HIS BABY: A Bad Boy Hitman Romance

by April Lust

  “Dad, no!” Emma called out, jerking her hand out of Kellan’s. It seemed to burn.

  At the same time Kellan said, “I can’t.”

  Rocco dashed between everyone in a delirious desire to understand what was going on.

  “Can’t?” her dad asked. “Or wont?”

  “Both. God, Kellan, say something,” Emma demanded. She hoped Kellan, who her father had always preferred, would be able to talk some sense into him.

  “I don’t think this is a good idea, Mac. No, I’m going to go out and say that this is a bad idea.”

  “Exactly,” Emma said.

  “Why?” Mac demanded, summoning that old boom to his voice. He motioned a large hand in Emma’s general direction. “He marries you, it gives you protection, it gives you stability, it gives you money. It gives you everything you need.”

  “That’s not why you get married, Dad. At least not nowadays.” She crossed her arms firmly over her chest. This wasn’t fair; this was not fair at all. She would be lying if she said she had never thought of getting married to Kellan. In her fantasies, however, he wanted to marry her, too. It only took one look at the hard line of Kellan’s jaw to see he wanted none of this.

  “You got better reasons?” Mac demanded.

  “Yeah, I dunno, maybe love? That seems like a good one.”

  “Emma, love doesn’t keep you safe.” He said it so softly, like one speaking to a child who just didn’t understand the way the world worked.

  “Mac, I love you like a father, man, you know that,” Kellan stepped in. His voice was surprisingly calm despite the bit of red that was working along his throat. “But you know I don’t intend on getting married to anyone.”

  “Yeah, so you’ve said. Well, I’m saying differently.”

  Kellan shook his head. “I would do anything for you but—”

  “Then do this.”

  It was three in the morning, and Emma was beyond tired, and scared. In a better time, she may have been able to argue more. She shook her head and started down the hallway towards what used to be her bedroom. “I am not talking about this right now.”

  “Then when, Emma? I don’t have long.”

  It was a cheap shot, but she stopped walking. “That was mean. Completely uncalled for.”

  “Well, I don’t got time to play nice.”

  Emma turned around. Her father looked like a faded memory of himself. She didn’t need a doctor, or him for that matter, to tell her he didn’t have much longer left on this earth. She hated that. “Tell me why I should do this. Why you shouldn’t just keep me safe?”

  “Because that’s what I’ve been doing, and it isn’t enough. They don’t believe you’ll be protected. This will make them believe.”

  “And what do I get out of it?” Emma demanded.

  “What, your life isn’t enough?”

  “If I marry Kellan, the life I had is over anyway.” Emma threw her hands up. “I’ll have to come live here, school will be over…all of it.”

  “The hell you will,” Kellan put it. “I’ll keep you safe, but I won’t make you give up everything.”

  “Oh, well, that’s magnanimous of you,” she sneered.

  “Emma…” her father warned.

  “Dad.” she retorted.

  “I’ve never asked you or anything, Emma. Not once.”

  “Funny,” she shot back. “I asked you for everything, but I never got any of it.”

  He laughed. It would have been a cheerful sound if he hadn’t started coughing again. He took another sip of water to ease it, not that it did much. “How the hell did I help make you? God, Emma, you are smarter than me by far, all that knowledge up in your head. I’ve known that, I’ve always known that, but now you got all this fire. I don’t know where it came from, but I know you are a good girl, a smart girl. Fuck, I am proud of you.”

  She didn’t know what to think of his words, or how to respond to them. It might have come easily or naturally to another girl who had spent years being close to her father. Emma wasn’t one of them. Emma was struck mute by her father’s openness.

  “Thanks.” She meant it.

  He gripped her fingers, and this time she didn’t pull away. “But I know how this business works, and I am telling you this is the only way.”

  “Why? Why is this the only way? I mean, can’t I just go live somewhere else? I could just—”

  “Just what?” he demanded. “Run away again?”

  It was another cheap shot, and Emma hadn’t been entirely prepared for how much bitterness her father could put into five words. What little kindness he had garnered from her just a minute ago evaporated.

  “That’s not fair.”

  “Emma,” her father said, “I never said it was. If you go gallivanting across the country, do you think they won’t find you? They managed to find you hours away at college, when we hadn’t even spoken to one another in months. Running away is not the answer here.”

  “But this is?” Kellan asked. “I’m sorry, Mac, I don’t understand.”

  “They went after her because they thought she was without protection. That she had no connections to us or the club. It wouldn’t be anything but attacking a dying man’s daughter. But you aren’t a dying man, Kellan. You are young and strong and they know it. If she is with you, if she has your name protecting her, they will think twice.”

  It was a point she couldn’t argue, even when she wasn’t sleep deprived. “You know what? Fine. Fine! No one but one of you was ever going to date the daughter of the criminal anyway, right?” She stormed off and fell into the first bed she could find. What hurt the most, she thought as the first wave of exhaustion swept over her, was that it was true.

  # # #

  Kellan Mathers watched the retreating back of the club president’s daughter and knew damn well he was in for it. Her blonde ponytail danced with every angry movement and he couldn’t help but stare at it. He loved a woman with fire in her blood, and if Emma Ketchum could simmer with it at the worst hours of the morning, he could only imagine what she would do with it

  He didn’t know where it all came from. When she’d been little she’d been this scrawny little nerd with glasses and knobby knees and braces who couldn’t put together five words. As a door slammed open and shut he decided he was going to have to reevaluate who Emma was now.

  “You think she knows she went into your room?” Mac asked.

  Kellan snorted. “You wanna be the one to tell her?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Me neither, old man, me neither.”

  There was a long silence as Kellan wheeled Mac down the hall and into the master bedroom. They went through the actions of caregiver and care recipient as Kellan got him ready for bed. Rocco bounced around the bedroom, happy to get in the way.

  “You mad at me?” Mac asked as he slid against the covers.

  “Nope. I’m pissed.”

  “Wanna be more specific?”

  On the outside Kellan knew he looked calm, cool, and collected. They both knew better. Kellan could look as cool as a winter lake right before he pulled a trigger. It was what had always made him a good enforcer, and a good club member. He knew how to shut it all away and pretend like he was fine. He knew better than most what it meant when you lost control. He had the scars on his back to prove it.

  “You shouldn’t have sprung it like that on me. If you wanted your daughter to become my old lady, you should have given me some kind of head’s up.”

  Mac took his time crawling into his bed. Kellan waited.

  “Could be that I didn’t think about it ’til I saw y’all two wrestling with that mutt in the front yard when she pulled up.” Mac smirked.

  “Bull.”

  Mac pulled his covers over his skinny legs. His arms shook with the effort. It was a sad thing to see a man who Kellan used to think of as a mountain become a sand dune. He was wasting away, and nothing short of a miracle was going to stop it from happening. Silently, Kellan was praying to al
l the gods that had ever had a temple.

  It wasn’t that Kellan didn’t think death wasn’t coming to everyone, it just seemed to be coming too soon for Mac. Kellan wasn’t ready to put the old man in the ground.

  It wasn’t just the emotional craziness of losing a person who had meant a lot to him for the better part of his life. It had more to do with the fact that everyone seemed to agree that when Mac died, it was going to be Kellan taking over. Hell, for the past six months he had basically been running the daily operations. It wasn’t hard. Move guns or electronics from point A to location B, and shake the local businesses for protection money, keep the right palms greased. That was the easy part.

  It had all pretty much been easy until Gabriel stuck his nose into their territory. Ashland was Beasts territory, and everyone along the western seaboard knew it. Kellan didn’t know what wild hair had crawled up the Cuban’s backside but it was causing more problems than he wanted to deal with.

  Then they had gone and attacked Emma. Everyone knew Emma Ketchum was off limits. She wasn’t part of the game. She wasn’t a criminal; her record didn’t even have a speeding ticket on it. She didn’t take part in any of the business. So what had that bastard been thinking?

  “That’s some face you got going on there,” Mac said. “You gonna tell me what that’s about?”

  “Thinking about bashing in some tatted up Cuban face.”

  Mac chuckled appreciatively. “You’re gonna have to table that for the moment. You are gonna have a lady to think of.”

  It took a great deal more control to not yell this time. “Mac, you know I got nothing but love for you, but I think this is a stupid idea. This is…this is like ten kinds of stupid.”

  Mac’s head slumped back against his stiff medical pillow. “You’re ten kinds of stupid.”

  “Don’t play with me like this, Mac. I’m not an idiot.” He managed to keep his voice steady, but barely. “Tell me. Just friggin’ tell me what the hell made you think hooking me up with Emma, with your goddamned little girl, was a good idea.”

  Mac did nothing but incline his head. It was a slow movement, but it had that kind of weight to it that someone only got when they knew they had all the right on their side. Kellan had seen it from time to time and he knew he couldn’t fight it.

  “You’re right. It’s my little girl and I am asking you to take care of her.”

  “Exactly, man, she’s your kid. She’s—”

  “All. I’ve. Got.”

  Each word was a bullet, fired right into Kellan’s guilt. All his careful cool calm shattered. He grabbed the closest thing to him, a long empty cigarette tray, and threw it across the bedroom. It didn’t even give him the satisfaction of shattering. It just made a dent in the wall and clattered to the floor.

  “You finished?” Mac asked.

  Kellan let out several impressive curses before he slapped himself down in the chair next to the bed. “I don’t wanna get married. I don’t wanna be anyone’s man.”

  “I get that.”

  “Mac, you know what my life was like. You know what my father was.” His eyes were fixed on the dent he had caused in the wall. Yeah, it was a wall and a cigarette tray, but what if one day it wasn’t? What if one day it was a pretty girl’s face, or even a kid. “I don’t want to be that.”

  “Your father was a mean damn drunk,” Mac snorted. “And you are nothing like him.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Who better than me, kid?”

  Kellan raked his hands through his hair and set his palms against his eyes. “You know how it was for me.”

  “Yeah, kid, I do. I also know that same shit’s been following you around since you were a kid. And I also know it’s gotta stop. In no time at all you are gonna be putting my president patch on your kutte and you know what that means.”

  “It means I gotta step up.”

  Mac snorted and shook his bald head. “Easy words to say, Kel. But what does that mean?”

  “Apparently it means I gotta marry a hot blonde who hates me, hates you, and hates everything I do with my life.”

  Mac nodded, already beginning to drift off. “If your wife doesn’t hate something about you, shit, man, you are doing something wrong.”

  Kellan left the old man to get some sleep and wandered the house. It was a good deal nicer than the trailer his family had. How they’d managed to shove four adults and twice as many kids into a doublewide, he’d never know. It was all held together with hunting, whiskey, and rage.

  What was he going to do, pass that on? What happened the first time Emma nagged at him to give it all up? He remembered clear as day what his dad used to do to his mom when she came at him with everything he’d done wrong. It didn’t seem to matter what words she’d used or how right she was, his father would haul off and knock her around.

  Kellan found himself in front of the liquor cabinet. It wasn’t locked, it wasn’t like there were kids about, and it wasn’t like Rocco had a taste for top shelf whiskey. Kellan plucked a bottle up and poured himself two fingers before knocking it back, enjoying the burn that went from his tongue to his belly and then everywhere else. He took another two and then wandered back down the hall.

  He was standing in the doorway to his room before he remembered she was sleeping there.

  She looked like an angel. He knew lots of guys said that about chicks, but when it came to Emma, it was true. She had that long blonde hair with just a little curl. Her face was all these soft angles that had just a hint of pink to keep her from looking like a piece of copy paper. She was beautiful in an untouchable, unstained way, and here Mac was shoving a piece of crap like him at her.

  And she’d said yes.

  He cursed and swallowed his second drink. The burn shook him all the way down to his toes.

  Emma Ketchum said she’d marry him. That was the craziest part of it all. Yeah, sure, it was said in frustration, but it had been said. He hadn’t expected that. Moreover, he certainly hadn’t expected to feel good about it.

  He shook his head and wished he hadn’t left the bottle in the living room.

  She looked good. Even in that ugly sweater and ill-fitting jeans she looked like a million bucks, which was too expensive for him to put his ugly hands all over. No, no, marrying the collegiate princess was a bad idea for a million reasons.

  A small whine drew his attention away from the girl and down to a mutt.

  “Go on,” Kellan said, motioning with his chin. “No need for us both to be sleeping on the couch.”

  Rocco needed no more encouragement. He prowled into the room and jumped up on the bed. Half asleep, Emma rolled over and wrapped an arm around the beast. She made a small sound that made his stomach do a flop as she curled into a tighter ball.

  She looked small. It struck him hard. When she was up and moving around and shouting at everyone she seemed twice as big and ten times as tough. Her dad had the same quality. It gave a person a certain kind of glow that you wanted to follow and protect.

  He could protect her a whole lot better sharing that bed with her. It was just a little too easy picturing climbing into that bed and wrapping himself around her like a snake. Would she be the kind of girl who whimpered and trembled, or the kind who moaned and demanded more?

  He was a snake. Kellan felt his pants go tight where they had no business doing so, followed by a wave of disgust.

  “Shit,” he snapped, and shook his head. Firmly he shut the door behind him.

  Chapter 4

  When Emma woke up the sun was high enough in the sky to cast long shadows over a stranger’s room. There was a warm body with dog breath flopped out next to her. With the stiffness of a body that had lay too long in the same position, Emma rolled over and received a big doggie kiss.

  “Hello to you, too, Rocco.” She patted his side. He gave a low grumble in response.

  She swung her stiff legs over the edge of a bed and looked around the room. It was, she determined, most certainly Kellan’s
. The blue bedspread was run of the mill, but the biker girl calendar hanging on one wall and the clutter of clothes all screamed thirty-year-old male. The hunting rifle casually slung over the back of a chair was a dead giveaway, too. Her father wasn’t a hunter, but Kellan was.

  Curiosity, and a desire to not walk out the bedroom door and into reality, had her perusing the less obvious aspects of the room. He was, after all, her husband-to-be. There was a stack of CDs that all ran towards the angry rebellious male from the ’90s music next to an iPod that was so new the headphones still had the waves from packaging. A half-empty bottle of Brute aftershave stood next to a few simple pieces of jewelry—a school ring and a chain with a cross on it.