by Jillian Neal
“He gave Fred and Oliver the evening off, so it was my understanding that Logan loaned the Accord to the two of them. They wanted to go into D.C. and see a show, I believe. Anyway, Logan did that right after he infuriated his father-in-law, yet again, by informing him that he was taking Adeline out for the evening and that Lucas wasn’t invited.”
The story alone seemed to exhaust her. Stephen grimaced.
“Good for Logan,” Jack quipped just before helping himself to a banana from the fruit bowl on the large center island.
“Hungry, Jack?” Stephen laughed.
“It’s almost ready. Don’t ruin your dinner,” Lillian reprimanded Jack just like she reprimanded the boys and Emily.
“Yes ma’am,” Jack answered with his mouth full of banana.
She turned back to Stephen, regaining all of his attention instantly. “Lucas said he needed a bit of a break, and he retired to his room around five. I’ll see if he wants to join us for dinner in a few minutes.”
“I do need to go over what he needs to do tomorrow at the trial with him one more time.” Jack swallowed down his bite of banana before he spoke this time.
“He’ll be down, I’m sure. I think everyone involved is just a little stressed,” Stephen offered. Lillian nodded her adamant agreement.
The Past, The Present, The Future
Lucas made his appearance as Stephen was fixing drinks. He’d insisted that his wife take her seat and that he would bring everything to the table.
“Keaton, Henry, come wash your hands and eat,” he called into the living room. The twins sprinted into the kitchen, almost toppling Lucas over in their haste.
“Sorry,” Stephen tried to remind himself that his home was probably extremely overwhelming to a man who’d been raised by servants in a castle.
“Oh, I’ve gotten rather used to it,” Lucas assured him with an air of disdain.
Anger crackled his fraying nerves. Stephen narrowed his eyes. “Good,” he quipped as he carried the water and tea pitchers to the table.
After hoisting the boys into their booster seats, buckling them in, and scooting their chairs forward, Jack served the twins piping hot bowls of chicken and dumplings. He seemed just as determined as Stephen that Lillian not go to any more trouble.
“Eat the carrots, not just the dumplings,” Lillian reminded the boys who looked disappointed, but nodded their agreement.
“Carrots make you strong wike Gar-wet,” Henry informed Jack.
With a beaming grin at Henry, Jack assured him that carrots would make him strong like all of his big brothers.
“I’m not sure I can withstand another Garrett.” Lillian gave Stephen another one of his grins as they shared the moment of intimacy over the raising of their wildest child together.
Reaching and taking Lillian’s hand under the table, he squeezed it in an unspoken gesture to assure her that no matter what he would be with her. He might not be able to keep anything bad from ever happening to the very reason for his existence, but if she had to walk through hell, as they had many times since that Monday afternoon when he’d driven her home, then he would walk right beside her and hold her tight until they made it to the other side.
“All right, Mr. Nguyen, I don’t want to keep Stephen and Lillian up late tonight, so do you have any questions for me about tomorrow?” Jack urged politely. “By the way, Lillian, this is delicious.” He gestured to his bowl.
Lucas’s brow knitted deeply. “Don’t Logan and Adeline need to be here to go over the trial?”
Jack and Stephen shared a quick, annoyed glance. “Truthfully, Mr. Nguyen, I asked Logan to plan something to help get Adeline’s mind off the trial for the evening. She tends to get very nervous and forget everything she’s supposed to say. I’m certain you’ve noticed when she’s with Logan her entire world seems right. Of the great loves of our time, I’d have to say they’re following in Stephen and Lillian’s footsteps.” Jack raised his glass of sweet tea in toast to the Haydenshires. Chuckling, they accepted the toast.
~Logan Haydenshire~
“It was adorable. I think I fell in love with you right then,” Adeline laughed hysterically.
Logan shook his head. She’d just retold the story of him dumping a full glass of sweet tea in Rainer’s lap the first time he’d asked her to eat over at his house.
“Remember the first time I asked you if you wanted to go walk around the lake?” he recalled with a sheepish grin.
Adeline beamed, and her laughter continued. Her quiet, infectious giggling righted every single thing in his world. “I remember you trying to walk the dock, and me not letting you.”
Logan feigned disappointment. “Yeah, me too. I cried myself to sleep that night.”
She cracked up again and shook her head at him. “You were so nervous.”
“Well, Rainer had been feeling my sister up for years. I thought I was behind.”
“I eventually let you.”
“Yeah, you did,” Logan waggled his eyebrows, giving her a cocky smirk.
They were tucked up in the back booth of Alfredo’s, the pizza joint just a few blocks from Venton Academy. They were in the very booth they’d sat in on their first date where Logan had spent two hours trying to get more than three words out of Adeline.
She’d eventually loosened up when he’d asked her what she wanted to do after graduation. He’d listened intently to her telling him how she wanted to take extra classes and graduate with honors because she wanted to be a Medio and get away from her mother. How she’d wanted to make her own money so she never had to depend on anyone ever again.
“That sounds kind of lonely,” Logan had stated concernedly.
She’d considered that for a long minute. “Being lonely is better than living with someone who wishes you’d never existed.”
Logan hadn’t really believed then that her mother wished she didn’t exist. But a few weeks later when he’d asked her to be his girlfriend, he began to understand.
He showed up at her apartment one morning to drive her to school and met Candy. She was coming off whatever she’d taken the night before and was screeching at Adeline because their cable had been turned off again.
Adeline had been sobbing and trying to explain that the money for the television had been spent paying the heating bill.
Candy had attempted to backhand Adeline, but Logan had stepped in, catching her hand and staring her down. The very same scenario had repeated itself numerous times in their lengthy dating relationship.
Adeline had been thoroughly embarrassed, but as she had no other way to get to school, she’d gotten in Logan’s car and he’d driven her out to Great Falls Park. It was the first time she’d ever skipped school. He recalled her initial terror. But they’d sat in the Accord, and then out in one of the hidden-away pavilions along the hiking trails, and they’d talked about her mother, her life, a few of the things that had happened to her, and how they’d discovered that she was Gifted.
Logan had refused to take her back to the apartment that afternoon. He’d taken her to the farm instead. She’d spent the weekend with them, sleeping in Emily’s room.
That day she’d offered Logan a whole lot more than walking the dock. He’d felt sick as he recalled her shame and her terror as she made the offer, thinking that staying on the farm and eating three meals a day for three days straight must’ve meant that he expected repayment of some kind.
He’d assured her that she owed him nothing, and that if they ever had sex that it would be because they were in love and committed to one another, not because he’d invited her to stay at his family’s home. And it certainly wouldn’t happen when they’d only been dating for one month.
Right then and there, Logan had been determined not to move their relationship to that level until he was absolutely certain that she felt loved, safe, and secure.
Truthfully, though, he’d been thoroughly disappointed that she wasn’t quite sure about letting him touch her breasts the night that she’
d had the courage to turn him down out on the dock. He was secretly relieved that she’d told him no. It was the first time he felt like maybe he was going to be able to convince her that her body was hers, and that they should decide together when to take their relationship beyond a few heated kisses and make-out sessions. It was the first time he realized that she believed he respected and loved her enough to wait.
“This was a really great idea.” Adeline’s sweet voice carried Logan back to the present. He beamed at her.
“Asking you out was a really great idea.”
She bit her lip and gazed up at him. “I liked you for a long time before you asked me out,” she confessed, though she knew that he already knew that.
“Hey, baby, I told you, I saw you that night at orientation, and I was done for. It just took me a little time to work up the courage to talk to you.”
“You asked me to eat lunch with you, and Rainer, and Connor that week.”
Logan nodded his agreement. He couldn’t stand the way Mitchell O’Ryan and all of his friends used to call Adeline horrible names and try and trip her in the dining hall because she didn’t have a name or a family crest.
“I was so glad that Emily was as nice as all of your brothers, because only having friends that were guys was kind of weird,” she confessed, making Logan laugh again.
When push came to shove, Rainer and all of his brothers had toed the line, just as he’d known they would. Eventually, most people stopped picking on Adeline because they didn’t want to tangle with the Haydenshire boys.
Logan and Adeline’s sub freshman year, only Will, Garrett, and Levi had graduated, meaning that Patrick, Cal, Connor, Logan, and Rainer kept constant watch over Adeline.
They reminisced and laughed as they finished off the pizza and several glasses of Dr. Pepper. Logan paid and waited on Adeline to use the restroom and then escorted his wife back out to the truck.
“Are we going home?” It didn’t seem she was ready for their evening to be over. They both wanted to ignore the world just a little longer.
“Not yet,” Logan climbed in the driver’s seat.
A delighted grin lit her entire face. Her onyx eyes sparkled in the moonlight. “Where are we going?”
“I have a few surprises up my sleeve.”
The grin remained fixed on her delicate features. “Are we going to go make out in the old physics labs again?” The laughter continued as they recalled all of the times they’d done just that.
“Thought about that, but then I came up with something a little better.”
He steered the truck onto the interstate, holding her hand in his. He was certain she would figure out where he was taking her as soon as he exited, but he reveled in her curious expression as she gazed at him with all of the love and adoration he felt for her.
“Logan,” she whispered after several minutes of amicable silence. His name was so quiet it was almost lost in the hum of the engine.
“What, baby?”
“I decided while I was at work today that if for some reason everything doesn’t quite work out the way I’d like for it to tomorrow, that everything will still be okay.” Her tone shattered his heart.
“Ad…” He started to reassure her yet again, to tell her that everything would work out.
“I know that everything will be okay no matter what happens. And I know that because I have you.” Her whispered tone turned haggard.
“Always,” Logan agreed, though he was determined she would win the trial; and not only would she continue her medical career, but her mother would no longer have any hold over Adeline.
The complexities of the trial tumbled over and over in his head as he drove. It was not a standard trial, and it was one that he knew very little about. His father had been one of the Governors of the Gifted Realm for as long as Logan could remember. He’d witnessed numerous trials, but this was going to take place in a Non-Gifted courtroom where his family had no favor.
The charges were against her mother. The drugs found in the apartment the night Adeline had been attacked brought about her mother’s arrest. Candy’s lies that the drugs were Adeline’s had sent the Non-Gifted justice system spinning.
It was all very convoluted, and truthfully, Logan didn’t fully understand how this had all happened. If Candy convinced the courts that the drugs were Adeline’s, she would walk away a free woman. Adeline would lose her job immediately, and would then have to stand trial again to plead her own innocence against the drug charges.
Other than the terror that would bring Adeline, Logan wasn’t worried about a second trial. His father could keep her out of jail by overturning the Non-Gifted ruling.
Candy was Non-Gifted and therefore he had no say in what happened to her. But if Candy was found not guilty, Adeline would lose her job, the one thing that meant almost as much to her as he did.
She’d worked so hard. She’d been through so much at the hands of her mother. She’d studied endlessly and had proven herself over and over again at Georgetown. Being a Gifted Obstetrics Medio was all she’d ever wanted to be.
Logan’s mind became more resolute. If Candy walked, Logan would quit his job at Iodex. He would leave his family, his best friend, his entire life. He would walk away from the Task Force that held everything he’d strived for since he’d fully come into his own Gifted protective powers. He would leave it all behind and move her to Australia. Her father could guarantee her a job in any hospital she wanted to work. He would give up his entire life for her, and move her to a place that he couldn’t stand. He’d even live in that stupid castle if that meant that she could do what she loved.
Cal’s joking smirk and kind brown eyes flashed in his mind and cinched his vocal cords. His big brother. God, there were so many conversations Logan wished they’d had. There were so many questions he wished he’d asked Cal before….
Logan wanted to end Wretchkinsides, end the Interfeci, and he wanted to watch Vladimir Pravus burn for brutally murdering his brother, but if he had to, he would walk away before any of that, and he would do it all for her.
Adeline’s grin spread ear to ear as Logan took the Route 193 exit. He’d been driving in a trance so her gasp jerked him abruptly from his abstraction.
“Logan,” she swooned.
He chuckled and squeezed her hand. “I might’ve slipped a bunch of quilts and blankets in the back of the truck along with a few sweatshirts.”
He made the left at the sign for Great Falls Park and laughed. “I mean, if you think it’s okay we go parking for a little while, Mrs. Haydenshire?”
“Well, maybe just this once, but I don’t know about letting you walk the dock,” she declared, just before cracking herself up.
Thinking she was the cutest thing he’d ever seen, Logan mocked disdain. “Uh, I don’t think so, baby. Those are mine, and I get to play with them whenever I want.”
“Is that so?” she challenged with a great deal of sass.
“Yes, Mrs. Haydenshire, it is, and there are a few other things that are mine as well, but I’ll show you those later.”
“You just wait until I tell your dad what you tried to get me to do in a parked car,” Adeline feigned objection, but was unable to hide her delighted grin.
Logan guffawed, “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure my parents might’ve made Will in a parked car, so I’m not sure he can really say much.”
With another few turns, Logan pulled the truck into an alcove well off of the main trail. Shifting the truck into park, he turned to gaze at his wife.
“So baby, you wanna see the truck bed?” He waggled his eyebrows, making Adeline giggle again.
“What if I get cold?” she fussed adorably.
“I’ll keep you warm; don’t worry.”
Adeline leapt out of the truck cab. Logan followed and helped her climb up in the truck bed. He spread out the numerous quilts he’d packed until there was a soft place for them to lay and gaze at the stars.
After pulling his warmest Ioses sweatshi
rt over her head, he laid down and cradled her on his chest. She arranged another few quilts over them.
“You warm enough, baby?”
“I’m perfect.” She tucked her head under his chin, making everything in their world fall into perfect accord as he turned on his side and brushed his hand over her face.
“I love you so much.” He felt her rhythms and her energy begin to fly.
“I love you, too.”
“Hey, Mrs. Haydenshire,” he whispered in the darkness, “I’m gonna kiss you now.”
“I was hoping you would.”
With that, Logan leaned and slowly brought his lips to hers. He mated their mouths, tracing her with his tongue until he was sweeping it slowly through her mouth, feeling her energy fill his soul and restore the restless, plaguing murmurs of his mind.
Promises and Regrets
~Governor Stephen Haydenshire~
After thanking one of his dearest friends for doing the dishes while he’d put the twins to bed so that Lillian could sit and have a cup of tea in peace, Stephen waved good-bye to Jack. With a deep sigh, he poured himself a little brandy and offered some to Lucas.
“Yes, thank you, Governor.” Lucas seemed extremely nervous. He was already on Lillian’s nerves. An idea formed quickly in Stephen’s mind.
“You know, I got in the habit of taking long walks around the lake when the boys were growing up because one of them typically had some girl out on the dock trying to get to second base, but I’ve discovered that it was actually extremely restorative. Would you care to join me?” He gestured Lucas towards the back door.
Lillian gave him another one of those grins that said if he’d keep Lucas out of the house and let her have several minutes of quiet respite, she’d make certain he was rewarded for his efforts. Stephen’s heart sped back from its weary exhaustion. His trousers still tugged whenever she gave him the look that said the most astonishing pleasures of the entire earth would be his that evening. My God, he would never deserve her or what she so willingly gave him.
