HE SHOT UP in bed so fast his head spun when the low emergency beep on his phone got loud enough to rouse him from a dead sleep. Fumbling about on the nightstand until he found his phone, Alex struggled to clear his brain and focus on the alert.
“Fuck,” he muttered when he saw what it was. Shaking Meghan awake, he told her in quick, static sentences, “Get up. I need you. Something’s happened. We need to go to Lacey. Quick.”
“Is it Cam?” she asked in a worried whisper.
“I don’t know. Hurry, would you? We have to get moving.”
Minutes later, they were up, dressed, and driving at high speed in the dead of night, each of them white knuckling the ride down to the cabin.
Halfway there, he told her to call Lacey. Wake her up and have her meet them at the front door. She followed his instructions with a scared and shaking voice. A frightened Lacey met them at the door.
“Is Cameron all right?”
“Turn on CNN,” was all he said.
The three of them scurried into the kitchen where Meghan immediately put some water on to boil and then gathered with them in front of the small TV Lacey kept on a counter.
They watched in silent horror as the breaking news report unfolded. A massive explosion in a suburb of Paris had ominous overtones. Half a city block was destroyed, and a fire was raging out of control.
Alex feared that sort of thing the most. That one day, Justice would be involved in a terrorist incident. It was no coincidence that Cam was somewhere around Paris at a time when something bad happened.
Frantically working his phone, as the girls remained glued to the TV, he was afraid of what he might find out. For the longest time, there was nothing. Just silence—the sort of silence that didn’t feel right.
Right before dawn, the first casualty report came in. Four dead. A dozen, if not more, injured. Whatever inner strength Lacey had evaporated at that moment.
“No, no, no!” she cried. That was when he saw she was clutching her stomach.
A very bad feeling crept up his neck and detonated in his head. This couldn’t be happening.
All hell quickly broke loose. “I’m pregnant, Alex,” she cried as sobs tore through her. “Oh, my god. I’m pregnant!”
He held her while she sobbed out a story he could see from the expression on Meghan’s face was tearing her apart.
Learning that Cam and Lacey suffered quietly through a miscarriage earlier that spring made him feel awful. Why hadn’t anyone said anything? Because of the wedding. Because the people he cared about the most tried to shield him and Meghan from heartbreak so as not to spoil their special day.
Did Cam know she was pregnant?
No, she’d wailed miserably. She just did a test two weeks ago, and it was positive. Every test since then came up the same, confirming that she was indeed pregnant.
He didn’t know what to say. Or do.
Finally, Meghan took control. Coolly telling Lacey she had to calm down for her sake and for the baby’s too, she rubbed the distraught woman’s back as Lacey lay with her head in his wife’s lap.
The news didn’t get better as the sun came up. When the death toll rose, and he wasn’t getting any answers from his deep list of contacts, he didn’t know where else to turn or what to do, so he went to his phone list, found Drae’s number, and pressed call.
When he answered sounding like someone just ran over his dog, Alex ignored his instinct to play nice and started barking like a madman.
“Get up, you motherfucker. Something bad’s happened. I need you.”
“Where are you,” he asked.
“At Cam’s. Get your ass down here. And hurry.”
“Yes, sir,” Drae answered smartly. “Be there in ten.” And then the phone went dead.
Alex stood over Meghan and Lacey, his heart breaking for Cameron’s beloved Ponytail. His wife looked up at him, her normally vibrant green eyes shadowed with distress and fear. What was he supposed to say to her?
As he watched, all the color slowly drained from her face. She turned away from him, and he saw her bite a lip and swallow hard. She was imagining what was happening to the Camerons, happening to them.
No. He wasn’t having it. Not any of this. Cam being hurt or dead wasn’t possible. They were too close. Too bonded. Surely, he’d know if some terrible fate had befallen his friend and brother.
Drae came bursting in with a wild man look in his eyes. He’d heard the breaking news alert—that much he was sure of simply by the hard-ass expression on his face. The guy was in analytical mode. Maybe Drae could make some sense of this.
Without more than a hard glance at the women, he started asking questions. It was his way, and Alex was never so happy to witness the man’s calm shrewdness.
“Are we sure it’s Paris?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Figured it out last night. Was waiting on a detection ping but this came up first.”
Drae nodded and stood there, hands on his hips, eyes darting around the room.
“What’s that guy’s name at State? The one who hooked you up after that thing with the ambassador fell apart last year.”
Damn, he was good. Reaching for his phone, he murmured, “Right, right. Stan. Stan Morley. Do you think he’s close enough to the committee? It’s a long shot, man.”
“Long, short, or back channel. We’ll take any shot we can. Does he have an angle? What can Justice do for him?”
Hmph. Alex knew damn well what the cost of calling in a favor would be. If this worked, he’d effectively be setting up a hostage swap. Information about Cam in exchange for Alex’s handling of the CIA boys’ dirty little mess. He bristled, not liking how it always came round again and again.
Balls.
“Go check the search program running on Cam’s computer. Give me the coordinates of the last three pings. Then reach out to your pals in the service. Isn’t there some classified mystical handshake those muscle guys in protective services do? Find out who the handler is. Let’s come at it from both sides and meet in the middle.”
“You got it, Major.”
Drae’s keen mind was firing on all cylinders, but he looked like warmed up horse piles. Alex assumed he and Tori’d had a rough night. Should he say something? Let his friend know he was aware of the couple’s difficulties? Hard decision to make. Saying nothing might be the easier way but Alex didn’t play that part in all of this.
“By the way, you didn’t do yourself any favors by not being here when we got home. Do you need more bullshit piling on?”
“You spoke to Victoria, didn’t you?”
“Uh, duh.”
“Now isn’t the time, Alex.”
His jaw clenched at Drae’s snotty tone. “Maybe not, dude, but we are going to talk.”
It felt like his friend was going to say something, but he cut off whatever it was and turned around to head to Cam’s study.
He’d think about the St. John drama later. Right now was all about finding Cameron and doing it quickly before the fierce inner fiber holding Lacey together completely unraveled.
“Jesus,” he muttered to himself. Moving to the far side of the open living room, he looked at the women on the sofa and felt his heart clutch with concern.
Two pregnancies in one day. Both oddly high risk. Stephanie because of age and Lacey because of a prior loss he could barely wrap his mind around coupled with the shock of Cam’s precarious and possibly deadly situation.
He sincerely hoped the hits did not keep coming.
Finn couldn’t believe his good luck. A sunrise run into Sedona to an equipment auction at a restaurant closing its doors had yielded fantastic results. In one fell swoop, he had nearly everything on his list of kitchen must-haves.
His adrenaline was cranking along at an annoyingly elevated rate that wouldn’t be helped by any more coffee, so he started keeping an eye out for a Mickey D’s. Scarfing down a couple of greasy hash browns and one of their disgusting egg sandwiches would be fuel enough until he got to Bendover.
He chuckled and gave the sunglasses slipping down his nose a little push back into place. Bendover. There had never been a more fitting name for a postage-stamp size town in the middle of the desert than that.
Where you from? Bendover.
Let’s meet for coffee. How about … Bendover?
Anyone headed to Bendover?
Shit. The guys at his station house in Boston would be all over that name with a never-ending tirade of snarky, highly inappropriate bend-over humor.
Somehow, the name was tailor-made for the life change he was already knee-deep in.
When everyone freaked out over what he was doing, his best answer should probably be a shrug and a muttered, “Bendover.”
It didn’t take long for a drive-through to appear, and after inhaling the scorching-hot hash browns and two breakfast sandwiches, he cracked open a small carton of ice-cold milk and downed that shit in one gulp.
Before getting back on the road, he opened a text message on his phone and shot off the good news to Barry.
Mission accomplished. Got us hooked up big time. Hope you like popcorn. LOL. Stopping at my place first and then I’ll meet you at Pete’s.
Pressing the phone into a rubbery do-hickey attached to the truck’s vents called a Spiderpodium, he redid his seat belt and pulled up next to a trashcan to get rid of the wrappers from his crap meal. Switching on a satellite station with country music, he pulled onto the highway and headed for the Villa.
His mind a jumble of thoughts, he tried to organize the thousand details he still had left to do, but one thing stood out in his mind. After tonight, when he and Barry signed on the dotted line, they’d be business partners and equal owners of the only bar in Bendover.
And as a result of that momentous life change, Whiskey Pete’s was about to get a full Hollywood makeover. Tearing out the grease pit masquerading as a kitchen and replacing it with something actually functional was numero uno on Finn’s to-do list.
Not a lot had excited him over the last few years. In fact, until his dad freaked out and booted his ass to an imaginary curb in the Sonoran desert, Finn felt his life was a badly executed remake of Groundhog Day. It wasn’t so much lather-rinse-repeat as it was shut up, sit down, and learn from your elders, boy.
But now? Holy fuck. He was genuinely excited and had a head full of plans for making Pete’s a contender in the bar food category of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives.
Food was his crack. Working with it. Eating it. Trying new recipes. Creating unusual flavor combinations and feeding everyone who visited his kitchen until they were ready to burst. In the world of firehouse cooking, he’d paid his dues and worked hard to lock down the skills needed to make huge family-style meals with a bit of gourmet and a lot of comfort in all his recipes.
Pete, Barry, and Barry’s girlfriend, Shelly, went batshit over his chicken enchiladas and firehouse chili. That was when he knew for sure an unexpected chapter in his life was his for the taking.
Turning up the volume on one of his favorite jams, Finn tooled down the highway in his brand new F-150, adopted a country-boy drawl, and belted out “Smoke” by a gritty Southern band he’d never heard of three months ago. That was how much his life changed.
As he sang, his mind took a detour when the lyrics led him over and over to thoughts of Remington Bisset.
Damn. The woman gave him an itchy rash. Like all over. A full-body itch he preferred not to scratch.
With hair so black it made the night sky jealous and a smoldering bitchiness begging to be tamed, she was smoke. The kind that could kill a man if he wasn’t careful.
Asking her out was sure to be an insanely dumb move, and considering what a shitshow he made of his life over the last year, the thought wasn’t very comforting. Insanely dumb moves were his trademark. When people thought of him, the first word springing to mind was troublemaker followed in close second by dumbass.
Taking Remy along as his date for the celebratory dinner Pete planned for the handover had trouble and dumbass written all over it.
Still, she was an itch. Sure, he couldn’t claw his way out of the curious attraction he felt for the ornery know-it-all, so making things worse by pulling her in was about as dumb a move as any previous one he had.
He snickered remembering the outrage on her face when he told her to dress like a girl. Rubbing a hand across his chin, he recalled the face slap she’d delivered. One he totally asked for. Taunting her about being a tomboy and not a real woman turned out to be Remy’s line in the sand.
What would she do tonight? He doubted she was going to fall in line because he said so. And good for her! No way should a woman as fine as her be taking shit from any man. Especially him.
Wow. Now, he was really looking forward to the evening’s plans. Not only was he about to own a bona fide western saloon, but he also had the promise of a few hours of neutral territory in which to get further under the enigmatic woman’s skin.
Good times!
Stephanie had a bad feeling the second her eyes opened. Not about the baby. Her baby was fine. Nope. This was something else. Something deeply troubling—a vibe she picked up that started a steady drumbeat of anxiety inside her.
Rolling to the side, she scooted closer to Calder’s sleeping form and snuggled against him. Just knowing he was by her side gave Stephanie a warm, comforting sense of peace.
She smiled against his arm. He’d been beyond wonderful last night. After the turmoil their baby announcement had caused, they’d snuck away, holed up in their guest suite inside the huge hacienda, and shut out the rest of the world.
Filled with wonder and unabashed delight, she was overcome with happiness at the miracle they’d created. And Calder? Oh, lord. The man was having a hard time staying cool.
Never in her wildest dreams had she ever imagined a time when they’d curl up together on the sofa and marvel over the prospect of a tiny life, growing inside her.
Making love within a cocoon of surprise, joy, and absolute wonder, he’d expressed with his body all the emotion he had for her and their unexpected family.
It was … magnificent.
“I can hear your dirty thoughts, madam,” her handsome hunk of man candy drawled sleepily. “Kind of hard to sleep when shouts of ‘Ride me, cowboy’ keep interrupting my Z’s.”
Even half-awake, he was pretty damn adorable.
Softly laughing, she hugged his arm and teased him quietly. “That was some ride, Moondoggie. I give it a nine-point-five for creativity.”
“Creativity?” he asked with a stifled yawn.
“Yep, shugah. Creativity. Not every man can perform an impressive hang ten and follow up with a double down ride that this cowgirl especially enjoyed.”
He chuckled and pulled her on top of his warm, hard body.
Hmph. Correction, she thought with a thrill. Make that very hard.
Jerking her legs apart, Stephanie straddled her hunk of burning love and levered upright until she was sitting astride him and unashamedly wiggling. Arching her back, she stretched out some morning kinks. Grinning down at him, she gathered her hair into a thick tail and twirled it together to make a loose, unpinned bun.
“Something tells me you mean business.” He snickered with real amusement. “Whenever you gals get a bun going, shit’s sure to get real.”
“Yes, well,” she griped with a snarl, “that stupid doctor tried to ruin all my fun. Sheesh!” she crowed with a disdainful growl. “Easy does it on the morning rides?”
Calder let loose with a genuine laugh. Fondling her breasts while a wicked grin spread on his face, he shrugged off her complaint. “I don’t think she realized what a true cowgirl you are, Duchess. And besides, I kind of liked the suggestion of getting a little cart.”
“Trotting along in a buggy is not the same as feeling the horse between your legs.” She mimicked the up and down undulation of riding. When he groaned, Stephanie ground to a stop and made a face.
“Well, darlin’, if a morning ride is that important to your well-being, I suppose,” he drawled smugly, “that if you absolutely insist, I will play the part your stallion can’t.”
She fell on him with a laughing kiss, grabbing his face in her hands and taking glorious advantage of his sexy lips. “I suppose I could manage,” she told him with devilish delight.
“Need any help getting situated? In the saddle, I mean?”
“Aw, shugah darlin’, I think I got this.” Rising up, she reached between them and found his hard length. His soft grunt sent tingles along her nerve endings. Enjoying the tactile reminder of the pleasure headed her way, Stephanie stroked him slowly, swirled her thumb on the lovely plump head of his cock, then guided his body into perfect alignment with hers.
“Ease down slowly, darlin’.”
Her body captured his and sucked him deep in a slow slide that ended with her purrs of delight and his growling response. It felt so good; she bumped and ground through a series of Circle C’s that made her quiver and shake.
“Comfy?” he asked. She didn’t miss the strain in his voice as her daring lover fought for control.
“Oh, yes.” She sighed as chills ran up and down her spine. Being joined with him and feeling the strength of his beautiful manhood deep inside her made Stephanie lose her way pretty quickly.
With his thumbs abrading her nipples as he cupped the swaying globes in his big hands, she started moving. Instantly, a flood of wet desire poured from her.
“Jesus, honey,” her lover moaned. “Gonna be a short ride, huh?”
Stephanie’s head started swimming, and every muscle and tendon in her body tightened. On each downward thrust, she cried out as his cock penetrated her deeply.
Stephanie clutched at his shoulders as the ride took off. His hand slid between them and began plucking at her clit. Rubbing the wet nub in slow circles sent her hurtling higher and higher.
“Look at you go,” he husked with a sexy vibe of pride as she rode him with sensuous abandon. “Ready to gallop?”
“Please,” she begged as the need for more and harder made her movements frantic and inconsistent.
“Hold tight, Duchess,” he told her as he took hold of her hips and began bucking as she clung and absorbed the deeper strokes.
They found a devastating rhythm that she rode with fierce determination. At the exact moment when an orgasm couldn’t be denied any longer, he slammed her down onto his rigid length and held her in place.
His cock swelled, and Stephanie moaned loudly. Feeling him pulse inside her was what sent her into the stratosphere. Throwing her arms wide, she hung there on the edge for a few seconds and then fell apart as a powerful climax blanked her mind.
“Freehand,” she heard him murmur as she jerked and quivered, her head thrown back and arms open wide.
Collapsing like a puppet whose strings were cut, she folded onto his wide chest and lay there shaking for a long time.
“And that, folks”—he chuckled softly—“is how two grown-ups make a baby.”