Defending Her Dignity
Page 24
I smile. “I want that, too. But there’s something you should know.” I bite down on my lip and drag my eyes down to my purse, still at my side. Reaching inside, I pull out the unopened box of Plan B and give it to him.
He looks momentarily confused, before his eyes widen and he looks up at me. “Was this…?”
“I was supposed to take it the next day, after we had made love. I was waiting until I could grab something to eat with it, but then I had to rush back to pick up Isabel and then the car accident, and well you know the rest…” I trail off, sucking my lower lip into my mouth and biting down.
“Yael, are you?” Lawrence asks, his eyes wide and his mouth agape.
I feel my eyes brim with moisture. Shit, I am so emotional. And as I do the math in my head, I don’t need to wonder why: I’m about five-weeks pregnant right now.
I nod my head and Lawrence drops the box onto the floor and pulls me into his arms. Seeing his excitement, I let out a sob and wrap my arms around him, squeezing him. When he realizes I’m crying, he pulls away and looks down at me.
“What’s wrong?”
I smile and shake my head. “I don’t know? I’m happy. I’m so happy. I think I was worried you wouldn’t be.”
Lawrence furrows his brow. “How could you not know this makes me the happiest man alive?” He presses his palm against my stomach and laughs as he looks up at me, his green eyes shining with happiness. “It’s a girl.”
“How can you know that?”
He smiles and shakes his head. “I’m not sure. I just know.”
He pushes the chair away and slides down onto the tiled floor, still keeping his hands wrapped around mine. I quirk my brow and look down at him, confused.
When I see him pull his hand away and reach into his pocket to pull out the small velvet box, my heart begins to pound against my chest. All I can hear is the blood rushing in my ears as he raises the small box and pops it open, revealing a large sapphire-and-diamond ring.
“Yael, I’ve been carrying this in my pocket ever since you first opened your eyes back at the hospital. I’ve wanted to ask you so many times now but wanted the moment to be perfect.”
He raises his hand to rest against my stomach. “And now that you’ve given me the best news, I know this moment is the one. Marry me, Yael. Tell me you’ll stay. Tell me you’ll be my wife, that you’ll continue to love me and Isabel. You’ll grow old with me. And that you’ll always tell me when I’m wrong or being an idiot. I don’t want to live another day without you knowing how much you mean to me, and I want to spend the rest of the time I have on this Earth showing you how much I love you.”
The tears continue to fall, staining my lips. I nod my head, unable to form a coherent sentence. “Yes, yes,” I continue to whisper, over and over again, still not entirely convinced this whole scenario isn’t just a beautiful dream, or some opioid- induced hallucination.
But it’s not. And not because I’ve refused every pain med they’ve tried to throw at me. It’s because when I look at Lawrence, I feel a chemical reaction in my own body. A soulmate recognizing the other.
Lawrence slides the ring on my finger before rising back up and enveloping me in his arms. Careful to avoid my still tender side, he almost crushes me in his tight embrace, and I do the same to him.
And it’s here, in this overflowing, flower-filled, sterile white hospital room, wrapped in the arms of the man I love, that I finally find what I’ve been searching for: that bright neon arrow is directing me to this man right here. Because for the first time, I’m realizing home isn’t about finding a place you belong—it’s about finding the people you belong with. And I belong with Lawrence, and with Isabel. And I’m already home.
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Acknowledgments
As always, thank you to my family for supporting me through this wild dream.
And thank you to my heroines - inspired by all the strong and independent and intelligent women in my life - I am grateful that each of you live inside of me.
About the Author
Jade Webb is a lover of romance novels that feature strong heroines who know that the loves that may come into their lives are always the icing, and never the cake.
Thanks to her own marriage, Jade has learned that the challenges of life can only help to make love stronger and she is grateful to her partner for embodying all the magic that love can offer.
When she is not writing or dreaming up new love stories, Jade is working in a retirement community outside of Boston that provides her with enough writing material for ten lifetimes.
Find Jade:
www.jadewebb.com
jade@jadewebb.com
Also by Jade Webb
Guarding Her Heart: Protecting Her Pride: A Renegade Love Bodyguard Novel
Read where it all began with Gabby and Liam.
Trust me, even though I’ve had a silver spoon in my mouth since I was a fetus and have a world-famous pop diva as a sister, there is nothing I want more in the world than to fade into the background and live out my Law & Order fantasy of becoming a public defender.
The only problem is my dad won’t bankroll law school unless I spend the summer following my older sister on her arena tour, keeping her out of trouble and making sure she doesn’t have yet another embarrassing public meltdown. Now relegated to a glorified babysitter, I am stuck lugging my ten-pound LSAT prep books through hotel lobbies and taking practice tests in my sister’s dressing rooms.
Then I find myself caught in a love triangle with my sister’s arch nemesis, bad boy popstar Jordan James and Liam, my sister’s confusing and irritatingly gorgeous Scottish bodyguard. Too bad I’ve sworn off love after seeing my own parent’s train wreck of marriage end with heartache and misery.
I’m tired of living under my family’s careful rules and law school is my way out. I won’t let anything get in my way. I won’t let anyone close enough to break down my walls. I have to guard my heart.
Available Now on Amazon
Also by Jade Webb
Protecting Her Pride: A Renegade Love Bodyguard Novel
Okay, sure, take a picture. I know you want to. And don’t worry, I know you can’t help but scream and cry when you see me. Trust me, I’m used to it. I’ve been in the public eye since I was fifteen years old. And now a decade later, I am one of the most recognizable faces on earth. And with that fame has come some highs and lows. Like the fact that I just shattered records for having one of the most successful nationwide arena tours and outsold all my previous albums. Awesome, right? And I know I should feel excited but unfortunately I’ve recently discovered that I have a stalker intent on kidnapping and chopping me into a thousand pieces.
And I’m freaked out. So I call the only person who I know I can trust. The man who was like a father to me and who led my security team my entire career.
Except he’s also the man I fired eight months ago when I was drunk and upset that he had punched my boyfriend (not that I could really blame him, my boyfriend is kind of an idiot). So I decide to go back and grovel for him to come back and work for me. Except he’s now retired.
But he has another idea.
His son: Roman.
My first kiss. My first love. My first everything.
The boy who I dumped two days before he was set to be deployed to Iraq. The boy who’s heart I broke. The boy who has cruelly haunted all my dreams ever since.
Except he’s not a boy anymore. No, he is most definitely all man. And while he agrees to help me out, be my bodyguard until my creepy stalker is captured, he obviously still hates me. And I can’t blame him. I hate myself, too.
But when my stalker starts to escalate, and I realize this threat is serious, Roman is the only one I can turn to. But how can I ever reveal the truth of why I had to break his heart seven years ago? I have
to protect my pride.
Available on Amazon