by Christi Snow
“She’s London,” the boy answered. “I’m Austin.”
“Cities...I like it.” Although that really didn’t sound like something Gage would have done, which just went to prove that she had no idea who he really was besides some love-swept, rose-colored, fantasy man she’d created in her young head when they’d been dating long distance.
Austin rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Our mom named us.”
Now that made a bit more sense. She unlocked the door to the kennel room and indulged her curiosity. “And how old are you guys? Will you be going to the local high school?”
“Seventeen,” London answered. “And unfortunately, yes.”
Felicia tried not to flinch at that age. Seventeen. That meant it was very possible the twins had been conceived before they had broken up. It definitely had to be a near thing. Had he cheated on her the whole time they’d been together? Her chest hurt. How could the idea of that still hurt so much?
She and Gage had been over ages ago. She should be completely over him. It was obvious he’d gotten completely over her, if she ever meant anything to him at all.
“So, seniors or juniors?” Either age would be a hard time to move. Those high school years were already so drama-filled, and being a kid of the military wasn’t for the weak. At least they had each other.
They arrived in front of Ralph’s cage, and as he stood, his tail wagging to see his kids. London cooed as she greeted Ralph.
Austin was still paying attention, though. “We’ll be seniors. And you didn’t answer her question. Is Ralph going to be okay?”
Felicia smiled at him reassuringly as she reached across to open the cage. “I’m going to open this, but don’t let him come out. We’re trying to keep him as immobile as possible, so he doesn’t dislodge his IV.”
London nodded solemnly as she reached into the cage and buried her face in the sweet dog’s fur. The dog took a deep breath as if he needed the reassurance from his owner just as much.
Felicia smiled. Good owners with happy pets...the best blessing for any veterinarian. She turned back to Austin. “Right now, I’m cautiously optimistic. As you can see, he’s feeling much better this morning, but we’re still monitoring him to see if he has any organ damage from whatever he ate yesterday. So far, it looks like his breakfast is settling well, and that’s a very good sign. Ralph may just be one of the lucky ones since you all were so quick thinking when he started having problems. Nothing’s guaranteed at this stage, but he looks good.”
Relief flooded the boy’s expression, and he reached toward Ralph. It was like he had been waiting for confirmation that the dog would live before he allowed himself to reach out. An interesting self-defense mechanism.
Patty leaned into the doorway to the kennels. “Dr. Parks, your first appointment is here.”
She nodded. “Thanks, Patty. I’ll be right there.” She turned to the kids.
London’s eyes widened. “We don’t already have to go already, do we?”
Felicia pressed her lips together tightly. She really shouldn’t allow the teenagers to stay back here by themselves, but she also didn’t have the heart to kick them out yet. “You can stay for just a bit longer. Ralph is scheduled for an abdominal CT scan in about thirty minutes. You can stay with him until the techs come to get him prepped. Okay?”
“Thank you!” London sprang up from the floor and threw her arms around Felicia. “For letting us stay and for saving his life.”
“I’m just doing my job,” Felicia said as she extricated herself from the girl’s embrace.
She started to leave, but Austin’s voice stopped her. “My dad told us to tell you that he’ll be in after he finishes with the movers. Is that okay?”
Seeing Gage again? As her heart leapt in excitement, she worried that it was entirely too okay. She shouldn’t be counting down the minutes until that happened again. She nodded. “That’s fine.”
And then she rushed out of the kennel area before the way-too-observant kids read something on her face that she sure as hell shouldn’t be feeling for a married man with a family.
Besides, she had Steven now. And he was great. So much better than Gage had ever been.
Maybe if she told herself that enough, she’d begin to believe it.
THE AFTERNOON AT GAGE’S house had devolved into chaos.
With every broken or slightly damaged item London unpacked that had belonged to her mother, the more unhinged she became. “It doesn’t matter.” Her voice sounded tight. “What’s one more ruined thing in this journey from hell that you’ve brought us on?”
When she began crying over a hideous bird sculpture, Gage had had enough.
He clapped his hands and hollered into the house. “Okay, all Winstons file in. It’s time for us to take a break, get out of here for a little bit, and find something for dinner.”
Slowly, the twins slogged in, both of them glaring at him like he’d told them they needed to go out in the field and forage for their meal.
God save him from overdramatic teenagers.
Gage nodded his head at Austin. “You want to drive?”
Austin shrugged. “Sure. Where are we going?”
“How about we go and check on Ralph? I need to talk to Dr. Parks about when he can come home, and then we’ll find someplace to eat dinner.”
Austin nodded, and they all filed out of the house and got into Austin’s truck.
“You know,” Austin said as he took the loop around town, “you never did tell us the whole story with your history with Dr. Parks.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” London added with her eyebrows raised at him in challenge.
Gage rubbed his hand over his tired face. He so didn’t want to get into his tragic love life with his teenagers, but they obviously weren’t going to drop it. “Okay. I’ll give you the short version of it. I dated Dr. Parks for a couple of years, but we never lived in the same town. It was just too hard to do the long-distance thing. Neither one of us were mature enough to handle the stress that so much time apart put on our relationship.” Meaning...he hadn’t been mature enough to handle it. He was the one who ruined it all and broke both their hearts.
“Did you love her?” London asked, and for once her tone wasn’t filled with attitude or spite. It sounded like she really wanted to know.
“I thought so at the time, but we were going two different places in our lives. I was in the Air Force. You guys know how much I’ve moved.” The kids had never been part of those moves since he and Chelle had gotten divorced so early. “There was no way she could have built a vet practice and a life with me at the same time. Our lives were at crossed-purposes. We just wanted to believe something else at the time. The relationship was doomed to fail.”
“She broke your heart,” London said softly.
Gage shook his head. “We broke each other’s hearts. It just wasn’t meant to be. Besides, if it had worked out with her, I wouldn’t have you two, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.” He could say that and truly mean it now. Back then, the reality had been very different.
Chapter Five
18 years ago
“What do you mean, you’re pregnant?” Gage stared at this virtual stranger in disbelief.
How had he gotten someone who wasn’t Felicia pregnant?
How could this be happening? How had he managed to fuck up his life so much in one night? He shook his head at the model tall blonde and stared down at her flat stomach. “We used a condom, didn’t we?” He’d been drunk, but he couldn’t have been that drunk. He just wouldn’t do that.
“We were both really drunk. I don’t really remember, but I’m guessing no, considering...” She looked past him to the sprawling apartment complex.
But...fuck...
He rubbed his hand over his face. He would have sworn that he’d never cheat on Felicia, either, never break her heart, never do anything to make her look at him with as much contempt as she had the last time he’d seen her. E
ven now, just a few weeks later, the memory of that look on her beautiful face made him feel like he needed to dive for the bushes and puke out everything—all he’d eaten, all his mistakes, all his bad decisions. So many bad decisions.
All coming back to bite him in the ass.
“Are you going somewhere?” She looked down at the duffle bag in his hands.
He’d been on his way to New Mexico to try to talk Felicia. Right after New Year’s Day when everything had gone to hell, he’d been called up for a mission and hadn’t managed to get leave for way too many weeks. But he’d finally gotten that resolved and planned to win his girl back. Now, that idea seemed ridiculous.
“Are you sure it’s mine?” God, he didn’t even remember her name. How could he be having a baby with someone when he had no idea what her name even was? He was the ultimate fuck-up. Felicia would be better off without him.
She nodded, tears filling her eyes. “Yes. I haven’t been with anyone else in over six months.”
He swallowed down the disappointment as his last hope was shot down in flames. He reached out a hand to her. “Well, since we’re going to be parents, how about a formal introduction? I’m Lieutenant Gage Winston.”
She took his hand with a small giggle. Her hand felt soft and delicate in his.
“Michelle Watson. Everyone calls me Chelle.”
“Chelle.” He smiled at her and hoped it looked at least halfway convincing. “It suits you. So, you want to get married?”
Her mouth dropped open, but it was really the only choice. She was pregnant with his baby. They had to be married for her and the baby to be covered by his military medical insurance. His life with Felicia was over. He’d done this to himself, and now, he’d have to live with the consequences—a life with someone that he didn’t love or know.
Yeah, he’d fucked up big time.
PRESENT DAY
“Dr. Parks?” Briggs, the vet tech who worked part time in the afternoons asked.
Felicia looked up from the file she’d been updating. “Yes?”
“The Winston family is here to check on Ralph.”
Butterflies erupted in her stomach. She hadn’t realized Gage had arrived. “Okay. I’ll be out to talk with them in just a few moments. Let me finish up this form. If you could go grab Ralph and put him in exam room three that would be helpful.”
“My pleasure.” Briggs winked at her. “The guy’s a cutie.”
Her gaze flew up to him. At first she thought he was talking about Gage, but no, her gay, twenty-year old assistant would definitely be more interested in Austin.
“Briggs,” she said, using her warning tone. “He’s too young for you. Besides, I think you’re forgetting the rule...no flirting with the patients’ owners.”
Briggs rolled his eyes dramatically. “You take all the fun out of everything.”
She laughed. “That’s my job as the boss.”
Briggs was an unapologetic flirt. It didn’t matter if the focus of his flirting was an eighty-year-old grandma or a seventeen-year-old, good-looking teenager; he didn’t care. He was just one of those guys who couldn’t help himself, and that made him a favorite with all their clients.
He also had a true passion for animals. He loved them without reserve, and the animals sensed that and trusted him completely. He was a great addition to her staff. She just had to make sure to keep him under control so he didn’t offend their more conservative clients.
She finished adding the last line of her treatment of Brutus, the Panther Chameleon and then closed down the file on her computer. Standing, she swiped her damp palms down her jeans and took a deep breath to steel herself. She just avoided checking her mirror to see how bad she looked. After working in the vet clinic all day, it was bound to tell her bad news. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to impress Gage, not anymore.
When she entered the exam room from the back, London was crooning over Ralph, Austin appeared to be appreciating Briggs.
Gage honed in on her.
He looked so good even in an old concert T-shirt. It clung to his toned pectoral muscles and his trim waist. Gage had been fit before, but damn, age had done very nice things to him...thicker shoulders leading to that ass that had always been incredible. Even the little bit of gray at his temples and the slight crinkling in the corners of his eyes suited him.
“Hi,” he said in a low tone that sounded way too intimate for this setting.
It hit low in her belly. She straightened and smoothed the lapels of her coat. “Good evening, Winstons. Well, we have some very good news. As you can see”—she waved her hand at the large, golden retriever who was doing his best to show London how much he’d missed her—“Ralph is feeling much better. All of our tests so far have come back looking very positive. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to keep him one more night just to monitor and make sure. But if he does okay tonight, then I’m thinking you’ll be able to take him home tomorrow morning.”
She glanced down at the file with Ralph’s latest results, double-checking that the numbers looked as good as she’d said. She glanced up at the twins. “Do you have any questions?”
“Yes, I have one,” Gage said.
She turned. Looking at him directly felt like looking into the sun. Gage’s pure, masculine beauty overwhelmed her, making it hard to breathe, hard to think. It was completely unfair. How could be even more devastatingly good looking now than he did twenty years ago? He had a few gray hairs now, but all they did was make the silver flecks in his eyes spark more.
“I know you’re probably the resident expert. We’re all starving after unpacking all day.” He raised a flirty eyebrow. “Where can we find the best tamales and queso in Terravista?”
She blew out a laugh. He remembered her fondness for Mexican food. “Well, it depends on which you value more...the tamales or the queso. Because nobody will beat Rosa’s for tamales, but The Tilted Sombrero is the place for queso.”
“Oh my god.” London’s eyes glittered with humor. “How can we resist a place with the name The Tilted Sombrero? Please, Dad, can we go there?”
He chuckled. “I have to admit I’m a bit intrigued. Is it hard to find?”
She shook her head at him. “No, it’s just down—”
Austin said, “You should come with us.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, no, I couldn’t.”
“Austin...” Gage warned.
“What?” Austin blinked wide, innocent eyes up at his dad. “You guys were together a long time ago. Don’t you want to catch up?”
Gage had told the twins about their history? What had he said?
“Oh, really?” Briggs raised an eyebrow. “History?”
“Well, yeah,” Felicia said, scrambling for a good excuse to get out of this. “But that was ages ago. Besides, I have to finish up here...”
“You don’t have any more appointments today,” Briggs said with a knowing nod at Austin. “You should go. You had a late night last night. I think you can take off fifteen minutes early tonight. I’ll take care of all the kennels so you don’t have to worry about them, and I know you were doing paperwork through your lunch break, so you can’t even use that as an excuse.”
She narrowed her eyes at her vet tech, but he wasn’t even paying her any attention. From the wink he just threw at Austin, he was sucking up to the cute boy.
She gave them all a tight smile. “Thank you, but I really can’t—”
“I would like to catch up,” Gage said. “Come on. Let me treat you to dinner as an apology for ruining your night last night.”
Her special night with Steven, her boyfriend. “Which is exactly why I shouldn’t. I have a boyfriend, and I’m sure their mother...” She had no idea how to end that sentence.
“Our mom died,” London said quietly.
It had the same effect as a primed hand-grenade dropping in the middle of the room. No one moved or said a word.
Finally, Felicia shook herself, torn between horror for these poor ki
ds and a mortifying sense of relief. Gage’s relationship status shouldn’t matter to her, especially if it had come at the cost of someone’s life. She was a truly awful person. “I’m so sorry,” Felicia said.
“But that’s exactly why you should come with us,” Austin said. “We’re in a new town—your town—but we also don’t know our dad very well yet. Come with us. You two can catch up, and it will make it easier for London and I to catch up with what’s been going on with him, too.”
They didn’t know their dad very well? That didn’t compute at all. Was Austin saying that Gage hadn’t been part of their lives? Maybe they did need to catch up, because the Gage she had known would have never voluntarily stepped out of his children’s lives.
“Come on,” Austin pleaded. “Say yes.”
How was she supposed to say no to that? She couldn’t, so she nodded. “If you’re sure...” She directed the question at Gage one more time to check that this was what he truly wanted.
“Yes.” He nodded. “Go get your purse and do what you need to do to close up. We’ll wait for you. And Felicia, if it will make you feel better, call and invite Steven to join us.”
It made her feel better that he offered, but she shook her head. “No, he had plans for tonight. They’re getting ready for...” She winced and hesitated a moment. “Um, the wing change of command so they were having marching practice tonight for his squadron.” She grimaced and tilted her head toward him. “Is it wrong that I told you that?”
He laughed. “No, it’s a normal thing. In the Air Force, the only time we march is at formal ceremonies. As a result, we all pretty much suck at it. Last minute practices aren’t unusual at all, especially for the maintenance guys.”
It seemed odd that he made a comment specifically about the maintenance troops, but she admittedly didn’t understand a lot about the military. When she’d been dating Gage, that had been his far-off life. And Steven tried to leave work at the office, so he rarely discussed much about the military. As a result, she’d never been exposed to much of it.