by Lexi Blake
How would she ever explain to her son that his dad wouldn’t even meet him?
“It’s fine. The contract was for the club only. He’s not my Dom in the outside world.” She needed to see her baby. God, had there actually been a moment when she’d been angry she was pregnant? In those first few days, she’d denied it. She’d been so mad that Theo was gone and she was going to be some kind of sad-ass single mom.
TJ was the best thing that had ever happened to her. Tears clouded the world around her.
Was the world this cruel? Was she going to have to choose between the only man she’d ever loved and her son? There was no question. She would make the decision every mother had to make, but it seemed so unfair.
He’d wanted her. He’d needed her. She’d seen it in his eyes. It had been there in how he couldn’t keep his hands off her, how he’d tried all night long. They’d almost been there.
None of it would work if he couldn’t accept their son.
Not merely accept. Love. He had to love TJ or it couldn’t work. She wouldn’t allow her son to be brought up with a cold and distant father. Better to let Theo go and allow Li and Case and Ian and Sean to be his male role models.
“It’s not fine,” Li said with a long sigh. “But I don’t know what to do about it. I know you won’t understand this, but men view children differently than women, and he simply doesn’t understand yet. He needs time.”
“Is there actually a meeting occurring?” She wouldn’t put it past Ian to give his brother a way out if he thought he needed one. He would cover for Theo as much as he possibly could.
Li nodded, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Yes, she’s surfaced. Nick got word that she showed up in France. He’s got boots on the ground already, trying to trace her.”
She knew she should be more interested, but at the moment, she couldn’t work up the will. TJ was more important. After she’d ensured her baby was fine, she could think about the Hope situation. “Well, it’s good to know he didn’t make something up to save Theo.”
“Ian wants this to work as much as any of us do,” Li replied. “He blames himself for Theo’s death.”
“Because he sent him out in the field?”
Li’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Because he knew damn well you should have been in charge. I even argued with him about it. Alex and I had separate conversations with him about that mission and Ten wanted you as his second. Ian insisted that he wouldn’t allow the mission to go through without Theo in command.”
A long sigh went through her. Well, she’d known at the time. “Yeah, I suspected that. You know, Theo’s his brother. He prefers him over me. I’m not going to bitch about it.”
Avery turned in her seat. “It wasn’t like that. You have to know why Ian did it.”
“Because blood is thicker than water.” Again, something she’d always known. Couldn’t Li make this car move faster? Up ahead she could see the hint of blue lights from the police cars.
“No, because he was trying desperately for you to see Theo as an equal.” Li slowed down as they approached the house. “He thought it would never work between the two of you if you couldn’t respect Theo in the field. Because the two of you work together, he wanted Theo to gain the same experience. He wasn’t putting you down. He was trying to avoid a problem that might have come up later. Don’t ever think Ian doesn’t know how valuable you are. Or me. It might have been brought up that with the new recruits we’ve brought in, the more experienced operatives should pair up and train them. I explained to Ian that if I lost my partner, he would lose me.”
Li had gone to bat to keep her as his partner? She wouldn’t have expected that. “You shouldn’t risk your job for me.”
Avery reached for her hand. “You’re part of our family. I wouldn’t want anyone else watching his back out there. We love you, Erin. This is all going to be okay. You’ll see. Let’s go and check on TJ. You’ll feel better once you make sure he’s okay. I’ll make us all some tea.”
Avery had spent too much time in Europe. “Top mine with some bourbon and you’ve got a deal.”
The car stopped and she could see Kai standing in the yard, talking to a uniformed officer. Erin opened the door and sprinted toward the house. Only one thing mattered. Getting her baby in her arms.
The door was propped open and she ran inside.
Kori was pacing, holding a crying TJ in her arms, his tiny body in a pair of footie pajamas. Kori’s eyes flared as she turned and saw her. “Thank god. He had a scare, Erin. I think he needs Mama.”
She drew him into her arms, holding him close and rocking him. His chubby arms reached around her, hugging her as much as they could. “Oh, baby, Mama’s here. It’s okay, my baby boy. It’s all right.”
He was okay. She could breathe again. His cries died down and he settled into her arms as though he’d been waiting to be right where he was. He sniffled and then sighed against her, obviously exhausted. She could start to ask the questions she needed to. “What happened?”
“We were watching a movie about an hour ago,” Kai said as he walked in with the officer. “TJ was asleep and I got up to get a bottle of water. That’s when I saw the security system was off.”
“I turned it on the minute you left,” Kori promised. “I know I did.”
She nodded Kori’s way. If she said she did then she had. “It’s okay. What happened?”
“I tried to turn it back on, but it was dead,” Kai explained.
Avery and Liam walked in, Avery coming to stand beside Erin. She leaned over and kissed the top of TJ’s head.
“The rest of the house had power.” Kori put an arm around Kai and he hauled her close. It looked like they’d all had a rough night. “I didn’t notice a thing until Kai started giving me all those weird hand signals.”
Kai sighed. “I didn’t want to yell out to keep quiet when there might be someone in the house. It tends to let the person in the house know we’re on to him.”
Poor Kori, surrounded by ex-military. Erin was sure their ways were strange to the screenwriter. “What happened then?”
“I moved down the hallway and that’s when I saw him. He was coming out of TJ’s room. I about had a heart attack.” Kai squeezed Kori close.
“He was in TJ’s room? How did he get in?” The answer hit her quickly. She was thinking like a freaked out mom when TJ needed her to think like an operative. How would she get in without being seen? “He came in through the window of the back room.”
It was the only reasonable explanation. The front and back doors would lead through the living room and then Kori and Kai would have seen the intruder. The master bedroom was split, so that would again lead past the living room. On the other side of the house there was a bathroom and two bedrooms, one of which served as an office.
The police officer nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We found evidence that after taking down the security system, he took the window apart. It’s why we think he was a professional of some kind. It looks like he used a knife to cut through the glue and then pulled the window pane out.”
Oh, she was getting such an upgrade in the morning. But then she’d never really expected professional criminals to come after her. It was an oversight. She’d gotten soft.
“I’ll put the team on it,” Liam assured her.
McKay-Taggart had a whole team dedicated to security systems and home and business safety. She was sure Remy Guidry and his boys would be at her place bright and early tomorrow. “Whatever it costs.” They wouldn’t charge her for their expertise, but changing out her windows for high-security glass would cost a pretty penny. “What was he doing in my son’s room and do we have the fucker in custody? I would love to have a talk with him.”
Kai’s face fell. “I caught him walking out. He had a gun and I wasn’t carrying. I didn’t think I needed to. I’m so sorry. He took a shot at me and when I tried to rush him, the gun went off again. The bullet hit the window in TJ’s room and that’s how he got cut.�
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“I called the cops and got TJ out of there while he and Kai were fighting,” Kori explained.
Kori was a civilian. How much had it cost her to run into a room where the bullets were flying? She’d run in and saved a baby who wasn’t her own. Erin let the tears roll as she hugged her friends. Theo hadn’t wanted to come, but she wasn’t alone. She was surrounded by people who loved her. Brave, amazing people.
“Thank you both. Thank you so much.” TJ wriggled in her arms but he didn’t cry again. He simply yawned and looked so much like his dad it hurt. “I’m so glad he didn’t tag you, Kai. You should have let him go.”
“I didn’t know TJ was okay. I thought he’d hurt him at the time. I was quite angry,” Kai admitted. “I’m apparently out of practice. He choked me out. I came to and he was gone.”
“He went back out the window, I think,” Kori said. “But I checked and all that was wrong with TJ was he had a cut on his forearm. I still had the EMTs examine him.”
“Ma’am, this seems to be a robbery gone wrong.” The police officer had already put away his notebook.
Li slid a look her way.
She knew what he wanted. Privacy. Maybe it was a robbery gone wrong, but maybe it was something else. Something they should handle in the family. She fully intended to figure out what that massive ass had done in her child’s room. But maybe she should thin the crowd before she brought out that card. It was obvious the police hadn’t figured out she had a camera in her son’s room, aimed at his crib. It wasn’t tied to the security system. It should have caught everything the man had done to TJ.
She held a hand out to the police officer. “Thank you so much for coming out, Officer. I’m grateful and I’ll help out in any way I can.”
He shook her hand and then passed her his card. “Dr. Ferguson gave us an excellent description of the subject. We’ll do what we can and get back to you in the morning. Is someone staying with you tonight, ma’am?”
Li took that one. “She’ll stay with us tonight. We’ll take her and my godson home and they’ll stay there until the house is perfectly secure again.”
Well, she’d known the minute she heard someone had broken in that she wouldn’t be staying home tonight. She should be staying with Theo, but at least she had somewhere to go. “We’ll be good. Thank you, Officer.”
He nodded and within ten minutes, they were alone again.
Kori slipped her hand into Kai’s. “Is there anything we can do before we head home? Do you need anything?”
Kai’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I’m going nowhere until I figure out what Erin’s doing. You know something you didn’t want the cops to know. What is it?”
Li already knew. “Where’s your laptop? Or do you want to watch it on your phone?”
She bounced TJ gently. “It’s in the office. Pray he didn’t take it, but I would have gotten a notification on my phone if the feed had been interrupted.” She looked at Kai and Kori. “I’ve got a small camera set up directly facing TJ’s crib. It feeds into my laptop, phone, and a small monitor I keep by my bed.”
Li jogged down the hallway toward the office.
“I’ll make that tea.” Avery started toward the kitchen. “It looks like we’re going to need it.”
Why the hell had that man been in her baby’s room? The fact that he’d been walking out of TJ’s room didn’t feel like a coincidence to her. Not on the same night that Hope McDonald managed to surface. That man wasn’t lost and looking for loot. He’d come to do something to her son.
And she was going to find him and kill him.
Liam strode back in, her laptop in his hands. “The man was definitely a pro. The job he did on that window was damn near flawless. I’ll figure out how he took out your security system, but right now I want to know what he was doing in that room and how long he was there.”
“I took his pajamas off,” Kori said, her face tight with tension. “I said I did it to change his diaper, but I wanted to make sure he hadn’t…you know.”
So maybe Kori wasn’t so naïve. She’d learned some good paranoia from the people around her. Erin had been planning on going over every inch of her son’s skin as soon as possible. “No needle marks?”
Kori nodded. “Absolutely nothing but where the glass cut him. I was very thorough, Erin. I even checked between his toes. The EMTs said they saw absolutely nothing that made them think TJ was having a pharmacological reaction to a drug.”
Erin shuddered at the thought, but it was her fear. She needed to see that tape. If that man had done something to her kid, she would make him pay in the most painful way possible.
They all followed Li into her small dining room. He turned the laptop around, pulling up the feed to TJ’s room. It was working perfectly, showing his empty crib, all the lights on and the glass that had shattered with the intruder’s gunshot.
God, her son could have been shot. It had been a mistake according to Kai, a shot that had gone off during the fight.
What the hell was going on?
“Do you remember what time this whole shit storm started?” Erin asked Kai.
“It was roughly an hour ago,” Kai replied.
Avery strode out of the kitchen with a glass in her hand. “Kentucky’s finest.”
Thank god. She needed it. She downed the shot. She’d avoided alcohol completely at the club, so a little indulgence wouldn’t hurt. Especially since her car was back at Sanctum and she was sleeping at Li and Avery’s. “Thank you. Hit play, Li. Let’s figure out what this asshole was doing.”
The video rolled and Erin watched as TJ slept, his rump in the air. It was the cutest thing. He’d been doing it ever since he’d been able to flip over. He would turn and put that baby butt in the air and sleep like that.
The night vision showed a shadow move across the head of the bed and then there he was. Erin held TJ close as she watched the intruder look down at her sleeping baby.
He leaned over and what he did next chilled Erin to her bones.
CHAPTER TEN
“That was pretty shitty,” Ian groused as the door slammed and Erin walked away, going off to check on her son. “You could sound like you give a shit about the kid. You know he’s your son, right. Do I need to get a test for you or something? You want your Maury Povich moment?”
He should have known all that support from his brother was just for show. He should have known it because he fucking didn’t deserve support. He deserved the scorn. He’d broken trust with her.
“I know I’m his biological dad, damn it.”
“You don’t act like it.”
“Because I don’t feel like it. Can you not understand that? Can you not get that I’m different? I don’t remember fucking anything. I can’t even remember that we’re brothers but I’m just expected to accept some kid I don’t know? I don’t feel anything for him, Ian.” He had to make someone understand what a shit he was. “That’s not true. You know what I feel? Irritated that he’s the reason she’s not here with me. Upset that I want her so badly and I’ll never come first with her. I don’t remember ever wanting a kid at all and now he’s the thing that’s coming between me and the one woman I need.”
Ian turned and sighed. “Is that what your problem is?”
“My problem?”
“Why you won’t meet your son.”
How did he make Ian understand? “If I meet him, she’s going to want me to…I don’t know…suddenly be some kind of happy dad or something. She’s going to want to see something I can’t give her. She’s going to figure out how fucked up I am.”
Ian put a hand on his shoulder. “Everyone knows how fucked up you are, brother. And you’re not saying anything I didn’t think before Charlie had our girls. You think you’re the first man to worry that a child is going to fuck up his marriage? Welcome to parenthood. We don’t have the same experience women do. They become mothers pretty much the first time that sucker kicks them from the inside. She gets nine months to get used to sharing her life w
ith this kid and we sit back and pray we survive.”
He shook his head because Ian was oversimplifying. “It’s not the same. I don’t even remember why I loved her.”
“Don’t you? I think you remember more than you’re willing to admit. Tell me you weren’t more comfortable with her tonight. Both when she was being submissive and when she was giving you hell.”
Somehow he’d responded to both of those Erins. Even earlier in the day when she’d been super sarcastic, it had felt like he’d known her. The submissive Red had felt familiar. The one he didn’t get was the woman who coddled him. It bugged him. It reminded him of things he would rather not think about.
The passionate Red and sarcastic coworker, yeah, he could handle her. He wanted to handle her hard-core. He would have if that crazy bitch hadn’t reared her head again.
“I’m attracted to her, yes, but I don’t remember our lives together and I can’t see the kid as anything but a problem.” He wished it weren’t true. He wished he could hear that he had a son and magically want nothing more than to be his father.
“Because you won’t sit down and hold him,” Ian insisted. “Because you’re being a coward. Look, I get it, but your time is almost up. She’s only going to wait for so long and at some point she’s going to pull some rough shit on you. I’m not sure if it’s going to be to walk away or to put your ass in a corner. Either way, you’re not going to like it and how you deal with it is going to decide the rest of your relationship with her. So think long and hard about this, Theo.”
Did Ian think he thought about anything else? He thought all day about how he could lose her. About whether he deserved her at all.
“Did I love her?” He’d asked Case, but now he wanted Ian’s take.
Ian stood in front of him, a serious look on his face. “You loved her so much I consider her my sister-in-law despite the fact you never married her. I honor her because I love my brother and she was the love of his life. Not because she was the mother of his child. I would help her. I would love my nephew, but it would be different. Erin is my sister because you loved her.”
