She placed a hand at Layla’s throat, choking her and raising the gun to shoot.
Andrew didn’t think, he just raised his own gun and shot—once, twice, three times until Shirelle fell sideways and off of Layla, as dead as she’d been trying to make her daughter.
Nathan rushed past him, calling Layla’s name and gathering her up in his arms. “Are you okay?” his brother asked, feeling all over his wife’s body for possible injuries. “What is it with you and going after crazy women with guns in their hands?”
“I’m fine, thanks to Andrew,” she answered. “But Roxxy…”
“Where is she?” Andrew looked around, but didn’t see any sign of her. Then before Layla could answer, his stomach dropped. “No,” he said when he saw the rectangle-shaped hole in the ground.
But his worse fear was confirmed when he came to stand over the grave and found Roxxy inside, blood splattered across the front of her white t-shirt.
ROXXY HAD BEEN ALL SET to die. The pain had finally started to fade away and a peaceful calm had stolen over her. But then she heard a voice calling her name. Her real name.
“Roxxy, Roxxy, no! Wake up, sweetheart.” She felt herself being pulled out of the shallow grave.
It was Andrew, she realized, and he sounded so heartbroken that she couldn’t help but do as he commanded.
“You’re still alive,” he said, when he came into view. “Stay that way. We’re going to get you to a hospital.”
She grabbed his hand and managed to croak, “Andrew, the camp should be year round, and not just for underprivileged kids, but ones with developmental disabilities, too.”
“Roxxy?” Layla came into view on the other side of Andrew, and she felt her twin grab her other hand.
Roxxy gave her a weak smile. “I’m glad I met you. I’m glad you’re my sister.”
Layla’s eyes were teary with worry. “Please, just hold on. I can hear sirens in the distance. Help will be here soon.”
It hurt to talk, but she had to tell Andrew one last thing. “My will still has Dexter as my main beneficiary. Just make sure he knows this is what I wanted and he’ll give you the money for the camp.”
“No, I’m not doing a damn thing for those kids without you,” Andrew Sinclair, a man known throughout Montana for his charitable giving, answered. “If you want to change their lives through camp, then you better hang on, because I swear, I will kill the program if you die.”
She shook her head. “Layla wouldn’t let you do that.”
“Oh yes, I would,” Layla said. “Forget the children. I want my sister.”
Roxxy would have laughed, except it hurt too much. “That’s mean.”
“I don’t care,” he said. “I need you to live.”
And to her great surprise, he pulled a diamond ring out of nowhere and slipped it onto her finger. “I want you to be in my life forever.”
“Even though I wasn’t honest with you?” she asked.
“Fuck honesty,” he said. “It’s overrated. I just want to be with you. I don’t care who you are.”
Roxxy gave him a wobbly smile as tears filled her eyes. It was exactly what he’d said in the dream, the one she’d woken up from this morning, knowing it couldn’t possibly come true.
And even though there was a bright light in the far distance of her mind, practically calling her name, she decided then and there to hold on tight to Andrew, to hold on tight to life.
After all she’d put Andrew through, she figured it was the least she could do.
EPILOGUE
New Year’s Day
UNLIKE when Roxxy had come to the Sinclair Chalet the first time, the ski lodge was at full capacity on her wedding day. Over three hundred guests had shown up for the formal ceremony and reception despite the remote location and the holiday date. And the scene inside was the very picture of glamorous elegance.
Elegant save for the twin sisters in the bathroom of the lodge’s largest honeymoon suite, that is.
“You know, this is kind of gross, right?” Roxxy said to her sister as she gingerly handled the clear plastic cup, which was filled to the halfway point with her own urine. She held it as far away from her body as possible, so as not to spill a drop of it on her couture wedding dress, even though holding her arm in such a position exacerbated the wound on her chest. It had been over six months since she’d gotten shot, and Layla had guided her through her physical therapy beautifully, but it still ached a little when she held out her arm for too long.
Roxxy didn’t mind. She considered it a small price to pay for gaining the kind of happiness she could have never imagined, even in her best dreams.
Layla was also wearing a fancy dress of her own, a floor-length, dark green matron of honor gown to be exact. But she seemed much more sure-handed with her own half-full cup of urine. “I’m in the medical profession. It takes a lot to gross me out. Plus, I’m too excited to feel anything but happy right now.”
Roxxy hesitated with the pregnancy test stick hovering above her cup in the air. “Maybe we should wait until tomorrow. That way you can drink champagne during the toast.”
“I’ve already set aside a bottle of sparkling cider for the table. If it turns out either of us is pregnant, we can both drink it in solidarity. If not, then no worries if I do.”
Roxxy smiled fondly at her sister. When they’d finally been able to get their hands on Roxxy’s birth certificate, they’d discovered that Layla had been born first. It had only been three minutes, but at times like this, Roxxy definitely felt like the younger sister.
“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Let’s do it.”
Five minutes later they checked the results and screamed in unison.
Perhaps not the wisest move, considering that Dexter came crashing through the bathroom door just a few seconds later.
“It’s okay, Dex,” Roxxy told him just as he drew his gun, eyes scanning the room for somebody to shoot. “We just found out we’re both pregnant. We screamed because we were happy, not because we were in danger.”
Dexter re-sheathed his gun in its side holster with a big grin on his face. If he was harboring even an ounce of resentment about the two nights he’d spent in jail because of their mother’s scheming, you couldn’t tell it at that moment. Not only had he made a special trip to give Roxxy away at her wedding, he’d also been handling security for the chalets, which was now swarming with press outside, despite the cold mountain temperatures. The story of how Roxxy RoxX had come to discover her long lost twin sister, fall in love with her brother-in-law, and get shot by her own mother, had made national headlines, and photogs were practically chomping at the bit to get pics of the wedding that would cap it all.
But at that moment, the circus outside became Dex’s last concern. He placed a large hand over Roxxy’s belly and asked, “Do you think you’ll have twins, too?”
“Not likely,” Layla answered, her voice apologetic. “Usually it skips a generation. But we might have twin grandbabies to look forward to.”
Imagining that made Roxxy and Layla scream anew.
But then they heard the sound of footsteps running into the suite.
“Layla!” Nathan called, at the same time Andrew called out, “Roxxy?”
They appeared in their groom and best man’s tuxes in the doorway with identical looks of fear and confusion on their identical faces.
This time Layla really did scream. “Get out, Andrew,” she commanded. “Don’t you know it’s bad luck to see the bride before the wedding?”
Neither Andrew nor Nathan budged.
“The last time we heard you scream, your mother had shot your sister, so you’ll understand why we came running,” Nathan said.
Layla giggled. “Don’t be silly. I’m fine. We were screaming because we’re pregnant!”
Their eyes went wide and they said, “Both of you?” at the same time.
“Both of us,” Layla and Roxxy answered back in stereo.
Nathan yelled, “Yes!�
�� and scooped Layla into his arms. But Andrew just stayed where he was, his gray eyes burning hot into Roxxy’s.
“Andrew?” she asked tentatively. When she had been admitted to the hospital, she’d also gone ahead and had her IUD taken out since it had been five years. But in her six months of recovery, she and Andrew hadn’t really discussed the possibility of children, or whether he even wanted them.
“Get out,” he said. “Everybody but Roxxy, get out right now.”
“It really is bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” Layla started.
“Nathan, unless you want me to physically remove your wife from this suite myself, I suggest you get her out of here,” Andrew answered.
With a few insistent words from Dexter and a few more good-natured grumbles from Layla they all cleared out, leaving Roxxy and her fiancé alone.
For a moment, Roxxy was afraid she’d made a terrible mistake. Maybe Andrew didn’t want kids and had thought she’d gone on the pill when she got the IUD taken out.
But then he crossed the room and kissed her, holding her so close, she could feel the joy vibrating throughout his body, and another part of him hard against her stomach.
“So I take it you’re happy about the news.”
Andrew shook his head at her, “Yesterday, I was just thinking I’d never been happier. But today, you’ve just made me the happiest man on earth. I’m so fucking glad you came into my life.”
Roxxy smiled. “Language, language, Mr. Sinclair. Is that how you talk to the mother of your future children? That’s not very gentlemanly of you.”
She started to undo his pants, and Andrew smiled, obviously liking where she was going with this.
“You see that’s just it, Roxxy. I thought I was a gentleman before I met you. Nathan was supposed to be the bad boy twin. But I guess in the end, I’m really the wild one.”
Roxxy grinned. “Good, because as it turns out, I’m the wild one, too.”
Then they showed each other just how wild they were up against the bathroom door.
The two people, who had thought themselves unlucky before meeting each other, didn’t worry at all about bad luck that day. The universe had conspired to bring them together through the most unlikely set of circumstances either of them could have ever imagined. And now they had one another, the baby growing inside of Roxxy, and a passion for each other that felt like it would never fade.
No, of this one thing they were certain. They were definitely the luckiest people on earth.
If you liked this story, check out the other books in the 50 Loving State series:
THE OWNER OF HIS HEART
HER RUSSIAN BILLIONAIRE
HER VIKING WOLF
Theodora Taylor reads, writes, and reviews in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys going to the movies, daydreaming, and attending dinner parties thrown by others with her wonderful husband. Feel free to contact her at [email protected], and if you love IR romance as much as she does, check out her review blog at irbookreviews.com
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