Eden

“This is amazing,” Natalie moaned, before taking another bite of her double cheeseburger. It was almost as big as her head, with slices of bacon peeking out from under the bun and melted cheese oozing out of the sides.

When my best friend, who was married to my husband’s partner, Jax, found out she was pregnant, she’d had a horrible time with morning sickness pretty much around the clock during her first trimester. It had only been in the last couple months that she’d moved past it and had gotten her appetite back. Since she found out she was having a boy during her ultrasound last week, she was taking full advantage of the fact that she was eating for herself plus a growing boy. As wonderful as it was to see how much enjoyment she was getting from her meal, I couldn’t help but worry about whether or not it was healthy for her, or the baby.

“That looks super greasy.” She narrowed her eyes at me, shooting a death glare my way. I was almost afraid to finish my thought, but I trudged ahead anyway. “Are you sure you should be eating it?”

“Don’t even go there,” she grumbled. “I get enough crap from Jax about what I should and should not eat. How much sleep I need a day. What kind of shoes I should wear. How I need to drink more. It’s never-ending. I swear, he’ll be lucky to make it through this pregnancy with his balls intact.”

I couldn’t help but laugh in agreement since I understood where she was coming from. Jax was a lot like Isaac, especially in how he treated his new wife. They were both super protective and possessive. They were also completely focused on our needs and wants. But, ever since Natalie had gotten pregnant, Jax had taken it to a whole new level. Even knowing Isaac would be the same way, I was still a tad envious of Natalie’s situation—especially since Jax had managed to knock her up before he’d even gotten her down the aisle.

There hadn’t been a positive result on any of the pregnancy tests I’d taken. Ever since my first time, on our wedding night a year and a half ago, Isaac had refused to wear a condom with me. Not that I actually tried to talk him into it or anything. Although I was only twenty years old, I was ready for us to start building our family—to have a little boy with his daddy’s dark hair and serious gray eyes who’d steal my heart, or an imp of a girl who’d wrap her daddy around her finger as easily as I’d done.

With the sheer volume of sperm Isaac had shot into me all these months, I was sure I’d be pregnant already. Fate apparently had something else in store for us because it hadn’t happened yet. In some ways it was probably for the best since it gave Isaac and I plenty of ‘us time’ to really get to know each other after our whirlwind courtship. Our relationship was all the more solid because of it. But it left me feeling even more restless than usual, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing—especially when you consider what happened the last time I had too much time on my hands.

My dad had freaked out when the FBI had come knocking on our door, but his reaction was nothing compared to what Isaac would do if it ever happened again now that I was his. If they took me away in cuffs and tossed me into an another interrogation room, I wouldn’t be surprised if he burned the entire world down to get me back. My husband might be a well-respected lawyer, but he would cross any line when it came to me and my safety—and then he’d use that legal eagle brain of his to figure out a way to make sure he didn’t end up in jail because of it.

“You’re probably going to need his balls later, so you might want to aim somewhere else if you decide to hit him.”

“I know,” she sighed. “But I can so easily picture myself nailing him between the legs when he’s being ridiculously over-the-top.”

“Has he let up at all on wanting you to take time off during the pregnancy?” I nabbed one of her fries and nibbled on it to stop myself from giggling at how hard she rolled her eyes at my question. Natalie was an associate at Harvey Croix and even though she reported to Isaac, Jax tended to interfere . . . a lot. And, it drove Natalie crazy.

“Not even the tiniest bit,” she groaned. “It’s not like I even do anything physically taxing at the office. He has all the assistants and paralegals offering me help with the smallest things. If he could figure out how to get someone to go to the bathroom for me, I think he’d actually do it. I would think it’s adorable except that he wants to limit the kind of cases I’m on too.”

“Why on earth would the kind of cases you take make a difference in the pregnancy?”

“Well” —she leaned forward and lowered her voice to the merest whisper—“Isaac took a case today that literally means the difference between life and death for his client.”

I scooted my chair closer to her because I didn’t want to miss anything she shared. If Isaac had taken a dangerous case, I wanted to know exactly what was going on and I wasn’t sure I could trust him not to downplay the situation in an attempt to keep me from worrying. Or interfering. He was so damn protective.

“What’s his client been charged with?”

Natalie looked around the restaurant, presumably to make sure nobody was listening in on our conversation, before continuing. “Murder.”

“Murder?” I repeated, surprised by her answer. It was hard for me to picture my husband defending someone who’d killed a person.

“It’s that guy who’s been accused of stabbing his girlfriend to death. The woman who worked at Sheffield Oil & Gas?”

I was familiar with the story because it had been splashed across all the newspapers and broadcast on every news channel for the last few days. Ever since he’d called 9-1-1 claiming to have discovered her body when he returned home from a late night run. The guy had looked devastated in the pictures I’d seen and the one interview he’d given the day after the murder. It had seemed like he couldn’t imagine what he was going to do without her in his life anymore. Even though the significant other is always the first suspect in cases like that, I was surprised when the police announced his arrest a couple days later.

“Isaac is defending him?”

“Yeah,” she confirmed. “It turns out that he went to college with the guy’s older brother. He called this morning and practically begged him to take the case. Of course, Jax just about blew his lid when Isaac asked me to second chair for him.”

“It’s not like Isaac would ever expose you to danger,” I defended my husband.

“You know how both of them are,” she sighed. “They don’t let a little thing like being best friends, or logic, get in the way of how they react whenever one of us is involved.”

Considering the way Isaac had reacted once when Jax had raised his voice around me because he was frustrated about not being able to find Natalie, I knew exactly how true her statement was. The guys trusted each other implicitly, but it didn’t stop them from overreacting when it came to their wives. “I hate to admit how sexy it is, the way they lose their minds when it comes to us.”

“Yeah, I admit it’s hot as hell,” she agreed. “But when I’m at work, I could use a little more reasonableness from Jax. I mean, I get that the last place he ever wants me to be is at the jail, let alone when I’m pregnant with his baby.” Her hand slid down to rub her swollen belly.

I tamped down the twinge of envy I felt at how she practically glowed when talking about their baby and returned my focus to the case, grumbling, “As if Isaac would take you to the jail with him.”

“Exactly! I’ll be perfectly safe helping with this case from the office, but it’s still driving Jax crazy because it’s going to be high-profile. The media has grabbed hold and just won’t let go of this one.”

“I’m sure it’s more than that. It has to bother him that you might be near someone who could be guilty of stabbing a woman to death. And one he was supposed to have loved at that.”

“I guess so,” she sighed. “But Isaac seems fairly certain that our client didn’t do it. First thing he did after accepting the case was to head over to the station and sit down with the guy. Jax and I spoke with him before I left to meet you for lunch, and he was adamant about taking the case. He said there was something odd going on, between the way the media has been blasting the story and the fact that his client told him his girlfriend had wanted to talk to him that very same night about something weird that was going on at work. She’d called him on her way home but since he was out for a run, he didn’t answer and she left a vague message. By the time he’d made it back home, she was dead.”

“It almost sounds like the plot to a movie,” I murmured. “An innocent man facing the death penalty—”

“Except we aren’t sure if the DA is going to go for the death penalty or not,” Natalie interjected.

I waved her comment off and continued on my roll. “A beautiful girl cut down in her youth who stumbled across something suspicious while at work for a dirty, multi-national conglomerate.”

The only thing missing was the brilliant, former (mostly anyway) hacktivist who could get the information to help save the innocent client.

“Only it’s not a movie,” Natalie objected with a frown. “Real people’s lives are at stake and we have no idea whether Sheffield Oil & Gas is really dirty. Not to mention the possibility that her murder had nothing to do with her phone call, at all.”

She was right, this was so much more than a silly movie. And without someone who had the ability to get to the bottom of what had really happened, an innocent man could die. I had the skills necessary and I was damn good at what I did. Isaac needed help and I made up my mind right then, he was going to get it—whether he wanted it or not.