“Is this the same place you brought me to the first time?”
“It is.” I waited for her to look back at me, and when she did, I cupped the sides of her face. “I could have taken you to a fancy restaurant, I could have taken you to the carnival, or I could have taken you to see a movie. But none of those things would hold what this diner and those pancakes do.” I pulled in a breath and swiped away a tear as it rolled down her cheek. “You like pancakes?” I asked, repeating the same words I’d asked all that time ago.
She lifted her hand, covering mine as a chuckle slipped from between her lips. “Who doesn’t like pancakes?”
“Wanna come get some with me?”
She leaned forward and pressed her lips against mine. “I’d get pancakes with you every day for the rest of my life,” she whispered.
And that was good enough for me.
Chapter Thirty-Five
LOLA
I bounced my foot as I bit the side of my thumb and glanced around. I was on edge, the nerves running rampant throughout my body. The last time I was sitting in this office I had Jan next to me and I didn’t know how I was going to pay to see the doctor. This time I had—
“Will you stop?” Brody said, his voice low as he placed his hand on my knee to stop me bouncing it. “You’re making me more nervous.”
“I can’t help it,” I rushed out. I turned to face him, hating he exuded calm while I was over here falling apart. “I haven’t seen the baby since it was just a blob. And, according to the internet, it’s the size of a bell pepper now.” I placed my hand on my small bump.
“So it’s no longer called blob?” Brody asked, his brow rising. “We gotta call it bell pepper?”
“Bell for short,” I told him.
He chuckled and moved his hand up to my thigh, squeezing once. “Like the princess?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Like the rich people use to call their butlers.”
“Lola Martin?”
My stomach dipped, and my eyes widened. I’d done way too much research on pregnancy and all the things that could happen. I was scared of what we’d see at this ultrasound, but I knew if anything happened, we’d deal with it—together.
Brody stood first and held his hand out to me. I placed mine in his, letting him lead me to the door where the nurse stood. The bright lights in the hallway flashed around me as we followed the nurse into a room. She reeled off what would happen at this appointment: blood tests, an ultrasound, and then the doctor coming to talk to us, but all I could do was nod until she left the room.
Brody held up the gown thing I had to change into and waited as I pulled most of my clothes off. My boobs were bursting out of my bra, and if the flash in his eyes was anything to go by, he liked it. I couldn’t think about that right now, though. All I could do was concentrate on getting dressed and waiting for the nurse to return.
She whooshed back into the room when I was on the bed, a tray of some kind in her hand, and then she was poking at me, drawing blood from my veins with a smile on her face.
“Are you excited to see baby again?” she asked, her blond hair covering half of her face as she looked down at the blood filling the tube.
“Yeah,” I croaked out, my voice apparently having given up.
“You’ll be able to find the sex out today if luck is on your side,” she commented, and I darted my attention to Brody. We hadn’t spoken about finding out early, but now that the option was on the table…
“Do you want to find out?” I asked him, wincing as the nurse pulled the needle from my arm and pressed some gauze against the pinprick wound.
“It’s up to you,” he replied.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not making this decision. You decide.”
“Let’s find out.” He grinned. “That way we’ll know what color to paint the nursery at home.”
The nursery.
It had been just over a week since he asked if I’d move in with him, and he hadn’t dropped a hint since. Part of me wondered if he didn’t want me to anymore, but the word “home” made me realize he was still waiting for my answer.
My apartment was on a three-month rolling lease, so technically, I only had a couple of weeks until it rolled into the next three months. I had to make a decision, but it wasn’t really a decision, was it? I knew the answer to his question when he first asked. I just didn’t want to rush into it.
The nurse left the room, leaving only the two of us in here, and I opened my mouth, about to tell him I’d move in, but the door opened again, and the same sonographer from last time walked in.
“Nice to see you again, Lola.” She flicked her gaze over at Brody as she shut the door. “Is this the baby’s dad?”
Brody stepped forward and enveloped my hand in his as he stood next to me. “I am.”
She nodded. “I’m Joy Grey.” She sat down on her little stool, clicking away at the keyboard, and then pulled a weirdly shaped device off the side. “It’s external this time.” She squirted some gel onto it and moved closer to me, lifting up the gown and pressing it against my stomach. I was already in desperate need to pee, and when she pressed harder, I nearly groaned. The cold gel had goose bumps spreading over my skin, and I gripped Brody’s hand.
“This is baby’s head,” she said, clicking the buttons on her keyboard and taking measurements. “Two arms, two legs.” She paused, zoomed in, and looked over at us. “Are we finding out the sex today?”
“Yes,” we both answered at the same time.
My heart was racing in my chest as she zoomed in closer, a smile spreading on her face. “Looks like you’ll be buying lots of pink things.”
“It’s a girl?” I breathed out. “Bell pepper is a girl?”
She laughed and clicked more buttons, pressing harder on my stomach as she did. “She is.” She clicked another button, and then the echo of the heartbeat surrounded us.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and stared up at Brody. His gaze was focused intently on the screen, a sheen of tears misting his eyes. “Brody.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he flicked his gaze down to me. “We’re having a baby.”
“We are,” I replied, smiling wide and not caring that tears were falling from my eyes like a river. “Little Bell.”
“Like the princess,” he replied. “Belle Easton.”
I choked on a sob, knowing this was right. Her name, me and Brody, everything. Everything was right, and unlike before, I wasn’t waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was basking in the happiness that surrounded us.
“Belle Easton,” I repeated.
The sonographer pulled the device off my stomach and printed out a few pictures, handing them to Brody as I wiped the gel off my stomach. “The doctor will be in shortly,” she said. “You have a healthy baby girl growing just the way she should.” She stood and patted my arm. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you,” I croaked out, staring at her as she walked out of the room.
“She’s perfect,” Brody said, handing me the images. “Just like her mama.”
Mama. I was going to be a mom, and it was the single greatest achievement I would do in my entire life.
BRODY
“Well?” Jord asked as I walked into my office. “Are we gonna have a football player or a cheerleader?”
I grinned, looking at each of them in turn. Jord was standing next to the sofa against the office wall, Kyle was sprawled out on it, and Ryan stood by the window. They were waiting like it was the last few minutes in the playoffs, the excitement oozing off them.
“A princess,” I answered instead because the images I had of cheerleaders when I was in high school wasn’t what I envisioned when I thought about my baby girl.
“Shit,” Kyle cursed, standing up. “We need a game plan.”
“Yep,” Ryan answered, stepping forward.
“I got one already,” Jord told them, pressing his hand against his gun. “Three uncles and a dad who can lock away any boy that tries
to touch her. We’re sorted.”
I shook my head but didn’t disagree with them as I walked over to my desk, placing the picture next to the one of Cade. “And a big brother,” I reminded them. “She’ll have her big brother too.”
“I can see we’re all gonna be real busy for the next twenty years,” Jord gritted out. “What did Cade say?”
“Haven’t told him yet.” I couldn’t stop staring at the ultrasound picture. She was the single most perfect grainy black-and-white image known to man. “We’re gonna tell him tonight.”
“Baby shower?” Kyle asked. “Baby showers are the next best thing to hooking up at weddings.”
“Jesus.” Ryan punched him in the arm. “Do you ever not think about getting laid?”
“Do you ever think of getting laid?” he asked, his brow rising.
Their bantering back and forth continued on, but now all I could think about was a baby shower. When Moira was pregnant with Cade, she’d had her mom throw her one, and all her friends came and celebrated with her. But when I thought about Lola, I could count the number of people on two hands who would attend, and ninety percent of them would be male.
My stomach sank, sadness washing over me. I plucked my cell out of my pocket and found Sal’s number. It rang several times, and then he answered, “Hello?”
“Sal.”
“Brody,” he grunted down the line. “What do you want?”
“Jan’s number.” I was straight to the point. There wasn’t any use in making small talk because neither of us was good at it.
“The hell you want that for?” he asked.
“I need to see if she’ll help with a baby shower, I—”
“Already in motion,” he answered, and then the line went dead.
“The fuck.” I stared down at my cell, blinking several times.
“He hang up on you?” Jord asked. I looked up at him and frowned. “Probably thought you were after his woman.”
“Him and Jan?” I asked. Sal hadn’t said anything to me about them, but then, I hadn’t really spent any time with him lately.
Jord shrugged. “I get that kinda vibe.” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Anyway, looking forward to your last day of not being the big, bad boss?” He grinned over at Ryan and Kyle. “I say we put super glue on Aaron’s chair and—”
“And I think you all need to get your asses down to Cresthill,” Aaron growled as he walked into my office. It was just after lunch, and his tie was already skewed to the side, his top button undone, and his hair a mess from running his hands through it.
“What?” I frowned and stepped from around my desk. “Why?”
“Quinn Baltera was found this morning.” His chest expanded on a breath. “With a single bullet wound to the head.”
I planted my hands on my hips. “Fuck.” We hadn’t heard anything from Cresthill since Hut’s funeral, and Quinn had made sure to stay away from both Lola and me that day. What the hell had happened? I nodded and stepped toward Aaron. “We’ll go check it out.”
“Should have known my last day wouldn’t go by without something happening,” he groaned. “Keep me informed.”
“Will do.” We filed out of my office, all the jokes and baby talk pushed to the side. We were in work mode, and when something like this happened, it was all you focused on. If Quinn was dead, then we had to get to the bottom of it.
We silently made our way out of the building and split into two cars—Jord with me, and Ryan and Kyle together. We didn’t know what had happened, and we never came up with any conclusions, not until we knew what we were faced with. What I didn’t expect was for Quinn to be laid out in the middle of the road outside Hut’s house. Aaron had said a single shot to the head, but he’d left out the fact that he was naked with “traitor” carved into his chest.
“Jesus Christ,” I snapped, looking away from his body as they covered him back up. “Do we have any witnesses?” I asked one of the detectives on the scene.
He sneered at me. “Don’t know what the DEA is doing here. This ain’t your juris—”
“You wanna start that game?” I asked, already fed up with how they were treating the crime scene. They hadn’t even cornered off the area. “I trump you every day of the week. Now, witnesses.”
He huffed out a breath, his eyes narrowed on me. “We don’t have any, but my officers are looking at surveillance in the surrounding area back at the precinct.”
“Good. I’ll head there now.” I pointed at Ryan and Kyle. “Those two are staying here, keep them informed.”
I walked away from the crime scene, my gaze batting over to Hut’s house. There was a time when that was the main place to be, but it looked sad and empty now, much like the people who used to live there. We’d been successful in our operation, but I couldn’t help thinking of the number of people who had been hurt in the process.
“This ain’t good,” Jord said when we were back in my car and heading to the local precinct. “Traitor? That could only mean Hut, right? But Hut is gone so—”
“Let’s just wait and see what we find here,” I told him, pulling into the precinct and double parking. I didn’t have time to find a space, and I didn’t give a flying fuck if they bitched about it. We were here to do a job.
We headed inside, and after some back-and-forth, finally got into the room where a detective was going over surveillance. “You found anything?” I asked.
“Just this,” he said, bringing up some footage and rewinding it. “I can’t get a good look at the face, only the back of him and the way he walks. But he’s definitely holding a gun, and the time stamp matches up with the statements of when the gunshot was heard.”
I nodded, pushing closer to the screen. “Rewind that again.” I narrowed my eyes, looking for any kind of trait I knew, but all he had was a slight limp. There was nothing significant about the grainy image, and that just meant we were trying to find a needle in a haystack.
“Keep searching,” I told him. “You find anything, you forward it to me.” I pulled out my card, handed it to him, and walked out of the room. This wasn’t good. It was really fuckin' bad.
“What do you think?” Jord asked, darting his attention left and right to make sure no one was around.
“I don’t know.” I huffed out a breath. “The only people who Quinn was involved with were Hut and the crew. Ted is dead, Ford is away at the academy, Jace is missing, and Hut is dead.”
Jord frowned, staring down at the floor. “What about that Carson guy?”
“Possible,” I replied. “Especially after what happened with Lola. He could be looking to take them all out, but it’s not his style. If he were going to do it, he wouldn’t take the time to carve traitor into his chest.”
“True.”
“Call Ford’s training officer. Make sure he’s still out of state and doing what he’s meant to be doing. Put him on alert just in case. He’s the last member of the crew, which means he’s a potential target.”
“On it,” Jord said, pulling his cell out and walking away.
The day had started out better than any other, but it had gone to complete shit in a matter of hours.
Chapter Thirty-Six
LOLA
I’d always been waiting for the bad to take me down right after the good had made an appearance. I was so used to it being that way, that just living in the moment was hard to do. It was getting easier, though.
Having Brody at the ultrasound with me was something I wasn’t sure would happen, but we were in a place of peace, a place where we were both happy. Now all I needed to do was tell him I would move in with him and take that final step. It was a step I was scared to take, but nothing ever came if you didn’t take risks, and Brody was a risk I was willing to bet on.
Working at the diner and pulling doubles was getting harder and harder to do the further along I got, but at least I wasn’t running for the bathroom several times a day now. Instead, tiredness would slam into me when I least expected
it, and my feet would swell to ridiculous sizes after being on them for six hours. I was thankful Brody was picking me up when my shift finished because the thought of walking home didn’t appeal to me at all.
I grabbed my notepad and moved over to a booth four women had just sat down in, smiling up a storm even though it felt like hard work to do so.
“Can I take your order?” I placed my small pencil against the paper and glanced up, the smile dropping off my face as soon as I did.
“I see the whore is still working here,” Moira sneered, flipping her perfectly styled hair over her shoulder. “Sal really needs to background check his staff.”
I hadn’t seen Moira since the day she’d confronted me, and that had been nearly three months ago. A lot had happened in that time. A lot had changed. Mainly me.
The woman sitting opposite her clutched her necklace, her eyes narrowing on me as she looked me up and down. “You can practically smell the Cresthill scum on her.” Her nose wrinkled, and I pulled in a calming breath. I would not let these women get to me. I would not— “Do they even have running water?”
“I’ll come back when you’ve taken a look at the menu.”
I started to turn, but halted when Moira screeched, “Are you refusing to serve us?” Fuck. Me.
“No,” I said carefully, turning back to face the table. This was not their usual scene, that much was clear. They were all wearing clothes more suited to a country club, so I could only guess they’d come here for me and not the food. “Are you ready to order?”
“Did we say we were ready?” the woman opposite her asked, and I was starting to realize these two were the more vocal of the foursome.
“If you’re not, then I can come back—”
“We’re ready,” the woman closest to me with auburn hair said. “I’ll take the omelet and salad.”
I wrote it down, and thankfully, they all reeled off what they wanted in turn, letting me make a hasty exit away from them. I’d been to hell and back—quite literally—so I wouldn’t allow a gaggle of bitchy women to get to me, but I could take the verbal shit from her. I understood she was hurting, and that her husband had done the unimaginable. I hadn’t known who he was, but I did now, and for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to regret it.
Fallen Duet: Brody & Lola: Free Fall & Down Fall (Easton Family Duet Boxsets Book 1) Page 38