Felicity Found
A Rogue Series Extra
Lara Ward Cosio
Rogue Publications
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Lara Ward Cosio
Copyright © 2018 by Lara Ward Cosio
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.
Created with Vellum
Preface
rogue
pronunciation: / rōɡ/
noun
1. A dishonest or unprincipled man.
1.2 A person whose behavior one disapproves of but one who is nonetheless likable or attractive
(often used as a playful term of reproof)
1
Felicity
I never in a million years imagined I’d end up here.
Here is Dublin, the city I once thought I’d left behind.
Here is an extraordinary house overlooking the Irish sea in exclusive Dalkey.
Here, at this exact moment, is bent over the kitchen sink, pulling clumps of mashed sweet potatoes out of my hair while I use one foot to keep the baby swing moving lest Ella wakes up. At the same time, I’ve got an eye on Romeo. He’s in his high chair, a few feet away, as he continues to squeeze pieces of the soft sweet potato in his chubby little fists until the burnt-orange vegetable flesh squirts out between his fingers. Romeo squeals with delight at this bit of magic—much the same way he did when he smeared pieces of the potato in my hair moments ago as I was giving Ella an extra second of my attention.
Here is surprised by motherhood to two infants, one by birth and one by adoption, after years of living with the disappointment of “unexplained infertility.”
Here is being married to one of the world’s most famous rock guitarists, or as I once knew him, the boy who was my friends-with-benefits schoolmate.
Here is at my wits’ end caring for these two precious babies—six-month-old Romeo and three-month-old Ella—while my husband is at the studio all hours finishing up his band’s sixth album.
Here is at the crossroads of both loving and struggling with every minute of it.
* * *
I have lived in a bubble of motherhood in these last few months, determined to experience all the good and messy moments this has to offer. That’s meant that I’ve willingly hidden away with the babies in a cocoon of sleep deprivation, dirty nappies, rotating feedings and baths, angelic smiles and coos, and the sweetest cuddles ever created.
The isolation is self-created, because while I know I have my good friend Sophie for help and advice, I rarely bother her since she’s got her hands full with her own two little ones. And my husband, Conor, is great support—when he’s here. We could certainly afford to hire in help, but except for the first six weeks when we had a live-in baby nurse, I’ve opted to do everything on my own.
After living with the idea that I’d never be a mother, I’ve jumped into the deep end, and with Conor dedicated to the studio, I’m left with the babies and my thoughts. And I often think of the twists and turns my life has taken. I had such a sense of purpose as a girl. And that purpose was primarily to escape the oppressive pressure my mother put on me to be her emotional support as she bounced from one bad relationship to the next. As much as I loved her, I knew early on that the only way to escape that dynamic was to get far away.
I set my sights on Canada. I still remember the amusement in Conor’s eyes when I told him my plan to attend university there. Besides being my occasional lover, he was my good friend, the one who knew all about my father being a non-presence, and my mother being too much of a presence. I thought he’d understand why I wanted to get away. Instead, he used my logic against me.
“You’re running away, is that it?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
Even at age fifteen, Conor Quinn was a looker. With black hair, bright blue eyes, and high cheekbones, he was destined to be handsome. Before he really grew into those features, though, he was still the one all the girls chased. On top of all that, he had an easy confidence about him that was magnetic. But he also had the most amazing ability to give me his focus when we were together. He could have been out with any number of girls, but for whatever reason, he was content to spend time with me—even if it involved some teasing, like with my big plan to leave.
“It’s not running away, CQ. It’s striking out on my own,” I had replied with the confidence of youth.
“You could strike out here, you know? Get a flat, do your own thing.”
“I’d still be at her beck and call, then,” I moaned.
“Not if you get busy with having your own life.”
“You don’t know what it’s like. Your parents are perfect.”
Though Conor rolled his eyes at that, it was true. It’s still true today. His parents are the loveliest couple. They had Conor late in life. Because they were older and only had one child, they were especially conscious of creating a stable and nourishing environment for Conor. The only pressure he ever felt was to pursue his exceptional abilities with classical music. When he turned away from that in favor of rock music, his mother was disappointed but it was his father who purchased his first guitar. His mother soon came around. Conor’s always had their support. It was the right balance between parents and a child. They took care of him. Unlike my situation. I felt like the caretaker of my mother—if only her emotions—at too young an age.
“I just don’t think the answer is to leave,” Conor had told me. “I mean, won’t you just be pretending to have left all your Ma’s stuff behind, but really knowing it’s all here just waiting on you?”
That bit of wisdom was not what I wanted to hear. I should have known better than to confide in Conor. See, even though he was gorgeous, he was also brilliant. Like, truly the cleverest boy I’ve ever known. He wasn’t going to grant me my denial.
“Listen, I wasn’t looking for an argument. I’m just telling you how it is,” I said.
Again, he gave me the amused eyes. But, thankfully, he let it go. After that, he did me the favor of just listening and not dissecting as I made my complaints about my Ma and
affirmed my plans to escape. He was a good friend in that way.
I’m lost in these memories and only pulled away by Romeo’s squeals. They have a tenor different to the ones he made when playing with his food. These squeals are reserved for only one person—his daddy.
Conor is home unexpectedly. I usually make an effort to clean myself up a bit for him when I know he’s coming, especially given the fact that when he comes home from the studio he’s almost always ready to reconnect in an intimate way. It’s only been a few weeks since I’ve been cleared to have sex again and Conor has been trying to make up for lost time ever since.
But I’m certain he’ll have no interest in that at this moment. Half my head is wet from trying to get the sweet potatoes out, though I still feel bits here and there. My stretched out blue and white striped tee shirt is stained with breast milk. I didn’t bother putting on pants today, too busy taking care of the babies, and my burgundy cotton boy-short-style knickers are not remotely sexy.
By contrast, Conor is perfectly put together, wearing jeans with a fitted gray button-up shirt over a white tee shirt. His brown belt is secured low around his hips and matches his weathered lace-up boots. The silver pocket chain he’s worn for years is his version of jewelry, and the only piece he wears besides his wedding ring. Though I love when he’s got some scruff, he’s clean-shaven. He’s tall, with lean muscles, and I swear he got into even better shape when I was pregnant.
“There’s my big man,” he says. To Romeo, of course. He always greets the kids before me. I hate that it triggers a pang of jealousy in me. It must be that sense that I’m no longer his only priority. But still, I know it’s not right. Sometimes, the feeling is so strong that I have to leave the room to get myself in order. I tell myself that he’s doing the exact right thing, that I should, in fact, find it incredibly sexy because he is a wonderful father. I tell myself that it’s only my out-of-control hormones that keep me from responding that way, and that I’ll soon be over this irrational reaction.
I watch as he gives his son a few minutes of adoration before he then checks on Ella. His daughter is still sleeping, but that doesn’t stop him from stroking the baby’s cheek. Finally, he faces me, gives me a once over, and smiles his Conor smile. Like the pocket chain, the smile is one of his signatures. Only, this one has the power to make women melt. It’s always worked on me. Except that at this moment, I’m too aware of how awful I look to fall for it.
He reaches out and touches my wet hair, retrieving a glob of orange sweet potato.
“You are a mess,” he says, still smiling.
“Yes, I know that.”
“Rough day with these two?”
“Normal day.” I start to move away. I have things to do. I need to clean up Romeo’s high chair, the floor under it, and get him into a bath. I need to prepare for Ella waking. She’ll want her own feeding—after a diaper change. I also need to find the time to look over my emails because though I’m technically still employed as Rogue’s Media Manager, I’ve done a piss poor job of it in these last few months. With the band almost done with the new album, I’ll need to find a way to get some balance between family and work.
“I know that look,” Conor says.
I stop and turn back to him. “What?”
He flicks the bit of food into the sink. “That little crinkle between your eyes. That’s the look you get when you’re worrying over a thousand things at once.”
“As it happens, I do have a lot to sort out.”
Again, I start to move away, but he grabs me around the waist and pulls me to him. Though I’ve lost a lot of the baby weight, mostly with the help of breastfeeding, I am still heavier than I’d like. Conor has never let that change the way he touches me, which is not only sweet but does wonders to make me forget about all the beautiful women with perfect bodies who throw themselves at him on a nearly constant basis. Such is the cost of being married to a rockstar. Though, he’s not just your average grungy rockstar. He’s currently being featured in an American magazine as “Sexiest Man Alive.”
I’ve long agreed with that designation. The problem is, so has he. Yes, he’s ridiculously handsome, but he also knows as much and doesn’t bother to hide the fact that he enjoys the effect he has on women—and plenty of men.
He’s using all his considerable charms at the moment by, not just holding me to him, but by sliding one hand down my back and letting his fingers trail over the generous curve of my backside. I should expect him to grab a handful next, but I know he won’t. Not yet. This teasing technique is deliberate. He likes to build up the anticipation, wanting me to reach a degree of neediness before he will move to the next level. This technique always works on me.
At least it did. I lost my sex drive not long after I got pregnant, not long after our impromptu wedding. I thought I’d feel more myself after the morning sickness subsided, but it hung on well into my third trimester. By then, I was so fatigued and swollen that the very idea of sex, even with the sexiest man alive, held no appeal. Conor was patient and understanding. But I know it wasn’t easy for him, especially once I had Ella and was cleared to be intimate and still my desire did not return.
The thing is, I know how his touch should be making me feel. I remember vividly how the slightest graze of his hand or a wayward glance would make me involuntarily bite my lip in anticipation that he’d do something more to titillate me. I should be silently urging him to do more than lightly trace the shape of my arse. I should adore a commanding squeeze or even a light spanking at the moment.
But I don’t. I don’t feel anything.
Dropping his voice an octave, he says, “How about I sort you out?”
“But I’m such a mess,” I protest, hoping I won’t have to resist him too hard before he understands—once again—that I can’t find the desire.
“A hot mess.”
He’s giving me with that Conor smile again. The one that is everything him: sexy, confident, and in control. It’s the smile that has the power to seduce women in an instant. I used to be one of them.
When he covers my mouth with his, drawing me into a kiss, I think he hasn’t really registered just how grubby I am.
“I need a shower, sweetheart,” I say, breaking away. “Maybe you can watch the kids while I clean up?”
After a moment of consideration, he says, “I have a better idea. Let’s get Romeo set up in that jumpy thing so I can get you clean and dirty all at once in the shower.”
I’ve put him off so many times that I know I need to find a way to get back to the intimacy we once enjoyed so effortlessly. I conjure up a vision of us naked and wet, his hands cupping my still larger than normal breasts as he presses up against me, and it’s all I need to nod my agreement. He is extremely talented in a lot of ways, one of those being this kind of thing where he reminds me that he still desires me, that I am still a woman and not only a mother.
Then again, he’s always been good at separating things—including once we went from being pals to being friends with benefits when we were in school. Though I tried to project indifference about it all, it wasn’t easy to resist falling for him.
2
I still remember the shock on my friend Sophie’s face when I told her Conor and I had this arrangement. She had made a splash showing up to school that year as a sixteen-year-old golden girl from America. We got on like a house on fire right away. There was a kind of vulnerability she projected that made me want to protect her. Who knows, maybe it was something similar to the way I cared for my mother? In any case, she was a great mate right away, even though we had very little in common.
I had already begun my thing with Conor by then and it seemed normal, but in telling Sophie about it, I realized it wasn’t what a lot of other girls would do. Sophie looked at me with something like pity, thinking I was doing this at Conor’s behest and settling for less than I should. But it was my plan all along. I had it firmly stuck in my mind that even if I was attracted to Conor, he and I could hav
e no future. Not with me planning on going to Canada and him planning on being a rockstar. I was very pragmatic that way—likely in reaction against my mother’s fanciful thinking that the next fella she met would finally be her Prince Charming. That, combined with the sporadic presence of my own father, led me to be much more protective of my heart than I should have been at that age. Conor tells me I have an old soul, as if it’s this grand thing to admire but I’ve come to see that it was all the result of fighting to protect myself against the kind of disappointment that my father invariably left me with and my mother modeled after each man left her. Not exactly as romantic as Conor would like to see it.
Still, he never made me feel that disappointment—jealousy, maybe, but not disappointment. I had suggested our arrangement, so how could I be disappointed if he stuck to it? He’d go seamlessly from tenderly holding me in his arms in his bedroom, to roughly nudging me to get me in on a joke when we were with our group of friends. His ability to draw a distinct line between our intimate times and our friendship could be jarring. But the worst of it was when I saw how he fancied Sophie.
It was clear as day he was interested in her. It was also clear that Gavin wasn’t going to let the fact that he had a girlfriend at the time stop him from laying his claim on her. I was witness to this little bit of a mating ritual when Conor attempted to charm the newly arrived Sophie with promises of showing her around as a personal tour guide. My heart sank as I watched this interaction—not just because I felt discarded, but because I was sure Sophie would fall for him. He was the one all the girls wanted, after all.
Felicity Found (Rogue Series Book 6) Page 1