Needing Nevaeh

by Terri Anne Browning

  The housekeeper announced us, then left the room to retrieve refreshments while my mother stood, shock on her face as she crossed the room to greet us. “Darling,” she murmured. “What a wonderful surprise.”

  I barely refrained from rolling my eyes, and I kissed her cheek. “Lyla and Mia couldn’t come to the party Friday night, and they wondered if you needed any help planning the wedding.”

  I had to force myself not to spit the word “wedding” at her, instead giving her a tight smile.

  “How wonderful, darling.” Turning with a beaming smile, she embraced Lyla then shook Mia’s hand. “It’s so good to see you again, dear.” Her eyes widened when she took in Mia’s sickly appearance and the sweat beading her forehead and upper lip. “Are you feeling well?”

  Mia swallowed and gave my mother a grim smile. “Morning sickness is the devil,” she said with a weak laugh. “It’s not contained to just the morning, so I have it all day long.”

  “Oh goodness,” Julia Hamilton exclaimed as she came over to join us. “Darcy had it for weeks until we got her in to see her OB/GYN. Isn’t that right, Braxton?”

  My eyes widened at her asking me about her daughter’s morning sickness. How the fuck would I know when I hadn’t even seen her daughter in years up until a few days ago?

  But it confirmed one thing.

  Darcy was pregnant.

  And apparently her mother thought I was the father.

  What the actual fuck?

  “I just found out that I’m pregnant,” Mia told her. “So I haven’t found a doctor yet. Would you mind suggesting your daughter’s?”

  “Not at all.” Walking back over to the table, she picked up her phone and came back to us. “Here it is, dear. Tell them Julia Hamilton recommended you, and they will fit you in immediately.”

  “Auntie Belinda,” Lyla said, putting her arm through my mother’s. “What can we help you with? I want to make sure Braxton’s wedding is perfect, and since he doesn’t have any sisters, Mia and I want to step in and help you with all the details.”

  “That is so kind of you two, darling. Come and look at these beautiful invitations Julia and I are considering…”

  For the next hour, the four of them talked about the wedding, and I had to grit my teeth and bite my tongue to keep from yelling at my mother that there wasn’t going to be a fucking wedding. Instead, I texted Barrick to ask him to pick up Nevaeh from her class and make sure she got to her next one safely.

  By the time the girls made an excuse to leave, I was silently seething.

  Darcy really was pregnant and using this wedding to push her unborn baby off on me. Did she really think she could get away with that and I would just fall in line with her plans?

  Fuck that shit.

  “We need to find out who the father is,” Lyla said as we rode back to the house. “I think we should put a tail on her.”

  “Whatever. Just do it. I want to know everything she does ASAP before I confront her.”

  Mia leaned forward to look at me over my cousin. “What do we tell Nevaeh?”

  “Fuck,” I groaned, remembering my promise not to keep anything from her. But I doubted she would be happy to go along with Lyla’s plan for me to play excited groom for my mother and Julia Hamilton until I figured out the rest of Darcy’s game. With finals only a week away and her dad’s illness and upcoming surgery, I didn’t want to add more stress to her already heavy load. “Mia, what do I do?”

  Her brow scrunched up for a moment before she blew out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t think we should tell her about any of this yet. She seems so fragile right now. I hate keeping her in the dark about anything, but after seeing how she was on the flight home and then yesterday…”

  “Yeah,” I muttered, my gut twisting in dread. “After next week, we will be back in California until the holidays are over. I can tell her everything once she’s done with finals and has had time to chill for a few days.”

  Both Mia and Lyla agreed it was the best plan for the moment, but even though it was mine, I wasn’t sure if it was actually the right thing to do. If Nevaeh found out I was keeping this from her, she was going to be pissed—and maybe hurt. Which I couldn’t fucking stand. No matter what kind of pain my kitten experienced, it drove me crazy. And if I was the one to cause that pain…

  It would kill me.

  Chapter 16

  Nevaeh

  Mom taught me to cook from a young age. She loved it when my sisters and brother and I helped her in the kitchen. Of everyone in our extended family, I liked to think my parents and siblings were the closest unit. When I was a kid, they would take me everywhere with them, and even though Daddy had a crazy-busy schedule and they could have easily afforded a dozen nannies, they never used one.

  Cooking was one of my favorite things to do, especially when I was missing Mom. Mia and the guys loved that I could and would cook for them. Otherwise, it was breakfast foods or takeout for every meal.

  Pulling out the freshly baked cookies from the oven was like starting a stampede. I heard Braxton’s and Barrick’s feet stomping as they sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed themselves one before I’d even placed the tray of cookies on top of the stove.

  “Fuck, if I didn’t love Mia so much, I would marry you, Nevaeh,” Barrick told me around his huge bite of scalding-hot cookie.

  I laughed, because that was what he said every time I baked something decadent. Transferring the rest of the cookies to the cooling rack, I turned to find Braxton leaning against the sink beside the refrigerator. He was eating his cookie a lot slower than his cousin, which made me stop and take better notice of him.

  By this point, he should have been working on his second or third cookie, despite their being so hot he would burn his tongue on the melted chocolate chips. He didn’t care, though, because he would wash them down with ice-cold milk and keep eating until either the cookies ran out or I took them away from him. Instead, he just stood there, barely nibbling on the first cookie that was rapidly cooking in his hand, a deep frown between his brows, almost as if he were in pain.

  Concerned, I crossed to him and touched his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?” He didn’t feel hot, and his skin wasn’t pale. Yet I got the feeling something was seriously off with him.

  He caught my hand and pulled it down so he could press my palm to the center of his chest. “I love you.”

  Everything inside me melted. Stepping closer to him, I wrapped my free arm around his waist. Since the first “I love you,” he’d been saying it often, and every single time felt just as good as that first one. I was never going to get tired of him saying those three words. “I love you back,” I told him. “But that doesn’t explain why you are barely eating your favorite cookie.”

  “Kitten, you’re my favorite cookie, and I would rather eat you than anything else.” With a heated, wicked gleam in his eyes, he stuffed the rest of his cookie into his mouth and swept me up into his arms. I barely had time to realize Barrick had left the kitchen before Braxton was carrying me to my room.

  Our room, now that Braxton had moved his things in there. Sasha lifted her head off the bed when we walked in. “Sasha, out,” he commanded gently, and she slowly climbed off our bed and trotted out of the room.

  Shutting the door with his foot, he carried me to the bed and set me down carefully. It was as if he thought I might break, and that made me smile even as he was lowering his head to devour my mouth.

  “Love you so fucking much, Kitten,” he said with a groan as he started pulling off my clothes. “Never going to let you go.”

  “Good.” That single word turned into a moan when he pushed my legs apart roughly and lowered his head. His lips latched on to my clit, and for a long, long while, he didn’t treat me like I was fragile at all.

  Hours later, I lifted my head from his chest. He didn’t look like he was in pain any longer, but there was a pensiveness to him that told me he wasn’t completely with me in the postcoital blissfulness I was curre
ntly enjoying while he rubbed his callused fingers up and down my naked back.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, worried about him. Braxton didn’t go dark often, but when he did, he drew into himself. I hated the distance I felt him putting between himself and everyone else.

  “Hmm?” Blinking a few times, he finally focused his eyes on me, and whatever he was thinking was shoved into a box, locked away from me. I didn’t want anything between us, but I would let him keep those deep thoughts to himself until he was ready to talk to me about it. I knew he didn’t like to talk about the accident that had cost him his leg, and I wouldn’t force him to relive it if he didn’t want to.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, pushing my hair back from my face. “You are so beautiful, Nevaeh. Inside and out. Waiting for you was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do but worth every second now that I get to hold you like this.”

  “The hardest? Really? Even more so than your accident?”

  He nodded. “Losing my leg was bad, baby. But the last two years, sitting beside you without getting to touch you the way I wanted, seeing your smiling face without being able to kiss these perfect lips, that was the worst kind of torture. In my heart, we have been together from the moment I saw you. We just had to wait before telling the world.”

  Smiling happily, I dropped my head back onto his chest. “You keep calling me perfect, but I’m not. No one is.”

  “You are,” he argued stubbornly. “And you’ll never convince me otherwise.”

  Laughing, I snuggled against him more, wanting to burrow into him completely so that we were always connected. “Okay, I’m not going to try to change your mind anymore. I like that I’m perfect in your eyes.”

  We stayed like that for several more minutes until I heard his stomach growl. Looking up at him, I grinned. “You’re probably all out of luck with the cookies. We left them unsupervised hours ago. Barrick no doubt finished them off long before Mia even had to go to work.” I stood up unashamedly, loving the way his breath hitched when he watched me walk to the closet to find something to wear. “Do you want me to make dinner or go out for something?”

  “All I want is standing right in front of me,” he said, and I glanced at him over my shoulder. His dark eyes were on my ass, and I gave it a little shake, causing him to groan like he was in pure agony. “Kitten, come back to bed.”

  Laughing happily, I pulled on a bra and then one of his shirts that was hanging beside mine. “No way. I’m starving. But after we eat, you can have all the dessert you want,” I promised with a wink.

  “Compromise,” he said, sitting up. “I order pizza and whatever else you want. And you come back to bed until it gets here. Then, we eat in bed, and after, I get to enjoy as much of my dessert as I want all night long.”

  My body turned hot with renewed desire at his suggestion. Glancing down at the T-shirt I’d pulled on, I shrugged and pulled it back over my head. Tossing the bra on the floor of the closet, I walked back to him and crawled up the end of the bed toward him.

  His hungry gaze devoured me as I took my time until I was straddling his hips. “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Collins. One I simply cannot refuse.”

  Chapter 17

  Nevaeh

  I walked out of my last final of the semester with a throbbing headache and an intense need for coffee and something decadent. Tests were normally nothing for me, but with all that was going on with Daddy, it took everything I had to focus on the exams.

  My fingers felt chilled when I touched them to my temples as I stepped out into the snowy late afternoon. Braxton wasn’t waiting on me since he had his own finals to finish, so I headed straight for the campus café without glancing around for him. As I walked, I turned on my phone and thought about everything I still needed to pack for the trip home the following day.

  PopPop was supposed to meet me at the airport since Mia wasn’t flying home until closer to Christmas. Luckily, she’d gotten an appointment with a reputable local OB/GYN the week before, and after a few days of following his advice, her morning sickness was starting to become manageable. I’d been worried about her, because for a few days, she hadn’t even been able to keep down liquids for long. Barrick took her to the emergency room at one point the day before she saw her doctor just for IV fluids.

  After stopping at the café for a large cup of my favorite coffee, I walked home. It felt strange being without Braxton, lonely. I missed him even though I’d just seen him a little over two hours before, and I knew I would see him again by dinner. Thankfully, he was going to fly with me to California the next day, but he would be at Mia’s parents’ house instead of mine.

  Mom knew I was with Braxton now, but neither of us had mentioned it to Daddy yet. I didn’t want to know his reaction to our new relationship, and I figured he would freak the hell out if I asked him if my boyfriend could stay with us—or actually sleep in my room.

  By the time I got to the house, I already had my keys out. I was freezing despite the thick winter coat I was wearing and the hot coffee I was still sipping. Putting the key in the lock, I started to open the door when a car I didn’t recognize pulled up in the driveway.

  Frowning, I watched as a blonde got out of the driver’s side. Her eyes skimmed dispassionately over the house before landing on me. Dressed in a black designer jumpsuit that showcased her willowy body and an open wool trench coat, she walked with grace in her gold heels despite the ice that was forming on the concrete walkway. I knew exactly who she was from the picture of Braxton and his parents taken the week before.

  Darcy Hamilton.

  Something darkened in her eyes as she came up the walkway toward me. “Hi, is Brax home, by any chance? I was supposed to meet him for coffee earlier, but he was a no-show.”

  Pushing the door open, I dropped my backpack inside the house and turned to face her. “No, he’s taking his Communications final. Would you like me to give him a message?”

  She stopped only a few feet from me, thrusting her hands into her coat and glancing over my shoulder like she expected Braxton to pop up behind me at any moment. “Yeah, you can tell him to call me. We have a lot to sort out before the wedding next month.”

  “You’re delusional,” I told her, my anger spiking rapidly. “There is no way in hell he is going to marry you. He’s with me.” My phone started ringing, and I pulled it out of my pocket. Seeing it was my mom, I answered it. “Hey, Mom—”

  “Did you finish your final?” she asked, her voice sounding strained.

  “Yes. About thirty minutes ago.” Darcy shifted, distracting me. “You should leave,” I told her, pulling my mouth away from the phone. “Before I call the cops. Although having your crazy ass committed sounds appealing as hell right now.”

  “Nevaeh, I need to tell you something,” Mom was saying in my ear while Darcy pulled an elegant envelope out of her pocket and thrust it toward me.

  “Here, since you don’t believe me about the wedding, take a look for yourself.” She pushed it against my chest when I just glared down at it.

  “Nevi, honey, something happened this morning. Daddy…” I suddenly realized Mom’s voice was full of tears even as my fingers folded around the envelope.

  Feeling as if I was having a weird out-of-body experience, I listened to Mom telling me that Daddy was in the hospital and that his surgery was being moved up. That as soon as they got him and Uncle Shane prepped, they would be doing the transplant.

  While I heard it all, I felt the tears start to flow because I wasn’t there to tell Daddy I loved him before he went into surgery. I opened the envelope with fingers that trembled and pulled out a wedding invitation.

  “Braxton and his cousin Lyla picked out that invitation with my mother and his last week. I think Mother even said his cousin’s pregnant fiancée was with them and agreed this was the perfect invitation for our wedding.” She smiled coldly, making me want to scratch up her pretty face. “You can keep that, sweetie. Brax and I would just love it if you could make it.” Sh
e turned to walk back to her car but paused at the end of the walkway. “And no worries about you being with him. I don’t mind sharing him. All guys have a mistress these days, right?”

  Lifting her hand, she gave me a small wave and, still laughing, walked to her car.

  “Nevaeh, sweetheart.” Mom’s voice penetrated my mind as Darcy pulled out of the driveway. Her voice was so full of emotion, I doubted she’d heard or even realized I’d had company. “Aunt Emmie has sent a car for you, and it will be there soon. Don’t worry about packing anything. Mia will bring your things when she comes. Just grab your ID. You’re on the first flight home, and it leaves in less than an hour. Someone from security will meet you at the entrance to the airport and escort you to the gate so you don’t have to worry about missing your plane.”

  Closing my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath and tried to pull myself together mentally. There would be plenty of time later to digest what Darcy had just told me. For now, I had to get to the airport and home. I didn’t remember half of what Mom said, so I didn’t know why Daddy was having emergency surgery, but I did know my family needed me a hell of a lot more than Braxton did.

  “Baby, please say something. You’re starting to scare me,” Mom cried.

  “Tell Daddy I love him,” I choked out, each word feeling like it was being torn from my throat. “Give him a kiss for me. Tell him…”

  What? Not to die?

  Tears poured from my eyes at that horrible thought, and I choked back a sob. “Tell Uncle Shane I love him too.”

  “I will, honey. And you know they both love you. Just be strong, my baby. Everything will be okay.”

  “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Mom,” I told her and hung up before I completely broke down. She didn’t need to hear me sobbing like a shattered little girl when she already had so many other things to worry about.

  Crumpling the wedding invitation in my fist, I reached back into the house for my backpack. It had my wallet in it, and apparently, that was all I needed. As I shut and locked the front door again, a black sedan pulled up at the end of the driveway. A man in a suit stepped out, sympathy on his face when he saw my tears.