A wave of exhaustion washed over me as soon as the anger, fear, and adrenaline stopped pumping through my veins; in their place was sadness and grief that someone I had once loved and trusted killed my brother. I thought that I would feel a sense of closure once I learned the identity of Dylan’s killer, but I didn’t. I grieved all over again.
“Baby, sit down before you collapse,” Josh said, pushing me onto the sofa. “What can I do for you, Gabe. How can I make this better?” My guy was a doer and had no intention of sitting idly by while I struggled through my grief.
I passed up the opportunity to make a snarky comment about what Josh could do to make me feel better, but it was a good sign that the chance to do so penetrated through the mental anguish I experienced. “I have to tell my parents, Josh. It feels like losing Dylan all over again. I thought knowing the truth would help me and provide closure. The pain is still there; in fact, it’s worse. My mom…” my voice broke, and I cleared my throat, “baked Jimmy cakes for his birthday. She made him all kinds of meals he could freeze and heat later after his wife left him. He joined us for Thanksgiving his first year alone.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “How could he sit at my parents’ table and eat the food my mother made all the while knowing he killed their son? Who does something like that?”
“A psychopath,” Josh said calmly.
“Did you learn that in psychology classes?” I asked, finding a bit of humor after all.
“Yes,” he said smartly. “Jimmy could be a sociopath, but his complete lack of guilt and conscience makes me think he’s a psychopath.”
“Huh,” I said, not sure what else to say. I looked at my watch and noted that it was getting close to ten o’clock. I knew my parents were still awake, but that didn’t mean calling them was a good idea. What good came out of them losing sleep? On the other hand, they would want to know that Dylan’s case would be closed if the ballistics test on the gun showed a match to the one used to kill my brother. What if Jimmy was lying? Did I risk upsetting my parents without solid proof?
“I can hear you thinking,” Josh said.
“Do I tell my parents now or wait until I know for sure that Jimmy killed Dylan?” I asked my husband.
“What would you want to happen if you were in their shoes?” Josh asked me.
I picked up my cell phone and dialed my parents in Miami. Josh pressed himself tight against the left side of my body then squeezed my knee comfortingly. The heat of his body and the slight weight of his hand was just what I needed when my words shattered my parents’ hearts all over again. Josh pressed his lips against my shoulder in a simple kiss when I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer.
Josh led me upstairs after I was done talking to them and held me tight in the darkness of our bedroom. I knew there was no fucking way I was going to get any sleep that night. I was also just as certain that the sunrise the next morning would pale in comparison to the man who loved me.
“My Sunshine,” I said, kissing his forehead.
“Always.”
“Come out and let me see you,” I said to Gabe through the bathroom door. “It can’t be that bad.”
“I’m not coming out,” Gabe said, sounding more like a petulant teenage girl than a sexy stud. “I can’t believe I let you pick out the costumes for the party.”
“You didn’t let me. That was your punishment for the asinine contests you and Dorchester set up again. Clearly tying you to the bed and fucking you stupid was only encouraging more stupid.”
“Stupid is as…”
“No, Gabe. Now is not the time to repeat movie lines like Savage and Sassy do to get out of trouble. You agreed to let me pick out the costumes, and you’re going to plaster a smile on your face when we go down there and kick some costume ass!”
“Can I wear my real gun in my holster instead of the fake one you gave me?” Gabe whined.
“No! Get out here.”
Gabe opened the door so fast that I nearly stumbled in, but then I got a look at him and fell to the floor laughing. Gabe stood over top of me with his arms crossed over his broad chest. “I don’t know why you’re laughing at me. That wig makes you look more like Joe Dirt than James Crockett.”
His ire only made me laugh harder. “That wig!” I said in between gasps of air. I’d gotten him a wig that was supposed to resemble the curly hairstyle of Ricardo Tubbs, but he was looking more like Lionel Richie.
“I look ridiculous,” he said. “Can’t we just cut eye holes in the bedsheets and go as a ghost or something?”
I stood up and faced my husband down. I was a firm believer in picking your battles wisely, and I discovered that I didn’t want to back down from him that night. “No!” I looked down at my white pants, pink silk T-shirt, and open white jacket. “I think I look damn fine in this outfit.”
“You’ll look better out of it,” Gabe grumbled, but at least his humor was starting to return. He looked down at his double-breasted suit jacket and matching trousers that were like a suit Tubbs wore on an episode of Miami Vice.
I pulled one side of my jacket open to reveal my cheap pleather holster and water pistol. “I’m still going to have a lot of fun if we don’t win.”
“Hey, why don’t I get a water pistol?” The whining had returned to his voice.
“You can play with my pistol once the guests go home,” I told him over my shoulder as I headed for the door. I had tons of things I still needed to do before our guests arrived.
“By then it’ll be empty,” Gabe argued.
That got my attention. “What kind of party do you think we’re having and where exactly do you think I’m going to be expending my cartridges?”
Gabe’s phone rang before he could answer me. He looked at the caller ID and smiled broadly. “Now you’re going to get it,” he told me before answering the phone. “Hi, Mama. Josh is being mean again. He won’t let me have a water pistol.” Gabe smiled smugly at me as he listened to what she had to say. I rolled my eyes because there was no way Martina would side against me. “Yes, I’ll put you on speakerphone so Josh can hear what you have to say.”
“Hello, my loves,” Martina said. “I’m happy to hear that you’re fighting over important things like water pistols and not boring crap like finances. I’m almost hesitant to intrude on the precious moment. Perhaps I should call back tomorrow.”
“No!” Gabe and I said at once.
“What’s on your mind, Mama?” Gabe asked.
“I know you are planning to wait a year before you adopt your first child, but an opportunity has presented itself. You see, there’s a young woman in our neighborhood who is looking for a couple to privately adopt her babies.”
“Babies?” we both asked in surprise.
Gabe recovered faster than I did. “How many babies?” I nodded my head because it was a great question.
“She’s having twins—a boy and a girl.”
“We’ll take them,” Gabe said as if he was talking about tickets for a concert that were up for grabs.
“What?” I asked in a near panic. “But our trip? Our plans? We aren’t ready.”
“Josh,” Gabe said, his voice thick with emotion, “were you ready for me? Was I a part of your plan? We’ll move our trip up a few months and be ready when they get here.”
Damn, but he was right. The best things in life were often ones you never saw coming. I saw the same hope and excitement in Gabe’s eyes that I felt bouncing in my chest with every beat of my heart.
“We’ll call you tomorrow morning once we make travel arrangements,” I told Martina.
“I’m so excited about being a grandmother.” Martina acted like it was a sure thing and I hoped she didn’t have her heart crushed if the woman chose someone else. “Even if it’s years instead of three months.”
“Three months?” we asked her. It sounded to me like any road trips we’d be taking the next year would be done in a minivan instead of Charlotte.
“We can do this,” I told Gabe. “Thre
e months is plenty of time to plan for a baby.”
“Two babies,” Martina reminded us.
“Two babies,” Gabe and I repeated, sounding like our birds.
“Lick my hole,” I heard Savage squawk downstairs.
“Butt Breath!” Sassy repeated back.
Our eyes widened, and our faces turned red because surely Martina overheard the birds repeating an exchange they learned from her son and me.
“You have three months to get Savage and Sassy’s language cleaned up,” Martina said after laughing so hard she gasped for air.
“Yes, ma’am,” we both said.
“Have fun tonight, Hole Licker and Butt Breath. Wait until I tell Bertie about this one. She’ll have new T-shirts made,” she said before she hung up.
I looked into Gabe’s smiling face and said, “I will not be called Little Daddy by my children.” Gabe threw his head back and laughed raucously. “I mean it, Gabe.”
“Oh, Sunshine. I love you so hard.”
Somewhere on a cloud, most likely over a rainbow…
“You did good, Bianca,” Georgia Beaumont said to me. “Did you know that Gabe would fall for my Josh when you slipped that potion in his drink?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “I don’t even know if Gabe drank his coffee that morning, and even so, it might not have worked.”
“What do you mean?” Dylan asked. Gabe’s brother was such a sweet young man, and I loved watching over the guys with him and Georgia.
“Gabe had to believe that the spell was possible for it to have worked on him. I had no idea if he believed or not; I just knew I wanted to try,” I explained to Dylan. “Even if Gabe believed, the potion only made it possible for him to see his true love. It didn’t make him fall in love. As you saw, he still had to put in the time and effort.”
“So, Gabe and Josh falling in love was all their doing and not the work of a spell, magic, or juju?” Georgia asked.
“That’s right,” I said. “I was just responsible for the shattered mirror.”
“Too bad you weren’t around to help me out,” Georgia said somewhat bitterly. “Then again, maybe it happened the way fate intended. At least they’re going to bring children into my home.” I didn’t bother pointing out to her that it was no longer her home, but their home. I thought she was going to have an angelic meltdown when they started remodeling the place, but she approved in the end.
“Oh man, I can’t wait,” Dylan said. “Gabe is going to be an incredible father.”
“As will Josh,” I said.
We enjoyed the Roman-Wyatt’s Halloween party from up high. Dylan and I danced to the retro music while Georgia tapped her toes in time to the beat while she kept an eye on the activities below. Something good must have happened because she threw her head back and laughed boisterously.
“I was going to say it was too bad you didn’t help the town vet with Josh two-point-oh there, but I can see that the strapping stud is taking matters into his own hands,” Georgia said.
I peered down through the clouds and saw that Kyle had tossed Chaz over his shoulder and was heading toward the door. Chaz was wiggling to get loose, but the hunky vet slapped his hand sharp against the younger man’s leather-clad ass.
“Get the popcorn ready,” Dylan said. “This ought to be good.”
The End!
To Kathy McFarland and her Sadie,
I cried along with you when it was time to say goodbye to Sadie. From that heartache came the inspiration for Dr. Dimples. It only seems fair that your Sadie lives on with him. Much love to you for all that you do for authors and readers alike in our genre and your passion for your fur babies. I’m blessed to know you and call you my friend.
XOXO
“I need to tell you something, Kyle. I should’ve told you months ago,” I said, staring into his deep blue eyes that reminded me of the Pacific Ocean in Josh’s honeymoon photos. I’d never seen water that color, or eyes for that matter. In fact, his irises were so dark that across the room you might mistake them for brown. I was used to seeing laughter, compassion, and toe-curling desire in Kyle’s bottomless blue eyes, but that night I saw frustration, hurt, and even a little wariness until he realized I planned to come clean with him.
“You can tell me anything,” Kyle said earnestly, or so I thought. It was hard to judge his tone when we were shouting over the music that blared through the speakers at Josh and Gabe’s Halloween party. He looked earnest and sincere at least. “I won’t like you any less.” Damn, I had hoped that was true, but I wasn’t holding my breath.
It was easy for Kyle to say that without knowing my secret. I couldn’t hide the truth from him another day. It was tearing me up inside and destroying any chance I had with him. I took a calming breath, stood on my tiptoes, and pressed my mouth to his ear because what I had to say was intended for him only. I had an uncanny ability to humiliate myself by blurting things out at the worst possible time, which Kyle was all too familiar with by then. With my luck, the music would’ve come to a screeching halt had I chosen to say my confession out loud. I whispered two words in his ear that I knew would get an immediate reaction out of him.
Kyle jerked back and looked into my eyes with a fierce expression that made me nervous. I’d never seen that look from him and I wasn’t sure what it meant for me—for us. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Kyle inhaled deeply through flared nostrils like he was working to calm himself. I expected him to yell, or walk away from me, but never would I have guessed that he would toss me over his shoulder caveman style and carry me out of the party.
“What are you doing?” I squealed in alarm.
“Not a word out of you,” Kyle said sharply. The slap to my leather-clad ass that followed was even sharper.
Maybe it was because I was too stunned to heed his command, or maybe it was because I liked the way my ass tingled from where he slapped it, but I didn’t listen. “Where are you taking me?” I demanded to know.
Slap! Hello!
“I’m taking you somewhere we can hash this out in private,” Kyle said. “I can’t believe you, Chaz.” He didn’t sound at all happy with me, and I worried that Kyle’s assurance that he wouldn’t like me any less were nothing more than empty words. How could he not think less of me?
There are times in your life where you wonder how the hell you’ve landed yourself in a situation. Tossed over the back of Kyle’s shoulder while he stomped out the front door of our friends’ house was one of them. It didn’t take much reflection for me to realize exactly how I got there.
A year earlier…
“What’s wrong with Harry?” Dr. Vaughn, aka Dr. Dimples, Dr. Do Me, and Dr. D, asked me. Harry? No, I manscape to within an inch of my life. No wild bush with hairy man berries here! Dr. Vaughn narrowed his eyes and leaned toward me a little bit. I moved back in surprise causing him to chuckle. “Stay still a second,” he said, “you have something in the corner of your eye.”
Dr. Vaughn cupped the left side of my face in his big, strong hand and gently worked something loose from my right eye. Hand to God I thought I was going to faint right then and there. I prayed hard that the trembling I felt was internal because I was nowhere close to being in the guy’s league. I saw the kind of man he had dated, and I didn’t measure up—probably in more ways than one. In fact, I’d just seen him flirting with his ex-boyfriend in the damn lobby. I couldn’t blame him for wanting to climb the hunky detective, but I had a feeling that ship had long sailed. Detective Wyatt had his eyes set on my best friend Josh, who tried really hard to hide his mutual attraction to the man.
“There,” Dr. Vaughn said. He held his finger up to show me the eyelash he’d worked free from the corner of my eye. “Aren’t you supposed to make a wish and blow on it?”
Do me, Dr. Dimples. Do me, Dr. Dimples. “Are we still talking about the eyelash?” I asked. I felt my face flame red with embarrassment when I realized what I’d said. Dr. Vaughn’s eyes widened as if maybe he imagined m
y lips wrapped around his cock, but that was probably wishful thinking on my part.
“Uhhh,” the normally unflappable man said.
For the life of me, I don’t know what made me do it. Perhaps it was his blown pupils or the racing pulse at his neck, but I wrapped my hand around his wrist and lowered my lips until they hovered over his finger with the eyelash. I kept my eyes locked on his while I gently blew on his long… digit. Dr. Vaughn swallowed hard then broke eye contact long enough to look down at his finger. A wide smile had bloomed across his face before he said, “Looks like you need to blow a little harder.”
Sure enough, my eyelash dangled from the tip of his finger. That little bastard was clinging to the sexy vet for dear life. Dr. Vaughn cocked his eyebrow as if he dared me to do it again and I surely couldn’t back down after the stunt I pulled. I formed my mouth into the cutest little pucker I could and…
Meow. The painful plea coming from the cat carrier pulled us both back to reality. What kind of cat dad forgot about his baby’s misery when the hunky vet walked into the room? This one!
“I love that your hairless cat is named Harry,” the good doctor said, humor lacing his voice. “I appreciate a sarcastic sense of humor. Kind of like the two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard named Tiny I saw earlier today.”
“Well, I’m funny at least,” I said because I wasn’t sure what else to say. I’d made a fool of myself, which was nothing new, but on a much grander scale than normal. It was time to get things back under control. “I noticed that Harry wasn’t using his litter box as frequently and today I saw blood in his urine.” Harry meowed again as if he weighed in on the situation. “He sounds like he’s in a lot of pain.”
“It sounds like a urinary tract infection. Let’s take a look,” Dr. Vaughn said, opening the door to the cat carrier. Harry walked to him willingly like he knew help was imminent. He meowed pitifully, earning an extra ear scratch from the vet. “I love how smooth he feels.”
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