“All day?”
She looked at him and narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”
“We’re going to have the kids all day long?”
“Yes, Justin. All day. We’ll have the older kids along with another couple, so there will be plenty of eyes to watch them. We agreed the babies would stay at the house and Ember said their housekeeper has nieces that would help in the evenings so we adults can lounge around the pool and have cocktails. Besides, we can go snorkeling with the older kids. It will be fun.”
Justin rubbed the back of his neck. He loved his brothers’ and sister’s kids, but he had zero experience being a supervisory element for anything under the age of 18, as in adults. “Uh, okay.”
Dani put the computer down and rounded the couch toward him. “What’s wrong?”
“What if I break one or something?” He dropped his head back and sighed audibly. “Kids break, don’t they?”
“No, children don’t break. I’ll be there along with one of your brothers or sisters.” Dani wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Great, it would be my luck we’ll pull the short stick and end up with Jade and Nic.” He could just picture it now. Jade teaching the kids how to throw punches and how to sneak up on someone and throw them to the ground.
“Nic loves kids, and he’s great with them. You handle an international corporation, base jump off mountains, swim with sharks, and do things we don’t talk about. A handful of kids are nothing.” She smiled up at him.
“Handful? Have you seen the tribe the Kings and Marshalls have started?” He did a mental count. “If you don’t count the babies, there are eight ankle biters. Eight. Even if we have another couple with us that is two kids per person to watch in the water. What if they drown?”
“Justin, I promise we won’t break anyone or let anyone drown.”
Her shoulders moved up and down under his hands. He glared down at her. “I can’t believe you’re laughing at me.”
“I can’t believe you’re being a baby about this.”
“Oh, no, not fair, I’m not being a baby.” He wasn’t. He was being cautious. Which, all things considered, wasn’t a word that he applied to himself. Ever.
She stepped away from him and walked backward toward the hall that led to the bedroom. “Right, you’re not being a baby. You’re being a… coward.” She lifted her eyebrows at him and slid the zipper of her wetsuit down as far as it would go. Fuck, she was gloriously naked underneath all that pink neoprene.
“Coward?” He stalked forward while pulling his suit jacket off.
“Mmm…” She slipped out of the arms of the suit and again walked backward.
He pulled his silk tie off and unfastened his cufflinks as he pursued her down the long hallway. By the time they’d played cat and mouse into their bedroom, he’d unfastened the buttons of his linen shirt and pulled the tails from his slacks. Dani turned around and slid the wetsuit from her body, revealing all her glorious skin. He was behind her in a moment, wrapping her in his arms.
“I am many things, but never a coward.” He leaned in and gently bit the juncture of her neck and shoulder.
“Ah… admit it, you’re afraid of those kids.”
“Never.”
“Really?” She spun in his arms and found his belt buckle. She undid the fastener as she stared up at him.
“Really.”
“Then maybe we should consider having one of our own.”
He settled his hands on her waist. “I thought…” She reached in his slacks and under the waistband of his boxers.
“Use your words, King.” She cupped his shaft and stroked it from base to tip.
He wrapped his arms around her and captured her lips. He craved his woman, needed her in ways he still couldn’t comprehend. When she ended the kiss, she sighed, “Okay, no words.”
Keeping her in his arms, he moved her backward toward the bed. He leaned over, half pushing, half placing her on the bed. Her legs came up, and he grabbed them, pulling her ass to the edge of the bed. He entered her and bent over her, pinning her to the mattress. “You shouldn’t tease me.” He withdrew and slammed into her. “I face my fears. Kids included.”
“I know.” She panted the words and pulled him down for a kiss. He let her lead the kiss while his hips pumped hard and fast. She was tight and wet, the heat and clinging slide into and out of her body taking him precariously close to orgasm too damn fast. He lifted slightly from the kiss to breathe.
“God, so good. So good.” Dani’s breathless words against his lips. He repositioned his arms so they were tucked under her, grabbed her shoulders, and used the brace against her body for more leverage. He stared at her, still mesmerized by the way her body reacted to him, the blush that spread from her chest up her neck and to her face as she neared her climax. He’d watched her countless times, and each time they made love, he found something new to admire. She arched under him and grabbed his shoulders. He adjusted and thrust harder, knowing they both were close. Her body tightened around him. He stared as her eyes closed and her body contracted around him. He pulled her tight against him and bucked into her, stilling only after he found his release.
Her hands trailed over his upper back. He lifted away from her, stopping to kiss her soft lips. They both crawled to the middle of the king-sized bed and collapsed, wrapped in each other’s arms. He pulled his hand through her waves of hair and sighed, “I’m not afraid of children.”
Her laughter bubbled around them. “I know. How else was I going to get you to stalk me down the hallway and take me like a caveman?”
He lifted away from her. “Seriously? How about saying, ‘Hey, I want caveman sex’?”
Dani laughed again. “Duly noted. Caveman sex. Maybe we can have a code word for that. It would be awkward in a crowd.”
He chuckled and dropped back down to the bed and pulled her on top of his chest. “Yeah, like Neanderthal or sabretooth tiger.”
Dani shook her head. “Too hard to work into a conversation. Oh! I could just call you Tiger.”
“Tiger, huh?”
“Yeah.” She smiled wide and lifted her eyebrows a couple times. “But I was serious. Maybe we could think about starting our own family.”
He stared at her for a moment, letting the sincerity of her words cover him. He blinked back the surprise. “Starting a family would mean no more adventures.” They’d spent most of their lives together finding the next extreme event to take part in. They were self-admitted adrenaline junkies and unapologetic in those pursuits.
“I’ve been thinking about that. We are extremely conscientious. We have the best safety gear money can buy. The likelihood of us getting hit by lightning, or heck, a bus or a car is higher than us getting hurt doing the things we train for months to do.”
He pushed her hair back from her face. “I want a family with you.”
“But…” She cocked her head and waited.
“But I’m not sure.” There. He’d said it. “What if something happens to me?”
Dani played with the hair on his chest. “You mean like what happened to your father?”
He nodded. “My dad left my mom with eight kids.”
“Well, first off, we are not having eight kids.” Dani smiled down at him. “How about we start with one?”
He gave a half-hearted smile. “Point taken.”
She shimmied up his body and dropped her elbows by his head, making direct eye contact with him. “No one knows the future. We could live to be a hundred or we could die tomorrow. I’m positive you’d make a wonderful father. I’ve seen you with your nieces and nephews.”
He held her eyes but shook his head slightly. “You can’t know that.”
She smiled down at him. “Just like you can’t know you won’t be. Look, I’m not trying to rush you into anything. Take all the time you need. If you think about it and you’re still not sure or you don’t want to have kids yet, that’s fine. Starting a family isn’t something one of
us decides. We both need to be ready.”
“How did I ever get so lucky?” He wrapped his hand behind her neck and brought her down for a kiss.
She pulled away and whispered against his lips, “We weren’t lucky, Mr. King. What we have—it was destiny.”
Chapter 7
Zane opened the last cabinet in the bathroom. Not there. Damn it, he’d bought extra toothpaste. He remembered it distinctly. “Babe, where did you put the toothpaste?”
Not getting an answer, he popped his head out of the bathroom. “Jewell?”
“Huh?” The distracted call came from the living room.
He sighed and padded down the hallway. “Babe, where did you put the extra tube of toothpaste?”
She blinked up from her cross-legged position. “The what?”
“Toothpaste,” Zane repeated.
“Ah… try the maintenance cabinet.” She stared down at the tablet, once again lost in the program she was working.
“Maintenance cabinet. Perfectly logical.” For his wife and about three other people in the world with her intelligence. He muttered the words as he spun on his heel and headed toward the small cabinet that held the hammer, screwdrivers, tape measures, and the odds and ends that they used to fix up things around the apartment. And there it was. He grabbed the boxed tube of minty freshness and shut the cabinet. He started to go into the bedroom to finish packing for them but stopped short. No. He had to ask.
“Babe.” He waited to see if she heard him.
She blinked up at him. “Wasn’t it there?”
“It was, but I have to ask… why did you put it there?”
“Oh, we had a full tube in the bathroom, and I read somewhere you could use toothpaste to patch holes in the wall.” She lowered her head and ran a finger across her tablet. “Why would he put the same code in twice?”
Zane sat down beside her. “Who are we talking about?”
Jewell dropped her tablet to the couch. “Vista.”
“Okay, let’s assume I don’t know what you’re talking about. Start at the beginning.” He had no earthly clue what she was talking about, but the name Vista rang every warning bell he owned.
Jewell sighed heavily. “When Tempest was debriefing the Fate in Russia, she said that One had the hard drive. We are surmising the drive I had was the original, but if there was a clone or a ghost of that hard drive kept for security…”
“You do that. You ghost all of your hard drives.” He’d seen her do it.
“Right, so if they fail, I have the programs already loaded on another drive and partitioned exactly how I want it to be. But ghosting the drives is insurance against failure, so you can recreate your systems with little problem. If that is what they have, we have no worries. But if he cloned the hard drive, the Fate or whoever has access to it would have access to the information we found on Vista’s drive.”
“But we—and by we, I mean you—have mitigated all the damage knowledge of that information could cause.” Zane reached over and rubbed her back. She leaned into his touch and then literally fell into his side.
“But what if I haven’t?” She sighed again and looked up at him. “I found something.”
“What?”
She scooted closer to him and tucked under his arm. When she was feeling insecure, she’d cuddle close and talk quietly. “I found a duplicate code on his hard drive.”
“And what does that usually mean?”
“It doesn’t. I mean, you have code that runs the programs and orders the information in the programs. Having an exact duplicate set of code for one hard drive is useless and redundant.” She sighed again. “Vista was methodical and intentional. This wouldn’t have just happened unintentionally.”
Zane pulled her into his lap and held her close, his chin resting on the top of her head. “So, you need to investigate.”
“Yeah.” She groaned. “Only I have no idea where to start.”
“Well, is the code exactly the same?”
“Mostly, except for some extraneous letters and numbers.”
“Do you have those?” Zane reached for her tablet and handed it to her.
“Yes, but you see a handful of letters and numbers.” She called up the screen.
“A puzzle? A message perhaps?” He stared at the jumble.
“That’s what I think. Only I can’t find any rhyme or reason for it. Taken out of context from the code it is nonsense; in the code, it just looks like stray keystrokes.”
“But Vista wouldn’t make that kind of mistake.”
“No, he wouldn’t. What am I going to do?” She looked up at him with her big green eyes.
“You are going to let your beautiful brain work on it while we get to Aruba. I know you’ll figure it out. We need to finish packing and then get to bed. We leave for the airport at five in the morning.”
“The secure comms pallet should arrive in Aruba with the security detail today.” She grabbed his neck when he moved to stand up with her in his lap. Her shriek of happiness and then outright laugh were the reason he did it. She loved it when he did the ‘He-Man’ thing. Her words, not his.
“Once we have that set up at Gabriel’s location, you and I are going to do nothing but lay in the sand and drink fruity alcoholic drinks.” Zane laughed and planted his feet as Jewell literally climbed his body and wrapped herself around him for a piggyback ride down the hall. She grabbed his earlobe in her teeth, tugging it for a split second before she released it and laughed. “You do realize you just said we could drink bad stuff.”
“Hey, fruit is not bad stuff.” He’d make sure the drinks had more fresh fruit in them than liquor. He hitched her up a bit and started walking down the hall to their bedroom. He glanced at the clock. He had nothing else left to pack other than Jewell’s computer and tablet, and that wouldn’t take long. Jewell, on the other hand, had yet to put a stitch of clothing into the suitcase.
“What do you want to take?” He dropped her legs once they hit the bedroom.
She opened a drawer and swiped an armful of underwear and dumped it into her half. “Swimsuits, shorts, tops, and maybe a pair of pants.”
“Sundresses? The family might have a dinner or something.” He’d bought her several over the summer, but they’d found a home in the back of the closet. His woman had a style. Yoga pants and t-shirts at home and jeans and nicer tops at work.
He turned in time to watch her dump all the shorts and t-shirts from her bottom drawer. She put her hands on her hips and stared at the suitcase. “Flip-flops and hair ties.” She spun and went into the bathroom, obviously going for the hair ties. He went to her closet and pulled several pairs of sandals and her favorite leather flip-flops out. The jumbled mess on her side of the suitcase was so like his wife. Things like what to wear were just not important. He’d righted most of the clothes by the time she came back, sans hair ties.
She stopped in the middle of the room and stared at him. He straightened and waited for her to formulate what she wanted to say. Actually, she was probably having the entire conversation in her head without consulting him. She turned and left the room again. He chuckled and continued to fold her t-shirts. Jewell stepped back into the room and asked, “When are we going to have children?”
Okay… Looking for hair ties led her to a conversation about children. He needed to understand how that happened. He dropped the shirt he was folding. “Jewell, do you want children?”
She stared at him, and then her brow furrowed. “I think so.”
He shoved the suitcase to the side and sat down on the bed. He patted the mattress beside him and waited for her to come sit down beside him. “Okay, walk me through it, please.”
She huffed and pointed to the bathroom. “I went to get hair ties and saw I had one of Tori’s from this weekend.” She stared up at him as if that answered everything.
“Right, so, did Tori say something about having children?”
“Yeah.”
Bingo. God, he was getting downright go
od at following her logic. “What did she say?”
“She asked when everyone was going to have kids. I told her I didn’t understand the way they are programmed, but everyone said that they just wing it and hope for the best. Even Joy wants to have a baby.”
Zane blinked and snapped his mouth shut. Moriah wanted kids. Holy fucking hell. Stop the presses. That was a headline that would stun the Shadow world. He’d try to process that bit of information later. “Oh, okay. Well, first, I’d love to have children. I thought you were against it. We’ve had this conversation, remember?”
“Yeah, and you said it was up to me and that you wouldn’t pressure me.” Jewell nodded. “You’re not pressuring me.”
Zane blew out a lungful of air. “Okay. You realize you’d have to put in shorter hours if we started a family.”
Jewell jumped up from the bed and started pacing. “Yeah, I get that. That’s okay. You have the right people in the right places in the section. I mean, we wouldn’t be able to leave for two weeks for an unscheduled vacation if you didn’t, right?”
He nodded and let her continue.
“As I see it, we have several cons. Children would require one of us to stay at home at all times or take them with us if we go to the ranch like Tori and Jacob do. Traveling together would be impossible, and I’m not sure I’m happy with that. However, I can do my job from my office and I don’t really need to travel; others can go in my place. But I don’t want to give up my job. Tori still works part-time, but I want to work full-time. I like what I do.”
He nodded when she looked at him. She didn’t need his input right now. She was working through the scenario she had in her head, and if he interrupted her, it could take weeks or months before the topic could come up again. He was very interested in knowing her thoughts on a family.
“The biggest con is that I would make a horrible mother.” She linked her fingers behind her neck and stared at him.
Promises (The Kings of Guardian Book 14) Page 5