When our plane touched the ground, there was a small bump, and just like that, we were home. Eden grinned beside me, poking me in the side with his elbow.
“I won’t plan on hearing from you for a few days at least,” he teased. “Send my love to your girl. Tell her we’re all proud of her for graduating early.”
Dave whirled around in his seat. “You know, I’d have thought she was a smart girl for graduating early, but she can’t be. I mean, how could she be if she’s in love with your miserable ass?”
“Hey,” Turner chimed in. “His ass was only visibly miserable at night and only because he misses the officer’s daughter. He’s in love, idiot.”
I was. I really was so unbelievably in love, and six months apart hadn’t done a thing to change it. I’d never been happier to be home. I couldn’t fucking wait to see her.
But I was also proud of what I’d achieved while I’d been away. Sure, the time without Sofia had been hell, but it had also been exactly what I’d needed.
My teammates continued to give me and each other a hard time while our plane taxied to a stop. Even hearing them banter like this made me proud. They’d gotten onto this plane six months ago as a bunch of strangers, and now they were brothers. I’d had a hand in that, which made me prouder than any of the successful missions had.
I, leader of the Misfits, had brought together and built a cohesive team. And what a hell of a team it was.
“Just so all of you know, I’m out that door the second it opens,” I said, unsnapping my seatbelt to stand up. I met each of my teammates’ eyes in turn. “It’s been a real honor serving with you boys. We’ll be seeing each other again soon, but in the meantime, take care of yourselves. Drink plenty of water or tequila, and get some well-deserved rest.”
Dave led the round of applause, pressing a hand to his massive chest once he stopped clapping. “Thanks, boss. Happy fucking to you. We hope we won’t be seeing you before you get it out of your system.”
I flipped him off but took his hand when he extended it toward me and nodded. “Thanks for everything, Linc. It’s been an honor serving with you, too.”
Eden and Turner gave semi-emotional speeches as well, but then the plane jolted to a stop, and I was out of there. When I reached the pick-up point, disappointment surged through me when Sofia wasn’t there to pick me up.
Charles waited for me in his truck, waving me over with a relaxed grin on his face. “Welcome back, Lincoln.”
“Thanks.” I tried not to show how much it bugged me that Sofia wasn’t there. “How’s your consulting firm doing?”
“Really well.” He waited as I slung my bag onto the back, then patted the passenger seat. “Mostly, it’s going as well as it is thanks to you.”
“Thanks to me?” I frowned as I shut the door, willing him to race me to his daughter as fast as he could get the old truck to go. “Why thanks to me?”
He glanced at me with that foreign smile still on his lips. “Word got out about you. One tour as the guy in charge and you’re already the stuff legends are made of but only in a good way.”
I sighed, dragging a hand through my hair. “Where are you going with this?”
“I’m proud of you, Lincoln,” he said, surprising the shit out of me. “Your unit did exceptionally well, and my firm is doing well because as word got out about you, it got out about me, too.”
“Well, you deserve it.” I reached out to clap him on the shoulder. “If you hadn’t given me so much shit, no way would I have been where I am today.”
“True.” He inclined his head. “But you deserve most of the praise coming your way. You manned up in the best way possible, and that put me on the map as a guy you want around your men.”
“I’m happy for you,” I said, meaning it. “I didn’t think retirement was going to suit you well.”
Charles brought a finger to his throat and moved it from one side to the other. “It felt like someone was slowly killing me. I swear it. Anyway, you and I should talk.”
“We are talking.” I turned in my seat to face him, feeling a spike of adrenaline that warned me something was coming. “Wait, why isn’t Sofia picking me up?”
“What, you don’t like it that it’s me giving you a lift?” he asked, humor lighting up his eyes as he attempted to hold back a laugh. “No, I know you were expecting her. I wanted to have a word with you before I hand you off to my daughter, though. You two have a lot to catch up on and a lot of time to make up for.”
There was a time I’d have suspected he was high for saying something like that, but once again, there was something softer about his expression. Nostalgic even.
“Okay, what did you want to talk about?” I asked. If he was going to insist on talking before I got to see my girl, he could bet everything he had that I was going to get through the conversation as fast as I could.
When we got to wherever he was taking me, I needed to see Sofia, and an unfinished conversation wasn’t going to stop me.
Charles nodded like he knew where my head was at. “We’ll need to figure out the details at a later stage, but I wanted to plant the seed. I know you’ve only just gotten a command, but I want to throw a wrench in the gears.”
“You do?” My mind ground to a halt. “What for?”
He caught my gaze in the rearview mirror when he stopped at a traffic light. “I want you to come work for me. I’ve been recruiting, and there’s no one I want on my team more than you.”
My jaw slackened. “You want me to leave the military?”
“Yes.” He kept his eyes on mine, searching while he spoke. “A job at the firm would mean you’d be home more than you would be away. Even when you had to leave, you would only be gone for a few days at a time. The longest you would be gone for the moment would be a week.”
Brows climbing as high as they could go, I practically gaped at the man. “Why would you offer me a job? Why now?”
“Because my daughter loves you,” he said without skipping a beat. “I know that you love her, too. You’d also be an asset for me to have around, so I’d be stupid not to do it. Plus, I have a feeling you’re going to want to be home more often than not for the foreseeable future.”
I frowned at him, struggling to make sense of all this. “I really missed Sofia. It would be great not to have to leave her for so long again, but I still don’t understand.”
“You will,” he replied confidently. “Just think about it. Discuss the offer with Sofia. I haven’t told her about it yet, but I won’t take offense if you turn me down.”
“Okay.”
He shifted the truck into gear, then smirked at me. “Right. That was the question I had for you. If memory serves, you had one you wanted to ask me, too?”
Oh, fuck. “Yeah, I do, but we don’t need to do it right now.”
“No, no,” he said in as close to a sing-song voice as I’d ever heard from him. “Now would do just fine.”
A lump sprang up in my throat. I tried to clear it away, but my voice still came out as a croak. “Oh, uh, okay. Fine. I wanted to ask for your blessing actually. I—”
Charles laughed, reaching out to pound me on the shoulder. “You can marry my daughter, Lincoln. You have my blessing.”
“Really?” My chin dropped as I tried to determine whether he was fucking with me. “You’re giving me your blessing that easily?”
“I’ve known this was coming for the last six months, son. I’m not stupid. I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and a lot to consider, and yes, you have my blessing.”
Relief rushed through me, knocking the air out of my lungs and making my head spin. But then Charles slowed the truck down outside of his house, waving at it with the flick of his hand.
“I’m glad we got all that sorted out. Now, I’m going to head out for a fishing trip for the weekend, so the house is yours.”
What the fuck is going on? I didn’t know what to say, but this was weird. I was also too eager to be with her to question it for much
longer.
“Thank you, sir. Thank you for picking me up and for everything else.” I was already opening my door.
Charles nodded. “Just do right by her, okay?”
“You got it.” I grinned, climbed out, and grabbed my bag from the back.
Before I’d even turned away from his vehicle, he gave me another wave and took off. I stared after the truck for a beat, still confused and a little overwhelmed by how he’d acted.
But then I remembered that my girl was right inside, and all the worries about her father’s sanity fled my mind. I jogged to the front door, finding it unlocked.
“Hello?” I called as I stepped inside, making sure to shut the door behind me. “Sofia? Baby, I’m here.”
I heard nothing, but as I took two steps into their house, I saw that every surface in their living room was covered in candles. The curtains over the windows had been drawn to accentuate the soft, flickering light, and the room smelled like vanilla and bergamot.
My heart went wild, but that was nothing compared to what it did when I heard a rustling behind me. I spun around to face the love of my life, taking in every detail of her before my brain could even give the signal to my feet to fucking move.
Her hair was a little longer, her eyes a little wider. She seemed nervous about something, her teeth tugging at her lower lip.
A white nightdress covered her body. As my gaze traveled lower, I realized what she was nervous about.
Instead of just her soft curves beneath the gauzy material, it also looked like she’d hidden a beach ball in front of her stomach. My eyes widened as everything clicked into place.
Our conversation that night before I’d made love to her. The surprise. Being reminded of how much I loved her every day. Charles’ job offer and his assumption that I’d want to be home more. The weird way he’d looked at me back in Iraq and when he’d picked me up from the airport.
Sofia was pregnant.
Before I even realized the command had reached them, my feet were moving toward her. I opened my arms and pulled her into them, only just noticing the massively wide smile that had lit up her face.
“Oh my god, baby,” I whispered as I held her as tightly as I could, nearly fainting from the relief of having her in my arms again. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to tell you in person,” she said, her voice muffled by my chest but her hard stomach pushing me away. “It didn’t seem right to tell you while you were gone, and especially not when I needed your head to be where you were and not here with us. Are you mad?”
“No, Sofia.” I buried my face in her hair, and for the first time in more than a decade, tears didn’t just well. They fell, wetting her hair beneath my cheek. “I’m so fucking happy. I just wish I could have been there when you found out and when you went to the doctor.”
“I made an appointment for tomorrow morning,” she said, pulling her head back to look into my eyes while staying in my arms. “I thought you might want to see your son.”
“My son?” The words were barely above a whisper, but that was the best I could do. My heart expanded to a size I would’ve thought was unhealthy before, immediately making space for a person I hadn’t even known existed just a minute ago. “Fuck, baby. I love you so much.”
“I love you, too.” She gave me a tentative smile. “You’re happy about this then?”
“Happy?” I practically choked on the word. “I’m ecstatic, babe. I’ve never felt like this in my entire life.”
“Good.” She took my hands and led me over to the couch. After pushing me down gently, she climbed into my lap and wound her arms around my shoulders. “I was hoping you’d be happy, but I just wasn’t sure, you know? I haven’t named him yet. I thought we could do it together.”
“Charles,” I said, not even needing a second to think about it. “It’s a boy, right? What do you think about Charles?”
“I love it,” she whispered, taking my bearded face in her hands and kissing me deeply.
I moaned into her mouth, so damn close to being sidetracked. But I knew I’d already wasted enough time, so I slowed the kiss until it stopped before covering her hands with mine. I waited until she looked into my eyes, sliding my fingers between hers as I held her gaze.
“I know this might seem sudden, but it’s not,” I started. “This is not how or when I planned on doing this, but it feels like the right time. I’ve already asked for your father’s blessing, so we’ve got that.”
Hazel eyes growing big, her grip tightened on my fingers as disbelief crept onto her features. “What do you mean you’ve got my father’s blessing? Are you…”
“Asking you to marry me? Yes. That’s exactly what I’m doing. I love you, Sofia. I’ll never stop loving you, and I’ll never stop loving little Charles. I’ve already ordered a ring. I probably should have picked it up first, but I—”
Sofia’s lips crashing into mine cut me off. She kissed me hard and fast before breaking the kiss to smile against my lips. “Imagine that. Plain old me making a tough SEAL ramble.”
“You’re not plain,” I said and leaned into her. “Are you going to put this tough SEAL out of his misery, or should I keep rambling?”
“I should probably let you stew in it a little,” she murmured, running her hands through my hair as she smiled back at me. “But I won’t. I love you, Lincoln. Of course, I’ll marry you.”
The feeling that ripped through me was indescribable. I’d thought I’d lost everything before I’d even met her, but life was, indeed, weird that way.
It turned out I’d needed those lows to reach new heights with her. Together, with her as a graduate and me as a consultant for her dad’s firm, nothing was impossible as long as we were together. I had a feeling we would be, though.
Forever. And for two or three more days after that.
The End.
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About the Author
Hey there. I'm Weston.
Have we met? No? Well, it’s time to end that tragedy.
I'm a former firefighter/EMS guy who's picked up the proverbial pen and started writing bad boy romance stories. I co-write with my sister, Ali Parker, but live in Texas with my wife, my two little boys, a dog, and a turtle.
Yep. A turtle. You read that right. Don’t be jealous.
You're going to find Billionaires, Bad Boys, Military Guys, and loads of sexiness. Something for everyone hopefully. I'd love to connect with you. Check out the links below and come find me.
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The Parker’s Wicked Playground
Let Freedom Ring
Copyright © 2020 by Weston Parker
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
The novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and plot are all either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons – living or dead – is purely coincidental.
First Edition.
Editor: Eric Martinez
Cover Designer: Ryn Katryn Digital Art
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Let Freedom Ring Page 27