“The kind that asks you to be a point of contact if I ever need to send anybody down to you again.”
I was blown away.
“I…of course,” I said instantly. “Whatever you need. I’m willing to help.”
He nodded once. “I know.”
“But what about Rafe?”
Sam looked over at my wife.
“Rafe isn’t mine…yet.” He hedged. “He belongs to someone else for a few more years…then I can have him. Until then, I need someone to help me. Someone who cares about getting these women to safety as much as we do.”
That was a humbling feeling, knowing that this man was willing to trust me with the safety of the women that escaped from abusive situations.
“We will help,” Lark declared.
Sam grinned at her.
“Never doubted that for a second.”
He nodded his head and started to go, but I stopped him before he could disappear around the corner.
“I found out that the other ‘bird’ that you helped. The one that lived in the house before Lark?” Sam nodded, his eyes going guarded. “She had my brother’s baby. We want to help her.” I wavered. “I don’t know at this point, but I’d really like to help her if I can.”
Sam grinned.
“Me, too.” He reflected. “First I’m hearing about it being his baby, but girl’s got a good head on her shoulders. She’ll do the right thing.”
She’ll do the right thing.
“I don’t think you understand,” I reiterated. “She gave him the baby. She’s gone, and he wants to help her.” I looked Sam dead in the eye. “Can you give me any more information on her?”
He paused, studied my face for a few long moments, and then nodded. “I was meaning to talk to you about that. You looking for her probably isn’t the best thing.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
He gave me a look.
“I wouldn’t put her safety in jeopardy. I would also be willing to bet, if she gave your brother the baby, that she’s already written off her life or at least that part of it.”
That made me angry. “You don’t know where she is.”
“Her ex has connections you couldn’t even begin to imagine.” He went on. “You think Lark had problems? You have no clue how much worse it could’ve gotten. Lark’s problems don’t even register on the same scale as Marianne’s. If she’s hiding, she has a reason to hide, trust me.”
With that, he left and didn’t look back. But he did manage to say one more thing over his shoulder.
“And stop looking for her. If she wants to be found, she’ll be found.”
With that he moved into the door and slammed it shut, leaving me worried and frustrated.
“Baylor?”
I turned and looked over my shoulder, seeing Lark’s worried face staring back at me.
“Yeah?”
“You coming?”
I nodded and started toward the car.
“I know.”
I stopped and turned to find a young woman.
Not too young, but younger.
Twenties, maybe. But just barely.
“Know what?” I switched gears. “What’s your name?”
She smiled. “Janie.”
“What do you know, Janie?”
“I know that what my Uncle Sam thinks is right isn’t always right.” She hesitated. “Marianne’s in a whole lot of trouble.”
I frowned.
“That’s enough, Janie.”
I looked up to find Rafe standing there, staring at Janie like he was about to throttle her.
Jesus Christ.
I could practically feel the sexual tension from here.
Knowing I would get no more information this day, I left the two staring daggers at each other.
The moment I got into the car, my wife stared at me in astonishment.
“What did they say to each other?” she whispered.
I looked at the two people still standing there, wondering what would come of the sexual tension between the two.
I knew Rafe, maybe not all that well, but enough that I believed that he would never cross that line.
The woman, Janie, though?
She’d cross it in a heartbeat.
Epilogue
There should be a calorie refund for things that tasted like crap.
-Lark’s hopes and dreams
Lark
Phone call number one of the day was placed after I got a picture message of a present that my husband was about to give to his brother for his birthday.
“What is that?” I questioned my husband.
“Travis’ birthday present.”
“What is it?” I asked, my voice a few octaves higher than usual.
“An electric toothbrush.”
I shook my head.
It wasn’t an electric toothbrush. It was a dollar store toothbrush with a vibrator duct taped to it.
“Baylor.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Seriously, he’s going to kill you.”
Baylor and his practical jokes.
“You’re going to have to grow up one of these days,” I teased him through the phone. “And I swear to God, if Tate turns on rap music on our Alexa while I’m sleeping one more time, I will go over there and set his bike on fire.”
Tate started to laugh in the background, and it was then I knew that I was on speaker phone…something that Baylor did a lot.
He felt that everyone in the world needed to know what was happening on the other end of the line, saving him the trouble of having to tell them later.
Normally it wasn’t a big deal. However, there were times, like right now, that I kind of hated that he did it.
“Baylor…”
Baylor started to laugh. “You told him.”
I hung up after saying I love you, then laid down on my bed and continued to study for my first exam of my second semester in veterinary school.
***
Phone call number two started out much the same.
“The air conditioning isn’t working,” I frantically whispered to my husband.
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because I don’t want to wake the baby.”
“We don’t have a baby yet,” he said humorously.
I rolled my eyes.
“Weeny is laying on my chest, and he looks so peaceful.”
“Weeny is a fucking cat, and there’s no reason in fucking hell you can’t wake him up by speaking loud enough for me to hear you,” he said, this time not so humorously.
We’d gotten Weeny when Baylor had found him in the trunk of a car, and instead of letting Baylor take him to the pound like he’d wanted, I’d saved him and brought him into our home.
Pongo despised him at first, but now they were reluctant best friends.
I rolled my eyes.
“But he looks so sweet laying across my chest,” I told him, this time a little louder. “I’ll Facetime you and show you.”
“I don’t want to…”
I hit Facetime and waited for him to connect, which he did. Grudgingly.
I immediately switched it over to rear view and showed him how precious Weeny looked with my big belly right behind him.
“Cute.”
I narrowed my eyes and then turned it back around so he could see the sweat on my face.
“Do you see this sweat?” I pointed to my forehead.
He didn’t look impressed. “Do you see mine?”
I narrowed my eyes. “How can you say that?” I snapped. “You’re outside. I’m inside.”
“Exactly,” he said. “If it gets too hot, go to Travis’s.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t want to go there. If I go there, I have to talk, and I don’t want to talk.”
He rolled his eyes. “What’s the temperature in there?”
I reluctantly stood up, placing the cat on the bed next t
o where I’d been laying, before rolling to a stand.
I waddled to the thermostat on the wall and moaned. “It says it’s eighty. It’s set at sixty-seven.”
“Too low for Texas, honey,” he said. “Bump it up to seventy-two. I’ll get some guys to look at it.”
Then he said his goodbye as a scuffle broke out in the background. He was doing a repo in the middle of the Texas summer, and I’d interrupted him.
Grinning and saying my ‘I love yous’ I dropped the phone to the bed and looked at both Pongo and my new kitty. “Y’all want to go to Grandma’s?”
Grandma’s was better than Travis’s because Grandma, aka Baylor’s mother, cooked me food and lavished me with attention. All I would get at Hannah’s house was a friend who would sit on the couch with me and yell at her kids.
Not that that wasn’t something I enjoyed— in moderation—but I’d just been over there yesterday. There was only so much a woman could take when she was seventeen years pregnant with a Hail baby who was presumed to be well over ten pounds…already. And seeing as I still had another two weeks to go, there was no telling what he’d be at birth.
Before I left, though, I changed my clothes, slipping on a less sweaty pair of underwear and a pair of leggings.
I glanced down at the underwear on the floor and decided that I’d get them later.
The heat was killing me. I could hardly breathe.
And I was hungry.
Two very bad things when it came to a pregnant woman.
***
Later was, apparently, the wrong move, when it came to picking up my underwear.
Me being too lazy to bend over and pick up my underwear meant when I got home later that night, it was to a whole shit ton of men in my closet, where I’d changed earlier, surrounding them.
I glared at Baylor.
“Baylor!” I hissed.
He turned his head from where he’d been surveying the men in the attic doing something to the A/C.
“What?”
I gestured for him to come over to me. Which he did, curling his arms around my back and pulling me as far into him as he could.
“Go pick my underwear up off the ground,” I gestured to the underwear I’d just left lying there earlier.
He looked over his shoulder, spotted the underwear, and shrugged. “They’ve already seen them.”
“That’s not the point,” I growled. “Now go.”
He rolled his eyes and let me go, walking over and picking them up.
Then he tucked them into his pocket.
I groaned. “Seriously?”
He grinned, looking down at the lacy thong that was half in/half out of his pocket.
“What’s wrong?”
I blew out a breath and walked away, counting to ten as I did.
I made it to five before he was wrapping his arms around me and pushing me into the spare bedroom that we’d yet to prepare for our child.
“What are you doing?” I asked as he closed and locked the door.
“You.”
Forty-five minutes later, I walked back into the kitchen and stopped when I felt the cool air pouring out of the vent above my head.
“This is amazing,” I informed the room.
The two men from the A/C company looked at me and grinned.
I looked back at them and waved.
They waved back, and suddenly I felt awkward.
“Who do I make the check out to?” Baylor asked.
The men told him, and two minutes later, they were out the door with a check in their hand for their services.
“Thank you,” I told Baylor.
He turned around and winked at me, but before he could come to me, his phone rang, startling both of us.
“Hello?”
Baylor listened intently.
“You’re shitting me.”
Baylor’s eyes were wide and almost happy as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the line speak.
“That’s kind of sucky.”
Kind of sucky.
I snorted and walked to the fridge, pulling out the fried chicken from the gas station that Baylor must’ve brought home for dinner.
After putting it in the microwave, I waited for him to finish his phone call before demanding to know answers.
“What’s kind of sucky?” I demanded.
Baylor looked at me curiously. “Sal was killed in a prison riot.”
My brows rose at that.
I couldn’t say I was upset.
“Should I be upset about this? Because I’m not.”
Not after all that he’d put me—and Baylor—through.
Baylor may be all healed now, but every time I saw the scar on his belly, I got angry all over again.
“I’m not either.”
I burst out laughing, then turned and pulled the chicken out of the microwave when the beep sounded.
After placing it gently on the table, I sat down and started to eat straight out of the box.
I couldn’t help it, though.
I was so hungry.
I might’ve eaten twice at ‘Grandma’s’ house, but I was still starving.
“I got another call today.” Baylor sat next to me, dropping a cold bottle of water on my side of the table, and a cold beer on his.
“Yeah?” I looked up at him, part of the skin of the drumstick I was eating hanging out of my mouth.
He stole the skin and popped it into his own mouth.
“Hey!” I growled, mouth full.
He winked and said, “Yeah. They’re sending another bird here.”
My brows rose.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Tonight.”
My mouth opened.
“But we don’t have the house ready yet!” I said. “We just got the other one ready for the Jay. How are we going to get the new one done before she gets here?”
“Not a she. A he.”
My mouth hung open in surprise.
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Well then,” I said. “How old is he?”
“Eighteen.”
“Wow,” I said. “So young.”
He agreed, then snatched the last chicken leg.
He loved dark meat. Me, not so much. But the chicken legs were the easiest ones to eat at this point. With the current level of my hunger, if I didn’t eat the dark meat, I’d probably starve to death before I could pull all the chicken off of the breast he’d gotten me.
And as we got up to leave forty-five minutes later, I realized that though this wasn’t exactly how I thought I’d be living my life a year ago, this was exactly what I needed.
I was with the man I loved. I was pregnant with my man’s baby. I was in my second year of vet school.
Life never worked out quite how I wanted it to in the beginning. Maybe it was a matter of it being the wrong time and the wrong place. But I knew for damn certain that I was in the right place now with the right person. Baylor was my home. He was my future. I couldn’t have dreamt up a better life than the one I was finally living.
What’s Next?
The Hail You Say
Book 5 in The Hail Raisers Series
1-11-2018
Chapter 1
What if I have a child that’s allergic to dogs and I have to get rid of the child?
-Reed to his mother
Reed
16 years ago
The first time I saw her, I nearly fell out of my truck.
I remembered it like it was yesterday.
She was wearing a pale lavender top, short—and when I say short, I mean that if she bent over I'd see her underwear—khaki shorts. A pair of simple black flip flops from Old Navy—the ones that are a dollar on sale every other week—and she had her hair up in a ponytail with the length of the ponytail braided down to her bra strap.
&nb
sp; Her long strawberry blonde hair seemed to shimmer and shine under the street lamp, and I wanted to touch it. Wrap my fingers around the length and bring it up to my nose to smell.
We met because her best friend and my friend wanted to meet. Each of us had tagged along, neither of us realizing that we were about to have our lives changed forever.
“Come on,” Drake said. “It’s time to go.”
I rolled my eyes and walked with my friend out to my truck. And it was my truck, because if it was his, I knew that I wouldn’t get a say so in what time we left.
What if this girl was his soulmate? I didn’t want to have to stay out there until dawn. I wanted to be able to go home at a normal time, because I had a baseball game the next day.
Thinking about how much this was going to suck, I drove slowly, uncaring whether Drake was bitching in the seat next to me.
“Could you drive any slower?” Drake, aka Dilbert as I liked to call him, groaned.
“I can’t get another ticket,” I told him honestly. “I was barely able to pay for the last one. If I get another, I have to go to teen court to get it dismissed and that would fucking blow, because then they’d make me do community service. Then I wouldn’t be able to practice with the elite team on Saturday, and then…”
“I got it,” Drake muttered under his breath.
I grinned.
Drake hated hearing about my practices…mostly because he wasn’t as good as me and couldn’t keep up with me at all.
That wasn’t vanity talking, either.
I played on two club teams. One for baseball, and one for soccer. Lucky enough for me, they split the seasons. Fall and spring it was baseball. Winter and summer, soccer.
When I wasn’t playing games for one, I was practicing for another.
At one point, Drake had been on the baseball team with me, but he quit shortly after his father and mother caught him trying to juice himself—or shoot himself up with steroids—to keep up with me.
Which had upset me, too.
Now we were just friends, and I made it a point to chill and relax with him, since I think the whole reason he tried was because we’d been the best of friends during our younger years, but had grown apart as we got older.
“Okay, she’s going to have her friend there, so if we disappear for a little while, you have to take one for the team.”
I snorted, knowing where he was going with that.
He wanted me to keep the proverbial fat chick entertained while he went for his own entertainment.
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