Cease Fire (Blackbridge Security 9)

“I’m so excited for you,” Beth says, shifting gears as she follows me out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. “Maybe I can get pregnant quickly, too, and our babies could be best friends. Maybe we’ll have a boy and a girl, and they can grow up and fall happily in love!”

I give her a quick grin, wondering just how damn different it is for her brother to be off-limits to me, but her unconceived child would be good enough for my own. Then I realize what she’s saying. Her child would be biologically related to the child growing inside of me.

“Can I get through the first trimester before you start planning my child’s wedding?”

She laughs at me. “Get dressed. We can grab lunch after we tell Brooks. I know he’s going to be ecstatic. Can you imagine a baby that looks like him? He’s got better genes than the weird guy from accounting at your work. I’ll make coffee while you get ready.”

She disappears out of the bedroom, humming a nursery rhyme.

I’m shaking as I get dressed, torn between telling her the truth and taking a chance that I can convince Brooks, with little to no conversation, to pretend he knocked me up before the wedding weekend even happened.

Chapter 9

Kit

Giving up on someone has never been easy for me. I’m the type of guy who would rather sit down, talk through my problems, and come to a resolution than just let things fester. I wanted to do that with Jules. I didn’t want to walk away from our weekend together and never speak to her again, but she has given me no choice.

For weeks I’ve texted, and for weeks those texts have gone unanswered. She’s seen them. My phone tells me as much. Hell, the speed at which she saw them made me hopeful… at first, but a response never came. She hasn’t answered a single one of them.

I’d like to say that if I knew this was going to be the outcome, I never would’ve stepped into her hotel room that night, but who am I kidding?

Having the chance to hook up with the woman I never thought I’d be able to lay a finger on, much less discover what she feels like on the inside? Even I’m not fool enough to lie to myself on that. I would do it all over again. I’d spend the exact same moments, the exact same pleasure, even knowing I was going to be left feeling like an addict without the slightest chance at another high like she offered.

I shake my head as thoughts of her try their best to take over once again. I’m getting better at shoving them away, getting better at chalking the experience up to a once-in-a-lifetime adventure and trying not to let it eat me alive inside.

“You okay, man?”

I roll my head on the sofa and look over at Jude. “I’m good.”

Not great, but good is just going to have to do.

He gives me another disbelieving look because my answer has been the same the last hundred or so times he’s tried to get me to open up about my sour mood. I tried acting like nothing was wrong, but it left me exhausted, completely drained.

I don’t have a right to the heartbreak I feel. I’m the one who broke the rule. I’m the one who allowed myself to have expectations after our weekend was over, when Jules made it abundantly clear from the very beginning that hope didn’t exist between the two of us.

“How’s the wedding planning going?” I ask Finn in an effort to get any and all attention off of me.

Finnegan Jenkins, Blackbridge’s mechanic and safecracker, drops to the sofa beside me.

“Good, I guess. Kendall wants something small, so there isn’t really much to do,” he answers with a smile on his face.

My Irish friend fell in love with Kendall Stewart so quickly, I think it left his own head spinning, but the man is over the moon, ecstatic to make her his. Her three kids seem just as excited.

Kendall was abducted and held for hours by two men wanting retribution for a debt owed by her ex. Although she was rescued and found safe, I know my friend still feels guilt over not being able to protect her from the evils in the world. He’ll spend every day for the rest of his life making it up to her.

I swallow, thinking I want the exact same thing, a woman to love and protect, a woman who opens her eyes in the morning and her first thought is of me.

I clear my throat, trying to get back to the conversation at hand.

“There’s always something to do,” Jude says. “Modern Bride has complete lists.”

We all look at him. “What?”

“You read Modern Bride?” Finn asks, his tone marked with doubt.