“So, you weren’t going to tell us about what was going on? That the bombers might not be the same people?” Linda said, looking pissed surrounded by the other ladies who wore the same expressions on their faces too. We all glared at Cole, what the fuck?
“Don’t look at me, you’re assholes. They tortured me!”
“You fucking pussy, Cole. You couldn’t hold up to five women?” Brett growled.
“You weren’t there,” he snapped back. “You don’t know what those…those… women,” he threw his hand out in their direction, “did to me!”
Jack walked back in at that moment and took in the room. “Shit, I was only gone for five minutes. What the fuck did I miss?”
“And you, Jack Townsend…” Colette leaned in his direction. “All of these years we’ve been married and I’ve never kept one secret from you, and you do this?” The expression on her face changed and went into an almost pout before she whispered, “I trusted you!”
Oh, she was good and Jack fell for it straight away.
“Honey, no, I was going to tell you, but…” he faded off and looked for an excuse. Epic fail!
I looked over at Isla to see her glaring at me, too, but I knew exactly how to deal with her and stood up and walked over to her before picking her up.
“Say goodbye to everyone, sayang.”
“Put me down, Luke!” She was wriggling in my arms trying to get away.
“Nope and stop moving before I drop you and we hurt the babies.”
She stopped immediately and crossed her arms glaring at me.
“And I want some of that baking dropped off at the house,” I said, looking at Cole. “You eat it and I’ll shove one of those wooden spoons so far up your ass that you’ll be using it as a toothpick.”
“Luke!” Mom scolded while the guys snorted. They wouldn’t be laughing soon, that I could guarantee with the looks on their wives’ faces.
“Jesus, you’re so combative,” Cole grumbled. He’d be getting the bitch treatment from all of us for a long time after this, so he needed to get used to it.
“Say bye, Angel.”
Isla turned and gave them all a sweet smile and said goodbye as I walked out of the door and toward Layla’s house, dropping it as soon as we got outside.
“You’re in so much shit, Montgomery,” she hissed looking up at me. “I’m so pissed at you.”
“I know how to work that out of you.” I smiled down at her, and I did.
“Oh no, I’m not talking to you and you’re not gonna touch me.”
“I can work that out of you, too.”
“I’ll scream if you touch me, Luke, I mean it.”
“Great idea, sayang, let’s go make you scream.” The guard in front of the door opened it for us and I walked in kicking it closed behind us and up the stairs. Time to make my Angel scream.
Isla
Laying back against Luke in the bath, I giggled as my stomach suddenly moved as the babies went on a tumble mission. Luke reached up and put his hand on them and burst out laughing when one of them kicked him in protest.
We’d come home and he’d carried me straight up to our room. It had been a week since we’d been able to do anything because of my arm and the bed rest that I’d been put on by Doctor Conlan. Stripping us both down, he’d laid me out on the bed and climbed over me, caging me in with his arms and legs and holding my head gently between his hands.
“I would never let anything hurt you, you know that, don’t you?” He looked anxious as he said this, and I wondered about what information we hadn’t been able to get out of Cole.
“Of course, but why are you asking me this?”
He had let out a deep breath and closed his eyes as he lay his forehead against mine before saying, “We had to do stuff which means we can’t involve the FBI to get information out of the two guys that we tracked down Angel; I had to do stuff. I needed to know everything so that I could protect you, but after they got into this house, I failed you and the babies.”
He looked so tortured by all of this and I didn’t realize that I was crying, until I felt the tears running down my temples into my hair.
“What did you have to do?” I couldn’t raise my voice louder than a whisper because his pain was cutting me to the bone. The worst thing was that I didn’t know what the pain was to take it away for him.
“The guy who shot you.” His eyes moved to the bandage that was still on my arm covering the wound that no longer had stitches in it. “He wasn’t talking…” he trailed off and looked over my head at the wall, but I wanted his eyes on me, so I reached up and turned it back toward me. “I hit his leg with a baseball bat and basically shattered his knee.” He swallowed audibly and then whispered, “I needed to know how to protect you, Isla…”
I had known my husband for most of my life and in all of that time, yes, verbally and mentally, he had been hard, but physically? Never, and I knew this had to be eating him up.
“You did what you had to do, what you’ve always done - made sure that I’m safe. Someone shot me honey, it wasn’t just harsh words, it was a bullet. Making that decision was hard for you, but you did the right thing and if I was in your shoes, I’d have done it, too. The bomb being delivered here…” I shook my head never losing eye contact with him once. “That wasn’t on you either nor could you have done anything. You’ve not been sleeping Luke, I know that, and it’s because you’re afraid that it’ll happen again and they’ll succeed this time, but they won’t.”
“I have something else to tell you.” I gave him a nod and waited for him. “Jodie and Calista are dead, sayang. They were found today in a motel three hours out. And they were the ones who planted the box with the bomb in it in here, we think.
Calista was seen buying the shit needed.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d struggled with them for years and they had been cruel and evil in ways that damages people for life, and the only person who had protected me from them was the man in front of me and his family and my Gram. I could feel sad that they were dead, but then they had apparently made a bomb that could have killed us and the babies or the people who were around it when it went off in the field. I didn’t care about what they did during my childhood, I had a better life without them in it and it brought me closer to my husband. But I did care about the bomb, and because of that I felt no sadness or remorse at this news.
“I’m glad they’re gone. Does that make me a bad person?” I whispered.
Shaking his head, he leaned down and brushed his lips across mine. “No, it doesn’t. They weren’t good people who lived life decently, Isla. The only emotions I felt about this news were toward you and how you would take it.”
A thought hit me. “How did they die?”
He raised his head up and gave me a half smile. “Cole reckons it was the ‘special Kool-Aid’.”
It was an inappropriate moment to laugh, but I couldn’t help it; he was so bang on with that. They were like a cult, the two of them, so drinking the poisoned Kool-Aid would be pretty apt.
“Does my Dad know?”
“Coleman was going to tell him, but I don't doubt that seeing as they were still married that the police would visit your father to break the news to him.”
“They were horrible people Luke, evil. The things they did…” it was hard to remember all of the hell that they’d put me, through, but even harder to voice it out loud. “Why did they hate me so much?”
He stroked the hair off my face and said seriously, “Jealousy. People love you, Isla, they meet you and instantly see your personality and inner beauty as well as your outside beauty. You never had to flirt with guys to get their attention,” he looked angry at this. “You never caked on makeup like a mask because you don’t need it and you never had to give head to get ahead, as crude as that sounds. They did!”
I just shook my head and rolled my eyes, he had to say that because we were married, pregnant, and getting married again.
“Have
I told you how much I love you today?” He asked leaning down to kiss me softly. “I love you to the moon and back. I will for the rest of my life.”
“Wow, that’s far,” I grinned as I replied, because only Luke would come out with that.
“It’s true. And did you know, that the heart makes enough energy for a truck to drive roughly twenty miles every day, and if you multiply that by a lifetime that’s the same distance as it is to get to the moon and back to earth.”
“So, you’re telling me that you love me with all of the blood your heart pumps during your life?” I wrinkled my nose because that bit was a bit less romantic.
“Yup,” he kissed me again, this time for longer and a little bit wetter. “And that’s a fact, Mrs. Montgomery.”
Smiling up at him because I loved Luke’s rare dorky moments like this, I replied, “I love you enough to squeeze your two behemoth babies out of my hoo-hah and not rip your nuts off and feed them to you through your nostrils. Now that’s love.”
Luke burst out laughing, and I just lay looking up at him relieved that what was haunting him before was now gone. But I also meant my testament of love - these babies were going to be huge, even my OBGYN had said that. Thank God for the wonders of modern medicine and its painkilling abilities, I intended to take everything they offered.
I swept my hand up his back and pulled his head down to me for what turned into one of the most intense and amazing kisses we’d ever had. The whole time we were both stroking each other, and when he entered me, it was like heaven, but then it was like that every time. He’d taken it slowly as I held onto him and wrapped my legs around his hips. There were moments for hard and fast, moments for starting slowly and speeding up, but this was one of the rare moments where you needed to make love slowly and worship each other.
I was getting close and I knew Luke was, too, and when he reached down and circled my clit, I went over the edge screaming and clamping down on him so hard I felt him struggling to move. His groan, when he hit his climax within seconds of mine, took me higher, and by the time I came back down again I was shaking as he panted into my neck.
“I can’t feel my legs, Luke!” It came out as a croak, making me blush thinking that the security guard outside the door may well have heard me screaming.
“You’re welcome.” His chuckle into my neck had ended on a yelp when I’d pinched his arm skin for being so cocky.
“You need to do that when I have your gargantuan babies so that I don’t feel anything.”
“I’m not convinced they’ll let me do that in the hospital when you’re in labor, sayang and I doubt you’ll want me to either,” he snorted, playing with the angel wings necklace around my neck. I still felt emotional when I saw the necklace because it had been something that I’d cherished as a kid, almost the only beautiful thing I had that was mine only. When I’d taken it off and dropped it, I thought that that was it for the rest of my life, but he’d carried it around and kept it safe since that night. “Let’s go and relax in the bath for a bit. You still need to take it easy.”
He wasn’t going to get any arguments out of me. Lying back against him now, watching my bump moving, even after all of the earlier revelations I felt more relaxed than I could ever remember feeling.
Picking up his watch from the side of the bath, Luke chuckled as he saw the time. “Three twenty on the dot. That’s my boys!”
The babies had the most bizarre routine, they had been carrying out their acrobatic routines at the same time every day for the last ten days. It might have deviated by five minutes, but it was the same time pretty much.
“Boys? One of them could be a girl you know.” He was adamant it was boys, but I had a feeling there was a girl in there.
“No, it’s both boys. It has to be; I don’t know what to do with girls.” I couldn’t help laughing at his panic.
“Uh Luke, I don’t know what to do with babies. I have zero experience, at least you had younger brothers!”
“I never changed their diapers or shit like that though! I just…brother’d.” He shrugged.
“Is that even a word?” I asked through my giggles.
“It is now!” Sighing, he rubbed my bump one last time and continued, “We need to get out of the bath, baby, we’re going over to my parents for dinner because we’ve got final wedding plans to go over with Mom.”
Shit, I’d forgotten about our MOGzilla time tonight.
As we were getting ready, I saw him typing furiously on his phone and my heart sank. “That thieving thimble dick, he just sent me this!” He held up his phone and I saw a photo of Cole on the screen standing with a bag that had Luke’s name on it full of the baking we’d done earlier. He was grinning straight at the camera with a full mouth of whatever it was that he’d taken out of it. The kicker was, the only time that I could bake or even cook properly was around Luke’s mom, any other time what I made just went wrong for whatever reason so those baked goods were like gold dust to Luke.
“We’ll get some from your Mom tonight, she always has tons of yummy stuff around,” I rubbed his back still giggling.
“This is true. I’m still gonna kick his ass. Limp raccoon pricked bush fucker.”
Chapter 27
Maya
S tanding in Ren’s parents’ house waiting to be told that it was time, I snuck a look out of the window at the marquee’s that were set up for today. I was nervous about the normal things, like messing up my lines or falling flat on my face, but my Dad had promised me repeatedly that he was going to make sure that I didn’t. I know every bride has those worries, but not every bride had to walk in stiletto’s down an aisle covered in fabric that could potentially snag on of the heels resulting in a face floor moment in front of everyone.
My parents had arrived four days ago and I’d had to bite my lip to stop myself from laughing at the look on Ren’s face when Dad met him for the first time and glowered at him for “knocking her up before you put a damn ring on her hand”.
People would think that, as an Ambassador, he’d be stuffy and uptight, but when he got going, my Dad could leave Cole in the dust.
Mom was excited and pretty much flying high over the prospect of being a Grandma, and once Dad had stopped giving Ren shit and had seen my bump, he’d grinned like a crazy guy.
I’d had my final fitting yesterday and we’d collected all of the dresses before the rehearsal dinner, which hadn’t gone according to plan. We’d had chocolate bombs for dessert, and as a joke, I’d had the caterer fill Cole’s with tampons. Unfortunately, the sauce that we poured over was a hot raspberry one. When the chocolate had split open and the sauce had poured onto the tampons…let’s just say Cole freaked out that badly that he hit the plate in front of him and sent the contents flying onto himself. He’d ended up with a couple of tampons hanging from random places and the raspberry sauce on his face and pretty much everywhere else. That had led to him gagging so hard he threw up, just missing my Dad, and then ran and stumbled out of the door towards the bathroom.
“Did you ever have him tested?” Dad asked Brett, who was sitting beside him.
“No, but we did tell him that he was adopted.”
“Is he?”
“Maya did, and apparently he’s fine. I’d still prefer that he was adopted,” Ren replied scowling, while his siblings nodded their heads and Christie looked up at the ceiling.
“I told you that boy wasn’t right when he was born,” Hurst snapped at Jack.
“Dad, he’s a mini you for crying out loud.”
“That’s how we knew there was something wrong with him, sweetheart,” Linda said, reaching over and patting Jack’s hand. “You’re just like your father, too, but at least four of your kids got Colette’s genes. We have hope that Ren and Maya’s baby will too.”
Turning around to face me, Dad looked at my stomach, then to Ren, then Brett, Tom, and Layla who had both arrived that morning. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then looked at my Mom for help. She j
ust patted his cheek and said, “It’s okay, I don’t think it’s hereditary.”
Little did they know, I still had the number that Ebru gave me and I fully intended on using it, as soon as the baby was old enough.
It had sucked not being able to spend the night with Ren and I missed him. I was lying with Pippa, who I’d stolen back from the pig thief Cole, feeling sorry for myself in our big empty bed, when I felt the first movement from the baby and snatched up my phone, dialing Ren.
“I miss you, baby,” he sulked down the phone as soon as he answered.
“Ren, I need you here, now.”
“What’s wrong?” I could hear stomping and doors slamming. He was at Mark’s house with the rest of the guys, while the girls all spent the night here, so he didn’t have too far to run. The houses were far enough apart though that it would still take him a couple of minutes to get to me.
“The baby moved,” I gasped just as it did it again.
I could hear the guys shouting and Ren yelling at them to get out of his way. There was a thud and Cole whined and then there was scuffling sounds. “The fucking baby moved, assholes, get outta my fucking way!”
Obviously, those were the magic open sesame words because it all went silent in the background and all I could hear was Ren panting as he ran. The door slammed downstairs and I hung up hearing footsteps thudding towards me, and then he was skidding into the room and Pippa was standing at the edge of the bed squealing for her daddy.
“Is it okay? Do you need the doctor? Is it meant to do that?” I just laughed and grabbed his hand, putting it on my bump. As soon as his hand spread out, the baby kicked again and I looked up at him grinning to see his nose wrinkled. “Baby, I think that’s just gas.”
“It’s not gas, it’s the baby,” I was growling, but come on, gas? This was the most magical moment of my life and he was calling it gas!
Ebru, Scarlett, and Layla stuck their heads into the room and took in Ren’s look of… I don’t even know what that was, and my scowl.
Providence Series Books 1-4 Page 47
