond had also never been stronger.

  Taking Heather to Boston for the Major’s wedding turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Where his other life was concerned, she’d been thrown into the deep end of the pool. Not only did she not sink like a rock, but his sexy psychologist-slash-lover also quickly carved out a niche on the home team bench of the Justice ladies.

  They’d been well on their way to nailing down a future together when Cam struck pay dirt in the search for his missing daughter. Knowing Heather’s background, he wasn’t sure that presenting her with a kid wasn’t kind of like tossing a grenade in her lap. But if it had been, she didn’t show it because, in every sense of the word, Heather rescued him and Bella. And now, here they were, about to embark on an epic adventure—as a family.

  His apartment was the first thing to go. As he emptied a storage space he’d been hanging on to for years, he shipped what he didn’t get rid of to Arizona. Same for Heather. Without blinking an eye, she resigned from the college the second she could and slowly and methodically sorted through her stuff. By the time they arrived out West, their belongings would already be on-site. A life waiting for their arrival.

  And speaking of on-site—he really needed to send something nice to Betty for straightening out the housing kerfuffle on that end. Drae and Cam were adamant that as a Justice partner, he should live in the compound. Because they did. And from what he was hearing, Calder was building a home on the Valleja-Marquez property too.

  Only Parker Sullivan kept his home at a distance, a fact Brody leaned on heavily when he had to put his foot down over the housing arrangements. It wasn’t that he was being a dick about living on the property. He felt honored to be part of the inner circle, but he and Heather had talked it over. Even her parents and Pops had weighed in with their thoughts. Bella would be school-age in the fall, and long-term decisions were a top priority. The sooner they could create a new normal, the better.

  They’d quickly vetoed the notion of homeschooling, which led to a brutal assessment of what life on the compound would be like for the little girl.

  She needed to be with her peers, not hanging out with a bunch of filthy-mouthed guys and a pack of dogs. They wanted her to have as much normal as possible. House in the ‘burbs. A yard for George. Local school. Kids on the street to hang around with. Play dates. PTA meetings. Girl Scouts. Dance lessons.

  Discussing this shit with Cam and Drae was an exercise in futility—mostly because they were so damn sure Alex would want Brody’s family under his protection. That part made sense, of course, but he had new priorities and looked at things in a completely different light.

  Betty—bless her organizational, Zen-master heart—stepped in and settled the whole thing. With her usual take-charge panache, she arranged for video tours of several properties halfway between Sedona and the Marquez property, close to the location where Parker was building Angie Marquez a love shack.

  Heather fell in love with one of the houses, and that was that. The place they settled on was a spectacular five-bedroom home that everyone knew was overkill. That didn’t stop him, though, from buying the thing once Betty finagled a deal he couldn’t walk away from.

  It was Southwestern suburban paradise at its best with an open first floor and a top-of-the-line kitchen, a playroom with French doors that opened off the living room, a home office, two garages, and every bell and whistle his little family could want. There was a pool, a spa, a fenced yard area, and a large concrete pad big enough to park an RV.

  The second floor of the newly constructed home was better than anything he could have dreamed. The bedrooms upstairs ope
ned to a large common loft area where Heather planned to create a smaller, cozy family zone. Perfect for Bella. Perfect for them.

  Oh yeah. And the master bedroom? It was a small city with a raised sleeping platform and a separate seating area. Perfect for the Tantra chair his hot girlfriend found so useful. They each had a walk-in closet, and the bathroom was large enough to rival the size of a New York City apartment. He planned to make love to Heather in the enormous tiled shower—after all, it came with a convenient fucking ledge. He could sit with her straddling him or even better, she could bend over and use the ledge for support as he pounded her from behind.

  He was a homeowner, for fuck’s sake, and was planning a shit-ton of Brody and Heather debauchery in their new place because … well, because he could.

  Besides daydreaming about the future, he was also scrambling to take care of some Justice business too. That was why he’d been driving into D.C. for the last week. Those FBI buggers making Justice crazy with demands that involved his rather unique skillset eventually managed to tick Parker off. With him handling the legal affairs while Alex was in Spain, he’d become embroiled in the drama by default.

  In the end, though, it was Brody’s decision to meet them head-on and school all those motherfuckers in a way they’d never forget. He’d done his duty and had the scars and lingering PTSD to prove it. The black suits out at Quantico were kidding themselves for thinking he’d jump to attention just because Uncle Sam came snapping his red, white, and blue fingers.

  No fucking way. His days of peering through a gun scope were over, and unless it involved saving the planet from aliens or defending humanity against a zombie apocalypse, his sniper days were behind him. And that included using him as some sort of gun toting Grand Wizard teaching his ways to hordes of young soldiers just waiting to join the fight.

  Hardly.

  Nope. His life was transformed. By no less than the Justice brothers themselves. He was going to have a dream job as managing director of the Justice Canine Program. It still boggled his mind that they offered him a seat at the big kid’s table. Now he, Heather, and, amazingly, his daughter were starting a brand new life.