Guarding Her: A Secret Baby Romance

by Lexi Whitlow

  Bianca groans and says something through her gag that sounds like, “Why now?”

  Cullen nods, contemplating. “Because I’m sick of your bullshit, Bianca. You couldn’t pay me this month, and I’m done playing your game when you should be playing mine.” He brings his knife across her cheek, and she inhales sharply, beads of blood forming along the slice. The cut is shallow and will fade far more quickly than the others I’ve seen Cullen give. It might not even leave a true scar, not the kind he favors. But the look on Bianca’s face shows what it means to her. Cullen looks back at me with his one blue eye and glares at me.

  “Jonny, you take the girl to the safe house tomorrow. Keep her chained. B has a week to get her shit together, or we start with her fingers and work our way down. And don’t worry. We’ll make sure to get regular updates from you about how the girl is. You let her go, we kill her. Keep her with you, under your watch, and she and her aunt both live to see another day.”

  I leave, and I drive toward Summer.

  I’ll keep her under my watch, yes.

  But it’ll be on my terms.

  Present Day

  When I come to pick Summer up, she’s ghostly pale and nearly fucking shaking. I can see it even before I pull my car into the spot near the back. It’s either been a hard shift, or it has something to do with seeing her mother and that empty-ass inn.

  It feels like the time I saw her after Cullen had bagged her aunt. I could have ended it all then, knowing what I know now. Sometimes, on my darker nights, it’s made me guilty that I didn’t figure it out earlier. Maybe then, Summer would have stayed in New York.

  I’ve often imagined her standing up to Cullen, telling him to fuck off and leave her and her aunt alone.

  She wouldn’t have needed me, though. And she would have left. Despite the fantasies I’ve held onto for years, I know that for sure. Summer was always headed somewhere, and I’m lucky that right now, I’m something she’s considering as part of her plan.

  I walk up to her, sauntering, hand in one pocket. She sees me as some kind of asshole bad boy, someone who won’t live up to her standards. Not that I can say I blame her. For the first time in a while, I take stock of myself as I’m walking toward her.

  Potentially dead end job? Check.

  Still occasionally working for criminals? Check.

  Covered in tattoos she probably doesn’t want her coworkers to see? Double check.

  But I still keep walking. Acting on instinct, I pull her tight into my arms and kiss her cheek. For a second, she’s stiff and barely responds, but then I feel her hands snake around my neck, and that thing in my chest goes tight. Before Summer, there were a hundred women, maybe more. A different one every night. But since I said “I do” in front of that stupid drunken priest, I’ve only been with one. I’ve doubted that decision in the years I’ve been here, especially when the dumb fighting skanks would throw themselves at me after matches, but I pushed them all away.

  Summer doesn’t know that. She probably thinks I’ve been manwhoring around like I did before I met her. Standing here, tangling my fingers through her hair and holding her, I think I should tell her. It rests on the tip of my tongue for a minute or more, but it’s not what I end up saying. Right now, this woman is aching with need—and it’s not the kind that’s satisfied in the bedroom.

  “You okay, Sunshine? You don’t seem okay.” I’m used to sounding clipped and arrogant, because that’s everything I’ve been in the life I chose to lead after Summer. But when I talk to her, it’s different. It was that way in New York too, but I was always operating on instinct, not stopping to think what it meant.

  Now I know what it means, even if she doesn’t.

  She sobs and then cries, pulling on my neck. I know she thinks she doesn’t look pretty when she cries, but with her tears, humid against my shirt, and her hair, wild and messy and pulled up on top of her head, she looks vulnerable and young—and more than beautiful.

  “I’m supposed to be divorcing you!” She yells it into my shirt, and just like always in front of this damn hospital, there are five or so people walking by and looking at us curiously. “Why the hell do you keep coming by when it just makes me—it just makes me—“

  “Horny?” She pulls one arm away from my neck and backs away enough to punch me square in the chest. “You know, you’ve got one hell of a right hook. I’ve got a promoter looking for a good female fighter.” She punches me again and laughs, wiping her tears away. A piece of her hair falls out of the bun, just brushing the tops of her breasts. Even though her scrubs cover up those freckled orbs, I can’t help imagining what they look like now.

  “You’re not supposed to come around here. You’re just supposed to sign papers and stop coming here and stop looking at me like that—”

  “Like what?”

  “You know how you’re looking at me.”

  “Can’t help it. You’re the first pretty girl I’ve seen in three years.”

  She rolls her eyes, but then she smiles, and it seems like the best smile I’ve ever seen. She barely smiled at our wedding, but that all happened fast. The honeymoon though—I remember those smiles. I think of what she looked like all the time. I take a piece of her hair and twirl it between my fingers.

  “Seriously, Sunshine. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Stop calling me that.” She takes a step back, but it doesn’t look like she wants to, not really.

  “Because you don’t like it?”

  She just looks at me and doesn’t answer, crossing her arms over those spectacular breasts. “If you must know...” She raises an eyebrow like she’s not sure if she should let me in on any more of her life. But maybe I’m projecting. That’s what my sponsor always called it—projecting. Like I’m making up a little story about what she thinks. “My mom’s inn is fucked. She has to foreclose. Or declare bankruptcy. Or some shit like that. Maybe she could sell if she did it fast, but it seems like she didn’t think about that, at least not how she should have. And not when she should have.”

  I bite my lip. “I thought you probably knew all that. But—”

  “You knew? Did she tell you during one of your private conversations I just learned about?”

  I give her a shrug. “I like Linda.”

  “Jesus. ‘Linda.’” Summer makes a frustrated growling sound to show me just what she thinks of my using her mother’s actual name. In that moment, I get a brief flash of what she must have been like as a teenager. “If I had a few more months, I could dig up the money. I could do something.” She lets her arms hang down by her sides, listless. “We really ought to get the divorce...”

  Not this again. I thought we were just about past this. But that’s not what she’s worried about, not really. I try not to let my chest get tight again, try not to let it get to me. It’s like there’s something that happened to her. And each time something bad happens, she comes back to this idea that I don’t fit into her life.

  I cross my arms and study her face. “We will.” I pause, sucking in my breath. After years of thinking about this, that’s not something I could possibly do. “If that’s what you want after the separation. But I don’t think that’s what you were talking about—”

  “I was talking about that first. And then my mom. She’s really not your concern, Jonathan.” Her words are sharp, but her tone isn’t. Instead, her voice sounds raspy and angry all at once, like she’s about to break.

  “I used to hate that name. It was my dad’s name.” The one who trained me to fight and gamble. The one who put us all in debt to Cullen and his sickening group of cronies. She cocks her head to the side and chews on that information, though maybe she’s searching the depths of her soul to see what insults she can sling at me for introducing myself politely to her mother. But she sighs again, still looking defeated, and she comes up short.

  She doesn’t hate me. But even after folding into me, she has me at arm’s length.

  Here it comes, the insult. She puffs up and looks
at me, eyes hard.

  “Look. I’m sorry. I know you were trying to help her. But I’m fucking angry—at her, and at the bank, I guess.” She sighs deeply and runs her fingers through her hair, making it even messier. “And at myself, for not coming back here sooner. I think I’m just going to go home.” I catch her bright green gaze, and I can tell she’s looking at me with something that’s close to longing. Her eyes are bright with tears, but it’s like she wants to break down that barrier and come back to me.

  There was a time, however brief it was, when she would have gotten me to fix this.

  “I can drive you. Or walk with you,” I say.

  Or throw you over my shoulder and make you forget your own name.

  I don’t say that part, but I wish I had the guts. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m not convinced she won’t give in. Not just yet.

  “No.” She puts her hand up when she says it, and walks over to her car. Her ass is still perfect, and I can see the outline of it, even through her scrubs.

  “Okay if I follow you in my truck and make sure you’re okay? I don’t like you walking into that apartment by yourself.” The words come out like some macho bravado shit that’s closer to something I’d say to a date back in New York. But I can’t think of anything off the cuff to make it sound much better.

  To my surprise, she turns and smiles. “Yeah. That would be fine.” She shakes her head slightly. “You’ve got a truck and everything. It’s like you’ve turned into some kind of country boy. Trying to walk me home, talking to my mama. You’re not going soft on me, are you?”

  I shrug. “Not soft. No ma’am.” I put on a Southern accent and tip a fake hat at her, and she gets in her car.

  It’s not the most successful drive home, but I follow her and make sure she gets into her apartment. I park at the far side of her parking lot, and she turns and waves at me.

  I said years ago I’d take care of her.

  And I still take that seriously.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Three Years, Four Months Ago

  “It’s in and out,” Ash says. He gives me a suggestive look, and I squirm uncomfortably. He’s driving me home again, and something about his car makes me doubly uncomfortable. It’s Cullen’s car, one from his fleet—that should say everything I need to know about this man. But there’s Ash, sitting across from me, red hair like copper in the morning light. “And then you can do what you want, Sunshine.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I blush and pull a lock of my hair behind my ear. I always got made fun of for having freckles, for my blushing, for the reddish tone to my own hair. But the way Ash looks at me makes all the taunts fly away, like those memories aren’t part of my past at all.

  “That’s what you are.” He says it simply, looking away as he pulls up to the bus stop across from my aunt’s bar. “I’m no poet, but that’s what you remind me of.” As he reaches for a cigarette, he brushes my hand, and a thrill runs from the top of my head down to the base of my spine.

  This is a bad idea. A very fucking bad idea.

  In the dark of his apartment, it seemed like everything Ash said made sense, like the sham of a marriage would protect me. But why would it? I wouldn’t be a real member of the family. I’d be a wife. When Ash talks about the wedding, he says it will guarantee my safety. What if it only makes me more vulnerable? What if I’m being guided by the way he looks at me and nothing else?

  I move to open the door, and he catches my hand. “I know what you’re thinking, Summer. Cullen is a dangerous man, but he doesn’t break the code. His family has had a hold in this area for nearly a century. Any woman a man takes as his is safe, and her family as well.”

  “I don’t belong to anyone.”

  “You marry me, you’re mine.” He shrugs as he lights his cigarette, and a ring of white smoke curls out the window. “That’s how it works. My father was in the Family and his father before him. And now I am—and my wife becomes the same.” He cuts his blue eyes at me, then he reaches over and puts one hand on my breast. My nipple immediately goes stiff, and the tight, winding need in my core intensifies. My body responds before my brain can, and I push my body into his hand and open my legs ever so slightly. His fingers run down over my waist and find their way between my legs, lifting my skirt and pressing against my panties. To my shame, I’m already wet, just at the thought of belonging to him. He leans in and bites at the soft flesh of my neck as he slides his fingers against the outline of my clit. Then his fingers move deeper, trapping my clit between them, fabric pulled tight against my sensitive button.

  “Ash, what if it doesn’t work? What if we don’t stay married long—” He leans in and quiets me with a kiss, his hand still pressed tight against my panties. I shiver and close my eyes. His fingers move with agonizing slowness, so slow that I start to lift my hips and push against him. He forces me back down on the seat and keeps working his hand. Chills begin to rise from my core, and I groan against his lips. As an idle teenager, I thought of marriage from time to time—what my dress would look like, what flowers I would order from the shop down the street from my mother’s inn, how I would look as I walked into the garden where my friends and family waited.

  In none of my fantasies did I consider someone like Ash, someone who would take my body and make it sing, building desire and tension and arousal to points beyond my understanding, thoughts clouding and turning to mist as he touched me.

  People on the street walk past us, and I could care less if any of them see what we’re doing in Ash’s car. His hand roams over my breasts, his other buried between my thighs, and his lips feel slow and tender against mine, even as his hand presses harder and harder against my body. The heat rises through me, slow this time, reaching my breasts, through my spine, cascades of warmth singing through my sex and filling me. I buck against his hand once and then twice. He pinches my clit at the height of it, forcing another shock through my system. He groans like he takes pleasure in playing my body like this. I open my eyes and see a look of satisfaction on his face—the same look I see when he comes inside of me.

  He brings my face close to his and kisses me on the forehead. “You’re a good girl, Sunshine. So good when you come for me.” I look down and see that his cock is hard, straining against his jeans. My mouth waters—and he catches me looking at him. “And so hungry for my cock.” He kisses me again. “But I’ll wait and give you the best fuck of your life after you marry me. Now go. I can’t see you after noon today—bad luck.”

  When his hands leave my body, I feel abandoned all at once, like there’s a piece of me missing. I stare at him, trying to read his face. “But this marriage isn’t real. What does any of that matter?”

  He reaches over me and opens the door, my gaze still locked with his. “Go on, Sunshine. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, bright and early.” I slide out of the car, and as the door closes behind me I hear Ash say something to me.

  It sounds like, “Who said it isn’t real?” But before I can tap on the window he pulls away, and I’m left alone in the street, time standing still around me.

  Present Day

  The next night, we leave our cars at the hospital, and Ash walks me the two miles home, the summery night breeze whipping around us. There’s a part of me that wants to reach out and take his hand, but that doesn’t fit with the Ash I knew before, the man that promised to protect me by making me his. The man with the scheme. In hindsight, it was a very stupid scheme.

  It would make me laugh—if I hadn’t been so alone when I ran away, if I hadn’t come here, hating him and loving him all at once, and never expecting to see him again.

  File for abandonment, the lawyer said. It’ll be easy, the lawyer said. You’ll never even have to see him.

  “I have money.” It’s the first time Ash has spoken in the mile since the hospital. He keeps looking ahead and walking, and I nearly trip on a crack in the pavement.

  “What money? What are you talking about? Money for what?” I catch my bala
nce, but I stay frozen in place.

  Ash keeps walking, and about twenty steps ahead, he realizes I’m not beside him. He turns, and in the streetlight, his tattoos look like shadows, his hair like burnished copper. “Not as much as I’d like. $25,000, maybe 30. I’ve got some stuff tied up in different places.” He shrugs, and some of that old casual confidence shows through. A chill runs down my spine, and desire registers in my body, lower and deeper.

  “For what exactly?” The words feel dry in my throat.

  “For your mom. I want to help.”

  I close my eyes and swallow hard. It’s easier when he’s not trying to help me. When he’s just a pretty face who walks with me so I won’t be alone at night. That’s much simpler than the man who left me, who missed the worst days of my life, who sent me letter after letter. The man who showed up here and won’t let me forget him.

  “Ash—” I start. My voice nearly breaks again. It’s done that so much in the past few days that my throat is sore. “Ash, you can’t do that. That’s for your gym, isn’t it?”

  “It is. But this is more important.” He shifts to the side and puts his hands in his pockets. “I know you won’t accept it, but I’m telling you, I have the money. I could help.”

  “Why would you—”

  “You’re my wife,” he says, and suddenly I feel like I’m looking back in time. Ash looks and talks just like he did when I first met him, but there’s a different cadence to his voice, like he’s calmer and more reserved. “You’re family. Your mother, she’s family too. I’m not a member anymore, but I still hold to that. ‘Family comes first, and so it ought.’”