Off-Limits (The King Brothers) - Page 47

“I’m going to go make us some coffee,” I said. “I’m leaving you a bathrobe. Come join me in the living room.”

“Okay,” she said from inside the shower. “I’ll be out in just a second.”

Pulling my robe over me, I put on my trusty slippers and made my way into the kitchen. As usual, Simon was ready for lunch, and I made his bowl first. Then I started up the coffee, making a pot that had just finished brewing by the time Danica was out of the shower and heading in the room with me. I poured her a cup and brought it out with my own and sat down in the living room.

Danica pulled a blanket over her as she sat on the couch across from me in the easy chair, and I took a big sip. The blanket was one of my favorites. Heavy and thick, it was one that I always used if I wasn’t feeling well and was planning on crashing on the couch, or if I just didn’t feel like going to my actual bed. Usually that was because Simon had jumped on my lap and I couldn’t rationalize making him move when he was clearly so happy.

Almost as if he could hear me thinking about it, Simon poked his head into the room and, seeing the blanket on the couch, hopped up. There was a frozen moment when Danica and Simon met each other’s gaze, and Danica stopped moving. Slowly, Simon walked closer to her chest and settled in a nook between her elbow and her knee where she was curled, propped up by pillows on the couch.

“Well, then,” I said.

“I thought he hated me,” Danica whispered.

“Hate is a strong word,” I laughed. “There’s just a general contempt he has for anyone and anything. For some reason, you have been chosen.”

“Chosen,” Danica said, and I laughed again. She reached a tentative hand out to pet Simon, who looked up at her hand as if he was choosing whether to allow her to retain her fingers or not and settled on stretching his neck so he could make himself force her to pet him.

“So,” I said, hoping to jolt her into the conversation.

“Right,” she said. “Okay. So, I have a sister named Jasmine.”

“Alright.” I filed away the information that there was a second Peters woman, in case one of my snooping brothers got to asking. “Go on.”

“She’s a lot younger than me. Still in her early twenties,” she said. “She’s been a ballet dancer since she was little. When our parents passed away, I took on the role of her parent as well as big sister. I’ve always taken care of her and cleaned up after her messes, which for a while there were pretty frequent.”

“I can commiserate with that,” I said, not sure if I was more like Danica or Jasmine in the situation, but I found it familiar, nonetheless.

“When I say I have cleaned up her messes, I mean that literally and figuratively. I’ve given up so much to make sure she could chase her dream that I feel like I am living vicariously through her sometimes,” she continued. “I watch her life and her achieving these big goals of hers, and I know that I played a part in that, you know? I helped make that happen.”

“Of course,” I said, nodding. It made sense, but I wasn’t sure where she was going with it.

“Well, now I don’t need to live so much vicariously through her. I am literally going to be living part of her life,” she said. I cocked my eyebrow, and she looked down at Simon, who was clearly enjoying the pets and cuddles. “In less than two months, I am going to be a mom, and she is going to be heading back to her ballet company in San Francisco.”

“Oh fuck,” I said, the words dropping onto my head like lead bars.

My brain was having a hard time processing it. The sentence that said she was going to be a mom was enough to make my heart stop, but once everything else settled in and I realized what she meant, it was somehow even worse. She was going to be taking her sister’s baby to raise as her own so her sister could continue to work as a ballerina.

But that meant that everything that Danica was doing, everything she had going in her life, was gone. She had to give it up to change everything completely so she could be a mom. I couldn’t even imagine the incredible change it would take to make that decision for myself if it were my own child. To do it for someone else’s, even your niece or nephew? That was insane.

It also explained so much about the last week or so. How in the world was she going to handle that with someone brand-new in her life? How could she explain that? How could she date when she was dealing with a newborn?

Tags: Natasha L. Black Romance
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