“We’re going to go grab some dinner and a shower,” Ford said, sounding worn out as hell. “You should come with us. Maybe catch a few hours of sleep while you’re out.”
I shot my brother an ‘are you kidding me’ look, and he rolled his eyes.
“Maybe you should catch some sleep while you’re there,” I suggested. “And also, change your clothes. You have a little blood splatter on your shirt collar.”
Ford grimaced. “SWAT call.”
I didn’t bother asking for more details. I was dealing with all that I could for now.
Anything that had put my brother in such a bad mood and had caused him to have blood that close to his face, didn’t seem like something I could deal with.
“Love you,” he said as he left the room.
“I love you, too, baby brother!” I called out to his quickly retreating back.
My mom and dad had already been by to visit, but they were leaving today. They’d taken off another unpaid week from work, but there was nothing they could do here. A point in which I’d convinced them of finally this morning.
I closed my eyes and leaned my face against Pace’s forearm.
Today had been a jam-packed day.
Dr. Page had come by and checked on the two of us. Ford had come by to tell me that Pace’s mother was denied bail and would be spending the foreseeable future in lockup until her trial. A trial that was set to take place in a month.
Sergeant Jackson had been moved from the hospital to lockup as well, bail denied for him, too. His hearing was unsurprisingly set for the same time as Pace’s mother’s.
In a month, we’d have one hell of a day, that was for sure.
“Pascha Eidolon Vineyard,” I teased. “Wake up.”
“Don’t ever call me that again.”
My heart pounded in my throat, and I tried not to let the exultation show on my face when I lifted it to find him staring at me with so much love in his eyes that I couldn’t breathe.
“Why not?” I asked. “That is your name.”
“That’s my name,” he agreed. “But I hate it. She used to call me that.”
I’d never call him that again.
I rose up from my perch on my chair and leaned over the bed until I could press my lips against Pace’s chapped lips.
“I’m so happy to see you awake,” I breathed.
When a tear fell and plopped right onto his face, he lifted his good arm and pulled me into his chest.
“I was lost there for a second, but I’m found now.”
That was when I broke down and started to cry.
It was the first time that I’d cried a single drop since it’d all gone down. Since my life had changed so irrevocably.
He pulled me into him until I was lying by his side, face resting on the good side of his chest.
His hand curled around mine and froze when he felt the healing scabs there.
“What happened here?” he asked, sounding confused.
I went up on an elbow to look in his eyes.
“You don’t remember?” I asked, sounding worried.
He frowned, his eyes squeezing shut for a few long seconds, then they popped open again and the familiar panic that I’d seen that same day came upon him all over again.
“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re okay.”
I smiled at him and placed another kiss on his lips. “I’m okay. The tile from the floor exploding caught my hands, and that was the only damage done.”
“She’s being very quiet about the other injuries, too,” I heard said from the doorway.
I looked up to find my father standing there, arms crossed over his chest.
“She was hit twice. Your bulletproof vest covering her saved her from taking one to the head, and one to the chest. Look,” Dad said as he walked farther into the room.
That was when he walked right to the bulletproof vest’s plate that he’d extracted from the ruined plate holder and turned it to show Pace.
Pace stiffened.
“At first, we weren’t sure what the hell was going on,” he said. “There was blood all over her, but no actual wounds. That was when we realized that she’d picked up your blood-filled uniform shirt, vest, and utility belt and brought them to her. They were soaked with your blood.”
They had been.
I had no idea why I’d done that.
“I think that was why Jackson stopped shooting at her, to be honest,” Dad said. “He saw the blood and figured he’d gotten her. The only real place that she’d been hit was by tile fragments that sprayed up off the floor and peppered her hands. That’s the only reason she was hurt at all.”
When I looked from my dad to Pace, it was to see them both facing off.
Pace’s face looked terrible. Sick to his stomach.
My father’s didn’t look much better.
“Honey, why don’t you go get the nurse and tell him that Pace is awake,” Dad suggested.
I opened my mouth about to refuse when I happened to see the grateful look in Pace’s eyes.
Placing a kiss on his cheek, I got out of bed and hurried to the nurses’ station.
I found them all standing there looking over a Scentsy catalog.
“Umm,” I interrupted them. “My fiancé is awake.”
***
Pace
“She’s okay?” I rasped.
“Yes,” Trance answered. “We’ve watched out for her. She’s lost a bit of weight over this last week, but ultimately, she’s doing just fine.”
I swallowed hard.
“I almost lost her,” I breathed.
“You protected her with your life,” he said. “I saw you crawling across a hospital floor Army-style. I can’t think of anyone in this world that I would give my baby girl to that would be a better choice than you.”
I’d already talked to him about asking for Oakley’s hand in marriage, which he’d given me permission, but it was still nice to know he felt that way after everything that had happened.
“I almost fucked up,” I breathed.
“Almost doesn’t count,” Trance said. “Now, ask her to marry you already. She’s been lying to these nurses so she can stay with you, and I’m pretty sure that it’s wearing on her.”
Grinning wickedly, I gave him a thumb up.
“Will do.”
And that was exactly what I did five minutes later when she returned.
Epilogue
I’m not a bitch. I’m just hangry…and maybe a little bit of a bitch.
-T-shirt
Oakley
Three months later
“I can’t believe y’all are making me do this,” my dad muttered as he stared straight ahead.
I licked my lips to keep from laughing and turned my eyes on my mother.
She rolled her eyes and said, “Trance, you’re walking your daughter down the aisle. You were the one to suggest to them to have a destination wedding.”
He grumbled under his breath. “That’s true, but I didn’t think they’d want me to come.”
“You’re my father.” I laughed then at the absurdity of his statement. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“I thought you’d go to Vegas and elope. It’s much faster and cheaper,” he admitted.
“You’re getting your flight for free,” Viddy said. “You’re also getting your hotel room for free, and the wedding is almost paid for. The only thing we did for it at all was hire a photographer.”
That was true.
Pace’s aunt and uncle had taken care of everything else.
And when we’d tried to buy my wedding dress the day that all the fittings were done, I’d gone into the shop and come out moments later with the dress only to tell my mother that it was already paid for. My guess, Pace’s aunt.
Pace had wanted to include his aunt in the ceremony and had asked if we would consider getting married in Alaska.
I’d h
ad absolutely no problem with that, which was why we were all on a plane to Alaska for mine and Pace’s wedding.
My father, being my father, was freaking out as usual.
And by the time we landed a couple of hours later, he was drunk off his ass along with my mother who’d had to deal with him.
“Are they always like this?” Pace asked, holding my dress as his carry-on.
I peeked to make sure that it was okay after being shoved into a small space for so long before I answered him.
“My mother drinks because of my dad,” I said. “And my dad drinks because he hates airplanes.”
Pace’s lips twitched. “That’s funny.”
“It’s not funny,” Mom piped in. “Twenty years ago, it was funny. Now it’s just a pain in my ass.”
Pace looked over at me over my mom’s head.
“I love you,” he told me. “Even if you want to start acting like your father.”
My lips twitched. “You never know. I just might.”
An hour later, when my mother and father were securely tucked into their hotel, I looked over at Pace and said, “You ready to go for that run?”
Pace looked at me gratefully.
“Yes. A hundred times yes.”
After Pace had been released from the hospital, I’d started to really push him on doing what he wanted to do—which was run. And now he was about to run his first half-marathon while he was here.
I was going to be running the 10K and would be waiting for him at the finish line when he was done—hopefully. Pace was fast. Way faster than he’d ever thought he would be. There was a distinct possibility that he’d be meeting me at the finish line.
I may not be the fastest ever, but I was getting there.
After the third time that Pace had lapped me on the small two-mile track that wound around the hotel, we called it quits.
That was, of course, when I met his aunt for the first time.
It didn’t take me long to notice her.
She looked exactly like Rana, Pace’s mother.
I shook Pace’s hand to get his attention, and he followed the direction of my gaze to see his aunt standing there looking ecstatic.
She didn’t complain once when Pace threw his sweaty arms around her and hugged the hell out of her, either.
When Pace pulled back, Diana, Pace’s aunt, looked at his chest with a scowl on her face.
“If that woman wasn’t facing twenty-five years to life in prison right now, I’d find her and shoot her in the same exact spot,” Diana hissed.
Pace laughed.
“You’ll have to get in line. Oakley said that if she ever gets out, Mom’s hers,” he said, letting her go.
Diana looked at me. “You’ll have to fight me for her.”
I grinned. “Chances are I’ll find out before you…and with you living out in the Alaskan Wilderness, I don’t see you getting there before me.”
Diana threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, Pace. You picked a good one. I love her.”
Pace threw his arm around me. “I love her, too.”
Two days later, we were married.
Two days after that Pace won his half-marathon and his face was splashed across almost every newspaper in Alaska.
I managed to finish before him, but only fast enough that I could turn around and watch him eating up the last one hundred meters between us.
***
Two years later
“Daddy, Daddy!”
I grinned at my girl’s reaction to seeing her father’s picture.
Diana Vidalia Vineyard was exactly one year old today, and we were celebrating by watching her daddy run the Boston Marathon.
“Did you hear back from the doctors?” my mother asked from my side.
She had Diana in her arms and she was holding the phone out so my daughter could look at it. My father had spotted Pace at mile number twenty-two and had sent a picture.
He’d looked really good. Not too worn out.
And definitely hot as hell in his tight ass shorts that showed off a wonderful package.
My running had suffered when I’d found out that I was pregnant with Diana. Not because I’d stopped, but because Pace had practically wrapped me in cotton wool and treated me with the utmost care.
I was nowhere near his caliber anymore, but I’d run my first half-marathon, and he’d been there at the finish line to catch me the moment I’d crossed.
That was the day that we’d found out that we were having a baby girl.
That was also the day that he’d told me I wasn’t running that far again until after I was no longer pregnant.
I’d decided to appease him, but mostly because that had been the worst run ever. When I’d picked it back up after Diana’s birth, it just wasn’t the same. I could run…but I just didn’t have the same passion for it any longer. My passion had switched to a certain little blue-eyed blonde that looked so much like her daddy that it hurt.
“Clean bill of health,” I said. “I also got a call about Jackson. They moved him to a new prison because he was getting beat up every other day there.”
My mother snickered. “That sucks. Your daddy’ll have to find another contact at the new prison.”
I didn’t comment on that.
Couldn’t.
Mostly because I could see my husband sprinting his heart out toward the finish line.
“He’s there!” I cried, pulling Diana from my mother’s arms and moving toward the finish line.
I was practically bouncing on my toes as we waited.
This was something that Diana and I did at every single race that he competed in, and Pace loved it.
He loved seeing us the second he finished.
He loved us.
We loved him.
God, I loved him.
The love that I felt was so all-encompassing that sometimes I feared I’d get lost in it.
Pace looked up then, his eyes finding mine, and a blinding smile lit his face.
“Daddy!” Diana screamed.
And, impossibly, that smile got even bigger.
If there was one person in this world that Pace loved more than me, it was Diana.
Not that I had a problem with that. Diana was so easy to love.
“Faster, Daddy!”
There were two words that Diana could say clear as day. Faster and Daddy.
Pace picked it up faster.
All because his baby girl told him to.
And when he crossed the finish line a whole ten minutes and four seconds faster than his personal record, I couldn’t stop myself from throwing myself into his arms.
“You did it!” I cried out.
Pace’s arms closed around me tight.
“All because of you.”
I snorted and pressed my lips to his sweaty cheek. “Keep dreaming, Pace.”
He squeezed me tight. “I don’t need to dream, baby. I’m already living the perfect life.”
What’s Next?
Make Me
Book 4 of the KPD Motorcycle Patrol Series
9-10-19
Chapter 1
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.
-Things Royal says to her father under her breath
Royal
I reluctantly trudged up the steps of my father’s home and hated every freakin’ second of it.
Thankfully, the Judge was likely at work already. Not thankfully, I was sure that him being on time for work meant that he’d left Jimmy to be taken care of by his wife. A wife that didn’t get up until ten in the morning, meaning that Jimmy didn’t get help until well after ten-thirty, sometimes eleven.
And, since I had today off from work, I had the time to help.
My brother was also helped into bed around nine every night by my father, so I knew without a doubt that he was more than ready to be out of bed by seven every morning, if not earlier.
I punched
in the code for the alarm as soon as I walked inside, then headed straight up to Jimmy’s room, that used to be my old room.
Walking through the door without announcing myself, I headed straight up to Jimmy’s room and didn’t pass Go! Go being my step-mother’s room which was so far on the opposite side of the house that it might as well be not in the house at all.
That was mainly because if Jimmy did end up crying out for help because he’d been in one spot too long and things started to really hurt, he would have to yell for Torri. Torri who went out of her way not to be bothered—IE moving her room to the other side of the house and having sound-proofing installed just in case.
I knocked on the door and waited.
“Come in,” Jimmy’s deep, husky voice drawled from the other side.
I grinned and threw the door open, laughing when Jimmy’s annoyed gaze met mine.
“Hey, little brother,” I said. “What’s up with that scowl?”
“Torri is gone,” Jimmy sighed. “She had a massage appointment at nine this morning, and she knew you had the day off. She came in here long enough to tell me that and jet out. She didn’t even let me call you first.”
I gritted my teeth, pissed all over again.
“What a bitch,” I snapped. “I waited until eight to come over here just on the off chance that I woke her. She could’ve told me, and I’d have been here at six.”
Jimmy laughed and patted my hand.
I grinned at him and brought his hand up to my face.
“Let me call your mom,” I said jovially.
Jimmy fist pumped as he reached for the rope that was above him.
I watched as he slowly pulled himself to sitting, then grabbed onto the pole in front of him to stay upright.
The phone rang in my ear as I watched him move.
“Martha?” I said into the phone.
“Royal!” Martha, Jimmy’s mother, cried out in excitement. “Is she gone?”
I grinned. “She is. Would you like to come over?”
Martha didn’t even hesitate. “I’ll be there in five minutes, tops. I have to leave the bakery for a bit, therefore it might take me a little more time to arrange it, but I’ll be there.”
“Great,” I said. “See you in a few.”
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