Every morning when Liam got up, he made breakfast for both of them. He included lots of protein, like eggs, bacon, sausage, or Greek yogurt. He often cut up fruit, as well, usually strawberries, bananas, and cantaloupe. After breakfast, he left for work. Brynn tried to get some form of exercise every day. If the weather was warm, she met Clara and Juliana at the park.
December sped by, and before she knew it, the holidays were approaching. With Christmas coming up, Declan was out of his mind with excitement. Kellan insisted that Brynne join them for their family Christmas that year.
Above the fireplace, Clara had hung stockings with everyone’s name on them. When Brynne arrived on Christmas Eve, they even had a stocking hung with her name on the mantle, and next to it was a tiny baby stocking for baby Murphy. Brynne was still an emotional trainwreck and cried when she saw it.
“Hey,” Brynne whispered to Quinn as he was sitting by the window, rocking Isleen. “If you have time, could we get an ultrasound of the baby? I think Liam would like to have one, even if he doesn’t realize it.”
“That’s a great idea. Of course I have time. Just let me know when you want to come in.” The rocking chair creaked as Quinn rocked. “Do you want to know if the baby’s going to be a boy or a girl?”
“I’m going to leave that up to Liam,” she said.
Liam heard his name, and he walked over with a plate of Christmas cookies in hand. “What’s up?”
Brynne snagged a star-shaped cookie off the plate. She was always hungry. “We’re planning to do an ultrasound so that you can have a picture of the baby.”
“Oh, that’s awesome. I’d love that.” He beamed at her. “Thanks for thinking of that.”
“Thank your brother. Quinn’s going to let us come in and do it at his office.”
“But you’re willing, and I appreciate that,” Liam said.
“Do you want to find out what gender the baby is going to be?” she asked.
Liam nodded. “Absolutely. I am not good at delayed gratification.”
“You two come in around Valentine’s Day, and we’ll find out if this baby is a boy or a girl,” Quinn said.
Brynne thanked Quinn again, and Christmas Eve was a delightful haze of shouting, flying gift wrap, and wrestling shifters. On Christmas Day, Liam handed her a fancy envelope.
“We’ve already exchanged gifts,” she said.
“Yes, but this is a little something extra.”
She opened the envelope, and inside was a plane ticket.
“It’s an open-ended airline ticket,” he explained. “After the baby’s a few months old, I wanted you to be able to still go to Europe and look for other shifters. I know that’s important to you, and I didn’t want you to feel like I was holding you back. Even if you find them, you always have a home here.”
Brynne nodded as she gripped the envelope.
He handed her another paper. “It’s a house. I bought it, and there’s a young lady living there now while she finishes medical school. When she’s done, it’s yours. I didn’t want you to feel like you have to live with me to be a part of our clan. You will always have a home in Cedar Lake.”
Her throat stung, but she was determined not to start crying. Again. “Thank you,” she said. “You have no idea what this means to me.”
He placed his hand on her stomach. It was now slightly round. “You have no idea what this means to me.”
She knew one thing for sure. She was in love with Liam Murphy.
It just sucked that she had no fucking clue what to do about it.
With each passing day, Brynne fell a little more in love with Liam, which sure wasn’t going to make leaving any easier. She fell a little more in love with his family, too, specifically Clara and Juliana and their kids.
Right after Christmas, she went with Clara and Juliana to the café in town. By then, her stomach was getting rounder, and she’d had to give up on her jeans. Both Clara and Juliana had given her a pile of maternity clothes, and she was grateful to have them.
After the waitress handed out their hot chocolates, Clara whipped out a notebook. “Okay. We have to start planning.”
“Planning what?” Brynne asked. They’d already finished the nursery.
“The baby shower.” She held up a hand. “Don’t say it’s up to Liam. He doesn’t care at all. He wants you to be happy.”
Juliana pulled out her own notebook and pen. “Who should we invite?”
Brynne made a face. “You guys are the only people I know here.”
“Do you want to invite Nicolae?”
She took a sip of her hot chocolate and then a bite of a croissant. “Just try to imagine him at a baby shower.”
Clara shuddered. “You’re right. I can’t picture it. But if you want to invite him, he is welcome in our home.”
Juliana elbowed her. “Hey, who said it’s going to be in your home?”
“Do you want to host it?”
“Maybe!” Clara said.
Before they could start arguing over the location of the shower, Brynne interjected. “I don’t know yet if it’s a boy or a girl. I won’t find out for a few more weeks.”
“Oh, we’ll wait until after you find out the gender to have the shower. This is just a plan. Do you have any themes you like?” Juliana asked.
Brynne wasn’t sure what she meant by themes. She’d never attended a baby shower. There was a party at work one day for a pregnant instructor, but someone just brought a plain cake with a picture of a baby rattle, and they’d all chipped in to buy wipes and diapers for the pregnant mom. Maybe the other ski instructors had been failures at celebrating babies.
Unsure what else to say, she said, “No.”
“How about hiking? Or camping? We can make little tents and have real logs on the table,” Juliana said with enthusiasm.
Brynne stared into space while they brainstormed and jotted down ideas in their notebooks. She didn’t want to disappoint them, but it was hard to care about a shower for a baby she wasn’t going to raise and stuff she’d never use. Of course, she wanted Liam and the baby to be showered with gifts and to have the things they needed, but Liam was popular in town. Brynne had no doubt that a human woman would see that he was a single man who was raising a baby and would swoop in to save him. She’d just have to try not to be too bitter when that happened.
Would she be able to stay in town and watch him with another woman? Would she be able to watch another woman raise her child? Her hand went to her stomach, and she covered it protectively.
“What’s wrong?” Clara asked. “Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine. Can I ask you both something?”
They nodded in unison.
“Does Liam ever date?”
They both looked at each other but didn’t say a word. Finally, Clara shook her head. “No. I’ve never known him to go on a single date. I tried to set him up with women. There were some single teachers who were interested, but he wanted nothing to do with them.”
Interesting. He’d only been seventeen when their clan had been separated during the battle, so that meant he’d never dated a shifter before, at least not seriously. He’d told her that he’d never slept with one, so at least she had that going for her.
“Why do you want to know?” Clara asked.
“Are you in love with him?” Juliana asked.
There was no point in lying to them. She could try to lie, but they’d probably see through it. So what if she told the truth? Maybe they’d tell their husbands, and Quinn and Kellan would tell Liam, but would he be shocked? She doubted it. It was probably all over her face every time they made love.
Look at her, calling it making love instead of having sex. Or even fucking. That’s how she preferred to think of it, though—making love. It was special. They’d shared a heat and made a baby together.
“Yes,” Brynne said. “I’m in love with him.” It felt good to finally say it out loud.
After they all celebrated the new year together
, Liam told her that he and his brothers were planning a getaway trip to an island where they could all shift and fly around without fear of detection. They’d always had that freedom in Ireland, but there was ancient magic near the Cliffs of Moher that protected them. Here in Texas, they didn’t have that level of protection. They didn’t even have any snowy mountains.
“There’s a place like that?” she asked. “An island?”
“Yes. It’s a remote island out in the Pacific.”
“That sounds lovely, but I’m not sure if it’s safe to shift while pregnant. I can’t remember anyone in our clan doing it at all.” While that was true enough, she could still go on the trip and just not shift. Clara and Juliana were going, and they didn’t shift. Her fear was that going would only make her more attached to this family and to this baby.
She knew that if she brought it up to Liam, he’d insist that she live with him. He would scrap the contract in a second because she wasn’t a stranger. She was part of his original clan, and he would honor that, but changing her mind wasn’t fair to him, and she still didn’t know exactly what she wanted.
Did she want to be a mother? She wasn’t sure. Did she want to stay in Cedar Lake? Mostly, yes. Yet, she still wanted to explore the world and find the other shifters that had been denied to her. As much as she loved Clara and Juliana, she needed other female dragon shifters in her life now that she knew they might be out there.
She was in love with Liam, but she knew that she might regret giving up the chance to go look for more of their kind. Her parents had loved each other, but that hadn’t been enough to stop their destruction when the witches attacked.
What if there were others like her—alone, isolated, living in a human world? She was tempted to fly back to New York City to confront Nicolae and demand answers, but she knew he’d only give the answers that suited him. She owed it to those shifters to find them and try to give them some solace, just as Liam had given it to her.
So, she stayed home when the others went to the island, but as soon as Liam left for the trip, she missed him terribly. She missed all of them. Clara and Juliana had gone along on the trip, too. They even took the babies so that they could start to learn to control their shifts and their strength in a safe place.
She went and picked up the plane ticket that Liam had given her. It was so thoughtful of him, but what if it was also a signal? Did he want her to leave once the baby was born? Clara and Juliana had said he was smitten with her, but she couldn’t see the evidence of that. At least she didn’t have to decide just yet. She was going to live in Liam’s house until the baby was born, so for now, she just had to survive this pregnancy and survive being in love with the shifter who’d hired her.
19
Liam
Liam missed Brynne every second of the trip.
“Watch me, Uncle Liam!” Declan screamed. Now that he was seven years old, he had learned some fancy dives.
“I’m watching,” Liam called out.
He watched as Declan shifted into his dragon form and dove straight into the water. Gleefully, Declan launched himself back into the air. He returned to the edge of the cliff and over again, this time spiraling as he descended toward the water.
Liam made his way over to his nephew. “Have you caught any fish yet?”
Unable to speak since he was still in his dragon form, Declan shook his head in the negative.
“It was Brynne’s father who taught me how to fish,” Liam said. “I know you’ve fished in the lake at home, but let’s go out further and see if we can catch a big one here in the ocean.”
Declan was always eager to learn new skills. Liam showed him all the techniques he’d learned from Brynne’s father, and they fished for two hours straight while Kellan and Quinn flew around with their baby daughters.
As Liam flew, he began to sense distress. Declan was in high spirits, so it wasn’t coming from him, and in the distance, he could see Quinn and Kellan laughing with their babies. On the island, Clara and Juliana were sitting by a campfire, roasting marshmallows. Everyone with him was happy, safe, and content. Over the next hour, it became clear that the feeling of distress was coming from Brynne, all the way back home. Liam had always been aware of his brothers when they were in close proximity to him, but when he was out of the country, or even out of the state, he could no longer feel their presence.
How was it possible that he felt Brynne’s?
Brynne was his mate, and he could feel her from half a world away, but she wasn’t happy. In fact, it seemed to him that she was very upset. He had to check on her. He ran to his bag and pulled out his cell phone. As soon as she answered, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Brynne! Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
He didn’t want to reveal that he thought they were mates, especially not over the phone. “I just had a feeling that you were upset. Maybe I’m overreacting because this is the first time I’ve been away from you and the baby,” he said.
“I was a little upset earlier, but it’s nothing unusual. You know how the pregnancy hormones are.”
He held the phone close to his face. “Are you sure that’s all it is? I can leave right now and come home.” Liam knew that Kellan would happily have them all pack up and fly home if that’s what Brynne needed.
“No, I’m fine. Do not come home for me.”
“You’re sure?” he asked.
“Absolutely. Enjoy your trip, and I will see you soon.”
“Okay, take care of yourself. Call me if you change your mind.”
He sat down on the ground when they were off the phone. He was one-hundred percent pathetic. Declan had gone to find his dad, but when Liam looked up, Quinn had left Isleen with her mother and was on his way over.
Quinn sat down on the ground next to Liam. “What’s up, man? You usually enjoy these trips more than anyone, but you’ve been morose the whole time.”
“Did you not just see me out there fishing with Declan?”
“Sure, but you’re not yourself. What’s wrong? Is it the baby? Brynne? You’d tell us if there was a problem, right?” Quinn handed him a cold beer bottle with the cap already off.
Liam took a drink. “Yeah, I would. There’s no problem, not beyond one of my own making.”
“What do you mean?”
“Brynne is my mate. I am in love with her, and I want to be with her.”
“Have you told her?”
“No. I did the opposite. I gave her an open-ended plane ticket to Europe, and I bought her a house in Cedar Lake for after the baby’s born.”
Quinn whacked him in the back of the head. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“Because I don’t want to stifle her.”
“Stifle her, my ass. She probably thinks you want her to leave.”
“Why would she think that?”
“Oh my God. Are you stupid? Did that heat go to your brain? You gave her plane tickets to fly around the world—away from you. You bought her a house—away from you.”
A sickening sensation rolled over him as Quinn’s words sank in. “Oh God. I hope I didn’t make her feel like I want her to leave.”
“Well, the good news is that she’s going to be here at least until August.”
“November,” Liam said. “She’s going to stay for at least three months to breastfeed the baby.”
“Okay. That’s good. So she’s invested in the baby and in staying around for a bit. You have plenty of time to fix this.”
Liam hung his head. “What if she doesn’t want it to be fixed?”
“Jeez, you are pathetic. I’ve never seen you like this. You’ve been in provider-mode every time I’ve seen you, but she’s been nearby. You fly away from her, and boom! You fell apart.”
“She’s my mate.”
“I know that, man,” Quinn said. “It’s kind of hard to miss. You need to tell her.”
“I’m going to.”
�
�Seriously, don’t put it off anymore.”
He wouldn’t put it off again. He was going to talk to her—soon.
20
Brynne
She had lied to Liam. She wasn’t the least bit fine, but there was no way she wanted him to come home from his trip. He told her many times how much these island trips meant to him and his brothers, and especially to Declan, his nephew.
They used these trips to rest and recharge and reconnect with their inner dragon. As soon as the baby was born and she knew it was safe to shift, she planned to join them on one of the trips. She couldn’t wait to shift, dive, soar, fly, and swim as a dragon with members of her own clan, clan members who had accepted her even after a fifteen-year absence.
Still missing Liam, Brynne walked into the baby’s nursery. Soon, she’d have an ultrasound photo to put into one of the frames. Just as she picked up the frame to look at the size, a sharp sensation jolted through her stomach. Her hands flew to her abdomen. Was something wrong? She’d never heard of dragon shifters having problems in pregnancy, but there was so much she didn’t know. If there was something wrong, she’d have to call Liam back.
As she turned to leave the room, it happened again, a quick stab right inside her stomach. She paused and put her hand back on her stomach. Then, she sank into the wooden rocking chair she had added to the nursery. She leaned her head back and let out a relieved laugh. The sudden pain had been the baby kicking. She’d just never felt it before, but there it was—two little feet pushing against her womb. She rubbed her hand over her belly.
“Little baby, you scared me,” she said. With her hand flat on her stomach, she could feel the kicks through her skin. She pulled her shirt up and watched in wonder as her skin stretched and moved. “Oh, baby. Your daddy is going to be beside himself when he sees this.”
She knew then that she would never be able to leave this baby behind. There would be no extended stay in Europe. Sure, she could visit for a week at a time and look for other shifters, but she wouldn’t go stay for months on end. She wanted to be here with the baby, watching him or her grow.
Lawyer Dragon's Surrogate (Irish Dragon Shifter Brothers Book 3) Page 9