Protecting His Pregnant Lover (Southern Soldiers of Fortune 1)

But it wasn’t some passing person shining a light on them and discovering their hiding spot. Something, or someone, must have tripped the football field’s floodlights. Olive heard a shout, and edged her way around Levon and back to the crack in the wall just in time to see the figures scatter. “Shit!” She caught the curse between her teeth and let it die before it became more than a whisper. “We almost had them!”

“Olive, I didn’t come all the way out here to ride in all by myself, guns blazing, tonight.” Levon sounded amused; more than that, he sounded patronizing. Olive whirled, but anything more she had to say in that second fled from her completely when she realized Levon was directly behind her. In fact, spinning around had planted her right against his chest, his face only inches from her own.

“So… what now?” she asked him after a moment’s careful silence passed between them. Levon seemed oblivious to their proximity as he craned around her to get another look out at the field.

“Looks like we’re alone, but I can’t be sure. We’ll wait it out,” he said.

“And then what?” Olive prompted him. She wanted in on organizing a plan of attack. If those goons were actual gang members targeting her most vulnerable students, then she needed all the research information she could gather on that front.

“Let’s keep focusing on the now,” Levon suggested. “Now you’re going to tell me what you’re doing here, sparing no detail.”

Olive huffed. “Look, I didn’t know they were gang members, okay? I thought I was dealing with something a little simpler.”

“You said a name earlier,” Levon prompted. “Who’s Franklin?”

“Franklin Monroe is one of my students,” she replied. “I’ve known him for years. He’s been acting different recently—more skittish, I guess. And since those guys said his name just now, it has me worried that they might be targeting him for some reason.”

“Olive.” The floodlights on the football field were bright enough to throw some light through the cracks in the shed. Enough that even in the claustrophobic shadows, she could see the intense blue of his eyes as he gazed at her. She knew what was coming, but there was no diverting the conversation away from it… not when it was physically wedged between them like a small planet. “Whose baby is it?”

She didn’t want to have this conversation. Especially not in the field house, the place of countless pregnancy scares when they were growing up. Somehow, this felt like bringing a prophecy full circle—a prophecy she, a self-appointed nerd, had never expected to have a hand in.

“It’s yours,” she blurted. “Honestly, Levon, it is. I haven’t been with anyone else since the class reunion, and there wasn’t anyone else for a while before, either. We can take a test if you—”

“I believe you.” His voice took her aback almost more than his words; it shook, actually shook. He ran a hand through his unkempt locks, and she knew he was doing his best to process this new factor in his life. Believe me, big guy, I’ve been there. Olive wasn’t without sympathy for how he must be feeling. It wasn’t like he decided to knock up his old lab partner on purpose.

“I meant to tell you,” she stressed. “Really.” She was still between his legs; she turned around fully, now, and grasped for his arm in the dark. “I tried getting into contact, but…”

She trailed off, waiting for him to continue.

But he just stared at her, wordless, and his silence made her more and more self-conscious by degrees. She had probably made a huge social gaffe by delivering her news here, now. The least she could have done was postpone it until they were out to dinner or something! But not as a date, God no. Not that she would say no to an actual date with Levon Asher…

Now even her thoughts were spiraling into incoherent babble. Olive pulled her hand back from him, the same way she would if she had just senselessly placed it on a hot stove.

“I… should go.” She had no idea what she was saying anymore. She probably sounded like an idiot, something she definitely wasn’t—but Levon Asher had a way of reducing her to a babbling fool. She turned to the door, pulling it open. She was desperate to look back, but she suppressed the urge. He would call her if he wanted to discuss this more.

Wouldn’t he?

Only ringing silence answered her private plea, and Olive took that as her cue to leave. Obviously Levon would at least say something if it wasn’t safe for her to walk away yet. She bowed her head, unable to fully conceal just how disappointed she was, and slipped outside.

The floodlights had clicked off for now, but she knew this campus like the back of her hand. It was only a short walk back to the main street and, from there, to her house. She should be able to find her way easily in the dark. She pulled the collar of her coat up, and…

A pair of hands seized her in the darkness.

4

Levon heard Olive’s stifled shriek, and it was exactly the wake-up call he needed to snap him back to reality.

This was not the time to focus on surprise pregnancies, sudden fatherhood, and the swirl of emotions that threatened to storm him like he was the enemy beach and not the SEAL. It was time to bottle it all up and thrust it aside—he’d unpack her news later, along with the guilt at having allowed Olive to walk out of the shed alone in the first place.

It took every particle of self-control he had in him not to kick the door down and burst out into the open after her; but his SEAL training took hold, and Levon listened. The instincts he had worked hard to hone had yet to steer him wrong, and had saved plenty of lives before this moment.

Levon twitched the door to the equipment shed open slowly, steadily, using two fingers to ease the crack wide enough for him to slip through without making a sound. He tucked himself into the deeper shadows around the side of the structure and listened. He could pick up the muffled sounds of a struggle coming from nearby.

What surprised him most was how they became less muffled in the next instant.

“Listen, I… I don’t know who you are, and you’ve done a good job of concealing your identity.” Olive must have slipped at least partially free of her aggressor’s hands; she kept her mouth moving now, her voice gathering strength as that big brain of hers went into overdrive. “But I was just out for a walk alone. That’s… that’s all I’m doing. Just me and the baby.”

The moon cast enough ambient light that Levon could see her captor’s posture go rigid. Evidently the man had kept his grip around her shoulders and mouth and hadn’t noticed the women he held was pregnant. Amateur. Levon allowed himself a moment’s distaste as he crept along. How do you not notice the woman you’re holding hostage is seven months along?