But she had to have a fucking purpose here. She looked out the window at the huge expanse of land that surrounded his house. The bees she knew absolutely nothing about. Gardening? Not her thing either. She didn’t know shit about fixing stuff around the house.
Frustration rapidly welled up to a breaking point inside her.
When Theo came into the kitchen, she was stomping around, muttering curses as she tried to prepare rice.
“What’s wrong?” He sounded a little panicked and was keeping his distance, standing across the kitchen from her, his hands at his sides outspread.
“What now? I didn’t think this far. I didn’t think you’d actually want me here.” The words came out in a rush. “I don’t know what to do with myself. How are we going to raise a baby if I can’t make a living?”
His face relaxed and he looked relieved as he walked to where Dusty was strangling the handle of a pot over the stove. Theo covered her hand with his, and the warmth of his touch had her relaxing into his body behind hers.
“I can’t even cook a damn meal.”
A low chuckle against her ear had her relaxing further. “I hear babies don’t actually eat meals for a while. We have time to figure stuff out.” His arms came around her. “I can make some chicken to go with this. No worries.”
“Well, I don’t have any skills.” She spun around in his arms and wrapped her arms around his neck, for reassurance more than anything. “I can’t run a bar with a baby.”
“I don’t think money is going to be an issue for a while, either. I’m going to have honey in a few months to a year; we can work with that. Also, I had plans for a garden and some other things. We have sustenance. As long as you don’t want Gucci shit, we’ll be fine. I promise.” He rubbed her back, pulling her against his body. “For now, let’s just enjoy having each other for a few days before we start making plans.”
He reached behind him and turned the stove off before settling Dusty on top of the counter.
“Right now, I want to enjoy you right here.” His voice lowered to a growl and he kissed her again, making her worries fall away. His hand made its way under her panties and stroked her, eliciting a gasp.
Dusty could learn to live this way.
Theo heard Ethan move before he started crying. The baby had a way of waking up slowly, giving Theo some advance warning. Nathan was the opposite, letting out an ear-splitting shriek as soon as his consciousness let him.
Theo hopped out of bed and scooped up Ethan from the crib before he could wake his brother and Dusty. He held him close to his chest as he walked down the hallway to their nursery and changed his diaper. Then they went downstairs.
He had no idea how much he would love fatherhood. Twin boys were hard, sure, but he savored the night-time feedings, the early morning wake-up calls, and everything in between. Heating up the bottle, he went ahead and heated the second one for Nathan, knowing he wasn’t far behind. When the bottles were ready, he walked back upstairs with Ethan in his arms, holding the bottle to his mouth one-handed, the first thing he’d learned. He saw Nathan stirring and knew the shriek would not be far behind and scooped him up with his other arm.
He hadn’t perfected the art of changing diapers one-handed though, so he cradled them both as Ethan finished his bottle. He laid him on the play area on the ground while he changed Nathan, then went downstairs with both to feed Nathan and start breakfast for his bride.
Yes, a civil ceremony had happened, where he declared himself to Dusty. And he hadn’t looked back.
A new life. These boys and Dusty were his fresh start.
Dusty actually liked the bees, too.
“What are you doing?” Dusty’s sleepy voice came from the doorway to the kitchen. He turned to look at her, and his eyes feasted.
Rumpled and sleepy-looking, she was gorgeous. Her hair had gotten longer, her body rounder, and everything was softer with motherhood. He walked over to her and leaned down to kiss her.
“Making coffee. Poorly.” He raised his arms, showing that he hadn’t done shit about making coffee, and she took Nathan and his bottle from him, with an indulgent smile.
“Can you make it now?”
He loved his life now. Who knew? All it took was an end to the violence in his heart. Dusty and his boys had replaced the anger and hatred with love. It was extraordinary.
They finished feeding the babies and drinking coffee, taking turns burping them. Dusty was better at it than he was. She had a magic touch.
“What’s on your plate today?” she asked him as she laid out a blanket for them to lie on in the living room.
He brought her a biscuit with a piece of sausage stuck inside. “I’m going over to the outskirts to see if the market there has room for a honey booth.” Dusty had taken to the honey thing like a moth to a flame. She found unique bottles to put it in and created labels and tags for them. She’d even put together a website that explained the health benefits of local honey. Together, they had a small enterprise going. They weren’t millionaires, and if they didn’t each have a little nest egg, it wouldn’t be profitable at all.
Dusty was making plans to start up a small store here in town that would see local jams, herbs, and some cuts of meat. She was better at meeting people than he was, and she had managed to make friends with a local butcher that worked out of his home, as well as a couple of women who made jams and jellies. She herself had started a small herb plot in his backyard.
It had seemed to surprise her, how much she enjoyed gardening, and he’d loved to see her discover that part of herself. Theo had learned from his dad about ties to nature and its grounding effects. While raised in the city, the weekend trips he occasionally got to take with his father showed him firsthand how centering nature can be. Whether they were fishing, camping, or even just sitting in the shade of a tree at the park, his dad had told him to just be still and let nature do its thing.
Of course, he’d forgotten how to do that, and had spent precious months relearning the skill. But Dusty had helped.
With Dusty’s help, Theo was pretty sure he would learn a lot of things, including how to live again.
And he was looking forward to every step of the way.
Po was lying in bed, about to go to sleep after a long of day of nothingness at work when his sister called.
“Daisy. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you anytime soon.”
It reminded him of some things he needed to talk to her about, but in person. She needed to see the urgency of his request, not listen to it over the phone.
“Well, I found something else, and I wanted to talk to you about it before I did anything.”
Panic seized him and he sat up in bed.
“No. I’ve been doing some digging myself, and no. Don’t do anything.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you about it first.”
“Not first. You can talk about it with me, but please don’t do anything. This is dangerous stuff.”
She sighed over the phone, long and loud. “Fine. Come over tomorrow night. I’ve got a friend you need to meet anyway.”
“Your friends don’t need to be involved either, Daisy.” He struggled to keep his voice calm as he continued. “This is important. This guy is really fucking dangerous.” Then he remembered. “I can’t tomorrow night. I’ve got a thing.” He was going after the dangerous guy, but his sister didn’t need to know that. Certainly not how far he went when he went after someone. “Next week?”
“Okay, fine. Next week. I’ll hold off on anything until after we talk. I won’t even tell Rebel all of it.”
“Don’t tell her anything, Daisy. She doesn’t need to be involved.” Po’s anger was mounting at her inability to listen to him and take this seriously.
“I think you would like her.” That was an abrupt change of topic. Was he being played?
“I really think this whole thing is a bad idea. Can you just go on living and pretend you don’t know anything about this? Just let me handle it, pleas
e?”
Her voice got quieter. “You know I can’t, Po. This is too important, too terrible.”
“Okay, fine. Just hold off on anything until we see each other face-to-face.”
“I love you.”
“Love you too.”
Read on for a sneak peek at a different series, Dark Knights in the City, Perfect Drug, available everywhere!
Perfect Drug
Charlie Delmonico is a fixer. It’s what he does for a living. He fixes all the city’s problems.
For a fee.
And he wants to fix Amelia’s problems. Or use her for a fix, whichever works best.
Amelia works in the lobby of a building, until Charlie offers her a job she can’t refuse. Does she want to be fixed, though? Or does she just want Charlie to see her? To know her?
When Charlie gets involved with a deal involving four other guys, to ruin the city’s leader of the underworld, Amelia gets stuck in the middle.
She sees his true colors, and it tears them apart.
Even though Charlie is her perfect drug.
CHAPTER ONE
Today was the day she was sure she’d lose her job.
Late, again. Amelia tried not to think about it, since there wasn’t a damn thing to do to fix things. She’d left as soon as she could, but driving in traffic when you know you’re late is so stress-inducing anyway. It was impossible to speed to get there on time, since there was a traffic accident ahead. Everyone else was stuck too. Nothing to be done for it.
This was her third time being late in a month, and she knew she would be in trouble for it. She’d tried talking to Neil, her boss. She’d explained that everyone else was trying to get to work at the same time, and it didn’t seem to matter how early or late she left her house, she was still borderline late almost every day. She’d asked for a different schedule. If she had to be there at seven instead of nine, she could leave at six and actually get there on time. There wouldn’t be as much traffic.
But he’d told her when she’d applied for, and gotten, the job that started at nine a.m., that’s when she needed to be there, period, or he would find someone who could.
The last tax notice had come yesterday, and thankfully, she’d opened it before Gram had. No telling what her great-grandma would have thought about seeing the news. It basically said the county would take hers and Gram’s home and sell it if they didn’t pay the back taxes in two weeks.
And she didn’t have it.
That was one of the things her grandma had taken care of without saying a word. When she’d died, Amelia had suddenly been in charge of everything. Suddenly in charge of her grandma’s mother, Amelia was not excelling at this adulting thing. Ever since she’d left for college, she had made one mistake after another. And now the family home was at stake, and she was stuck in a shitty job she was about to lose.
She inched by the accident that had held up traffic, snorting at the flat tire on the car, not quite out of the road. There were three wreckers, waiting to be called upon, taking up the entire lane. So it wasn’t really an accident at all. Just a flat tire taking up valuable highway real estate.
After Amelia passed it, the bottleneck was gone, and she zoomed the rest of the way as fast as she could.
But it wasn’t fast enough.
Amelia rushed up the steps to her office building, not having the time to admire the gloomy windows she loved. The architecture was what had initially drawn her to this building; tall, dark windows, spires and gargoyles, it was something out of a novel, and her imagination had captured her months before.
Now it was just a building where she worked. The magic had disappeared from the first interaction with her supervisor, the building manager, Neil Owens.
Douche.
She rushed over to her station at the desk in the lobby, where she greeted employees, visitors, and helped the wayward ones find their destinations.
“Hi,” she muttered to the guard, Larry, without looking up. She was focused on not drawing attention to her tardiness, but Brooke noticed.
Of course.
“You’re late again,” she scoffed as she examined her manicure. “Neil won’t like it. He said—“
“I know what he said,” Amelia mumbled as she tossed her purse and bag under the desk and sat in her chair to clock in on her monitor. “Gram had an issue this morning, and I had to deal with it.”
She’d started making her pickles early today, and Amelia hadn’t been prepared for it. After she’d emptied the jars from two days ago, and then the drive…
A massive box of stationary was unceremoniously dropped on the desk in front of her with a loud thud that made her jump in her seat.
“Glad you could join us, Miss Flores.” Neil’s voice dripped with disdain over her shoulder. “I need these addressed and in the mail by lunch. They’re due to go out today. The addresses are in your email.”
He stood behind her, too close. Brooke was looking up at him with a grin on her face. Amelia hated them. She was convinced they had something going on. As the building manager, Neil had more power than he deserved. He was in charge of cleaning, security, and maintenance as well as the building employees.
Like Amelia, as he constantly reminded her.
Right now, as close as he was, she could feel the heat of his body on the back of her head, where his crotch was pressing into her ponytail, messing up the curls she had carefully done before she’d realized she’d forgotten to wash Gram’s pickle jars.
Nobody else could see it, with the possible exception of Brooke, who was blindly greeting people who entered the building and offering to look up and give directions to where they needed to go.
Meanwhile, Neil’s dick was pressed into the back of Amelia’s head.
With a sigh, she leaned forward to open her email and start addressing envelopes.
“You know you are on the last straw here, Amelia,” Neil had bent to whisper in her ear. “If you don’t finish this mail before you take your lunch, you’ll be in my office by one.” The words uttered in her ear left a slimy promise in their wake. She didn’t want to be in his office, ever. She could only imagine the begging and pleading he would want her to do to keep this job.
Suddenly, the air thickened and she knew exactly why. It happened every morning, when he came in. She could feel the air move around her, prickling her senses with an awareness. Her eyes rose to find the tall commanding figure standing directly in front of her.
“I’ll triple whatever he’s paying you to quit right now and come work for me.”
Charlie Delmonico.
Grab your copy here!
About Melinda Owens
Melinda Owens was born in 2020, when the world turned dark. Her previous muses leaving her, she recreated herself as a darker author, saving her own sanity in a world with happily-ever-afters in spite of her own frustrating circumstances. She lives in East Texas with an abundance of cats and her family of giant people.
The Secrets We Keep Page 13