Falling For A Donovan (The Donovans Book 14)

by A. C. Arthur

  She’d stopped shaking her head, but was now rubbing the small pouch perched over the gold belt she wore. Henry looked away.

  “Oh, you think because you made an attempt to not share your release with me, that you dodged the pregnancy bullet.” She made a tsking sound. “Come on, Henry, you know better than that. Pulling out is not a reliable form of birth control.”

  Henry almost yelled his frustration at that moment. How many times had his father told him that very same thing? Ike Donovan had made sure to have “The Talk” with each of his sons on the day they turned ten years old. While Henry’s mother had thought they were too young to know about men and women at that point, Ike was insistent. His boys were to be respectful to women, loving and generous. They were also supposed to be responsible and protective of any woman they deemed worthy enough to sleep with. The mere thought that he’d done less than what was expected of him had Henry trembling with anger.

  “That is not my child!” he told her, this time as he stared directly into her eyes. “I don’t care what you’ve decided in your mind, that child will never carry my name. I can promise you that.”

  “Please don’t make promises, Henry,” she said, her demeanor once again changing. She was no longer smiling, no longer rubbing her stomach. Now, she’d taken a step back and was staring at Henry as if he were possibly one of her biggest enemies. There was clear detestation in her glare, even when she lifted a hand to smooth down the side of her hair.

  “You’re one of those men that aren’t good at keeping their promises,” she continued. “But that’s alright. I hear what you’re saying and I’m going to leave because it was never my purpose to come here and cause a scene. Before I leave, however, you should probably know that my son will definitely carry your name. At least part of it anyway.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Why are you doing this, Roslyn? I don’t know how else to say this but to just say it, I don’t want to be with you anymore. There is no future for us no matter what you say or think. There’s nothing. It’s done!”

  This was the first time Henry noticed the small black purse in Roslyn’s right hand. Her fingers clenched it so tight, it made a noise.

  “His last name will be Donovan,” she stated evenly. “Just like his father’s.”

  “Roslyn,” he began but she put a hand up to stop his next words.

  “Ask your brothers, Henry. Call Bernard and Al and ask them how it’s possible that I will be giving birth to a Donovan son. Go ahead,” she said. “I dare you!”

  Henry spoke carefully and slowly, “Get out of my office.” His entire body was shaking, his head had begun to throb. “Get out of my building. My town. My life!”

  She’d already begun walking, a slow and sultry swagger that spoke volumes about the mistake Henry had undoubtedly made.

  “Words, Henry. That’s all you are spouting is words. They mean nothing to me,” she insisted as she approached and opened the door to his office. “Your words mean absolutely nothing to me. I will have this baby and he will carry the Donovan name. You can’t change that fact. None of you can.”

  Henry fell back in his chair the moment she was through the door, dropping his head into his hands. He tried to take deep breaths, to keep from either passing out or jumping over that desk and running after her to…to what? What was he going to do about the bombshell Roslyn had just dropped on him? How was he going to tell Beverly? And his brothers? What the hell had she meant by saying “ask your brothers”? Henry didn’t know and he shouldn’t care. He shouldn’t give a damn about Roslyn or whoever’s baby she was carrying. He just shouldn’t.

  But he did. Damn it all, he did care. Because if what she said was true, if she was in fact carrying his child, Henry’s life—the life he’d planned for, the one that his parents had expected him to have—was over.

  It was all over.

  Chapter 1

  Present

  Big Bear Lake, California

  “Medics are on the way,” York yelled across the room. “ETA fifteen minutes. Calling Linc, like you told me to, now.”

  He’d hurried over to the doorway where Jaydon had fallen after he and Dev had fired at her. “She’s got a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there,” he told them

  Dev nodded to acknowledge York’s words. In his arms he held a trembling Bailey. As Tia had slid to the floor, taking Trent down with her, Bailey had screamed “No!” and Dev had immediately gone to her. She’d tried to run to Trent and Tia, but Dev held her firmly in his arms until she’d finally turned away to bury her face in his chest. Now, she was shaking. Not crying or speaking, but definitely upset. They all were.

  “Stay with me Tia,” Trent was saying. “Please, baby, just stay with me.”

  Dev’s longtime teammate and friend was cradling his wife in his arms. York was moving, Dev could hear his footsteps. Seconds later light flooded the room and when Dev looked toward the opposite corner he saw York slipping a lighter into one of the front pockets on the jacket he wore and setting a kerosene lantern down on the table.

  “Look at me, Tia. Just look at me,” Trent was saying now.

  “She can’t die.”

  It was a whisper and Dev might not have heard it if he wasn’t holding Bailey against his chest.

  “She just cannot die. They can’t win. They can’t,” Bailey continued.

  “They won’t,” Dev told her as he kissed the top of her head. “They definitely won’t.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  Dev turned his attention to the doorway once more and Bailey lifted her head at the sound of the newcomer’s voice.

  “What are you doing here?” Dev asked him as Bailey turned and eased out of his arms.

  “I own this cabin. You’re on my property and I want to know what the hell happened to her!”

  Dane had knelt down then, touching Jaydon’s forehead and then her neck as he searched for a pulse the way York had done moments ago.

  “You wanna know what happened?” Trent yelled. “Look what she did! Look what that bitter bitch did to my wife!”

  As if for the first time Dane looked over to where Tia lay on the floor. He stood and took a step toward them but Dev was faster. In seconds he had a hand to Dane’s chest stopping the guy’s movement.

  “You should leave now,” he said. “Before things get worse.”

  “How can they get worse?” Dane asked. “People are dying.”

  “Because of your mother and your sister,” Bailey said. “They kidnapped me. They planned to kill me and Trent. They’re nuts!”

  Dane looked past Dev, but he didn’t try to move. He was a tall man, almost as tall as Dev, but not quite surpassing Dev’s six feet four inch stature. Dane also had a thick frame, like a man who definitely worked out. But none of that mattered. Dev was certain he could kill this guy in a split second if he even looked like he was going to cause more trouble here.

  “Wait,” Dev said as if just processing Bailey’s words. “She’s your sister?”

  The noise of the medevacs arriving caught everyone’s attention and Trent immediately began moving.

  “No,” Dev told his friend. “Don’t move her. Let them come in and get her.”

  “I don’t like her lying on this filthy floor,” Trent said, shaking his head.

  Bailey knelt beside her cousin then and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “I know,” she said. “But the paramedics are going to come in here and get her and they’re going to take good care of her.”

  Trent looked at Bailey and nodded. “She has to live. She just has to.”

  “She will,” Bailey told him. “She will, Trent. Let’s get ready to let the paramedics do their job.

  “I’m going with her,” Trent said.

  “Yes, you’re going with her. We’re all going,” she told him.

  Dev looked to York who told him, “Just got a text from Linc, the jet’s in the air now.”

  Dev nodded just as four paramedics carrying bags
of supplies hurried through the door. They immediately began shouting orders as two went to Tia and the others to Jaydon. There was a flurry of movement after that and Dev took that time to walk through the cabin once more. He wanted to make sure he remembered everything. He was going to the hospital in the jet. That was the first priority. The second was to find Roslyn Ausby. That bitch had orchestrated the events that had transpired tonight. It was going to be the last time she shed blood under Dev’s nose. Of that he was positive.

  When he returned to the front room where Tia and Jaydon had lay, it had been to see that Jaydon was already gone. Tia was on a stretcher with Trent still standing close by.

  “Let’s move,” one of the paramedics said.

  The other nodded and on the count of three they lifted the stretcher and headed out the door. Trent moved behind them but turned before going through the door. He looked at Dev and Dev stared at him. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. Dev knew exactly what his friend was thinking.

  “I’ve got this,” he told Trent. “You go and handle your family. I’ve got this.”

  Trent only nodded and then he was gone.

  They had words just hours earlier. Trent didn’t like that Dev was sleeping with Bailey. Dev understood. He wasn’t completely sold on the sensibility of the situation himself. But even that didn’t matter at the moment. The concern was for Tia’s life. Dev was no doctor. He was a soldier. A trained fighter…and killer.

  As his fists clenched at his sides he could think of only one name, one target—Roslyn Ausby.

  This wasn’t the first time Dev had been onboard the Donovan jet. The soft white leather seats and plush beige carpet weren’t new to him. Neither were the other opulent features—the many HD flat screen televisions, top shelf stocked bar and refrigerator full of food. The newly designed Gulfstream G280 with its sleek wing and high-thrust engines had earned best-in-class for fuel efficiency. It also possessed state-of-the-art flight and navigation systems and had autothrottle and autobraking components that were reportedly setting new standards for aircraft control and handling. To put it quite simply, it was a beautiful and magnificent aircraft. One which Dev was counting on to get them to the hospital as quickly as possible.

  In the chair beside him Bailey sat with her seatbelt fastened, her gaze forward, hands clenching the arms of the seat. That was the only sign that gave away how she was feeling.

  She’d walked out onto the front porch of the cabin watching as Trent boarded the medevac behind the stretcher carrying Tia.

  “She can’t die,” Bailey had said once more.

  Dev stood behind her, staring at the medevac as it took off. In his mind he’d recited the same words. He hadn’t dared to speak them.

  “The jet will be here in a few minutes. We’ll follow them then,” he’d told her instead.

  She hadn’t responded.

  The second medevac had taken off at that moment and it dawned on Dev that Jaydon was on that one. The sound of an engine starting grabbed his attention at that point and Dev looked across the way to where a black Suburban was backing up slowly. Dane Donovan was driving that vehicle. Dev made a mental note of the tag number even though he was positive that the truck either belonged to Dane or was a rental. The man lived in New York, but had houses in several other cities where his company had physical locations. One of those places was San Francisco. So he was close enough that he could have already known his mother and sister—Dev was still trying to get a handle on that little tidbit of news—were at the cabin. He also could have known that they were there because he’d been in on the plan to hurt Bailey and Trent.

  “Why was Dane here?” she’d asked while they’d waited for the jet.

  Bailey’s question seemed like another echo from Dev’s mind, but instead of answering he’d gone back into the cabin.

  “There’s nothing left here,” York had told him when he entered the living room once again.

  “Go find the other team,” Dev told him. “And Apollo. Find out where he is and why he didn’t know someone had broken into Trent’s house?”

  “Apollo’s good at what he does,” York told him. “Something had to happen.”

  Dev was thinking the same thing.

  “Something did happen,” Bailey had said. “Tia was shot. Jaydon was shot. And we still have no idea where Roslyn is. A lot happened and a lot stayed exactly the same.”

  Those were the last words Bailey had spoken. A few minutes later the jet arrived. Dev and Bailey boarded while York re-traced the steps they’d taken to get to the cabin, heading back to the vehicles they’d parked on the road. He would look for the three members of the team that Trent had assigned to guard the perimeter. The three that hadn’t warned them that Jaydon was coming back to the house.

  Now, Bailey was silent and so was Dev. His mind was rolling through facts, playing out the scenario as it had unfolded and compiling another list of questions. They’d been set-up, just as Bailey had told them when they’d rescued her. Roslyn had known they would come for Bailey so they’d left her there like bait. They’d taken that bait. After the information had come in that they were at the cabin, they’d acted immediately. Dev wondered if they should have waited. Maybe they should have scouted the area first, somehow figured out how to get eyes in the cabin so they would know what they were dealing with before entering. That’s what they would have done on any other mission. The plan would have been rehearsed and all scenarios considered.

  Unfortunately, this hadn’t been like any other mission. This one involved Bailey and for Dev, that was personal.

  “We’ve been cleared to land,” the pilot announced on the overhead speaker. “We’ll be on the ground in ten minutes.”

  Bailey re-checked her seatbelt. Dev watched her hands as she did. They were steady. No rings on her fingers. She wore no jewelry, not at the tender lobes of her ears or around the sleek line of her neck. Her hair, the two-toned mass of it, was pulled back into a messy tail. A smudge of blood was on her light blue shirt.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked feeling his temples begin to throb.

  He should have checked her first. Jaydon had been firing and so had Dev and York. Bailey was standing behind Trent and Tia, so she could have easily been hit. Why hadn’t he thought of that when the paramedics were at the cabin?

  “No,” she replied and then looked down at her shirt. “It’s Tia’s. When I knelt down next to Trent I must have rubbed against her arm.”

  Dev’s teeth clenched, even as a wave of relief washed over him.

  “She was shot in her arm, close to her shoulder. Another bullet to her chest. That’s the one,” she said. “That’s the—”

  Dev leaned over and took her hand then. He held it tightly as he spoke, “Tia’s strong,” he told her. “Since the first day I met her she’s been fighting for one thing only and that’s to be with Trent and her son. She won’t leave them. Don’t worry. She won’t.”

  When her eyes shifted to him, their gazes locked.

  Dev did not hold hands. He did not console people. And he didn’t wish for anything. Ever.

  Yet, here he was, doing those very things.

  He hated seeing Bailey like this. Without the edge to her voice and the energy to face the next situation head on buzzing beneath her skin. Those were things that had always drawn him to her. Probably because he possessed those same traits himself. It had been like kindred spirits meeting the second he saw her on Sansonique Island over a year ago.

  Dev held Bailey’s hand as they walked down a long hallway in the hospital. A nurse was leading them to a private waiting room.

  “When they radioed in to say who they were bringing in and her condition, we knew we’d better have a space for you all to gather,” the nurse was saying.

  She was walking quickly, her short cap of gray hair the only part of her body not moving. Around them other things were going on. Someone was being paged. Another nurse wearing a black top with white snowflakes, walked past them pushing a cart
full of supplies. As they passed a nurse’s station, two women sat, both staring at computer screens. Another woman dressed in a white coat instead of the scrubs the nurses wore, stood reading a chart. Bailey’s fingers tightened in Dev’s hand.

  Their nurse pushed open a door and Dev let Bailey go first. The hugs came quickly, severing the connection of their hands as Beverly Donovan pulled her niece into her arms. When they’d been at Trent’s house earlier today, Linc had talked about the family obtaining a second jet, and that after their newest list of specifications were met, that jet would be ready to take flight. Apparently, the oldest of Henry Donovan’s children had made that happen sooner, rather than later, as now Henry, Beverly, Linc and Jade were sitting in the waiting room, having arrived from Las Vegas before Dev and Bailey.

  She went from Beverly to Henry, then to Linc and finally to Jade. All of them held her tight, tears streaming down the women’s faces. They were happy to see her alive and well. Dev had been too. What he wasn’t happy about was seeing Trent sitting in a corner, legs spread, elbows propped on his thighs, and his head down. He went to him. Trent looked up before Dev could even consider taking a seat.

  “She’s in surgery,” he said, his voice low and gruff.

  “She’ll come out of this,” Dev told him. “You believe that.”

  Trent only nodded.

  “Jaydon?” he asked.

  Dev shook his head. “Don’t worry about any of that. Your head needs to be here with Tia. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “How did Dane know?” Trent asked about two seconds before the door to the waiting room was pushed open.

  “Mr. Donovan, who shot your wife?”

  “Is it true this shooting is connected to the fire at the Donovan estate in Las Vegas?”

  “Henry Donovan, do you have a secret son? Is he the one who shot Tia Donovan?”

  Reporters came into the waiting room with microphones extended, cameras with lights glaring, voices sounding over each other and a rapid fire of questions being aimed at all of them.