by M. S. Parker
“I have to admit, I was worried when she said she had a friend she wanted me to meet. Zelda’s friends in high school…” He shuddered. “Total dogs.”
My jaw dropped. How in the world did Zelda not realize what an asshole her cousin was?
“But you,” he paused to run his gaze over me from head to toe, “you’re a smoking hot babe. A total fox.”
“Thanks.” I let sarcasm fill my voice, but he appeared clueless.
“I got my Thunderbird over there.” He jerked his chin toward the long line of vehicles in the driveway. “Back seat’s been nice and broken in. Wanna check it out?”
Before I could tell him exactly where he could stick his Thunderbird, something hard hit me from behind.
I flew forward, barely missing Theo and landing face-first in the snow. Everything was dark and wet as I struggled to get my hands underneath me. My lungs and throat burned as I swallowed snow, tried to breathe. A heavy weight was on my back, and I felt something hitting at my legs. I struggled, kicked, fought to turn over…
And then, suddenly, I was sitting up and coughing. My eyes stung as I tried to open them, but I did it anyway, blinking to clear the snow from my lashes. I kept coughing, gasping for air while only dimly aware of people talking around me. Then a face appeared in my vision. Golden blond hair that gleamed in the firelight and a pair of beautiful pale blue eyes. A strong jaw with some stubble.
Wow.
My stomach flipped.
Maybe my brain had been oxygen-deprived too long because I’d never had that kind of reaction to a guy before. Any guy. Ever.
“Are you okay?” He might’ve been asking the question for a while now, but it was only just now getting through.
“Dude, I said to get your damn hands off her!”
“I’m…confused.” I thought for a second and then added, “And I’m wet.”
“Sorry about that.” He gave me the most charming smile I’d ever seen. “But I figured it was better to be wet than on fire.”
I blinked. I must’ve still had snow in my ears.
“Dude!” Theo grabbed the blond man’s arm and yanked him up. “Hands off my date!”
The stranger was leaner than Theo, but taller, and something about the way he carried himself told me that if my ‘date’ threw the first punch, the new guy would be the one left standing.
“Let go of me so I can help your date up, since you’re apparently not going to do it.” The stranger’s tone was even, but there was no mistaking the warning.
Theo let go but glared at the man as he stretched out his hand to me. I took it, unable to stop staring at him. He gently pulled me to my feet, then wrapped his hand more securely around mine. The gesture could have come across as possessive, but to me, it merely felt protective. He’d let go if I pulled away. I knew it instinctively.
“Come on, Abigail,” Theo said, holding out his hand. “We can still go check out my Thunderbird.”
I stared at him, incredulous. “That’s really your response to what just happened?”
“You’re a real dick.” The stranger said it so matter-of-factly that it took my befuddled brain a moment to realize that Theo had just been insulted.
“It’s okay.” I squeezed the new guy’s hand and then let go, taking a step toward Theo. “I don’t want to check out your car. In fact, no woman wants to be told that you’ve ‘broken in’ your car right before you try to get her to sleep with you. Not that I would’ve slept with you anyway. I have standards.”
Color flooded Theo’s face. “What did you say to me?”
It wasn’t worth repeating so I just sighed heavily. “Just go away.”
“You little–”
“You might want to think before you finish that sentence,” the blond warned, taking a step closer to me.
The two men eyed each other for several long seconds as I held my breath. Then, sputtering incoherently, Theo stomped off, and I felt a sense of relief that he was gone. I turned back to the gorgeous guy with the golden hair.
“Mind telling me why you tackled me?”
“Sorry about that.” The heat in his eyes belied the ease of his stance. “But you were on fire.”
I blinked. “What?”
He reached out and unwound my scarf, not touching me as he did it, but the nearness was enough to make my skin tingle. I breathed slowly, taking in the sharp tang of smoke that seemed slightly different than it had a few minutes ago. It wasn’t that or the scent of pine and snow, however, that had me mesmerized. It was him – either his cologne or his natural scent – and it distracted me enough that it took me a moment to realize that he was holding up the end of my scarf.
Or what used to be the end of my scarf.
It was burnt. Not just a couple spots where sparks had landed, but several inches had been reduced to nothing more than cinders.
“A gust of wind blew the end of your scarf into the fire. It caught the bottom of your coat too.”
Startled, I looked down and saw that he was right. My coat had about half an inch of burned material along one side.
“I saw it from over there,” he continued. “I tried yelling, but someone started playing that damn music.”
I raised an eyebrow. “So your next idea was to tackle me?”
He scuffed his boot in the disturbed snow, the tips of his ears turning pink. “Yeah, I didn’t really think that through. I was thinking more ‘fire!’”
I laughed at his sheepish expression. A man as hot as him shouldn’t be able to look adorable too. It wasn’t fair. “I supposed I can look past it then.”
He smiled, and I felt it all the way down to my soaking wet toes. “I’m CT, by the way.”
“CT?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Chester. My real name is Chester Thomas Hunter, but I hate it, so I go by my first two initials. CT.”
I held out my hand. “Abigail Slade. I just go by Abigail.”
He shook my hand but didn’t let it go. His fingers slid between mine, and I couldn’t believe how natural it felt to hold on to him like this. How much I wished I wasn’t wearing gloves. I wasn’t one of those girls who came to parties to find a guy for the night. I didn’t have anything against them, but it just wasn’t me. I hadn’t even been considering Theo’s offer to check out his car. In fact, I’d been trying to figure out what I’d do if he did something like reach for my hand because the last thing I wanted was for him to touch me.
But I wanted CT to touch me. I wanted to hold his hand. I wanted more time with him. I couldn’t explain it, this connection to a man I’d never even seen before tonight, but I couldn’t deny it either.
A shiver ran through me from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. He tugged his hand free, frowning, but before I could wonder if I’d done something wrong, he had pulled off his coat.
“I’m such an idiot. You have to be freezing. We need to get you out of those wet clothes.”
If he hadn’t just then draped his coat around my shoulders and looked more concerned than horny, I might’ve been worried this whole thing had been a scam to get in my pants.
“Don’t worry. I’m going to take care of you.”
Somehow, I really believed he meant every word.
Eight
Cai
Evening, December 23rd, Present Day
Hudson Valley, New York
“So, he told her not to worry, that he’d take care of her.” Jax finished his story as the rest of us listened with rapt attention, captivated as much by the idea of something new as we were by his voice.
Syll leaned her head on his shoulder, and he tightened his arm around her, as if holding her had grounded him. When my big brother had told me that he’d fallen in love with the owner of the bar he was trying to buy, I hadn’t known what to think. Jax was almost as logical and level-headed as me. While my field was science and his was business, the way we approached our work was similar. I hadn’t been able to believe that he’d allowed emotions to cloud his judgm
ent, and I’d sworn that would never happen to me.
Then I’d met Addison Kilar.
My eyes were immediately drawn to where she sat on the arm of the couch, next to me. Her brilliant orange-red curls were down, spilling over her shoulders in that wild way I loved. She was slender, almost delicate-looking, but stronger than she appeared. In fact, I frowned as I noticed that she’d lost weight. The skin beneath her pale green eyes was darker than the rest of her fair complexion even though I could tell she’d tried to cover it up. I’d known she wasn’t sleeping well, but how had I missed the physical toll the last week had taken on her?
I reached over and took her hand, raising it to my lips. The surprise that lit up her face sent a flash of guilt through me. Like my brothers, my personality and my sexual preferences made me a Dominant, and I wasn’t only one in the bedroom. We didn’t go to the extremes that some couples chose, even in their day-to-day lives, but that awareness was always there between us.
She shouldn’t have been surprised at the affectionate gesture.
Dammit!
Addison hadn’t grown up in an abusive or neglectful home, but because of her high intelligence and independence, she’d often been left to her own devices. It was my responsibility to make sure she always knew how important she was to me, and I’d clearly failed in that department recently.
“I never knew our parents met while on blind dates with other people,” Slade said, the light in his eyes dim.
I hated that Slade and Blake had so few memories of our parents and Aimee. Jax and I hadn’t even been in double digits when they’d died, but Slade and Blake had only been five and four years old. Their memories were hazy at best and probably based as much on stories people told as they were on actual memory. Not that they’d even have much in the way of stories. As Jax’s tale proved, we didn’t talk about our parents often.
“There’s a lot we don’t know about them,” Blake said, an edge of bitterness to his words. He’d been doing better, but I knew it’d take more than a few months to undo the damage that had been done to him. “No one really wanted to talk about them.”
He said we, but none of us deluded ourselves into thinking that any of us had gotten the short end of the stick more than Blake. Our silence, and that of our grandparents, had done him a real disservice. More than that. It had left scars deeper than the rest of us had ever imagined.
“We’re going to change that,” Jax said. “It doesn’t matter if it hurts to talk about them. We need to do it.”
I could see my surprise reflected on my brothers’ faces. To hear Jax talking like that wasn’t something I ever expected. He wasn’t the sentimental type. Or, at least, he hadn’t been before he met Syll. The two of them were so good for each other, and they were going to make great parents to beautiful children.
“Excuse me,” I said quietly as I pushed to my feet.
I didn’t make eye contact as I made my way into the kitchen. It was small, but private, and that’s what mattered to me. I needed a moment. If anyone noticed me leaving, they probably thought the talk of my parents was dredging up things I’d rather not remember, but that wasn’t it at all. I actually liked the idea of getting to know more about the family I barely remembered.
It was thoughts of the family I didn’t yet have that sent me from the room. Looking at my brothers with their women and realizing that they’d all have the chance to see themselves reflected in a child’s face, it hurt more than I’d thought it would. I didn’t begrudge any of them the children they’d have, whether soon like Blake and Brea, or later like the others, but that didn’t make it any easier to see what I’d never have.
I served myself some more eggnog and lingered by the punch bowl, not quite ready to go back yet. I hadn’t had a lot of time to get used to the news that Addison’s doctor had given us earlier this week, and I certainly hadn’t had the time to process it. Everything had been focused on Addison and how she was handling the news. We were both doctors, though our fields weren’t genetics or obstetrics, but understanding things on a logical, factual level was different than accepting what all of this meant for our actual lives.
How it changed everything.
I was supposed to care for her, protect her. It was literally my job to come up with answers and solutions to complex problems that could wipe out life on earth if things went badly enough. My IQ put me among some of the smartest people alive, and I’d never hurt for money or influence. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for Addison, no line I wouldn’t cross to give her all of the things that she deserved in this life.
The problem was, this wasn’t something I could fix. Not with money or power or even with medicine. Sure, there were procedures that could possibly work around the medical issues, but they were dangerous, not to mention the low possibility of success. And that would be with only one attempt. Multiple births could happen, but if we wanted more than one child, it would raise the risk to Addison’s life.
But if she wanted it, I would stand by her for every second, even if it killed me to do it.
I turned around and looked out the window, though I could see little outside. The moon was up, and what little I could see was bright. But as I watched, dark clouds passed over it often enough that I caught only glimpses of the trees around us. I’d always been more of a city person than an outdoor one like Blake, but I couldn’t deny the beauty of this place.
I gratefully let thoughts of the mystery behind the cabin crowd out everything else. Those thoughts led to a number of questions tumbling through my mind.
Why had my grandmother purchased this cabin? Even more, why had she hidden it from us? Maybe she hadn’t actually hidden it though. Maybe she’d just died before she’d had the chance to tell us about it. Or maybe she’d intended to present it to us at a specific time, like a gift.
I remembered the grief of each of my losses, but now the thoughts of them brought a new kind of sadness. Grandfather had been available for advice about things like school or business, but for something like this, he wouldn’t have been any help. Well, if the issue had been money, he would’ve willingly helped with that, but when it came to the types of questions I wanted to ask, the sort of support I needed, he wouldn’t have done me much good. I’d never missed Grandma Olive or my mother more than I had over the last few days, not even when I’d been pursuing Addison.
I closed my eyes, wondering if coming here had been a good idea after all.
A familiar touch made me open my eyes, and I didn’t need to see her reflection to know that it was Addison standing behind me. The longer we were together, the more I felt as if I revolved around her, a planet to her sun. She was mine, the only person who’d ever managed to quiet the chaos in my head. The person who had become the most important person in the world almost from the first moment we’d literally run into each other. No matter what the future brought us, her place in my life wouldn’t change. I needed her more than air, and I’d do whatever it took to keep her safe and happy.
Nine
Addison
Evening, December 23rd, Present Day
Hudson Valley, New York
Since meeting Cai, I’d asked him a few times about his parents and grandparents, but I’d never gotten much out of him. Knowing how young he’d been when they’d died, I’d assumed that he didn’t remember much beyond his grandfather, but now I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t consider myself to be an overly demonstrative person, but in the short time I’d known the Hunter brothers, I’d learned that I was practically sappy by comparison.
When he’d left the living room, however, I suspected that it had more to do with our doctor’s appointment this past Monday than it did with Jax’s story. Having kids hadn’t really been an ‘if’ issue with us, but more of a ‘when,’ and being the scientists we were, we’d both decided to have full work-ups so we would know of any issues before we officially started trying. Both of our families were dysfunctional enough that we knew there’d most likely be gaps in our medical histori
es, and we wanted to be as prepared as possible.
Except nothing had prepared me for the discovery that the chances of me getting pregnant were slim to none.
I wasn’t a health nut, but I’d always taken care of myself. I barely even drank alcohol. But the reason I couldn’t have children had nothing to do with the environment or my choices. Nothing I could’ve done differently, and no lifestyle change would alter the results. Understanding all of the medical terms didn’t help. The fact of the matter was, biology had failed me.
When Cai didn’t return after a few minutes, I excused myself and followed him into the kitchen. While things had only gotten to this point recently, the tension between the two of us had been there over the last few weeks. If I had to pinpoint a more accurate point of origin, Thanksgiving would have been the most logical choice. That had been the weekend we’d made the official decision to go for our medical work-ups.
It had also been the weekend my younger brother and his girlfriend had announced that they were pregnant.
The only thing that hurt worse than learning that I’d most likely never become pregnant was finding out that Gene had accidentally gotten Sandra pregnant despite the fact that they’d been using birth control. And they didn’t want a baby.
Cai was standing at the counter and didn’t acknowledge my presence as I entered the room behind him. I took a moment to appreciate the beautiful man who’d claimed me as his own. Golden blond hair, bright blue eyes, and the body of a god. At almost six and a half feet tall, with the build of an athlete, my thirty-two-year-old boyfriend could hold his own against athletes ten years younger.
