“I love you,” she whispered against my mouth, just before she began to lose control of her breaths. And then the little pant I knew by now signaled her end began to slip from between her lips. I touched her, ran my hands under her nightgown, and pulled her tight against me. I held her ass and encouraged her to please herself, to bring herself to an orgasm. I loved watching the pleasure on her face, loved seeing how much my touch did for her. I wanted her to come on me, on my cock; I wanted to know I could give her the same that she easily gave to me.
When her orgasm hit, she tightened her thighs, holding me deep and still inside of her. She leaned her head back, her hair tickling my thighs, a moan that could only be the cry of love slipping from between her lips. I buried my mouth against her throat and felt the vibration as it rocked through her, waiting.
When it passed, I rolled her over, pulled her thighs high over my hips, and began to rock slowly. I wanted to go slow and enjoy every second of this moment in our lives. But I couldn’t quite hold onto the control necessary to do that. In seconds I was thrusting hard against her and she was encouraging me, rocking her own hips against mine. We moved together in a rhythm that could only take us to one conclusion. She came again as I delivered my own load, filling her with a piece of myself I could never get back.
We lay there for a little while, holding each other, buried against each other. The box was under my pillow. I hadn’t meant to do it quite like this, but the moment just seemed perfect.
“I love you,” I whispered as I tugged it out.
“I love you, too.”
I leaned over a little and opened the box. She gasped when she saw what it was.
“Marry me, Mina. I want us to be a family.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“We already are,” she said.
Epilogue
Ash
Laughter danced around me. I held the baby high in my arms, listening to him babble as he played with the wooden truck Kirkland had given him. Christmas had always been a happy time in the Grayson household. I was glad to see that it was again.
Mina was in the kitchen helping Rose tear the meat off of the ham bone, putting away the leftovers from the feast towards which we’d all contributed. The ham was my contribution and the bone would make a lovely pea soup later in the week. Joss contributed a carrot cake. David and Ricki brought the salad and Kirkland spicy potatoes that were almost too hot to eat. Rose was the practical one, making corn on the cob and the best homemade bread I’d ever tasted.
I could hear Rose telling Mina that she didn’t have to help with the chores, especially today of all days. Who does chores on their wedding day? But the wedding was hours ago, and this was Mina’s home now. It was her responsibility. Besides, that’s what Mina did. She couldn’t sit around and see a task that needed completing and not get up to do it.
Ricki, on the other hand, was perfectly content to sit on one of the long couches with her feet on a stack of pillows. But one couldn’t blame her since she was three days overdue. That baby had decided he didn’t want to meet the world just yet.
David was fussing over her, driving her over the wall with all the things he wanted to do. She had the most presents under the tree this morning. Even McKelty didn’t get as much as she did. They were an equal division of baby gifts and gifts meant just for her. She smiled and laughed over the first half dozen, but after that, it simply got embarrassing.
But who could blame David for being so excited?
Aidan was five months now. She was babbling almost as much as Ford. The two of them were complete opposites in looks. Ford was dark where Aidan was light. Ford was husky where Aidan was tiny, almost petite if a baby could be petite. Ford was noisy, always talking and carrying on. Aidan was quieter, though just as curious about the way sounds came out of her mouth. And they were both equally loved by their parents and aunts and uncles. They came in second on the present count this morning.
Joss was watching the children, a blissful smile brightening her eyes. From time to time she’d look down at the shiny new wedding band on her finger. She’d finally consented to doing the deed with Carrington, surprising everyone when she announced their nuptials would be taking place that morning at the justice of peace. But Mina couldn’t have that.
“We already have a wedding planned. You have to join us.”
So it was a double wedding, quietly performed at the Catholic Church downtown just after dawn this morning. It drove McKelty nearly insane to have to wait that long to see what Santa brought her, but she did seem pleased to watch her Daddy make a firm commitment to Joss.
“Does this mean you’ll never go away?” she’d asked when it was all over.
“Oh, darling, I never was going to go away,” Joss assured her.
I wondered if the double ceremony made Mabel and Kirkland rethink their decision to hide their nuptials. Everyone was shocked to discover that they’d married back in February, just weeks into their relationship. Mabel said she’d wanted to wait to make sure things worked out. Kirkland said it was because she couldn’t shake the guilt that came from her childhood, a religious childhood that still played with her moral compass. Mabel grew up in a traditional, Mormon family, and she still believed in some of their teachings even if she didn’t attend church anymore. Whatever their reasons, everyone was thrilled for them.
Especially now. Mabel’s pregnancy was just beginning to show. Kirkland was over the moon, reduced to the fussy, obsessive husband he used to make fun of during his playboy days. It was…strange. Nice. But strange.
We’d all changed. There was no denying it. Even Donovan.
He and Kate were struggling to get pregnant, but it didn’t seem to have made them bitter or any less in love. You could see it when you looked at them, the love they had for each other would survive any obstacle fate or God or whatever they believed in threw their way.
Of all of us, they were the ones who would be sitting on the front porch, hand in hand, seventy years from now.
Mina came over and handed me a glass of champagne. I kissed her temple.
“I love you, Mrs. Grayson.”
She looked up at me, a warm smile on her lips.
“I love you, Mr. Grayson.”
Emily and Jack came through the door, a stack of presents in their arms. Emily had recovered nicely from her bullet wounds. The doctors said she might have a little pain on rainy days, but something like that would never hold Emily Warren back.
She came over and dropped a kiss on my jaw.
“I have a case I want to talk to you about later,” she said.
“It’s Christmas, Emily,” Mina said. “And our wedding day.”
“I know. Bad timing. But the bad guys don’t really honor things like holidays.”
“Business, babe,” I said.
She shook her head, sliding the baby out of my hands. “One of these days, we’ll trade in the guns and the bad guys for something better.”
“Like what?”
She looked around the room at the children and the pregnant bellies. “A daycare?”
She was laughing before I could crack a smile. She knew that was never going to happen. Security was who I was. It was who Kirkland and Donovan and Joss were. We would always live this life and do what we knew was right. We would always rescue people. And the people who loved us would always understand that.
I hoped.
Family. Either you understood or you found a way to live with it. That’s what family was all about.
And that’s what we were now. For better or for worse.
###
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Chapter 1
What do you say when you see your nemesis standing right outside your door?
“Hi,” I croaked and wrapped my arms around my middle.
I didn’t want to croak. Croaking was the last thing I needed to do when I faced this man. So I tried again. “What are you doing here?”
Oh, God! Was that my voice? That breathless ‘I’m about to swoon’ version?
This was too much.
“You knew I was going to find you,” he said quite flatly.
“Why on earth would you want to do that?”
That was better. Still croaking, but not as bad. Instead of sounding like a geriatric toad, I sounded more like a teenage toad. That was better, right? That gave me some confidence.
I straightened up and pushed my chest out. His eyes immediately dropped to my boobs, and it felt as though some high voltage laser had singed them. My brain was a little muddled, and I could feel my nipples hardening to pebbles right before his eyes. This was crazy.
“Maybe because of that.”
He flicked his hand toward my chest in reply to the question I had forgotten I’d asked. But then, as his eyes widened a little, I realized he wasn’t pointing to my chest. He was actually gesturing toward the small, round bump that my belly had become over the last few weeks.
I was fifteen weeks pregnant. And he was the father.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“You’re here because of the baby.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What else? Did you think I wouldn’t find out? That I’d let you walk away with my flesh and blood?” There was no amusement in his eyes. They were chilly and staring at me quite dispassionately.
So he was angry. I got that.
But he was being unreasonable.
“I did what I thought I had to do. Can’t you see that?” I asked him, trying to appeal to his better nature. I hadn’t seen any evidence of it, but it had to be there. Any man who wanted a child as fiercely as this man wanted the baby in my womb has to have a better nature, right? I had to believe that.
“All I can see is that we are not going to have this conversation on your doorstep.”
His tone said it was not up for debate. Yet, I hovered there, trying to look for a way to stall him. I did not want him in my apartment. I did not want him in my space. It wasn’t like he was going to hurt me or anything. Nicolas Costa was a lot of things, but he wasn’t the kind of man who went around hurting women. I wouldn’t have agreed to this insane arrangement if he was.
I couldn’t believe I was here, standing with Nicolas Costa, about to have his baby. I put myself in a difficult situation, and I didn’t know what to do about it.
Dear God…if only my mom were here, she would tell me everything would be alright. Actually, no. First, she would chew my ass out and tell me what an irresponsible, thoughtless thing it was I’d done, and then she would wrap her arms around me and tell me she understood why I’d done it and that she loved me.
I felt my throat grow tight and scratchy, and I had to blink really hard to push back the tears. My chest hurt. I rubbed it absently…not like it did any good. I missed my mother so much. It had only been three months since she’d died, and I’d not yet gotten used to being without her.
I sighed again and stepped back.
“Come in Mr. Costa.” I kept my voice cool and polite, hoping if I projected that image, I would actually begin to feel it.
It was time I stopped running away from the facts—no matter how much I disliked them. The truth was, I was pregnant with this man’s baby and I had signed some legal documents saying that I would give him the baby when it came. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time, and I even collected a partial payment.
God, that really does sound bad, like I sold the baby in my womb. But it was nothing like that. Nothing like that at all. The baby wasn’t really mine…not really.
The fertilized egg was not mine. I was merely a carrier, a human incubator. But that didn’t stop me from feeling like I was this baby’s mother in every sense that mattered. And that was the crux of my problem. I loved it with a fierceness that amazed me. And I didn’t care what this huge hulk of a man said. He would have to go over my dead body to get to the baby, and I intended to let him know that.
Chapter 2
It all began fairly innocuously.
My mom was a maid in Los Angeles, working for a couple of well-known actors, some politicians, and a few rich, but not so famous, business moguls. She’d done it for as long as I could remember in an attempt to keep us off the streets. Her best friend, Constance, was in the same line of work. In fact, they used to work for the same agency. But then Constance got a full-time position with Nicolas Costa, who just happened to be one the hottest Hollywood directors the world had seen since Frank Capra or Alfred Hitchcock. She talked about him constantly those first ten years or so. Sometimes I felt like I knew him just from the things Constance said about him. He seemed human. Kind. That is, of course, until he got married. Constance didn’t have much to say about his wife, actress Aurora Parker, or him, really, after their wedding five years ago. It was like her kindly, honest employer had disappeared and was replaced with something out of that old movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Then, one day, I went to visit my mom and Constance was talking about the Costas needing a surrogate for their baby. When she mentioned the insane amount they were offering to the right woman, I knew I had to give it a shot. I needed the money. Not too long before then, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, and there was just no way her insurance would cover the amount of chemo she would need. Not only that, but the chemo would make her too sick to work, and that would mean losing her insurance all together. So the burden fell on me, but I couldn’t afford the treatments she needed—not on a teacher’s salary. After everything my mom had given up for me…being a single mother is never easy, but being an uneducated immigrant only made it that much harder. I hated the thought of my first pregnancy being a surrogacy. And the idea of giving up a child that I would carry for nine months was overwhelming. But I was willing to do anything for her. She was all I had, and she’d given everything just to make sure I had everything she never did. I would never know my father, but I was okay with that because my mom loved me so fiercely that I never felt anything was missing from my life.
And the idea of doing something that amazing for another couple was exciting. I love kids. I’ve taught kindergarten since I graduated college three years ago. Most of my fellow teachers walk into the school looking like they’d rather be almost anywhere else but there. I’m not like that. I look forward to each and every day with my kids, even when they’re being difficult. So, giving the gift of a child to someone else was another motivation. To give life where none had existed before is miraculous.
I filled out some paperwork through the Costas’ attorney and waited, spending all my free time going to the doctor with my mom to find out what could be done for her stage 3 lung cancer. Lung cancer. I found it so ironic that a woman who never smoked a day in her life and always yelled at people who dared to smoke anywhere near me would be the one who would get it. The doctors thought she might have gotten it from exposure to all the cleaning chemicals she’d used over the years. They said some of the stuff she used was highly toxic if used in huge quantities, which, of course, my mother had always done. Who would’ve thought?
I’d almost forgotten about the whole surrogacy thing when I got this phone call one Saturday afternoon. Aurora Parker wanted to know if I’d be willing to come to her house for lunch. I was…there is no word for what I was. Shocked just doesn’t seem to cover it. I expected her husband to be there, too, but she explained that he was scouting locations for a movie he was s
et to film in Ireland and couldn’t make it back, but I’d meet him at our next meeting.
Next meeting?
Aurora—this beautiful, perfect blond woman who I’d watched in half a dozen movies over the last few years—chose me to carry her child. She said it was because I was a kindergarten teacher. She giggled and said that she knew I wouldn’t be biologically related to the child, but she liked the idea that the baby would be exposed to an academic setting during gestation. I wanted to explain that kindergarten wasn’t exactly an academic setting, but she seemed so excited by the idea that I couldn’t argue with her.
We met two more times after that initial meeting—once at her country club while she was waiting for a tennis date to arrive, and once more at the house. Nicolas Costa wasn’t at those meetings either. I didn’t actually meet him until after all the medical stuff was done—the exam and whole battery of blood and urine tests they made me take. I felt like I was preparing to go into space or something. The doctor they had working on me even asked for details about my sex life. On the one hand, I could see how it was his business whether or not I had ever had a sexually transmitted disease. But did he really need to know when I lost my virginity and whether or not I was into what he termed ‘rough sex’? At one point, about a month into the process, I began to wonder if it was all worth it.
After a month of meetings and medical exams and whatever else, I finally met Nicolas Costa. I already knew what he looked like. You couldn’t live in Los Angeles and not know what he looked like. His face was constantly on billboards and magazines and those placards on the side of buses all through the city. Yet, meeting him face-to-face was so intimidating I almost lost my lunch on his toes. And those toes were covered in Prada shoes that were probably worth more than all my belongings put together.
“So, you’re the famous Ana Martinez I’ve been hearing so much about,” he’d said, approaching me with his hand outstretched. “It’s a pleasure to finally put a face to the name.”
ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) Page 16