His Pregnant Christmas Bride

by Olivia Gates

  Before he could scoop her to his heart again, a big hand slapped him hard on the back. Dammit.

  “So tell me, Wildcard, how do you feel now you’re a married man?”

  He turned to Antonio, who was grinning at him wickedly, everything right with his world again now that he’d gotten his Liliana to forgive, and marry him, too. Something Ivan had had a hand in.

  While he’d been with Anastasia in Russia, Antonio had called him in a bleak state, asked him to come take what amounted to his last will and testament, to give to Liliana after he’d left, ostensibly to commit accidental suicide on some frontline. Ivan had rushed to his side, then to Liliana’s to make her stop him. Which she had.

  Ivan had rushed back to Anastasia the next day. She’d still been sleeping so long in those days he doubted she’d even noticed he’d been away.

  But when Antonio’s wedding had come just a week later, he’d begged off being his best man. Anastasia hadn’t been up to attending weddings at the time, and he couldn’t have left her. And he couldn’t bear seeing his best friend get the love of his life, when he’d felt he’d eventually lose his.

  Did that make him a terrible friend? Yeah. Probably.

  Antonio sure would never let him live it down.

  Pulling Anastasia into his side lovingly, he crooked an eyebrow at his best friend. “Why don’t you tell me first? You’re an old married man now, while I’m fresh off the altar.”

  Antonio looked down at his wife of only two months, going positively goo-goo eyed. “It’s simple really. I’m the happiest man in existence.”

  “Oh, no, you’re not!” Ivan growled, actually annoyed at his friend’s claim.

  “Oh, yes, I am.” Antonio all but stuck his tongue out at him.

  “It’s my wedding, and if I say you’re not, you’re not!”

  The two women looked at each other...then burst out laughing.

  As he and Antonio turned to their wives, demanding in mock severity what they found so funny, the rest of the gang, as Anastasia called them, converged on them.

  “So what are you ladies busting a stitch over?” That was Isabella, sauntering over with that serpent husband of hers slithering right behind her. Yeah, Ivan still wasn’t a fan of Richard Graves, a.k.a. Cobra. Neither was Richard a fan of his. They were both perfectly fine with this.

  “Yeah, we want in on the belly laughs,” said Scarlett, Raiden’s wife.

  Anastasia and Liliana turned to the ladies, laughing harder than ever.

  “There’s just something hilarious about watching these two Olympians bickering,” Anastasia spluttered.

  Liliana hooted in laughter. “And not any bickering. The twelve-year-old variety. Time stopped for them the day they met, it seems.”

  “No, it didn’t,” Ivan growled. “And we don’t bicker!”

  “You tell them, brother.” Antonio squared off beside him, as always joining with him against any others.

  “Oh, you bicker. You’re experts at it.” Eliana, Rafael’s wife, gave Antonio an affectionate nudge. “Just admit it.”

  “It goes beyond expertise. It’s a matter of survival for you boys. I don’t think you can live without plucking at each other’s shiny feathers.” That was Jenan, Numair’s wife, who’d become the leader of the gang of wives, just like Numair had been and remained their brotherhood’s leader. “So what was the subject of the squabble this time?”

  Anastasia feigned a shudder. “I’m afraid if we tell you, we’d have a full-scale war among all of you on our hands.”

  Liliana nodded in mock trepidation. “Yes, we shouldn’t say. To preserve the peace within the brotherhood.”

  It was the men who now spoke up, each demanding in his own inimitable way to know what the Bones/Wildcard duet had been saying behind their backs that they should be punished for.

  Anastasia and Liliana finally pretended to break down under duress and divulged the sensitive subject of the debate.

  As expected, each man protested, claiming the title of Happiest Man In Existence for himself, each ready to duel for it. Finally the bickering escalated to jabs and shoves, among the raucous laughter of their delighted and adoring wives.

  Suddenly, all the men froze. As did Ivan.

  It took the women moments to realize that the men weren’t playing a collective joke on them, when they all rushed to get out their phones.

  Ivan’s heart hammered so hard he jumbled his password to open the screen twice. He had the same difficulty in bringing up the latest message.

  After reading it, he bit his lip, for fleeting moments wondering if this was some kind of prank, wishing it was. And knowing it couldn’t be.

  Then he raised his gaze to his brothers, saw confirmation of that in their solemn eyes.

  This was no prank. It was really him.

  Cypher.

  Their Black Castle brotherhood’s long-lost brother.

  He was texting them on the line that not even their wives had access to. With a message made of only five words.

  Expect a visit...soon. Cypher.

  * * *

  Many hours later, the reception was over and the impromptu meeting he’d had with his brothers had revealed no insights into Cypher’s message, or any projections about future developments.

  Head filled with nebulous worries, Ivan now walked into their bedroom suite with Anastasia in his arms and clinging around his neck.

  As he lowered her down on their bed. But as he came down half over her, started kissing her, she stopped him. And he knew why.

  He’d previously explained who Cypher was, leaving out as much as he could. Which clearly hadn’t satisfied her. She had more questions. Ones he didn’t know if he ever could, or should, answer.

  “Have any of you texted Cypher back?” she asked.

  “If we could have we would. Cypher is the only one in our brotherhood who’s my equal in cyber powers. He hid from even me all these years. I have no idea where he’s been, what he’s been doing. Or even who he is anymore.”

  “You all looked so...shaken at his message.”

  “We hadn’t expected to hear from him after all these years.”

  “You said it didn’t end well between you. All of you?”

  “Yes.” He hated talking about this, would rather be extracting molars without anesthesia. Before Anastasia could hit him with another question he only had to evade, he stretched her arms above her head. “Now enough of this. Let me make love to my bride.”

  And for a very long time, he did just that.

  * * *

  After he’d drowned them both in the ecstasy of their unity twice, Anastasia stirred in his arms.

  He was savoring the drugged cast in her eyes and his own satisfaction when her question hit him out of left field. Damn. He’d managed to forget everything that existed outside of this room. Until now.

  “Does this visit Cypher said to expect worry you?”

  He rose above her, smiled reassuringly, and told her his very first, and what he intended to be his very last, barefaced lie.

  “Of course not.”

  * * * * *

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  * * *

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  Keep reading for an excer
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  Back in the Enemy’s Bed

  by Michelle Celmer

  One

  Grace Winchester didn’t get nervous.

  As the youngest of the Winchester daughters, she may have had a privileged and pampered childhood, but as an adult she was no spoiled heiress. She’d worked damned hard building her fashion-design business, and she was a well-known and respected activist for women’s rights. In a world where men dominated, she’d trained herself over the years to believe that there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do.

  Okay, so there was one thing.

  She couldn’t say no to her father.

  The closest thing to royalty in Chicago, Sutton Lazarus Winchester was not the sort of man who took no for an answer. One stern look from those piercing green eyes and people fell in line. But with all the recent scandal surrounding their family, and Sutton’s failing health, lately she could see the worn-away edges on his harsh manner and hoped that he would take pity on her. Just this once, because what he was asking of her was truly her worst nightmare.

  “Daddy, I don’t want to do this.”

  Her father, sitting like a king on his throne at his massive teak desk, in his equally massive office in the Winchester estate, didn’t even look up from the laptop screen. He’d been ill for months, sometimes barely strong enough to climb out of bed. But today was a good day. He even had some color in his hollow cheeks. “We all do things we don’t want to, Princess. It’s called life.”

  She felt herself being reduced to the whining and stubborn adolescent who would stomp her foot and huff when her parents told her no. Which honestly hadn’t been all that often. She was the baby of the family, and with a bat of her ultra-long super-dark lashes most everyone gave her what she wanted. But what he was asking her to do now? When he’d said the words, they shook her deep to her core.

  Roman Slater is coming to speak to me and I want you here.

  Roman Slater, owner of the top private investigation firm in the Midwest, Slater Investigation Services, and the one man on the face of the planet whom Gracie swore never to speak to again. Roman Slater, who’d swept her off her feet and promised to love her forever, then betrayed her and her family in the worst way possible. And not just once, but two times.

  All of her life people had used Gracie to get to her father, but she’d thought Roman was different. She’d thought he’d truly loved and trusted her. And she had trusted him with not only her family, but her heart.

  Big mistake.

  “I don’t understand why I need to be in the meeting,” she told her father, and if she were hoping for an explanation, she didn’t get it. Sutton Winchester never justified his demands, or explained himself. He’d never had to.

  “You’re staying,” he said, an edge of impatience in his tone. It was the voice he used when she was pushing her luck.

  The reality of the situation began to sink in. In only a few minutes Roman would be standing there, in the flesh, in her father’s office. So many mixed feelings buzzed through her brain she felt dizzy and disoriented. Instinct was telling her to run and hide, and though she knew that it wasn’t physically possible for her heart to sink, it sure felt as if it had. It was currently somewhere south of her spleen.

  Earlier in the day, before her father summoned her home, life had been good. In fact, it had been great. Her new line of purses was flying off the shelves in every boutique in every major city in the United States, and the new fashion app she’d recently created was now on smartphones and tablets all over the world. So other than not having any time for a personal life, and being a tiny bit lonely, she couldn’t complain. Now it felt as if her world had been thrown totally off axis.

  Why did it have to be her? Couldn’t her sister Eve take her place? She was the CEO of the family business, Elite Industries, the multimillion-dollar real estate giant Sutton had founded. The business that Roman had recently, under the direction of Sutton’s mortal enemy, Brooks Newport, tried to take down in a scandal of epic proportions.

  If there was a competing royal family in Chicago, the Newport brothers, Brooks, Graham and Carson, were it. The Newport brothers were self-made millionaires with axes to grind. Brooks in particular had made it his mission to crush Sutton, run his business into the ground, and ostracize Gracie and her sisters, Nora and Eve. Which had nearly slammed the brakes on the intense love affair between Eve and Graham Newport, Gracie’s future brother-in-law.

  And Roman had helped him orchestrate the entire media smear campaign against their family. As if he hadn’t betrayed her family enough already. Seven years after the first scandal he’d been involved with, in which the Winchesters had been exonerated of any wrongdoing, he was coming back for more. But once again Brooks’s outrageous claims had no basis in reality, and in the end had only made the man look like the petty and greedy power-hungry narcissist that he was.

  “After all the lies Brooks and Roman spread about us, why take a meeting with Roman at all?” Gracie asked her father. “Have you forgotten the way he dragged our family name through the mud? Twice! And the horrible things that they said you did this time?”

  If she had been hoping for outrage, she didn’t get it. In fact, Sutton didn’t so much as bat an eyelash. “I haven’t forgotten,” he said.

  Gracie adored her father, but she wasn’t blind to his faults. And he had more than his fair share. He’d lived large most of his life. He was a narcissistic, arrogant, womanizing jerk, who drank, smoked and lived hard, but he would never sink so low as to commit date rape. And four of the five illegitimate children Brooks had accused him of fathering were a genetic mismatch. Carson, however, had tested positive, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was Sutton’s illegitimate son. Gracie and her sisters were still reeling from the news that they had a half brother. Sutton’s numerous romantic affairs were no secret. But Gracie had strong suspicions that his relationship with Cynthia Newport had been more than an affair. She knew that her parents’ marriage had been one based on financial compatibility more than love, but it still hurt to think that Sutton had been in love with someone other than their mother, Celeste.

  But enough already. She was tired of th
e rumors and conjecture. Sutton was dying and Gracie just wanted him to be able to go in peace.

  Not only had the scandal affected Sutton’s failing health, but the risk to their company had been profound, and they were in jeopardy of losing several multimillion-dollar accounts if the attacks on Sutton’s reputation didn’t stop. Eve had managed to keep the company on an even keel, but now that she was pregnant with Graham’s baby, things were even more complicated.

  And this whole mess was thanks to Roman and what Grace considered to be his less-than-impressive PI skills. When she thought of all the pain he had caused, all the suffering and humiliation he had subjected them to, anger lit a fire in her belly.

  She would choose anger over shaky nerves any day.

  “What if Brooks sent him here to dig up more dirt?” she said, hoping to talk some sense into her father. “So he can finish the job and destroy our family.”

  Sutton folded his hands on the desk in front of him and looked up from the computer screen with the same clear green eyes she saw every morning in the mirror. For a sixty-five-year-old, he’d been in impressive physical shape until his lung cancer diagnosis earlier this year. Now his poor health was undeniable. Though he was a true fighter, the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and there was nothing that his team of doctors could do. It was only a matter of time.

  Today, thankfully, was a good day. Some days lately, he could barely make it out of bed.

  “Roman didn’t request to see me,” Sutton said. “I asked for this meeting.”

  It took a second or two to process what he’d said, then her jaw nearly came unhinged, right along with her temper. And she did something that she never, ever did. She raised her voice to him.

  “Why would you do that, Daddy? After all the family has been through, how could you even think of letting that man in our home?”

  “It’s something I need to do,” he said firmly, and there was a softness in his gaze, a look of resignation in his eyes that broke Gracie’s heart. Sutton never showed weakness. She had never once seen him cry, or lose his composure, and rarely had she seen him truly angry. But this look of defeat was more than she could take.