Thrive (Guardian Protection)

by Aly Martinez

  But, as the day had worn on, I’d fallen in love with them because they were the sweetest, most precious girls I’d ever met.

  Amelia was a daddy’s girl through and through, so she spent most of our first night together in his lap, talking incessantly about whatever flittered through her mind. Sophie, on the other hand, was all too interested in me. Or rather my makeup, my jewelry, my heels, and, last but not least, my perfume. We were all going to be in trouble when she hit her teen years.

  Teen years I was going to get to be a part of.

  A few days earlier, Melissa and I’d had our little chat about my involvement in the girls’ lives. She wasn’t a bitch about it. She definitely wasn’t warm and welcoming, either, though. I couldn’t blame her. Those were her babies. It was her job to protect them, even when she didn’t need to. I left that day knowing she and I were never going to be friends, but it meant the world to me that she was willing to allow me to be a part of their family at all. She could have made it hell on all of us—especially Jeremy. But she didn’t. She might not have liked how quickly our relationship had progressed. Hell, she might not have liked me at all. But she loved her kids, so she put her own feelings aside and did what was best for them. I respected the hell out of her for that.

  The basement door creaked as Jeremy opened it. He quietly shut it before padding down the stairs. “What are you doing down here?”

  “I didn’t want to wake up the girls.”

  He smirked as he made his way to me with a steaming mug. “Baby, you sipping your coffee in the kitchen isn’t going to wake them up. As late as they stayed up last night, I’m not sure a marching band in their room could wake them.”

  I laughed and then set my cup on the end table. “Better safe than sorry. I’m exhausted. I’ll need at least one refill to keep up with them today.”

  “It’s probably best you make that two. They turn into gremlins on Saturdays.”

  I giggled. “Good to know.”

  Smiling, he sat down, slid his arm around the back of the couch, and turned to face me. “Hey, you know those pictures of the girls you hung upstairs? The one on the left is uneven. We should fix that today.”

  I jerked my head back. “What? No, it’s not. I used a level.”

  He leaned over me and set his coffee beside mine. Staying close, he intently held my gaze. “Yeah, it is.”

  I twisted my lips. “Are you talking about the one to the left of the couch or the one to the left of the chair?”

  “The one to the right of the chair. To the left of the couch.”

  Thoroughly confused about what picture he was talking about, I asked, “Wait, you mean the picture of Amelia on the slide?”

  His eyes narrowed on me. “I thought that was Sophie.”

  Rolling my eyes, I replied arrogantly, “Trust me. It’s Amelia.”

  Spoiler alert part three: This is the scene where the Zombie Mira, who had been parading around in my already dead body, finally dies—from embarrassment.

  He sucked in a sharp breath and then ominously whispered, “I fucking knew it.”

  I swayed away from him, but it was worthless because he had me caged into the corner of the sofa. “You knew what?”

  He laughed. “Jesus Christ. Are you shitting me here?”

  “Um,” I drawled, shifting my eyes from side to side before giving them back to him. “It’s hard to say because I have no clue what you are talking about.”

  “Oh my sweet, sweet lying wife,” he murmured, chuckling to himself. “I thought I was going crazy. But you got me good. I had no fucking idea you could lie like that.”

  I stared up at him in bewilderment. “What are you talking about? I haven’t lied about anything.”

  Hooking his arm at the back of my legs, he dragged me down the couch until I was flat on my back. He settled on his side beside me, resting his head in his palm, and stared down while his lips twitched with amusement. “The day the girls were born, we had to paint Sophie’s nails pink so we didn’t switch them. I still struggle with telling them apart if they aren’t talking or looking straight at me. But you, Pinocchio, can tell them apart with no problems despite that you’ve only spent one day with them.”

  Oh, shit.

  I cut my gaze away, mumbling, “They don’t look that much alike.”

  He barked a laugh. “Baby, their daycare teachers get confused when they wear different shoes to school. They do look that much alike.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, I gave him my eyes back. “Maybe I’m just good at stuff like that.”

  He nodded, completely unconvinced. “I considered that yesterday when you corrected me twice when I called them the wrong names. But then I remembered how you mysteriously knew where I worked the day you called me and that, the first time I brought you here, you’d thought I’d been living in my house for a while. And how you knew Sophie, not Amelia, liked dresses and tiaras. So I got to thinking.”

  Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.

  My stomach knotted as I tried to squirm out from under him. “I should probably start breakfast. The girls will be up soon.”

  He held me tight to prevent my escape and dipped low, nuzzling his nose with mine while whispering, “You’ve been stalking me, baby.”

  My heart slammed in my chest, panic and embarrassment heating my cheeks. “We’re married and live together. It’s hard not to stalk you.”

  He chuckled and then swept his lips across mine. “No, baby. You’ve been stalking me for years.”

  I scoffed. “You’re crazy.”

  “Oh, I’m crazy?” he asked, incredulous. “Mira, a few minutes ago, I got a notification on my phone that my high school English teacher liked my picture of us on Facebook.”

  Oh, shit. Damn. Fuck.

  But that wasn’t even the worst part.

  He finished with, “Which is really extraordinary if you think about it, considering I heard she died two years ago.”

  My entire face went up in flames. “Wow, that’s…” Silently cursing that beautiful picture for making me forget that I was still signed in as Mary Collier, I once again tried to make a break for it.

  Not shockingly, Jeremy stopped me. “Oh, no, you don’t. I believe it’s time we had a talk about how much you seem to know about me.”

  Shit. I was cornered. Literally and figuratively. I could have gone on with the lies, but it was useless. Honestly, it was a miracle in and of itself that I’d been able to keep the ruse up for as long as I had. My ability to lie had not improved with age.

  Unable to get away from him, I did the only thing I could do and screwed my eyes shut so I didn’t have to face him when I finally admitted, “It was a…um…difficult stage in my life.”

  “The kind of difficult that makes you start a fake Facebook profile pretending to be a seventy-year-old high school English teacher to stalk your ex-boyfriend?” he teased.

  Prying one eye open, I snapped, “I am one step away from dying of embarrassment and you’re enjoying this?”

  He grinned and brushed his nose with mine again. His warm breath tickled my skin as he whispered, “Immensely.”

  “Any chance you could stop enjoying it and start forgetting about it?”

  He nipped at my bottom lip. “Probably not.” He rolled onto me, his thick thigh falling between my legs, the other supporting the majority of his weight against the cushion. “But, if you happen to have the urge to take your pants off and ride me hard and fast before my girls wake up, I’d be willing to forget about it for about fifteen minutes or so.”

  “Shit,” I groaned. Mainly because I knew he was going to make me actually explain before letting it go. But also because he moved his hand to my breast and used his thumb to circle my nipple.

  “Your call, baby,” he murmured.

  So, yes. I was embarrassed about having been caught.

  I was also newly married to an extremely sexy man who did the most incredible things to my nipples when I was on top. And, while I was a woman who was ma
dly in love with the aforementioned sexy man and could pretty much have him whenever I wanted, I also had a day to spend chasing two divas in my future, which would surely end with me falling asleep before my head even hit the pillow. So I bit the bullet.

  Shimmying out of my pajama pants, I huffed. “Fine. Yes. I made a fake profile. I found Kurt’s high school yearbook one night. Made a few fake profiles of your old classmates. You accepted none of the friend requests. I waited another week. Made one for your high school English teacher, you accepted, and then boom, I was in dirty-little-secret heaven. Yes, I stalked you. Yes, I used to torture myself with pictures of your beautiful daughters. No, I swear it was not as creepy as it sounds.” I swung a leg over his hips. “No, I shouldn’t have lied to you about it. But knowing you were happy and seeing pictures of you and your family got me through a lot of rough times. So I won’t apologize for doing it.”

  His smile suddenly faded, and his eyes filled with more love than I’d thought would ever be aimed at me. “I don’t want you to apologize,” he rasped. “Baby, I’m not upset. I’m fucking thrilled.” He slipped his sweats down low enough to free his length, but his piercing eyes never left mine. “I don’t want to even think about what would have happened if you hadn’t made that account. That’s how you knew where to find me.” Using my hips, he guided me down and sank into me. “It’s the reason we’re here.”

  My head fell back and a gasp slipped from my throat.

  His hand moved to my breast, and I circled my arms around his neck to balance.

  Our hips rolled together like a tender assault.

  “One phone call, Mir,” he murmured against my neck, kissing his way up to my ear, “brought you back to me.”

  My heart skipped, warmth and love washing through me with a slow current.

  I hadn’t known it when I’d dialed his number, but that one phone call had changed my entire life.

  Bigger and better than my wildest dreams.

  A small smile pulled at my lips as I remembered the first time I’d kissed him on the back of his truck in the woods. I had already been irrevocably in love with him.

  I’d known it then; I’d just been too scared to admit it.

  I knew it now, and I was never letting it go.

  Stilling on his lap, I cupped either side of his face and whispered the words I’d said to him all those years earlier. “In another life, we could be soul mates.”

  His hands at my breasts spasmed, and his back shot straight, his eyes darkening as the memory hit him.

  And then, just before I kissed him, effectively losing myself in him for all of eternity, I breathed, “This is that life, baby.”

  Two years later…

  A flash of heat lightning illuminated her smiling face while the hum of classic country poured through the speakers. My wife was on her side, facing me, one hand tucked under her head, the other resting on my cheek.

  “My mom’s still a bitch,” she whispered.

  “That she is,” I agreed, placing my hand in the deep curve of her hip and giving her a squeeze.

  The distant thunder rolled in with a peaceful rumble, echoing off the trees surrounding us.

  Her thumb ever-so-gently stroked over my lips as she said, “I’m still glad we came. Thank you for bringing me here.”

  I smiled and kissed the pad of her finger. “Don’t thank me. It’s your family.”

  Another flash from the sky gave me a brief glance at her dark-brown eyes. She’d just turned thirty-nine, but in the back of that truck, we were kids again.

  It was the wrong woods. Turned out our secret little hideaway was now the parking lot of a strip mall. But that hadn’t stopped us. We’d driven around for over an hour, searching for a secluded spot where we could park and stare up at the sky. Judging by the private property signs I’d driven past on the way in, we were breaking more than a few laws. But it was worth it to have that moment back with her.

  We didn’t have a cooler full of beer this time. Nor did we have Kurt Benton dividing us.

  But it was Mira and me.

  The way it always should have been.

  “Hey, baby,” I murmured. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Oh, yeah?” she replied, sliding her hand down to my neck. “Do tell.”

  I pushed up onto an elbow and smiled down at her silhouette. “What if we drive down to the beach?”

  She giggled just like she had so many times as a girl in the back of my truck. “Tonight?”

  “Yeah, tonight. Destin is only a few hours away, remember?”

  “Are you serious?”

  I leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Completely.”

  “We’re supposed to meet the Bentons at the house in the mountains in two days. That’s a lot of driving.”

  After a lot of discussion and more than a little hesitation on my part, Mira had convinced me to have dinner with Terry and Max Benton. What the hell was I supposed to say to them after I’d essentially gotten their son locked away for life and then married his ex-wife? I knew they’d loved me like a son once, but that should have been enough to sever any kind of lingering feelings. Though I should have known better when it came to the Bentons.

  It had been years since I’d seen them, but they’d welcomed me home with open arms. Well, that’s not completely true. Terry had slapped me the second she’d opened the front door. She’d spent the next hour scolding me for having stayed gone for so many years. And then she’d scolded me for not having come back for Mira sooner. And then she’d scolded me for having Sophie and Amelia and not bringing them to see her. And then, when she had finally finished with all of that, she’d thrown her arms around my neck, burst into tears, and welcomed me back home.

  We didn’t see them much, but Terry and Mira talked on the phone a good bit. And, every month or so, they would come over to the house on a weekend when we had the girls and spoil them rotten with a toy store worth of gifts. They were good people. Regardless that their only child had turned out to be such worthless scum.

  A few months earlier, we’d invited them to spend a few days with us in the little cabin we’d bought in the mountains of North Carolina. They’d eagerly agreed, and Mira had been bouncing off the walls about it ever since.

  “Come on,” I pleaded. “We can stop at the gas station, pick up some sandwiches and drinks, and drive through the night to the beach like old times.”

  Another flash of lightning revealed her lip curled in disgust. “Gas station sandwiches might not be your most effective selling point anymore.” She paused. “Especially since I can’t eat them anymore.”

  I arched an incredulous eyebrow. “Since when is a gas station ham and cheese too good for you, fancy pants?”

  “Since I’m pregnant.”

  My entire body went rigid as a blast of adrenaline shot through me. “What? How?”

  She laughed. “Well, when two people love each other…”

  I slid my hand to cover her belly. “I know that, smartass. I mean…so soon?”

  “We both know you don’t get to time these things,” she replied, stroking the dark hairs on the top of our son’s head as he slept snuggled in a blanket between us.

  Avery Christopher Lark had entered the world at a healthy eight pounds, two ounces only twelve weeks earlier. With chocolate-brown eyes and thick, dark lashes, he looked just like his mother—perfect in every way. I’d never seen Mira happier than when they’d laid that screaming, bloody newborn on her chest. And, as she’d aimed her tear-filled eyes, blazing with pure love, up at me, that happiness had radiated through me as well.

  We’d worked hard for that little boy, and given that it had taken us well over twelve months to conceive him, we’d both resigned ourselves to the possibility that having another child might not be in our future.

  But God had always had other plans for the two of us.

  A loud laugh rumbled from my throat, excitement coursing through my veins. “Are you sure?”

  She lifted our son to
her chest with the practiced ease of a doting mother and then sat up. I followed her as she inched down until we were sitting side by side on the tailgate, our legs dangling over the edge.

  “I haven’t been to the doctor or anything, but the small fortune I spent on pregnancy tests this morning when I lied about going out to get breakfast confirmed it.”

  “Jesus,” I breathed, slinging my arm around her shoulders and pulling her into my side, careful not to squish Avery.

  “Not to count our chickens before they hatch or anything, but that would be two before I’m forty.”

  My throat was thick with emotion and my chest tightened, but I managed to sound quasi masculine when I said, “Did you just call my baby a chicken?”

  Her shoulders shook with laughter, and she craned her head back to look up at me. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  I blinked. “For what?” No way I’d heard her correctly. Not after what she’d just given me. Another baby? I should have been the one thanking her.

  “For loving me. For taking care of me. For understanding me.” She kissed the top of Avery’s head. “And, most of all, for giving me a beautiful life.”

  Jesus. This. Fucking. Woman.

  After tucking a stray hair behind her ear, I moved my hand down to rest on our son’s back. “You don’t have to thank me. Loving you, taking care of you, understanding you. Those aren’t favors I’ve done for you. I give you those things because that is what you deserve. I know it’s still hard for you to see sometimes because you spent a lot of years withering. But from here on out”—I kissed her—“as long as we’re together…we thrive.”

  THE END

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