The Virgin Next Door (Stud Ranch)

Calla blinked but couldn’t hold back any more. She put her hands to her face and started crying.

“Oh. There, there, Ms. Carter.”

“Calla!”

Calla looked up at Liam’s worried voice. “Are you all right? I’m sorry we took so long. The cops kept asking a million questions.”

Liam jogged past the doctor to her side. Mack was behind him but he stopped in the doorway.

“Are you okay?” Liam asked again, slipping an arm under her head and pulling her to his chest. She didn’t realize how tense she’d been until all her muscles relaxed at his touch. She went limp against him, reaching her other hand out for Mack.

He stared at her for a long moment before coming forward and clasping it. Finally. Finally she could breathe out.

“Everything’s fine,” she said, laughing and crying at the same time. “The baby’s fine.”

The next moment, though, her head was filling with images of what happened earlier.

God, when she’d come to in the ambulance only to find an attendant strapping her waist to the gurney. And then—she shuddered remembering how that man, that monster, ripped the second ambulance attendant backwards and how the blood sprayed when he slit his throat—

She shuddered.

“What is it?” Liam said. “Baby, you’re killing us here.”

She could tell he meant it, too. He sounded anguished. He didn’t deserve it. She knew both he and Mackenzie had been through the ringer today too.

“Just…” She looked from Liam to Mack. “Thank you. If you hadn’t gotten there when you did…” She shuddered again and pressed the hands they were holding to her stomach.

Mack jerked his hand away and she looked up at him startled.

He ran his hand through his hair. “I need to go.”

He stood up abruptly.

“Wha—” Calla said at the same time Liam said, “You’re not going fecking anywhere.”

Mack swallowed, looking from one to the other. He shook his head and looked down. “I almost got you killed. The bab—” His voice broke and he looked toward the window, jaw flexing with emotion.

“You saved me.” Calla reached for his hand again but again, he pulled it away.

“Stop it,” he bit out, eyes flashing at her. “I know what I am. I’m ugly and fucked up inside. Why do you think I got these tattoos?” He yanked up his shirt sleeve to expose one of the bug-eyed devils inked on his skin. “It’s what he made me. I’m damaged fucking goods and you deserve better than me. You deserve a man like him.” Mack’s eyes went to Liam.

“Mackenzie,” Calla cried. How could he think that of himself? He’d been used and abused so horribly, but didn’t he see? That was over now. “Don’t you see? I felt ugly and alone my whole life until you two. We belong together. We’re each other’s family. And now we’re about to add one more.”

Mack’s face went pained as he glanced at her hand on her stomach.

Don’t pull away. Please. Don’t pull away again, she begged silently.

“For Christ’s sake, there you are,” boomed a voice from the doorway. Calla’s head swung that direction just in time to see Liam’s father striding into the room.

41

LIAM

“I had to find out from the fecking paparazzi where me own son was. They’re flocked outside like buzzards over a kill.” Ciarán looked Liam up and down. “Well, you look a bit waterlogged but not too much worse for wear. Now let’s end this nonsense and come home with me on the private jet.”

Liam could only stare at him in disbelief. Did he not see the woman in the hospital bed whose hand he was holding?

He stood up straighter. Enough. “Da, this is me girl, Calla. And that there,” he pointed to the ultrasound picture that had been printed off, “may or not be me biological son or daughter. Either way, I’m going to love them as if they were.”

His father’s back stiffened. “You have to find out. You can do a test before its born. If I would have had that chance, it would have changed everything.” Emotion choked his father’s voice.

Liam could only blink in disbelief at the man he’d spent his whole life either worshiping or hating. “So you coulda kicked me and ma to the curb if you found out I was the stablemaster’s bastard before I was even born? Is that what you’re sayin’ straight to me face?”

Ciarán shook his head. “If you would have let me get two words in the other day, you would’ve heard me when I told you I did a DNA test. With some hairs from your comb you left behind. You’d only been gone a month at the time, but I realized it was time to know. To put this behind us once and for all.” Liam couldn’t be sure, but it looked like there might be a sheen to Ciarán’s eye. “You’re mine after all. You’re me son. But then I didn’t know where you were. Not until that woman got in touch with us. You have to believe me, lad, if I’d known all along, it would have been different.”